Nights in White Satin - Hardcover

Spring, Michelle

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 034542493X ISBN 13: 9780345424938

Publisher: Ballantine Books, 1999

Synopsis

"Powerful emotional intensity . . . The book hits you where you live," raved the Washington Post Book World about Michelle Spring's Standing in the Shadows. The Los Angeles Times hailed it as "[a] suspenseful thriller . . . truly startling." Now Michelle Spring returns with a psychologically astute novel that unfolds against the stately backdrop of Cambridge, England.

But behind this refined university setting lies something truly sinister.

For private investigator Laura Principal, the case begins unexpectedly at the annual May Ball, a jubilant celebration marking the end of examinations, an avalanche of food and fountains of champagne. Laura is hired to provide security, but somewhere between the dancing and the fireworks, a student disappears.

Katie Arkwright wore white. Sleek, elegant, in silver armlets, she was a vision of purity. But when Laura starts probing into the missing woman's life, she finds that Katie concealed a dark side. With this jarring revelation, Laura opens a floodgate of damning secrets and double lives--encompassing a college don's mysterious death and the discovery of the skeletal remains of a baby.

The deeper Laura searches into a tangled past, the more tension mounts in every corner of Cambridge--where someone waits, coiled to strike. And strike again.

Enigmatic characters, shameful acts. Hidden motives as passionate as they are malignant. A conspiracy of silence that shields an unspeakable truth. In Nights in White Satin, Michelle Spring penetrates the complex impulses that can seize desperate souls--and once again creates an incisive novel of psychological suspense.

About this title

About the Author

Michelle Spring grew up in Victoria, Vancouver Island, British Columbia, later moving to Cambridge, England, where she currently lives with her husband and two young children. Under the name Michelle Stanworth, she has had an academic career that spans two and a half decades, four academic books, an affiliated lectureship at Cambridge University, and, most recently, the Professorship of Sociology at Anglia University in Cambridge. Her first novel, Every Breath You Take, was nominated for both an Anthony Award and an Arthur Ellis Award as Best First Novel. She is also the author of Running for Shelter and Standing in the Shadows.

From the Back Cover

"Michelle Spring is a major new novelist whose literate, intricately patterned storytelling will be warmly greeted by fans of P. D. James and Minette Walters."
--SANDRA SCOPPETTONE

From the Inside Flap

ul emotional intensity . . . The book hits you where you live," raved the Washington Post Book World about Michelle Spring's Standing in the Shadows. The Los Angeles Times hailed it as "[a] suspenseful thriller . . . truly startling." Now Michelle Spring returns with a psychologically astute novel that unfolds against the stately backdrop of Cambridge, England.<br><br>But behind this refined university setting lies something truly sinister.<br><br>For private investigator Laura Principal, the case begins unexpectedly at the annual May Ball, a jubilant celebration marking the end of examinations, an avalanche of food and fountains of champagne. Laura is hired to provide security, but somewhere between the dancing and the fireworks, a student disappears.<br><br>Katie Arkwright wore white. Sleek, elegant, in silver armlets, she was a vision of purity. But when Laura starts probing into the missing woman's life, she finds that Katie concealed a dark side. With this jarring

Reviews

Even though men will sometimes be boys when women and drink are on offer, nothing could be more decorous, or more jealous of its propriety, than the May Ball, when Cambridge students celebrate the end of exams. That's why Philip Patterson, the master of St. John's College, passes over the police to ask Laura Principal, who's just finished arranging security matters for the ball, to look into the disappearance of Katie Arkwright, a visitor from lowly Anglia University across town, who asked her prim escort, Jared Scott-Pettit, to leave the dance and then took off without him when he declined. The briefest investigation discloses Katie's earlier brush with Cambridge: while she was waiting tables at a private dinner for the Dorics, 40 undergraduates and recent alumni of St. Bartholomew's, in the college's Echo Room, her clients turned on her, stripped her, and assaulted her. Is the person behind her disappearance now Roger Duff, ringleader of the Dorics, or Stephen Fox, senior tutor at St. Bart's, who sniffs to Laura that Katie was anything but blameless in the incident? Before Laurabereft of her partner and sometime lover Sonny Mendlowitz, who's off trying to vindicate a client accused of beating a prostitutecan focus her suspicions, murder narrows the field of suspects and raises the stakes for those remaining. Good Cambridge backgrounds and a strong sense of moral outrage offset the predictability and occasional self-importance of Laura's fourth case (Standing in the Shadows, 1998, etc.). (Mystery Guild selection) -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Anglophiles will delight in this Cambridge-based tale, which convincingly weaves the city's geography and history into its well-crafted plot. Spring thankfully avoids the bane of many mysteries set in a famous city, breaking the history into easily digestible tidbits and never sounding like a travel guide. Readers will quickly warm to protagonist Laura Principal, a private investigator who helps support the agency by taking seemingly mundane gigs like providing security for Cambridge's annual May Ball. When a female student disappears after the ball, however, the job quickly turns menacing and eventually leads to murder. Meanwhile, a handsome academic makes a play for Laura, whose relationship with boyfriend Sonny has been a little shaky of late. Spring effectively mixes plenty of humor into her realistic, hard-edged crime story; readers will find themselves chuckling frequently at Laura's wit and ironic view of the world. A good choice for fans of P. D. James' Cordelia Gray. Jenny McLarin

