Looking Down

Sarah Fortune, lawyer and professional mistress,
returns in an intriguing mystery which is as much about the identity of
the human spirit as it is about the unexplained death of an unknown
girl.

Richard Beaumont hoped to see the elusive chough on the Dover
cliffs. Instead he sees a young woman falling to her death. No-one
recognises her, no-one has reported her missing, and Richard returns,
shaken, to his new young wife, but instead of finding solace in Lilian's
company, he locks himself away and obsessively paints the scene of the
woman's broken body on the rocks. His cool behaviour towards her takes
Lilian to the flat below and the wordly-wise company of Sarah Fortune.
But Sarah, once Richard's lover, is awkward with her and is also
preoccupied with her brother's unbreakable habit of cat-burglary, and
the suspicious traffic to the penthouse at the top of the mansion block.
Unable to forget what he witnessed, Richard returns to the coast and
is befriended by the local police surgeon. Recently widowed, John is
depressed, not so much by his wife's death but by the realisation that
his marriage had been a loveless void. Recognising the symptoms,
Richard introduces him to Sarah, so that she can no longer ignore the
Beaumonts' troubles and is drawn into helping to trace where the dead
girl came from and in so doing reveals a trade which is both
breath-takingly lucrative and chillingly cruel.