Vancouver Island is a land of ghosts and shipwrecks.
Hauntings abound: the woman in a white ballgown seen on the stairs at Craigdarroch Castle; a crying girl who floats out to sea each morning; Kanaka Pete, a murderer hanged at Gallows Point, whose restless spirit wanders the beaches at dusk.
The western coast of the island is known as the Graveyard of the Pacific. Hundreds of ships have been wrecked in its treacherous waters, and countless lives lost.
The wreck of the Valencia, in January 1906, was one of the most tragic. En route from San Francisco to Seattle in bad weather, her captain overshot the entrance to the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and struck a reef near Pachena Bay. As the ship slowly sank, a hundred metres offshore, the screams of the women and children could be heard over the sound of the rain and the wind. Only a handful of men survived.
Months later, a local fisherman found a lifeboat containing eight skeletons in a sea-cave next to the bay, the mouth of the cave blocked by a large boulder. There were also several reports of a lifeboat seen on the open sea, rowed by a crew of skeletons.
In late 2019 I had just returned from a trip to Vancouver Island, and my agent was about to put my first novel, Five Minds, out on submission to publishers. He asked me for an idea for a second novel that he could pitch at the same time. I was sitting at my desk with a blank piece of paper on which – for reasons that escape me – I had written a single word: ‘undelete’. As I wracked my brain this turned into an idea for a crime novel: a police officer trying to solve a murder in an isolated community where some members could unwind time. How would it work if whenever they got close to identifying the murderer someone turned back the clock?
For me the three most important parts of a novel are a clever plot, characters the readers want to spend time with, and an interesting location.
I had a plot; the characters would develop as I wrote; so I needed a location.
Vancouver Island has a stark beauty; it is isolated from the world, and frequently battered by fierce storms sweeping in off the Pacific Ocean. It seemed the perfect setting for a classic murder mystery: a group of people trapped in a remote mansion by bad weather, one of them murdered, and one of them a killer.
A friend of mine who comes from the island told me about Black Lake, near Pachena Bay, and the famously tragic shipwreck that had occurred there.
So Black Lake Manor starts with a shipwreck inspired by the story of the Valencia. Mine takes place a hundred years earlier. What follows also draws on the rich mythology of the local First Nations people.
In Black Lake Manor a single lifeboat escapes the sinking of the Pride of Whitby in 1804, but the survivors find themselves trapped in a cave. Only one escapes alive, having survived by eating the flesh of his companions. He is rescued by the Mowachaht, the local First Nations people, who realise that he has been visited by an island spirit and acquired a unique ability, which his descendants will share: once in their lives they can turn back time by six hours.
Two hundred and forty years later, when the locals close ranks around a possible murderer, this presents real problems for the investigating officer. Each time she has almost solved the murder she has to start again, with no recollection of what she discovered last time round – and each time her investigation goes off in a different direction. So, unusually, the reader knows more than the protagonist. But which of her possible solutions is the correct one?
Black Lake Manor features cannibalism, live heart removal, a chess set (which may or may not be a red herring), and a pet octopus.
It draws heavily on its location: the incredible beauty and harshness of the island; and the dark mythology of its people. I hope that I have done justice to it, and perhaps even will inspire some readers to visit the Graveyard of the Pacific.
Black Lake Manor by Guy Morpuss (Profile Books) Out Now
A locked room. A brutal murder. And a killer who can unwind time… In the former mining town of Black Lake, there is an old story about a shipwreck with only one survivor. His descendants have a unique ability: once in their lives – and only once – they can unwind the events of the previous six hours. More than two hundred years later, part-time police constable Ella Manning is attending a party at Black Lake Manor, the cliff-top mansion belonging to the local billionaire. When a raging storm sweeps in from the Pacific, she and several other guests find themselves trapped. And when their host is discovered brutally murdered in his study the next morning, the door locked from the inside, they turn to her to solve the crime. Pushing her detective skills to the limit, against the odds Ella is sure she has identified the killer… but then someone undoes time. With no memory of what she discovered before, her investigation begins again, with very different results. Which of her suspects is guilty? And is there something even more sinister she is yet to uncover? Can she solve the mystery before time runs out… again?
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