Axwater — Jennie Melville

Axwater was a shining lake, among beechwoods heavy with foliage.

Christabel Warwick, arrived there early for her appointment. She was to meet the boy she had loved when they were both teenagers, six years before. They had been torn apart then, but had planned to meet at this time and in this place six years later. The time had come.

Piers was not there to meet Christabel. Yet she had the feeling he could not be far away, and she later stumbled on evidence that seemed to her to support this hope.

Christabel is living alone in the Old Observatory in the woods, not far from Axwater Lake. Her search for Piers brings her into contact -- and in some cases conflict -- with a number of eccentric neighbors: there is evidently a conspiracy to hid something and part of the conspiracy itself is camouflaged with the apparatus of tarot cards and second sight.

I wanted to cry out and make a protest in the name of rationally and logic and science and all the things that had shaped my life.

But at a more prosaic level Christabel is driven to observe that Murder is a secret event, but it also cries out with a loud voice.

From the Observatory, hidden in the woods near the shining lake of Axwater, Christabel can observe the trajectory of a new comet. And in the course of time and danger she learns of the mysteries and murders that led to the failure of her six year tryst with Piers.