The Snow Globe Read online

  PRAISE FOR THE NOVELS OF JUDITH KINGHORN

  The Snow Globe

  “Both a gripping tale of family secrets and a comedy of manners, Kinghorn’s novel paints a vivid portrait of love and its perplexing complications. Set against the backdrop of Europe in the years following the Great War, The Snow Globe is a fascinating journey back in time. Historical fiction fans will not want to miss this gem!”

  —Renée Rosen, author of What the Lady Wants

  “An absolutely delicious book. . . . The period is beautifully observed, and we are expertly drawn into a suspenseful blend of tangled relationships and shocking discoveries. Daisy’s coming of age in the ‘brave new world’ of postwar England had me holding my breath. Elegant and evocative to the last word.”

  —Elizabeth Cooke, author of Rutherford Park and The Wild Dark Flowers

  The Memory of Lost Senses

  “Mysterious, evocative, and deeply sensual, The Memory of Lost Senses brings to life a lost era, a golden dream before it comes to an end. In its portrayal of how we change the past, and how we can lose it, the novel delves through fascinating layers and explores the real nature of truth. This moving story is not to be missed.”

  —Simone St. James, RITA Award–winning author of The Haunting of Maddy Clare and An Inquiry into Love and Death

  “Kinghorn has crafted a multilayered story of unbridled passion, intellectual pursuits, and uncovered memories. Lucinda Riley’s readers will enjoy Kinghorn’s manipulation of the story’s timeline, fans of Sarah Jio will adore the novel’s romantic backbone, and historical-fiction readers will appreciate Kinghorn’s eye for authentic period details.”

  —Booklist

  “Kinghorn’s prose is lovely, lavishly describing both the characters and the setting, which leaves the reader with a strong sense of time and place. The characters themselves are engaging and well developed. Fans of Kinghorn’s remarkable debut novel, The Last Summer, will surely be pleased with this second effort. For readers yet to discover Kinghorn’s novels, this book is sure to create a whole new legion of fans.”

  —Historical Novel Society

  “[A] beautifully written and tangled tale of love, loss, and longtime friendships. Kinghorn plays on the emotions stirred up by memories and how we each perceive the past. The lyrical prose and hints of mystery, betrayal, blackmail, jealousy, and regret make for a touching, thought-provoking, and compelling read. Kinghorn evokes the years before the war as she skillfully envelops the reader in her imaginative, tragic tale.”

  —Romantic Times (4½ stars)

  “Exquisite . . . a sensual and visual feast of a story, and a powerful follow-up to last year’s enthralling debut, The Last Summer . . . a mesmerizing book of finely wrought words. The evocative tale of an elderly woman for whom the past is both a comfort and a tyranny, a place that holds unutterably beautiful memories and painful events that torment and haunt. . . . Thoughtful, delicately crafted, and imaginative, The Memory of Lost Senses is a page-turning, atmospheric mystery story but with a powerful, all-consuming love affair burning deep at its core to direct the action . . . and steal our hearts.”

  —Lancashire Evening Post (UK)

  “A witty, clever, and compelling tale, with a beautiful love story at its heart. I loved it.”

  —Jane Harris, author of The Observations and Gillespie and I

  The Last Summer

  “Well-drawn characters combined with flawless writing make Kinghorn’s debut a triumph. This story kept me up for many nights in a row, and I couldn’t turn the pages fast enough. Un-put-downable and relentlessly intriguing, this is a tale for the ages. I expect it’s not the last we’ll hear from this talented storyteller; at least, I hope not!”

  —Dish Magazine

  “The Last Summer is irresistible: a captivating story of love and family against the backdrop of World War I and its aftermath. I stayed up late reading, hooked on its sensuous prose, elegant settings, and fascinating characters.”

  —Margaret Wurtele, author of The Golden Hour

  “Impeccably written and well researched, this is an atmospheric and haunting read. It takes the reader from languorous summer days by the lake on a country estate to the horror of the trenches with equal aplomb. . . . Judith Kinghorn skillfully navigates our journey through love and loss . . . the perfect balance of romance and grit by a great new writer. Don’t miss it!”

  —Deborah Swift, author of The Gilded Lily and The Lady’s Slipper

  “An enchanting story of love and war, and the years beyond.”

  —Penny Vincenzi, bestselling author of Wicked Pleasures

  “The Last Summer is a dense and luscious read that is emotionally gripping and at times unsettling, but is a powerful tale of love, regret, and both the loss of Clarissa’s innocence and that of England’s.”

  —Evangeline Holland, author of An Ideal Duchess

  “A glorious read, highly recommended.”

