I based this book on twenty-nine-year-old Doctor Sophia Hickman, who vanished in August 1903. Outlandish theories raged in the press about the reasons for her disappearance which I won’t mention here for fear of spoilers! Apart from my fictional solution, I have mostly kept to the facts of the case as described in the newspapers …
One unexplained death at the heart of an organisation is unusual, but three inexplicable deaths within a small group of friends seems more like the plot of a murder mystery novel. Yet that is what happened to Edmund Gurney, Arthur Myers and Frank Podmore, each of whom held important positions within the Society for Psychical …
Located a short way along the Shotley peninsula, the village of Chelmondiston is notable for the hamlet of Pin Mill and views across the River Orwell. Rebuilt in the 1860’s, the local parish church of St Andrews lost its tower to a flying bomb in 1944. But it was the Chelmondiston Rectory that was the …
Jacqueline Beard Writer 