The mystery of those wartime pillboxes

Lesley, aged 65, will be at Haywards Heath library on October 3 and Lewes Library October 4. She will also be attending the Fatal Shore Festival at The Shoreham Centre on the weekend of October 14.

“The germ of this idea came from a pill box. These are redbrick structures built close to the coastline to defend Britain from Hitler’s invasion which was daily expected in early 1940. Pillboxes are a familiar sight in the Sussex countryside where I walk my dog. Thick brambles make many of them impenetrable. I did extensive research into the construction of pillboxes and explored many of the ones around where I live. Besides this, I read wartime diaries and newspapers. As with any novel, the ultimate purpose of extensive research is to steep myself in the atmosphere of the time. My intention was that this mystery set in a present that is rooted in the past will appeal to others as it did to me. I write what I’d liked to read, stories that recall those moments when, you’re in an old house and become suddenly aware of those who once lived there as if they have only just left the room. The starting point for this story, as with other of my stories, started with a single image. A pillbox and the two diminutive figures following a dog that is chasing a rabbit towards it. Once inside the children find the skeleton of a murder victim.”

Lesley had envisaged writing a crime novel with some Christie Golden Age themes - a country house murder, with the classic elements of a “green back Penguin, a vicar, a grumpy colonel, postmistress and the widow of a pillar of the community to show how a way of life was interrupted by war.” She did extensive research into the wartime era including reading wartime diaries, where she discovered the existence of what is often called Churchill’s Secret Army, made up of men and women who were recruited supposedly into the Home Guard, but in fact placed into a secret auxiliary unit which expected to launch attacks on the invading army. At the end of the war, these recruits were cut loose without pensions or praise. Having signed the Official Secrets Act could never divulge what they did.

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