The Stranger House
A stunning psychological thriller set in Cumbria past and present, from the award-winning author of the Dalziel and Pascoe seriesThings move slowly in the tiny Cumbrian village of Illthwaite, but all that's about to change.Post-grad Sam Flood and historian Miguel Mercado first meet at The Stranger House, Illwaithe’s local inn. Sam is there to find information on her grandmother, who left four decades before, while Mig’s research stretches back to the English Reformation, four centuries ago.The pair have nothing in common, yet their paths become increasingly entangled as they pursue their separate quests. Together they will discover who to trust and who to fear in this ancient village where the inhabitants are determined to keep the past buried.
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REGINALD HILL
THE STRANGER HOUSE
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
Harper HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
Copyright © Reginald Hill 2005
Reginald Hill asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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Source ISBN: 9780007194834
Ebook Edition © OCTOBER 2015 ISBN: 9780007351619 Version: 2015-09-17
For Allan, Brian, John and Peter
To his friends a man should be firm in friendship sharing gifts and sharing laughter.
‘The Sayings of the High One’ Poetic Edda
Be helpful to strangers who stop at your house,don’t mock or demean them.It’s hard to be certain simply by lookingwhat kin they may claim.
‘The Sayings of the High One’ Poetic Edda
By dead-man’s shore in shadow-landa hall was raised roofed with serpentswhose venom drips on those who dwell therekillers and defilers. All doors face north.
‘The Sibyl’s Prophecy’ Poetic Edda
Contents
Part Two The Valley of the Shadow
5 a nice straight country road
Most of what I know about the incredible scandal of the estimated 150,000 child migrants shipped from Britain to the furthermost corners of its Empire derives from Margaret Humphrey’s moving exposé, Empty Cradles (Doubleday, 1994; Corgi, 1995), which I recommend unreservedly. But no character in my book is based on any individual involved in any capacity in that sorry tale of abuse of persons and of power.
Australia figures in my story and anything I have got right about matters Australian is almost certainly down to Mel Cain and Christine Farmer of HarperCollins, who organized my only visit to their lovely country and made sure I had a great time. By the same token, anything I’ve got wrong is down to me, so let me put my hand up now and save you the bother of writing!
But most of the action of The Stranger House takes place in Cumbria, England, which is the powsowdie the politicians made thirty years ago of the grand old counties of Cumberland and Westmorland, with segments of Lancashire and Yorkshire stapled on to straighten the boundaries and make it fit more easily into a filing cabinet.
This was the setting of my formative and is the setting of my degenerative years and I feel some natural unease at locating on my own doorstep a story which is full of eccentric people often behaving badly. So let me state without reservation that the valley of Skaddale and its village of Illthwaite are entirely figments of my imagination. Their names, population, history and topography are invented, and they bear no relation other than the most basically generic to any real places.
This means that my dear friends, my excellent neighbours, and indeed all occupants, native or new-come, of this loveliest of landscapes can rest peacefully in their beds.
And so can their lawyers.
My heroine’s terms of reference are mathematical, my hero’s religious.
