Rogue in Porcelain (29 page)

‘Not true,' corrected her father calmly. ‘I was coming to Marsborough anyway, and thought I'd like to see where Sarah will be spending the next few months.'

He held out his hand with a smile. ‘Guy Lacey. I'm grateful to you for offering my daughter a home.'

‘Anyone would think,' Sarah remarked acidly, ‘that I was twelve years old, and starting boarding school.'

‘Well, you
are
going to a new school, poppet.'

She flung him an exasperated glance, and Avril laughed. ‘I don't know why we're standing on the doorstep. Do come in. If you take your things straight up, Sarah, your father can see your room. Then perhaps you'd like a cup of tea?'

Sarah opened her mouth – to decline, Avril suspected – but her father got in first.

‘We would indeed. Thank you.' He lifted the case again, and followed Sarah up the stairs, while Avril hurried to the kitchen to switch on the kettle and put the batch of scones she'd made in the oven to reheat. She liked what she'd seen of Guy Lacey, the latent humour in his eyes and his easy manner. He obviously had the measure of his headstrong daughter.

When they joined her minutes later in the sitting room, he stood for a moment, looking about him appreciatively, then walked over to the corner table and studied the family photographs.

‘Twin daughters?' he enquired, and, at her nod, ‘Bet they were a handful!'

‘They had their moments,' Avril conceded. ‘They went to Belmont Primary, by the way.'

‘We drove past it on the way here. It looks nice and spacious – plenty of windows. I've a thing about light.'

‘Comes of being an electrical engineer,' put in Sarah drily, and he laughed. Then, glancing back at the photos, he grew serious. ‘And it's one of them who had that nasty experience in Chilswood?'

Avril's heart started pounding. So that was why he'd accompanied Sarah. And, in doing so, forced her hand; she could no longer remain silent about her own role.

‘Rona, yes,' she answered, trying to keep the tremor out of her voice. She squared her shoulders, and looked straight at Guy Lacey. ‘If you'd like to sit down,' she added, ‘there's something you should know.'

After Sarah's initial exclamation, they sat in silence as she told them of Rona's meeting with Julia and her brief stay in Sarah's bedroom, and the silence continued when she'd finished speaking.

Then Guy Lacey turned to his daughter. ‘Any comment, poppet?'

‘It's a bit – unnerving,' Sarah said.

‘It's not as though anything happened in that room,' Avril put in anxiously.

‘No, but it still brings it home rather.'

She steeled herself to say, ‘If you've changed your mind about coming here, I shall quite understand.'

Lacey said quickly, ‘Oh, I'm sure there's no question of that, is there, Sarah?'

The girl hesitated a moment, and Avril held her breath. Then she said, ‘Not really. The room seems very comfortable, and it's so convenient for the school.'

Her father added, ‘It's good of you to be so frank with us. Thank you. I hadn't realized your daughter actually knew the victim. That must have made it much worse for her – and, of course, for you.'

‘Yes.' Avril drew a deep breath. ‘Well, now we've got that out of the way, I'll bring the scones in, and we can have tea.'

As the meal progressed, her liking for Guy Lacey increased. There was a family resemblance between father and daughter, she noted; Sarah had inherited her father's grey eyes, though the expression in them was quite different, and they had the same shaped mouth. He wasn't as bald as Avril first thought; although his forehead was high, his hair – dark and generously sprinkled with grey – was still plentiful over the top and back of his head. She guessed he was in his mid to late fifties, but the casual clothes – open-neck shirt, sweater and jeans – made him seem younger. Tom, she remembered, had refused point-blank to wear jeans after turning fifty – mutton dressed as lamb, he called it.

Eventually, Lacey put his plate on the coffee table and stood up. ‘I must be on my way. That was great, Mrs Parish, thank you. It's good to have met you, and I hope there are no further traumas for either you or your daughter.'

Sarah went with him to the door, and Avril collected the tea things together. The conversation she'd been dreading was behind her, and she still had her lodger. For the moment, that was enough.

Oliver Curzon rang his cousin's doorbell just after six, and it was answered by Emma.

