She gave herself a comprehensive glance in the long mirror of the wardrobe. Not bad for thirty-five, you could see many worse in a day’s march.
She picked up her handbag and went gaily off down the stairs and into the kitchen to pick up the basket she had put ready earlier.
‘Have a good time,’ Miss Jordan said with a friendly smile.
‘I certainly will.’ Alma went out through the side door into the sweet-smelling afternoon.
She shifted the basket into a comfortable position on her arm. As well as her library books the basket held some socks and vests she had laundered for her uncle, a wedge of dark moist fruit-cake and an apple pie just the way he liked it, sweet and juicy, with a hint of cinnamon.
Alma and her uncle got on very well. Matt was her mother’s older brother. Alma had never had any father worth mentioning, she had only the vaguest idea of who he might have been and didn’t greatly care. It had never seemed to bother her mother and Alma saw little reason why it should bother her.
Her mother had died in middle life from some sudden and furious disease of the blood, at just about the time when Alma had come to the end of her own disastrous foray into matrimony.
In the general upheaval and desolation Alma had arrived on her uncle’s doorstep. He took her in, was very good to her in those wretched weeks, and she never forgot it.
Matt had done odd jobs up at Lynwood ever since he was a lad and it was he who suggested the Lynwood job to Alma. It was not long after Gerald Foster’s marriage to Vera, and Matt knew that Mr Foster was looking for someone to help in the house.
In Duncan Murdoch’s day the Lynwood kitchen had been ruled over by Hetty Attwood, an old-fashioned and increasingly eccentric domestic who had originally been engaged by his wife when they were first married.
Mrs Murdoch didn’t survive the birth of Vera and in the bleak time that followed, Hetty Attwood was utterly indispensable to Duncan Murdoch. He would never have dreamed of repaying her by sending her packing in her declining and deteriorating years.
Gerald Foster well knew the domestic situation at Lynwood long before he married Vera; in the course of his work for Murdoch he was often in the house. He was well aware that Hetty Attwood was not only far from competent but also by no means completely honest in her household dealings.
Vera turned a blind eye to these shortcomings – Hetty had been her father’s servant and, before that, the servant of her parents, and so must not be judged by ordinary standards.
But these sentiments weighed not at all with Gerald. He intended to get rid of Hetty as soon as he could decently manage it after moving into Lynwood as master of the house.
As a first step he set about finding a replacement for Hetty. Matt Bateman mentioned that his niece, young, energetic and competent, was looking for a post.
Gerald managed to persuade Vera that they should take Alma on to assist Hetty, but he couldn’t prevail on her to give Hetty her marching orders.
It was a good seven years after Alma Driscoll first stepped over the Lynwood threshold before Gerald finally managed to bid goodbye to Hetty – with a suitable and indeed generous financial provision, in recognition of her long service.
Alma now reigned over the Lynwood household. If extra help was needed it was brought in temporarily and with her agreement. She was well satisfied with her present situation.
She hummed a tune as she walked briskly along the road towards her uncle’s cottage. She reached Matt’s gate and walked up the neat path between trim flower-borders to the front door. She turned the handle and went in. Half an hour’s pleasant chat with her uncle, leaving in good time to catch the bus outside the pub on the village green.
Three quarters of an hour later she stepped on board the bus. She settled back luxuriously into her seat at the rear.
She looked forward with pleasure to her outing. A ten-minute ride would deposit her in the centre of Cannonbridge, bustling and lively on market day. A good prowl round the shops – mustn’t forget Mrs Foster’s colour shampoo, light golden blonde.
Pity Mrs Foster was going grey so early, she’d had such pretty soft pale hair when Alma first saw her – must be eight years or more now, she calculated with fleeting surprise at the swift passage of the years.
After the shopping, a long browse in the public library, stocking up with the historical romances she loved. Then she would call in, as she did every Thursday, at a little terrace house in an Edwardian crescent behind the library, to have a substantial high tea with Rosie Trewin, a friend she had known for some years. Rosie used to work at the pub by the green in Abberley, but she’d left a couple of years ago to marry a Cannonbridge man; they now had a six-month-old baby.
Alma opened her handbag and took out a fruit pastille; she popped it into her mouth. At the prospect of the afternoon and evening before her she sighed with pleasure. What more could anyone reasonably ask?
Seventy miles away in Lowesmoor a church clock struck three quarters. Gerald Foster paused for a moment and glanced at his watch, then he resumed his careful pacing of the building site, the third of four he had driven over to see.
He always inspected and assessed on his own, couldn’t tolerate an agent at his heels, interfering with the keen flow of calculation through his brain.
Gerald considered Lowesmoor a vigorous, thrusting town, poised for expansion, definitely a place to invest in. He left the site and climbed a small eminence nearby in order to view the terrain from above. No insoluble problems, no difficulties with access, altogether satisfactory.
He went back to his car and drove slowly about the district, gauging the tone and character of the neighbourhood. When he was satisfied, he found a phone kiosk and rang the agent’s office. It was now almost half past five.
‘I’m ready to talk terms,’ he told the agent. ‘What about dinner at my hotel this evening?’ Tomorrow was already mapped out and Gerald wasn’t a man to watch with any pleasure the long hours of evening slip unprofitably away in idle recreation.
‘Good idea,’ the agent said, and they arranged a time. The agent was a bright young fellow, a bachelor, still under thirty.
He pondered for an instant the possibility of suggesting to Foster a visit after dinner to one of the local night spots. There was a new place of which he’d heard encouraging reports, dim lights and bright girls. But after a moment’s reflection he dismissed the idea. Foster didn’t strike him as the type to welcome the suggestion.
‘Right, then,’ he said. ‘The lounge of the Falcon. A quarter to eight.’
At eight o’clock Alma Driscoll and her friend Rosie Trewin left Rosie’s little terrace house and went along to the local pub for an hour or two while Rosie’s husband obligingly kept an eye on the baby.
At half past ten Alma caught the last bus back to Abberley and made her way along the lane to Pinetrees. She looked in on the old couple, made them hot drinks, settled them down for the night and went off to bed, well pleased with her day.
Next morning she was awake early; she never slept late. By a quarter to seven she was washed and dressed, had tidied her bedroom and was on her way downstairs to make tea and take it up to the old folk.
She wasn’t required to make breakfast or help them to wash and dress. A woman came in from the village at half past seven on alternate Friday mornings to see to all that and to keep an eye on things till the housekeeper returned on the mid-morning bus.
Alma carried the tray up to the main bedroom and knocked softly on the door. They were already awake, looking forward to a cup of tea.
Promptly at half past seven the village woman arrived and Alma was free to go back to Lynwood.
It was a fine morning, clear and mild, with a slight rustle of breeze. She met no one as she walked along the road, but the village was already stirring. She could hear the