Staging Death (6 page)

‘I think I’ve been tailed,’ I said baldly. ‘And I’ve still got two sets of keys on me.’

‘But it’s after seven – what do you expect me to do?’

I’d had a teacher at school who’d told us about non sequiturs and I thought that that might be one.

‘I think you’d better come and meet me.’ I told him where I was.

‘At this time of night?’

‘Look, Greg, I’m carrying the keys for four or five million pounds’ worth of assorted buildings. If you’re happy for them to be nicked, that’s fine.’

‘Have you any proof…?’

‘No, and I haven’t much battery left either. See you here in – what? – ten minutes?’ Just to make sure, I cut the call. And phoned Aldred House to warn them I was running late. Without my notes, too, though I decided not to mention that.

Greg, turning out in his Merc with the air of a man braving a blizzard, not just a drop of drizzle, seized the precious house keys and drove back to the office, no doubt chuntering all the way. He’d no doubt be even more disgruntled if I ever told him that I had a completely trouble-free journey to Aldred House. Perhaps it would be better to steer clear of him for a bit, and invent details of a thrilling car chase should he ever enquire.

As it happened I turned into the long driveway with about a minute to spare. I hadn’t had time to go home, so I didn’t have the files I wanted. At least in my Nicole Farhi suit I looked every inch the efficient business woman. Perhaps the effect was spoilt by the constant rumblings of my stomach, but perhaps Allyn would have the grace
to ignore them – or the generosity to offer me a dairy- and preservative-free snack.

I was admitted by a young woman I’d not met before, but whose black outfit, demure to the point of downright ugly, suggested she might be a maid. She showed me into one of the rooms that hadn’t yet had our attentions, but had certainly had someone’s – it was fully rigged out as an office, complete with hi-tech computer and other gizmos, and blonde wood furniture. I picked my way through the strongly accented syllables – one of the former Soviet republics? – and deduced that she wished me to sit down. The furniture was as excruciating to sit on as it was lovely to look at.

I had plenty of time to discover its drawbacks.

At last not Allyn but a willowy young woman appeared. Her face cried out for a frame of short bubbly curls, but her hair was cut as severely as any Frenchwoman’s, with heavy German designer spectacles overwhelming a retroussé nose.

‘You have an appointment with Mrs Frensham?’ she asked.

If only I could have told her that she knew damned well I had. As it was, I inclined my head gravely.

‘Mrs Frensham regrets that she has been called away. Perhaps you would care to make another appointment.’

‘Of course. But I suspect she has already made
notes on the rooms in question. Perhaps I should take those with me? We wouldn’t want to inflict further delays on her plans. In fact, could we pencil in a time and date for the carpet dealer to bring up the ones I thought would be best?’ We applied ourselves to diaries, and came up with a date at the end of the following week. ‘As for the rooms,’ I continued, ‘why don’t you walk me round? Unless I am eating into your free time? Ms…er…?’ It was almost half-past eight, after all. And most young women like her would have been out on the town at this time on a Friday evening.

She shot me a curious glance, as if wishing she could acknowledge the absurdity of the whole charade.

‘Fairford. This way, please,’ she said, all expression ironed from her face and indeed from her voice.

Entering the old part of the house and its original decor, I wished I could have been transported to an earlier and more hospitable age. Two hundred years ago I should have still been a minion, working with other minions. But at least when my work with the tape measure and notepad was done, I would have been ushered down the backstairs to the servants’ quarters, where I would have been plied if not with the master’s leavings then at least with the homely fare that kept the servants fuelled for their eighteen-hour
days. Today if I had made such an exit, I would have found Greta and her coffee machine. So I allowed Ms Fairford to show me out of the front door. The Ka was waiting patiently, but crashed a gear when I tried to get into reverse.

By the time I was within hailing distance of home I realised I was too tired and too hungry to dig out of the freezer a healthy but garlic-free option – having kissed so many garlic-mouths in the course of my career I know all too well the effect on people within breathing distance. There was only one thing for it. The local Indian takeaway. They did a most wonderful chicken tikka kebab in a naan, with lashings of salad swimming in a pungent dressing. To hell with the breath. And the waistline. And the arteries. Tonight I dined with the gods.

