"Averack, home of the Stephenses, is Cornish for 'by the coast'. It stands on a little promontory near St Just Creek which, with St Mawes, is part of Roseland, in that soft underbelly of Cornwall with its low cliffs, drowned river valleys and sheltered harbours.
Only a few miles to the northwest, on the other coast, there are real cliffs, a rugged shore and, even today, a different breed of people."
With these words, John Burley began the story of Detective Chief Superintendent Wycliffe's 23rd investigation.
It was provisionally entitled Wycliffe's Last Lap. It was also John Burley's last lap - he had completed little more than six thousand words when ill health, and then death, overtook him.
What was to be the nature of Wycliffe's swansong? With such a small amount of information on which to draw, it is impossible to say with any certainty. However, one thing is evident: John Burley was intent on revisiting territory which he had used to good effect on several previous occasions: the claustrophobic, poisonous, and ultimately fatal tensions which exist in an extended family living in close proximity.
The opening chapter of Wycliffe's Last Lap bears a marked resemblance to one of his best non-Wycliffe stories, The House of Care. The same device - a family meal - is used to introduce the principal characters; the same financial difficulties and a similar, earlier, unresolved death, appear to be central features of the story.
And although this is only a very early, uncorrected, draft of the beginning of the plot, one further thing is clear: Wycliffe's Last Lap was to present the ageing detective with a complex and intriguing psychological puzzle.
© Andrew Darling
The text fragment of Wycliffe's Last Lap will be included in Wycliffe and the Vanishing Author, the projected biography of WJ Burley, by Andrew Darling. |
