The Distant Hours is the third novel by Australian author Kate Morton. The hardback edition was published in the United Kingdom by Pan Macmillan in November 2010, the paperback was published in 2011. The Distant Hours was a Sunday Times Top Ten Bestseller in hardback.
Synopsis
Part One
The book begins with arrival of a letter, sent during the Second World War, to a small house on Central London in 1992. Edith Burchill (Edie), a young woman working as an editor in a small family-run publishing firm, is visiting her mother Meredith when the letter arrives. Their relationship has never been close, and Edie is shocked by her mother's emotional reaction. She explains that as a child she was evacuated to Kent during the war. She was taken in by three sisters who lived in their grand, ancestral home of Milderhurst Castle.
Some months later, Edie is driving back from meeting a client and finds herself in the village of Milderhurst. She is immediately entranced by the castle, and remembers having been brought to the gates by her mother when she was very young. She discovers that Milderhurst Castle was the home of the author of her favourite childhood book, "The True History of the Mud Man", and that his youngest daughter was driven mad by being abandoned by her fiancé. She impulsively decides to stay the night and go for a tour of the castle the next day, led by one of the sisters.
The next day she meets the Sisters Blythe; Persephone (Percy), and Seraphina (Saffy), who are twins and daughters of Raymond's first wife, and Juniper, the youngest and daughter of his second wife. Juniper seems to be suffering from dementia, and the twins are very protective of her. She has throughout her life been subject to 'losing time', where she would black out and lose control of her actions. Percy takes Edie on a tour of the castle, showing her the library where the twins' mother Muriel was killed in a fire. When Percy leaves Edie alone to answer the telephone, she is met by Juniper wearing a very old and beautiful dress. Juniper calls her Meredith, and tells her that she's done something terrible. Edie is quickly escorted from the castle.
The story then cuts to 1941, where the twins (who are then in their thirties) are preparing for Juniper and a mysterious guest to arrive for dinner. Saffy realises that the man Juniper is bringing with her is her lover, a man called Thomas Cavill, and that Juniper is bringing him to announce their engagement. A storm starts to rage outside as they wait in the parlour. Juniper and Thomas are extremely late, and the twins are beginning to worry that they won't arrive, when there is a knock at the door.
Part Two
Edie decides to ask her mother more about her stay at Milderhurst Castle. When her mother refuses to speak about it Edie calls on her Aunt Rita, who finds a box of letters written by Meredith to her family while she was at Milderhurst. Before she can read them she has to rush to the hospital, where her father is being treated for a heart attack.
The story then cuts to the day of Meredith's evacuation in 1939, as she leaves her family and travels to Milderhurst. Percy is due at the town hall to collect an evacuee, but is distracted by hearing a rumour that her housekeeper, Lucy, is due to be married. She feels keenly betrayed, and loses several hours wandering in her own thoughts. In the end Juniper, who is known for acting irrationally and on her own agenda, picks Meredith out of the group of children who are left. Saffy is at home with their father, who refuses to leave his tower and is suffering from paranoid delusions of the Mud Man coming to kill him. Lucy comes to tell her of her engagement, and to announce her resignation.
Part Three
Due to his heart attack, Edie's father is unable to leave his bed. Her investigation of the Mud Man's origins piques his interest, and she begins reading the book to him. Having read all the letters Rita gave her, Edie gives the letters to her mother who is infuriated by the intrusion and the two haven't spoken properly since. In her investigations, Edie finds an advert placed by a Theo Cavill trying to find Thomas. She decides to speak to the Theo in the hopes of asking Thomas to explain what happened that night in 1941. Edie finds Theo in a nursing home, and he is excited to hear news about his brother. When she explains that she was hoping to get information from him instead, he is crestfallen, and tells her that Thomas has been missing since 1941. Theo goes on to say that he received a letter sometime later supposedly from Thomas, saying that he had eloped with another woman.