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HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
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First published in Great Britain by Heinemann 1952
Copyright © 1952 Rosalind Hicks Charitable Trust. All rights reserved.
Cover by ninataradesign.com © HarperCollins 2017
Agatha Christie 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: 9780008131425
Ebook Edition © June 2017 ISBN: 9780007534975
Version: 2018-04-11
Contents
I
Ann Prentice stood on the platform at Victoria, waving.
The boat train drew out in a series of purposeful jerks, Sarah’s dark head disappeared, and Ann Prentice turned to walk slowly down the platform towards the exit.
She experienced the strangely mixed sensations that seeing a loved one off may occasionally engender.
Darling Sarah—how she would miss her … Of course it was only for three weeks … But the flat would seem so empty … Just herself and Edith—two dull middle-aged women …
Sarah was so alive, so vital, so positive about everything … And yet still such a darling black-haired baby—
How awful! What a way to think! How frightfully annoyed Sarah would be! The one thing that Sarah—and all the other girls of her age—seemed to insist upon was an attitude of casual indifference on the part of their parents. ‘No fuss, Mother,’ they said urgently.
They accepted, of course, tribute in kind. Taking their clothes to the cleaners and fetching
