Mistletoe Mystery (20 page)

“Nah, it was nothing. Just someone in the next room,
snoring. Rachel, I think.”

Philly stood up, taking her cocoa with her. “I’m going to
bed.”

“Can we talk first?” asked Matt.

“No.”

As she left the kitchen she heard Joe say to Matt, “Woman
trouble, huh?”

***

The following morning, Joe was nowhere to be seen. Philly
assumed he slept in, due to her disturbing him the night before, but she was
eager to see if he had managed to film anything.

Whilst Matt had been sitting at the bottom of the stairs,
Philly had gone to Joe’s room, which was in her wing, and asked him if he could
set up a camera, with an infra red lens, at the junction of the stairs, with
enough sweep to see anyone going up or down. Though not sure of the legalities,
Joe had decided he was game if Philly did not mind.

She had looked for the camera when she went back to bed, and
not found it, so Joe must have hidden it well. It was only when she was in her
own bed that it occurred to her that if Joe were the culprit, he would not
share anything with her. She dismissed the idea, deciding that Joe was not only
very young to be involved with Robespierre, but also a bit too chunky to fit
through the attic window, let alone be able to run about on the roof at night.

Matt was also late appearing. Whilst Philly helped Meg and
Puck put out the breakfast buffet on the sideboard in the dining room, she
asked about him, trying to sound casual.

“Oh he’s left, Philly. Didn’t you know?” said Meg. “I’m
surprised he didn’t say goodbye to you.”

“Left…” The mini packet of cornflakes Philly was holding
fell to the floor. “When?”

“This morning, just before you got up. He said he had things
to do.”

“Oh well, that solves that problem. I doubt we’ll see him
again.” She quickly filled her friends in on what Matt had told her the night before.

“The sneak,” said Meg. “Oh, Philly, sweetheart, I’m so
sorry.” She put her arms around her friend. “You’re well rid of him if you ask
me.”

“Yeah, good riddance to bad rubbish,” said Puck.

“I thought you both liked him.”

“We did, but now you obviously hate him, we hate him too,”
said Meg. “The rotter.”

“Yeah, he’s not worth crying over, sweetheart,” said Puck.
“You can do better.”

“Oh, I doubt it,” said Philly.

“Yeah, I doubt it as well. He was a bit of a peach,” said
Puck, winking and clucking the roof of his mouth with his teeth. “But I’m sure
you can do nearly as well. Well probably not even nearly as well, but they do
say there’s someone for everyone. So … er … yeah, good luck with replacing
him.”

“Thank you, Puck, that makes me feel so much better.” Philly
could not help but smile. Her friends always knew how to cheer her up.

“That’s what I’m here for, babe.”

“Have either of you seen Joe this morning?” she asked. “He’s
usually first down for breakfast.”

“I think he went out to do some filming in the grounds,”
said Meg. “He said he wanted some nice winter scenes for the report.”

“Ah, that’ll be where he is. If you two can manage here, I
might go and look for him. I wanted to ask him something.”

“Yeah, we’re about done,” said Puck. “I’ll fetch the coffee
cups.”

“Good. It’s time to wrap this up and move on with life, I
think,” said Philly. “After breakfast, we’ll gather everyone together for the
denouement, then feed them lunch before they all leave for home. To be honest,
I’m willing to accept that Dominique was an alien from another planet, who
hitched a ride back home on the same space ship as E.T.”

“Works for me,” said Meg.

Philly did not just want to go out and speak to Joe. She
wanted to think clearly about Matt, if such a thing were possible. Why had he
suddenly left, after refusing to the night before? She began to wonder if
everything he told her about his father had been a lie after all, and he really
was there all along to try to steal something. He had no doubt turned it on
her, trying to make out she was the one with criminal leanings. When she
thought about it, it was a clever trick to play. It put her on the back foot,
making it hard for her to continue accusing him, because she was too busy
defending herself.

Her heart ached. Despite all her best defences and the
doubts she had, she knew she was in love with him. She remembered the feeling
of inevitability on the day they met. She knew now that only she felt that way.
This was probably why it had been so easy for him to drive away from her.
 Good riddance to him! The thought barely reached the hallway ceiling as
she put on her winter coat. It would take her a long time to get over Matt
Cassell. Not just loving him, but her disappointment that he was not the man
she believed him to be.