‘Hi, Oliver; come to collect Millie?'

‘Got it in one.'

‘Come in. They're upstairs playing a board game at the moment. They were running wild, but I decided that after a large tea, it was time to settle down a bit.'

‘Quite right, and I'm glad about the large tea. Millie's fussy about her food, and Sally was hoping she wouldn't get a request for pasta the minute she was over the doorstep.'

‘Little chance of that. Go through to the sitting room; Sam's there.'

She went to the foot of the stairs and called up. ‘Victoria! Uncle Oliver's here; could you both come down, please?'

The anticipated wail of protest greeted her. ‘We're in the middle of a game, Mummy! Can we finish it?'

‘If it doesn't take too long.'

Emma joined the men in the sitting room. ‘Could they have a few minutes' grace to finish their game?'

‘Fine by me,' Oliver agreed.

‘Time for a beer, then,' Sam said firmly. ‘How about you, darling?'

‘Not at the moment, thanks.'

As her husband went to get it, Emma said, ‘You must be desperately worried about Nick. How's he coping with all this?'

Oliver looked grave. ‘With difficulty, I think; especially since both the police and the press keep on at him.'

‘The press?'

‘They're always asking if he's any comment, and flashing cameras at him. And the police are worrying like terriers at that visit to Aylesbury, going over and over what he did when the customer didn't show, what time he got home, etcetera.'

Oliver reached up and took the glass Sam handed him. ‘Thanks. We're talking about Nick. Ironically, it's the fact that he wasn't anywhere near Chilswood that's counting against him; if he'd been at the factory with the rest of us, there'd be no problem.'

‘They're bound to come up with something sooner or later,' Sam said comfortingly.

‘Then let's hope it's sooner,' returned Nick's brother.

Two hours later, when Victoria was in bed and they'd had their meal, Sam flicked a glance at his wife.

‘What's the matter, love? You're very quiet this evening.'

‘It's nothing,' she said evasively.

‘This business with Julia getting you down? Unfortunately, all we can do is weather it till something breaks.'

Emma gazed into the fire. ‘Why did Oliver say Nick wasn't in Chilswood that afternoon?'

Sam looked at her in surprise. ‘Because he wasn't; he was in Aylesbury.'

‘Yes, but after that.'

‘He went home. Em –' Sam leaned forward, suddenly anxious – ‘what is it?'

She looked up at him, her eyes wide and frightened. ‘Oh, Sam, I saw him! In Chilswood.'

Sam went still. ‘That afternoon? You couldn't have.'

‘But I did! I was on the kerb waiting to cross the road, and he drove past. He didn't see me – he was looking straight ahead – but he passed within feet of me.'

Sam moistened his lips. ‘What time was this?'

‘About five o'clock. I'd just dropped Victoria off at Brownies.'

‘Why haven't you mentioned it before?'

‘To be honest, I'd forgotten all about it. Naturally it didn't seem important at the time, and it only fell into place when Oliver said he hadn't been near Chilswood. And he had.'

She looked worriedly at her husband's tense face. ‘What shall we do?'

Lindsey lay immobile in bed, her eyes wide open in the dark. Whatever she'd expected from the evening behind her, it was nothing like the way it had panned out.

The first surprise had been the chauffeur-driven car, the second, the information that they were driving to London for dinner at the Savoy. She'd been expecting to be taken to either the Clarendon or Serendipity, the new restaurant everyone was talking about, and she'd had a moment of panic that she wasn't smartly enough dressed. But that was Dominic's fault for not briefing her. He was wearing a clerical grey suit, white shirt and blue silk tie and looked, she thought, very suave and elegant.

‘How did the family lunch go?' he asked, as the chauffeur turned out of the drive into Fairhaven, the cul-de-sac where she lived. So he'd not forgotten being turned down in its favour.

‘Dramatically,' she replied. ‘One of the party went into labour and had to be rushed to hospital.'

‘Good heavens! I hope you'd all managed to eat first?'

She laughed. ‘We had, yes, except for the prospective mother, who wasn't hungry.'

