False Impression Read online

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Further Titles by Veronica Heley From Severn House

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Further Titles by Veronica Heley from Severn House

  The Ellie Quicke Mysteries

  MURDER AT THE ALTAR

  MURDER BY SUICIDE

  MURDER OF INNOCENCE

  MURDER BY ACCIDENT

  MURDER IN THE GARDEN

  MURDER BY COMMITTEE

  MURDER BY BICYCLE

  MURDER OF IDENTITY

  MURDER IN HOUSE

  MURDER BY MISTAKE

  MURDER MY NEIGHBOUR

  MURDER IN MIND

  MURDER WITH MERCY

  MURDER IN TIME

  The Bea Abbot Agency mystery series

  FALSE CHARITY

  FALSE PICTURE

  FALSE STEP

  FALSE PRETENCES

  FALSE MONEY

  FALSE REPORT

  FALSE ALARM

  FALSE DIAMOND

  FALSE IMPRESSION

  FALSE IMPRESSION

  An Abbot Agency Mystery

  Veronica Heley

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  This first world edition published 2014

  in Great Britain and 2015 in the USA by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

  19 Cedar Road, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM2 5DA.

  Trade paperback edition first published

  in Great Britain and the USA 2015 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD.

  eBook edition first published in 2015 by Severn House Digital

  an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

  Copyright © 2014 by Veronica Heley.

  The right of Veronica Heley to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Heley, Veronica author.

  False impression. – (The Bea Abbot Agency mystery series)

  1. Abbot, Bea (Fictitious character)–Fiction.

  2. Murder–Investigation–Fiction.

  3. London (England)–Fiction.

  4. Detective and mystery stories.

  I. Title II. Series

  823.9’14-dc23

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8445-9 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-84751-562-9 (trade paper)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-610-6 (e-book)

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

  This ebook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited, Falkirk,

  Stirlingshire, Scotland.

  ONE

  Bea Abbot ran a successful domestic agency from her house in an upmarket London suburb. She believed in helping people in trouble, but she did ask them to respect her working hours. Unfortunately, this murderer was no respecter either of her, or of her routine.

  Tuesday, late afternoon

  Bea Abbot had problems of her own before Leon Holland arrived to disrupt her working day.

  He was a man of about her own age who had recently managed to insinuate himself into her life. She hesitated to call him a friend, because in her book ‘friendship’ required a certain degree of trust, while Leon Holland would make a clam look like an open book. He liked her to be available whenever he needed a partner for a business function or an evening at the theatre, and he frequently suggested she might enjoy a tumble in bed … an invitation which she had so far declined. What he did not do was confide in her about his business affairs.

  To give him his due, he had never before interrupted her work to ask for help.

  The door into her office was ajar as usual, so she heard the stir when he arrived at the agency. Her staff adored him, partly but not wholly because he usually brought them a box of cakes. She heard him enquire if Mrs Abbot were free for a cuppa, and then, without waiting for a reply, he knocked on her door and walked in.

  He was carrying a tote bag, instead of a box of goodies.

  Bea was on the phone to a customer. She was going to tell him to get lost when she saw that, despite wearing a social smile, Leon vibrated with tension. She told her client she’d ring back later and cut the call. Normally, she’d have offered him a cup of tea in her office, but …

  ‘Trouble?’

  He nodded.

  She could feel her nerves tighten. He wouldn’t come to her for help without good reason. She closed the file she’d been working on and went through to the main office to tell her manageress that she was taking a break. The agency occupied the basement of her house, so it only took a moment for her to unlock the communicating door to the stairs and lead the way up to her living quarters.

  As she headed for the kitchen, she heard him dump his overcoat and travelling bag in the hall.

  She took a tray of tea things into the big living room to find him lying back in an armchair with his eyes closed. That was unusual, too. Leon had an enviable capacity to work a twelve-hour day and go on to dinner or the theatre without showing any signs of tiredness.

  He was a big, well-built man, who just missed being handsome. She noted that the laughter lines around his eyes seemed deeper than usual, and there was an upright cleft above his nose which she hadn’t noticed before. As she set a cup of tea down on the table beside him he said, ‘Should I feel guilty about interrupting your day’s work?’

  ‘Probably.’ She’d never seen him look so tired. So defenceless. A moment later he sat up, smiling, sipping tea. As bright as a button, banishing fatigue.

  She took a chair opposite. ‘What’s wrong? And don’t say “nothing”.’

  ‘Ah.’ He turned the cup round in his hands, looking down into it. ‘You’ve used tea bags. I had an aunt who used to read fortunes in the tea leaves.’

  ‘What happened if she saw disaster looming?’

  ‘Ah. Yes. Precisely.’

