Free Pretty Maids All In A Row by Anthea Fraser

nursery rhymes.
    'May I wish you a long and successful run, then,' Lois said steadily. 'I'm also a fan of your husband's. I've read all his books and admire them tremendously,'
    Matthew himself, ashamed of his outburst, had nevertheless watched the obeisance paid to his wife with sour envy. He'd have to accept TV offers after all, he mocked himself. Only then would be become familiar to the square-eyed public. He found himself chatting to the local headmaster, a hollow-cheeked and sad-eyed man with dull, dusty-looking hair. His wife was small and plump, her face unashamedly devoid of make-up and her pronounced north-country accent at variance with the soft local burr to which Matthew had already become accustomed. Her husband's origin was apparent only in the occasional flattening of a vowel, a southern university having for the most part standardized his accent.
    'A fine Yorkshire name you have there, Mr Selby,' Mrs Bakewell was saying.
    'I suppose it is.' Never having thought about it, Matthew was vaguely surprised.
    'Grand part of the country. We'll be glad to get back there, when Donald retires.'
    Her husband gave a brief smile, and Matthew wondered if Bakewell himself had other ideas. He'd an air of disappointment about him; perhaps there'd been hopes of a professorship, and he resented ending his career a village schoolmaster.
    'I hear you're doing a history of the Sandon family, Mr Selby,' Donald Bakewell remarked. 'Lot of black sheep there, I imagine. All safely in the past, of course. I don't know the present earl, but he's highly thought of in these parts. Looks after his employees well, from all accounts.'
    'We met at Cambridge,' Matthew said, and, seeing Mrs Bakewell's lips tighten, regretted the admission. No doubt Leeds or Bradford would have been a more acceptable academe. 'They have quite a colourful past, but I dare say that goes for most of our old families.'
    'Have you been to the church yet? Reg Dugdale has registers going right back, and the graveyard's full of Sandons. The earliest tombstones are illegible, more's the pity, but if you peer close enough you can make out a few thirteen hundreds. The family still has boxed pews, you know, which they dutifully occupy at Christmas, Easter and Harvest Thanksgiving, though I believe the present countess is Catholic'
    'I suppose all the Sandons were, once, coming from French stock,' put in a pale, fair woman who had drifted up and stood listening to the conversation.
    'So were we all, once, Mrs Palmer!' the schoolmaster reminded her. 'Our little church switched faiths along with the others, when it was expedient to do so.'
    'Of course—I was forgetting.' The newcomer flushed and Matthew felt sorry for her. He turned as an attractive woman joined them, and learned with gratitude that she had read his books. Perhaps this wasn't such a backwater after all!
    Jessica meanwhile, with her usual flair for timing, chose her moment to tease Charles Palmer. Aware of him still on the fringe of the group nearest her, she looked up at her hostess and said in her clear, carrying voice, 'Tell me about Freda Cowley. Her departure seems to have taken people by surprise.'
    'Yes, she didn't even tell Carrie, which was thoughtless. But she's always been impulsive. Probably the chance suddenly came to go off for a week or two, so off she went.'
    'I had a decidedly odd phone-call,' Jessica went on, and, noting Charles Palmer's rigidity from the corner of her eye, used a dramatic pause to maximum effect. 'A woman over from the States,' she continued then, 'who seemed to think Mrs Cowley was expecting her. She'd been invited to spend her vacation at Hinckley's Cottage.'
    Kathy frowned. 'That's too bad. Freda's gone too far this time. What did you tell her?'
    'I offered to give her the estate agents' number, but her money ran out while I was looking it up and she didn't ring back.'
    'It would be Wilma Bernstein, I expect. Freda said she was coming, but I didn't know when.'
    A few minutes