A Novel Conversation with Wendy Percival and Max Rainsford

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Q: Hello, I’m Helen, host of Novel Conversations, please do make yourself comfortable. Would you like a drink? Tea, coffee, wine – something stronger? You’ll find a box of chocolates and a bowl of fruit on the table next to you, please do help yourself. I believe you are a character in Wendy Percival’s novel The Malice of Angels. Would you like to introduce yourself? Are you a lead character or a supporting role?  

A: Thanks, Helen. A beer would be great. My name’s Max Rainsford. I’m a journalist – a former colleague of the book’s protagonist Esme Quentin’s late husband, Tim. As to whether I’m a lead character or a supporting role… well, let’s say if it wasn’t for me approaching Esme at the beginning of the book, there’d be no story!

Q: What genre is the novel and what is it about?

A: It’s a genealogy mystery and it concerns the wartime disappearance of a nurse in 1943. But at the start of the book, I’m more interested in the unsolved murder of an old soldier which Tim and I investigated when we were still wet behind the ears. Turns out there’s a link to this nurse Esme’s researching.

Q: No spoilers, but are you a ‘goodie’ or a ‘baddie’? (Or maybe you are both?)

A: Mmm. Tricky question. I’m on the side of the good guys as far as I’m concerned, but Esme might tell you different. She has a thing about my moral compass!

Q:  Tell me about another character in the novel – maybe your best friend, lover or partner … or maybe your arch enemy!

A: There’s one guy in the story that I’m particularly interested in – Lloyd Gallimore. Bit of a sly political animal. I’m convinced he’s got something to hide so I’ve been digging around in his past. That’s how I found out… but hang on. I can’t tell you that or I’d spoil the story. I’ll just say my investigative journalist antennae wasn’t far wrong.

Q: Is this the only novel you have appeared in, or are there others in a series?

A: This is my first time. Esme likes to keep her past nailed down, you know? She wasn’t exactly pleased when I showed up, hassling her for help. But in the end we helped one another.

Q: What is one of your least favourite scenes you appear in?

A: The one when Esme tells me exactly what she thinks of me. She pulls no punches, I can tell you that. Ouch!

Q: And your favourite scene?

A: The time Esme & me went to London to see the old boy – a former SOE officer, that’s a Special Operations Executive. He had some fascinating stories to tell – and a few secrets too.

Q: Tell me a little about your author. Has she/he written any other books?

A: Yes, Malice of Angels is the third novel in her Esme Quentin series. She’s written a couple of novellas, too. Her books are inspired by the stuff she digs up while researching her family history.

Q: Is your author working on anything else at the moment?

A: Yes, she is. Esme Quentin mystery number 4. This time it’s inspired by the story behind the last women in England to be executed for witchcraft in Devon in 1682.

Q: How do you think authors can be helped or supported by readers or groups? What does your author think is the most useful for him/her personally?

A: Adding a simple review on Amazon, Goodreads or sharing their thoughts on social media about a book they’ve enjoyed, saying what they loved about it is always appreciated.

Q: If your author was to host a dinner party what guests would he/she invite and why? Maximum nine guests – real, imaginary, alive or dead.

Author Elizabeth George: Her Inspector Lynley books were always a favourite of my author’s and a great inspiration, as was Ms George’s book about her writing life, Write Away. So much so, that when the first Esme Quentin book Blood-Tied was published, my author wrote to thank Ms George to tell her how helpful the book had been in her journey. Ms George very kindly wrote back to congratulate her on her success at being published.

 

Her late mum, Pat: Pat was a keen writer of children’s stories, mainly, though was never published. She died a long time before my author began writing herself so it would fabulous to share what’s happened in the last 30 years, in writing and life in general.

Patricia Shelley (nee Barton) 1975

Victoria Wood: Another lady who’s sadly missed. Such a wonderful sense of humour! Apparently she wasn’t as gregarious as one might imagine so chuckling at life’s little anomalies with just a few people around a dinner table would seem most appropriate.

Julie Walters: And you can’t have Victoria Wood without Julie Walters, can you? I’m sure Julie would enjoy spending time with her friend again. And it would make Victoria feel more at home.

Author Robert Goddard: another favourite author. Though my author would want to grill him on why he’s stopped writing the type of books she enjoyed most - the ones which had a very clever historical connection within the plot.

C J Sansom’s Tudor character, Matthew Shardlake: my author would love to hear about what life is like for this mild-mannered lawyer, and his hopes for the future.

 

Thank you Max, it was a pleasure talking to you. Would your author like to add a short excerpt? meanwhile,  would you like another beer? 

