Today, we’re taking a trip to rainy 1882 London for an exclusive peek at The Crooked Medium’s Guide to Terror by Stephen Cox!
The Crooked Medium’s Guide to Terror
by Stephen Cox
True terror is a murderer you can’t stop.
London 1882. A carpenter is killed by a train – an eerie, brutal crime. Flamboyant medium Mrs Ashton and her sapphic partner Braddie seek justice for the widow.
A charismatic new medium takes London by storm. Dock-lass Maisie sees her frightening prophesy of vengeance. A noble family is devastated, but worse is to come.
Outgunned and bewildered, the three confront a deadly conspiracy. They risk losing everything.
A reckoning from beyond the grave.
A crucial scene from Chapter 4.
London, a rainy February in 1882. Controversial medium Mrs Ashton and her servant (and sapphic lover) Braddie have been approached by a distraught client, Miss Svensson. Miss Svensson’s fiancé David Gittens was killed on the railway at night, a few weeks before the wedding, and the police have closed any investigation. His clothes reeked of gin, but he never drank anything but beer, in moderation.
Mr Oliphant is a retired boxer, a friend both of Mrs Ashton and the dead man. He supports Miss Svensson in her vehement belief that the death must be foul play. People who knew Gittens said he was a cheerful well-liked man, with no criminal links, no history of mental disturbance, and looking forward to his marriage.
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The following morning, it was still raining. The chivalrous Earl sent a four-seater for their convenience. Miss Svensson, Mr Oliphant, and the couple headed to the railway cutting.
Mrs Ashton again pressed the poor woman on her fiancé’s mysterious errand. ‘The slightest matter, the slightest hint?’
‘He said it sounded an easy case. Oh, I wish I had been more curious.’
How dreary the February rain on its third day. A new notice warned of the danger of going down into the cutting, and an official of the railway company waited under a tree. Miss Svensson had not been here before, and she clasped Mrs Ashton’s hand as they dismounted. Umbrellas were deployed.
‘Do you get many deaths on this line?’ Mrs Ashton asked the official. ‘I am not talking of crashes but people straying onto the line, deaths by violence on the train, and so forth.’
‘There was a suicide on the bridge, ten years back. A woman who used a knife, not jumping. It didn’t delay the service. This death is a bad business. Souvenir-hunters and photographers and ghouls. Not all with the sense to check the timetable.’
‘Might as well plough the ground up,’ Braddie growled.
‘And the body was moved, in the rain, before the police came?’
‘We had to clear the line. The jury saw it in the skittle alley in the Two-Tailed Fox.’
Gittens might have been drugged or brought here by force. But why? Was the guard telling the truth about the leap?
Miss Svensson took Mr Oliphant’s arm, and Mrs Ashton, in her unstylish boots, occasionally held Braddie’s as they descended. Questions faded, it was time for Mrs Ashton to use her spirit sense to feel and hear and maybe even see what lingered behind the material world of the weather, stumps and shrubs and the depressing brick walls topping the cut.
Down by the rails, the railwayman walked them to the spot, checking his watch every few minutes.
Emotion gripped her.
Violence – a sudden jerk of pain that brought a gasp. Terror.
Laughter, cold and mocking.
‘Here,’ the railwayman said a moment later.
Mrs Ashton had once been joined spiritually to a dying man – extraordinary to be inside their fear and pain. She had visited the sites of great crimes. Sometimes a man dying by unexpected force left traces, but not like this, which felt deeply wrong in ways she could not describe. Shuddering, she must touch the spot for her power worked best with contact. Oh, to have avoided more agile clothing from vanity.
Braddie saw what she was doing and helped her down. Kneeling on her shawl – the hotel laundry would not be happy – she reached out to touch the rail.
My grandmother told me I read too much. I remember walking in the garden when I was small, telling myself stories. It was over thirty years of wanting to be a novelist before I tried… and succeeded.
The Crooked Medium’s Guide to Murder was much loved. It arose because I wanted to write about Britishness and specifically about Englishness; about our complex relationship with the past; I wanted leads who were morally grayer but still capable of kindness. Personally, it was time for a novel with queer leads. And these difficult times I needed to write something with some uplift. I always intended more than two books. The Crooked Medium’s Guide to Terror is spookier, and more dangerous. It throws all three women out of their comfort zone.
I spent nearly all my childhood in Bristol, and I’m now an adoptive Londoner. I live with my partner, and it’s lovely my two adult children come back from time to time. Our garden rages wild.
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Giveaway to Win 4 x Signed Books by Stephen Cox (Open to UK Only)
Prize includes – Our Child of the Stars, Our Child of Two Worlds, The Crooked Medium’s Guide to Murder and the Crooked Medium’s Guide to Terror.
*Terms and Conditions –UK entries welcome. Please enter using the Gleam box below. The winner will be selected at random via Gleam from all valid entries and will be notified by Twitter and/or email. If no response is received within 7 days then Rachel’s Random Resources reserves the right to select an alternative winner. Open to all entrants aged 18 or over. Any personal data given as part of the competition entry is used for this purpose only and will not be shared with third parties, with the exception of the winners’ information. This will passed to the giveaway organiser and used only for fulfilment of the prize, after which time Rachel’s Random Resources will delete the data. I am not responsible for despatch or delivery of the prize.
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Win 4 x Signed Books by Stephen Cox (Open to UK Only)
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