Dying For a Cruise (4 page)

‘Course, when Lucas said he intended to take her out at least once a week, I took it with a pinch o’ salt, like. He’d just had her commissioned, see, and I thought …’ Aware that he was becoming a little less than discreet, he shrugged his shoulders and trailed off.

Jenny, of course, had no such scruples. ‘You thought it was just another rich man’s toy?’ she stated flatly. ‘That he’d soon get bored with it, and leave it to slowly rust away, out of sight somewhere?’

Tobias gave her a thoughtful glance, and then nodded. ‘Yeah, that’s what I thought, right enough. And glad I was to be proved wrong. Lucas has had her for years now, and we still go out in her near enough every week. Course, he likes to show her off, so we often take guests up to London or Oxford and back. Sometimes even further – though the river gets narrower the further north you go, and it wouldn’t do to get the
Swan
stuck. Not that I mind the company of guests, you understand?’ he added anxiously. ‘A boat like the
Swan
deserves to be shown off. She was made for folks to enjoy. But I like it quiet too – when it’s just us.’

Tobias settled himself more comfortably against the post. ‘I remember, deep one winter, we took her out just after an ice-breaking barge had been through. We’d had a hoar frost the night before, and the sun came up next morning, as pale as a lemon. Well, we took her out, and she was the only boat on the water. All the weeping willows was hanging over the banks, like them silver strings you put on Christmas trees. Must have been a Sunday morning, too, cos as we went, we could hear the church bells a’going. No one was with us on that trip, neither. Just me and Brian, Lucas and Francis. I’ll never forget it. People tend to think that a riverboat’s just for the summer. T’ain’t true.’ He shook his shaggy, leonine head, and Jenny, who’d been almost hypnotized by the vision of it in her mind, suddenly opened her eyes a little wider and gave herself a mental shake.

This would not do!

‘Well, I suppose I should inspect the cupboard space on board. I don’t want to take any food that might spoil.’

‘Oh, we’ve got a refrigeration unit on board, didn’t you see it?’ Tobias asked, as proud as any father talking of his daughter’s prowess.

Jenny, thoroughly delighted now, admitted that she hadn’t seen it, and she followed him happily to the galley to be shown a small but handy fridge, tucked away under the sink.

Hundreds of yards away, in a neat and newly renovated cottage in the middle of the village, David Leigh looked up from his desk and glanced through the window towards the river.

He should be at the office, by rights, but Archie Pringle, senior partner of Pringle, Ford & Soames, Solicitors, had been more than happy to give him the afternoon off, when informed that the junior man had been invited to join Lucas Finch on a weekend river cruise.

Not only was the
Stillwater Swan
something of a ‘celebrity’ around and about, having been featured in several lifestyle magazines and local newspapers, but Pringle, Ford & Soames would be very happy indeed to get their hands on some of Lucas Finch’s much-vaunted business dealings. It was well known that Finch had made the majority of his fortune in biscuits, and owned several factories that still produced such delights as ‘Jimmy Jammy Fingers’ and ‘Peach Puffs’. There was a lot of mileage to be got out of a biscuit king, so Archie Pringle was more than happy (if a little envious) to let his junior have a little leeway in the hopes of landing some of Finch’s business. And if, as rumour had it, the start-up money for Lucas’s empire had been a shade, well, shady, then that was just too bad. In this uncertain economic day and age, it paid even well-established and respectable solicitors not to be too choosy who they did business with.

David Leigh, however, was not feeling particularly grateful for his unexpected leisure time. In fact, as he looked out at the river and thought about tomorrow morning and the start of the cruise, happiness was the furthest thing from his mind.

He pushed the papers he’d been working on away and rose to his feet feeling stiff-necked and badly knotted up. It was his nerves, he knew. The tension was getting so bad that he thought, just sometimes, that he might go stark staring mad any minute now. He felt like he wanted to scream and rant and rave, but didn’t dare to, because he was not sure that he would be able to stop, once he’d started.

Instead, he walked slowly towards the window, and his eyes went immediately to the almost fairy-like figure of his tiny wife, who was busy picking some raspberries at the bottom of the garden. She looked incredibly lovely, dressed in a pale, floating summer dress, her ash-blonde hair blowing in the breeze.

