50 pages • 1-hour read
The Long Call
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Chapters 34-43Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 34 Summary
Matthew makes a series of phone calls. He first calls Jonathan and tells him of Lucy’s disappearance. He then calls Christopher Preece, who confirms that he was at St. Cuthbert’s when Lucy disappeared. Finally, he calls the Marstons, who don’t respond. Matthew sends Ross to the Salters to question them about their whereabouts when Lucy disappeared. Matthew then goes to St. Cuthbert’s and learns that Caroline and Edward were both working with parishioners at the time of Lucy’s disappearance.
Chapter 35 Summary
At the Shaplands’ house, Jen shows Christine some photos of Christopher Preece, Colin Marston, and Dennis Salter to see if she recognizes the man who abducted her. Christine doesn’t recognize any of them other than her uncle, Dennis, who she says didn’t do it. Jen tells Christine about Lucy’s disappearance. Christine reveals that Lucy told her that she was working with Simon to help save the Woodyard. Jen notices that Christine has a purple cardigan that looks just like one Lucy has; the two women bought identical cardigans while on vacation. Jen calls Matthew and hypothesizes that Christine’s abduction was a case of mistaken identity. This theory suggests that there are a least two people involved in these crimes: one who gave orders, and one who committed the abduction.
Chapter 36 Summary
Ross and Jen return to the station and fill Matthew in. Jen relates her new two-kidnapper theory, and Ross reports that he was unable to find the Salters at home. Ross hypothesizes that the motive behind the murders might involve Simon’s money and the Woodyard’s financial troubles; he suggests that they put forensic accountants on Preece, Salter, and even Jonathan and Matthew himself. Matthew acquiesces.
Testing a new theory, Matthew visits Rosa Holsworthy’s mother, Janet. He questions Janet about why she and her husband really pulled Rosa from the Woodyard. Janet confesses that Rosa was sexually abused there. At the time, Janet didn’t tell Jonathan about the incident because he was on his honeymoon; instead, she told Christopher Preece, who called her into a meeting with Woodyard trustee Dennis Salter and Woodyard legal counsel Colin Marston. Salter and Marston told Janet that these were merely allegations, but Janet told the men that she had proof in the form of Rosa’s semen-stained skirt. Preece and Salter cut Janet a check to buy her silence; she accepted the money due to her family’s financial troubles.
Speculating that Lucy’s disappearance might be connected to this history of abuse at the Woodyard, Matthew gets Janet to admit that Lucy was close with Rosa and came to the house shortly after Rosa’s assault. This leads Matthew to wonder if Rosa might have given the semen-stained skirt to Lucy because Lucy was working with Simon to uncover the Woodyard’s history of abuse. Matthew gets Janet to call her husband at home to see if the skirt is still there. They discover that the skirt is missing. Janet confesses that Edward Craven who raped Rosa. (Edward is Caroline’s boyfriend and a local parish curate.)
Chapter 37 Summary
Matthew confronts Christopher, who denies the cover-up and blames Rosa for being “promiscuous.” Back at the station, Ross receives a message informing him that an emergency call was placed. The speaker identified herself as “Lucy,” and this call was traced to the home of Colin and Hilary Marston, a couple living in the cottage closest to the location in which Simon’s body was found.
Chapter 38 Summary
Matthew, Ross, and Jen enter the Marstons’ empty home. There is evidence that Lucy has been here and that the Marstons themselves were home recently. Suspecting that Colin would hide Lucy out in the dunes, the trio leaves the house. Ross and Jen head inland along the road, while Matthew heads for the dunes. As Matthew investigates alone, someone sneaks up behind him and knocks him unconscious.
Chapter 39 Summary
Heading in the other direction, Ross and Jen hear a car speeding away from the beach. Worried about Matthew, they head in his direction and find him on the beach.
Chapter 40 Summary
Matthew wakes to find Ross tending to him. Jen is with Lucy, who was left on the beach alongside him. Both he and Lucy were bound, gagged, and left to die when the tide came in. Matthew calls Jonathan, who comes to the beach from their nearby home, and Lucy calls her father.
Despite being concussed, Matthew goes to Caroline’s. From what he has seen of the relationship between Caroline and Edward, he deduces that Caroline likely knows that Edward sexually assaulted Rosa. Matthew confronts Caroline, who admits to knowing that Edward is a rapist and that he was the one who mistakenly abducted Christine, believing her to be Lucy. Edward was told to abduct Lucy because of the evidence she had of his crime. However, Caroline denies that Edward killed Simon. Matthew returns to the station. Edward and Christopher Preece have been brought in for questioning, and Matthew receives a call informing him that the Salters have just returned home. Matthew takes Ross to question the couple.
Chapter 41 Summary
Jen questions Edward Craven, who confesses to having raped Rosa. He tells her that he wanted to quit his work in the clergy, but Caroline convinced him that it was his “duty to stay” (357). He also told Christopher, who, to Edward’s surprise, didn’t ask him to end his relationship with Caroline. Edward further confesses that he mistakenly abducted Christine at Christopher Preece’s orders, but he insists that he had nothing to do with Lucy’s abduction.
