Planning for Murder [antikvár]

One< 1 >'Things appear to have got into a bit of a mess since I last descended on you,' Miranda Jones observed, casting a disapproving eye round her father's studio on the Wednesday before Easter. 'It's lucky I decided to come for the whole week.'Miranda, who was then in her second year at a London ballet school and shared a flat in Battersea with her friends, Lucy and Mark, spent most Saturday and Sunday nights, as well as the major part of her summer vacation, at East End House in West Sussex, where she had been bom and, after a fashion, brought up. There were times, especially during the winter, when she would have chosen to be elsewhere, but she had a strong sense of responsibility as well as aflTection for her father, Billy Jones, who was an architect and on the reclusive side. And, to be absolutely honest, of late West Sussex offered other inducements for frequent visits, which for the time being Miranda chose to keep to herself.Miranda's somewhat exceptional filial attitude dated from her early childhood when her mother, discovering herself to be unfitted for marriage and motherhood and, most of all, Billy's reclusiveness, had thrown in the towel and departed to take up residence with a woman friend in Provence. This domestic upheaval had made