Amazon loves Felicity. “Felicity Carrol and the Murderous Menace” has been selected as a Kindle Deal of the Day today, December 1st, priced at $2.99.
Heiress and amateur detective Felicity Carrol makes a perilous journey to apprehend a notorious murderer who has terrorized England–and now continues his vicious killing spree in America and discovers not all killers are as they seem.
“This colorful, action-filled mystery presents a novel twist.”
—Kirkus Reviews
London, England
“Apples. Apples.” Felicity Carrol sang out in a whiny voice. She held out the fruit to the woman who passed. “Juicy and sweet, dearie. Only a penny.” Her cockney accent was as perfect as the apple she offered.
Standing almost a head taller, the woman ignored Felicity with a wave of her right hand and then crossed Warwick Road. The woman had no little finger. Felicity took in the woman’s scent of lavender, vanilla, and murder.
Bessie Denner was suspected of killing three husbands with arsenic. The Deadly Widow had finally appeared.
Taking a bite out of the apple, which was as good as she had advertised, Felicity watched the woman walk into Simons Apothecary. The suspect wore an expensive though gaudy blue satin dress and hat with the largest ostrich feather imaginable, which made her even taller.
In contrast, Felicity wore a plain dress, apron, and shawl, all topped with an oversized bonnet. Proud of her disguise, she based it on those of other vendors she had seen on the streets. Her wares lay in a wooden tray hung around her waist with a leather belt. Three days before she had started her apple selling right in front of Simons Apothecary. On that first day however owner Alfred Simons had yelled at her to move on, in less than polite terms, and added a little shove for good measure. Slight and short, Simons’s eyes resembled a mole’s, especially when he threw curses at Felicity’s apple seller. So Felicity had moved directly across the street. The vantage point proved sufficient. Through the apothecary’s window, Felicity spotted the woman with the big feathered hat pitch her arms around Alfred Simons and plant an ardent kiss on him.
“Complice,” Felicity whispered. The French word for accomplice sounded so much better in this case.
Felicity had smelled Bessie Denner’s lavender and vanilla fragrance before. Like a mist over a cemetery, the scent had lingered on the clothes of Denner’s latest kill. Felicity had examined the newly deceased Michael Spencer in the London Coroner mortuary. The victim had been dressed as he had appeared in life, a barrister’s clerk natty from his toenails to his neck. Despite the conservative clothing, the face had revealed a kindness even in rigor mortis.
The coroner reported arsenic poisoning as the cause of death.
“They did one of those tests to find the stuff,” said Mr. Hobson, a clerk at the coroner’s office.
“The Marsh test,” Felicity had said.
“That’s the one.”