A Dangerous Deceit (2 page)

‘Well, I see no virtue in deliberately seeking discomfort.' When he used it, he had a smile of tremendous charm that quite transformed his features.

Margaret smiled back and refrained from mentioning the expense attached to the fixing of pipes, radiators and boilers. Neither Symon's theological studies nor his family background had given him that sort of insight into the lives of ordinary folk. It probably wouldn't occur to him for some time that central heating was far beyond all but the favoured – unless it were pointed out to him, when he would, to do him justice, be extremely mortified.

Accepting his proposal of marriage, Margaret had also accepted that it was going to be her duty to instruct him on such matters. Coming from a family such as his, and possessed of a private income, he had an uneasy relationship with his conscience when it came to being able to acquire something no ill-paid curate could afford. He had put temptation behind him over the acquisition of a small car, and went around on a push-bike or walked like every other curate – and even his vicar – did, but had succumbed over her engagement ring and had now convinced himself that buying a house would not be going against his principles.

When Margaret thought of the alternative – that horrid little clergy house crouching in the shadow of the parish church – she could not find a reason to disagree. Indeed, it made even more sense to give some consideration to Laurel Mount. True, the dining room was gloomy, but perhaps it was nothing that couldn't be dealt with by fresh, light wallpaper and paint – and after all, how much time out of one's life was spent in the dining room? In any case, they were unlikely to be living here forever, perhaps not for very long. She cast another look around the drawing room. Although it announced the date of its origins in the shape of a simply hideous black marble fireplace and some dun-coloured wallpaper featuring maroon plums, it was well proportioned and had a south-westerly aspect. The garden had a mulberry tree and might be quite pretty in spring.

The French windows were locked when she tried them, but Symon found the key in the bunch which had been handed over and they descended three slippery wrought iron steps to the flagstones outside, his hand protectively under her elbow. The steps had been cleared of snow, no doubt on the instructions of the agent, but bore a thick rime of hoar frost. They turned in unison and looked in silence at the unpromising red-brick facade. ‘What do you think?' he asked.

Margaret avoided an immediate answer by bending to pick a small, somewhat withered slip of rosemary, grey-green and tough, the last surviving sprig of a frost-bitten shrub poking through a snow-covered flowerbed. It gave off its pungent, peppery smell as she held it to her nose but the leaves fell to the ground, dead, after all.

‘Well?' Symon prompted to her bent head, her profile just visible under the modishly close-fitting cloche hat, a matching red to her coat. The question came out sharper than he had intended, but she didn't look up.

He put his finger under her chin and raised it so that she had to look at him. Tendrils of soft brown hair escaped charmingly from under the hat's tiny brim. Her eyes were a clear, golden hazel, thickly lashed. A little frown creased her brow. He looked, and suppressed a sigh. He couldn't dismiss the unnerving feeling of – could it be uncertainty that he had sensed in her lately? In Margaret, strong-minded, even wilful at times? Whatever it was, it was something he couldn't get past. At that moment, he felt an almost irresistible desire to crush her in his arms, along with another, almost equally irresistible one, to shake her and tell her she was nearly driving him mad with this uncharacteristic dithering about which house they were to have, that by now he was entitled to expect her to have been getting over her father's death. A forceful personality like his was not accustomed to being gainsaid. He almost lunged forward to grab her, but then controlled himself. ‘Margaret,' he said, breathing deep, ‘think carefully before you answer … do you really want to marry me?'

Had he actually said that?

She stood for a moment in shocked silence. She almost started to say something, then stopped herself. Finally she answered, a smile beginning in her eyes. ‘If there's one thing I hate above all things, it's women who keep men dangling on the end of a string – and now I'm one of them, aren't I, poor Symon?'

He looked affronted. ‘Don't laugh, Margaret.'

‘Dearest Symon, I'm not laughing, I'm
teasing
.' She looked contrite. ‘And that's not very nice of me, either. I'm afraid I've been infuriating lately, haven't I? How do you put up with me?'

