Just a Matter of Time (novel)
Just a Matter of Time is a 1973 thriller novella by James Hadley Chase.
Summary
Alice Morely-Johnson is an old lady who is worth several million dollars. She had been a popular pianist and now she has retired to live in a penthouse with a chauffeur named Bromhead who serves her impeccably. Her financial matters are handled by a banker named Chris Patterson who is doing it because he knows that Miss Morely-Johnson is fond of him and gives him costly gifts. When Miss Morely-Johnson’s companion-help goes away, she asks Patterson to search for one. Patterson falls for an applicant named Sheila and even Miss Morely-Johnson seems to like her because allegedly she had played on stage with her father.
Patterson is excited about Sheila getting the job because he can meet her. What Patterson does not know is that Sheila has been fixed beforehand by Bromhead, the chauffeur who plans to execute a perfect crime of killing Miss Morely-Johnson and making it appear like an accident so that all her insurance money goes to a nephew of hers, Harry, who is in love with Sheila. The plan was that after her death they would divide the money in three equal parts and move on, but the plan begins to go awry when the detective on duty in the penthouse senses something fishy about Sheila dressing up as someone else leaving the penthouse.