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The Sunset Years of Agnes Sharp (Miss Sharp Investigates, Band 1) - Softcover

Buch 1 von 3: Miss Sharp Investigates

Swann, Leonie

 
9781641295987: The Sunset Years of Agnes Sharp (Miss Sharp Investigates, Band 1)
Softcover
ISBN 10: 1641295988 ISBN 13: 9781641295987
Verlag: Soho Crime, 2024

Inhaltsangabe

A quirky group of seniors attempts to solve one murder while covering up another—with the help of an enterprising tortoise—in this twisty, darkly funny mystery from the author of Three Bags Full.

It has been an eventful morning for Agnes Sharp and the other inhabitants of Sunset Hall, a house share for the old and unruly in the sleepy English countryside. Although they have had some issues (misplaced reading glasses, conflicting culinary tastes, decreasing mobility, and gluttonous grandsons), nothing prepares them for an unexpected visit from a police officer with some shocking news. A body has been discovered next door. Everyone puts on a long face for show, but they are secretly relieved the body in question is not the one they’re currently hiding in the shed (sorry, Lillith).

It seems the answer to their little problem with Lillith may have fallen right into their laps. All they have to do is find out who murdered their neighbor, so they can pin Lillith’s death on them, thus killing two (old) birds with one stone (cold killer).

With their plan sorted, Agnes and her geriatric gang spring into action. After all, everybody likes a good mystery. Besides, the more suspicion they can cast about, surely the less will land on them. To investigate, they will step out of their comfort zone and tangle with sinister bakers, broken stairlifts, inept criminals, the local authorities, and their own dark secrets.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Leonie Swann grew up near Munich and earned degrees in philosophy, communications, and psychology from Munich University and the Munich School of Philosophy. Her debut novel, Three Bags Full, was published in 2005 and became an instant hit, leading the German bestseller charts for months. It has since been translated into twenty-six languages and won the prestigious Glauser Prize for crime fiction in the debut category, as well as the PETA Award. She has now published six books and lives and works in the English countryside near Cambridge.

Amy Bojang is a translator of German language literature. She has an MA in Modern and Contemporary German Studies from the University of Nottingham. In 2017, she was selected by the journal New Books in German for their Emerging Translators Programme. She lives in England

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1
Edwina’s Biscuits


The doorbell rang, and Agnes Sharp abandoned the search for her false teeth, simultaneously pleased and annoyed.
     Pleased that she had even heard the doorbell—her ears hadn’t really been playing along recently, and sometimes all she could hear was a high-pitched, nerve-jangling ringing, accompanied by a rushing sound. So, the doorbell was a welcome change.
     On the other hand, it would be quite embarrassing to open the door without the aforementioned false teeth, unclear and toothless. But the caller had to be gotten rid of before he had the idea of going snooping around in the garden—teeth or no teeth.
      “I’m coming! Juft a minute!” Agnes bellowed into the hall, then she sallied forth. Out of the room. Mind the threshold! And then the stairs. A step forward, a step down, then bring down the other foot. A vertigo-inducing moment without any sense of balance, a deep breath, then gather courage for the next step down. And so on. Twenty-six times.
     A minute, my foot!
     The doorbell rang again.
     Her hip grumbled.
     The doorbell rang once more.
     “Juft one moment, for God fake!”
When she reached the first landing, a real rage had built up in her, towards the stairs, the caller, the renegade false teeth, but also her housemates. Why did she always get the difficult jobs? Like scaling the stairs. Or taking out the bins. Or . . . absolutely everything!
     Edwina would have made it down the stairs somewhat quicker, but she would of course have been useless at the door. Bernadette was sitting in her room crying her blind eyes out. At this time Marshall was mostly somewhere on the Internet, unreachable, connected to the computer as if by the umbilical cord. And you obviously couldn’t expect Winston to attempt the descent without the stairlift.
     Why had nobody repaired the stupid stairlift?
     Then Agnes remembered that it had been her job to call for it to be repaired, but with her unreliable hearing and her aversion to the telephone she had kept putting it off. It was her own fault then, as so often seemed to be the case these days.
     The only scapegoat left was the caller, and her rage towards him was mounting.
     She had mastered the last step and was dragging herself to the front door with a calculated slowness accompanied by the doorbell’s staccato chimes. Did they think she was deaf? What was the buffoon playing at? What did they even want at this time? And what time was it anyway?
     Agnes fumbled briefly with the latch, then threw the door open. She would have liked to give the caller a piece of her mind, but nothing came to her.
     “Yef?” she snapped. She didn’t quite carry it off and got even more annoyed.
     “Err . . . Miss Sharp?” The caller peered rudely past her into the house. A bloody whippersnapper with officious glasses and a briefcase under his arm. This couldn’t be a good sign. Agnes crossed her thin arms, while the whippersnapper switched on a winning smile, rather too late.
     “Miss Sharp, I have wonderful news for you!”
     He really shouldn’t have said that. Up to now Agnes had simply planned to get rid of the troublemaker, but now she lost it. Wonderful news? Today of all days? It was too much!
     Despite her missing teeth she tried a friendly old-lady smile—with moderate success, as she gathered from the puzzled look on the sales rep’s face. “Oh, for me? How lofely! Come frough to the lounge.”
     He only had himself to blame!
 

