Standing in the Shadows Paperback - 1999

Excerpt

Howard Flatt's description of the murder was flecked with hesitation: just the facts. Geraldine King had died, he told me, on the fourteenth of October.

He left out all the important things. He didn't tell me that Geraldine had dressed with care, as always, on that day--that she'd chosen a blouse in a tone that lifted her sixty-something complexion, and a cardigan, in a blue of the palest shade, that found an echo in her eyes. He didn't tell me that her hair was white and fluffy, nor that her panties, ripped from crotch to hip, turned up at an arm's throw from the body.

Howard had said that Geraldine had been found on the ground under a walnut tree. I only learned later--from Becca Hunter--that blood from the head wounds and runoff from the evening rain had puddled around the body as it had impressed slowly into the soft earth. That by the time Geraldine was found, her pastel cardigan was as wet as sea moss, her skirt so drenched that the pattern of tiny tea roses showed scarcely at all. It was Becca who reported that, when she touched Geraldine, the plushy arms were surfaced with the chill of death.

"And next to her body, just a few feet away," Howard explained, as if he had omitted nothing, "was the tree. And partway up the tree, at the head of a ladder, was a platform. And that was where--" He came to a halt, a frown on the scale of the Cheddar Gorge splitting his bony brows.

"It's all right," I said quietly. "I remember."

We were nursing drinks at a small round table in Parker's Bar. I work in Cambridge whenever I can, but I haven't gotten around to opening an office there....

For a working base in Cambridge, my house on Clare Street does just fine. A filing cabinet, a fax machine, a computer that gives instant connection to Camden, and there you have it--all the convenience of an office, with few of the drawbacks. No commuting to work, and the chance to shift between desk and bed as inspiration strikes.

However, there is one distinct disadvantage. Old clients, or new clients who are friends of friends, are welcome to ring my doorbell....

Howard Flatt had rung me at home--number supplied by the Camden office--at 8:30 A.M. on the dot. "Miss Principal?" he asked.

"Laura Principal," I confirmed. "Can I help you?"

Indeed I could. Howard Flatt wanted to hire a private investigator to follow up a murder that had taken place two years before--the killing of a Geraldine King.

"Your connection to this crime?" I asked. But even as I asked, the answer came to me. The name of the child--only eleven years old at the time--who had been convicted of the murder, was Daryll Flatt.

What must it feel like, I wondered, to have a killer for a baby brother?

Media reviews

"[A] suspenseful thriller. . .  Truly startling."
--Los Angeles Times

"A RAPIER-SHARP PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLER. Michelle Spring is a major new novelist whose literate, intricately patterned storytelling will be warmly greeted by fans of P. D. James and Minette Walters."
--SANDRA SCOPPETTONE

"An engrossing tale of the everyday face of evil and the casual corruption of innocence, set in the green, ageless riverside town of Cambridge. The contrast is delicious, and Michelle Spring keeps getting better."
--LAURIE R. KING

"POWERFUL EMOTIONAL INTENSITY . . .
THE BOOK HITS YOU WHERE YOU LIVE."
--The Washington Post Book World