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Silent in the Grave: A Victorian Historical Mystery (A Lady Julia Grey Mystery, 1) Paperback – December 29, 2009
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Go back to where it all began with the original Lady Julia Grey historical mystery series from New York Times bestselling author of Killers of a Certain Age, Deanna Raybourn.
“Let the wicked be ashamed, and let them be silent in the grave.”
These ominous words are the last threat that Sir Edward Grey receives from his killer. Before he can show them to Nicholas Brisbane, the private inquiry agent he has retained for his protection, he collapses and dies at his London home, in the presence of his wife, Julia, and a roomful of dinner guests.
Prepared to accept that Edward’s death was due to a long-standing physical infirmity, Julia is outraged when Brisbane visits and suggests that her husband was murdered. It is a reaction she comes to regret when she discovers damning evidence for herself, and realizes the truth.
Determined to bring the murderer to justice, Julia engages the enigmatic Brisbane to help her investigate Edward’s demise. Dismissing his warnings that the investigation will be difficult, if not impossible, Julia presses forward, following a trail of clues that lead her to even more unpleasant truths, and ever closer to a killer who waits expectantly for her arrival.
Previously published.
Don’t miss the complete Lady Julia Grey mystery series by Deanna Raybourn!
Book # 1: Silent in the Grave
Book # 2: Silent in the Sanctuary
Book # 3: Silent on the Moor
Book # 3.5: Midsummer Night (novella)
Book # 4: Dark Road to Darjeeling
Book # 5: The Dark Enquiry
Book # 5.5: Silent Night (novella)
Book # 5.6: Twelfth Night (novella)
Book # 5.7: Bonfire Night (novella)
- Print length448 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherMIRA
- Publication dateDecember 29, 2009
- Dimensions5.13 x 1.18 x 8 inches
- ISBN-100778328171
- ISBN-13978-0778328179
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I'd say that I met Nicholas Brisbane over my husband's dead body is not entirely accurate. Edward, it should be noted, was still twitching upon the floor.
I stared at him, not quite taking in the fact that he had just collapsed at my feet. He lay, curled like a question mark, his evening suit ink-black against the white marble of the floor. He was writhing, his fingers knotted.
I leaned as close to him as my corset would permit.
"Edward, we have guests. Do get up. If this is some sort of silly prank—"
"He is not jesting, my lady. He is convulsing."
An impatient figure in black pushed past me to kneel at Edward's side. He busied himself for a few brisk moments, palpating and pulse-taking, while I bobbed a bit, trying to see over his shoulder. Behind me the guests were murmuring, buzzing, pushing closer to get a look of their own. There was a little thrill of excitement in the air. After all, it was not every evening that a baronet collapsed senseless in his own music room. And Edward was proving rather better entertainment than the soprano we had engaged.
Through the press, Aquinas, our butler, managed to squeeze in next to my elbow.
"My lady?"
I looked at him, grateful to have an excuse to turn away from the spectacle on the floor.
"Aquinas, Sir Edward has had an attack."
"And would be better served in his own bed," said the gentleman from the floor. He rose, lifting Edward into his arms with a good deal of care and very little effort, it seemed. But Edward had grown thin in the past months. I doubted he weighed much more than I.
"Follow me," I instructed, although Aquinas actually led the way out of the music room. People moved slowly out of our path, as though they regretted the little drama ending so quickly. There were some polite murmurs, some mournful clucking. I heard snatches as I passed through them.
"The curse of the Greys, it is—"
"So young. But of course his father never saw thirty-five."
"Never make old bones—"
"Feeble heart. Pity, he was always such a pleasant fellow."
I moved faster, staring straight ahead so that I did not have to meet their eyes. I kept my gaze fixed on Aquinas' broad, black-wool back, but all the time I was conscious of those voices and the sound of footsteps behind me, the footsteps of the gentleman who was carrying my husband. Edward groaned softly as we reached the stairs and I turned. The gentleman's face was grim.
"Aquinas, help the gentleman—"
"I have him," he interrupted, brushing past me. Aquinas obediently led him to Edward's bedchamber. Together they settled Edward onto the bed, and the gentleman began to loosen his clothes. He flicked a glance toward Aquinas.
"Has he a doctor?"
"Yes, sir. Doctor Griggs, Golden Square."
"Send for him. Although I dare say it will be too late."
Aquinas turned to me where I stood, hovering on the threshold. I never went into Edward's room. I did not like to do so now. It felt like an intrusion, a trespass on his privacy.
"Shall I send for Lord March as well, my lady?"
I blinked at Aquinas. "Why should Father come? He is no doctor."