I’ll have one as well I think!

Salute! Here’s to writing a best seller!

Wendy

CONNECT WITH Wendy Percival

website https://www.wendypercival.co.uk

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/wendypercivalauthor

Twitter https://twitter.com/wendy_percival

Universal Amazon link: http://mybook.to/MaliceofAngels

Excerpt from Chapter 1 of 

MALICE OF ANGELS, by Wendy Percival

It wasn’t until she turned into the narrow medieval passageway of Fish Street that Esme Quentin suspected she was being followed. He – if it was a he, it was difficult to be sure, encased as the walker was in a hooded trench coat – seemed to be keeping his distance. He slowed as she slowed, held back if she paused, as though biding his time before approaching her. Perhaps she should grab the initiative and challenge him? Demand to know who he was and what he thought he was doing creeping up on a middle-aged woman in the dark?

She stopped and looked round, but he must have pulled back as he’d disappeared into the shadows.

She shook her head and carried on down the cobbled street with a greater sense of urgency. Had he been in the records office? There was something vaguely familiar about the way he walked, a loping manner which she felt she should know. Thinking about it, she may have seen him before. He’d been watching from across the road as she’d hurried into the archives that morning. Had he been waiting for someone? Waiting for her? So why not come right out and seek her out? Why hover on the perimeter with intent only to follow her at the end of the day? And what did he want? To engage her genealogy research services? Perhaps he was shy or had a dark family secret he needed her help to uncover and was coy about explaining it. She’d been engaged by a couple of eccentric clients in her time but not one who’d used stalking as their modus operandi.

But she had no time to waste speculating. She’d already cut it fine by staying so long in the records office – she should have headed home ages ago. But she’d succumbed to her usual habit of being sucked into a story as her research unfolded. Once hooked she always found it so difficult to drag herself away.

She paused at the corner of the street to glance behind her. All was quiet. Perhaps she’d imagined the whole thing….

She let out a long sigh and allowed herself an indulgent giggle at her imagined melodrama, blaming her oversensitivity on an afternoon of reading first-hand accounts of wartime traumas.

The street narrowed and as Esme plunged into the shadow between the two buildings, someone grabbed her arm.

Reviewed by Discovering Diamonds

This author has been awarded an 
INDIE BRAG GOLD MEDALLION

https://www.bragmedallion.com/

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Ten Minute Tales : THE OLD COTTAGE by Barbara Gaskell Denvil

Ten Minute Tales

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a different Ten Minute Tale* every day

(except Friday when we have Novel Conversations)

Enjoy!

THE OLD COTTAGE

 by 

Barbara Gaskell Denvil

I had lit the fire this morning and had done a good job for a change. Sometimes when I lit a fire, I only managed to produce smoke. Now the wood in the old shed was dry, and I’d rummaged in the back for the driest, even though old Ted complained.

“You mucks up all me nice tidy piles o’ faggots and such,” he moaned as usual.  “And tis hard enough fer me to put it nice and tidy again.”

“I’ll do it myself when the weather warms up a bit,” I apologised to him. “But you never feel the cold. I do. I need a fire. It’s like ice this morning.” I pointed at the shimmer of frost on the grass.

“Some folks,” he replied with a shake of uncut white hair, “is too delicate. If you works as hard as I done when I were your age, then you toughens up,” he assured me.

“The world has changed since you were young,” I answered back, almost dropping the pile of cut wood in my arms.

Treading warily across the thread of lawn between the shed and my cottage and trying not to slip on the crusty white frost, I had staggered indoors and lit my lovely big raging fire in the living room, and settled back on the armchair to close my eyes and dream.

The cottage was the love of my life, built nearly eight hundred years ago with ceiling beams of dark wood as crooked as the logs on my fire, and walls of stone several feet thick. A wonderful insulation of course, Light a fire in one room, and the whole house sizzled. The inglenook was impressive, and I was proud of living in such an old building with all those special reminders of how people lived in the distant past. Some things had been rebuilt and modernised of course, principally the kitchen and the bathrooms.  Well, I wasn’t going to cook on a trivet over the fire, nor take a bath in an old wooden tub filled with water I had heated in a bucket over the flames. So I had an en-suite fit for a king, or better still, a queen. I had a kitchen even more luxurious, but apart from an odd corner and the lock on the front door, virtually everything else was original. The creaking floorboards, for instance, the rickety little staircase to the second floor, and the thatched roof which I’m sorry to admit was looking like it needed a few plugs.

