House At Winters End

The House at Winter's End

A Margaret Redfern Mystery

By

Darryl Martel

When retired schoolteacher and sharp-eyed amateur sleuth Margaret Redfern accepts an invitation to visit her old friend Edith Howard in Margate, she expects little more than seaside walks, over-steeped tea, and bracing civil exchanges with Edith's stiff-necked husband, Reggie. But a letter from a solicitor changes everything.

Edith has unexpectedly inherited an estate in rural Cumbria from a long-lost cousin, Edward Winters, presumed dead since the war. With Edward's sudden reappearance and death comes an eerie inheritance: Winter's End, a brooding old house filled with shadows and unanswered questions.

Accompanied by her trusted friend Eleanor Middleton, Margaret travels with Edith to the estate to help her make sense of the property and Edward's long, hidden life. But what begins as a quiet visit quickly deepens into something darker. The house is untouched yet uneasy. The villagers remember Edward with wariness. And Edward's journal, hidden in a crumbling lookout tower, reveals a decades-old secret involving a boy named Peter, a suspicious drowning, and the silence of those who knew better.

As Margaret begins to piece together Edward's final years, she discovers a trail of guilt, blackmail, and betrayal reaching back to the post-war years, a silence enforced not just by fear, but by those with something still to hide. With threats arriving at the doorstep and old enemies resurfacing, Margaret must decide how far she's willing to go to bring justice to a boy long buried and a man who spent a lifetime in exile from his own past.

Elegant, atmospheric, and quietly haunting, The House at Winter's End is a story of guilt passed down through generations, and the quiet courage of women who refuse to let the truth stay buried.