Staging Death (16 page)

‘What accent CDs?’

‘The ones you borrowed from my car. You remember, the morning after the night you stayed over. And as payment you were kind enough to leave the daffs you’d no doubt nicked from the garden of one of my neighbours.’

His face was a study in blankness.

‘Forgotten, have you? Well, you were so pissed I nearly had to carry you home, so I suppose it’s hardly surprising you can’t remember. What really impressed me, though,’ I continued, venom gathering with every syllable, ‘were your breaking-and-entering skills. When did you learn them? And did you learn to hot-wire a car at the same time? Make sure you only do it when you’re sober, though, or the police can do you for being drunk in charge of a car, and then where would your licence be?’

‘I did not break into your car. I did not borrow your CDs – why should I want them? I only do Mummerset, don’t I? And as for leaving you flowers – frankly, my dear, much as I usually adore you, you’re simply not my type.’ He sounded very convincing.

But would anyone believe an old soak like Chris? I certainly didn’t want to. Because then I’d have to ask another question. If Chris didn’t break into my car, who did?

Before I could arrive at a satisfactory answer, my mobile phone rang. Still not Caddie. Greg, with a funny note in his voice. Would I meet him at the barn conversion he’d mentioned the other day? Now?

I could think of no particular reason to be awkward, not when he sounded so boyishly eager, so I set off straight away.

Before I’d even parked, I could see the reason for his excitement.

The barn conversion – for some reason named the Old Barn – was utterly lovely from the outside. Inside the conversion was wonderfully sympathetic, light and airy but retaining its essential solidity. According to the spec, it was insulated to the highest standards, with all sorts of energy-saving measures built in. The latest solar panels were already in place, rainwater flushed
all the loos, and movement-activated electric lighting had been installed in the bathrooms. The fitted kitchen was occupied by top-of-the-range equipment, all rated at least A+. In the vendor’s place I would have furnished it before offering it for sale, because the high ceilings and wooden floors detracted from the sense of it being a home, the very intimidating acoustic making every footstep sound as though it had emerged from the soundtrack of a B-movie.

‘Seen all you want?’ Greg demanded at last, as proud as if it were his own. Why he’d chosen to specialise in older properties when he clearly preferred modern ones I didn’t know. Unless, perhaps, he suffered from the same problem as I did – a reluctance to wave goodbye to favourite houses – and solved it by not dealing in what he wanted for himself. And he wanted this. His eyes gleamed as they had when he was a young man, and had just seen in a showroom the first car he could afford to buy new, as opposed to a rust bucket discarded by a mate.

In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if he did buy this, since it had an air his present Seventies place lacked, for all his wife’s attempts at grandeur. I would love to furnish it for him. OK, I’d love to furnish it for anyone, given this blank canvas and an equally blank cheque.

In fact, why not make a bid now? ‘I think you
should talk to the vendor about some drapes and enough furniture to give a would-be purchaser an idea of what it might look like. As it is, it sounds like one of those posh restaurants where you can’t hear anyone speak because of the echoes. It wouldn’t cost a lot, not if I sourced it.’

‘Never miss a trick, do you, my wench?’

‘We share the same genes, Greg,’ I observed dryly. ‘Come on, if the vendor spent ten thousand, he could ask another twenty-five. More. And if I really did a good job, then he might even be able to sell the furnishings as part of the deal. No one would want to break up a
Homes and Gardens
look, would they?’

‘Let me have a think about it,’ he said, drifting away from me, something so uncharacteristic in my decisive brother I wondered for a second if he might be ill.

I jotted a few notes about the potential decor in my elegant Burford’s leather folder. It was better than looking at the garden, still, to be honest, a builder’s yard, despite the hopeful potted bay trees standing self-consciously either side of the front door.

When he ambled back he was looking a tad absent-minded, so I said, ‘I’ve been meaning to talk to you, Greg, about the Thorpes. Does the fact I’m negotiating with them over the price of their cottage mean I’ve officially moved up
a grade? I know you’ve let Simon go. And the agency’s done well recently. I’d like to see myself on the permanent staff. Maybe not full-time. But at times I feel like a glorified usherette, or a National Trust guide. I’d like to be a proper part of the firm.’ He’d understand that even if it wasn’t wholly true.

‘You’ve got some good bonuses coming up,’ he mused. But whether he saw that as a positive or a negative it was hard to tell. ‘I get very good feedback about you… Tell you what, you couldn’t fix it for me to see some of your work, could you?’

‘You mean watch me talk to the clients, as if I were an apprentice?’

