IT IS 1774, and Susan Bell lives in the grounds of Westminster Abbey with her widowed father, the Dean, and their voluble parrot, Cuthbert, rarely venturing beyond its confines. Life is uneventful, even after the unwelcome arrival of her cousin Lindley and his unusual scientific demonstrations, until the Society of Antiquaries appear, armed with a letter from King George III, demanding to open Edward I’s tomb.

Soon after, a ghostly figure is seen walking the abbey cloisters, wearing the dead king’s crown and shroud. Then, one of the antiquaries is found at the tomb with what seems to be a spear through his neck, and the corpse disappears. The scandal threatens her father’s position — he was the king’s choice, imposed on the abbey — and Susan feels it her duty to investigate.

Susan’s private diary is the narrator throughout, and Leonora Nattrass uses her expertise as a specialist in 18th-century literature to create an authentic, chatty voice for someone who, at 23, is without education or life experience, but observant and keenly intelligent.

Susan has a flair for description: her little round father is a robin, Lindley is an owl, and she, with her freckles and brown hair, a thrush. As marriage is her only possible career, she calmly assesses the few men she meets as potential husbands — the more so as her father is hotly pursued by a wealthy widow. She avoids the attentions of Mr Suckling, the sacrist, and is completely unfazed by the King’s sudden visit.

In a parallel universe, whose characters are based on those present at the actual opening, she is able to use her near invisibility as a woman to go about her investigation, in a huge abbey, alternately silent and thronged, so vividly drawn as to be a character in its own right.

Fiona Hook is a writer and EFL teacher.

The Bells of Westminster
Leonora Nattrass
Viper £16.99
(978-1-80081-701-2)
Church Times Bookshop £15.29