My smug contentment was interrupted as my mother walked in. But for a change, she wasn’t scolding me. “Come on, lazy bones,” she said, but she wasn’t cross and wore a beaming smile. “I was up in the attic and thought what a good study it would make. You’d love a new bright study, wouldn’t you dear? Of course, it would take a lot of work and cleaning up – but just think – a study, all yours, and you’d never be interrupted again.”

“There’s no place in this house where I won’t be interrupted,” I smiled back. “But it’s a lovely idea. Thanks, Mummsy darling.   But honestly, I don’t mind being interrupted. There’s so many of us living here, but that’s the way I like it. My present study suits me fine, even if everyone does wander in and out. Better than all those stairs up to the attic. But I wonder if I ought to repaint the study I use already?”

She nodded and trotted back upstairs. I was left in peace to close my eyes again and imagine the glorious past of this cottage where I lived, thinking of the centuries of folk who had inhabited this beautiful country home. I had been born here of course, and my mother still often talked to me as though I was her adored little baby. But I didn’t mind, naturally, I was just delighted to have her still at my side.

When I went out to the local village, it almost seemed empty in comparison to my cosy home. Even when I was in bed, it was not unknown for someone to pop in and ask if I was warm enough or whether I wanted a cup of hot milk.

When I finally decided to repaint my existing study after all, I certainly had to face a barrage of complaints and differing opinions. The old plaster had worn thin and become a little grubby over the long years. I thought it needed an inspiring spruce-up.

I asked my mother. “I like the idea of a musty sort of saffron colour,” I told her. “Maybe mustard.”

She stared back at me, mouth open, eyes wide. “What a horrible thought,” she said in astonishment. “That just sounds dirty. If you want yellow then have a proper yellow, dear. Buttercup. Daffodil. Or softer, like the baby dress I knitted for you when you were just one month old.”

“And I’m supposed to remember that?” I laughed. “I’m sure it was gorgeous, Mum, but now  I want something more sophisticated. Not just sickly sweet and pretty.”

“People who don’t like pretty,” sniffed my mother, “are simply odd. Go and ask Julia.”

Julia had always claimed good taste, although her ideas were a bit out of fashion these days. I brought up the subject with tact. “Julia dear, you are the genius of the family. I just wanted your superior advice on what colour to paint this room. It needs redecorating.”

She looked down her nose at me, tossed back her hair, and stared around. “Green,” she said at last. “A pale green, but not too leafy. No washed-out oak trees or weeping willows. A pale musty colour a little like my old shawl.”

“I’ve never seen your old shawl,” I reminded her. “What about mustard?”

“Mustard,” she told me, “is a vile colour suitable only for decaying fruit. No, certainly not. Green is the right choice, but more parsley than rosemary.”

I gave up and stomped upstairs. There I found Graham and called to him as he headed for the attic steps. “Graham dear,” I interrupted, and he whizzed around with a big smile.

“Ah, my little Sara,” he said, looking across at me. “How can I help? I’m afraid I’m not much use to anyone since the war. I dare say you’ll remember I was injured. Quite badly, too.”

How could I forget?

“No, no, nothing heavy,” I assured him. “But I’m wondering what colour I should repaint the study walls. Now, don’t worry, I don’t want any help with the actual painting. I’m quite capable of that. I just wanted to choose the best colour.”

Regarding me with faint disbelief, he shook his head. “Reckon I don’t even know the fancy words for colour they use these days. Now me, I just like pink. Like roses. Makes me feel happy.”

I thought that was the worst suggestion yet, so I thanked him and hurried back downstairs. Actually, I was a bit cross with myself since I didn’t need anyone else’s permission to paint whatever colour I wanted, but not only did it seem polite to ask the others who lived here, but I really liked to know what they thought. They just might have better ideas than me.

So I was looking for Milly when I actually bumped into her. “Ah, Milly,” I called,: I had to call loudly since she was a little deaf, but now she turned around and smiled when she saw it was just me. “You know I spend almost all day every day in my study,” I said, still half shouting. “Well, I think it's rather dingy and so I want to paint the walls a nice new colour. So what colour would you suggest?”

She smiled and chewed one finger nail. “Umm,” she said slowly “A nice bright white is always best, my dear.”

I hoped she couldn’t hear my sigh. “It’s already white, Milly dear. I want something more – vivid.”

Having thought another long five minutes, she managed a wide smile. “I know,” she decided. “Wallpaper.”

