Dear Reader,
Looking back over the years, I find it hard to realise that twenty-six of them have gone by since I wrote my first bookâSister Peters in Amsterdam. It wasnât until I started writing about her that I found that once I had started writing, nothing was going to make me stopâand at that time I had no intention of sending it to a publisher. It was my daughter who urged me to try my luck.
I shall never forget the thrill of having my first book accepted. A thrill I still get each time a new story is accepted. Writing to me is such a pleasure, and seeing a story unfolding on my old typewriter is like watching a film and wondering how it will end. Happily of course.
To have so many of my books re-published is such a delightful thing to happen and I can only hope that those who read them will share my pleasure in seeing them on the bookshelves againâ¦and enjoy reading them.
LADY DOWLEYâS Christmas party was in full swing, an event which achieved the very pinnacle of social life in the village of Little Estling, remotely situated as it was some nine miles from Aylesbury and well away from the main road. Remote though it was, it had more than its fair share of landed gentry and the retired professional classes scattered in and around the small place, carrying on tradition: cricket in summer, garden parties, church bazaars, carol-singing at Christmas â¦
The large ornate drawing-room in Lady Dowleyâs Victorian mansion was full of people, not because she was especially liked in the neighbourhood but because she offered refreshments of a kind most of them were quite unable to afford: smoked salmon, Parma ham, delicious bits and pieces poised on minuscule scraps of toast. The wines were good too; her late husband had assembled a nice cellar before he died. She was an overbearing woman, still handsome in a middle-aged way and prone to interfere in other peopleâs affairs and with a deep-rooted conviction that she was always right. It would have upset her very much to know that her friends and acquaintances pitied her and, despite not liking her over-much, would be prepared to go to her aid if it should ever be required.
Happily unaware of this, she surged to and fro, being gracious to those she considered a little beneath her socially and effusive to those she saw as her equals, and presently she fetched up before a middle-aged, thick-set man with a calm wise face and shrewd eyes.
âDr Crawley, how delightful to see you.â She glanced around her. âAnd your dear wife?â She didnât give him time to answer. âAnd your lovely daughter?â
Dr Crawley said comfortably, âThey are here, Lady Dowley, no doubt having a good gossip with someone or other. Youâre keeping well? And Phoebe?â
âI told her that she simply had to comeâI go to all the trouble of asking any number of interesting people.â She looked over his shoulder. âYou must excuse me; there is a very old firm friendâdo remember me to your wife if I shouldnât see her ⦠Perhaps she will come to tea soon.â
Dr Crawley made a non-committal noise. His wife, a sweet-tempered woman with a retiring disposition, was none the less the granddaughter of an earl, therefore to be cultivated by his hostess. Dr Crawley, whose family had lived on the outskirts of the village for generations, and who knew every single inhabitant, gave a derisive snort and then turned to see who was tapping him on the shoulder.
His daughter Beatrice was a head taller than he, a splendidly shaped girl standing five feet ten inches tall in her bare feet and as pretty as a picture. She had light brown hair, long and straight and coiled in the nape of her neck, large grey eyes with sweeping lashes the same colour as her hair, a delicate nose and a wide, sweetly curved mouth above a determined chin. She was smiling.
âFather, cheer upâweâll be able to leave in another half-hour or so. Iâve left Mother with Mrs Hodge discussing knitting patterns.â She stopped abruptly as a pair of hands covered her eyes from behind. âDerek, it is you, isnât it? Has the path. lab thrown you out at last?â
She put up a hand to her forehead. âDonât you dare to make my hair untidy, it took me hours â¦!â
The hands dropped and she was turned round, smiling, offering a cheek for his casual kiss, aware that there was someone with him. A man of vast proportions with grey hair cut very short and heavy-lidded blue eyes. It was an unpleasant shock to see that he was looking at her with a detached coolness so that her smile faded. He doesnât like me, she thought uncertainly, but we donât even know each other â¦
âBeatrice, this is Gijs van der EekerkâGijs, this is Beatrice Crawley; weâve known each other since we were trundled out in our prams. Years ago.â
She shot him a lookâany minute now he would tell this man how old she was. She held out a hand and said, âHow do you do?â and had it engulfed in a firm grip. âAre you visiting Derek?â she asked, wanting to hear his voice.