Tonight should be enjoyable for the most part. I will be making a new thing for dinner that I hope Steve likes, taco soup. If he doesn't like it then I'll have lots of leftovers or lunches. On TV is Say Yes to the Dress (2 new episodes!) and the official premiere of Camelot on Starz channel. Tomorrow I’ll be starting the May issue: getting the template ready and looking through Amazon’s database for stragglers. And I’ll be doing laundry. I also have to figure out what writing assignment I’m going to do this week for my class: article or start a bigger project?
I’m being bad: I’m playing hooky from the reading I should be doing. I should be starting the book on communism in 1920/30s Montana but instead I started the most recent Charles Finch. Killing time after work and before my class yesterday, I got it from the library, justifying that I have to read it by saying it is a 14-day book. And really, the High Plains books have an expiration date, too, so it’s not really a valid reason. But I swear after the poetry book I needed to touch base with a real book.
So I’ve started A STRANGER IN MAYFAIR by Charles Finch. This is 4th of 4 in series featuring Charles Lenox, a gentleman sleuth, in 1860s London. Here is a summary:
Returning from a continental honeymoon with his lifelong friend and new wife, Lady Jane Grey, Charles Lenox is asked by a colleague in Parliament to consult in the murder of a footman, bludgeoned to death with a brick. His investigation uncovers both unsettling facts about the family he served and a strange, second identity that the footman himself cultivated. Going into the boxing clubs and public houses, the Mayfair mansions and servants’ quarter of Victorian London, Lenox gradually realizes that an old friend may be implicated in the footman’s death. Soon a suspect is arrested, but Lenox has his doubts. Desperately trying to balance the opening of Parliament and what he feels sure is a dark secret, he soon discovers that the killer is someone shockingly innocuous—who may be prepared to spill blood again.
Here is an excerpt:
Chapter One
For an Englishman it was a strange time to be in France. During much of the century a strong enmity had existed between the countries’ two governments, first because of Napoleon’s rather uncouth attempt to conquer Europe, then because of the lingering hostility born of that time. Now, though, the emperor’s nephew ruled France and had shown himself more liberal than his uncle—he had freed the press and the government from many of their previous restrictions—and an uneasy peace had sprung up across the Channel.
Even during the worst of times, just after Waterloo, for instance, there had been civility among open-minded French and English men, and now a man like Lenox, who loved so much about France—its coffee, its food, its wine, its architecture, its countryside, its literature—could visit the place with open admiration. There were republican rumblings in the capitol, however, and many Frenchmen, whose grandfathers had survived the revolution, felt fearful of what the next years might bring. Both Lenox and Lady Jane were happy that they had come when they did. Who knew what changes another shift in regime might bring? Who knew whether they would ever be able to visit again? And since that was the case, they had done all they could. Lady Jane had ordered dresses by the dozen (the seamstresses here being so infinitely preferable to English dressmakers—even at the height of the war fashion had been smuggled from one country to the other), while Lenox had spent his days closeted with a dozen different politicians, all of them sympathetic.
For he was in fact the newly minted Member of Parliament for Stirrington—had been elected not six months since. In that time he had barely entered the great chamber, however. He and Lady Jane had married in the Whitsun Recess, and now, in the Summer Recess, they were on their honeymoon. Paris was their final destination. They had spent three weeks traveling through the beautiful lake towns of the Alps, then another two in the French countryside.
In truth, as wonderful as it had been, both longed to be home. They missed London, missed their friends, and missed the little street off Grosvenor Square, Hampden Lane, where they had lived in side-by-side town houses for the better part of two decades. When they returned the two houses would be one: Over the past months an architect had supervised the demolition of the walls between them and seamlessly joined the buildings’ rooms to create one large house. It gave Lenox a good deal of private pleasure to contemplate this physical symbol of their union. For long years Jane had been his closest friend, and he could scarcely believe that he was lucky enough now to be married to her. Their births were close enough (hers slightly higher), and they had grown up together, but within London society she was one of the brightest stars, and while he was welcome everywhere and had a great variety of friends, he was viewed as idiosyncratic because of his career. Perhaps his marriage and his admission to Parliament would change that. He hated to admit it, but he wouldn’t mind. It had been hard to go it alone for so long in the face of everyone’s polite disapproval of his vocation.
That evening they were in their sitting room at the Crillon. She was at a small carved desk, writing her correspondence, and he was sitting in an armchair, reading. A cool summer breeze blew in through the window.
As if she were reading his mind, she looked up and said, “To think—in three days we’ll be home!” “I can’t wait,” he said quietly and ardently. ***
I'm going to read some news and blogs before starting dinner. BTW, have you seen that video of the twins talking? Love it!
TGIF!!
Much love,
PK the Bookeemonster
