Every Second Thursday

COPYRIGHT

Harper

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

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.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.

Source ISBN: 9780008175900

Ebook Edition © MARCH 2016 ISBN: 9780008175917

Version [2016-02-18]

DEDICATION

For Christopher

with love

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

About the Author

By Emma Page

About the Publisher

CHAPTER 1

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 now. Had she permitted it, Mrs Foster would very shortly in return have asked her to call her Vera, in the hope of establishing the kind of indulgent cosy intimacy she had known with her father and had been ceaselessly trying to find elsewhere ever since his death.

Vera’s father, Duncan Murdoch, was over seventy when he died and he had been in declining health for several months. But his death had all the same struck his daughter a shattering blow.

He had been working in his study on the ground floor of Lynwood – he ran his own business, the Cannonbridge Thrift Society, and he used the Lynwood study as a subsidiary office in addition to his regular office in the town.

Vera had just looked in to see if her father wanted coffee. He glanced up and smiled at her with his usual look of affection. He said, ‘That would be a very good—’ and suddenly clutched at his chest and fell forward across the desk.

He was dead from a massive heart attack before Doctor Tredgold arrived eight minutes later, snatched from the middle of morning surgery.

But that was all nine years ago, when Vera was still a pretty young woman, certainly a total stranger to the sciatica that afflicted her these days. Now she settled herself further back against the pillows and levelled a mulish look at Miss Jordan’s straight and elegant back.

‘I have no intention of stirring from this bed for another week,’ she said in a louder tone than was necessary. ‘I’m sure Doctor Tredgold doesn’t expect me to get up so soon.’

Miss Jordan turned from the window. Her neat overall covered a tailored dress cut on classic lines. She wasn’t good-looking but there was something in her calm face that drew the eye.

Her delicate skin had a pale, creamy tint and she wore no make-up. She had a good deal of thick dark hair arrestingly streaked with white; it was drawn back into a heavy knot at the nape of her neck. Her eyes, a light clear hazel, were large and well set.

‘Oh, come now, Mrs Foster,’ she said in a rallying tone. ‘I’m sure Doctor Tredgold expects better results than that from his treatment. When he was here on Monday he told me I wouldn’t be needed here much longer.’ Miss Jordan went out from the Cannonbridge agency on short-term postings. ‘He thought I’d be able to leave early next week.’

‘You can’t possibly leave as soon as that,’ Vera said in loud protest. ‘I won’t hear of it.’

There was a sound of movement along the corridor, footsteps in the adjoining bedroom. Vera glanced towards the connecting door. It opened a little and her husband’s face appeared in the aperture.

‘Just seeing to my overnight bag,’ he said with amiable briskness. ‘I’ll be with you in a moment.’ His face vanished from the doorway.

Vera drew a long sighing breath. ‘I’ve finished with the tray,’ she said abruptly to Miss Jordan. ‘I’ll do my hair now.’

Miss Jordan removed the tray and brought some toilet articles over from the dressing table. She set them down within Vera’s reach.

Miss Jordan had very smooth white-skinned hands with long slim fingers. She did a good deal of fine needlework and took great care of her hands.

She held the mirror while Vera teased the front of her hair into artless curls. Her hair had always been fine and delicate and was now growing perceptibly thinner. The colour, once a soft honey-blonde, was now harsher and deeper from regular tinting. The sciatica had prevented her from visiting the hairdresser in Cannonbridge and greyish streaks showed along her temples and parting.

‘My make-up tray,’ she commanded and Miss Jordan brought across the lipstick and powder, the eye-shadow and mascara.

‘Are you good with hair?’ Vera asked as she worked on her face. Perhaps Miss Jordan could wash her hair with a colour shampoo; it might serve as temporary concealment for the grey. ‘Today’s Thursday,’ she added. ‘Alma could buy a shampoo for me this afternoon in Cannonbridge.’ Alma Driscoll was the Lynwood housekeeper. Every Thursday she set off from Lynwood after lunch for a jaunt into Cannonbridge.

Each alternate week Alma didn’t return to Lynwood till next morning, spending the night at another house in Abberley village, an Edwardian villa called Pinetrees, standing about a quarter of a mile from Lynwood.