I wasn’t going to do that since the medieval walls were all crooked and bent and the corners were like stubby little bent tree trunks. So I just thanked her and went on to  find Bob. He didn’t like to be called Robert. Very fussy. Well, I was being fussy about the wall colour so I called up the stairs. “Bob, are you there.?” I asked.

A reluctant groan echoed back down. “I’m here as usual,” he said, and stomped downstairs.

Talking about stomping, I could hear Merriweather outside and goodness, his footsteps were heavy. I had asked him to be quiet a few times but he never took any notice. So anyway, I turned to Bob and explained the situation.

He regarded me as if I was mad. “Do you wish to draw on your walls?” he asked with distinct contempt. “No, I should hope not. So why do you wish to paint on them?”

This was getting more complicated than it was worth. “Never mind,” I sighed. “It’s not important.

But there was only one other person to ask, apart from Ted who lived outside and only knew the old names for the flowers, and of course old Merriweather, who would just hiss at me.

So I asked the last one in the family, and I found her sitting in the summerhouse, reclining like a goddess on the day bed, enjoying the faint sunshine oozing through the glass ceiling.

This was Lizzie, and I chuckled at her. “I might have known you’d be out here,” I grinned.  “I’ve lit the fire indoors today, it’s so cold. And here’s you enjoying the sunshine. Well, that little haze might truly come from the sun I suppose, but it’s freezing.”

“You’re just a baby, my dear,” Lizzie told me. “One tiny shiver of breeze and you complain that it’s ice.”

But I hadn’t come to talk about the weather, so I got to the point. “Lizzie, dear, If I paint the study walls a new colour, what do you think it should be?”

She thought a moment, looking vague, then asked, “What colour is it now, dear?”

I always knew she was scatty, so I just said, “Well, it used to be your study, Lizzie dear, so don’t you remember it is just white plaster. But it’s got grubby over the years, so I thought I’d brighten it up.”

“Ah yes,” she sat up, trying to gather her wits. “Yes indeed, I used to sit in there to do the family’s accounts. No more, thank goodness. It’s your study now, my dear, so you choose.”

“Well,” I admitted, “I thought perhaps mustard.”

She seemed a little confused. “It’s quite a large room, dear,” she mumbled. “I doubt if there’s enough mustard in the kitchen.”

Sighing again, I stayed to explain even though I knew I shouldn’t have bothered. “Not the real thing, Lizzie dear. Just paint of the same colour.”

But she shook her head. “It doesn’t smell good dear,” she decided. “Mustard is alright on baked ham, but not on walls. Why not use a nice calm blue paint? Blue skies, blue water, big blue eyes. Blue is such a beautiful colour.”

“Sky blue?” I queried, quite liking the idea.

“But of course you can’t copy the sky,” she objected. “On cloudy days the sky is all grey and gloomy. Then at sunset it goes yellow and red, quite strange, isn’t it? Then naturally at night it goes black. Well, perhaps not true black, depending on the moon and such like. More of a very dark blue. I quite like that, but it wouldn’t be right for a study. And besides, how could you paint the moon and all those stars?”

I gave up and thanked her before wandering back to the house across the frosty crackled of the white tipped grass. I was careful not to bump into Merriweather. There wouldn’t be a lot of point asking him about colours.

I could hear Lizzie calling after me. “How about yellow, dear? Not mustard itself, but the same sort of colour. Like sedge?  That might be quite smart.”

I looked back over my shoulder and waved at her. I decided that I couldn’t be bothered painting the study after all. I’d keep the dirty white.

Besides, none of these people’s opinions mattered. They’d all been dead for years. There was mother, and Aunty Lizzie. Lizzie had only died ten years ago, but my dear mother passed away twenty-five years gone. As for great, great, great Uncle Graham, he died during the Boer War and that was certainly more than a hundred years past. Milly died during the puritan age when Cromwell ruled, and she had been burned as a heretic, poor dear. As for Julia, well she was a grand lady who escaped to England as the French Revolution started. Ted the gardener was alive in Elizabethan times and had some wonderful stories to tell, and Bob was a priest in the late medieval, while sometimes my oldest ghost of all came to visit, not that he was ever particularly welcome.

Most of my ghosts were either in the family, or they were so familiar, they now seemed just as close as family and I loved them all. But all Merriweather did when he came to visit, was hiss at me and show all his teeth.  I’d given him that name myself as a slightly ironic choice. After all, he was just a Tyrannosaurus Rex, and it was quite difficult for me to think of him as part of the family, even if he had also lived on this same land a few hundred million years ago.

© Barbara Gaskell Denvil

website: https://barbaragaskelldenvil.com/

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