Guilt Edged (19 page)

‘But if your father and Griff aren't careful, those hands won't be living in this cottage or working for this firm.'

I wanted to shout that it was none of his business. But, of course, since he was an accountant that was exactly what it was.

Mary stepped in, pressing more salad on me. Who'd have thought a lettuce leaf could prevent a quarrel? But it did, or rather the little slug sharing it with me did. I don't know which of us shrieked loudest. By the time we'd all calmed down, the moment was passed, and I dug out some of the
noblesse
that was supposed to
oblige.
‘Tell me, have you decided where you're going to live? You won't be commuting between the two cottages for ever?'

Apart from regularly popping into the shop to make sure Mary was OK, my working life continued to involve little more than watching paint dry. At least on Wednesday morning I was due to be part of the video conference. I'd never done anything like it and was half excited, half anxious. But I needn't have been either. At the last minute – I was literally just getting dressed in what I thought might be a videoconferencing outfit – Carwyn phoned to say it had been postponed. His boss wanted him to drop everything to tackle something else. Brian and Helen had wanted it to go ahead without him, but he insisted he wanted to be part of it. How about Friday?'

‘Brian's auction day.' As I listened to his muttered swearing, I added, ‘You know what Brian will say?' I told him without waiting for a reply: ‘
I told you so.
That's what they'll say. And they'd be right.'

‘Please don't take it personally.' He sounded quite upset.

‘Carwyn, as far as I'm concerned fraud is personal. Particularly when I'm dragged into it by Mrs Fielding and her darling little Puck.'

M
ore drying paint, then – not to mention, of course, drying glue. But suddenly I wanted air – maybe it was the glue fumes getting to my brain – and bolted, without telling Paul exactly where I was going, because I was off to check the two auction houses' offerings.

There was nothing top-end worth bidding for at the Lyminge one, but I left low bids for some items that should do well in the shop or in everyday fairs. The Hastings one was more interesting, with one or two gems tucked away in quite unexciting lots. Real gems: an eighteenth century Lowestoft bowl shoved under a twentieth century Winfield basin – Winfield being Woolworth's range, of course. Perhaps that one would have sentimental value, as opposed to the very real value of the Lowestoft. And there were other things in the room too. I didn't know exactly where. But there was something I had to respond to.

At last I found a pile of china, as haphazard as any of Pa's heaps still awaiting my attention. There were some decent Victorian plates, part of a dinner service, some twentieth century Wedgwood, and other odds and ends. And sandwiched between two very handsome late sixties Royal Worcester dessert plates was a piece of Delft. Eighteenth century. Adam and Eve. With the least bit of TLC it'd fetch upwards of three thousand pounds. I checked. The estimate for the entire lot was one to two hundred. OK, that was my Friday booked. But since other people were milling round, I simply put on my uninterested face and drifted on. Miniatures. No, I was absolutely not interested in miniatures.

Why wasn't I surprised to find a crop of very ordinary ones and one quite spectacular one? All one in one lot? The good one was of a guy in Restoration clothes, long cleft chin, gorgeous hair, his heavy-lidded eyes languorously regarding the world. Was that the right word? Or was it
sensuously
?

At least I wasn't ignorant enough to think I'd happened on a picture of Charles II. But I knew I'd found something. Not that the paperwork agreed with me. Unknown man, unknown artist. From the collection of some guy in Worcestershire, just like the other, ordinary ones. Estimate six hundred to eight hundred for the lot. I nearly squawked in disbelief. If only I'd had time to finish studying that magic book, I might have known something about the good one. And, come to think of it, I'd left the book at Aidan's. Not that I could have sat down and studied it here. Apart from anything else, that would have given the game away something shocking.

Yes, that miniature had to be mine. Not even Tripp and Townend's. Mine. Along with the dross that came with it if necessary.

So much for Paul's theory that you only needed the Internet to trade. If I hadn't been there in the flesh, I'd never have seen any of the precious items I wanted to bid for. Wouldn't have sensed them.

Even as I stuck a mental tongue out at him, however, I realized that he might have been right about something else. Phone bidding. No point in arousing interest by bidding for something people didn't associate with me. Why not do it anonymously, either via the net or by phone? Since, on the whole, I thought I'd rather hear a voice putting in my bids for me, I toddled off to the office and gave them my details.