“Anofer Bifcuit?”
     Where on earth were her teeth?
     The whippersnapper silently shook his head. He had taken a single bite of his biscuit and since then had been sitting strangely tensely in the battered wingback chair, chewing. Agnes poured piss-yellow herbal tea into his cup and studied the brochure the intruder had pushed into her hand with feigned interest.
     The visitor put the half-eaten biscuit back on the plate—a cold clatter like stone on stone. Edwina’s biscuits were generally even spurned by the mice, but for occasions like this they were priceless.
     “Do you liff on your own?” the whippersnapper asked with a mouth full.
     He didn’t want to swallow or spit, so he was stuck.
     Agnes thought about Winston and sobbing Bernadette, about Edwina, who was probably trying to find her inner balance through yoga, about Marshall, and finally, about Lillith, and sighed deeply.
     The visitor nodded sympathetically.
     “What we offer if perfect for people like you. We manage your houfe, take care of renting it out. We take care of everyfing, whilft you fpend your golden funfet years at Lime Tree Court . . .
     He went quiet and fixed his gaze strangely past Agnes on the floor, where Hettie the tortoise was passing by with her usual elegance.
     And on her shell—the false teeth! Presumably they’d been travelling around the house by tortoise for quite a while, a disembodied, mobile grin. Exactly the kind of thing Marshall would find funny.
     Agnes leaned right forward, fishing for her false teeth and grabbed them. Hurrah! She quickly put the dentures into her mouth and beamed at the whippersnapper with rows of pristine teeth.
     “Golden sunset years, you said?”
     “Wifout finanfial worrief!” The sales rep gave in and stood up. “I’d freally luf to ftay and chat, but I . . .”
     “You’re going already? What a shame. Are you sure you don’t want another . . . ?”
     Agnes picked up another biscuit threateningly, but the whippersnapper was already on his way to the door, and a good thing that he was too.
     Because Lillith was lying out in the woodshed, a bullet in her head and a smile on her lips. It was going to be a tough day.
 

They held their crisis meeting in the sunroom on the first floor. It was easiest for Winston that way. Agnes had prepared tea and got Edwina to take the teapot and cups upstairs. They had real biscuits out of a packet too.
     Agnes took an experimental bite—her dentures held firm—and looked around. Marshall was next to her, upright and sharp-eyed. Next to him Edwina was in one of her impossible yoga poses with a dreamy expression on her face. Winston just looked calm and sad in his wheelchair. Dignified, like Father Christmas. The scoundrel! How did he do it?
     Unlike Winston, Bernadette almost never seemed dignified. Instead she came across like a Mafia boss, not least because of her dark glasses. She had calmed down a bit, but it was the calm before the storm—or, better put, between two storms. With a downpour.
     To Agnes’s right there was a gaping empty chair.
     “The engineer for the stairlift is coming tomorrow,” she reported. After she had...

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Verlag
Soho Crime
Erscheinungsdatum
2024
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1641295988
ISBN 13 
9781641295987
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
384
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
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