Relief surged through him. She did tease him, that was true, but she could also make him laugh, which helped him feel less weighed down with the seriousness he felt was expected of him as a man of the cloth. ‘Does that mean yes?'

‘I don't see why we shouldn't make something of this house.' And indeed, a few minutes ago she had been envisaging her mother's Victorian cranberry glass collection, placed where it could catch the light, and some nice pictures against pale walls. Tradesmen would deliver, and she was a good walker.

It was scarcely the reply he had hoped for but it reassured him. He was sorry he'd doubted her, even for a moment; he should have known by now that once she had committed herself to something, she would never break faith. ‘Well,' he said. ‘Well, that's a relief.'

‘You didn't really think—?'

‘I imagined nowhere but Folbury was going to do. I know how attached you are to the place.'

‘So much so that I'd refuse to live anywhere else? Symon, not really!'

Symon, who disliked being made to feel foolish, was even more annoyed with himself, to think that he'd allowed himself to believe she wouldn't contemplate living only a few miles away from where her life was presently centred, where her roots were, where all her activities were bound up. It was not only foolish, but disloyal to Margaret. All the same, a weight lifted itself from his shoulders.

It scarcely mattered to him where they lived – well, hardly at all, as long as they were together – barring that miserable clergy house down in the town, which he had no intention of inflicting on himself, or his new wife. Equally, he was determined not to start their married life in Alma House, the large rambling residence where Margaret presently lived with only her brother, and Maisie Henshall, who helped to keep everything in order. In fact he had absolutely no desire whatsoever to live in the same house as Felix – hasty and argumentative, filled with all those preposterous Socialist ideas, forever throwing the place open to those so-called friends of his, some of whom were so left wing they had espoused Communism and given up their jobs to work for the party, and were never averse to a free meal and a bed. Surely he had only imagined that such a suggestion had hovered tentatively in the air? That Margaret, free now of the obligations to her father, was reluctant to hand over the running of the house to Maisie, or to abandon it to Felix and his cohorts? She was overprotective of Felix, when she had no need to be; he was more than capable of looking after himself.

A few months previously, Osbert Rees-Talbot, who had not only lost an arm but had also sustained other long-lasting and debilitating internal injuries many years ago while serving as a soldier in the South African war, had died tragically. That night, he had kissed Margaret, said goodnight and gone upstairs earlier than usual, in order to take a bath before retiring. An hour later Felix had tried the knob of the bathroom door and, alarmed to find it locked, had called to ask if all was well. There was no reply. The key was in the lock and when the door didn't respond to his shoulder against it, he had resorted to slipping a piece of paper in the space beneath and poking the key on to it. The door open, he was met with the sight of his father, face downwards in the bath he had run.

It seemed there were always difficulties in reaching a firm conclusion in such a death, but in this case it appeared to be so obvious that there had been no need to search for underlying causes: it was evident that Osbert, possibly overcome by an attack of pain or dizziness, had slipped under the water and, one-armed as he was, his balance never very reliable, been unable to save himself, hapless as a fly with only one wing. The verdict at the inquest had been death due to accidental causes.

No one outside the family remarked on the locked bathroom door, perhaps because they assumed that to be the normal procedure when one took a bath. His doctor, however, who had foreseen such difficulties in view of his disabilities and warned him never to do such a thing, shook his head angrily at the folly of patients who thought they knew better than he did. Within the family, none of them spoke of why Osbert, normally so conscientious about heeding this warning, had felt it necessary on that occasion to disregard it.

They had understandably all been deeply shocked by the tragedy, which had thrown their lives into confusion. But now, in the face of Margaret's procrastination, Symon's never too easily held patience was wearing thin. He considered he had been more than generous in allowing it to go on so long, putting it all down to having too much responsibility thrust upon her since her father had died – amongst other things, dealing with his financial affairs.