Tomorrow I would tell Greg where to put his job. Well, first I’d find out if the Wimpoles’ offer had been accepted – why hadn’t he told me earlier if it was? Or, worse, if it hadn’t been! And I’d make the courtesy call to the creepy Gunters – but if they were going to buy any of the properties I’d eat Greg’s old toupee. And then – because I was sick of being messed around by his clients and scared half to death when I thought I was being tailed – then I would quit. Full stop.

‘You didn’t tell me!’ My voice rose in an unprofessional and unmodulated shriek. But then, who wouldn’t scream when she’d learnt that her agent had sent two other actresses from her stable to audition for a part? ‘Why not, Caddie, why not?’ I added, in what I hoped sounded more like sorrow than anger. After all, I told myself, not every agent would have dealt with work on a Saturday, even though it seemed practically every other profession did. Why, weekends were obviously estate agents’ busiest days.

‘Darling, it was such a small part – hardly worth the train fare, to be honest. But I’m still looking out for you.’ The reassurance merely sounded tinny over the phone. ‘Maybe – given your…’ Did she really choke back the word
age
? ‘Well, maybe we should be thinking about character parts. Let me see… There’s a murder
victim on
The Bill
– no lines, though. But I’m sure you could persuade them to let you take direction with a few good groans.’

I’d done
The Bill
before, and learnt a lot from it. But as a corpse? Corpse make-up can take ages to apply and even longer to get off. A police inspector, now, even a sergeant, with a good long meaty role – that would be really worth having. Though didn’t police officers retire when they reached fifty-five? Maybe it was sixty.

‘And the problem is the woman’s supposed to be in her seventies. Not quite you yet, darling. So my advice is to keep practising those accents. Think that new soap. Think guttural. Something will come up, you mark my words. Now, someone’s waiting on the other line – I think we might just be talking Hollywood here,’ she added with a gleeful squeak, giving me decidedly too much information. So now I knew why she was around on a Saturday – nothing to do with care for me.

So the conversation with Greg that I had rehearsed in the shower would have to be aborted. Humble pie would be back on the menu. And I’d have to get on the phone to the creepy Gunters and ask what their intentions might be.

Though I felt that for all the good I was doing to my career I might as well be taking
hang-gliding
lessons, I shoved an accent CD into the
slot in the car audio system and listened to it as I drove, repeating as gutturally as I could all the words and phrases I heard. What was it today? Oh, yes – Czech. Not that I felt the least like bouncing. What I really wanted to do was go back to bed and pull the duvet over my stylish head, not park this over-obvious car in a slot that would have been ample had Greg not left half his Merc draped over the white line. Wasn’t he old and ugly enough to have learnt how to park?

Claire was rearranging all the sheets of particulars in the perspex stand when I went in. There was no sign of Greg.

‘Dentist’s,’ she said briefly.

So even they worked on Saturdays. ‘Nothing too trivial, I hope.’

Claire looked at me sternly. She’d never quite decided whether to treat me as a fellow employee or as the boss’s sister, and such comments unsettled her.

I took my seat at the usual desk. ‘Well, I don’t expect much response from the Gunters, despite the amount of time they took up, but I’d better phone them anyway.’

I found their file and dialled the number they had given. As Greg had said, they were
London-based
, with an authentic-looking dialling code. A phone rang, which was promising – but kept on ringing, with no answering machine or service. I
gave myself a mental kick. If they were up here house-hunting they wouldn’t be in London, would they? Had Greg filled in the slot for the mobile phone contact number? They must have had a mobile because before I’d met them at Knottsall Lodge he’d reminded me – his turn to give
egg-sucking
lessons this time – to leave mine switched on in case they got lost and needed to be rescued. I’d better scroll down through all the information, just in case he’d slotted it into the wrong place.

I was still swearing away under my breath when in he came. But my moans were forestalled when I saw what he was carrying – a bottle of bubbly. All he did with it, however, despite the fact I was almost begging, my tongue lolling from my mouth, was take it through to the little staffroom where there was a sink, a kettle and a tiny fridge.

I exchanged glances with Claire. One of us had to say something and she’d clearly elected me.

‘Thanks for rescuing me last night, Greg,’ I said when he came out again. I managed a
silly-little-me
laugh. ‘The Gunters had really given me the willies, and then being tailed like that…’

‘You were tailed?’ Claire exclaimed. ‘Good God, who by?’

‘Oh, you’re making a song and dance over nothing,’ Greg snapped.

