The Apricot Bed

by Margaret Yorke

Bertram Bliss walked through the store, inhaling the scents from the perfumery department and revelling in the presence of so many women. From the Chairman’s office at the top of the building, he directed the affairs of the shop, and the lives of those who worked there. To some, like Sally Manners, the talented display designer, who had her own dual life to manage, he was a subject for mockery; others, like Marjorie Betts, had reason to bless his kindness and resourcefulness; and Paul Jessamy, the ambitious young head of the Household department, admired his business acumen. But it is the true nature of Bertram Bliss’s relationship with his wife that is gradually discovered as the store prepares for Christmas, and on the night of the staff dance a crisis is reached in the lives of several people.

Set against the busy background of Bliss’s store, in the provincial town of Sedgemouth, with a large cast of characters, this is a story of lust, frustration and loneliness, and of one woman’s journey to self-knowledge.

192 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1986

About the author

Margaret Yorke was an English crime fiction writer, real name Margaret Beda Nicholson (née Larminie).
Margaret Yorke was awarded the 1999 CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger.

Born in Surrey, England, to John and Alison Larminie in 1924, Margaret Yorke (Margaret Beda Nicholson) grew up in Dublin before moving back to England in 1937, where the family settled in Hampshire, although she later lived in a small village in Buckinghamshire.

During World War II she saw service in the Women’s Royal Naval Service as a driver. In 1945, she married, but it was only to last some ten years, although there were two children; a son and daughter. Her childhood interest in literature was re-enforced by five years living close to Stratford-upon-Avon and she also worked variously as a bookseller and as a librarian in two Oxford Colleges, being the first woman ever to work in that of Christ Church.

She was widely travelled and has a particular interest in both Greece and Russia.

Her first novel was published in 1957, but it was not until 1970 that she turned her hand to crime writing. There followed a series of five novels featuring Dr. Patrick Grant, an Oxford Don and amateur sleuth, who shares her own love of Shakespeare. More crime and mystery was to follow, and she wrote some forty three books in all, but the Grant novels were limited to five as, in her own words, ‘authors using a series detective are trapped by their series. It stops some of them from expanding as writers’.

She was proud of the fact that many of her novels were essentially about ordinary people who find themselves in extraordinary situations which may threatening, or simply horrific. It is this facet of her writing that ensures a loyal following amongst readers, who inevitably identify with some of the characters and recognise conflicts that may occur in everyday life. Indeed, Yorke stated that characters were far more important to her than intricate plots and that when writing ‘I don’t manipulate the characters, they manipulate me’.

Critics have noted that she has a ‘marvellous use of language’ and she has frequently been cited as an equal to P.D. James and Ruth Rendell. She was a past chairman of the Crime Writers' Association and in 1999 was awarded the Cartier Diamond Dagger, having already been honoured with the Martin Beck Award from the Swedish Academy of Detection.

Margaret Yorke died in 2012.

Reviews

[Patricia Young · Rating 5 out of 5]

Payback

Another well written novel, interesting characters and a very satisfying ending by a highly underrated author. I have read and enjoyed several of her books and unlike some authors I have enjoyed every single book.

[Deb Mervold · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed the characters and the sense of justice that occurs.