Although the doctor had assured them that she was indeed three months’ pregnant, she still looked as slender as a reed. At only five feet two, with tiny wrists and ankles, David could hardly imagine her big with child.

He sighed, then winced, as a haunting note filled the air.

At the bottom of the garden, Dorothy Leigh looked up, and frowned. She knew the sound well, of course. Everyone who lived in Buscot did. It was the hauntingly lovely steam whistle of the
Stillwater Swan
.

Brian O’Keefe must be testing the boilers in preparation for the cruise tomorrow.

Dorothy paused in picking the luscious, tart berries, a small frown tugging at her pale brows. She wasn’t looking forward to tomorrow. Or Sunday. She wished, in fact, that they weren’t going at all.

She knew that Lucas Finch had what her mother coyly called ‘a thing’ for her, but it was not the thought of fighting off Lucas’s rather coarse passes that worried her.

Her green-eyed gaze turned back to the house and she thought she saw a figure step hastily back from the bedroom window. Not possible, of course. David was hard at work on old man Filey’s last will and testament. The silly old goat was always chopping and changing it about, much to the amused annoyance of his loving kith and kin. He’d probably left his imagined fortune to his cat this time, or to his sour-faced sister who was, for some reason, currently in favour with the old man.

Dorothy sighed and resumed picking the berries. If asked, she couldn’t have said quite
why
she was so uneasy.

She only knew that she was. She just couldn’t shake off a feeling of … well … of … doom, almost. Her old granny would condescendingly have put it down to her condition, whereas her more modern doctor would have reassured her that it was only natural that she should sometimes feel so restless, but Dorothy knew it wasn’t that.

There was something wrong with David.

But she knew that her husband would only give her one of his long-suffering, lightly amused looks if she tried to ask him about it, so she didn’t bother. But a wife knew these things.

And so she went on patiently picking berries, and wishing that Lucas hadn’t asked them out on the boat.

Inside the house, David Leigh walked back to his desk and pulled out a piece of paper. He looked at it for a long, long, time, his face curiously pinched and grim. Yet anybody looking over his shoulder wouldn’t have seen anything remarkable about the correspondence at all. It was simply a long, handwritten letter from one of Pringle, Ford & Soames’ clients, outlining some conveyancing work that he wanted done on a property out Farrington way.

But what David Leigh did next might well have surprised any observer.

For, slowly, carefully, and on a separate piece of paper, David Leigh began to write an exact replica of the letter. Word for word. And in a handwriting that was fast beginning to look indistinguishable from the real, original thing.

With just a bit more practice, David thought with a near-hysterical and grim twist of his lips, he could have a lucrative second career as a forger ahead of him.

In the beautiful old town of Woodstock, Gabriel Olney checked his tie in the mirror. It was perfectly straight and impeccably knotted. It was navy blue, and bore the insignia of a very good public school. He stood ramrod straight in front of the mirror, looking every inch the colonel he had once been. He was not tall, at five feet eight, but the very rigidity with which he habitually stood to attention made him
seem
taller. He was going to be sixty-one on his next birthday, but he was as lean and fit as a whippet.

His dark grey eyes checked that his moustache was properly trimmed, and that his dark blue ‘sailing’ jacket was without a crease. He gave a brass button an eagle-eyed check, but it shone as only good old-fashioned spit-and-polish could make it shine. He gave a grunt of satisfaction.

Unlike David Leigh, Gabriel Olney was looking forward to the weekend. Very much so.

He smiled, a rather hard, gimlet-eyed smile as he took off the jacket and began, very carefully and very neatly, to pack his small, overnight case. His wife’s larger case already lay half packed on the bed, crammed with garments she’d simply tossed in, willy-nilly.

He gave it a scathing look.

When his shaving things were neatly stowed, and his deck shoes (encased in polythene, of course, to ensure that they could make no dirty marks) were neatly tucked away at the side, he shut the lid and zipped it up. Then he straightened and reached into his wallet. From it he exacted a cheque.

It was a very
large
cheque.

As he looked at the rows of noughts, he smiled with gloating satisfaction.