How could she get it so wrong? She always thought she could
tell the difference between good people and bad people. Now she was not so
sure. Matt’s apparent duality had brought to the fore other fears. The fears
that she had felt since becoming interested in the mystery of Dominique
DuPont’s disappearance. Since the very beginning and for reasons she could not
fathom she was convinced it was all connected to her.

As she stepped out of the front door, she shuddered. Not
because of the chill in the air, but because someone walked over her grave.
Suspicions that she had been forcing deep down inside of her were coming to the
fore. She had no proof, only a strong feeling of something not being quite
right. It was partly to do with Mrs. Cunningham’s newfound realisation that
Dominique’s accent was put on. It created a flicker of something within Philly.
A memory of when she first started drama school and had to practice accents.
She had been no better at it than Meg. Her Yorkshire accent was pretty good,
but her French accent always came out sounding Welsh. What was it she had to
remember? Almost as if the memory was afraid to come to the fore, it stayed
deep within her, insisting it was irrelevant. It could not possibly be part of
the jigsaw puzzle that had been forming since she found Robespierre’s painting
in Dominique’s trunk in an attic that neither should have anything to do with.
To acknowledge there may be a connection, and complete the puzzle, might be to
admit something so painful that she might never recover from it.

She looked around the land. Her land. The pain subsided a
little. Sometimes she found it hard to believe that this beautiful house and
park were all hers. Mr. Scattergood would no doubt say she was selfish, but
even if she sold it, the developers would only turn the house into several
apartments selling for a million pounds each. Why should she not own it all to
herself, and then maybe pass it on to her children. If she ever had any. She
could not imagine loving anyone but Matt. He had filled her life in such a
short time, it already felt empty without him.

She saw Joe in the distance and called out to him.

Chapter Fourteen

“Have you got anything for me, Joe?”

“Not what I thought I had, Philly.” He sat on a bench at the
side of the lake, looking at the viewing screen on his camera.

“Excuse me?”

“Come and sit down and I’ll show you. I thought I’d caught
your prowler, but it turns out I’ve only caught a couple of illicit lovers.”

“Really? Amongst the guests you mean?” Philly sat next to him,
blowing on her fingers. She really ought to have put her gloves on. “How
fascinating. Do show me.” It was something amusing to take her mind off her
troubles.

Joe fiddled with the camera a bit, rewinding it through the
night. “Here, look at this,” he said, pausing the picture at around two-thirty
in the morning. “I found this when I checked the camera on my way back up to
bed last night. You can’t see much, but you can hear a voice.”

Just as Joe said, there were a couple of figures talking at
the top of the stairs, but they had their backs to the camera. As far as Philly
could make out from their size and body forms, one was a man the other was a
woman. “We can’t talk now,” said the woman. “I’ll meet you by the lake early in
the morning. Say seven o’clock. I always go for a walk before he wakes up.” The
man nodded, and they parted company, but neither of them went up to the attic.

“That’s Mrs. Bennett!” said Philly. “I’d know her voice
anywhere. I wonder if that’s Mr. Graham. They have become rather close. But I’d
have sworn she was devoted to her husband, despite her crushes on random
actors.”

“Nah, it’s not Mr. Graham. Did you know he used to be a
photographer? Did weddings and all. I love old cameras and he’s an interesting
man to talk to. Watch this.” Joe fiddled with the camera again. “There’s
nothing else for the rest of the night,” he explained. “So your prowler must
have decided to rest last night. Mrs. Bennett met her fancy fella in between
you and Matt going up, and me following half an hour later.  So I came
down here with the camera just before seven. Bit naughty of me, I know, but I
couldn’t resist finding out who they were.” Joe held the camera up to Philly.
“Here’s her secret lover.”

The film showed Mrs. Bennett throwing her arms around a man,
hugging him tightly. There was very little passion in the embrace, but a lot of
love.

