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Автор Dilly Court
Published by HarperCollins
The News Building
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Published by HarperCollins
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Copyright © Dilly Court 2016
Cover layout design © HarperCollins
Dilly Court 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.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008137380
Ebook Edition © November 2016 ISBN: 9780008137397
Version 2017-05-09
For Georgina Hawtrey-Woore.
Table of Contents
The grandfather clock wobbled dangerously, its pendulum swinging to and fro in a carillon of chimes as it toppled off the carter’s wagon and hit the frosty cobblestones with a resounding crash. With her arm around her sobbing mother nineteen-year-old Alice stood on the pavement outside their home, watching helplessly as the bailiff’s men picked up the splintered wood and hurled it on top of her late father’s favourite armchair. For a moment it was as if Clement Radcliffe was still sitting there, his spectacles balanced on the tip of his nose as he studied the morning newspaper. With his nightcap slightly askew on his balding head and his moth-eaten red velvet robe wrapped tightly around his thin frame, he had always seemed oblivious to the world about him. An academic by profession and inclination, Clement had rarely come down to earth, and when he did it was usually to ask for another lump of coal to be placed on the fire, or another candle to make reading easier. And now he was dead.