But Aquinas was quicker than I. I had thought the gentleman meant that Edward would have recovered from his attack by the time Doctor Griggs arrived. Aquinas, who had seen more of the world than I, knew better.
He looked at me, his eyes carefully correct, and then I understood why he wanted to send for Father. As head of the family he would have certain responsibilities.
I nodded slowly. "Yes, send for him." I moved into the room on reluctant legs. I knew I should be there, doing whatever little bit that I could for Edward. But I stopped at the side of the bed. I did not touch him.
"And Lord Bellmont?" Aquinas queried.
I thought for a moment. "No, it is Friday. Parliament is sitting late."
That much was a mercy. Father I could cope with. But not my eldest brother as well. "And I suppose you ought to call for the carriages. Send everyone home. Make my apologies."
He left us alone then, the stranger and I. We stood on opposite sides of the bed, Edward convulsing between us. He stopped after a moment and the gentleman placed a finger at his throat.
"His pulse is very weak," he said finally. "You should prepare yourself."
I did not look at him. I kept my eyes fixed on Edward's pale face. It shone with sweat, its surface etched with lines of pain. This was not how I wanted to remember him.
"I have known him for more than twenty years," I said finally, my voice tight and strange. "We were children together. We used to play pirates and knights of the Round Table. Even then, I knew his heart was not sound. He used to go quite blue sometimes when he was overtired. This is not unexpected."
I looked up then to find the stranger's eyes on me. They were the darkest eyes I had ever seen, witch-black and watchful. His gaze was not friendly. He was regarding me coldly, as a merchant will appraise a piece of goods to determine its worth. I dropped my eyes at once.
"Thank you for your concern for my husband's health, sir. You have been most helpful. Are you a friend of Edward's?"
He did not reply at once. Edward made a noise in the back of his throat and the stranger moved swiftly, rolling him onto his side and thrusting a basin beneath his mouth. Edward retched, horribly, groaning. When he finished, the gentleman put the basin to the side and wiped his mouth with his handkerchief. Edward gave a little whimper and began to shiver. The gentleman watched him closely.
"Not a friend, no. A business associate," he said finally. "My name is Nicholas Brisbane."
"I am—"
"I know who you are, my lady."
Startled at his rudeness, I looked up, only to find those eyes again, fixed on me with naked hostility. I opened my mouth to reproach him, but Aquinas appeared then. I turned to him, relieved.
"Aquinas?"
"The carriages are being brought round now, my lady. I have sent Henry for Doctor Griggs and Desmond for his lordship. Lady Otterbourne and Mr. Phillips both asked me to convey their concern and their willingness to help should you have need of them."
"Lady Otterbourne is a meddlesome old gossip and Mr. Phillips would be no use whatsoever. Send them home."
I was conscious of Mr. Brisbane behind me, listening to every word. I did not care. For some unaccountable reason, the man thought ill of me already. I did not mind if he thought worse.
Aquinas left again, but I did not resume my post by the bed. I took a chair next to the door and remained there, saying nothing and wondering what was going to happen to all of the food. We had ordered far too much in any event. Edward never liked to run short. I could always tell Cook to serve it in the servants' hall, but after a few days even the staff would tire of it. Before I could decide what to do with the lobster patties and salad molds, Aquinas entered again, leading Doctor Griggs. The elderly man was perspiring freely, patting his ruddy face with a handkerchief and gasping. He had taken the stairs too quickly. I rose and he took my hand.
"I was afraid of this," he murmured. "The curse of the Greys, it is. All snatched before their time. My poor girl." I smiled feebly at him. Doctor Griggs had attended my mother at my birth, as well as her nine other confinements. We had known each other too long to stand on ceremony. He patted my hand and moved to the bed. He felt for Edward's pulse, shaking his head as he did so. Edward vomited again, and Doctor Griggs watched him carefully, examining the contents of the basin. I turned away.
I tried not to hear the sounds coming from the bed, the groans and the rattling breaths. I would have stopped my ears with my hands, but I knew it would look childish and cowardly. Griggs continued his examination, but before he finished Aquinas stepped into the room.
"Lord March, my lady." He moved aside and Father entered.
"Julia," he said, opening his arms. I went into them, burying my face against his waistcoat. He smelled of tobacco and book leather. He kept one arm tucked firmly around me as he looked over my head.
"Griggs, you damned fool. Julia should have been sent away."
The doctor made some reply, but I did not hear it. My father was pushing me gently out the door. I tried to look past him, to see what they were doing to Edward, but Father moved his body and prevented me. He gave me a sad, gentle smile. Anyone else might have mistaken that smile, but I did not. I knew he expected obedience. I nodded.