“Mr. Scattergood! No, it can’t be,” said Philly. “They only
met…” She stopped. Of course, it was so obvious. “No,” she said to Joe.
“They’re not lovers. I just think they’ve known each other for a long time,
that’s all. I also think I know who the prowler is. We were right. He’s been
here all along. Mind you, I’ve no idea how he managed to climb over the roof.”

Philly said nothing over breakfast. She wanted to try to get
Mr. Scattergood alone. Despite his brusqueness, she had warmed to the old man
because of his affection for her godmother. Unfortunately it also meant that
more of the jigsaw puzzle than she ever wanted to see was beginning to appear.
But much better to face it than to pretend it had never happened.

After breakfast, she left Meg and Puck to finish off the
denouement, making sure that Mr. Scattergood was sitting safely in a chair in
the drawing room. As far as she could tell, he was not about to move. Mrs. Bennett
seemed very emotional. She kept wiping her eyes, and her husband continually
asked her what was wrong.

“Nothing,” she said, sniffing loudly. “It’s just my
hormones, that’s all.” He seemed happy with that explanation.

Philly went directly to the attic, and then straight to the
corner where she had seen the beam of light. Sure enough, she found something
she had never noticed before. At the back of the attic was a false door, set
into the wooden panels. She pushed it open and peered inside. There was a light
on inside the panelled area, operated by the sort of string one found in a
bathroom. That was the light she had seen. The hidden room had other surprises
in store. Piled up around the walls in the tiny space were dozens of paintings.
Philly did not know if they were originals or not, but her best bet was that
they were.

She would have to phone the police, even though she knew the
truth could ruin her. She backed out of the room, and felt something hard
sticking in her back.

“I have waited a long time to be able to see them properly,”
said Monsieur De Lacey. Philly turned slowly, and saw he held a gun in his
hand. “They belong to me.”

“No,” said Philly. “They belong to the people you stole them
from.”

“They are mine. I knew all along she had deceived me,
telling me there were no more paintings left. She tried to pay me off, but I
did not take the money. I knew what was behind here was worth much more. I
realised the extent of her lie when I saw your house on television, with
Robespierre’s fakes on the walls.”

“Let the girl go, Armand,” said a voice from the attic door.
“She’s innocent in all this. What’s more, she’s Robyn’s girl.”

“She is merely her goddaughter.” De Lacey turned slightly to
look at Mr. Scattergood.

“She’s still Robyn’s girl. The one she gave it all up for.”

“She deceived us both, Robespierre,” said De Lacey. “She did
not give it all up at all. She merely kept the best for herself. As she always
did.”

“That’s because she was the one who took all the risks,”
said Scattergood.

“Not so,” said Armand.

“She was Dominique, wasn’t she?” said Philly. “My godmother
was Dominique DuPont.”

“That’s right, lass,” said Scattergood. “She was always
young looking, so it was pretty easy for her to get a place in the school.
Armand there played her father. As well as being a damn good actor, he also
happens to be one of the finest cat burglars ever. Still very good at it by the
sound of things, though a bit slippery nowadays. He used to send your godmother
the stuff disguised in food parcels, I’d copy them, and then we’d replace the
original with the fake. All whilst the owners were away living it up on some
tropical island with Princess Margaret and the Aga Khan. Half the time they
never even noticed the change. Then we’d sell the originals to buyers who weren’t
too fussy about where they got their art from.”

“The dates in the tower were the times you met, weren’t
they?” asked Philly.

Mr. Scattergood nodded. “Yes, and when I was caught that
time, I deliberately told the police the truth, knowing that they wouldn’t
believe me. I had met a man and a beautiful woman who gave me money. Dominique
– your godmother – and De Lacey. I just fudged knowing their names. It was a
double bluff that worked.”

Philly turned to De Lacey. “You hurt your ankle, falling
from the roof.” She struggled to keep her voice calm. He still had the gun
pointed at her.  “So you had to pretend you’d fallen downstairs to explain
why you were limping.”

“You are as clever as your godmother,” said De Lacey. “And
as greedy. Keeping the paintings to yourself.”

“No!” Philly exclaimed. “I didn’t know about them till today
or the secret room for that matter. I guessed there was something hidden up
here, but I didn’t know what. I’m going to phone the police and they can find
the original owners.”