The Grimoire of a Good Wife

Plot

1900 Zendula is gripped by a horrifying crime: the kidnapping and murder of the two year old baby son of the country’s most daring aeronaut Raul Nautes. The prime suspect is a lowly carpenter. But as the trial enthralls the nation doubts emerges. All of the evidence indicates an inside job. Raul Nautes is increasingly suspected of being the actual kidnapper and killer of his own baby boy. Soon Raul Nautes’ aristocratic wife Alice Eules and his beautiful sister-in-law Diana Eules openly accuse him of murder. At the same time a mysterious criminal mastermind nicknamed ‘Moriarty’ is taking advantage of the crime to extort blackmail money from the accused Raul Nautes. At this point who doesn’t suspect the cold, arrogant, social climbing parvenu Nautes?

Elgar Lovell Reid the dashing leader of the Populist Werewolf Pride Movement launches his own investigation to defend the accused carpenter during which he discovers that all of Old Eule’s male heirs have mysteriously died in freak accidents leaving only Alice and Diana Eule. And found at every death scene is is a mysterious red chess piece which matches a mysterious chess set given to Old Eule just before his heirs started to die —- with a red chess piece left by each corpse. The increasingly discredited and suspected Raul Nautes accuses Diana Eule of murdering her way to the inheritance of Eule Manor as his own conduct becomes ever more suspicious. He is clearly concealing something while being blackmailed by ‘Moriarty’!

And things get even more bizarre when Elgar Lovell Reid discovers evidence of paranormal hauntings at Nautes House which may have caused the death of the baby boy. Nautes House was built on top of the demolished lair of the Fox Hollow Killer a mass murderer who is still haunting the site of his heinous crimes. Did the Fox Hollow Killer’s demonic ghost drive Nanny Barnes to murder? And the trademark of each Fox Hollow Killer’s crime was a red chess piece. And a red chess piece was found shoved into the mouth of the poor dead baby! Or is a new Fox Hollow Copycat Killer on the loose and did this copycat killer actually kill the Nautes baby?

As Elgar Lovell Reid plays amateur detective the infamous Aleister Crowley, a chess enthusiast as well as part-time spy and warlock, arrives to investigate the paranormal hauntings at Nautes House linked to the infamous Fox Hollow Killer’s demonic obsession with chess games. Are these horrifying murders connected to a satanic chess game called the Ghost Gambit and was the Nautes baby a human sacrifice to The Beast 666?