The Killer in the Choir. Simon Brett

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      Simon Brett worked as a producer in radio and television before taking up writing full-time. He was awarded an OBE in the 2016 New Year’s Honours for services to Literature and also was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. In 2014 he won the CWA’s prestigious Diamond Dagger for an outstanding body of work. simonbrett.com

      Also by Simon Brett The Fethering Mysteries Bones Under the Beach Hut Guns in the Gallery The Corpse on the Court The Strangling on the Stage The Tomb in Turkey The Killing in the Café The Liar in the Library The Charles Paris Theatrical Series Dead Room Farce A Decent Interval The Cinderella Killer A Deadly Habit The Mrs Pargeter Mysteries Mrs Pargeter’s Point of Honour Mrs Pargeter’s Principle Mrs Pargeter’s Public Relations

      The paperback first published in Great Britain, the USA and Canada in 2020 by Black Thorn, an imprint of Canongate Books Ltd, 14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE

       Distributed in the USA by Publishers Group West

       and in Canada by Publishers Group Canada

       First published in 2019 by Severn House Publishers Ltd,

       Eardley House, 4 Uxbridge Street, London W8 7SY

       This digital edition first published in 2020 by Canongate Books

       blackthornbooks.com

       Copyright © Simon Brett, 2019

       The right of Simon Brett to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

       This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is purely coincidental.

       British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library ISBN 978 1 83885 383 9 eISBN 978 1 83885 384 6

      Contents

       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

       Chapter Nineteen

       Chapter Twenty

       Chapter Twenty-One

       Chapter Twenty-Two

       Chapter Twenty-Three

       Chapter Twenty-Four

       Chapter Twenty-Five

      To the hope that,

      in my next incarnation,

      I’ll be able to sing

      EPITAPH ON AN AMATEUR SOPRANO

      Her final note has now been sent,

      Her final chord’s undone.

      After life’s gloom, death should present

      Her moment in the sun.

      Alas, she has the worst of fates –

      She must in Limbo stay

      And wait outside the Pearly Gates

      For ever and a day.

      She’s not shut out because of sin.

      Her virtue’s plain to see.

      It’s just … she never knew when to come in,

      And could never find the key.

      ONE

      The trouble is, thought Carole Seddon peevishly, that no one knows any of the old hymns any more. Though devoutly anti-religious, she did have standards when it came to certain matters of British tradition. And she was strongly of the view that children should be brought up to know the basic repertory of hymn tunes that she’d had to learn at their age.

      Carole was not a frequent visitor to All Saints Church in the village of Fethering. Lack of faith precluded regular Sunday attendance and, as a divorced woman in her fifties, she was not invited to many weddings or christenings. So, it was just funerals, really. And it was a funeral that had brought her to All Saints that Thursday morning in late February.

      She had not known the deceased, Leonard Mallett, well, nor liked him very much. Of his professional career, in the world of insurance, she knew nothing. But they had both been on the same committee, which he had chaired, for the Preservation of Fethering’s Seafront. Though the group only met a couple of times a year,