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    Seven Years
    Seven Years
    Seven Years
    Ebook74 pages1 hour

    Seven Years

    By Peter Robinson

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    A gripping novella from the New York Times–bestselling author of the Inspector Banks Mysteries and a “master of the art” (TheBoston Globe).
     
    Retired Cambridge professor Donald Aitcheson loves scouring antiquarian bookshops for secondhand treasures—as much as he loathes the scribbled marginalia from their previous owners. But when he comes upon an inscription in a volume of Robert Browning’s poetry, he’s less irritated than disturbed. This wasn’t once a gift to an unwitting woman. It was a threat—insidious, suggestively sick, and terribly intriguing.
     
    Now Aitcheson’s imagination is running wild. Was it a sordid teacher-pupil affair that ended in betrayal? A scorned lover’s first salvo in a campaign of terror? The taunt of an obsessive psychopath? Then again, it could be nothing more than a tasteless joke between friends.
     
    As his curiosity gets the better of him, Aitcheson can’t resist playing detective. But when his investigation leads to a remote girls’ boarding school in the Lincolnshire flatlands, and into the confidence of its headmistress, he soon discovers the consequences of reading between the lines.
     
    Praise for Peter Robinson
    “Robinson is equally skilled at reflecting procedural details and treating his flesh-and-blood characters—despite their flaws—with compassion and humor.” —The Miami Herald
     
    “Robinson is good at producing ingenious mysteries and this one doesn’t disappoint.” —The Sunday Telegraph on Friend of the Devil
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMysteriousPress.com Open Road
    Release dateMar 13, 2018
    ISBN9781504048088
    Seven Years
    Author

    Peter Robinson

    One of the world’s most popular and acclaimed writers, Peter Robinson was the bestselling, award-winning author of the DCI Banks series. He also wrote two short-story collections and three stand-alone novels, which combined have sold more than ten million copies around the world. Among his many honors and prizes were the Edgar Award, the CWA (UK) Dagger in the Library Award, and the Swedish Crime Writers’ Academy Martin Beck Award.

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    Reviews for Seven Years

    3.5/5

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    • 4/5
      An engaging short story/novella with interesting characters and a good plot. It captured my interest at the beginning and kept it to the end. Recommended.
    • 4/5
      A bibliomystery from TMB.A retired Cambridge classics professor enjoys his days driving to small villages to see the historical sites and rummage through old bookshops. In one such shop he purchases a few books, then later when going through the Browning book of poetry, he finds an inscription he hadn't seen before buying, a rather sinister and threatening inscription to someone named "Miss Scott".His concern for this woman's safety, and his interest in knowing what that inscription was all about, leads the professor into sleuthing. And now I have to read Browning's "Porphyria's Lover", as it figures prominently in this story.

    Book preview

    Seven Years - Peter Robinson

    Robinson_SevenYears_cover.jpg

    Seven Years

    Peter Robinson

    I

    t is one of the greatest

    pleasures of my retirement to set out early on a fine morning for some ancient town or city renowned for the quantity and quality of its second-hand bookshops.

    Much of my enjoyment, I will admit, lies in the anticipation of what I might discover on the overflowing shelves of cramped anterooms and attics. I take my time getting to my destination, enjoying the countryside as I drive along. I also combine my book-buying expeditions with a visit to a nearby cathedral, country churchyard, or place of historic interest, and I round off my excursion with a late lunch at a local inn, where I thumb through my day’s purchases and enjoy a pint or two of ale with my meal.

    Though my tastes are catholic, there are certain subjects I seek out in particular: poetry, literary criticism, and biography being prime among them. I have always been of a literary bent, and in my working life I was an academic, a Professor of Classics at Cambridge, no less. I was good enough at my job, with well-respected translations of Catullus and Ovid to my name, as well as a brief introduction to Latin verse which I am pleased to say has been adopted as a first-year university recommended text. These days, however, I prefer to spend less time poring over dead languages than I do enjoying the writers of my native tongue. Having aspired to poetry once in the long ago days of my youth, I especially enjoy reading verse and accounts of the lives of the great poets.

    Naturally, with second-hand books one has to keep an eye out for damage of a physical nature and for other people’s scribblings. Underlining of text I detest, especially when it is done in ink, but though I also disdain marginalia in general, there have been occasions when I have chosen a specific copy of a book simply because of the interesting observations of a previous reader. One can feel an astonishing degree of kinship with such anonymous scribblers, whether one agrees or disagrees with them.

    One fine English autumn morning, I had been wandering the streets of Beverley, a town hitherto unknown to me, on the eastern fringes of my allotted region. I had been delighted with the magnificent Gothic minster, golden in the late morning sunlight, and it was time to seek for books. I have learned over time that one will usually find the most interesting bookshops in rambling Dickensian structures hidden away in the mazes of narrow crooked alleys behind market squares and main shopping streets, so that was where I headed first.

    After a delightful hour or two of exploration, I found myself carrying my weighty book bag into a pub, whose chalked blackboard promised first class food and well-kept cask ales. I bought a pint of Timothy Taylor Golden Best and ordered a plate of gammon, chips and peas and settled contentedly at a wobbly corner table in the small lounge. Rays of sunlight filtered through the windows and caught the motes of dust in their stately dance, the way that the film projectors once did with cigarette smoke in the cinema, and I was thankful that the pub was almost empty and the landlord had foregone the cacophonous allure of slot machines and piped music. As I sipped my ale and savored its bitter taste, I felt that all was well with the world, and I reached for my bag of books.

    Imagine my surprise, then, when I found that the selection of Robert Browning’s poetry I had been so thrilled to find had been defaced on the flyleaf. I am usually careful enough to flip through a book before I buy it, but in this instance the pages had stuck together and that prevented me from noticing the inscription on my cursory examination in the shop. As far as I had been able to tell, the book was in mint condition; there were no signs of wear, no price-clipping or creases on the spine, and certainly no tell-tale coffee rings on the cover. In fact, it looked as if it had never been read.

    Curious, I sipped some more ale and held open the flyleaf so that I might read the offending scribble:

    "Miss Scott,

    You know you want to read Browning’s poetry. ‘My Last Duchess’ and ‘Porphyria’s Lover’ in particular. ‘The Ring and the Book,’ too, perhaps, though that one is rather long and much abbreviated here. No poet quite captures adultery, betrayal, madness and the act of murder the way Browning does. Try this:

    ‘… I found

    A thing to do, and all her hair

    In one long yellow string

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