How to Solve Your Own Murder (Castle Knoll Files, #1)

by Kristen Perrin

I think of my childhood, which was London through and through. Me and Mum spending weekends pinging around tube stations like silver balls in a pinball machine. I always assumed people who were raised in the countryside had roots of some sort, but hearing Oliver talk about his lack of connection to Castle Knoll tells me that I’m the one with roots. Something about that makes me feel momentarily mollified. My ramshackle upbringing with Mum might have been unconventional, but at least it was happy.

“My favorite chess saying is very simple: You can play without a plan, but you’ll probably lose.”

I tried to play this game with a plan, but it looks like I lost anyway. So I’ve set my plan to continue without me. Good luck, Frances

“Which one?” I blurt out, because I can genuinely think of multiple elephants in this room.

“I take it you already know about the incident in question?” I feel so extremely clever that I almost can’t contain it. The cleverness pulsing through me is so strong that I don’t even cringe at my sudden over-the-top attempts to speak like a lawyer.

Emily was a planner; she always had been. And I worried I was about to lose.

The lie would be one Emily’s mum would want to hear. And that’s the thing with lies: They’re much easier to believe when it’s an idea you like.

I’ve come to see the women in my family as lonely pillars. Great Aunt Frances filing everyone else’s lives away on her estate in Castle Knoll, while Mum is shut up in the Chelsea house painting out her past. And me, now adrift between them, trying to work out whose story I’m telling and whose story I’m living.