A Very Vexing Murder – Lucy Andrew (1)

My other hand works its way into his redingote pocket as he writhes underneath me, trying to buck me off. My fingertips are slick with sweat as they wrap around something small, hard and metallic. I draw my hand out of his pocket and hold it up to the light. A dainty, heart-shaped gold locket engraved with forget-me-nots with turquoise stones at their centre. I slide my finger against the catch to reveal the lock of hair inside a hinged, glazed compartment.

The hair belongs to Mr Churchill’s great-grandmother, I expect. Because there’s no doubt about it – this is the missing Churchill heirloom. ‘Care to explain this?’ I ask, still sitting astride Denny. Denny shrugs. ‘Never seen it before in my life.’ I shift my weight, thighs digging into his hips. ‘You’re going to have to do better than that, I’m afraid.’ Denny sighs. ‘Will you stop mauling me if I tell you?’ I smile at him sweetly. ‘I thought you’d never ask.’ ‘I won it.

In a game of whist.’ ‘From Frank Churchill?’ I demand. ‘Yes,’ Denny mumbles. ‘Down there?’ I say, gesturing towards the trapdoor. ‘Yes.’ ‘So I was right. It is an illicit gambling den.’ ‘He does hair too, though,’ Denny says, as if this makes his lie by omission less morally objectionable.

‘Why did you keep it? It’s worth a pretty penny.’ ‘Well, I couldn’t exactly sell it on, could I? It’s rather distinctive, particularly with the old bat’s hair inside.’ ‘You could have removed it,’ I reason. ‘Trust me, I tried. She won’t budge.’ Sounds like a Churchill. ‘Besides, it’s much more valuable to Frank than it would be to any jeweller. Thought I’d give him the opportunity to win it back.’

He grimaces and shuffles underneath me. ‘Look, will you let me up now? It feels as if there’s a walrus sitting on my stomach.’ ‘Fine,’ I say, shifting my weight onto his chest to push myself up and off him. He winces, but doesn’t complain. ‘But you still have the locket,’ I say, dangling the chain in front of his face as he scrambles to his feet.

‘Yes, well, I haven’t seen him for a few days. Which is odd for Frank. Usually he’s here whenever he can escape from his tyrant of an aunt.’ His eyes follow the locket as it swings back and forth. ‘This gambling den. It’s run by a fellow called Durand? French, is he? Your French barber?’

‘How do you—’ ‘I have my sources.’ ‘The premises are his,’ Denny admits. ‘And does he lend out money to his patrons?’ Denny shakes his head. ‘I wouldn’t know about that.’

Lucy Andrew is a crime writer and crime fiction scholar who has an unhealthy fixation with Jane Austen. She has a PhD in English Literature from Cardiff University and was a Senior Lecturer in English Literature before leaving academia to concentrate on her writing. She lives in Wolverhampton with her septuagenarian tortoise (and her husband).

Find out more about Lucy on her website: www.lucyandrew.com 1kitap1.com/en 1kitap1.com/en First published in paperback in Great Britain in 2026 by Corvus, an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd Copyright © Lucy Andrew, 2026 The moral right of Lucy Andrew to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book. No part of this book may be used in any manner in the learning, training or development of generative artificial intelligence technologies (including but not limited to machine learning models and large language models (LLMs)), whether by data scraping, data mining or use in any way to create or form a part of data sets or in any other way.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities, is entirely coincidental. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Paperback ISBN: 978 1 80546 418 1 E-book ISBN: 978 1 80546 419 8 Printed in Great Britain.

Corvus An imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd Ormond House 26–27 Boswell Street London WC1N 3JZ www.atlantic-books.co.uk Product safety EU representative: Authorised Rep Compliance Ltd., Ground Floor, 71 Lower Baggot Street, Dublin, D02 P593, Ireland. www.arccompliance.com 1kitap1.com/en For mum and dad. Thank you for believing in me and for always supporting my dreams.

1kitap1.com/en ‘M CHAPTER 1 Rule number one: Don’t commit yourself to disposing of your client’s rivals unless you’re sure they deserve it (or you’ve been paid an obscene sum to do so). iss Harriet Smith?’

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

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• Unique ID: 4f43a6074c2c28e7
• File Extension: .pdf
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• Title: –
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• ISBN: 9781805464181, 9781805464198
• Pages: 313
• Language: English (en)

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• Estimated Reading Time: 490.83 minutes
• Total Words: 98,166
• Total Characters: 532,453
• Average Words per Page: 313.63
• Average Characters per Page: 1701.13

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