An Apple from Eve, chapter 1

Oh, dear. This will be a long nine days, I'm afraid. I'm not crazy about the book, though perhaps it will improve when the nasty fiancee comes on the scene. On the bright side, it features a Dutch doctor - I've written over 20 posts, and none of them featured the Dutch doctors that gave the blog its name!
By the way, the title of this book doesn't make much sense to me. We'll see whether that improves.
As the book starts, Euphemia Blackstock is driving home from the hospital she works in, because her father is having heart trouble. You'd think that under the circumstances, she would be too distracted to notice a steel-grey Bentley pulled up beside her at the traffic light, but she does notice. When she gets to her home, it turns out that the driver of the Bentley is a heart specialist who has been called in to consult on the case. This is our hero, the Dutch doctor, Dr. Tane van Diederijk. He advises that surgery won't help - it would only extend Colonel Blackstock's life for a few days.
Though, to be precise, Tane doesn't mention this at all until the next morning, after the Colonel has died in the night. This is so high-handed that I can't even grasp it - although the family was present, Tane decided not to tell them that their father would probably die in the night, unless he had surgery to extend his life a few days. And of course it's likely that they would have decided against the surgery, but how would he know that? There might have been one more relative that needed the extra day to arrive (to say goodbye), or some alteration to the will that wouldn't be ready until the next day.
The Colonel has left the house mortgaged, and Euphemia decides that it would be best to keep the house, but rent it out until they can come up with some way to pay the mortgage and afford to live there again (it's early days yet, but so far her best plan is to hope that Ellen, her 20-year-old sister, marries a millionaire. Practical!). It turns out that Tane wants to rent out the house, because he needs a house for a few months that is handy to London, and he offers a rate that is twice what Euphemia had hoped for.
By the way, Euphemia is not strikingly beautiful, but she's not plain either. She's a bit plump, which for Betts means "a serious cold, and drop a few pounds and be perfect".