‘And did all go well?'

‘I think so; the baby's two months premature and is in an incubator, but they seem hopeful of her chances.'

‘I'm sure she'll be fine. My daughter was in an incubator for ten days,' said Dominic Frayne.

Lindsey was momentarily silenced. Two divorces, OK, but there'd been no mention of offspring. ‘How many children have you?' she asked, trying to sound equally nonchalant.

‘Three; two from my first marriage and one from my second. All independent now, thank God. Have you any yourself?'

Again she was taken by surprise. ‘No.'

‘You have been married, though?' And, at her nod, ‘I thought that's what Jonathan said.'

So they'd been discussing her. What else had Jonathan told him?

That was the end of any personal discussion. He had been courteous and attentive, and she'd made him laugh a couple of times, but even on the way home, and despite the privacy afforded by the screen separating them from the driver, their conversation might have been between total strangers.

And that's what they were! Lindsey thought in frustration. Prior to that evening, they'd exchanged only a couple of sentences, and when he dropped her back at her flat, she felt she knew him no better than when they'd started out. How Dominic himself would evaluate the evening, she had no idea.

Avril had been a little concerned that, since school didn't start till Thursday, Sarah might be at a loose end the following day, while she herself divided her time between the library and the charity shop. Nor had she established the weekend routine; she certainly didn't want the girl hanging round the house.

On both counts, however, her fears were quickly put to rest. At breakfast the next morning, Sarah announced she was going into Marsborough, to shop and meet an aunt for lunch.

Possibly seeing Avril's relief, she added with a smile, ‘Dad warned me that in a B&B you're expected to be out of the house between nine and five, though I might be back slightly earlier, depending what there is to do after school. And in case you're worrying about weekends, I shan't be in your way then, either. Until I make more friends here, I'll be going home Friday to Sunday evenings, if that's all right?'

‘Of course,' Avril said awkwardly, ‘but don't feel you have to go out. Your room's a bedsit, after all.' And marvelled at her own hypocrisy.

The girl was making an effort to be accommodating, she thought, as Sarah left the house half an hour later, and they'd soon feel more relaxed with each other. The fact that there'd been no awkward initiation period with Julia was best forgotten.

Since she would be working all day in the room allocated to her, Rona again dropped Gus off with Max. The task ahead filled her with a mixture of anticipation and trepidation; there had seemed no order to the piles of paper awaiting her, but by the end of the day, she should have a better idea of what they contained and how to set about sorting them.

There was no sign of Finlay when she arrived at the pottery, and it was Meg Fairclough who took her up to the room. The boxes and folders were as she'd last seen them, but at least the room itself was warm and welcoming.

‘Let me know if you need anything,' Meg told her. ‘I'll bring you a cup of coffee at ten thirty, and the directors have invited you to join them for lunch.'

‘Would it be very ungracious to decline?' Rona asked. ‘To be honest, I'd much rather have a sandwich up here and get on with the work.'

‘Just as you like, of course. I'll make your apologies and bring you up something from the canteen.'

The next few hours passed slowly and laboriously, punctuated by the arrival firstly of coffee and later of a tray bearing a warm Cornish pasty and a bowl of fruit salad. Rona's hands were soon black from the accumulated dust, and her nostrils filled with the musty smell of old paper. Bills, scrawled designs for patterns, and letters, letters, letters – none of which, in her opinion, were worth keeping, except as historical examples of the formal exchanges between family members.

By three o'clock, her back was aching from bending over the boxes, and she had four or five separate piles of papers on the carpet. Although she'd originally hoped to sort them into date order, this proved virtually impossible, since only in official correspondence was the year given. At this stage, it was also impossible to separate those she felt could be scrapped; time enough for that when she knew exactly what she had.

Meg Fairclough, coming in with a cup of tea and a biscuit, found her on her hands and knees.

‘How are you doing?' she asked, setting them down on a clear surface.

‘Slowly,' Rona replied.

‘Anything of interest?'

‘To the family, yes, but not for my purposes.'

‘I suppose that's only to be expected,' Meg said, and Rona was forced to agree.