Vengeance is Mine!



Death at the Jesus Hospital [by] David Dickinson          

London; Constable [2012]

978-1-61695-084-2; $25.00

Here’s another convoluted mystery for Lord Powerscourt and Lady Lucy, along with 3 sets of Detective Inspectors and Sergeants in 3 different crimes.  The first man murdered was Abel Meredith, also known by the number of his room, #20, at the Jesus Hospital almshouse in Marlow near London. The second victim was Roderick Gill, bursar at the Allison’s School in Norfolk.  The third victim is Sir Rufus Walcott, former Prime Warden of the Silkworkers, at the Silkworkers Hall on the Thames in London.  The institutions where the others were murdered also have a connection with the Silkworkers, a livery company with its history in the guilds of medieval England.  All three men had their throats cut, and a strange marking, rather like a thistle, carved on their chests – a mark no doctor, coroner, or cop could identify.

Powerscourt is called in by the current Prime Warden of the Silkworkers, Sir Peregrine Fishbourne, to deal with the first murder, and the case just gets bigger and bigger.  Local law enforcement interviews the rest of the men at the Hospital, to no avail.  Powerscourt sends his former assistant from when he was in Military Intelligence, Johnny Fitzgerald, to buy drinks for the old-age pensioners and to interview them casually.  He uncovers a plot by the current warden, Monk, to bilk them out of the money in their wills, but not much more.

Powerscourt dispatches his wife, Lady Lucy, under her prior married name, to the school, to see what she can get out of the students, who had taken such a negative attitude towards the policeman from the Norfolk Constabulary, that they refused to talk to him.  The police did get some information from some of the women with whom Gill had dallied.  One of the boys tells Lady Lucy that the murderer, a man with a big black beard whom he had seen in the hall, dressed as a postman, the morning of the murder, had a South African accent.

The third murder seems to have no clues, except that there was a long time in the early adulthood of the victim, which is unaccounted for anywhere.

Despite meetings at Powerscourt’s house in London of all of the personnel investigating the murders, they don’t seem to be getting any closer to the truth.  Then Powerscourt decides to try to identify the strange marks made on each of the bodies, which leads him to the General Officer Commanding at Aldershot, the Royal Army Training Camp. 

Then things rush forward, leading them to Salcombe on the Devonshire coast, where the man with the painful past, linked to the three dead ones, has been hiding.  There is a race between a sailing yacht and a lifeboat crew, which is an exciting rundown to the conclusion.  It was revenge all along.

Dickinson is painstaking in the historical details and interesting in the aspects of the characters he chooses to highlight.  The plotting is intricate and interesting, and the overall bottom line is a highly recommended historical mystery! ~ lss-r

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Library book.