Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Nicola Upson is the author of five previous Josephine Tey mysteries, including An Expert in Murder, and two works of nonfiction. She has worked in theater and as a freelance journalist. A recipient of an Escalator Award from the Arts Council England, she splits her time between Cambridge  and  Cornwall. 

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They were the most horrific crimes of a new century: the murders of newborn innocents for which two British women were hanged at Holloway Prison in1903. Decades later, mystery writer Josephine Tey has decided to write a novel based on Amelia Sach and Annie Walters, the notorious “Finchley baby farmers,” unaware that her research will entangle her in the desperate hunt for a modern-day killer.

A young seamstress—an ex-convict determined to reform—has been found brutally slain in the studio of Tey’s friends, the Motley sisters, amid preparations for a star-studded charity gala. Despite initial appearances, Inspector Archie Penrose is not convinced this murder is the result of a long-standing domestic feud—and a horrific accident involving a second young woman soon after supports his convictions. Now he and his friend Josephine must unmask a sadistic killer before more blood flows—as the repercussions of unthinkable crimes of the past reach out to destroy those left behind long after justice has been served.

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Two for Sorrow

A Mystery Featuring Josephine TeyBy Nicola Upson

Harper Paperbacks

Copyright © 2011 Nicola Upson
All right reserved.
ISBN: 9780061451584

Chapter One

Josephine Tey picked up an extravagantly wrapped hatbox
and used the perfect Selfridge bow to hook it on to the rest of
her parcels.
?Are you sure you wouldn?t like me to have that delivered for
you, Madam?? the assistant asked anxiously, as if the hat?s
independent departure from the shop were somehow a slur on
her standards. ?It?s really no trouble.?
?Oh no, I?ll be fine,? Josephine said, smiling guiltily at the
group of young girls behind the counter. ?Carrying this will
stop me going anywhere else today, and that?s probably just as
well ? if I send many more packages round to my club, they?ll
be charging me for an extra room.?
Balancing her recklessness as best she could, Josephine took
the escalator down to the ground floor. Its steady, sedate
progress gave her plenty of time to admire the vast, open plan
design of the store, a look which was still so different from
what most of London?s shops had to offer. The whole building
seemed to sparkle with an innate understanding of the connection
between a woman?s eye and her purse; even the prominent
bargain tables were neatly stacked with beautiful boxes
that gave no hint of their reduced price. December was still a
week away, but staff were already beginning to decorate the
aisles for the festive season and the familiar department store
smell ? plush carpets and fresh flowers ? had been replaced by
a warm scent of cinnamon which only the drench of perfume
from the soap and cosmetic departments could keep at bay. As
a ploy to make Christmas seem closer than it really was, it
seemed to have worked: even this late in the afternoon, the
shop was packed with people and Josephine had to fight her
way past the make-up counters to the main entrance and out
into the bustle of Oxford Street.
She turned left towards Oxford Circus, following the long
stretch of glass frontage to the corner of Duke Street. The shop
windows were full of wax models, each a variation on the
theme of Lot?s wife, forever stilled in the midst of a gesture.
Some beckoned to the curious to step inside, others carried on
with their imaginary lives, oblivious to the flesh and blood
women who studied every detail, but all were arranged against
a background of light and colour which had been as carefully
designed as any stage set. Josephine paused by a particularly
striking bedroom scene. A ravishing wax figure, dressed in a
crêpe de Chine nightgown, stepped out of a nest of silken
sheets and pillows. Her pink foot rested lightly on the floor,
and she stretched a perfectly manicured hand over to her
bedside table, which held a morning paper, a novel ? The
Provincial Lady in America, Josephine noticed ? and a tea tray
with the finest bone china. Her dressing table ? a magnet for
feminine extravagance ? gleamed with crystal, gold-stoppered
bottles. It was a powerful image, but its message ? that a life of
comfort and intimacy was available to anyone who knew
where to shop ? was as painful for some as it was seductive to
others. There was a whole generation of women for whom this
would never be a reality, whose chances of happiness and
security, even companionship, had been snatched away by the
war, and no amount of satin could soften the blow of what
they had lost. Glancing at the spinsters on either side of her ?
she used the word half-heartedly, aware of her own hypocrisy
in treating them as a race apart ? Josephine knew that the
troubled look on their faces was about more than the lingerie?s
ability to withstand the November cold.
The pavement was only just wide enough to accommodate
a double flow of pedestrians, and Josephine walked on slowly,
recognizing herself in the women from provincial towns who
seemed utterly engrossed in their business, determined not to
miss a thing. It was after five o?clock and, in the last hour, the
pinks and oranges of a winter sunset had quickly given way to
a sky the colour of blue-black ink. An unbroken line of street
lights stretched ahead of her like pearls on a string, drifting
into the distance and relieving the mile-long stretch of shops
? ladies? mile, as it was known ? from the ordinariness of the
day. Some of the smaller branches had already closed, emptying
more workers out onto the streets, and a few shop girls
stopped to gaze wistfully into the windows of the larger stores,
a long day on their feet having strengthened their desire to
stand for once on the other side of the counter; most, though,
headed quickly for the underground or for bus queues which
grew longer by the second, muttering impatiently to themselves
and keen to make every second of freedom count before
the daily routine began again.
As impressive as its sequence of huge stores was, Oxford
Street was one of Josephine?s least favourite parts of London,
something to be endured for the sake of a weakness for clothes
but never for longer than necessary. Gladly, she left its crowds
and its clatter behind and cut through into the more select
surroundings of Wigmore Street. There was something about
the anonymity of walking through London in the early evening
that never failed to delight her, a sense of freedom in the
knowledge that ? for as long as she chose ? no one in the world
knew where she was or how to contact her. She had traveled
down from Inverness ten days ago, but had so far managed to
keep her presence a secret from all but a few casual acquaintances
at her club. It couldn?t last forever; there were several
engagements booked for the following week and she would
have to pick up the telephone soon and open a floodgate of
invitations, but she was in no hurry to socialize before she had
to. A world in which there were no timetables to be followed
or deadlines to be met, and where messages left were never for
her, suited Josephine perfectly. She was determined to enjoy it
for as long as possible.
Even so, the sort of undemanding companionship offered
by an afternoon of dedicated shopping was a relief after the
solitary morning she had spent in her room ? just her and a
typewriter and a series of shadowy figures from a past which
felt utterly alien to her. She was still not sure about the novel
she was working on, and wondered if her desire to write something
other than a detective story had been wise after all.
When her editor suggested a book with a historical slant, a
fictionalized account of a true crime seemed a good idea,
particularly one with which she had a personal connection,
but the claustrophobic horror of Holloway Gaol was starting
to depress her and she had only just begun. Summer ? both
the real summer she had spent in Cornwall and the imaginary
version which she had recently delivered to her publisher ?
seemed a long way away, and she found herself craving the
warmth of the sun on her back and the comforting presence of
Detective Inspector Alan Grant, hero of her first two mysteries.
These early stages of a book, when all the characters were
unfamiliar, were always the hardest to write....