'Animal lovers will delight' Ann Granger
**
'A real treat . . . I loved it. Cats, dogs, murder and a credible and
relatable heroine' Barbara Nadel**
Driving home from a ceramics evening class, Clarice Beech reflects on
the absence of one of her students, Colin Compton-Smythe. Later, Emily,
Colin's daughter, telephones to say her father has died during routine
surgery. Distraught, Emily opens up to Clarice about his wretched
childhood and the day five-year-old Colin returned home to discover
Avril, his mother, gone. Colin never believed she would have left
without him and had been trying to find out more about Avril's
disappearance all those years ago.
Clarice readily agrees to accompany Emily to Colin's funeral. On
arriving at the stunning Victorian Gothic manor house, with Bellatrix,
the majestic stone Siamese cat reposing at its entrance, Clarice soon
becomes drawn into the fractious world of the Compton-Smythe family:
Colin's argumentative father Ralph and his equally combative partner
Tessa, their daughter, Dawn, being stalked by an ex-lover and, most
unsettling of all, Ernestine, Ralph's emotionally unpredictable sister.
And then there's Johnson, Ralph's menacing manservant.
Clarice discovers the nearer she gets to the truth, the greater she is
in danger as somebody is intent that the mystery of the missing wife
should never be resolved.
