A Symphony of Echoes

Cover of A Symphony of Echoes

**A Symphony of Echoes** is the second novel in the Chronicles of St Mary's. It tells the story of Max and her colleagues as they battle their way across the timeline, occasionally solving a mystery or two.

## Blurb

**Wherever the historians go, chaos is sure to follow...**

Despatched to Victorian London to seek out Jack the Ripper, things go badly wrong when he finds the St Mary's historians first. Stalked through the fog-shrouded streets of Whitechapel, Max is soon running for her life. Again.

And that's just the start. Max finds herself in a race against time when an old enemy is intent on destroying St Mary's. An enemy willing, if necessary, to destroy History itself.

From the Hanging Gardens of Nineveh to the murder of Thomas a Becket, via an unscheduled dodo rescue mission, join the historians of St Mary's as they hurtle around History on more hilarious, hair-raising escapades.

## Plot

Max is back, and how! Some months have passed since the first book, and Kalinda Black is finally ready to call it quits as an Historian. She takes Max with her on her last jump, during which she hopes to find out the identity of Jack the Ripper. They spend some time in a pub before slinking into London's misty streets. They've jumped to the night of his murder of Mary Kelly, but can't seem to find him. Max has a funny feeling that she and Kal are being followed. They get back in the pod for some tea and a talk, then jump back to St Mary's, unaware of another presence in the pod.

Just before she can open the door, something moves that isn't supposed to. It's some kind of monster that can render itself practically invisible to the human eye, and it's prepared to violently murder the two women. Max calls for a code blue, a contamination in the pod, and outside everyone starts the procedure for removal. Max and Kal fight for their lives before Max realizes that they won't make it one way or the other, and decides to take matters into her own hands. She points a gun at Kal, but the Security Section breaks into the pod before anything happens.

In the medical ward, Max and Kal are tormented by visions of Jack the Ripper walking through St Mary's and standing at the end of their beds. Farrell and Guthrie make short work of destroying the last sample of the monster that Dr Foster had kept in case of any infections, but Farrell doesn't return to meet Max, who has just been released from the medical ward with a handmade red snake. A search starts, but the only thing found is a set of coordinates written in soap on a men's bathroom mirror. Someone has set a trap and used Farrell as bait.

Max makes a plan with Dr Bairstow and, alone, takes a pod to the set of coordinates on the mirror, and discovers that they lead to a future St Mary's. She finds Farrell in their medical ward, hurt and confused and kept in a medical coma, presided over by a terrified young nurse Katie. Max is caught, attacked by Izzie Barclay and assaulted by Ronan's thugs before Peterson and Guthrie intervene with a distraction elsewhere. A battle commences.

On her way back to the medical ward, Max sees Izzie about to kill Farrell and shoots her in the back. Izzie is unceremoniously dumped in the elevator, tries to tell Max how she dies and is shot in the head by a very mad Max. Hostages come swarming out the basement, together with Peterson and Guthrie, and the battle is won by St Mary's. Max, Peterson and Guthrie decide to stay a while until the institute is able to run itself again, with Max acting as interim director until a new one could be chosen.

Some time later, the future St Mary's has a day out to Mauritius around 1666 to catch some dodos. Mrs Partridge is the only one to succeed at this task and is presented with a tiny cup. Another jump is arranged, this time to watch the murder of Thomas Becket on 29 December 1170, at the Canterbury cathedral. Peterson jumps back to talk with Dr Bairstow, after which some familiar sonnets are found under a certain fourth step during a flying apparatus contest. The future St Mary's finances are set. Now a fully functioning unit once more, Max calls an all staff meeting to announce Pinkie will be its new director. She, along with Peterson and Guthrie, jump quietly back to their own St Mary's.

