Angel With Two Faces (41 page)

Angel With Two Faces
is a work of fiction, inspired by real places, real lives and, in some cases, real events, and is a tribute to the unique beauty of Porthleven, the Loe Pool, and the Penrose Estate, as well as to the people who live and work there. It’s a community that I love being part of – one which does indeed turn a face to the past as well as to the present, and is all the more special for that.

Josephine Tey was one of two pseudonyms created by Elizabeth Mackintosh (1896–1952) during a versatile and successful career as a novelist and playwright; the other, Gordon Daviot, was reserved for plays, historical fiction and a biography. Unravelling her life through her work and her letters continues to be a fascinating journey, and the Josephine Tey who appears in
Angel With Two Faces
blends some of what we know about Elizabeth Mackintosh with the personality which emerges so strongly from her eight crime novels – novels which have always been widely regarded as some of the finest and most original to emerge from the Golden Age period.

In reality, Tey did, of course, finish the book we see her writing here, although it was not set in Cornwall.
A Shilling for
Candles
was published in 1936, and went on to be the basis of Hitchcock’s film,
Young and Innocent
. In her book, Tey’s murder victim – the actress Christine Clay – leaves her fortune
‘for the preservation of the beauty of England’, something which the author herself would do less than twenty years later, when, after her premature death at the age of 55, she left her estate and the royalties from her writing to the National Trust for England in a special Daviot Fund.

I’m sure she would be delighted to know that the Loe Pool and the Penrose Estate are now in the safe hands of the National Trust, and some of the author’s proceeds from
Angel
With Two Faces
will go to support the Trust’s work on the Estate.

I owe a great debt to my Cornish friends – to Victor and Monica Strike for their generosity in sharing stories of their family trades in matters of life and death, which have shaped the book more than they can know; Oliver Allen for bringing 1930s Porthleven to life with his own family history; George Snell for his legendary tales and for memories of Loe Bar and Gunwalloe; Brian Stephens for the loan of his library, and for keeping an eye on us whenever we’re there; Motley Penrose (or Lynford) for making Helston Lodge more glorious than it is already; Lynda Green for happy times at the Galley and at Motley & Co.; Sheila Toy, Michael Crowle, John Strike and all the Motley regulars; Lesley Wearne from Charlotte’s Tea House for lending her name; and Sandy and Russell at the An Mordros Hotel for their constant support and encouragement, and most of all for their friendship – without which, there would be no Cornish novel.

I’m forever grateful to the Rogers family for allowing people to enjoy the beauty of the Loe Pool and Penrose Estate, and to the staff and touring companies at the Minack Theatre who continue to keep the spirit of Rowena Cade very much alive with magical performances each summer. My apologies go to the artist Hilda Quick, who actually designed the costumes for the Minack’s 1935 production of
The Jackdaw of Rheims
; to my knowledge, the performances went off without a hitch.

Part of the research for this book was funded by Arts Council England, and I would like to thank everyone at Arts Council England, East for their continued support of the series; my agent, Karolina Sutton, my editor, Walter Donohue, and everyone at Faber and Faber for making the books a reality and a joy; Dr Peter Fordyce for devoting so much of his precious time to advising on nastiness, and for his love and knowledge of horses; Alastair Cameron from the National Trust for providing information about the history of the Penrose Estate; Margaret Westwood, Dr Helen Grime and Anne Fraser of The Highland Council for continuing to unravel the past; Professor Harriet Jump for the gracious loan of her mother and aunt; Carol Carman for all the inside information from the Yard; and Cambridge University Library for holding the answers to so many questions – I don’t know how anyone writes a book without it. Special thanks go, once again, to Irene for her magic and blessings, and to St Anthony of Holland Park for so much more than finding the title.

Love and thanks – as always – to my family, in particular to my father for his love of the woods and a good game of cricket, and to my mother for her passion for a good story and her eagle eyes during the early stages of this one.

And to Mandy, who drove 380 miles in the snow to start
our
Cornish adventure in Morveth Wearne’s cottage – this book is precious to us for lots of different reasons, but none more so than the fact that we’ve done it together.

Nicola Upson was born in Suffolk and read English at Downing College, Cambridge. She has worked in theatre and as a freelance journalist, and is the author of two non-fiction works and the recipient of an Escalator Award from the Arts Council England.

Her debut novel,
An Expert in Murder
, was the first in a series of crime novels whose main character is Josephine Tey – one of the leading authors of Britain's Golden Age of crime writing.

She lives with her partner in Cambridge and spends much of her time in Cornwall, which is the setting for her second Josephine Tey novel,
Angel with Two Faces
.

AN EXPERT IN MURDER