Yes! The game was afoot.

So why was I feeling guilty?

In the past I'd have self-harmed till I could shut out a nagging doubt. Griff had suggested an alternative: hard work. But even as I geared myself up for yet another evening with nothing more cheery for company than a paintbrush, I puzzled over what felt like a tarnished conscience. My father regarded finding as keeping, no more and no less. Griff's dictum was
buy cheap; sell dear
. That was what trade was about. I hadn't stolen anything. I hadn't hidden the plate I wanted. I wasn't the person who'd given what I was sure was a poor provenance for the miniature. So I had done nothing wrong. Could I have done more that was right? Should I have alerted the auctioneer – not a man I knew, even by reputation – to the fact that my antennae were twitching? ‘Hello, my diviner's instinct tells me your learning and experience are astray?'

I'd done it professionally in France. I'd told aristocrats their inheritances were dodgy and informed the Prime Minister that he'd wasted money from the public purse. But I hadn't done it this afternoon.

As I picked up the figurine I'd marked out for the evening's work, I let her slip. A hundred pounds' worth of Chamberlain's Worcester milkmaid, entrusted to me to have a churn restored to her right arm, lost the other. Just like that. So now – because that was how I did business – I had to do the whole repair for free, explaining that I'd been a careless idiot. The waste of a complete evening and a tiny chip on my reputation.

It was only as I finished all I could do on the milkmaid for now that I realized what I'd done wrong. Or failed to do right. It was nothing to do with the miniatures. It was that I should have had my eyes open for shady white horses and suspicious Ruskin ginger jars. And I hadn't, in my lust for goodies, even thought about them. I headed down to the computer and checked. Yes, there they were. Both of them. Tomorrow's job – and not for me. For Carwyn.

For some reason I couldn't concentrate any more. There was no point in risking another breakage, so I did some ungluing and cleaning, before heading downstairs to do some of the boring office tasks that would probably have had Paul rubbing his hands in glee. If only I hadn't rushed my fence with my offer of payment. I should have sidled up to the idea, saying I couldn't cope with paperwork, real or virtual, and asking if he would become our office clerk. It was true about the paperwork. Griff had made huge efforts to educate me, but I'd missed years of schooling, sometimes through wagging off, but more often because of Social Services' inadequacies, moving me from one home to another without any thought of continuity. These days I could write a decent sentence, but then, halfway through a paragraph, I'd forget how I'd begun. And words would float away, just out of my reach. I could see the general shape, but it was only the dear, precious computer spell-check that stopped me making some absolute howlers – malapropisms, Griff called them. He'd taken me to see
The Rivals
, but I hadn't been able to laugh at Mrs Malaprop's mistakes because they could so easily have been mine.

After no more than twenty minutes, I fancied a drink. One of Griff's best hot chocolates. No Griff to make it, of course, and I had to agree with him that drinking-chocolate needs full-fat milk, not the red-top I'd made him use when his heart problems started. For some reason I still bought it even though he wasn't here to worry about.

Forget the hot chocolate, then. I prowled round, checking and double-checking every lock and camera. At last I stopped myself. What was I up to? Sometimes I behaved like this when thunder was brewing, but it was just a miserable murky autumnal night, with rain in the air swiftly becoming thick swirling mist.

At least that made one decision for me. It wasn't a night to drive to Tenterden. I'd have been soaked through by the time I'd got the car through all our security, and though the trusty Fiesta had fog lights, the roads just didn't encourage a random visit. And a phone call would have scared Griff half to death and made him insist on coming home to keep an eye on me. Actually, that was just what I wanted. Even an overnighter at Pa's would have seemed halfway attractive if only I'd remembered to get bedlinen and curtains.

Eventually, I did what I should probably have done an hour ago. I headed to bed and to Tim the Bear.

And awoke with a huge jump in the middle of the night. A pulse racing, heart pounding sort of jump. The sort that has you frozen in bed, listening for intruders.

