The dingoes had howled across the mountains, and the possum who ruled the ceiling and the lemon tree had indulged in his nightly growling battle with any intruder into his kingdom, but this morning Wombat Hills seemed peaceful, the only sound the thud of the wallabies once again failing to get through the fence to the rose garden. Mrs Douglas Mulberry (née Agnes Glock) opened her eyes in her late mother-in-law’s bed while across the room her late mother-in-law’s maid, Trout, added more wood to the bedroom fire. To Agnes’s relief her husband was not lying beside her. Douglas must have had a good night again.
The curtains were open, as usual, as were the windows. The air smelled of chilled gum tree from yesterday’s late spring snow. Douglas did not like closed windows, even in the mountain winters, nor closed curtains at night.
Across the room the two cherubs that supported her mother-in-law’s chaise longue stared at Agnes, unblinking. It was a perfectly good chaise longue. The bed was comfortable, and the linen sheets worn to an incomparable softness. The only fault Agnes could find with them – and the rest of the house furnishings – was that they had been
