Présentation de l'éditeur
Heiress Missing: The Untold Story.
Clemmie Colshannon, a London art appraiser framed (pun intended) by her boyfriend and subsequently fired, retreats to the bosom of her eccentric family in Cornwall to recover. But no sooner has she unpacked her bags than her sister, Holly, an energetic reporter who lives to scoop, enlists Clemmie’s derring-do on a juicy story.
It seems that Emma McKellan, who writes the society pages for the Bristol Gazette, has disappeared days before her lavish wedding. As Holly and Clemmie search for clues on the missing bride (relishing the prospect of delicious scandal), they inadvertently steer themselves directly toward trouble.
In times of crisis, the Colshannon clan is always in the thick of things–particularly Clemmie’s drama-queen mother, who has an affinity for saving wild animals, and her brother, who goes to outrageous extremes to impress a certain girl and succeeds only in terrifying her. Whether she likes it or not, Clemmie always seems to find herself in the throes of adventure. And sure enough, the whole family is soon fleeing to the south of France . . . with an ex-convict in hot pursuit.
Extrait
Chapter One
"Bonjour Madame!" I greet the lady behind the desk and put on my most charming smile. It always does to treat these ladies well. Some of them have the power of a small country.
She looks up from her work, peers at me over the top of her half-moon glasses and sniffs slightly as though she can smell my Englishness. My smile falters a little. I mean, I have been in a police station in England before. Once. So although I'm not exactly a hardened criminal, I do have some idea of the form. But do they do things differently in France?
"Mon frere est ici . . ." I start haltingly in my GCSE French. The problem with GCSE French is that you have to fight a constant urge to ask people their name, how old they are and where they live before you can get down to the brass tacks of any problem. "Il est . . . er . . . em . . ." I'm trying desperately to find the word I need. I trawl through my limited vocabulary. It's no good, there's nothing that vaguely matches it. So I try the English phrase.
"UNDER ARREST."
It doesn't seem to fool her; she looks at me blankly. I try it again, this time with a French accent.
"ARRESTE."
"Il est en etat d'arrestation?" she queries.
This sounds vaguely right so I nod.
"Qui s'appelle?"
"Il s'appelle Barney Colshannon."
"Attendez lˆ bas."
She gestures to some chairs by the wall, so Sam and I duly wander over to them and sit down.
Of course, I blame my mother for all this. She had just received Morgan the Pekinese's pet passport and suggested we all nip over to France for the weekend to see if it was working. He is a rather old and smelly dog with no teeth left in the front of his mouth and will pee on anything if you leave it in the middle of the room. I'm not quite sure what he is thinking when he tries to bite other dogs, he must be under the impression he can suck them to death. Anyway, despite being adored by my mother, Morgan and I have never quite seen eye to eye, so why we couldn't have just popped him on a cross channel ferry and waited to see if he came back I simply do not know. However, the pull of some French bread and cheap booze was simply too much for us and we all readily acquiesced.
My mother always makes France sound absolutely delightful as she is a bit of a Francophile at heart, but her version is solely based on Gerard Depardieu and some adverts she did for the French tourist board back in the eighties which involved her getting pissed on Bordeaux. According to her, France is just one big bit of cheese with plenty of wine and a few ooh-la-las thrown in. Not a police station in sight. This is a clearly inaccurate opinion because here I am in a French police station with no cheese, no wine and certainly no ooh-la-las.
We had all split up this morning to go our separate ways. I wanted to look at the shops, Bar