‘It wasn’t nothing. Each time I turned, the car behind followed me. I swear.’ I added, ‘It wasn’t until I pulled in at the Esso Station they gave up.’

‘Best thing to do,’ she nodded sagely. ‘Go to where there are people.’

‘So I called poor Greg out to take charge of the keys to the properties I’d been showing – I wouldn’t have wanted them broken into.’

‘Property! What about you?’ Claire demanded.

‘I do sometimes wonder if unmarked cars might be safer,’ I murmured. ‘Or at least, something with more discreet letters and a smaller logo.’ But not loudly enough to do me out of my share of that champagne.

Greg looked as uncomfortable as if we were talking about what he stigmatised as Women’s Problems.

‘How did you get on at the dentist’s?’ I asked, remembering that a sister should be sympathetic.

‘Only a check-up. But next week I see the hygienist,’ he said in a voice laden with doom. He was obviously keen to change the subject. ‘Any news from the Gunters?’

I shook my head. ‘I can’t reach them on their landline and I don’t seem to have a mobile number,’ I said neutrally.

He dug in his pocket for his latest purchase
– one of those boys’ toys that carry everything you need in life, from your email to your blood group, in one neat gizmo.

A few prods with his thumb and he was able to tell me what it was, in the tone of a bored teacher talking to a really stupid pupil.

Though I could have yelled at him for not putting it in the proper place on the file, I thought of the bubbly and merely jotted it down. ‘OK, I’ll get on to them.’

He nodded, and retired to his sanctum. We could hear him making another call. The words weren’t clear, but the tone was decidedly upbeat.

Claire jerked a stubby thumb in the direction of the staffroom and mouthed, ‘Fizz?’

I nodded. ‘Any idea what for?’ I whispered.

‘He took a call on his mobile earlier – as soon as he’d answered he bolted in there.’ This time the thumb pointed to his sanctum.

‘Maybe his premium bond came up.’ Mine wouldn’t, since I’d had to sell them all years ago, during my sherry period. So I applied myself to work, tapping the number Greg had given me. This time the phone rang loud and clear.

‘Yes?’

I ignored the unwelcoming tone of the stony syllable and put my brightest smile into my voice. ‘Mr Gunter? Vena here, from Burford’s Estate Agents. I’m just making a courtesy call with
regard to the properties—’ I hated the jargon but Greg insisted on it, and since his office door had opened a smidgen I’d better do as I was told.

With a few brief and effective syllables, Gunter cut the call. Rolling my eyes and dropping my jaw, I held up the handset to Claire and pointed. I replaced it quietly.

‘Not the right moment?’ she asked.

‘From what he said, I don’t think any moment is the right one. Wow.’ I mouthed the foul expletives, as if not saying them aloud somehow sanitised them.

‘I wish it didn’t feel so personal when someone swears like that,’ she said. ‘Though I suppose it’s different for you, being an actress.’

I puzzled over the logic for a second, and then shook my head. ‘You mean I’m used to having people yell foul things at me on stage? It doesn’t quite work like that.’ I raised a shaking hand. ‘See, it’s still upsetting.’

‘What’s upsetting?’ Greg materialised, unable to hide a grin as big as the Cheshire Cat’s all over his face.

‘Being sworn at big time when you’re just trying to do your job,’ I said, with a sniffle I freely admit derived more from RADA than Gunter’s obscenities. There was no point in playing the stoic when Greg was around. He took everything at face value, and if I’d told him I was fine, he wouldn’t
have thought I was being brave, he’d simply have believed I was indeed fine. ‘I told you I thought there was something dodgy,’ I said, swallowing hard enough for the movement to be seen from the back of the gallery. ‘Normal people don’t speak to other normal people like that, do they?’

Claire rubbed her thumb against her fingers. ‘Very rich people sometimes do.’ She stopped short, no doubt fearing that Greg might take it as a criticism.

I didn’t argue, thinking of Allyn’s
non-appearance
the night before. That had told me how she rated me as clearly as if she’d dictated a memo for her secretary to send me.

Greg’s smile, which had made a token disappearance, now returned in all its majesty. ‘Some very rich people do nice things,’ he said. ‘They buy a house that’s been on our books since Noah sailed his boat up the cut!’

Delight and incomprehension battled it out on Claire’s face. I was too busy throwing my arms round Greg’s neck to explain that in moments of emotion he lapsed into Black Country idiom, as well as accent.

