Short Story Wednesday: "Summer Games" by L.C. Tyler

In this story the narrator, John Smith, is invited to a country house weekend by an old coworker who he can hardly remember, although he knows that he did not like him very much. The ex-coworker, William Kilvington, inherited a castle from his uncle and quit his job. 

The invitation mentions that there may be a corpse or two, so John assumes it will be a murder mystery game. Out of curiosity, John decides to go. The party will begin on Midsummer's Eve and he is instructed to tell no one that he is coming. 

John arrives via taxi, due to a delay in transportation, although all the other guests arrived via prearranged transportation. The guests are a mixed bag. Among them is a coworker who worked with them in their previous job, the builder who has been working on the castle, and one of Kilvington's cousins, who is contesting the will.

There are complications, of course, and soon there is a dead body. The story was humorous and the ending was very unexpected. I liked the story a lot.

First two paragraphs:

"It's like an enchanted castle out of the Arthurian Legends," I said. "From such a battlement might Morgan le Fay have watched in vain for Lancelot."

The taxi driver nodded thoughtfully. "Shit road, though," he said.

 

This story was published in Midsummer Mysteries: Short Stories, edited by Martin Edwards. I first read a couple of stories from this book in August of this year, and reviewed them here.

L.C. Tyler, the author of this story, has written two crime series. The first series is the contemporary Ethelred and Elsie mysteries, which is a humorous series, and the second is the John Grey historical mysteries set in the seventeenth century, which I assume are more serious. You can check out Tyler's website here.

This story is the first fiction I have read by Tyler, but my husband has several books in the Ethelred and Elsie mystery series and I plan to try that series myself.