Death of a Delft Blue

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Set and printed in Great Britain by Tonbridge Printers Ltd, Peach Hall Works, Tonbridge, Kent, in Times ten on eleven point, on paper made by Henry Bruce at Currie, Midlothian, and bound by James Burn at Esher, Surrey

To

Marjorie K. Avery, o.b.e.

and

Marjorie Beer,

who were kind enough to provide me with the Netherlands setting for this book

Preamble

‘A Fortnight in Holland.’

Title of a book by Leslie Bransby

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According to the guide books, Scheveningen, on the Netherlands side of the North Sea, has developed over the centuries from a mere fishing-village to a popular resort. It boasts excellent hotels, fine beaches, possesses every facility for boating and bathing and can offer all the other forms of amusement which a holiday-maker is likely to require.

Dame Beatrice Lestrange Bradley and her secretary, Laura Gavin, preferred to stay in it rather than in the neighbouring, more dignified but less frivolous city of The Hague, so each morning Dame Beatrice, who was in Holland to attend what her secretary described as ‘a gathering of the vultures’ — in other words, a general conference on higher education — armed herself with her notebooks, her lecture notes, some typed pages of what Laura termed ‘irrelevant answers to improbable questions’ and betook herself to Noordeinde and the historic house in which the conference was to be held. This left Laura in Scheveningen to amuse herself as she pleased for most of the day.

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