‘Which one?’ I asked, when my sisterly duty had been done.

‘The Grove. Only the bloody Grove.’

‘That’s been hanging round for over a year,’ Claire observed.

‘That’s what I just said, wench! Any road up, this bloke’s just put in an offer, on the basis of seeing it on our website.’

‘Which bloke?’ I asked. I didn’t think such words passed Claire’s lips.

‘Some fancy pop singer mate of your Toby Frensham,’ he said. ‘Cash. Just like that. The owner’s practically had his hand off, I tell you. He’ll move out next week! This guy Rivers’ lawyers have phoned me, they’ve faxed me a contract and, before you ask, Vee, the deposit has just arrived in the bank. So I think it’s time for a drop of this, don’t you?’ He dived into the kitchen and produced the bubbly and some cheap glasses we used on birthdays, at Christmas, and on days we had a sale like this.

‘Don’t they even want a search and survey?’ Claire asked.

‘I got the vendors to update their HIP, and it’s in a conservation area. His solicitor says Rivers’ll deal with any structural and other problems. I can tell he doesn’t approve, but I don’t suppose you argue with clients like that.’

I was doubly pleased. It was I who had recommended to Toby that his friend look at our website, which meant extra commission for me, without all the humiliation of trailing round after people like the Gunters. Greg would need reminding, but not in front of Claire.

‘What do you know about the purchaser?’ Claire asked.

‘Andy Rivers?’ I thought his life was almost public property.

‘The name rings a bell.’

I’d forgotten Claire was so much younger than I. You could almost see her dredging in her memory for the name.

‘He was a pop singer years back,’ I said, not adding that that was when I’d met and bedded him. ‘Years and years, in fact. He made a pile writing not just pop music but film music.’ I sang a famous theme.

She snapped her fingers. ‘That’s right. And he didn’t just sit and enjoy his money, did he? He founded a hospital in Africa somewhere.’

‘And got involved in the day-to-day running,’ I added. To his credit – and God knows he sometimes needed a bit on the plus side – Toby was one of his major donors, sponsoring kids needing special treatment and so on. But I was sworn to secrecy about it.

Claire asked, ‘So what’s he doing here?’

‘Family in the Midlands,’ Greg said, still wrestling with the bottle. Would he never pop that cork?

I dived into the kitchen and came back with a tea towel. I relieved him of the bottle and had it open without spilling a drop in two shakes of
a bee’s ankle. Drat him, he’d got us both using Blackheath lingo now.

Eager to share my bonanza I reached for my phone. Who would enjoy a good lunch? Chris Wild? Very personable, and bound, if he used his poshest voice, to get a good table at a moment’s notice. Or poor Meredith? But he’d have to promise not to turn up on his motorcyclette. I couldn’t be doing with that. Chris, of course, didn’t always say the most flattering things, and Meredith could use a good meal at someone else’s expense. Besides, part of me wanted to see if he was still wishing Toby ill and if he was preparing to do more than mouth unspecified threats. If he really were serious, I’d have to say something, and not just to Meredith himself. For all his many faults, Toby was a friend, and one of more years’ standing than Merry. And, after my scare last night, I did rather think I preferred people to stay the right side of the law.

At last I had a valid reason to phone Caddie. If anyone knew the truth about Merry, she would, and I suspected she’d rather talk about his past than my future.

‘Oh, no, darling,’ she declared. ‘It was only GBH.’

‘Only!’ I repeated silently.

‘And there was a great deal of provocation.’

‘Did he really go to prison?’

‘It was a long time ago, Vee – and we all have things in our past we’d rather forget. Why do you ask, anyway? You’re not thinking of…you and he aren’t…?’

‘No, I’m not and we’re not. He just got a bit aerated about someone the other day.’

‘Oh, he would, wouldn’t he? He’s like that. But he’s a pussycat these days, after all those anger management courses.’

Was that reassuring? Perhaps it was time to change the subject. ‘Any news on the audition front, Caddie?’

‘Nothing for your age group, darling. Now, there’s a call waiting, so I must love you and leave you.’

Our celebration was rather lower key than I’d hoped. It occurred to me that it would still be some time before my bonus actually arrived in my little hot hand, and that in the meantime I was pretty well at the top of my credit card limit. Merry was a beer man, so a pub was just the right venue for him. He suggested Cox’s Yard, which he liked because he’d done some young people’s theatre there and had always been made welcome.