The Moquette Mystery

The year before the Second World War a young Northern woman called May is working in the fabrics department of a London department store when a detective comes in, clutching a scrap of fabric. Any idea what this is? May's superiors aren't interested, so she takes the piece of oddly carpet-like cloth - in a floral pattern in pretty yellows, purples and blues - and gets rid of the officer by offering to find out. It turns out to be a piece of railway moquette, but not from any line May can identify - and in any case, how does it help to solve a murder? May's investigations take her out into Metroland, up to cloth mills in Halifax, and finally to the Isle of Wight, to solve the Moquette Mystery.