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

It was back in January when I'd been asked to coordinate security for the May Ball at St. John's. I didn't play hard to get.

"We'll do it," I'd said. "No problem."

For a private investigator, security work is bread and butter. Doesn't tingle the taste buds, but keeps the stomach full.

"Piece of cake." That was Sonny's response. He's my partner at Aardvark Investigations, the man to blame for getting me into this line of business in the first place. His heart was set on expansion, and--as he never tired of saying--expansion calls for capital.

Sonny knew a job that couldn't be turned down when he saw it.

"Easy peasy," echoed Stevie, our right-hand woman, during the week-before planning session. "Maybe Geoff could help." She reached for the telephone.

But by the time I asked, "Geoff?" she was deep in conversation with a client.

No problem; piece of cake; easy peasy. Two parts business and one part bravado, these responses.

St. John's College lies more or less in the center of Cambridge. The ten green acres that make up its grounds are bounded by busy roads--Northampton Street, Bridge Street, St. John's Street. The River Cam runs through St. John's, providing a conduit to Trinity College on one flank and to Magdalene Bridge on the other. Our brief was to keep college property intact, keep revelers safe inside, keep gate-crashers out. This might sound simple. But anyone who thinks they can coast their way through security with logistics like this is long on optimism and short on sense.

It's part of the wayward tradition of the Cambridge May Balls--just as staging them in the month of June is part of that tradition--that there will be gate-crashers. Their exploits are the stuff of local legend. It's whispered through college corridors how a pair of students equipped with climbing gear scaled an outer wall, changed from tracksuits to black tie, and managed to reach Third Court before they were accosted by security men. How a party of women from Newnham wrote themselves into history by scuba diving up the Cam. They infiltrated St. John's from the river. Their presence was betrayed only by the slapping of their flippers on the lawn. How a Churchill man, stowed inside a brewery van, had been pinned under three hundred pounds of draft lager when a barrel detached from its moorings. He emerged with broken ribs and a greatly enhanced reputation.

Or that's how the story goes.

Our job was to hold firm in the face of siege. Sonny, Stevie, and I were to secure the beachheads of the ball. To guarantee that the mock-Gothic portals of New Building would not be breached. It might not be a heavyweight assignment, but it had an element of challenge. On the evening of the ball itself, even I felt a surge of excitement.

By the time I'd escorted all the suppliers out of college and checked the storerooms for stragglers, there was a queue awaiting admission that stretched from the St. John's gatehouse all the way to neighboring Trinity. With three-quarters of an hour still to go before the party began, the crowd grew by the minute. Their voices bounced off the buildings on either side of the street. Echoes magnified the sound until a hundred people seemed like several thousand. I heard the raucous cries that greeted new arrivals; heard a football commentary conveyed by radio to the crowd. And every few seconds, massive and mysterious whoops of delight.

"What's going on?" I asked Stevie, whose territory included the front entrance. She had just sauntered back from a recon outside the gates.

"Someone's sharing round the most enormous bottle of champagne--"

"A jeroboam?"

"Whatever." Stevie hadn't attended Cambridge, and her shrug said she didn't care a hoot for the things that I'd learned there.

"Champagne, yes. Glasses, no," she continued. "They're drinking bubbly straight from the bottle. Like water on the sidelines at a football match."

I had never before seen Stevie dressed as she was that evening. Security staff are expected to blend in at the May Ball. That means formal gear--no jeans, no business suits--and Stevie had gone all the way. She wore a figure-hugging sheath scaled with brown sequins. Not for Stevie the pale English flower look. She was all tanned and strong and sparkling, like an Olympic sprinter en route to a Hollywood bash.

"Starting as they mean to continue?" I asked, nodding in the direction of the Champagne Charlies in the queue outside.

