Dusty Kent Murder Mystery #8

I was looking forward to visiting the extraordinary Jenolan Caves in New South Wales with Team Dusty to research the area for Dusty Kent Murder Mystery #8. However, it was not to be. The entire visitor precinct closed in 2019 due to severe weather damage and won’t reopen until next year. For the first time in the writing of these mysteries, Brigid George has had to make do with remote researching of the setting.

In Dusty Kent #8 (as yet untitled and unpublished) Sean and Dusty travel to the caves–the oldest cave system in the world at 340 million years old. When she first sees the four-storey complex of Jenolan Caves House with its gables, tiled roofs and multi-paned windows, Dusty exclaims, “It’s like a storybook house!” She did not know then that ghosts loitered in the storybook house.

And so it was in Agatha Christie’s short story Philomel Cottage, the main character was captivated by an isolated, dream-like country home, exquisite with its old-world charm. She did not know it was hiding a terrifying dark reality and shadows from the past. Dusty also experiences ‘the ghosts of years past’ in the spirits that accompany her on her morning walk and the ghosts of past employees that haunt the hotel.

Spirits of the dead have featured in previous Dusty Kent investigations such as the doomed princess of the yellow hibiscus flower in Disguising Demons, but the Jenolan Caves simply teem with ghosts and apparitions.

One setback after another has interrupted my writing of this mystery, which I began during my Covid isolation, but the light at the end of the tunnel is finally starting to shine.

Image: www.jenolancaves.org.au