Ring of Guilt (16 page)

‘If I had my way, I'd shove it in a jiffy bag and send it back.'

‘But you could have your way. We have the jiffy bags to hand, and Mrs Walker makes daily journeys to the post office.'

‘What if Dilly needs the money to escape from her husband?'

‘She doesn't need your assistance. There are plenty of refuges. She might call the police. She could get an injunction against him. That's if your supposition is correct.'

‘If it isn't . . .'

‘Dear one, who knows?' He looked at me closely. ‘You're going to do something I don't like, aren't you? You're going to consult the nearest thing we have to a Kentish oracle: Titus Oates, and his gnomic utterances.'

Miserably I nodded. ‘The thing is he's got his ear nearer the ground than anyone else I know. Next time I'm out and about, I'll phone him – he prefers mobiles, you know.'

‘I'm not unaware that from time to time you claim you need a walk and go out with a bulge in your coat pocket. So I presume you're in contact with him. Unless, of course,' he added with a strange blend of wistfulness and hope, ‘you have a secret admirer?'

I hugged him. ‘I should be so lucky.'

‘You liked young Will until you had that dust-up with him. Is it time to declare a truce and ask him for advice? Maybe over a quiet drink . . . ?'

‘I'd rather talk to Titus first,' I said, hating myself. ‘As soon as I've washed up . . .'

Griff was cross enough not to tell me he'd do it, although to be fair it was my turn.

‘Crawling round the countryside all day,' Titus croaked, ‘got the fucking flu.'

At least he'd got a gold coin, too. ‘I was wondering about something even worse than flu. Dilly Pargetter.'

‘Still getting beaten up. But won't leave the bugger. Or the bugger won't let her. Tell you what, doll, you ever get involved with a bloke that so much as touches you, you jump ship.'

‘Can I trust her?'

‘You trust a puppet with its strings pulled by someone else? Work it out.' He gave an enormous, but slightly unconvincing sneeze.

‘Bless you,' I said automatically. ‘You'll keep clear of my father until you're better, won't you?'

‘Afraid you'd have to drop everything and go and nurse him? Makes sense, I suppose.'

‘And Dilly?'

‘Give her the flu, you mean?'

‘I mean—' I poured out the whole story.

Another sneeze. ‘No receipt? Then you're a bigger fool than I took you for.'

‘But you don't deal in receipts and stuff,' I pointed out.

‘You do. And there's the difference.'

I
let myself in, cutting the alarm systems. Griff must be in the shop, still hurt and offended. A peace offering would be a nice cup of coffee, with one of the forbidden biscuits. I rang through for him.

Mrs Walker answered the phone. ‘I'm on my own here, Lina. Mr Tripp's gone off somewhere in the van. In a bit of a hurry. Now, I wondered if I might help you with the preparations for Bath – I'm happy to polish and wrap, you know. And now I know your price code, I'd be happy to affix labels.'

Affix. She and Griff used words like that as if they were born with them.

‘You've both been looking a bit peaky recently, so I'm more than happy to help.'

Griff would know how to shut her up without offending her. But Griff wasn't here.

I must have missed at least another paragraph of what she was saying while I worked out how to be tactful. Eventually I just cut in, not tactfully but truthfully: ‘Ah! I've just seen a note propped up by the kettle.'

Not having you worried another minute. I'm taking action myself.

G xxx

He'd switched his phone off. Of course he had. I left a message. ‘Just stop and turn round. Don't do it, Griff, please.'

Surely he'd check when he reached Winchelsea, where Dilly had her shop. It was a place that for some reason he didn't like at the best of times, though with all its history you'd have thought he was in heaven. Just for good measure, I left another message. ‘I really don't want you doing this. Even Titus doesn't like Mr Dilly – thinks he's violent. It's bad enough him beating up Dilly – but you're not involved at all. The whole thing's my fault. Please Griff.'

That makes what I said sound almost coherent. It wasn't.