The fortunes of the present Rees-Talbots, such as they were, had come into being through their great-grandfather, Huw Rees-Talbot. Through his marriage to a young woman of the locality, he had come to Folbury from South Wales and, continuing the trade to which he had been apprenticed, had set up a brass foundry, one more in the mushroom growth of Black Country trades – some small, some not so small – allied to the metal industry, heavy and light, which had already made Birmingham world famous. By dint of unrelenting work and canny investment, Huw's original two-man foundry had prospered and over the years he had expanded it to take in an engineering workshop for the machining of his castings. He had also bought up several smaller concerns, as well as property, both domestic and industrial. By the time he died, he had amassed a respectable fortune.

His son Joshua had outlived him by only a few years, dying of a heart attack while his own son and heir was in South Africa, in the first stages of recovery following the amputation of his arm. Afterwards, back home in Folbury, his army career behind him and faced with finding a new life for himself, Osbert had taken on the management of the Rees-Talbot finances, but it wasn't a task anyone had wished to take on when he died.

‘Find a sound man of affairs and turn everything over to him,' advised his brother, now retired from his own military career. A hitherto lifelong bachelor, Hamer had found himself comfortably entrenched in Malvern, unexpectedly and delightfully married to the widow of one of his fellow officers, and had discovered golf. In the end it had been Margaret – always her father's right arm, literally and figuratively – who had stepped in to keep things ticking over until someone suitably trustworthy could be found, Felix having flatly declared himself unwilling to take on the job. In Symon's opinion – though he had so far kept it to himself – it was high time they all looked after their own affairs.

Now, at last, someone had been found, in the person of Mr Bertram Lazenby, an elderly, semi-retired accountant recommended by the bank. He had nodded approval at Osbert's meticulous ordering of the family affairs, and the conscientious way he had looked after the interests of his brother and sister, but Osbert's system had been one of his own devising and Mr Lazenby had still not succeeded in adjusting it to his own satisfaction. He was taking his time and would not be rushed.

‘Symon?' Margaret's question as they went back into the house made him blink, suddenly aware that he'd been lost in his own thoughts for too long. ‘Darling Symon, I'm so sorry if I've made you think even for a moment … How could I? You must know I love you more than—' Her face became quite pink. Such declarations weren't easy for either of them.

‘I do know it, Margaret, my love, of course I do.'

‘You mustn't get me wrong – it's just that I've been bothering too much with other things that don't really matter one jot, when you have enough concerns of your own.'

‘What concerns do I have that aren't yours?' he asked lightly. But he had felt a jump of alarm, and in a moment his eyes, grey that always darkened with emotion, were the colour of slate. Yes, he had his own – not secrets, not at all, but rather worries he preferred to keep to himself, for the time being at any rate, though it seemed he hadn't been as successful in concealing them as he had thought. Not seeing his own lack of logic, he said abruptly, ‘Whatever's bothering you, you should tell me, you know. It's what I'm supposed to be for, isn't it? To listen to troubles.'

‘Since when have you ever taken Confessions?'

‘Perhaps you ought to try me. And I don't mean in a professional capacity.'

‘Oh really, darling, there's nothing to bother you with, just bits and pieces of my father's that still need sorting out.' She touched his cheek lightly. ‘Haven't you noticed yet? I'm afraid it's my nature to fuss unduly. You'd better marry me quick, before I become a finicky old maid.' She laughed, yet he fancied the shadow hadn't entirely gone from her eyes.

That same night, a slow thaw began, and over the next few days the snow turned to slush, the gutters ran and the Fol, down in the valley, spread its banks.

On the third day, out at Maxstead, two retrievers were bounding forward, joyful to be back once more in their familiar routine, when the bitch, following her nose, suddenly found something very much to her liking. Setting up an excited barking, she began to dig. The other dog was close behind her and soon both were tugging furiously, their teeth into a brown leather boot that stuck up out of the newly softened soil.

‘Oof, I've had enough!' Margaret collapsed into a canvas deck chair and threw her tennis racquet down on the grass.