Exposing not a smooth roundness but a fissured depression, choked with sand.
The body had been placed on its side with the head hard up against a boulder in the foundations, the chin dropped to the chest, exposing the side of the skull. He stared down at the remains, thrown off-balance, then bent again, his mouth dry, and explored further until he came to the pale orb of the skull. The plank was an old floor-board, nailed down, and the bones were underneath it.
He tried to move it aside, but it stuck fast, then he straightened, aghast, as certainty came. A rotting plank half-covered the remains. He leant forward, interest sharpening, and scraped at the sandy soil, revealing more stained bones and recognising a tangle of threads from decaying textile. But the next one was a long bone, and he held it, considering a moment, then rocked back on his heels. There’d been others-ribs decaying amidst rabbit droppings and debris from the collapsing ceilings, or bleached vertebrae. The first bone he had dismissed as dead sheep. The House Between Tides Chapter 1 2010, James What happened between them has remained a mystery, but as Hetty listens to the locals and studies the masterful paintings produced by Theo during his short-lived marriage, she uncovers secrets that still reverberate through the small island community-and will lead her to the identity of the long-hidden body. Yet ancient gossip and a handful of leads reveal that their marriage was far from perfect Beatrice eventually vanished from the island, never to return, and Theo withdrew from society, his paintings becoming increasingly dark and disturbing. Hungry for answers, Hetty discovers that Muirlan was once the refuge of her distant relative Theo Blake, the acclaimed painter and naturalist who brought his new bride, Beatrice, there in 1910. Few physical clues are left to identify the body, but one thing is certain: this person did not die a natural death. She intends to renovate the ruinous house into a hotel, but the shocking discovery of human remains brings her ambitious restoration plans to an abrupt halt before they even begin. An atmospheric debut novel about a woman who discovers the century-old remains of a murder victim on her family’s Scottish estate, plunging her into an investigation of its mysterious former occupants.įollowing the death of her last living relative, Hetty Deveraux leaves London and her strained relationship behind for Muirlan, her ancestral home in Scotland’s Outer Hebrides.
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