MUSE MONDAY
Please welcome Jan Selbourne. She has a fascinating premise and WWI is her backdrop. Read on!
In 2015, I joined an Anzacs on the
Western Front tour, visiting the battlefields where my grandfather served
during World War One.
Looking at the
lovely towns and villages and soft green fields it was hard to imagine the
horrors of that war until our guide held up enlarged photos of blackened,
treeless wastelands littered with bodies of men and horses.
We visited
the immaculately cared for Commonwealth War Graves and memorials and it was
very humbling to see the thousands of graves of young men who never came home.
Particularly sad was the inscription on so many headstones - "Known Only
to God"." I could only assume their bodies were unrecognizable, and their
identity discs buried in the mud or blown elsewhere. .
After the tour ended, I
got to wondering if it was possible for a soldier to swap identity discs with
another who had been killed in battle. In those days, War Service records
were hand-written. It would have been a mammoth task to record the thousands of
injuries and deaths from each battle. Curiosity grew to a real need to know, so
I contacted London's Imperial War Museum and the Australian War Memorial in
Canberra asking that question. Both replied that it was possible but unlikely
because the chance of discovery was high and the penalties very harsh. Neither would
confirm it did happen, but that was good enough for me to write The
Proposition.
Blurb
War changes a
man. For Harry Connelly it’s down to a bullet on the Western Front or arrest
and prison at home – until, badly wounded, he collapses beside the body of
Andrew Conroy. Same build, same
coloring, illegitimate, no known family. What does he have to lose? Harry swaps identity discs.
Now Andrew, he’s
another face in post war London until a letter. A cousin from the dead soldier’s
unknown family wants to meet, to make amends.
Barely surviving on his pension, ‘Andrew’ agrees and is presented with a
shocking proposition. Accepting is out of the question, refusing pushes him
into a nightmare of murder and blackmail and a very frightened Lacey Haines.
Lacey is barely
coping with the consequences of her sister’s treachery until Andrew saves her
from a vicious assault. Can she trust him when she’s hiding secrets that could
kill them both?
Excerpt
Andrew forced himself to look at her. “Please hear me out before you
throw me out. There’s no other way to say it. I am not Andrew Conroy.”
Lacey’s
face froze in horror.
He put up his hands. “I am not the killer! I am, or was,
Harry Connelly. Andrew Conroy and I were two of the thousands of men at Amiens,
preparing to face another hell for King and country.”
An
anguished whisper. “What on earth are you saying?”
She didn’t speak while he told her everything from
the day before the battle, the bloodbath, Conroy’s lifeless body, his injury
and discharge.
“You
stole a dead soldier’s identity discs and left him to be buried without his
name?”
“He’d already gone to the hereafter. I doubt identity
discs would make any difference there.”
“Hereafter or no hereafter, it was
despicable,” Lacey whispered contemptuously. “So, you were discharged and went
on your merry way as another man.”
“Not a
merry way, a room in a boarding house drinking too much rum. Then Elliot’s letter
and the real reason why he invited me.”
He told
her, watching her expression change from scepticism to disbelief.
“Do you
really expect me to believe that ridiculous story?” Lacey looked at Gina and
dropped her voice. “You’ve used Gillian’s letters to cover up why you were
there.”
“Her
letter about Elliot’s proposition which would give her money to leave England?
Why did Elliot hire an investigator to find me? The reasons why he was so
desperate to produce a child and why he needed a substitute will be the reason
behind those murders.”
A shadow
of uncertainty crossed her face. “I don’t believe a word you’ve said.”
“It is
unbelievable, its obscene and it’s the truth. I’ve told you he locked me in a
room upstairs. It was pitch black and sheer luck I found an adjoining door to
the next room. I went downstairs, knocked out and you know the rest.”
“You
can’t prove one thing about that night.”
“Neither
can you,” he hissed back at her. “You’ve told everyone you didn’t know your
sister’s whereabouts and by incredible coincidence you were there that night.
Did you really hide in the kitchen? Did you hit me on the head?”
Her
mouth tightened, then the question he was dreading.
“Why did
you take Andrew Conroy’s identity discs?”
“My career in the police force ended when I belted the
son of a Member of Parliament senseless, and my wife humiliated me for the last
time.”
Buy Link
https://www.amazon.com/Proposition-Jan-Selbourne-ebook/dp/B087LNZS4S/
Find Jan here:
https://www.facebook.com/jan.selbourne/
https://twitter.com/JanSelbourne
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jan-selbourne-2817b6140/
https://nomadauthors.com/JanSelbourne
