Huge thanks to my editor, Walter Donohue; to my publicist, Sophie Portas; and to every single department at Faber, whose loyalty to these novels means the world to me, as does the continued support and friendship of my agent, Veronique Baxter, and the dedication of her colleagues at David Higham Associates, Nicky Lund and Sara Langham. I’m grateful to Gráinne Fox of Fletcher & Company and Matthew Martz and Jenny Chen at Crooked Lane Books for taking such good care of Josephine in the US. The longevity of any series is a collective effort, and I appreciate the efforts 295of everyone who works so hard to enable me to breathe life into the characters I love.

Love and thanks, as always, to my family and friends, whose enthusiasm and kindness never cease to amaze me. And to Mandy, who makes each book better than it would otherwise have been, and never more so than this one: thank you for the title and the real-life events that inspired the story, and thank you for making Christmas sparkle from September to the end of January.

About the Author

Nicola Upson was born in Suffolk and read English at Downing College, Cambridge. Her debut novel, An Expert in Murder, was the first in a series of crime novels whose main character is Josephine Tey, who – along with Agatha Christie – was one of the finest of Britain’s Golden Age writers. There have been eight books in the series, of which Nine Lessons was shortlisted for the CWA Historical Dagger in 2018. She lives with her partner in Cambridge and Cornwall.

By the Same Author

an expert in murder

angel with two faces

two for sorrow

fear in the sunlight

the death of lucy kyte

london rain

nine lessons

sorry for the dead

stanley and elsie

EXTRACT FROM DEAR LITTLE CORPSES

31 AUGUST 1939

1

The full moon made a nonsense of the blackout. Josephine pulled her front door to and walked out into the garden, where a mischievous, scavenging breeze chased the first fallen leaves of the year. The uneven path felt hard and dry at her feet, and the countryside around the cottage had tired visibly in the late August heat; even now, on the cusp of midnight, the breeze could do little to banish the day’s stifling humidity. In the distance, a low rumble of thunder promised some respite from the tension in the air, and she wondered if the run of good luck which had blessed the Suffolk harvest was about to come to an end. The fields were half cut now, the ratio of stubble to thick yellow corn growing steadily by the day, but in the sharp, silvered light, everything seemed suspended in time, as if the fields – like the men who worked them – were holding their breath, waiting to see which way the world would turn.

Stopping at the garden gate, she looked back towards the cottage, hoping to take satisfaction from the darkened windows which she and Marta had worked on all afternoon, diligently lining the curtains with black, as though for a funeral which had yet to take place. She stood here often in the evenings, finding happiness in the home they had made for each other, in the scent of the flowers or the remnants of a meal on the table – all evidence of a simple, shared existence amid lives that were otherwise separate and complicated. Tonight, without its cheerful lamplight, the cottage already looked forlorn and derelict, as if it sensed a period of desertion and had decided to strike the first blow. The small transformation of something so cherished shocked Josephine – more so, even, than the dramatic reconfiguring of London in preparation for war, changes that made her feel like a stranger to the city she loved. She stared at the cottage’s featureless anonymity, but the security she craved didn’t come; instead, she had the sense of slipping into an abyss.