"I shall wait in my room."
"That would be best. I will come when there is something to tell."
My maid, Morag, was waiting for me. She helped me out of my silk gown and into something more suitable. She offered me warm milk or brandy, but I knew I would never be able to hold anything down. I only wanted to sit, watching the clock on the mantel as it ticked away the minutes left.
Morag continued to fuss, poking at the fire and muttering complaints about the work to come. She was right about that. There would be much work for her when I put on widow's weeds. It was unlucky to keep crepe in the house, I reminded myself. It would have to be sent for after Edward passed. I thought about such things—crepe for the mirrors, black plumes for the horses—because then I did not have to think about what was happening in Edward's room. It was rather like waiting for a birth, these long, tense minutes of sitting, straining one's ears on tiptoe for the slightest sound. I expected to hear something, but the walls were thick and I heard nothing. Even when the clock struck midnight, the little voice on my mantel chiming twelve times, I could not hear the tall case clock in the hall. I started to mention the peculiarity of it to Morag, because one could always hear the case clock from any room in the house, when I realized what it meant.
"Morag, the clocks have stopped."
She looked at me, her lips parted to speak, but she said nothing. Instead she bowed her head and began to pray. A moment later, the door opened. It was Father. He said nothing. I went to him and his hand cradled my head like a benediction. He held me for a very long time, as he had not done since I was a child.
"It is all right, my dear," he said finally, sounding older and more tired than I had ever heard him. "It is over."
But of course, he was entirely wrong. It was only the beginning.
I he days leading up to the funeral were dire, as such days almost always are. Too many people, saying too many pointless things—the same pointless things that everyone always says. Such a tragedy, so unexpected, so very, very dreadful. And no matter how much you would like to scream at them to go away and leave you alone, you cannot, even if they are your family.
Especially if they are your family. In the week following Edward's death, I was inundated with March relations. They flocked from the four corners of the kingdom, as mindful of the pleasures of London as their family duty. As etiquette did not permit me to be seen in public, they came to me at Grey House. The men—uncles, brothers, cousins—briefly paid their respects to Edward, laid out with awful irony in the music room, then spent the rest of their time arguing politics and arranging for amusements that would get them out of the house. My only consolation was the fact that, like locusts, they managed to finish off all of the leftover food from the night Edward died.
The women were little better. Under Aunt Hermia's direction, the funeral was planned, the burial arranged, and my household turned entirely on its head. She carried around with her a notebook filled with endless lists that she was forever consulting with a frown or ticking off with a satisfied smile. There was the crepe to be ordered, mourning wreaths, funeral cards, black-bordered writing paper to be purchased, the announcement for the Times, and of course my wardrobe.
"Unrelieved black," she informed me, her brow furrowed as she struggled to make out her own handwriting. "There must be no sheen to the fabric and no white or grey," she reminded me.
"I know." I tried not to think of the new gowns, delivered only the day before Edward's death. They were pale, soft colours, the shades of new flowers in spring. I should have to give them to Morag to sell at the secondhand stalls now. They would never dye dark enough to pass for mourning.
"No jewels, except hair jewelry," Aunt Hermia was saying. I repressed a shudder. I had never warmed to the notion of wearing a dead person's hair braided around my wrist or knotted at my ears. "After a year and a day, you will be permitted black fabric with a sheen, and deep purple or grey with a black stripe. If you choose to wear black after that time, you may relieve it with touches of white. Although," she added with a conspiratorial look, "I think a year is quite enough, and you must do what you like after that."
I glanced at my sister Portia, who was busy feeding her ancient pug some rather costly crab fritters laced with caviar. She looked up and wrinkled her nose at me over Puggy's head.
"Don't fret, dearest. You have always looked striking in black."
I grimaced at her and turned back to Aunt Hermia, who was deliberately ignoring Portia's flippancy. As children, we had been quite certain that Aunt Hermia was partially deaf. It was only much later when we realized that there was absolutely nothing wrong with her hearing. The trick of hearing only what she wanted had enabled her to raise her widowed brother's ten children with some measure of sanity.
"Black stockings of course," she was saying, "and we shall have to order some new handkerchiefs edged in black."
"I am working on them now," said my sister Bee from the corner. Industrious as her namesake, she kept her head bowed over her work, her needle whipping through the fine lawn with its load of thin black silk.