And then the doorbell rang. I flung the door open to find Morris silhouetted against a sudden burst of sun. I flung myself into his arms. ‘Thank God you're here! I don't know what to do. Griff's—'

At this point I realized two things. He definitely wasn't hugging me back. And he was pulling forward a woman with a baby in her arms. His partner. Mother of Leda, to whom Griff and I had sent a coral teething rattle. From both of us, you understand.

‘This is Penny,' he said, rather late. ‘Penny, Griff Tripp's partner, Lina.'

We air-kissed, left-right.

‘We were passing and I thought I might be able to find Penny a pretty ring here. When we got married we only had a wedding band, and I thought . . .'

My God, the man only wanted me to find him what in other circumstances would be an engagement ring. We were now supposed to be friends, no more, but that seemed to be pushing the boundaries of understanding a little far. Or maybe Penny had wanted to check out what she saw as the opposition.

My smile felt stiff. ‘Of course. We don't carry many, as you know, but there might just be the right thing.' In fact, we'd only started to deal with them after we found someone selling imperfect ones at perfect prices. ‘But come in and have a coffee first. I'm worried, as you might have gathered,' I said with a little nod at Penny. ‘Griff's decided to do a knight errant thing and get me out of a hole I dug.' For once I thought on my feet. Though he obviously knew about Griff's email, I wouldn't mention the SOS email I'd sent unless Morris mentioned it first. Especially as I couldn't remember whether I'd sent it to his home or work computer.

But I was thinking too fast. I ought to be cooing over the baby. Babies didn't turn me on one bit, but this one seemed quite nice and even managed what seemed like a smile. What if Penny put her on the floor? Would she crawl and grab all Griff's precious things? Or stagger around and collapse fragile furniture? The only child-oriented things in the entire cottage were two collector's Steiff bears, not meant for children at all, and Tim, and she certainly wasn't chewing his ears.

Fortunately Morris had picked up the panic in my voice. Helping to peel layers of clothing off Leda, he looked at me under his eyebrows and asked very coolly, ‘What's this about Griff? Is he in real trouble – his email didn't suggest anything too serious – or just something you're imagining?'

‘Let me make you coffee – or would you prefer tea? I've got green, too.' If I sounded flustered it's because I was. All I wanted to do was leap into the other van and hurtle to the coast.

They asked for different things and than apologized and changed their minds. In the end, I gathered that she wanted peppermint tea – did we have any left? – and he'd like decaf instant coffee. In the kitchen I tried phoning Griff again – nothing. So then I turned to hostessy things. Biscuits. Tray. The right sized cups. Sugar and milk. I must have knocked everything over at least once. Still mopping the milk off the tray, I carried everything through and parked on Griff's favourite Regency occasional table. Bad idea. At least there was just room on the bookshelf for it.

As we all sat down, Penny grabbed Leda and to my horror put her nose to the back of her nappy. ‘The smell test. And she's failed. Your turn, Morris. After all, you must know where the bathroom is.' Was that smile a bit on the acid side?

It was like having a conversation with someone in the dentist's waiting room. We must have talked about something, but I can't remember what. At last Morris returned with a clean baby and something unpleasant in a polythene bag. ‘Dustbin?'

‘Back yard,' I said. ‘Shall I—'

‘No, I'll find it.'

I had an idea that this was Morris's way of letting Penny and me get to see something of each other. I saw rather more of her than I'd expected. She suddenly lifted her T-shirt and started to breast feed. It seemed to me that Penny was making a lot of statements, the strongest of them without any words.

At long last Morris returned. ‘So, tell me about Griff.'

‘I agreed to sell something secretly for someone,' I said, as if he didn't know already. ‘A pendant – I could probably sell it for two or three hundred. You know how meticulous Tripp and Townend are about receipts. Well, I didn't have any paperwork for it. And I – we both – had a nasty feeling I was being set up for something. Don't know what. But rumours are flying – most of them emo . . . emi . . . emanating from the guy who claims he's my grandfather.'

‘Arthur Habgood, right?' Morris's smile was so swift it was hardly there but it told me I'd got the word right.

