Mary Fitt – författare

World-renowned cartoonist Seth returns with three new ghost stories for 2024.When Margaret finds a cottage to rent in the moorlands for her visiting Aunt Dorothea, she pays no mind to its rumored dark history. But when Dorothea goes missing only days after her arrival, a haunting tale of greed and murder soon comes to light.

'Mr Gabb, your son did not commit suicide.  He was murdered.'Simon Gabb has everything - or so it seems: a beautiful house, a big estate, a flourishing business and two sons, both endowed with evident capacity for carrying on the family firm.  The moody Giles is brilliant and inventive; the married Basil is dependable and efficient.  And yet something is manifestly wrong.  A secret invention, on which his business was engaged for the government, becomes known to those who had no right to know it.  But how and where did the leak occur? It is a conundrum which creates suspicion and dissension within the family and engulfs everyone who dine with them one Saturday night.  Giles has become friendly with young Arden and Billy Laforte, who were the previous owners of Herons' Hall until their father's death left them penniless, and who now rent one of the lodges on the property.  When Giles brings the Lafortes to the Hall for the first visit to their old home in three years, the Gabbs hardly know what to expect.  Yet the Lafortes seem completely at ease, so when a fierce storm develops, Mrs Gabb insistes they stay the night. The next morning, Gabb's elder son, Giles, is found dead in a motorboat on the lake, his body propped up by a shotgun. But it is soon apparent that the gun was not the cause of death, nor did he die in the boat; a skilled marksman shot him from a distance.  Superintendent Mallett is assigned the case and must deal with the smouldering emotions the flare up between everyone present that evening.

'Is it wise to evoke these memories—to raise these ghosts—after all these years?After attending a burial in an old country churchyard, Superintendent Mallett and his friends are struck by the sight of two elderly ladies, regally dressed in black and accompanied by their uniformed chauffeur, placing an elaborate wreath on the graveyard's most imposing monument. The vicar confirms that the Misses de Boulter of Chetwode Lodge have placed a fresh wreath on their father’s and brother’s tomb every week for the last fifty years. In the opposite corner of the churchyard lies the small neglected grave of Mary Dazill.  In flashbacks, we learn how everything goes wrong in the lives of two sisters when their father brings the enigmatic Mary Dazill home and proposes to marry her.  Soon, murder ensues.  A fatalistic mystery with the emotional echoes of a Greek tragedy.

‘When a man has three separate notices by three different women inserted in the local paper, and he’s my own namesake besides, I feel I owe him something.’Sequential death notices appear for Robert Raynald: one by his mother, one by his estranged wife, one by his daughter. This odd approach draws the attention of Superintendent Mallett and his friend Dr. Fitzbrown. The inquest had decided that Raynald shot himself whilst temporarily insane, but his daughter Geraldine is not convinced and presents enough evidence to arouse the investigator within Mallett. Raynald's story is presented in flashbacks, as Mallett and Fitzbrown build a picture of his life through the people who knew him best. Requiem for Robert combines the excitement of a detective story with a haunting reading of character.

'All these people who thought themselves securely in possession are now going to be dependent on the caprice of this young man.’During a blinding rainstorm, Jake Seaborne takes a wrong turn and arrives at Ullstone Hall, where is he is initially mistaken for ‘Hugo’, the new heir to the family estate. It seems Hugo is the offspring of the late Mr Ullstone’s first marriage in India, but the children of his second marriage have never met him. In short, the Ullstone family destiny is now in the hands of a complete stranger. A friend, Sir Frederick Lawson (who it turns out knows Jake’s family) has been asked to act as a “sort of buffer” for Hugo on his arrival, but Lawton cannot stay and Jake agrees to act in that role until he can return. But not everything is as it appears to be, and when the handsome and charming Hugo arrives, trouble follows and before long three people are dead.

Not every woman can collect her dethroned lovers and their wives into one room. But then Claribel was not ‘every woman’. Things happened at her parties and so one swallowed the latest baits and joined all the other poor fish. But having given her party, having collected her bevy of expectant friends, having displayed her three mysterious lovelies, it was painfully bad tactics to make them play a murder game. All sorts of curious things were liable to happen when one let loose such a motley throng in a darkened house. So really it was Claribel’s fault, and she had only herself to blame when things did happen. A fairy tale with a sting in its tail.

Christabel Strange, a highly successful young novelist, is taken ill and dies a year before the story begins. It was her wish that her biography should be written by her friend Marcia Wentworth; but inexplicably, she bequeathed her diaries to her wily, eccentric grandmother, who loathes Marcia and refuses to allow her to see them. Dr. George Cardew, Christabel's childhood friend, arriving at the house (which according to Christabel's will, is being shared by Marcia), finds himself between opposing and bitterly hostile camps, for the family are at loggerheads with Marcia. He begins to wonder why Christabel behaved in such a peculiar way, and whether her death was really due to a fever. The possibility of foul play becomes a certainty when another murder takes place and a volume of the diary is stolen. Gradually Dr. Cardew pieces together the clues to Christabel's hidden life, but it is not until there has been further violence that he is able to identify the murderer and the reason for the original crime.

On the eve of her adored adopted daughter Augusta’s twenty-first birthday, and after bullying her harpist Tenella, and telling her great nephew Palin a family secret so dreadful he leaves Tristowell Castle and goes straight down a pothole, old Lady Elizabeth Carn is found securely and determinedly strangled. All sorts of developments in every direction occur, with some thumping subterranean scenes. Inspector Mallet investigates.

The man calling himself Henry Rowles had lived in the lonely hut by the sea wall for twenty years when he decided to make a will leaving everything to old George Pollicott, the night-watchman who had so curiously befriended and cared for him. But his money was in a South African bank and deposited under another name, so retired solicitor Vaughan agrees to look into the matter, Shortly after Rowles is found dead, and Pollicott is charged with his murder. As Vaughan digs into the victim’s past, he must decide if Rowles was an imposter or a frightened man cruelly deprived of his birthright

Sweet Poison takes its title from a line in King John: "Sweet, sweet, sweet poison for the age's tooth". It refers not only to the fact that the central character dies of poison, thought to be self-administered, but also to the fact that this character is a man obsessed with the past.  Augustus Gale was a man in love - in love with a woman of genius who had been dead for over a century. This macabre devotion poisoned both his own life and the lives of those around him: his son and daughter, his beautiful second wife, and even his devoted mother. Yet it was a strictly confined obsession, and when a party of archaeologists sought permission to excavate a Roman mosaic pavement on Augustus's land, they were met with blunt and contemptuous refusal. It might be said that Augustus Gale was a man who deserved to die, but if so, whose was the hand that killed him and with what motive?

The dinner given at Fairfield Manor was meant to celebrate the host's recovery from a serious illness, but it ended in murder.