Free Leaving Everything Most Loved by Jacqueline Winspear Page A

poor, and those seeking to improve their lot. The properties were mainly of Regency and Georgian stock, and the fact that there was no uniformity to the buildings enhanced, rather than diminished, the character of the area. The Grand Surrey Canal, built in the early 1800s, brought with it a flurry of construction, which added Victorian housing and effectively completed the square, which was named after the then Prime Minister, Henry Addington.
    Maisie parked her motor car close to the address she had been given for the ayah’s hostel where Usha Pramal had been living at the time of her death. She looked around the square before lifting the brass door knocker and rapping three times. Some moments later, the door of the brick Georgian terrace house was opened by a young Indian woman wearing a sari of olive green cotton with a wide border embroidered in a medley of pale green and yellow threads. She wore her long jet-black hair in a single braid, and as she stood on the threshold to greet Maisie, a cluster of thin silver bangles on her wrists jangled when she pushed a stray hair behind her right ear. Maisie noticed that she was wearing a silver crucifix.
    â€œYes? May I be of assistance to you?” The woman’s smile was broad and welcoming.
    â€œI’d like to see Mr. or Mrs. Paige, if I may. Are they home?”
    â€œMrs. Paige is here. Please come in.” She stepped aside, and held her hand out to one of two ladder-back chairs situated on either side of an umbrella stand in the entrance hall. “Please wait—I will fetch her.” The woman bowed her head and walked on tiptoe towards the door at the end of the passageway. It seemed almost as if she were dancing, so light was her step.
    While waiting, Maisie regarded her surroundings. Dark cream wainscoting ran along the bottom half of the walls, above which wallpaper with a design of intertwined red geraniums had been hung without matching the pattern. She thought that if she looked at the wall for long enough, she would become quite dizzy, so strong was the sense that the bricks were moving underneath the paper. She looked at a collection of photographs on one wall, of a series of very British-looking adults clustered together in places other than Britain. In one they were seated at a table under a palm tree, in a second together in front of a series of mud huts. There was one of a church minister holding his hand up to the heavens while talking to a group of dark-skinned children, all seated with legs crossed and each one appearing to hang on his every word. A crucifix hung on the wall.
    â€œGood morning. I’m Mrs. Paige.” A short woman with a round face and hair tied back in a bun stood in front of Maisie, her hands clasped in front of her middle. She wore a flower-patterned day dress with the low waist that might have been fashionable some ten years earlier, though the fabric seemed to pull across her middle. Her face was unlined, and her cheeks rosy red, as if she had been sitting in the sunshine without a hat.
    â€œMrs. Paige, please forgive me for imposing upon you without notice; however, I wanted to see you at the earliest opportunity.” Maisie held out a card. “I have been retained by Mr. Pramal to look into the death of his sister, Miss Usha Pramal, who I believe resided with you.”
    The woman appeared agitated, looking at the card without taking it, and wringing her hands together. “Well, yes, but . . . but my husband isn’t here, you know.”
    Maisie nodded. “I see—but perhaps you could spare me five minutes or so. I have just a few questions for you, Mrs. Paige.”
    â€œOh, all right then. Come with me.”
    Mrs. Paige led the way into a front-room parlor. It was a dark room, revealing a sensibility that was somewhat old-fashioned, even by the standards of those who were slow to change or who had little money to do so. A picture rail painted in maroon gloss that had lost its