  —The Bookseller (UK)

  “Judith Kinghorn has beautifully captured the thoughts and feelings of a particular group in a lost generation. From an historical perspective, Kinghorn has clearly done her research, which is illustrated in the small details that capture the war and postwar periods, making The Last Summer entirely believable and often shocking. . . . Despite the themes of loss, grief, and change, The Last Summer is above all a wonderful and heartbreaking love story . . . highly recommended!”

  —One More Page (UK)

  Other Titles by Judith Kinghorn

  The Last Summer

  The Memory of Lost Senses

  New American Library

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) LLC, 375 Hudson Street,

  New York, New York 10014

  USA | Canada | UK | Ireland | Australia | New Zealand | India | South Africa | China

  penguin.com

  A Penguin Random House Company

  First published by New American Library,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) LLC

  Copyright © Judith Kinghorn, 2015

  Readers Guide copyright © Penguin Group (USA) LLC, 2015

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA:

  Kinghorn, Judith.

  The snow globe / Judith Kinghorn.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-0-698-17784-0

  1. Young women—England—Fiction. 2. Families—England—History—20th century—Fiction. I. Title.

  PR6111.I59S66 2015

  823'.92—dc23 2014036483

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  Contents

  Praise

  Other Titles by Judith Kinghorn

  Title page

  Copyright page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  PART ONE: December 1926

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

/>   Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  PART TWO: Summer 1927

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Acknowledgments

  Readers Guide

  Excerpt from The Last Summer

  About the Author

  For my mother, Elizabeth

  Birds do it, bees do it, even educated fleas do it.

  —Cole Porter

  PART ONE

  December 1926

  Chapter One

  When Eden Hall was first built, the local newspaper received a number of letters about its electric lights. They were dangerous, too bright, and had no place in the country, people wrote. These Londoners should stay in the city if they wanted that sort of thing.

  A quarter of a century later, and two weeks before Christmas, Eden Hall was once again in the newspaper. This time not because of its size or bright lights, or in fact because of anything to do with it, but because eighteen-year-old Daisy Forbes had joined the nationwide manhunt for missing writer Agatha Christie and had volunteered her family home as a meeting point for those searching the surrounding hills and valley known as the Devil’s Punchbowl.

  “Volunteers wishing to assist the Police in the search are invited to meet at Eden Hall this Saturday, December 11th, at 9 o’clock . . . Refreshments and facilities will be available,” the paper stated at the end of its front-page bulletin, titled THE MYSTERY OF MRS. CHRISTIE.

  By nine o’clock on Saturday morning more than 150 people had converged on Eden Hall, and more kept coming. They stood about in the dank December gloom, clutching Mabel Forbes’s Crown Derby and Wedgwood china as Daisy and Mrs. Jessop, the cook, refilled cups from the large tea urn.

  For seven days, ever since Mrs. Christie’s Morris Cowley motorcar had been found abandoned at a nearby lake with an expired driving license in it, the nation had been gripped, and like the airplanes scouring the countryside, conjecture buzzed in the icy air: Had Mrs. Christie been kidnapped? Had she been murdered? Was her husband in some way involved?

  When the local police constable climbed onto the old mounting block with a megaphone, a hush descended and heads turned. The policeman spoke in a solemn voice; it was a grave and serious situation, he said. He pointed to the map pinned to the coach-house doors, asking everyone to note the areas marked with red ribbon and requesting that they organize themselves into groups of four or five. No one, he advised, should walk through the valley of Devil’s Punchbowl alone.

  Daisy listened as grisly questions were tossed through the mist at PC Trotton; murmurings and then louder debates broke out in huddles. A man had been seen behaving suspiciously down at the crossroads two days earlier. Yes, a few had seen him. No, he wasn’t from these parts. An outsider. But was he a murderer, too? Was the man lurking in the fog-shrouded heathland waiting to strike again? For some minutes PC Trotton struggled to regain control of the assembled crowd; then he remembered his megaphone and reminded everyone in a newly stern voice that, as yet, no crime had been committed.

  It was almost ten o’clock when Stephen Jessop strolled across the gritted courtyard to Daisy. The last group—with knapsacks, binoculars and sticks—had already disappeared through the five-barred gate into the woods, accompanied by Trotton and two of his colleagues.

  “Thanks for waiting . . . Sorry I’m late,” said Stephen, rubbing his hands together, then cupping them over his mouth.

  “We’re meant to be in groups of four or five, Stephen, not two.”

  “Ah, but that’s probably for those who don’t know the terrain. And we do.”

  “No, it’s for reasons of safety, Trotton said.”

  Stephen smiled. “Well, you’re perfectly safe with me.”

  Daisy shook her head and began to walk. “Why are you so late?” she asked.