And if the same fictional somebody who might have been watching David Leigh had now been stood peering over
his
shoulder, they’d have been very surprised indeed. For the cheque was not made out
to
Gabriel Olney, but was made out
by
Gabriel Olney to Lucas Finch.

But still Gabriel Olney, late colonel in what he considered to be one of the best regiments in the land, smiled with eminent satisfaction as he considered the vast sum of money he intended to part with.

At that particular moment in time, Jenny Starling was also smiling like the Cheshire cat that had had the cream. And found a canary in it to boot.

She was standing in the large kitchen of Wainscott House, going over every item the butcher, fishmonger and greengrocer had brought in their smart little refrigerated vans.

The butcher had arrived first, bearing lean cuts of venison, dark, marbled steaks, prime lamb, fresh pork and smoked bacon. Not even Jenny had been able to find a single fault with the tender meat.

The fishmonger had arrived just as she’d finished carefully storing the meat in the large fridge at Wainscott House. She would only remove the food to the
Stillwater Swan
first thing in the morning.

The fishmonger had fared rather less well than the butcher, for Jenny had insisted that he take away his mussels and return with a batch that suited her fastidious tastes better. She’d compounded his misery by rejecting two of his trout, which, she insisted, after a beady-eyed look at their gills, could be chucked in the bin, thank-you-very-much. But she was happy with the prawns, crab, salmon and whitebait, although she did reject his oysters.

Jenny disliked cooking oysters, ever since that very distressing incident concerning the Russian ambassador’s wife, and the six bottles of vodka.

The greengrocer, last of all to arrive, had to watch and wince as she minutely inspected every vegetable and piece of fruit that he laid out for her, from the leeks to the quinces, the asparagus to the grapes. He left with only a few bruised apples, some (admittedly) unwholesome-looking bananas and a dented kiwi.

All in all, not a bad haul, Jenny thought, looking at her list of goodies. Already her heart was thumping. Breakfast was easy enough, of course, for a full English breakfast was a must. She could make some fresh sausages with the pork and the herbs she’d already gathered from the kitchen garden, and smoked bacon, grilled tomatoes and kidneys. And of course plenty of fried eggs always went down a treat with the men.

For the ladies, though, and especially Dorothy Leigh, Jenny would include the options of delicately flavoured omelettes, porridge and perhaps a little kedgeree on the menu.

Lunches, too, would be a snap, with plenty of salads, a cold chicken and ham pie, perhaps even a huge fruit salad, to help keep the guests cool and refreshed on a hot summer’s day.

But the evening meal….

Jenny sat down eagerly, pulling the list of goodies towards her, and letting her imagination run riot.

There would have to be hors d’oeuvres, of course – cheese and anchovy biscuits, Bengal eggs, salmon croutes, sardine and olive canapés. She sighed in bliss. Then, for a second course, perhaps some lobster cocktails followed by a chicken liver savoury or maybe halibut rarebit. And she mustn’t forget soup, of course. A rich game soup, or, no, perhaps something lighter … Jardiniere soup, or lettuce and spring onion soup. Yes, very nice on a sultry summer evening.

And for the main course…. Her heart very nearly sang a song. Well, Lucas Finch had promised her she could go wild. Perhaps eels. No, perhaps not. Not with a pregnant woman seated at table. Fricassee of veal, perhaps, or venison à la royale.

Hmm….

And desserts that looked as beautiful as they tasted. They’d have to be cold, of course. A pity that, but it
was
high summer. Almond cream with greengage jam would go lovely with a variety of things. Apple gateau, or apricot soufflé … yes, especially for Dorothy Leigh. And for the gentlemen something a bit more substantial. Chestnut and pineapple trifle, or floating island, or lemon sponge….

Someone coughed.

Jenny looked up ferociously. She’d just begun to elevate herself into the lofty heights of foodie nirvana and she wasn’t too pleased to be brought down to earth with such an unkind bump.

‘Yes?’ she snapped. To a perfect stranger. Jenny blinked, and immediately apologized. ‘I do beg your pardon. I was miles away.’

The stranger inclined his head. And in that instant, Jenny was forever to believe that this man did
everything
silently. She had certainly never heard him come in, and since the kitchen was tiled, she
should
have heard him. And when he spoke, his voice was little more than a whisper.