The Shape of Sand (Hardcover)

Unfortunately the party will have disastrous consequences for all, for next morning it is discovered that Beatrice has mysteriously gone missing. Her dearly loved four children Marcus, Harriet, Vita, and Daisy are fraught with worry, fearful not just for their darling mother's well-being, but also for the survival of their insular and carefully constructed world of privilege and opportunity, now in serious danger of crashing down around them.

A search of the house and grounds ensures; there are frantic calls to friends and relatives; and contact is made with several guests from the party the night before, but Beatrice remains undiscovered, her disappearance enigmatic and strangely disturbing. Soon the scandalous whiff of betrayal begins hover; she was seen flirting with the simmering and impatient Kit, a much younger man who was obviously enamored of her, and the next morning, Valery Iskander, Beatrice's archaeologist friend from Egypt, hurriedly left the Estate, neglecting to give a formal goodbye.

Also missing is Beatrice's leather valise, a silver hairbrush, a walking costume, and some delicately embroidered silk underclothing. Almost at once, the conclusion is reached - the propensity for shame rocking the very foundations of the Jardine family - that Beatrice has been having a surreptitious affair with Valery Iskander and they have, together, eloped to Egypt. Everyone assumes Beatrice had been harboring some "very unladylike desires," the long held perceptions of an untroubled and happy life at Charnley totally wrong, her life falling apart for some time.

It isn't until forty-four years later, that Harriet; Beatrice's eldest daughter is given the clues to complete the puzzle of her mother's disappearance. The Second World War is over and an insurance firm has now acquired Charnley as its head office. Alterations and renovations had turned to house into a different place, the spirit of the old Charnley gone forever, the memories pushed away over the years, though the shocking events have always left an indelible stain in the air that have saddened and depressed Harriet.

When a few old photos, some scraps of old papers, and Beatrice's diary, recounting a summer trip to Egypt come into her possession, Harriet, for the first time, has a realistic hope of finding out the truth of what happened in that summer of 1910. Her hope of solving the mystery, however, is thrown into chaos when a body is found, hidden within the walls of Charnley – the body is that of a woman.

Harriet has always maintained that her mother, the lady of the house acted too precipitately in contravention of her normal rules and that she would never have consciously flouted convention and willingly chose ostracism; she treasured propriety too much, and always lived surrounded by people whose high opinion was paramount to her. But Beatrice's diaries gradually divulge an inexplicable longing that seemed to assail her in her decorous life at Charnley; an urge to break free from the strictures of her world; beneath her marble cool exterior "there beat a longing for something wild and free, something dangerous trying to escape."

Author Marjorie Eccles, in this stylish and sophisticated whodunit, gives a distinctive voice to each character and plants many questions in the mind of the reader as to what became of Beatrice. Covering two world wars and the rise of the suffragette movement, the author intensely brings to life two very different time periods: The post-war austerity rule of run-down Britain, a country that is gradually picking itself up, life still bound by restriction and shortages of nearly everything; and the golden era before the First World War, a world of rich elegance, where "willowy ladies wore long dresses with sweeping trains and enormous, elaborately-trimmed hats perched on their equally complicated coiffures," – all set against a background of "smooth lawns and terraces and country houses." The world of Charnley had once been a "civilized home," where well bought up people were kind to each other, and good humored; and where real anger rarely surfaced.

Eccles manages to capture the sycophantic and opulent nature of the Edwardian era in all its self-congratulatory and sycophantic grandeur; people were always at their ease, simply talking, chatting, or passing time in a life devoted to the undiluted pursuit of pleasure. The diary entries of Beatrice grow more grow more agitated as the plot thickens, her trip to Egypt – the hot sand, burning skies, pyramids, temples and ruins – almost overwhelming her, the weight and memory of old ghosts oppressing her.

Time has mostly stood still for Beatrice amongst the grey stone of Charnley and the flawed splendor of its painted rooms; this spoilt, tragic, and misunderstood woman has unfortunately spent most her life caught and trapped in an engulfing sense of despair not of her own making. Mike Leonard February 06.