‘I know you’re good at that. The interior decor work, of course.’

Why was he asking about that? That wasn’t the job I wanted – I was already doing it. So I asked, ‘March in on Toby Frensham and ask to see the before and after, you mean?’

‘That’d be very nice,’ he said, obviously missing my irony. ‘And Mo would certainly like to hobnob with him and his missus. But what I really expected was some before and after photos, like, and a few sketches. Maybe some swatches of fabric, like you show your clients.’

‘Easy-peasy. Either you can pick them up at my place now or I can drop them in when I next come into the office.’

We agreed on the latter.

But it was an exciting couple of days before I did. Exciting and profoundly disappointing.

Caddie phoned just as I got home from seeing the barn, to summon me to an audition. ‘Mug up modern,’ she urged. ‘Think Pinter. Think serious but subtly funny.’

The train journey to London saw me learning chunks of
The Birthday Party
.
I wasn’t, to be honest, sure what to wear for auditions anymore. The Nicole Farhi might have suggested I didn’t need the work; on the other hand, someone really au fait with the fashion world would know it wasn’t this season’s. Wear it and be damned? I wore it.

Big, big mistake. I should have worn my gardening jeans and old trainers. It turned out I was auditioning for a good old-fashioned actors’ cooperative, where no one earned a bean, and everyone mucked in with all the jobs, from cleaning the loos to taking the lead. It wouldn’t even pay the rent, not at London rates – I gathered most of the cast were going to sleep on sympathetic floors. It wouldn’t even look good on my CV. So I made my excuses, and toddled off to calm down in the lofty rooms of the National Portrait Gallery. How many hours had I spent there? Although I might sneer at Allyn for naming her kids after characters from the period she was
researching, I’d never attempted a part without looking at portraits of the contemporaries of the playwright. Their costumes affected their posture – try slumping in a corset – and their posture affected the way they spoke. As did the corsets, of course.

I always made a little pilgrimage to see the women I admired, some of whom felt like friends, even mentors: the Swan of Lichfield, for instance, Anna Seward. And Aphra Behn. Jane Austen, obviously – that tiny, precious scrap of a portrait that was probably nothing like her. The miserable Brontës, with their sadomasochistic heroes. And on to the actresses, my real heroines. Sarah Siddons looking grand; Ellen Terry, her fire contained but not extinguished by her husband GF Watts; Victoria Russell’s portrait of Fiona Shaw in her undies. No one would paint me in my undies! And then, as always, came the sad realisation that no one was likely to paint me at all.

I phoned Caddie to report on the audition, and, with luck, to scrounge an early supper before I headed to Marylebone. She’d have loved to feed me, she trilled, but she was just getting ready for a film premiere. One of her clients, of course.

One of her other clients.

‘This is mistake! This is not Old Barn!’ the man declared. His face showed seven shades of
fury, each more worrying for his cardiologist than the last. Given he must have been about fifty, weighing something perilously close to twenty stone, I should imagine he was already at considerable risk. I just hoped I wouldn’t have to give him mouth-to-mouth. He muttered furiously to his companion, a beautiful young woman with white-blonde hair and six foot two of slender legs and body. Think Maria Sharapova. Perhaps out of consideration for her much shorter escort, she wore the most wonderful flat shoes – purple with black velvet laces. If she spoke any English at all, I would simply have to ask where they came from. Her black bag was quite brazen about its origin – Dolce and Gabbana. Her silk trouser suit was anonymous, but its immaculate cut told me I ought to have recognised it without the vulgarity of a label.

‘It is old,’ I ventured, when he gave me a chance to interrupt. ‘But the inside has been taken away and replaced with—’

‘I want old house! Very old house!’ Was he going to burst a blood vessel or strangle me?

Cool. I must keep my cool. After all, he had been misled, however inadvertently. ‘That’s not a problem, Mr Zhubov. We have a couple on our books you might want to see. I might even be able to take you to them this morning.’ I opened my folder so that they might both see the range
of properties on offer. He grabbed it, and, with the Sharapova clone peering over his shoulder, leafed through, muttering all the while. Why he hadn’t checked the particulars when he’d booked the viewing, I had no idea. But maybe I could placate him by offering him an immediate look at Langley Park and Oxfield Place. Even as I phoned to check that a visit was possible, I wondered what on earth I was letting myself in for. This was the very type of man who had so scared me before. To be sure, Greg, in an unwonted burst of efficiency, had completed all the details the heart could desire. The computer file was veritably bursting with them. He had even ticked the checkbox for passports. However, although all the information insisted that they were Russian, I was still by no means sure. Those accents…

Claire almost reluctantly admitted it was possible to show them the other houses. She and I had had a long talk about safety, and we had agreed all the things Heather insisted on for her staff. We had told Greg what we had decided, rather than ask his opinion. Confronted by Claire in active rebellion, he had instantly agreed; indeed, it rapidly became his very own idea, even to the colour codes for the folders I should mention if I were in distress.

