Asking For Trouble (17 page)

I wasn’t worried how to handle him because I was sure he wouldn’t want to start a shouting match which would bring Alastair to investigate. But I did want to know what he was after. It wasn’t my body, I was almost sure of that. I must have made it clear how I felt about him. But you never knew with men. They’re loath to take no for an answer and big handsome Jack-the-lads like Jamie here can never get it into their thick heads that any girl doesn’t fancy them, no matter what she says.

‘If you’re going to tell me I’m the sexiest thing you ever saw,’ I told him sarcastically. ‘Skip it.’

‘You’ve got to be joking,’ was his reply, expressed with considerable feeling. So much feeling that it really wasn’t flattering and although I’d asked for that, I felt quite offended. He went on, ‘I wouldn’t touch you with a barge-pole with a rubber glove on it, as the saying goes.’

‘Kinky!’ I said.

He just gave me a disgusted look. ‘As far as I’m concerned, you’re just a piece of garbage which blew in here off the city streets. God knows what I’d catch. You might even be HIV positive, for all I know.’

‘Thanks.’ If nothing else, I really knew for sure now he hadn’t come here looking for nookie. ‘So what do you want?’ I asked.

‘You’ve got a confounded nerve!’ His tone was almost one of wonder, as if he really couldn’t understand it. ‘You come here, get yourself invited to stay, run rings round the old people, even old Ruby, help yourself to my cousin’s bathrobe, her room . . . anything else of hers you can find, I guess.’

Remembering the lipstick, I felt my cheeks burn and was glad of the moonlit room which meant, I hoped, he couldn’t see it.

‘I don’t creep around at night trying to get into other people’s rooms while they’re asleep!’ I snapped.

He just grinned, holding up the key and waving it slowly back and forth like a metronome beating time. ‘Expecting me?’

He still laboured under the misapprehension that I must find him attractive and had been lying here hoping he’d appear. I suppressed the impulse to deny it, because he wouldn’t have believed me, and would have taken my protest as proof.

‘What do you want?’ I asked as coldly as I could.

‘A little talk, nice and private. And keep your voice down! I’ve taken care not to make a noise and disturb the household. You’ll oblige by doing the same and not shouting your head off, as if you were still on your street corner!’

‘Drop dead!’ I invited him. ‘You’re out of your tiny mind if you think we’ve got anything to discuss. Right?’

Even in the pale light, I saw him glower. ‘Wrong! We’re going to straighten out this situation here and now, before you see Alastair at breakfast and get another chance to play little girl lost.’

That made me wild. But I realised that if I reacted to the jibe, I’d be playing this his way. It was time to set a condition of my own.

‘You can do all the talking you want,’ I told him. ‘I’m not saying a word unless you give me that key.’

I saw him debate that with himself. It was no use his being my gaoler if I just heard him out in silence. No situation was ever ‘straightened out’ that way.

He didn’t want it to look as though I’d won a point, however, so he decided to be amused by my request. ‘Here!’ He chucked the key at me. I just managed to catch it and, I have to admit, to have the small piece of metal pressing into my palm was comforting.

Preliminary negotiations settled, we moved to the next stage. Jamie swivelled the dressing-table chair and seated himself.

I took the Lloyd Loom chair, wrapping the bathrobe round me as much as I could. It was on the skimpy side, being tailored to fit, at a guess, a fourteen-year-old. I held it together over my thighs, but my boobs threatened to pop out the top which didn’t quite wrap over enough.

He watched me wriggling uncomfortably and offered, ‘If you want to put some clothes on, I’ll turn my back. Although I’m surprised you’re so shy.’

‘Just a moment!’ I snarled. I got up, sidled my way over to the bed, grabbed the duvet, wrapped that round me and returned to my chair, swathed like a chief attending a pow-wow.

When I was settled, he cut through any more ceremonial with, ‘How much?’

‘How much what?’

‘How much do you want to go back to London, first thing in the morning? I’ll pay a reasonable amount.’

‘Why are you so keen for me to go?’ I countered.

‘Fifty quid? Eighty? That’s my final offer.’

The man was determined to insult me. Not just by offering the money, but so little! I wasn’t even worth a decent amount! But offering at all? He was worried.

‘My, you’re really keen for me to go! I’m just a bit of garbage, right? Why should you bother about me? Or have I got you rattled, Jamie?’

He couldn’t take mockery.