Chapter 42 Summary
Matthew and Ross arrive at the Salters’ home, where Matthew questions the couple. Matthew sends Ross to find the Salters’ boots, which are caked in sand. Matthew recounts the story of Simon Walden as he has pieced it together. Matthew deduces that shortly after Simon began working at the Woodyard, he began to suspect that there was a history of abuse. Simon investigated this issue on his own and began coming to The Golden Fleece, near the Salters’ home, not to see Lucy, but to see Grace.
Hearing Matthew’s theory, Grace confirms that Simon came to see her because Simon had realized that Dennis was involved in the cover-up and that Dennis was abusive. Simon started sitting in the Golden Fleece, waiting for Grace to come talk to him and help him to expose Dennis. Grace admits to eventually telling Simon what she knew of the cover-up. However, because Grace will not lie to Dennis, her husband eventually discovered her activities. Dennis told Grace that she had done a bad thing, and that it would be convenient if Simon Walden were to die. Because Grace was so afraid of her abusive and controlling husband, she lured Simon to the beach with the promise of giving him a copy of the check that Dennis and Christopher Preece gave to Janet Holsworthy. Grace then murdered Simon. Dennis initially denies that he and Grace had anything to do with Lucy’s abduction, but he becomes defensive when Matthew tells him that the police have CCTV footage of what happened outside the shop where Lucy was last seen before being found on the beach.
Chapter 43 Summary
Matthew returns home to Jonathan and tells him that the case is finally over. Matthew suggests that he start inviting his mother over for Sunday dinner, and Jonathan approves.
Chapters 34-43 Analysis
Throughout this final, climactic section, Cleeves alternates between perspectives to generate tension and intensify the unfolding mystery. In Chapter 36, when Matthew pieces together the secret that Dennis Salter and Christopher Preece are trying to hide, Cleeves deliberately omits Matthew’s realizations from the third-person limited narration, leaving the reader and Matthew’s fellow detectives equally unenlightened to increase the impact of the reveal during his later questioning of Janet. Cleeves also uses the scene break after this revelation to continue to create tension, slowing the narrative by describing Janet’s work at the Rosebank Care Home. This momentary deceleration of the plot’s momentum raises questions about what Matthew has pieced together, and it is as yet unclear whether Janet is directly involved in the murder or whether Matthew’s greater focus is on her daughter, Rosa. Likewise, Cleeves conceals Matthew’s internal thoughts throughout this line of questioning, creating a more dramatic discovery of the assault on Rosa as Janet tells her story.
Further exploring The Impact of Rural Faith Communities, the narrative implies that Matthew’s habit of distancing himself from the Brethren ultimately allows him to come to his own conclusions about the role of faith in his own worldview. This final section of the novel investigates the consequences of avoiding such a process of self-discovery and instead following the guidelines of a faith tradition without analyzing its premises. For example, when Caroline explains why she chose to stay with Edward despite knowing him to be a rapist, Matthew notes, “She was confident that she could fix Edward Craven, that she had the power to reform him. Where had that arrogance come from? Her religious faith?” (349). Here, Matthew makes a connection between the redemptive promises of Christian morality and Caroline’s belief that faith alone can “fix” a transgression like Edward’s rape of Rosa. Matthew interprets Caroline’s conviction that Edward is accountable only to their God—and not to the law—as a type of arrogance. Within the context of the novel, the faith community of the Brethren creates a devastating code of silence by insisting that human criminality is only held accountable by the Church, and victims like Rosa are therefore left with no recourse for seeking justice.
The final chapters of The Long Call specifically address the issue of Coping With Guilt, and this topic is explored in social realms, not just in instances of criminality. Significantly, Cleeves gives her novel an open-ended conclusion and does not reveal whether Matthew will be able to heal his relationship with his mother, or whether Caroline will ever find forgiveness after discovering the extent of her role in Simon’s murder. However, Matthew’s spontaneous decision to invite his mother to Sunday dinner hints that he may be able to extend forgiveness toward her for her long-held prejudices against him and Jonathan. Additionally, the novel’s conclusion explores a different expression of forgiveness through Jen’s interrogation of Edward. When Edward tells Jen that she hates him now, she responds, “I don’t hate you. I hate what you’ve done and what it led to” (360), echoing the common Christian aphorism to “love the sinner, but hate the sin.” There are several possible readings of why Jen—a thoroughly non-religious character—reverts to the language of religion when telling Edward her viewpoint. On one hand, the language of religion might offer Jen a framework for finding a pathway toward forgiveness when she is momentarily unable to find any path to forgiveness by herself. Alternatively, Jen’s retreat into the language of organized religion might be her way of telling Edward—a deeply religious character—what he wants to hear so that she can bring an end to the interaction as quickly as possible. In either case, the finality of the chapter’s closing line, “She left the room and didn’t look back” (360), suggests that Jen has no intention to reflect on the possibility of forgiving Edward to any greater degree than she has already expressed.
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