House of the Lost
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Grateful thanks are due to Hildegard and Ron Harman, who provided me with practical travel routes for Central and Eastern Europe during the writing of this book.
Theo Kendal had never expected to see Fenn House again and he had certainly never expected to own it. He had not been to the place for a good ten years and if his cousin Charmery had not died, he would have continued to live in his own small north London house, churning out a novel a year, eking out his income with a little dilettante journalism and some radio scripts, and managing to forget for most of the time that Charmery had ever existed. But because she was dead he was driving into the wilds of Norfolk at the beginning of a cold grey December, along roads which a decade ago had been familiar but which now included a confusing bypass which sent him speeding in the wrong direction for half a dozen miles.
Melbray, when he finally reached it, had changed very little. Here was the high street with the tiny market square, a scattering of shops, the local pub and a doctor’s surgery. It had been the local doctor who found Charmery’s body; Theo had not met him but he had seen him being accosted by reporters on TV news bulletins after the inquest. The doctor had clearly disliked the attention; he had pushed the microphones away and walked off with his shoulders hunched and his coat collar turned up defensively. Theo, his emotions still in tatters over Charmery’s death, had been grateful for the man’s discretion.