After everything that's happened, Dr Bairstow tells Max she could use some r&r and sends her and Farrell to an extremely expensive retreat center called the 'Red Barn'. The director of the Red Barn, a nasty piece of work by the name of Dr Alexander Knox, wrecks Max's confidence with alarming speed. The whole situation is made even worse when she is rejected by Farrell, and, completely done with it all, she in turn totals his car and drives it into the lake near St Mary's. Once Farrell has also returned, Max stubbornly refuses to make up with him, even when he tells her Knox made him reject her.

Max figures out that Farrell's realistic dreams are actually bleed-through from a different time. She tries to look up Knox's history, but finds nothing. Thinking it's possibly protected by the thirty year rule, she jumps to the future St Mary's and discovers that Knox is its missing director. Instead of being killed during the battle, he must have jumped back to establish the Red Barn and give refuge to Clive Ronan, Izzie Barclay and Davey Sussman. Knox is apprehended in the past, tried in the future by the entirety of his old unit, and shot dead and left together with his accomplice Evan in a ice cold, snowy landscape somewhere along the timeline.

Some time after her return to her own St Mary's, Max is called to the medical ward. Her PA, David Sands, is dying. He tells Max to make up with Leon and she promises to do so. A bit later, Max, Peterson, Schiller, Van Owen, and [NAME] jump to the Hanging Gardens of Nineveh in 680 BC in a series of relatively easy jumps to the seven wonders of the ancient world designed to help the new recruits get their bearings. The three recruits jump back to St Mary's after a medical emergency arises, leaving Max and Peterson in the gardens.

They are rescued after struggling to survive for a few days because of their witnessing the death of Nineveh's king in the gardens. Max and Leon finally make up before the team jumps to Edinburgh, 1567, to fix the anomaly found in the Shakespearian play they found under the fourth step last year. In the play, Mary Stuart never marries James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, which seems to be the cause of the anomaly. During an audience with Queen Mary, the team sees a young Clive Ronan conniving with the French ambassador, realizing that it's him who made the anomaly possible. Max succeeds in locking Mary in a room with Bothwell to be sexually assaulted, feeling sick because she's the reason the lovely Mary goes down such a dark path.

Once back at St Mary's, Dr Bairstow meets with Max to tell her that her next mission will be Troy, the one destination she's always wished to go to.

## Dramatis Thingummy

* Dr Edward Bairstow - Director of St Mary's.
* Mrs Partridge - His PA and Kleio, Muse of History.

### Technicians

* Chief Leon Farrell - Chief Technical Officer.
* Dieter - Technician.

### Historians

* Madeleine Maxwell - Chief Operations Officer.
* Tim Peterson - Chief Training Officer.
* Kalinda Black - Liaison Officer at Thirsk University.
* Mary Schiller - Historian.
* Greta Van Owen - Historian.
* Mr Clerk - Historian.

### Security

* Major Ian Guthrie - Head of Security.
* Markham - Security guard and amateur conjuror.
* Randall - Security guard.
* Evans - Security guard.

### Research & Development

* Professor Andrew Rapson - Head of R&D. Sole inhabitant of Planet Rapson.
* Doctor Octavius Dowson - Librarian, Archivist, and sorely tried.
* Mrs Mack - Kitchen Supremo.
* Mrs Enderby - Head of Wardrobe.
* Mrs Shaw - Peterson's assistant and bringer of chocolate biscuits.
* Mr Sands - Keeper of the world's worst collection of knock-knock jokes.
* Miss Rosie Lee - A nightmare.

### Sick Bay

* Doctor Helen Foster - Does not play well with others.
* Nurse Hunter - The object of Markham's affections.

### Villains

* Ronan - Trouble from the future.
* Isabella Barclay - Bitch.

### From the Future

* Pinky - Chief Technical Officer.
* Katie - An unhappy nurse.
* Evan - Sole surviving historian.
* Mrs Partridge - Astonishing but true.
* Assorted dodos - Don't ask.

### Historical Figures

* Jack the Ripper - A very naughty boy.
* Thomas Becket - A troublesome priest.
* Mary Stuart - The Tartan Trollop.
* Earl of Bothwell - Sex on legs.
* Sundry courtiers
* Assyrian soldiers