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First published in Great Britain in 1981 by Collins Crime
Copyright © Emma Page 1981
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: 9780008175900
Ebook Edition © MARCH 2016 ISBN: 9780008175917
Version [2016-02-18]
For Christopher
with love
CONTENTS
Eight o’clock on a clear golden morning in late September. The village of Abberley had been awake and astir for an hour or more. On the road that led north out of the village to the town of Cannonbridge two miles away, a tall house named Lynwood stood up on a bank and looked west across the valley. It was a substantial dwelling of graceful proportions, dating back to the early years of Victoria’s reign, set on the edge of farmland with smooth lawns falling away from it on all sides.
In the large front bedroom on the first floor Vera Foster settled back into the nest of lacy pillows that Miss Jordan had just shaken up with professional efficiency.
Vera ate the last of her porridge, beautiful thick creamy porridge cooked all night in the kitchen Aga in the Scottish fashion. Her father – now dead – had been Scottish. That was how he liked his porridge cooked, that was how it continued to be cooked at Lynwood, nine years after his death.
Very gingerly she moved her left leg into a better position. The sciatica was receding now but regular attacks over the last few years had taught her a wary respect for the pain and its ability to spring suddenly back at her when she had fancied it vanquished.
Over by the long windows Miss Jordan drew the rose-flowered curtains further apart.
‘It’s a lovely morning,’ she said in her precise tones. ‘I’m sure it’s going to turn out warm this afternoon. I could move a chair out on to the balcony. If you wrapped up you could sit out for half an hour.’
‘I’m certainly not well enough to sit outside,’ Vera said crossly. A stubborn look appeared in her china-blue eyes. She drank her coffee with a moody air.
The sciatica laid her low with relentless regularity twice a year, in spring and autumn. She made the most of these enforced retreats, expecting – and receiving – a good deal of pampering and cossetting.
But Miss Jordan was a newcomer to Lynwood; she had been sent by the Cannonbridge agency a couple of weeks ago in response to an urgent request from Vera. She was not a trained nurse but a companion help with some nursing experience. She was a tall angular woman in her early forties with a sharp-featured face and a disciplined, authoritative manner. She adopted towards her patient a more bracing attitude than Vera was accustomed to. Competent and careful Miss Jordan certainly was, attentive enough, even kind in her impersonal way, but indulgent and cossetting she certainly was not.
Vera had attempted at the start of the fortnight to address Miss Jordan by her first name – which was Edith – but Miss Jordan was by no means disposed to allow such familiarity. She had never done so, never considered it wise, certainly didn’t intend to begin