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First published as in Great Britain in 1973 by Collins Crime
Copyright © Emma Page 1973
Emma Page asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780008175924
Ebook Edition © MARCH 2016 ISBN: 9780008175931
Version [2016-02-18]
for
D. S. P.
with love
CONTENTS
A sunny July morning with a salty stir of breeze among the tall green spears of montbretia in the narrow border under the kitchen window. Pauline Barratt looked up from her notebook with its jotted reminders, menus, dates and names; she gave a resigned sigh as her gaze came to rest on the narrow leaves. By the time the scarlet flowerheads broke from their sheaths the summer would be over. It was racing past her as it had raced for the last few years, in a whirl of bookings and cancellations, arrivals and departures, beds to be made up, lunches to be thought of.
Footsteps along the passage, the slightly ponderous steps of someone well into middle age, carrying with them a strong suggestion of purpose.
‘There you are, madam,’ Bessie Meacham said as she came into the kitchen. ‘I’ll get the packed lunches out of the way and then I can start on the cooking. Just the one couple for sandwiches today?’ Saturdays in the busy season might be pretty hectic early and late, but at least they offered a relatively calm spell in the middle.
Pauline turned from the window. ‘Yes. And just one person in for lunch.’ She frowned. ‘I’m not sure yet about the numbers for dinner.’
‘Probably best all round then if I make a good large beef or chicken casserole,’ Bessie said with decision. ‘And I can roast a nice leg of lamb as well. A big potato salad and a couple of cold sweets, should be enough late strawberries to make a flan.’
Pauline felt a touch of the old sense of inadequacy that still visited her fifteen years after she had walked through the front door of Oakfield as a bride of eighteen, not altogether able to credit her good fortune in actually marrying Godfrey Barratt. Bessie had stood waiting in the hall to welcome her – of course she hadn’t been Bessie Meacham then, but Bessie Forrest. She was twenty years older than her young mistress; she had worked at Oakfield ever since she’d left the village school at fourteen.
Pauline had never been able to rid herself totally of the notion that Bessie regarded the house – and the domestic quarters in particular – as her own property. Her impersonally pleasant manner always seemed to imply that Pauline was a temporary interloper to be casually humoured until she saw fit to drift off elsewhere.
‘I don’t think there’ll be any strawberries left.’ Pauline was determined to find some point on which she could assert authority. ‘The beds were picked