Tucking Tim firmly between the pillows, I reached for the old swagger stick Pa had given me in the belief it was now legal to whack intruders round the head. I couldn't see it. And then, ever so slowly, considering how poised for fight or flight I was, I realized I needed to switch on the bedside light to see. Normal: we don't have street lights in Bredeham, of course, so when it's dark, it's dark. Not normal: the bedside light didn't work. Nor did the main light.

At last I had the swagger stick in hand and could feel my way downstairs. The sensors picked up even this stealthy movement and the security system emitted a set of increasingly hysterical beeps, until I prodded in the area code number. Once in the kitchen, I wasn't greeted by friendly greenish glows from the microwave or the oven clocks. So the power was out, as well as the lights.

We had one clever burglar if he'd managed to throw the mains switch.

Even though I knew the alarm system was still working, I was ready to scream. I clamped my hands across my mouth. Better me than someone else. Breathe, Lina, breathe from your diaphragm.

Once the panicky whooshing in my ears subsided, I made myself listen. Griff's favourite clock. That was all. No, it wasn't. There were lots of other noises, but from outside. Car alarms? No, house alarms.

Damn me if I didn't head into the living room to check. The sensor got very ratty. I withdrew smartly and re-set it.

By now I'd just about recalled that though our alarm system had a huge battery back-up in the attic for when the power failed, other houses became either noise machines or burglars' paradises. To save power, the cameras shot fewer frames. The sensor beep was quieter and less frequent. The exterior alarm remained silent – unlike those of several of our neighbours, intermittently lighting up the street. So it was a general power failure.

So why did I still feel twitchy?

On impulse I called the night-time equivalent of Geoff, the screen-watcher. This was what we paid our massive bills for – someone to tell us our property was intact. Answering first ring, the man grunted his name: Phil. I'd not come across him before, never having bothered the night shift in the past.

Phil didn't sound reassuring. ‘No street lights in your location,' he said.

‘Never are,' I said, explaining.

‘But there's no one making your floodlights come on. So everything should be fine. Let's just have one look-see. House, OK. Inside and out. Shop – fine too. Hang on, there's a car parked just opposite. Let's see what I can see … Yep. There's someone in it, pretending to be asleep.'

‘Pretending?'

‘Why should someone sleep in a car in a village street?'

My heart did a funny little dance. I knew only one person likely to park up to catch me first thing in the morning – someone who was fairly sure of his welcome, but not sure enough to wake me up at midnight or thereabouts. For all I knew it wouldn't ever work, for all I knew I'd made the right decision, just at that moment I'd have given anything to let Morris into the house.

Phil clearly thought he'd asked a question I didn't need to answer. Rhetorical. ‘Looks like obbo to me. Anywhere you can check from? Upstairs window? Don't let anyone see you.'

‘Phil, it's pitch black out there – no street lights, remember, and it's getting really foggy.'

I could almost hear him grinding his teeth at my stupidity. ‘There's a burglar alarm on the house he's nearest to. Every time it flashes on and off you can see him. Come on, Mrs Tripp, if there's enough light for your camera to pick it up …'

He'd obviously passed his customer relations course with highest honours – or not.

The only window looking at that particular angle was in the bathroom, and it involved putting a stool on the loo seat, holding on to the blind for dear life and, since the window only opened about three inches, peering through a very narrow gap. It wasn't a regular manoeuvre of mine. Yes, there was a car. A very old Subaru: he must be talking about that. Unfortunately, the eerie blue light didn't reach as far as the sleeper's head or face.

At this point my heart stopped dancing. That wasn't Morris's sort of vehicle, not at all. But it was vaguely, very distantly familiar. I could picture it somewhere.

Inching down, I sat on the edge of the bath to consider.

Griff had made me play endless memory games – objects on trays I'd have a minute to scan, before he whipped them away and told me to list them. And of course my job had helped – repairing a badly smashed vase was like doing a three-D jigsaw. So I told myself I could do it. I could. But the more I insisted, the less I could conjure the image. I was just picking up the phone to call Phil and report failure when it came to me: I'd seen a car just like it in Baker's Auction House's car park. It wouldn't be Brian and Helen's. They sported his and hers Beamers, come to think of it, which said something about the state of the auction trade. Could it possibly be Tristam's?