Pinetrees belonged to a couple who had been friends of Vera Foster’s father. They were both old now and frail, very dependent on the services of their resident house-keeper. Once a fortnight this housekeeper went off to see her married daughter in a neighbouring village. She spent the night there and caught the first bus back in the morning. By arrangement with Vera, Alma Driscoll stayed the night at Pinetrees in her place, to keep a friendly eye on the old couple.

‘If Alma gets me the shampoo,’ Vera went on, ‘do you think you could wash my hair tomorrow?’

‘Certainly.’ Miss Jordan had spent nearly ten years in one post – before she took up temporary work with the agency – and she had washed and waved the long white tresses of that fastidious employer on a great many occasions. She could certainly cope with Mrs Foster’s scanty locks.

Vera patted turquoise eye-shadow – too lavish and too bright – over her crêpy lids. ‘If you didn’t know how old I was,’ she said suddenly, ‘what age would you take me for?’ She stared intently at her reflection in the mirror. ‘Be honest, I shan’t be offended.’

She had told Miss Jordan at their first encounter that she was thirty-two. In fact she was forty and looked fifty. She cherished the illusion that Miss Jordan was about to reply twenty-eight. Or thirty at the very most.

Miss Jordan knew well what Mrs Foster wished to hear. ‘Twenty-nine,’ she said judicially, splitting the difference.

Vera’s expression softened. She made a pleased inclination of her head and for a moment Miss Jordan could see the girl she once had been, Daddy’s little darling, pretty, cherished. And hopelessly spoiled.

Vera brushed mascara – too thick and too dark – over her sparse lashes. ‘I’ve been married for eight years now, believe it or not,’ she said with a complacent air.

‘Indeed.’ Miss Jordan had no difficulty in crediting the eight years, she could have swallowed eighteen without demur.

‘I take it you’ve never been married?’ Vera asked.

‘I have not.’

‘You’ve never felt the need?’ Vera persisted with unlovely curiosity.

‘I most certainly have not.’ Miss Jordan’s lips came together in a grim line. ‘Nor am I likely to.’

‘Oh, you never know,’ Vera said lightly.

‘Indeed I do know,’ Miss Jordan said with force. ‘One does not marry by accident.’

The connecting door opened wide and Gerald Foster came into the room.

‘I think I’ve got everything,’ he said cheerfully. ‘I’ll be off in a few minutes.’ He advanced towards the bed, smiling at his wife.

He was a little above average height, with a spare figure and narrow shoulders. He was six years younger than Vera but looked considerably older than his age, not because of any greying or fading but from the many lines on his face. His habitual expression was of reflection and calculation, of devoting sustained and intense thought to the complicated business of living.

He had never really looked young, not even as a lad, he had always looked like a serious adult temporarily inhabiting the skin and flesh of a child – a boy – a youth.

Eight years ago when he and Vera got married, with Vera at thirty-two briefly restored by the stimulus of the event to the pretty flush of youth, and Gerald at twenty-six looking even more solemn and unsmiling under the weight of his new responsibilities, anyone would have taken Vera for the younger of the pair. Now they seemed much of an age, somewhere in the vague stretches of middle life.

‘I’ll phone you about nine o’clock this evening,’ Gerald said. ‘Just to see that everything’s all right.’ He patted his wife’s hand with an affectionate smile.

Miss Jordan turned from the bedside and made to leave the room discreetly, but Vera raised a hand to halt her.

‘There’s no need to go rushing off,’ she said. ‘You can clear away these things.’

Miss Jordan gave a little nod and busied herself gathering up the toilet articles while contriving with professional ease to efface herself from the presence of the married couple and whatever private conversation they might be about to engage in.

‘I’ll try not to be late back tomorrow,’ Gerald said. ‘With luck I should be here by seven or eight.’

He was off on a business trip to Lowesmoor, a large town some seventy miles away. He had worked as a clerk for Vera’s father, had been highly thought of by that shrewd gentleman. After Murdoch’s death Gerald had taken charge of the business; he had gone in for a programme of systematic expansion and made a considerable success of it.

