Free A Dangerous Deceit by Marjorie Eccles

And when I say interested, I mean interested, Plum. It need not affect our relationship. Try to remember, darling, why I’m doing this.
    Meanwhile, Arthur Aston, dead in his brass foundry. A second mysterious death, barely six weeks after the discovery of the last is juicy, for Folbury, anyway. Harold Butterworth dithered about letting me cover it, but since he didn’t trust me to ‘hold the fort’ either – i.e. sit in the office in case something turned up – and more likely because he obviously had the mother and father of a hangover, out I was sent. It’s more than time he got a grip on himself. Frank, the old stalwart I replaced, now retired, was seemingly content to jog along in the same old rut, but at the same time it’s quite evident that he’d been carrying Butterworth for years.
    The police have to look carefully into any sudden, unexplained death and they are crawling all over Aston’s foundry, which they would not be if they were certain this death was natural. I attempted to speak to Joe Gilmour, the ginger-haired sergeant on the case, but he was cagey in the extreme. I mean, even more cagey than usual for the police, which makes me think they know something more than they want to reveal. I shall have to tread softly, in more ways than one. I had what amounted to a stiff warning from Butterworth last time. It’s in his interest to keep in with the local police – the inspector, Waterhouse, is one of his Rotary Club cronies – and I can’t afford to put his back up again. No one is, after all, indispensable, and it’s vital that I stay here, isn’t it? And not only for the money … though let’s not forget that by provincial standards, the
Herald
actually pays surprisingly well, which is a bonus in itself.
    I would like to get to know the Rees-Talbots better, but it’s not easy. The family (and I include their cousin Kay Dysart, the doctor, and their aunt Deborah) are very hospitable and have heaps of friends – Felix sometimes even throws Alma House open for the meetings of the WSG – but at the same time, they’re such a tight-knit family I feel that whatever happens they’ll stick together. When anything goes wrong they close their ranks and don’t let their feelings show; they are so well-mannered and restrained, even Felix, whom his family sees as a revolutionary. Really, he is quite a pussycat compared to the rest of the WSG. The violent feelings ritually sounded off at their meetings would horrify Margaret and Co.
    More as soon as I have anything useful to tell you, darling.

Five
    Lady Maude, widow of Sir Lancelot Scroope, stuck her finger deep into the soil of a small terracotta plant pot, making room for the last of the geranium cuttings she and Heaviside, her head gardener, had been bringing on. She despised anyone who imagined they could garden without dirtying their hands. As far as she was concerned, a finger made the ideal dibber for these tiny plants.
    Tenderly, she coaxed the sturdy little cutting into the hole and gently teased the loam over the roots before firming it down and placing the pot with those already completed – nearly two hundred – in satisfying rows on the greenhouse bench, ready to plant out in the garden in a few weeks. She had a plan for the large lozenge-shaped flowerbed in front of the drawing room windows – a blaze of massed geraniums, edged with royal blue lobelia and white alyssum, patriotic and cheerful. She and Heaviside were in complete accord: neither had any patience with newfangled schemes that sought to make a garden look like a wishy-washy artist’s palette. Or worse, those dreadful all-white gardens that were said to be the latest thing.
    Her task finished, she rubbed her hands down the hessian gardening apron she never neglected to wear over her dresses – once expensive though now doubtless thought dowdy and old-fashioned, a fact which bothered