He leaned forward, his face twisted in anger. ‘Listen, you little bitch! Alastair doted on Theresa. Losing her was, for him, like losing an arm or a leg. He’s been eaten up with guilt, too, poor old devil, because he believes he could have saved her, as he puts it. No one needs to be a shrink to work out what’s going on now. You walked in and, as you no doubt hoped he would, he’s seized the chance to work off some of his guilt and loss. But you’re not going to play that little game. I won’t let you. Think yourself lucky I’m offering to pay you off! I could just as easily take you out of the house and beat you to a pulp.’

I fought the instinct to flinch before the venom in his voice and managed to sit steady and meet his eye. ‘You’d have a job explaining that to the old people, as you call them! And you’d have a job explaining to Alastair what you were doing in here if I screamed.’

‘You? Scream? When did you last scream to defend your honour?’ He gave a hoot of laughter. ‘Go ahead. I’ll tell Alastair it was all your idea. You invited me here, then tried to get money out of me for sex. He doesn’t know you well, but he knows your background. He might just believe it.’

‘He still wouldn’t consider it gave you the right to be preparing to fornicate under his, or Ariadne’s, roof. Alastair’s old fashioned. He probably imagines you’re a gentleman, Jamie, and somehow I don’t think you want to disillusion him. As for money, forget it. I came all the way here after giving it a good deal of thought. I’ll leave when I’m ready or Alastair tells me to go – whichever happens first. Either way, you don’t come into it.’

He got up, towering over me. ‘You’re going to be sorry you turned down my offer,’ he said. ‘I won’t make it again. You’re a fool, Fran.’

He walked out. The door swung closed behind him, leaving me wondering if he wasn’t right.

I didn’t think he’d be back. I returned the duvet to the bed and clambered back under it. Thumping the pillow, I tried to settle down, but it was hopeless.

Detectives oughtn’t to leap to conclusions. Just because I didn’t like Jamie, didn’t mean he was a complete villain. Perhaps he was just worried about the old people and wanted to protect them from me. Perhaps he had just come here tonight to offer me money to leave – or try and frighten me into leaving. But the more I thought about it, the more dissatisfied I became.

Was it my being in the house he didn’t like? Or my being in this room in particular? If so, was it just sentiment? Or perhaps he feared there was something in here amongst all Terry’s stuff, which might give me a clue. If so, a clue to what?

My earlier intention had been to search the room before anyone could tamper with the contents. Perhaps I oughtn’t to put that off any longer.

Wide-awake now, I got out of bed and switched on a lamp. I didn’t want to make a noise and waken the whole house so crept about barefoot, as sneakily as Jamie had done earlier.

First I went to close the curtains in case anyone
was
outside in the darkness. I could see a black frieze of tree-shapes moving in the night breeze against an indigo sky. The moon slid out for a moment and bathed the garden in a light which bleached out all the colours. My eyes, too, were becoming accustomed to the dark. Now I could see the outline of shrubs and paths. As I watched, the bushes moved, leaves shivering. The wind, I told myself. But I couldn’t be sure. Was that a shadow down there, darker than the surrounding ones? Was it long and thin, not round and stubby like the shrubs? Did it stoop and shrink into the box hedges? Was it only shreds of cloud floating by the moon’s face? Was I hallucinating? One thing was certain, I was clearly silhouetted against the lamplight.

I dragged the curtains to. This was a time to keep my imagination firmly under control. Detectives had to be businesslike. I began to work over the room systematically, slow and steady.

I tried the drawers of the dressing table. They contained the items I’d already seen there. Make-up, crumpled tissues, a manicure set. A couple of old bus tickets. They were similar to the one I’d bought to come from Basingstoke to Abbotsfield. So Terry had taken the bus into town a couple of times. I had to find something more significant than that. I abandoned the dressing table and turned my attention to the chest of drawers in the corner.

I took all the stuffed animals off the top and pulled it away from the wall. Nothing behind it. Nothing of interest in the top drawer, just a couple of sweaters. Second drawer empty. Third drawer filled with old schoolbooks and paperbacks. I took them all right out, each and every drawer, because there are good old reliable tricks like taping things to the reverse of the frame.

Declan told me that once, when a landlady threw him out of a furnished room he’d rented in Bayswater, he’d tacked a kipper to the reverse of a drawer frame before he left. He’d reckoned it would have stunk the place out before they found it.