"'Fraid so. Visit the loo now," she advised. "The toilets will be unusable by midnight." Sequins or no, on all important questions Stevie is practical to the core.

At half past eight we gathered our student security force and rehearsed the rules of engagement.

Sonny issued instructions. "You know when and where to check wrists," he said. "Anyone without a security tag exits immediately, under escort. Frog-marched if need be, otherwise untouched. The point is to get them out, not to injure them. Missing teeth aren't part of the package. And if the gate-crasher should happen to be a lady ..."

This was greeted by chortles of anticipation.

I intervened. "If it's a woman, watch your hands." I fixed my eye on the one security man who still smirked. "Unless, that is, you fancy a lawsuit later?" He straightened his face; he didn't look like the sort of fellow who wanted to spend his Thursday afternoons in court.

At precisely eight-forty-five Sonny set off with four student accomplices for the Bridge of Sighs. They would patrol the river and the college grounds on the far bank, where--if previous May Balls were anything to go by--gate-crashing attempts would be concentrated. Other student security staff were charged with other assignments--some to move between the tents, some to protect the hot-air balloon and the fountain, and a half dozen to circulate through the grounds, making random checks on wristbands.

And I? Well, I was there to coordinate. Translation: to confront crises and resolve problems, to make sure the guards knew what was going on, and above all, to watch the watchers. Our student security men were rugby players, martial arts aficionados--men of a muscular bent. They'd signed a contract, paid a deposit, and shown up on the evening properly turned out in black tie. They looked ready for business. But they were, after all, students themselves. A beer tent with free and unlimited draft, and a glut of glamorous girls, would be more of a temptation than some of them could resist.

The last-minute tour of the college fell to me.

Everything was in order. The soft stone of the college buildings and the clean green of the lawns formed an elegant backcloth for celebration. For stalls and counters and stacks of crates, burdened with food. For gleaming white cloths and sparkling silver on a flotilla of round dining tables. For cascades of balloons. For laser lights to slice through the festivities with mauve knives of fire. For tents where six bands performing in sequence would do their best to cater to the restless pleasures of the crowd. As I finished my tour the first of these bands was warming up, tossing a tentative rhythm onto the evening air.

I closed my eyes and listened. I could hear a gurgle of laughter from somewhere near the river, and the pitty-pat of a breeze as it teased the balloons.

I heard footsteps behind me. A strong pair of arms slid around my waist.

"Nice to see you in formal dress," Sonny whispered, and planted a gentle kiss on my neck.

The worst thing about working posh occasions is trying to do security with satin flapping around your ankles. I'd opted initially for a turquoise halter-neck, vaguely Egyptian in shape, with lots of room to swing my arms. But it called for high heels. The thought of chasing an intruder down a staircase on stilts made me think again.

So I'd settled instead on a black tuxedo. It had jet beading on the lapels, and a skinny silk chemise under the jacket, so it wasn't quite Radclyffe Hall. But I could fit a walkie-talkie in the pocket and get away with glittery high-tops. And in spite of the glitz, I could still do a six-minute mile.

"How about a dance?" Sonny asked. He was moving gently to the music, carrying me with him into the sway.

"Have we time? Before the hordes mount the horizon?" I didn't really mean it as a question. I wanted more than anything in the world to snuggle up, to slow-dance. To make like this fairy-tale setting had been magicked into existence for the two of us.

I turned slowly, guided by the circle of his arms, until we were face-to-face. Until I was staring straight into Sonny's warm brown eyes; until his lips brushed the side of my mouth. Until our legs were entangled, and there wasn't space between our bodies for the night air. Until his breath stroked my hair, and my breath stroked his. Until I couldn't tell whether the pounding I felt was his heart beating in his chest or my heart beating in mine.

Until we were dancing slowly, slowly. Barely dancing.

Cheek to cheek.

"Do you play?" Sonny whispered in my ear. As he had the evening in the jazz club, when we'd first met. When he'd put away his clarinet and turned up at my table.

As he had again, much later, when we'd teetered on the edge of a new relationship--fearing to damage the old, the purely professional one, but drawn to something more powerful. "Do you play?" Sonny said. Left it to me to decide. And I did.

We ignored the bass beat from the band. We shut our ears to the clamor of the queue outside. And First Court, still unpopulated, was elegant and tranquil. If it had been left to me, I might have forgotten obligation. Might never have allowed the ball to begin. Might have stayed all alone--just Sonny and me--slow-dancing the night away.

But Stevie, at least, had her ...

Edition details

• Publisher: Ballantine Books
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 034542493X
• ISBN 13: 9780345424938
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288