  “I slept in.”

  “I can’t believe you slept in when all this is happening. I’ve barely had any sleep and been awake since half past five.”

  “Yes, well . . . you are a little obsessed.”

  “Obsessed? I’m concerned—like everyone else. Apart from you, it would seem.”

  “I’ve told you what I think. It’s a publicity stunt. Has to be.”

  “I don’t think the government would be quite so involved if it were just a publicity stunt, Stephen. I read that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s very worried now, too. He’s given a spirit medium one of Mrs. Christie’s gloves so that she can use it to try to find her,” she added, turning to him as she walked through the oak gate into the woods. Overhead, the now-familiar burring of a small airplane circling distracted her, and she paused to look up. “Yes, all very queer,” she said. She lowered her gaze, met his eyes. “What? Why are you smiling?”

  “No reason,” he said, and they walked on beneath the evergreens.

  Three years older than Daisy, Stephen had lived at Eden Hall since the summer of 1909, when the Jessops adopted him. The then four-year-old orphan had come down from London on a train accompanied by a cousin of Mrs. Jessop, and though Daisy had no memory of that momentous day, she had heard how very shy Stephen had been and how very happy Mrs. Jessop had been to meet her new son.

  For all intents and purposes a general servant, Stephen had been officially employed at Eden Hall since he’d finished school at fourteen. More recently, after the scandal of the previous year, when Howard Forbes’s chauffeur had put a young kitchen maid in the family way and Howard had sent them both packing, Stephen had been called on to step in. He had never driven a motorcar, but Howard had told him that it was easy enough and that he could spend an hour or two practicing on the driveway. And so up and down and up and down Stephen and the Rolls went, clanking and grinding, juddering and stalling, as Daisy and her sisters looked on. The girls had anticipated—almost hoped for—a repeat of Aunt Dosia’s performance of earlier that year, when she’d decided to have a go in Howard’s old Austin Twenty and had—at some speed—driven the vehicle straight off the driveway through the Japanese garden and into the lily pond. But no such drama occurred, and now Stephen was Jessop and lived above the garages in the coachman’s flat.

  He was, Daisy often thought, the nearest thing she had to a brother—an elder brother—because he’d always been exactly how she imagined one to be: protective, informative, knowledgeable and sometimes teasing.

  Halfway down into the valley, standing on the ridge by the old wooden bridge, Daisy lifted her father’s binoculars from their leather case. The mist was clearing, the low winter sun breaking through the vaporous cloud, picking up flecks of color in the otherwise drab and scrawny heathland. Far below, she could see clusters of people moving in and out of the shadows on the tree-lined pathways.

  “Everyone seems to be heading in the same direction . . . toward Thursley,” she said. “Trotton specifically said we had to spread ourselves out, not follow each other,” she added, putting away the binoculars and turning to Stephen, who was rolling a cigarette. “I don’t know how you can do that at a time like this.” She jumped down from the embankment. “Don’t you realize? This is international news.”

  Ste
phen said nothing. He tilted his head, lifted his lighter to the cigarette.

  “You’re so annoying,” she said, watching him. “If poor Mrs. Christie is found, it’ll be no thanks to you.”

  Beneath his cap his dark hair looked greasy and uncombed. He obviously hadn’t had time to shave or to wash, she thought. He wore the dark green scarf she had given him last Christmas, knotted at the front of his pale neck and tucked into his sweater, his jacket collar pulled up high around it. He shivered and then stamped his feet as he sucked on his cigarette. “Come on, then,” he said, walking on. “Who’s dallying now?” he called back, jogging off beneath the pine trees.

  By the time Daisy caught up with him they were at the very bottom of the valley, where the stream was wider and gushed in a torrent over rocks and boulders swept down from the hills over millennia. He sat upon a tree stump and made a point of looking at his wristwatch.

  “Yes, very funny,” she said, not looking at him, walking slowly toward him. “There may have been a murder committed and you’re treating it as though . . . as though it’s all some sort of game.”

  “I don’t believe we’re going to find Mrs. Christie—or any clues to her disappearance—around here, that’s all. Her car was left at Newlands Corner, Daisy. That’s some miles away.”

  “Then why bother to come along? You were the one who first suggested we look here.”

  He stood up, took off his cap. His hair was dirty. He looked a state.

  “Were you perchance at the Coach and Horses last night?” she asked, kicking at the soft earth with her boot.

  He took a moment to reply. He said, “Yes, I was. And I’m sorry for being late, and for being . . . flippant.”

  She nodded.

  “Will you forgive me?”

  She turned to him, blinked and shrugged her shoulders. “I always do, don’t I?”