THE COMPANY SHE KEPT

by Marjorie Eccles ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 19, 1996

Fourteen years after a fateful Ouija experiment among ancient archeologist Kitty Wilbraham's household, two more communications awaken unquiet spirits once again. The first, a manuscript entitled The Carthage Affair, sends Felix Darbell, the former gardener's helper once in love with Kitty's exquisite, indifferent new secretary Sophie Amhurst, into a panic, since it's obviously written by one of the few people who knows the whole story of his involvement in that night. The second, an anonymous letter that begins, ""The night she died Dido came,"" and concludes, ""She would not have died if she had stayed away from England,"" points more delphically back to the past--but far more definitely to the immediate future, when its author, Women's Hospital receptionist Angie Robinson, is found strangled in a lonely lay-by. Eccles juggles her parsimonious cast of suspects--Kitty's former physician Dr. Madeleine Freeman, Angie's patron and only friend; smallholder Maryon Thomas, who bought his farm from Kitty; and the beauteous Sophie--so deftly that they seem to fill the whole world; you'll be hard-pressed to beat Chief Inspector Gil Mayo's forces to the punch in laying hands on the guilty party. Eccles's fourth (Late of This Parish, 1994, etc.) hops dexterously between the mysterious past and the violent present, though at some cost to the lightly sketched Lavenstock CID.

Pub Date: Aug. 19, 1996

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: 192

Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1996

Categories: FICTION