‘I wish you didn’t have to go away,’ Vera said with a pout that had ceased to be girlishly attractive a good ten years ago but which she mistakenly retained in her armoury. ‘You know I hate it here on my own.’

‘I go away as little as I can,’ Gerald said with an air of great reasonableness. ‘Hardly ever for more than one night and never more than twice in a month.’ He smiled. ‘You don’t want me to neglect the business, do you?’

‘All this expansion,’ Vera said mutinously. ‘I can’t see it’s necessary. I’m sure Daddy would have thought it risky.’

He gave her a humouring smile. ‘I never take unnecessary risks, my dear, you know that.’

She wasn’t to be won over so easily. ‘Daddy didn’t find it necessary to keep going away. He hardly ever went away on business.’

She led a very shut-in life. She had no close women friends, no relatives, scarcely any visitors. She had been very close to her father, had been desolated by his death, had tried to replace him with Gerald, not altogether with the success for which she strove and was still striving.

He stooped and kissed her cheek. ‘I’ll get my things,’ he said, ‘then I must be off.’ As he turned towards the connecting door he added mildly, ‘Times have changed a good deal since your father’s day. The business is very different now.’

Indeed it was. Duncan Murdoch had been the grandson of a Scottish crofter. His father had left the croft as a young man and gone south, to England, in search of lusher pastures. He worked for some years as a clerk, living with the utmost frugality, saving every penny. He laid out this little capital by way of small weekly loans to workmates spent up before pay-day.

Eventually he left paid employment and started a thrift and credit-voucher business of his own. The little enterprise prospered. He never overreached himself, was content with a modest success.

His son Duncan worked as his assistant, inheriting the business on his father’s death. He broadened its scope to include hire purchase and various other kinds of minor financial transactions. He kept it all on a very sound and stable footing; indeed, his temperament and upbringing made him excessively cautious. He was never gifted with imagination or business vision.

On his death the business passed to Vera, his only child. She would have been incapable of running it on her own and was greatly relieved when Gerald Foster – at that time her father’s clerk – agreed to take over the running.

Six months later they were married and became joint owners, joint partners in the enterprise. In actual practice this meant that Gerald continued to run the business and at regular intervals placed a sheaf of papers before his wife for her signature.

Duncan Murdoch had kept a lot of good capital locked up, earning its safe little percentage, risking nothing, producing nothing. Gerald Foster knew the value of capital from never having been able to lay his hands on any. He had inherited nothing from his poverty-stricken parents.

In his clerking days he had saved every penny, done what he could with it, but it never amounted to a row of beans.

As soon as he found himself in control of the Cannonbridge Thrift Society he lost no time in putting Duncan Murdoch’s reserve capital to work, shrewdly and carefully.

He kept all the original basis of the business but branched out to embrace small property deals, very small to begin with, tail-end bargains from executors’ sales and the like, run-down shops, clapped-out businesses, disreputable-looking cottages.

Everything he touched prospered. The cottages cleaned up and modernized remarkably well, the shops sold to developers who pulled them down and reared in their place neat modern frontages.

And Foster was above all fortunate in being able to jump on the bandwagon at the right time. When the markets took a tumble and inflation ran riot, he was busy buying and selling, trading and dealing.

But he didn’t lose his head, didn’t start to fancy himself a potential tycoon. He had the little office in Cannonbridge done up and made a good deal more efficient and convenient. But that was all.

He employed only one assistant, a general clerk. She was a formidably competent and respectable woman of powerful build and indeterminate age. He would no more have dreamed of employing some daft and decorative little eye-catcher unschooled in letters and numbers than his father-in-law would have done.

Foster came back now into his wife’s bedroom carrying a briefcase and an overnight bag. ‘You’re certainly looking a lot better,’ he said bracingly. ‘You should be up in a day or two.’

‘I feel very far from well,’ Vera said with one of her sudden fits of moodiness. ‘You have no idea how painful sciatica can be.’

‘I don’t suppose I have,’ he said with an air of apology. He stooped and kissed her cheek. ‘But I do know I’m leaving you in very good hands.’

He gave a little formal nod in the direction of Miss Jordan, who made a vestigial bow in return, to indicate that she had heard and appreciated the compliment, while still contriving to remain invisible – and indeed absent from the scene.