  So somewhere along the line he’d met with a setback big enough to make him break his routine and visit her on a working day. In his working day, too. Perhaps he’d tell her what it was, and perhaps he’d come because he needed space. A time out.

  But why? Didn’t he have a suite of rooms in the Holland family mansion not far out of London, with servants at his beck and call? Didn’t he own a flat in the Barbican for overnight stays, with a chauffeur-driven Rolls to waft him wherever he wished to go?

  He set down his cup, empty. She refilled it. Waited.

  He looked at his watch. Checked the time by her clock on the mantelpiece. His fingers drummed on the arm of his chair.

  She prompted him. ‘You’ve been away o
n business for a few days. It went well?’

  A nod. Earlier that year Holland Holdings (International) had been split into two. Leon’s much older elder brother, Briscoe – who had hitherto owned and run the multi-company organization as his private fiefdom – had retained control of the overseas companies but had handed responsibility for the British ones over to Leon.

  Leon had had a successful business career in his own right and had at that point been intending to take early retirement. He’d stepped up to the challenge with some reluctance, but had seemed to be coping well. He’d reorganized some of the businesses; he’d appointed some new managers and confirmed others in their posts. The markets had responded favourably, and he had seemed comfortable in his new shoes.

  Obviously, something had gone wrong. But what?

  If he didn’t want to talk, he wouldn’t. She glanced at the clock. She’d abandoned a client in the middle of a discussion about staffing for a silver wedding party. She needed to get back to her desk.

  He said, ‘What time did I arrive? Will the girls downstairs remember? Will you?’

  ‘You need an alibi?’ She half laughed. Then saw he was serious. ‘For what?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ His frown deepened. ‘“By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.” Tell me I’m imagining things.’

  ‘What things?’

  He ignored that. Stood up. Yawned. Hands behind his back, he went to look out of the tall sash windows at the front of the house. Was he avoiding her question, and if so, why?

  Her house was in a quiet, tree-lined street of cream-painted Georgian terraced houses. A self-satisfied street of well-maintained, expensive properties. The prospect was pleasing, though it didn’t seem to please him … perhaps because dusk was blurring the picture? He drew the curtains without asking her permission to do so.

  It was a something and a nothing, but it irritated her.

  True, it was getting dark. She got up to switch on the side lamps and considered drawing the curtains at the back of the big room as well. The house was built on a slope. At the front there was a small flight of stairs leading up to the portico at the front door and a steeper flight descending to the agency rooms below. At the back, French windows gave on to a cast-iron staircase going down to a walled garden.

  Standing at the rear window Bea allowed herself to relax for a moment, taking comfort from the hints of spring in the garden outside. The bushes and trees that lined the walls were still leafless, but crocuses and miniature daffodils were beginning to bloom in the terracotta planters on the patio. In the mornings, small birds fought over the containers of nuts dangling from shrubs near the house, but as the sky darkened they had taken shelter for the night. Yes, it was getting dark. Time for an arrow prayer. Tell me the right question to ask, Lord? She pulled the curtains to.

  He said, ‘May I take you out this evening? Perhaps even cadge a bed afterwards? The flat at the top of the house is empty at the moment, isn’t it?’

  No, it wasn’t. ‘Well …’

  He made a gesture of frustration. ‘I forgot. You’ve been lumbered with my niece. How’s that working out?’

  Bea hesitated. Briscoe, Leon’s older brother, had married late in life and sired a daughter, Dilys. He’d never paid much attention to the girl, and Bea could understand why. Dilys was a walking disaster with the self-confidence of a jellyfish. She couldn’t make a cup of tea without dropping her teaspoon into the sugar. One of her father’s business managers had ‘married’ her bigamously for her money, and then kept her cowed with verbal and physical abuse. Dilys had produced three children only to have her ‘husband’ and two of her children wiped out by his real wife. Dilys had survived after a fashion, but she was fragile, to say the least.

  Dilys’s Aunt Sybil, sister to Briscoe and Leon, three times married – or was it four? – who was more at home in the States than in the UK, had asked Bea to give the girl a bed and a job for a few weeks.

  ‘Dilys,’ Sybil had said, ‘is driving Briscoe mad. She wants to cook for him. She enquires about his underwear and tries to supervise his diet. He’s got his own team of housekeepers and nurses and dieticians and physios and the Lord alone knows what, and he doesn’t want them upset by her.’

  Bea was amused. ‘I can imagine.’

  Sybil sighed. ‘The fact is, Dilys hasn’t anything to do, but nothing I suggest is acceptable. I really need to go back to the States for a while on business. I offered to take Dilys and her daughter with me. Dilys says she doesn’t want a holiday, so I’ll take Bernice, who is always good company, which is more than I can say for her mother. I know it’s an imposition to saddle you with the girl, but would you please look after her for a couple of weeks?’

