Family and Friends

Family and Friends
Emma Page

A standalone mystery from the author of the Kelsey and Lambert series.A number of people in the Midland town of Milbourne felt their lives would be happier without Zena Yorke, for Zena, rich, spoilt, once-beautiful, diabetic, sat like a spider at the heart of a web of intrigue.There was her husband, initially successful in his garment factory because of her but now grown tired of her; Arnold Pierson, the firm’s accountant, over whom she had a mysterious hold; her hard-up brother, casting covetous eyes at Zena’s money; her beautiful sister-in-law who feared what Zena could disclose.In this situation the arrival in the town of a pretty widow acted as a catalyst. Yet when Zena died, the family doctor was satisfied it was from natural causes. There was no case to investigate.

COPYRIGHT (#ulink_eca3bfa5-073d-5890-a73f-efdaeaa7661e)

Harper

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)

First published in Great Britain in 1972 by Collins Crime

Copyright © Emma Page 1972

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.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.

Source ISBN: 9780008175986

Ebook Edition © MARCH 2016 ISBN: 9780008175993

Version [2016-02-18]

CONTENTS

Cover (#u5621b172-fca2-5761-970c-674b86120928)

Title Page (#ud9d2f590-de36-51c9-acf1-7347688436ee)

Copyright (#ulink_88bf5255-a8b2-5e69-82cc-ac3d496645c1)

Chapter 1 (#ulink_90cf951c-f169-540b-bfe2-10135e2d6de8)

Chapter 2 (#ulink_0c6053b0-34cb-51ac-8f50-fb6b31620d61)

Chapter 3 (#ulink_3c22aca4-0b15-5903-b3d9-4dbcc1b68ed5)

Chapter 4 (#ulink_c6154091-71ab-57d7-a491-88a00c5fc9e6)

Chapter 5 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 6 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 7 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)

By Emma Page (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER 1 (#ulink_110db8c3-70b2-5f46-a4e0-e49c0e2a3d33)

A damp and desolate afternoon in Milbourne, a hangover day filmed with the melancholy of the old year’s passing.

Little swirls and eddies of fog among the grey stone streets. The yellow lights of shops half-heartedly welcoming the straggle of dispirited housewives beginning the new year as they had finished the old, plugging the gaps in the family store-cupboard against yet another weekend, another succession of mountainous meals to be consumed in the name of festivity.

In the manufacturing quarter of the town, a mile or more away from the main shopping area, Owen Yorke sat at his desk in the small cramped office on the ground floor of Underwood’s. He had built the factory in the years of restriction that followed the second war.

No thought of luxury then, no concern to provide himself–the managing director and joint owner–with impressive surroundings of pale wood and a wide sweep of window, only the urgent necessity to produce, to sell, to start the wheels turning and keep them turning.

Now, twenty-five years later, success and the eternal need for expansion had brought Underwood’s to the point at which the old factory would no longer do. The plans for the new building had already been approved, work was to begin on the site in a matter of weeks, as soon as the fierce grip of frost showed signs of slackening.

Owen Yorke bent his head over the plans uncurled on his desk, considering the layout of the storage bays. The factory was silent now, the machines idle until Monday morning brought the workers streaming in again through the gates. Only a skeleton staff in today, the man who looked after the old-fashioned heating system, a handful of clerks catching up with the paperwork, cleaners busy with mops and buckets.