A Dangerous Deceit by Marjorie Eccles

and Margaret laughed at the idea of Directoire knickers with elastic round the legs. Deborah was not sure that she wasn’t just a little shocked … even she, who wore whatever clothes she felt like wearing, regardless of what anyone thought.
    â€˜That’s a very expressive hmm, Aunt Deborah.’
    â€˜It wasn’t meant to be. Your uncle …’ She stopped and then went on, ‘Whatever Arthur Aston was or was not – well, Kay, violence against anyone is appalling.’ After a moment she added, ‘What a dreadful thing for Mrs Aston. I think I must go and see her. And we must ask the vicar or Symon for prayers to be said for her husband in church.’
    Kay rolled her eyes. ‘I always suspected you were a saint, now I know you are. Aunt Deb, that man’s been persecuting you for months!’
    â€˜Pestering yes, not persecuting. There’s a difference.’
    â€˜All the same.’
    Deborah remained silent, putting a hand up to tuck a tendril of her untidy grey hair back into its pins while Kay, glass in hand, stared out through the open window over the long garden, still and quiet, that had once been her aunt’s delight but was not as well cared for now as it had been. Soft scents of spring wafted in. Dusk was beginning to fall and the daffodils under the trees showed like pale, sentinel ghosts. A blackbird began to sing.
    â€˜Did it ever cross your mind, Aunt Deb, that it might, just possibly, have been better to do as Aston wanted? If you had gone along with the uncles and agreed to sell the Hadley Piece premises to him, you could have moved out of here and bought yourself a nice, modern little house. You still could, you know. This place is far too big.’
    â€˜But when you have your own practice, it will make an ideal doctor’s house – room for a surgery and waiting room and everything. Unless, of course, you and that nice young pathologist … Donald Rossiter, isn’t it—?’
    â€˜Oh, I’ve no time for all that,’ Kay said, brushing the remark aside. ‘Don’t sidestep, darling. All right, I won’t push it, but I just wonder why Aston wanted that old horror of a building so much?’
    The premises on Hadley Piece, in effect a large, ugly warehouse, and one of the properties originally acquired by old Huw Rees-Talbot for the fairly substantial rent it brought in, had come down to Deborah and her two brothers. Out of use as a warehouse for several years now, Arthur Aston had been angling to buy it, having outgrown the two separate Henrietta Street buildings and needing larger premises in order to bring them together to – what was it he had said ? – to rationalize his business. Hamer had been willing enough to sell and Osbert, reluctant for some considerable time, had eventually come round to it just before his death, but it had needed Deborah’s agreement too and she had steadfastly refused to put her signature to the document which would enable the purchase to go through.
    â€˜He said he needed to expand, Kay.’
    â€˜I know what he said, but now is hardly the time to be thinking of expansion. I suppose he thought he could buy it cheap and hold on to it until better times arrive.’
    Deborah opened her eyes very wide and said calmly, ‘No. That was what he wished me to believe – about expanding, I mean – but he only wanted it to knock it down.’
    Kay put her glass on the table and stared at her aunt. ‘You surely haven’t any sentimental attachment to that gruesome old eyesore? Anybody with any sense would be glad to see it razed to the ground.’
    Deborah laid aside her sewing – it was getting too dark to see – and contemplated what was left of her sherry. ‘My dear Kay, those new houses that the council have built on what they’ve christened the Walnut Hall estate … that’s very satisfactory, but more land will soon be needed if