Blood At Beltane — Sally Spedding

It's June 2007 when Welsh poet and lecturer Ifor Griffiths gets news that he's to receive a prestigious Bursary enabling him to further research and translate the poetry of the late, hermitic Gaspard Lecroix, from the Sarthe department in France.Normally, this would be thrilling news, but it comes freighted with danger, not least from his mean-spirited partner, Menna Edwards with whom he has a young son, Arthur. Ifor is guarding a potentially risky secret, having fallen in love with a beautiful, young Muslim woman whom he'd met in Le Mans the previous year. A woman with powerful connections and a secret agenda of which he knows nothing.Meanwhile, sous-lieutenant Delphine Rougier has encountered the truly bizarre Athène Lardin at her rundown farmhouse, where many almost dead birds lie twitching in agony. But why? And what is this bitter, bizarre woman's real agenda? Who is the surly man she seems to be related to? And as the days pass, with ever more unforeseen and shocking events causing fear and tension at the Labradelle gendarmerie, will Delphine and her boss, Colonel Valon, with whom she is having a relationship, be able to prevent further tragedy and eventually find happiness?Or will Lardin with her obsessive agendas prevail? And the poet Ifor Griffiths who's inadvertently stepped into a death-trap, ever see his young son again?Only Walpurgis Night will reveal the truth.