Again, from novelist Ann Perry….

 

Oliver Rathbone comes 

From his chambers

Inns of Court

Not far from misty

Seamy riverbank London. 

Has a client named Exeter.

Lovely wife Kate

Kidnapped out of a

Sunny afternoon’s walk

With a friend.

Friend dismissed with

Her observations.

Demand note and

Scissored lock of victim’s hair.

Exeter is getting the ransom.

Planned late afternoon

Meeting on dreaded

Jacob’s Island before

The tides rise blocking

Tunnels and passageways

Required

Detective William Monk

Chief of the Thames River Police

Now attending.

For advice and safety sake.

The game is afoot

As Sherlock might

Have uttered in another scenario.

Just as cobbled and spooky…

'Why can't I be judged for who I am now, not what I was then?" asks the novelist Anne Perry. But she knows the question is pointless. Sometimes the past casts too long a shadow. In 1954, Perry - then a 15-year-old called Juliet Hulme, living in New Zealand - helped to bludgeon to death the mother of her friend, Pauline Parker. Both were convicted of murder and sent to prison. The grisly story was the subject of Peter Jackson's film Heavenly Creatures, in which Hulme was played by Kate Winslet.