Free A Judgement in Stone by Ruth Rendell

Eunice with quite a broad smile for her.
    “You are
sweet
,” said Melinda.
    August came in with a heat wave, and Mr. Meadows, the farmer whose land adjoined George’s, began cutting his wheat. The new combine harvester dropped bales of straw shaped like slices of Swiss roll. Melinda picked fruit, along with the village women, in the cherry orchards, Giles put up a new Quote of the Month, again from Samuel Butler, Jacqueline weeded the garden and found a thorn-apple, poisonous but beautiful and bearing a single white trumpet flower among the zinnias. And at last it was time to go away, August 7.
    “I won’t forget to send you a card,” said Melinda, recalling as she did from time to time that it was her duty to cheer old Parchment Face up.
    “You’ll find any numbers and addresses you may want in the directory by the phone.” This from Jacqueline, while George said, “You can always send us a telegram in case of emergency.”
    Useless, all of it, had they but known it.
    Eunice saw them off from the front door, wearing the crystal blue glasses to allay admonition. A soft haze lay over Greevingat this early hour, a haze thickened by smoke, for Mr. Meadows was burning the stubble off his fields. Eunice didn’t linger to appreciate the great purple dahlias, drenched with dew, or listen to the cuckoo’s last calls before his departure. She went quickly indoors to possess what she had looked forward to.
    Her purpose didn’t include neglecting the house, and she went through her usual Friday routine, but with certain additional tasks. She stripped the beds, threw away the flower arrangements—more or less dead, anyway, nasty messy things, dropping petals everywhere—and hid, as best she could, every book, magazine, and newspaper. She would have liked to cover the bookcases with sheets, but only madness goes that far, and Eunice was not mad.
    Then she cooked herself a dinner. The Coverdales would have called it lunch because it was eaten at one o’clock. They were not to know how dreadfully their housekeeper had missed a good solid hot meal eaten in the middle of the day. Eunice fried (fried, not grilled) a big steak from the deep freeze, fried potatoes too, while the runner beans, the carrots, and the parsnips were boiling. Apple pudding and custard to follow, biscuits and cheese and strong black tea. She washed the dishes, dried them, and put them away. It was a relief not to be obliged to use that dishwasher. She never had liked the idea of dirty plates with gravy or crumbs all over them hanging about in there all day, even though the door was shut and you couldn’t see them.
    Mrs. Samson used to say that a woman’s work is never done. Not even the most house-proud could have found more work to be done in Lowfield Hall that day. Tomorrow she would think about taking down the morning-room curtains, but not today, not now. Now for a thoroughgoing indulgence in, an orgy of, television.
    August 7 was to be recorded as the hottest day of the year. The temperature rose to seventy-eight, eighty, until by half past two it touched eighty-five. In Greeving, jam-making housewives left their kitchens and took the sun on back doorsteps; the weir on the river Beal became a swimming pool for little Higgsesand Baalhams; farm dogs hung out their tongues; Mrs. Cairne forgot discretion and lay on her front lawn in a bikini; Joan Smith propped her shop door open with a box of dog biscuits and fanned herself with a fly swat. Eunice went upstairs, drew her curtains, and settled down in deep contentment with her knitting in front of the screen. All she needed to make her happiness perfect was a bar of chocolate, but she had long ago eaten up all those she had bought in Stantwich.
    Sport first. People swimming and people racing round stadiums. Then a serial about much the same sort of characters as those Eunice had known in Rainbow Street. A children’s programme, the news, the weather forecast. She never cared much for the news, and