In Coberley Hall, there lives a secret.
That secret is ready to claim its next victim.

DI Colin Walker inherits the Jacobean manor house from his wife Lizzie, in whose death he has played a part. Wracked with guilt, but equally determined to forget, he takes up his inheritance only to discover a 17th century chest in the cellars. Inside it are Countess Lucy's clothes and possessions from the time of the English Civil War. A cryptic note next to her name in the village burial records leads him to question how she, once the house's chatelaine, died. His wife's death was the same?

As far as Colin is concerned all love ended with Lizzie, but he has reckoned without the countess's 'dead heart's desire'. But can he trust what he sees and feels? And what of the promise he made Lizzie on her deathbed?

Excerpt:
'Do you believe in good and evil, Mr Walker? Do you believe that one or the other can stalk a family in response to a great sorrow?

Excerpt:
'Nevertheless, I am disappointed,' I told myself... 'I cannot understand why it should be so incumbent on me to feel my wife is still alive when she is not.'... Since coming to Coberley Hall I had begun to feel sick to my stomach with excitement. Was I then literally incapable of digesting that I had watched her breathe her last?

Excerpt:
But for the candle's wretched little flame I would have been sightless... Such a priest-hole had probably been built into the oldest part of the Hall in the 1580's.

Excerpt:
I felt compelled to brave the claustrophobic darkness whose cobwebs sizzled and shrivelled at the touch of my candle. Scared myself, I tried not to scare. Soon I was gasping for breath in a narrow space streaked with drops of blood which lined the secret walls in painted, perpendicular columns. Here, at its core, the house bled from its internal haemorrhage, it was forever dying from its bleeding heart. The life-blood oozed from its walls in large red and white teardrops for the blood and water of the Passion.

Author's note:
The real Lady Lucy lived from 1624-1656. Aged 14, she was married by her father, John Dutton of Sherborne, to the 2nd Earl of Downe on November 26, 1638. It was said at the time to have been a match with 'no likinge in it'. Caught up in the English Civil War, she and her husband were staunch royalists and suffered fines and confiscations. Her burial note, detailing the strange circumstances of her death can still be seen in Coberly Parish records.

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• Mystery, Thriller & SuspenseSuspenseParanormalVampires

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