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The Murders at Fleat House

Lucinda Riley
Contents ( 42)
  1. The Murders at Fleat House
  2. LUCINDA RILEY
  3. Glossary of terms
  4. Foreword
  5. Prologue
  6. Chapter One
  7. Chapter Two
  8. Chapter Three
  9. Chapter Four
  10. Chapter Five
  11. Chapter Six
  12. Chapter Seven
  13. Chapter Eight
  14. Chapter Nine
  15. Chapter Ten
  16. Chapter Eleven
  17. Chapter Twelve
  18. Chapter Thirteen
  19. Chapter Fourteen
  20. Chapter Fifteen
  21. Chapter Sixteen
  22. Chapter Seventeen
  23. Chapter Eighteen
  24. Chapter Nineteen
  25. Chapter Twenty
  26. Chapter Twenty-One
  27. Chapter Twenty-Two
  28. Chapter Twenty-Three
  29. Chapter Twenty-Four
  30. Chapter Twenty-Five
  31. Chapter Twenty-Six
  32. Chapter Twenty-Seven
  33. Chapter Twenty-Eight
  34. Chapter Twenty-Nine
  35. Chapter Thirty
  36. Chapter Thirty-One
  37. Chapter Thirty-Two
  38. Chapter Thirty-Three
  39. Epilogue
  40. Acknowledgements
  41. 1
  42. The Murders at Fleat House
Cover image: The Murders at Fleat House by Lucinda Riley

The Murders at
Fleat House

LUCINDA RILEY

Macmillan logo

Contents

Glossary of terms

Foreword

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

THE SEVEN SISTERS SERIES

THE SEVEN SISTERS

1

ATLAS: THE STORY OF PA SALT

This novel is dedicated to all those who dream.
Never give up and never give in – Lucinda didn’t.

—Lucinda’s family

Glossary of terms

AAAlcoholics Anonymous, an organization that helps alcoholics achieve sobriety.
ASBOAn antisocial behaviour order given out by a court to stop a person behaving in a certain way.
CIDCriminal Investigation Department: the branch of a police force to which most detectives belong.
CPSThe Crown Prosecution Service.
PMA post-mortem examination; an autopsy.
SanShort for ‘sanatorium’. Some boarding schools have these as a sick bay for pupils.
SOCOA scene of crime officer. Their job is to recover and record evidence, such as fingerprints and DNA samples, from a crime scene.

Foreword

Dear reader,

I hope you are as excited as I am to be turning the pages of a brand-new Lucinda Riley novel. Perhaps you are an avid fan of The Seven Sisters series, and are eagerly waiting for Lucinda to transport you to a new and vivid realm. Maybe, though, you are new to her writing, intrigued by the promise of this fresh and compelling crime novel. In this case, very sadly, I must start at the end, to contextualise the pages you are about to devour. For those not aware, Lucinda – Mum – died on 11 June 2021, following an oesophageal cancer diagnosis in 2017. I am Lucinda’s eldest son and co-author (not of this project, I hasten to add). Together, we created the Guardian Angels series for children, and I am tasked with fulfilling her enormous literary legacy by completing the eighth and final novel in The Seven Sisters series.

For this reason, I wish to tell you how The Murders at Fleat House came to be. Firstly, although it has never seen the light of day, it was written in 2006. Once her youngest children had started school, Lucinda penned three novels without a publisher, two of which have subsequently been released to great acclaim – The Olive Tree (also called Helena’s Secret) and The Butterfly Room. It was always her plan to publish the third of these novels, which you currently hold in your hands, after the conclusion of The Seven Sisters series.

In the case of The Olive Tree and The Butterfly Room, Lucinda undertook extensive rewrites (as any author revisiting a project after a decade would wish to). Mum has not had that opportunity in the case of The Murders at Fleat House. As such, I faced a quandary when taking the decision to release this book. Was it my responsibility to edit, adapt and update the text, as she would have wished to? After much contemplation, I felt that preserving Mum’s voice should take precedence. With this in mind, only the bare minimum editorial work has been undertaken.