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CHAPTER ONE
As the door clicked gently shut behind her the quiet sound registered with all the force of a thunderclap on Beth Marton's ears For a second she froze, unbelieving; then she turned, gingerly pushing against the unyielding wood Of course it didn't budge—but then it wouldn't with the latch having sprung shut
'Oh, no, no' Beth pushed again, harder this time, even as she told herself it was pointless She was locked out If she had been standing outside her flat in London that wouldn't have hbours always around that she could have called on in the block in which the flat was situated, and one of them could have tele¬phoned her sister who had a spare key for eencies But this was not London
She glanced so but bubbleguhetti shoulder straps The dark windy night was not en¬couraging And rain was forecast
When a cold nose nudged one hand she glanced down at the big dog as surveying her with impatient eyes 'I know, I know,' she muttered 'We're out here and your dinner's in there, but it was you who insisted you needed the loo a o'
And it was her who had followed Harvey outside with the torch so she could make sure he didn't disappear into the black¬ness Which was doubly daft in hindsight, considering he kneas dinner time—Harvey's favourite moment of the day—and also that there was nowhere he could really go The garden sur¬rounding the little cottage she was renting was all neatly fenced
A gust of wind brought the s Beth she had lit the fire in the sitting roouard wasn't in front of it but standing to one side of the slate hearth
Panicking now, she scurried round the outside of the cottage to see if any of the s just h she doubted it When she had arrived at the place half an hour ago, travel weary after a journey she wouldn't have wished on her worst ene in the dark, everything had appeared shuttered and closed After retrieving the front door key which had been hidden under a plant pot as the agent had told her, she had lugged all her stuff inside, only stopping to bung per¬ishable food into the little fridge before she had stripped off for a wonderfully welcome shower
Once the stickiness of the tortuous journey—which had consisted of traffic jam after traffic jaht of dressing again, and so had pulled on her pyja the fire Harvey's enormous basket established in a handy corner, and a tin of his favourite food open in the tiny cottage kitchen, she'd been about to feed him when he'd made it plain he needed to be let outside for a moment
'Ow!' As she slipped on so which s, her eyeballs rattled with the jolt to her systee to cry was suddenly and very childishly paramount, but instead she recovered the torch which had fallen out of her hand and struggled to her feet Harvey see into this new gahtedly He'd found the long journey froether more like it
Thankfully the torch still worked, but Beth didn't need its light to tell her a fox or badger obviously skulked about the cottage garden at night The smell on her pyjamas and fluffy mules did the job more than adequately
Walking round the building to the front door again, she stood for a ht The day itself had been quite war in traffic, but the night air had a bite to it which said summer wasn't quite round the corner yet
She would have to s else for it Beth gazed at the beautiful old leaded lights in the sitting roolass was the same, and when she had drawn up earlier and adht then they e was tiny and chocolate boxy, cohout and all the char it was a couple of cen¬turies old But charht at this minute
Harvey's stoan to whine and when an enor whined it wasn't the same as a poodle
Beth couldn't hear herself think ‘All right, all right' She shushed hi to do a considerable ae if she smashed one of these lovely old s but she couldn't think of any other course of action As far as she could recall, she hadn't passed another dwelling place for so lane which had eventually led to the cottage Besides which, she was hardly dressed to go tra round the Shropshire countryside