Gentill - A decline in prophets

A note from the publisher

Dear Reader,

If you enjoy riveting stories with engaging characters and strong writing, as I do, youll love A Decline in Prophets. Historical crime fiction at its best, Sulari Gentill brings together art, money, crime, religion and murder in an extraordinary tale set in 1932 on the luxury cruise liner RMS Aquitania. The second book in the Rowland Sinclair Series, its the sequel to A Few Right Thinking Men. She had me hooked from her very first page, and I couldnt put the story down.

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Happy reading,

Alison Green

First published in 2011 by Pantera Press Pty Limited
www.PanteraPress.com

Text Copyright Sulari Gentill, 2011
Sulari Gentill has asserted her moral rights to be identified as the author of this work.

Design and Typography Copyright Pantera Press Pty Limited, 2011
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This is a work of fiction, though it is based on some real events. Names, characters, organisations, dialogue and incidents are either products of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, firms, events or locales is coincidental.

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A Cataloguing-in-Publication entry for this book is available from the National Library of Australia.

ISBN 978-0-9807418-9-6
eBook ISBN 978-1-9219970-1-3

Cover and internal design: Luke Causby, Blue Cork
Front cover image: Getty Images, Hulton Archive [#JE2886-001]
Back cover image: Getty Images, Hulton Archive [#JC8953-001]
Typesetting by Kirby Jones
Printed and bound in Australia by McPhersons Printing Group
Author Photo by J.C. Henry, Lime Photography

Pantera Press policy is to use papers that are natural, renewable and recyclable products made from wood grown in sustainable forests. The logging and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.

To all the prophets and profiteers I have known.

Prologue

DEATH WORE A DINNER SUIT

H is manners were perfect. Murder made sophisticated conversation while dancing the quickstep. He was light on his feet.

Annie Besant shuddered and closed her eyes. How clearly she saw the spreading crimson stain on the starched white dress shirt. That much was revealed but no more. She surveyed the room. So many immaculately tailored menall dashing, some charming, at least one was dangerous.

An old woman now, her celebrated clairvoyance was not what it once had been. The foresight was vague, useless for anything but tormenting her with a premonition of violence. The feeling was furtive, an occasional glimpse of a deep predatory darkness that lurked amongst the gaiety and cultured frivolity of the floating palace. A cold creeping certainty that one of the elegant gentlemen who gathered to dine, intended to kill.

1

RMS AQUITANIA

The RMS Aquitania is like an English country house. Its great rooms are perfect replicas of the fine salons and handsome apartments that one finds in the best of old English manor halls. The decorations are too restrained ever to be oppressive in their magnificence. There is no effort to create an atmosphere of feverish gaiety by means of ornate and colourful furnishings. The ship breathes an air of elegance that is very gratifying to the type of people that are her passengers.

The Cunard Steam Ship Company Ltd

I t was undeniably a civilised way to travel particularly for fugitives.

Overhead, crystal chandeliers moved almost imperceptibly with the gentle sway of the ship. If the scene over which they hung had been silent, one may have noticed the faint tinkle of the hand-cut prisms as they made contact. As it was, however, the Louis XVI Restaurant was busy, ringing with polite repartee and refined laughter as the orchestra played an unobtrusive score from the upper balcony.

The tables in the dining room were round, laid with crisp white linen and a full array of cutlery in polished silver. Each sat twelve, the parties carefully chosen from amongst the first class passengers of the transatlantic liner. Waiters wove efficiently and subtly through the hall. Though neither as large nor as fast as the newer ships in the Cunard Line, the RMS Aquitania boasted a luxury and opulence that was unsurpassed. Her passengers cared less about arriving first than they did about doing so in the most elegant manner possible.

Rowland Sinclair, of Woollahra, Sydney, hooked his walking stick over the back of his chair before he sat down. He dragged a hand through his dark hair, irritated with the inordinately long time it seemed to be taking his leg to heal. It had been over seven months now since Edna had shot him. Early in the mornings the limp was negligible, but after a day contending with the constant roll of the deck, the damaged muscles in his thigh ached and he relied on the stick.