The pattern of the other visits was so completely replicated I almost asked the Zhubovs
what they were up to so I could short-circuit the whole deal for them. My goose was pretty well cooked, anyway. They’d insisted on following me in their throaty Porsche, so they were extremely well-acquainted with the number of my car. It wouldn’t be hard to trace where I lived, and, no doubt, open the car and leave a bunch of daffodils on the seat. It might even be a fully fledged wreath this time, if I annoyed them. The bulge in his pocket left me in absolutely no doubt that he was carrying a gun.

I did tepidly ask them to stay together at both properties; I received the same disrespectful smirk in response. They didn’t even bother with excuses. Off she went, with her monster bag, and back eventually she came. This time I would swear that the bag, though no less bulky when she returned, was distinctly lighter.

We bade each other farewell, and off they drove.

I didn’t follow. This time I was going to find out what they were up to.

Before I plunged back in, I checked my mobile. Yes, it was switched on, with plenty of battery life left. And there was enough network coverage, not something that is always guaranteed in the countryside. I could summon help with one press of the thumb. Excellent. For a moment, I felt reasonably brave.

But puzzled. The place was unfurnished, so the number of places to conceal anything was limited. The Sharapova clone was nearly a foot taller than me, so she could have stowed something above my eyeline. But here at Oxfield Place there were no obvious high shelves, nor, when I’d given the place a thorough going-over, did I find any out-of-the-way ones.

I’d been here ten minutes, now, and for some reason started to feel uneasy. It was time to get out and run, I knew that. But how could I, with the job not done?

Then I heard the car. The Porsche. Why was it turning back into the drive?

And what was my excuse for still being here?

By the time they were parked, I was outside the front door, ostentatiously locking it, but quite clearly holding my mobile. That was going to be my excuse. I’d put it down somewhere in the house and had to return for it.

Their excuse was that Mrs Zhubov had forgotten to take a photo of the place for their records. As if there weren’t several in the folder with the particulars. With the rigid smiles of people who knew they were being lied to and were lying in return, we waited while Mrs Zhubov took her pictures, the Porsche and Mr Z prominent in the foreground, and returned to our cars. I was afraid he was going to graciously
wave me off first, but perhaps Porsche drivers are hard-wired to take precedence. I meekly followed in his wake as far as the gates, waving politely as he turned left and roared off. Had he bothered to check his rear-view mirror, he would have seen my Fiesta creeping decorously out and setting off in the opposite direction. By the time I’d found a gate to do a reverse turn in, he should be miles away. Unless he found a similar gate.

This time I hid the car in an outbuilding, tugging over it – poor paintwork – an old tarpaulin I found there. Poor fingernails, too.

My heart thumping, and not necessarily with all that effort, I slipped back into the house. I locked up very carefully behind me, sliding heavy bolts, and set the alarm for the front door, but none of the other areas of the building.

What was I doing? I’d checked everywhere. If it wasn’t on something, or under something – whatever it was – it must be in something. And there was nowhere for it to be in.

Biting a badly broken nail, I pondered.

The loo had always featured in the excuses the viewers had given for separating. The loo? I ran upstairs into the Nineties en suite bathroom carved tastelessly out of a beautiful symmetrical bedroom and stared. Not so much as a bathroom cabinet. The bath stood free from the wall on cast iron legs: no hiding place there, then.

I had an aunt who always used to amuse us by hiding what she referred optimistically to as
my jewels
behind the washbasin pedestal. Could anything be there? A couple of serious spiders apart, the space was unoccupied. There was only one other place. The cistern. The place where we’d been told to place house-bricks or
water-savers
in time of drought. And for some reason it was overflowing. Fortunately for me, it was a low-flush loo, so I could easily lift the cover.

I nearly dropped it.

Two polythene-swathed packets at least the size of a bag of sugar lurked inside. I left them where they were. What about the family bathroom? Bingo. And the downstairs cloakroom? Yes, a fourth and fifth. And there was one last bathroom, with another bag in its cistern. Somehow I did not think any package was sugar. Should I look? It was very tempting, for one as nosy as myself.