The Moquette Mystery

The detective who appears in London’s Quarmby & Bates department store brandishing the scrap of fabric is eager to be shot of the case. But for May Mitton in Fabrics and Furnishings, this coarse but rather beautifully patterned scrap appears to come from a train – but which, and where . . .? May’s investigations take her out into Metroland, to Oxford, back to her hometown of Halifax and the Isle of Wight – and into the mysterious world of moquette, with its celebrity designers and its impossible complexity of railway companies and carriage classes.