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Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
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First published in Great Britain by
Collins, The Crime Club 1976
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Source ISBN: 9780008196639
Ebook Edition © December 2016 ISBN: 9780007422814
Version: 2017-04-11
Contents
Gwenda Reed stood, shivering a little, on the quayside.
The docks and the custom sheds and all of England that she could see, were gently waving up and down.
And it was in that moment that she made her decision—the decision that was to lead to such very momentous events.
She wouldn’t go by the boat train to London as she had planned.
After all, why should she? No one was waiting for her, nobody expected her. She had only just got off that heaving creaking boat (it had been an exceptionally rough three days through the Bay and up to Plymouth) and the last thing she wanted was to get into a heaving swaying train. She would go to a hotel, a nice firm steady hotel standing on good solid ground. And she would get into a nice steady bed that didn’t creak and roll. And she would go to sleep, and the next morning—why, of course—what a splendid idea! She would hire a car and she would drive slowly and without hurrying herself all through the South of England looking about for a house—a nice house—the house that she and Giles had planned she should find. Yes, that was a splendid idea.
In that way she would see something of England—of the England that Giles had told her about and which she had never seen; although, like most New Zealanders,