  With some reluctance Bea had consented, and had even agreed to let Dilys stay in the temporarily vacant flat at the top of her house. She’d regretted it ever since. Talk about a wet Wednesday …

  ‘Well,’ said Bea, ‘she’s not exactly—’

  ‘I didn’t see her down in the agency rooms.’

  Bea tried to excuse the girl. ‘She may have popped out to the shops. She often runs errands in the afternoons if we’re not busy.’

  He wasn’t really interested. ‘Never mind. May I take you out this evening?’

  ‘I didn’t expect you back till tomorrow, and I have a dinner date.’

  He rounded on her. ‘With your ex-husband? The portrait painter who sleeps in any bed but his own?’

  She felt herself redden. ‘Yes. Not that it’s any business of yours. A gallery is mounting a show of his recent work, and I said I’d go along. He’s giving me supper afterwards.’

  Leon went to stand by the mantelpiece, looking at the pretty ormolu clock under the old-fashioned and slightly foxed gilt-framed mirror. ‘So, you’re busy and Dilys is occupying the top flat. I don’t want to take a chance on getting a black cab. Do you have the number of a local minicab firm?’

  ‘What about your own car? Is your chauffeur off sick?’

  ‘I’ve been driving myself, but the car’s in dock at the moment.’

  ‘Surely you have a courtesy car?’ She clicked her fingers. ‘Wait a minute. That’s not the right question. The right question is: why do you need an alibi?’

  He sent her a look she found difficult to read. When they’d first met, she’d thought his eyes were brown, but when he was stirred up, they flashed hazel with greenish lights. As they did now.

  She tried to put the pieces of the jigsaw together. ‘Let me see if I’ve got this right. Your brother has been ailing for some time, and I must suppose he is finally ready to retire from directing the affairs of the multi-billion overseas division of Holland Holdings. The news has got out that he’s moving on. The jackals are on the prowl, seeking whom they can devour. China and India are eyeing one another up. Meetings are being held in boardrooms across the world, strategies are being devised to snap up his overseas empire. Perhaps to divide it into smaller parts? They are all wondering how much to offer and what terms would be acceptable to the existing shareholders. Am I right?’

  He continued to stare at the clock. Half past five of an afternoon and all was very far from well.

  She narrowed her eyes. ‘Whose shares do they have to buy to obtain control? Your brother’s, of course.’

  Would Leon want to buy his brother out? But to do so, he would have to raise billions, if not trillions. She wasn’t sure he was cut out to be an international Captain of Industry. The British companies which he’d taken over were prospering under his chairmanship, but in Bea’s estimation he lacked the steely ambition necessary to want to rule the world.

  Well, if he didn’t want the job, then the corporation would be up for grabs. She tried to think who else might have shares in the overseas division of Holland Holdings. ‘You have some shares, don’t you? And your sister, Sybil? Ah, wait a minute. Sybil’s taken Dilys’s daughter to America for a while. I’m sure you’re in daily contact with her, but it seems a strange time for her t
o be away from the seat of power. Let me guess: has she given you her proxy?’

  He neither confirmed, nor denied. Which probably meant she had.

  She rubbed her forehead. ‘Who else has shares? Possibly Adamsson, your chief accountant. Now who would he want to sell to?’

  A shrug. ‘He takes his holidays in France. I suppose he might be thinking that way.’

  ‘Who else?’

  ‘A man my brother was at school with. Somewhere back in the Dark Ages, when they were both starting up in business, they gave one another a certain number of shares. Lord Lethbury has offered me his shares at three times their value. He said that if I didn’t buy, he’d sell to the highest bidder and make another fortune. He’s a wealthy man and well padded against the recession, which is why my brother keeps pushing Lethbury’s son at Dilys.’

  ‘What!’ Had Dilys mentioned that she was being pursued by a man? Perhaps she had. But not as if she were interested … though it was difficult to tell with Dilys, who drifted through the day, only touching the ground in spots. Wait a minute. Hadn’t the girl had some flowers delivered for her? When Bea had asked who they were from, she’d blushed and said it wasn’t anybody of importance.

  But, she had blushed.

  Bea was annoyed with herself for missing the signs. Dilys had been entrusted to her care, and she’d failed to spot that there was a man hanging around waiting for her to wake up. ‘You mean to tell me that your brother is trying to marry her off again, so that he doesn’t need to provide for her in future?’

  ‘That’s a possible reading of the situation, yes.’

  ‘Aaargh!’ Bea raised both arms to the heavens. ‘How dare he! The girl is in no state to make decisions about her future. What’s the boy like?’

  ‘Orlando? All right, I suppose. But it won’t work. I’m told he has a position of sorts at an advertising agency, arranging photo shoots. He wears pink jeans, and his hair is more ginger than blonde.’