Brat Farrar
Josephine Tey
eBook
The story is about the Ashbys, an English country-squire family. Their centuries-old family estate is Latchetts, in the fictional village of Clare, near the south coast of England. It takes place in the late 1940s, after World War II.The Ashby family consists of Beatrice Ashby ("Aunt Bee"), a 50-ish spinster and the four children of her late brother Bill: Simon, 20; Eleanor, 18–19 and twins Jane and Ruth, 9. Bill and his wife Nora died eight years before. Since then, the Ashbys have been short of money. Bee has kept the estate going by turning the family stable into a profitable business, combining breeding, selling and training horses with riding lessons. When Simon turns twenty-one, he will inherit Latchetts and a large trust fund left by his mother. Simon had a twin brother, Patrick, older than he by a few minutes but soon after Bill and Nora died, Patrick disappeared, leaving what was taken as a suicide note.