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Susie Dent's debut novel. “Guilty by Definition” (Sourcebooks Landmark) meets a dictionary editor in Oxford who begins receiving strange messages related to the long-ago disappearance of her sister.
A lexicographer turned detective follows clues that lead her into literary mysteries and unsolved parts of her past.
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“Guilty by Definition” Susie Dent
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Chapter 3
eidolon, noun (seventeenth century):
spirit, ghost or apparition
Martha turned and ran through the crowd, down the wide stone stairs and onto Beaumont Street, looking at nothing but the ground. After three turns she found a side road and turned onto it. She leaned her back against the wall and tried to breathe.
She knew there would be ghosts in Oxford. She wasn't afraid of any headless horsemen or nuns roaming the local ruins; it was Charlie, Charlie was always afraid that Charlie would find her. In the first year after her sister's disappearance, there were times when Martha's heart stopped when she spotted her in a crowd: long blond hair, a shapeless cardigan thrown over a thin cotton dress. She will hear laughter, guttural and sudden, or catch a movement, a gait, a turn of the shoulders, and she will be sure. Just for a moment. Then the illusion will dissipate and the person she knew as her sister will turn into a stranger.
As the years passed, Charlie's ghost grew older. Now it was women of about thirty-five who forced Martha to stop on the street. In Berlin, perhaps once a month, she felt that same flickering certainty before she realized that the woman with a child on her lap as she drank coffee in a sidewalk café was not her sister, but simply an echo of Martha's own idea of what Charlie might be now, thirteen years after fleeing Oxford and her family.
Martha pressed her palm against the wall behind her. She reminded herself of her therapist's mantra at times when she was in danger of becoming overwhelmed. What can you see now? Shiny paving stones of the alley, white brick wall opposite. What can you feel? Bricks under my fingers, the breeze ruffles my hair. What can you smell? Vegetable oil and Black Opium perfume which I applied this morning.
Her breathing slowed.
She pulled the letter out of her bag again and stared at it. Could it be from Charlie? Impossible. What could this Chorus know? Should she burn it? Throw it into the river? Take it to the police?
Ah, the police. She heard her mother's chair scrape across the kitchen floor and jumped up at the sound of the doorbell. They found Charlie's bicycle near the ring road. Was she hitchhiking? How did her PhD go? Martha couldn't remember their faces, only their hands clutching their cups of tea as they sat at the table, the quiet rumble of their voices as they talked about stress and pressure. They said that most of the escapees return on time. They left behind literature, helpline numbers and life-weary sympathy.
Martha realized that she was at her front door. Her body picked her up and carried her here through the growing darkness. She looked up. All the lights were turned off; her father must be in bed.
Charlie had been living here when she disappeared, taking advantage of the space, their mother's cooking, and the glow of her parents' approval while she worked on her doctorate. Martha has just left for university and has begun experimenting with life outside of Charlie's orbit.
As she inserted the key into the lock, she remembered how Alex's shadow moved across the folded letter in the museum. Now it was Charlie. Always here: the shadows of the past cast on the walls and floors. She pushed the door…
She took out the letter again and placed it on the kitchen table while the kettle boiled.
The truth will come to light. Murder cannot be hidden for long.
Excerpt from Susie Dent's book, Guilty by Definition. Copyright © 2024, 2025 Susie Dent. Reprinted with permission from Sourcebooks Landmark, an imprint of Sourcebooks.
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“Guilty by Definition” Susie Dent
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