Element of Chance
A standalone mystery from the author of the Kelsey and Lambert series.A mystery story that centres around the young and successful Alison Rolt. Complex strands of small town life unravel in the search for a murderer.
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Harper An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain in 1975 by Collins Crime
Copyright © Emma Page 1975
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.
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Source ISBN: 9780008175948
Ebook Edition © MARCH 2016 ISBN: 9780008175955
Version [2016-02-18]
CONTENTS
SEVEN-FIFTEEN on a calm, palely golden Friday morning in October. Andrew Rolt – Area Manager of CeeJay Plant Hire Limited – came slowly down the stairs of his large Victorian house on the outskirts of Barbourne. He was already dressed for work in a dark business suit; the skilful cut of the jacket concealed his thickening waistline, the beginnings of a paunch. Although he was not much over forty his brown hair was liberally streaked with grey. He was still passably good-looking in a boyish way; his features retained something of a vulnerable air.
He reached the front hall and went slowly towards the rear of the house. He had slept badly again, felt little appetite at the thought of toast or coffee. He halted in the doorway of the big silent kitchen and turned his head in the direction of the dining room with its store of bottles discreetly housed in the sideboard. He felt jittery, apprehensive. Surely the letter must come by this morning’s post. It had reached his ears in the gossipy interchanges of the trade that the interviews for the Kain Engineering job were scheduled for next Monday afternoon. If his name was on the short list they must surely let him know by today.
He had expected to hear yesterday morning, had come downstairs confident that he’d find the letter in the wire cage on the inside of the front door. He’d sent off two previous applications for jobs in September, both unsuccessful; when the second application had come to nothing he realized what was holding him back. This time he had corrected the error. He hadn’t put ‘Living apart’ in the box opposite ‘Marital status’; this time he had simply written: ‘Married.’
But yesterday there had been no word from Kain Engineering. There is still Friday, he had told himself, rallying almost at once from the old feeling of hopelessness that rose in him at the sight of the empty letter cage; there is no need yet for despair. It was despair that threatened him nowadays, a sense of failure and isolation that confronted him in unexpected moments, leaping out from behind a word, a look. He had to break out now from the barriers closing round him. In a couple of years he would be forty-five; he must make the push without delay – and must succeed in it – if he was to escape the insidious downward slope.
He glanced at his watch. Seven twenty-two. The post was scarcely ever later than seven-thirty. He turned from the kitchen and walked hesitantly towards the dining room. Nothing wrong with just one drink, it would make bearable the next few minutes of waiting.
In the large dining room with its tall windows framed in long drapes of plum-coloured velvet, he stooped to open the sideboard cupboard, paused with one hand already reaching for a bottle and stood for a moment with his eyes closed. No, he would not take a drink. He straightened up, sighed deeply and closed the cupboard.
He went quickly into the hall and let himself out into the garden, kept in trim by a jobbing gardener and glowing now with the deep rich colours of autumn. Chrysanthemums, dahlias, asters; shrubs with their soaring sprays and thick clusters of berries, white, scarlet and purple.
