An Empty Death

Summer, 1944: After almost five years of conflict, London's exhausted inhabitants, battered by the new menace of Hitler's V1 bombs, are living hand-to-mouth in a world of dust and dereliction, and war-weary.DI Ted Stratton is no exception. Still haunted by the memory of Diana Calthrop, the beautiful M15 agent who worked with him on a case in 1940 and whose fate he never discovered, Stratton is called upon to investigate the case of a dead doctor, found in suspicious circumstances on a bomb-site near Fitzrovia's Middlesex Hospital. Was it an affair that turned fatally sour, revenge for a fatal case of misdiagnosis, or, despite appearances, simply an unfortunate accident? Or, as Stratton begins to suspect, is there someone at the hospital who is not what he appears to be and will go to any lengths to protect his fake persona? Ted's wife, Jenny, working at the local Rest Centre, battles on valiantly although her spirit of make-do is wearing as thin as her clothing and she desperately misses her children, who are still evacuees in Suffolk.When a bombed-out and destitute woman appears at the centre, declaring that the man who claims to be her husband is, although identical, an imposter, Jenny thinks that it must be due to the effects of shock. The reality, however, is much stranger and far more dangerous...