‘It’s so boring,’ Vera said fretfully. ‘Stuck here all day with nothing to do.’

‘You can surely find something to entertain you.’ Gerald waved a hand at the television set, the radio, books, magazines. ‘If there’s anything else you want, I’m sure Miss Jordan or Alma will be happy to get it for you.’ Vera moved her head sulkily but made no reply.

He patted her shoulder. ‘Do cheer up, my dear. It’s a lovely day.’ He picked up his cases. ‘I must be off, I have to call in at the office first. Miss Greatbach will be wondering where I’ve got to.’ He smiled again and was gone before Vera might decide to allow tears to trickle down her cheeks.

Downstairs in the kitchen the housekeeper, Alma Driscoll, was busy with her chores and at the same time chatting amiably to her uncle, Matt Bateman. Matt was sitting at the table, finishing off the substantial snackmeal Alma had set before him.

He was a retired labourer living alone in a tiny cottage half a mile along the road to Abberley village. He had never married, had never seen much good come of it, nothing but loss of freedom and general aggravation. He dropped in at the Lynwood kitchen most days, to see his niece, drink a cup of tea, have a bite to eat. And cast his sharp eye round for any little unwanted trifles that might be doing nobody any good just lying about, but might come in very handy at his little cottage.

Alma rinsed out the teapot and set it down on a shelf. The room was large, with what had once been a butler’s pantry opening off it.

Vera’s parents had had the house modernized when they moved into it immediately after their marriage. Gerald Foster had caused further substantial improvements to be carried out after his own marriage. Vera would have been quite happy if he had left the house as it was; she would have felt that this enshrined her father’s memory.

But she was pleased all the same when the improvements were carried out. She appreciated the new comfort and convenience even if her nature didn’t allow her to open her mouth and say so.

Alma picked up the teacups from the table and carried them to the sink. She was a plump, cheerful-looking woman in her middle thirties. She had married once and lived to regret it. She was now a resolute divorcée amusing herself when and where she chose.

She glanced up at the clock. ‘Time you were taking yourself off,’ she said to her uncle with pleasant firmness.

He got to his feet. There was one further benefit from his visit that he intended to have.

‘I’ll just have a word with the gaffer,’ he said easily. ‘About the firewood.’ There was a beautiful lot of wood lying along the edge of the Lynwood shrubbery where the jobbing gardener, Ned Pritchard, had piled it two days ago.

Matt had marked the wood for his own. It would burn very nicely in the kitchen of his little cottage.

‘You certainly will not ask Mr Foster about the firewood,’ Alma said. ‘I won’t have any kin of mine coming here cadging.’

She saw nothing amiss in diverting a certain amount of Mr Foster’s food and drink towards her uncle in the course of his frequent calls at Lynwood. That was straightforward perks and nothing to be ashamed of.

And she made no secret of the pie or spiced fruit-loaf that she carried in her basket when she called in at Matt’s cottage. But that was quite definitely as far as she would

‘Miss Vera wouldn’t mind if I had the wood,’ Matt said. ‘Her Dad would have let me have it if he was still alive. A fine old gentleman, Mr Murdoch, I always got on well with him.’

‘And Mr Foster’s a first-class employer,’ Alma retorted. ‘I get on well with him. And I mean to keep on getting on well with him. You’re not asking him for that wood.’

‘Ned Pritchard’ll have it if I don’t,’ Matt said with resigned protest.

‘That’s up to Mr Foster. It’s his wood, he can do what he pleases with it.’

Matt pulled on his jacket with its deep and well-used pockets not immediately visible to the questioning eye. He picked up his cup.

‘Now mind,’ Alma said as he opened the door. ‘One word about that wood and you’ll have me to reckon with.’

‘I shan’t say anything.’ He’d already set his mind on another and equally fertile source of free fuel. No need to mention the fact to Alma. She was a dear girl but she did go on a bit.

‘You’ll be looking in at the cottage this afternoon?’ he asked.

She gave a nod. ‘I’ll see you as usual.’

‘This is your night for sleeping out at Pinetrees?’

‘That’s right.’ She came out of the kitchen and stood beside him on the doorstep, looking out at the mellow day.