Product details
- Publisher : MIRA; Reissue edition (December 29, 2009)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 448 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0778328171
- ISBN-13 : 978-0778328179
- Item Weight : 13.3 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.13 x 1.18 x 8 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #549,685 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #6,359 in Historical Mystery
- #17,355 in Women Sleuths (Books)
- #29,352 in Suspense Thrillers
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
New York Times and USA Today bestselling novelist Deanna Raybourn is a 6th-generation native Texan. She graduated with a double major in English and history from the University of Texas at San Antonio. Married to her college sweetheart and the mother of one, Raybourn makes her home in Virginia. Her novels have been nominated for numerous awards including the Edgar, two RT Reviewers’ Choice awards, the Agatha, two Dilys Winns, and a Last Laugh. She launched a new Victorian mystery series with the 2015 release of A CURIOUS BEGINNING, featuring intrepid butterfly-hunter and amateur sleuth, Veronica Speedwell. Veronica’s second adventure is A PERILOUS UNDERTAKING (January 2017), and book three, A TREACHEROUS CURSE, was published in 2018 and nominated for the Edgar Award. A DANGEROUS COLLABORATION was released in 2019, and A MURDEROUS RELATION appeared in 2020 and AN UNEXPECTED PERIL published in March 2021. The latest Veronica Speedwell adventure, AN IMPOSSIBLE IMPOSTOR, will be published in February, 2022. Deanna’s first contemporary novel featuring four female assassins who must band together to take out their nemesis as they prepare for retirement, KILLERS OF A CERTAIN AGE, will be published in September of 2022.
You can find her her social media links, blog, contests, and upcoming appearances at deannaraybourn.com.
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Julia Grey is trapped in an unsatisfying marriage to Sir Edward Grey. They’re giving a lavish party when he takes ill and dies. Julia discovers that Edward had received threatening letters; he hired a private investigator, Nicholas Brisbane, to find the writer. Brisbane believes that Julia’s husband was poisoned.
As Julia struggles to find who killed Edward Grey, she finds herself attracted to Nicholas Brisbane.
First published in December of 2006, “Silent in the Grave” is a splendid first novel. It’s too long (450 pages) and the lead characters are over written: Julia is too naïve, and Brisbane too emotional, but the historical background is superb, as is the description of Lady Julia’s pampered life. The denouement didn’t surprise me, nor did the fact that the Julia-Brisbane romance will be continued in the next novel.
Fun and well written.
Yes, the novel is set within the Victorian period and this is one of the reasons so many of her plot extensions work so well. The subjects touched upon were still either commonly accepted folklore or subjects people were becoming more educated about during the reign of Queen Victoria. We are also given information regarding the strict code of conduct to be followed by the different social orders during these times. Ms Raybourn manages to hit upon quite a few subjects considered taboo during this time simply by having different members of Lady Julia's family, the Marches, exhibit so much eccentricity. It seemed as if each member we were introduced to had taken on a different aspect of individuality outside the limits of polite society. Ultimately, as truly good authors can do, all of these different societal upheavals were brought together for a satisfactory conclusion to both the mystery and the novel as a whole.
As a person who has been an avid reader of mystery stories for over forty years now, I do not consider this to be a mystery in the usual sense. Yes, Lady Julia was trying to find if her husband died of natural causes and if not, then who the person responsible for his death was. But along the way, this story turned from being a mystery to being a character study of each and every character introduced into this story. I must say that I give Ms Raybourn full credit for her extraordinary way with descriptive writing. She made all of the characters come alive for me and solving the question of who was responsible for the death of Sir Edward was not nearly as important as determining how Lady Julia would react as she learned more and more of the truth of what had been happening in her life for many, many years without her being the least bit suspicious.
Even though I had figured out who the responsible person was, I continued to read because this author had made me so interested in the situations and characters involved in this story. I would highly recommend this book, not so much as a mystery, but as a wonderful reading experience. And I really applaud this author for having the courage to end the book without the obligatory happily ever after ending. Sometimes, life just doesn't work out that way and books don't have to either. Now I need to read the second book in the series to find out what my "friends" are going to be up to next.
The bad guys were a surprise, and she was freed from an unpleasant situation, but you have to read how or why. There is not any graphic sex, but there are sexual consequences, along with other things that silly people get themselves into.
I used to buy the books of a series at one time, but too often it was a waste of money, wish I had done it this time! And I am very Scroogey with my book money. But I will probably be buying all the books in this series and the rest of the books she has written, I think she is as good as Beaton, and authors like that, BUT it is a different genre.
I am sure you will enjoy this series!
It was such a good book, and our delightful author doesn't hem herself in; she thinks outside of the box. If you like a good mystery and dont want to know guess in the 1st quarter the ending, it is also good for that.