Last Post
by Robert Barnard
Summary
A mysterious envelope arrives on Eve McNabb’s doorstep soon after she has buried her mother, a woman who kept many secrets. The puzzling letter inside this envelope hints at an illicit passion between the letter writer and Eve’s mother, May McNabb.
Even when she was a child, Eve sensed that there were parts of May’s life she would never understand. She would never know the details of her parents’ marriage or why her father suddenly disappeared from her life….The letter writer may have some answers, but how can Eve find him or her?
With only a blurred postmark for a clue, Eve sets out to locate the writer and journey into her own past. What she never suspected was that questions can be dangerous, perhaps even deadly....
Excerpt
Letter to the Dead
Eve looked down at the face in the coffin. It was prettified, and the neckline of the dress, the only thing visible, was too meticulously neat to suggest her mother’s usual style. She wondered whether to kiss her for the last time. But she had already kissed her for the last time—as she lay dying. To kiss her now would be no kiss at all, because there was nothing remaining of her mother to receive it.
Mr. Bradshaw, the head of the firm of Bradshaw and Pollock, Funeral Directors, had not explicitly asked Eve if she wanted to see her mother laid out in her coffin. He had merely, after they had swapped funereal inanities, raised his eyebrows in the direction of the main laying-out room, and she had walked automatically, as if this was part of some ritual like exchanging rings at a wedding. Now, faced with the total extinction that was death, she felt nothing that she had not felt over and over again in the days since her mother died.
She had been with her when she died, sitting beside her in the hospital room. That was the important thing.
Eve shook herself and went back into the tactfully dim lighting of the main premises. She realized with a sinking heart that Mr. Bradshaw was preparing to be chatty.
“She’ll be much missed,” he said, as if he had just thought it up.
“I shall certainly miss her,” Eve said, trying to be conversational, “even though we lived a fair way apart with me in Wolverhampton and her here in Crossley. We always talked to each other every week, twice a week if anything noteworthy had occurred. And we wrote quite often, particularly if it was something that was difficult to put into words.”
“I remember very well when Mrs. McNabb first came to Crossley,” said Mr. Bradshaw, perching himself on an empty coffin with a price tag on its lid. “I was within an ace of taking Betty, that’s my eldest, out of the primary school and sending her to a private one. Then someone told me that he’d met the new teacher who was said to be going places, and who seemed enormously competent—knew what she wanted and how she wanted to achieve it. After I’d talked to your mother for a few minutes at a parents’ evening, I decided to give the school a go for another year. I never regretted it, and there’s a lot of parents about that time who did like me and would say the same.”
“I’m so glad,” said Eve, wondering when she could legitimately plead busyness and end the conversation. “I think she found being deputy rather difficult. She liked—not being in charge exactly—“
“No, no.”
“—but being able to take a lead, take people along with her. She even liked the maneuvering that convinced people they were part of the decision-making process. And she liked the compromises that had to be made, because she didn’t want the reputation of being a one-woman band.”
Copyright © 2008 by Robert Barnard. Reprinted by permission of Simon and Schuster Inc.
Reviews
“Unexpected solutions and a clever closing switch make this assured suspense yarn a satisfying read”—Publishers Weekly
Author's Biography
Robert Barnard’s most recent novel is Dying Flames. Winner of the prestigious Cartier Diamond Dagger and Nero Wolfe awards, as well as the Anthony, Agatha, and Macavity awards, the eight-time Edgar nominee is a member of Britain’s distinguished Detection Club. He and his wife, Louise, live in Leeds, England.