Showing results by author "Veronica Heley" in All Categories

Bea Abbot and her husband have been running a highly successful domestic agency for many years, but when he falls ill and dies, she is pressured by her MP son and novelist daughter to retire. Bea is so tired from the long years of nursing her husband that all she wants is peace and quiet, and to have her pretty early Victorian house in Kensington, London, all to herself. What she gets is a couple of young lodgers with troubled backgrounds and an old friend banging on her door, asking for help.

Ellie and her new husband Thomas are called to deal with Ursula, a young student who has staged a sit-in at church. Ursula challenges Ellie to solve three mysteries: a broken engagement, her friend Mia's disappearance, and a murder. As she investigates, Ellie begins to suspect that there is more to these events. Soon she finds her own friends and family targeted as a powerful group hunts her down.

Troubles never come singly. Ellie’s old friend and housekeeper falls off a ladder and hurts herself after seeing a “ghost” in a neighbour’s house, while Ellie is trying to get rid of a desperate young man, who says he’s looking for his great aunt… who happens to own the house in question. Mrs Pryce had told everyone she was moving to a retirement home, but never arrived there.

The fake diamond in Dilys Holland's engagement ring implies that all is not well with her marriage. And Bea Abbot has already clashed with Dilys's husband, the bullying Benton, when she refuses to help him rescue his ailing company. But matters are about to turn a great deal worse when Dilys tries to commit suicide. Or does she?

Ellie opens the door to a man who is a stranger but instantly recognisable as the father of her housekeeper's young son. Mikey had been conceived at a party during which his mother, Vera, a schoolgirl, had been drugged and raped. Abdi hadn't wanted anything to do with her, but now he is a consultant whose wife cannot have children, and he aims to pay off Vera and adopt Mikey. Ellie discovers that Vera still thinks fondly of her then boyfriend, even though he had also rejected her.

Bea Abbot's plans are disrupted by the unexpected arrival of one of her clients, bearing a brown leather briefcase full of expensive jewellery. Magda Summerleys has been working as a housekeeper for wealthy art expert Lucas Rycroft, who, she says, entrusted her with the briefcase for safekeeping - and who seems to have disappeared without trace.Drawn into the tangled affairs of the dysfunctional Rycrofts, Bea soon discovers that other members of the family are determined to get their hands on the jewels - by whatever means necessary.