The Grass Widow's Tale

The Grass Widow’s Tale

Ellis Peters

Felse Family 07

A 3S digital back-up edition 1.0

click for scan notes and proofing history

Contents

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‘Listen to who’s talking. I’m not the one who goes hobnobbing with gunmen and such.’ Such is Bunty Felse’s light-hearted reply to her husband’s parting words of caution, as George is called away to London on urgent police business.

But left alone in the house, Bunty begins to feel depressed: she will be forty-one tomorrow and feels that, now their son Dominic has grown up, there is nothing left for her to do except grow older.

To shake off the black mood, she goes out to the local pub — where a chance meeting with a distraught stranger proves that her farewell words to George were horribly mistaken. Caught up in a terrifying situation, Bunty struggles desperately to hold on to the life which earlier stretched out endlessly before her…

In this penetrating study of human passions, Ellis Peters once again displays her remarkable talents as a writer of classic crime fiction.

Ellis Peters is the pseudonym of Edith Pargeter, the distinguished author of many historical novels, including the Heaven Tree trilogy and The Marriage of Meggotta (available from Macdonald). As Ellis Peters she also writes the bestselling Brother Cadfael mysteries. She lives in Shropshire.

Also by Ellis Peters in Macdonald

DEATH AND THE JOYFUL WOMAN

FALLEN INTO THE PIT

THE KNOCKER ON DEATH’S DOOR

A NICE DERANGEMENT OF EPITAPHS

BLACK IS THE COLOUR OF MY TRUELOVE’S HEART

RAINBOW’S END

Ellis Peters writing as Edith Pargeter

THE HEAVEN TREE TRILOGY

THE HEAVEN TREE

THE GREEN BRANCH

THE SCARLET SEED

THE MARRIAGE OF MEGGOTTA

A Macdonald Book

First published in Great Britain in 1968

by Collins Publishers Ltd

This edition published in 1991

by Macdonald & Co (Publishers) Ltd

London & Sydney

Copyright © 1968 Ellis Peters

The right of Ellis Peters to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Printed and bound in Great Britain by

BPCC Hazell Books

Aylesbury, Bucks, England