But there was nothing behind any of these. I sorted through the books but I didn’t see what relevance a bunch of old Agatha Christie’s or
An Introduction to the Poets of the First World War
could have to any of this. One of the Agatha’s had a picture of Hercule Poirot on the jacket. I fancied he was looking at me in a smug way, clearly thinking my ‘little grey cells’ were vastly inferior to his. No doubt he would have worked all this out in five minutes, assembled everyone downstairs and pointed at whom? It would be nice to think he’d point at Jamie.

I checked through all the other books to see if anything had been slipped inside, but there was nothing. I put them all away and turned my attention to the wardrobe. No luck. I looked under the bed, under the mattress, under the carpet. I remembered reading a book where the heroine had sewn love-letters into the lining of the curtains so that her wicked uncle couldn’t find them. But these curtains didn’t have any lining and who did that sort of thing these days, anyhow?

I sat down on the bed, discouraged. It was nearly five. It was light outside now and the birds were singing. Several times I heard a horse whinny. They were already at work over in the stableyard.

I’d forgotten to put back the stuffed toys which all sat on the carpet in a row gazing at me with their glass eyes. I felt that Terry’s ghost was sitting with them, fixing me with the same reproachful look. I was supposed to have found it and I hadn’t. I still didn’t even know what it was!

‘It’s no use looking at me like that, you lot!’ I told the toys. I got up and picked them up in one armful to replace them on the top of the chest of drawers. As I did, one of them crackled.

I thought: if I had to hide something small, I could do worse than hide it in one of these toys. If I couldn’t sew it into the curtains like the heroine in that book, I could sew it in one of these animals.

I examined them all one by one. I ran a thumb along all the seams, tugged at their limbs and heads, prodded them all over.

Bingo! It was a blue and white rabbit and when I pushed its tummy it crackled again. Someone had definitely resewn the seam up his back, and not very well. The stitches were big and lumpy. I got a pair of nail scissors from the make-up drawer and snipped away at a few of them. It pulled apart easily and I pushed my fingers inside. They encountered a piece of paper, folded into a tiny wedge.

I eased it out, my palms sweating with excitement. It was two pieces of paper, not one. Two sheets of letter paper folded up together. After all, was this going to turn out to be an outpouring of purple passion? If so, I’d no right to read it.

I flattened it out and took a look at the signature.

It had been written by Ariadne Cameron.

Chapter Ten

I sat on the edge of the bed and placed the two rectangles of thick cream writing paper side by side beneath the bedside lamp. Each sheet was written on one side only and the letter was headed with the Astara Stud’s address and dated three years previously. It began,
Dear Philip
. . .

The only Philip I’d heard mentioned so far was Terry’s father, Philip Monkton. All I knew about him was that he was absent, unpopular and parted from Terry’s mother. Why this letter to him from his Aunt Ariadne should be in Terry’s possession and why she thought it necessary to hide it away, I’d only find out by reading it. I quashed any twinge of conscience at reading someone else’s private correspondence and scanned it with indecent curiosity. The writing was cramped but clear, an educated hand but an elderly person’s. Frankly, few younger people nowadays could write that beautiful even copper-plate. My handwriting looks like the tracks of a drunken spider.

The letter began with a general query after Philip’s well-being and some remarks about Ariadne’s own none-too-good state of health. Then came the nitty-gritty of the affair.

I am writing, Philip, to tell you that I’ve now settled details of my new will and Watkins, the solicitor, is drawing it up. I shall be signing it on Monday. The future of the Astara Stud is, naturally, my first consideration
.

Until recently, my entire estate was bequeathed to my brother. But the passing of time and the corressponding change in circumstances has necessitated some different arrangement. Alastair is getting on in years, as I am, and would not wish the responsibility. Besides which, the Grim Reaper is as likely to call on him as on me! You have never shown any interest in the stud and you are, in any case, busy with your own very successful career. Neither you, nor Alastair, is in need of money. With the exception of a few personal bequests, therefore, I’ve left everything to Theresa. By everything, I encompass the stud, all property including this house, and the residue of my estate after the individual bequests and other outgoings have been settled. I’ve discussed it with Alastair, who thinks it the best decision. I hope you will also be happy with the arrangement. It will leave Theresa a wealthy young woman. That in turn will relieve you of any future financial burden in her regard. In view of your remarriage (which may in time produce a new young family for you), it will be, I’m sure, a great relief
.