‘Right. He's reminding everyone that I was once accused of handling stolen goods.' I said all this for Penny's benefit, since one of the people who'd accused me was none other than Morris. ‘He's conveniently forgotten the fact that the woman who accused me is now doing time for handling stolen goods herself, and that I was completely exonerated.' I went at the word with a great rush and seemed to make it. ‘And I just have this twitch in my bunion that Dilly Pargetter is going to spot the pendant on one of my displays and claim I've nicked it. Or her partner is. He's got a reputation for violence. Domestic violence.'

‘And Griff's gone to sort him out?'

‘I think he's just gone to return the pendant. But a word out of place—'

‘Is far more likely to bring harm to Dilly than to Griff.'

‘Do you think so?' For a moment, that seemed a better option. But then I recalled the black eyes after I'd bought the ring at rock bottom price and the throat concealed by a scarf.

‘There's an awful lot of ifs and maybes to take in, Lina. Have you tried phoning him?'

Suppressing a tart answer, I set the phone on conference and pressed the redial button.

‘OK, so he's not picking up. But he wouldn't if he was driving, would he?' Penny said, removing Leda from her breast.

Leda yelled in fury and then settled down on the other.

‘Anything else I should know?' Morris asked.

‘Someone else has accused me of the same thing – different items, though. Kent Heritage Officer's on my case. At least I had receipts to prove I'd actually bought the items – one of them from Dilly. Sorry, this is coming out all jumbled.'

‘What sort of item?'

‘A rare old ring. Old enough for it to be way out of our period. Old enough for Griff to take it to the British Museum. Rare enough for his mate there, Sir Douglas something or other, to contact you lot and accuse us of thieving.'

His eyebrow said he recognized the name. ‘You said items.'

I'd forgotten how cold his eyes could be.

‘Another ring. In a load of packing material – I'd bought a box of rubbish at an auction and there was this ring in a screw of paper right at the bottom.'

‘And you're being framed?'

‘It might all be coincidence. But—'

‘But your immediate concern is Griff, right?' Penny summed up.

‘I'll just make a call or two,' Morris said, without any warmth. He slipped into the hallway so we couldn't hear what he was saying.

Leda had stopped suckling and was falling asleep.

I ought to say something. I ought to make an effort. ‘Might I hold her?'

‘I think she's just failed the smell test again. Could you point me to the bathroom?'

I can't say the experience was exciting, but since I'd never seen a nappy changed before in my life, it was educational. Penny and I managed a slightly better conversation, and we ended up in my bedroom where Tim the Bear took one look at Leda and smiled.

I was ready to help him into her arms, but Penny pushed him away.

‘He's much too smart. You don't want milky dribble down him. Or sick, which she sometimes produces when she burps. God, this motherhood business is so hard.' She sat on the bed. Staring at Leda's head, she said, ‘He says . . . he told me . . . he'd met someone. It wasn't you, was it? Because he said whoever it was sent him back to me with a flea in his ear. Said he had to love me as well as Leda. Was it . . . ? It was, wasn't it? It was very generous of you, Lina.'

I was surprised that a musician didn't hear the connection between Lina and Leda. And the version of events wasn't quite as I remembered them. However, all I said was, ‘I think he always loved you, only with your jobs . . . The thing is, I desperately needed someone to be there for me. Bit of an Orphan Annie. But since my father was decidedly absentee,' I continued, more upbeat, ‘I did point out that any baby deserved a better start than I had. And I'm glad he had the sense to see that. At least he's a hands-on dad. Nappies and everything.'

‘Better had be. Look, is it OK him looking for a ring here? It's a bit . . . crass.'

‘I won't cheat him. And none of my friends will. But it's a very personal thing, isn't it, a ring? I mean, it has to be your choice, not my recommendation. And if you don't see anything you fall in love with, you just walk away.'

I thought of the two lovely rings in our secret safe – so secret that apart from the guy who installed it, Griff, and me, Morris was the only one who knew where it was. And even he didn't know the combination. I'd had them both repaired. And that ruby would look stunning with Penny's dark hair.

‘Lina! Lina? Are you there? Phone for you!'

Morris's voice brought me straight back to what I ought to be worrying about – Griff.