The Ghost Murder: A Jon Doyle Mystery

By Atalhea Woodam

Jon Doyle is seeing ghosts while visiting the family home for the weekend. During a dinner party in an English country manor, where Jon is in attendance, a stranger is murdered and Doyle must help find the killer before his mother becomes a suspect. Still seeing ghosts, Jon reluctantly teams up with Inspector Bill Peart to track down the culprit.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Apr 17, 2015
• ISBN: 9781329055421

Book preview

The Ghost Murder: A Jon Doyle Mystery

A Ghost Murder: A Jon Doyle Mystery

by Atalhea Woodam

Copyright © 2015 by M. L. Walston

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or scholarly journal.

ISBN 978-1-329-05542-1

Chapter One

Good night for ghosts!

Dense fog blanketed the ground and blended waist high with the heavy mist, creating a grey veil across the city.  The few brave pedestrians looked like phantoms moving about the ether of purgatory.  The efforts of the street lamps were lost in the dreary vapor of the London night.

Offer you a ride, my boy? Mr. Arbunkel continued as the heavy bronze doors of the publishing house slammed shut behind him, Heading out Piccadilly, glad to drop you.

Jon Doyle stood just under the maroon and gold awning that covered the path from the publishing house doors to the street.  He had been turning up the collar of his coat, preparing to brace himself against the elements, when he started at the boisterous sound of Mr. Arbunkel.  The umbrella tucked under his arm slipped and fell into the gutter.  Jon bent to retrieve the wayward parasol as Mr. Arbunkel’s new 1923 Rolls Royce Silver Ghost mysteriously appeared from the haze and rolled to a stop in front of him.  The driver deftly slipped from the front seat and opened the back door, nearly knocking the recently recovered umbrella out of Jon’s grasp.  Before Jon was once again erect the rear door of the automobile closed silently, Mr. Arbunkel’s robust form snuggly secured within.  The pale gray vehicle dissolved into the night, leaving a swirl of fog in its wake.

Jon smiled at this recurring scene.  In his seven and fifty years, Godfrey Arbunkel had mastered the art of asking questions to which he never expected replies.  Arbunkel had become Chairman of the Board of Directors of the H-S Publishing House following the death of Jon’s grandfather, some thirteen years past.

What would old Arbunkel say if he knew that this young man he has left standing on the curb in the gloom of the evening is in all actuality his employer? Jon mused, not for the first time.  Shrugging off the thought, the young man pressed into the miserable night.

With chin tucked deep into his second-hand oversized coat, a warm reminder of his beloved grandfather, Jon pushed through the harsh elements towards Paddington Station.  He was lost in thought about the choices he had made that led to his assuming an alternate identity and applying for the lowest of positions at his family’s publishing house.  He swiftly jumped back as a taxi came dangerously close to him in the impenetrable fog.  It was a simple desire that drove him to become Jon Doyle and start as a sweeper, rising slowly through the ranks to become an assistant junior editor, at the printing house.  Yes, a very simple dream with a very challenging path to achievement.  Jon wanted to follow in the footsteps of William Andrew Jonathon Hadley-Styles, the thirteenth Duke of Woolston, his grandfather.

Dodging a couple who walked out of the fog and into his path, Jon began to wish he had been given that lift so absentmindedly offered by Mr. Arbunkel.  The current Chairman of the Board had not worked his way up from the bottom - in fact, Jon wasn’t at all sure Arbunkel had any notion of where to locate the bottom.  Of one thing Jon was sure, Godfrey Arbunkel did not know his name, not the one on the payroll nor the one in the family Bible.  The man certainly was without a clue to the fact that Jon owned thirty-two percent of the shares in the company founded in 1859 as a small bookshop with a printing press in the back.  Jon had secretly purchased shares from each board member and with the twenty-six percent his grandmother had inherited, the two had controlling interest of the now large and thriving company.   

Like his grandfather, Jon loved the publishing house.  Secretly working his way up from the bottom so that one day he would have the know-how to fill his grandfather’s shoes was a scheme his grandmother encouraged.  The current Duke and Duchess, his parents, were far less enthusiastic.  The only way his mother and father would agree to keep his secret was upon Jon’s promise to come home from London to Woolston Castle, near the village of Northwick, each and every weekend. 

Hesitating on a shadowy street corner, Jon struggled to ensure he had not lost his way in the dense fog engulfing the city.  After a moment or two of disorientation, he was able to vaguely make out the light coming through the window clock high above the entrance to Paddington Station.  Cautiously, the young man navigated the now heavier flow of pedestrians coming and going from the station.  Entering the warmth and light of the station, Jon though again of his parents.  The senior Hadley-Styles were certain he would soon forget this silly idea and that he needed to be reminded as often as possible that he was indeed a gentleman.

Jon had never had a moment’s worry about his family giving him away; they were far too socially conscious to ever let it be known that a Hadley-Styles worked for a living.  The true reason for Jon’s weekly trek to the country was to see his greatest friend and dearest love, the Dowager Duchess, his grandmother.  It was for her that every Friday evening he caught the last train from Paddington to the last stop at Northwick.  It was for her that every Monday he returned to London by the first train.  It was for her sake that he put up with the ridicule of his life choices from his pompous, yet loving, parents.  For her sake alone he traveled the ninety-one minutes on the Cheltenham Flyer from twentieth-century London to nineteenth-century Northwick every weekend.  He had never had a moment’s regret.

Jon supposed it was his having been so deep in thought, thus walking more quickly than wise in the unnavigable elements, which caused his early arrival at the station.  The young man looked about, there were handfuls of travelers scattered upon the various platforms; seeing the coffee shop was still open he made his way to the entrance.  He went in to the narrow establishment; two women in a corner booth looked at him with suspicion before returning to their whispered conversation.  Such weather always seemed to reduce sound to the hushed tones of a funeral procession.  The coffee shop was well lit, a stark contrast from the gloom of the night, and it appeared twice its width due to a mirror running along the length of one wall.  Jon ordered a sandwich and coffee to go.  As he waited he turned to see his refection staring back at him from the mirror.  He saw a tired middle-class man of rather ordinary appearance.  Dull brown eyes, that did not seem as if they ever generated an interest in anything but books, looked out.  The secondhand coat that had once been so elegant hung loose about his thin frame.  Jon reflected, not for the first time, that he should have the coat altered to his own size.  Perhaps it was the memory of his grandfather in this coat that kept him from following through at the tailor.

Jon listened to the station clock toll ten long notes and looked up to see the Cheltenham Flyer pull into Paddington Station.  The outer fog mixed with the steam from the locomotive engine created the effect of a smoky swirl that passengers floated through like spirits awaiting their ride to the after world.  Jon stepped into the first empty third class car