False Alarm Page 19

  ‘He might have used the pictures for blackmail purposes.’

  A bland smile. ‘For visits to a therapist?’

  Bea laughed. Of course. ‘Oliver tells me Harvey snapped one of Vicori’s executives leaving your flat. Does Sir Lucas approve of that?’

  ‘You mean, was my visitor working on me to undermine Lucas’s position?’ Her eyebrows peaked. ‘Forgive me; I can’t discuss that.’

  Bea pushed her empty soup plate aside. ‘I assume you have a fair number of shares in Vicori?’

  A tightening of the mouth. ‘I can’t discuss that, either.’

  ‘It was you who got Lucas to send in another caretaker so quickly?’

  ‘I may have mentioned the necessity for a replacement.’

  ‘Then you have better access to him than I have. I was told he’s on his way to Frankfurt for a meeting.’

  ‘So I believe.’

  ‘He’s left Lady Ossett for good, hasn’t he?’

  ‘I have no idea.’ A bland smile.

  ‘Do you attend her bridge parties?’

  A nod. A glance at a pretty gold watch. ‘Is that the time? I really must go.’

  ‘Are you acquainted with the next Lady Ossett?’

  ‘Who?’ Carmela beckoned to the waitress for her bill.

  ‘Another “who?”. Who pushed the caretaker over the edge?’

  ‘What!’ That caused her to flush. ‘You think . . .? No, really; that’s not . . . Surely not!’

  ‘Think about it,’ said Bea, accepting her pie with an eye that glistened. ‘My, this looks good enough to eat.’

  Carmela got to her feet. No more smiles. Bea’s question had shaken her. ‘I cannot conceive there is any—’

  ‘Who poisoned Lady Ossett’s supper?’

  ‘What!’ This was news to Carmela.

  ‘And I’m not all that happy about the death of the elderly woman on the ground floor, are you?’

  ‘Oh, now you are being absurd.’ But Carmela was flustered enough to drop her purse.

  Bea handed it back to her.

  Carmela said, ‘Thanks,’ and hurried out of the café, leaving the bill for her coffee on the table.

  ‘Now she owes me much more than fifty pounds,’ said Bea to herself. ‘And I’m going to make sure I collect it.’

  FIFTEEN

  Sunday afternoon

  Bea noticed the first few flakes of snow in the air as she returned to the flats. They rarely had significant falls in Central London. She couldn’t remember what the weather forecast had been. She huddled into her coat and was reaching for the bell for the penthouse when a large, angry-looking man – someone Bea hadn’t seen before – opened the front door while shouting back into the hall that this was his last word on the subject. He turned to leave but, on observing the change in the weather, stopped to fasten his car coat and search in his pockets for his gloves. He was so angry that his eyes passed over Bea without seeing her.

  Bea waited because he was blocking the entrance.

  The dark-haired girl, Evonne, appeared behind the man and pulled on his sleeve. She looked as angry as he. Father and daughter? A strong likeness.

  Now, what did Bea know about him? Some sort of tycoon, not as influential as Sir Lucas but in that bracket. He rented the ground floor flat for his daughter and had offered her a job on the floor of one of his dress shops. The girl had declined.

  ‘You can’t!’ Evonne was red in the face with anger – or distress.

  He threw her hand off. ‘Trust me. I can, and I will.’ He pulled his coat collar up and thrust past Bea on his way down the steps.

  Bea caught the front door before it could close, and entered. ‘Trouble?’

  The door to Evonne’s flat was open, and young Connor was lounging against it. Smoking. He hadn’t shaved for a couple of days so he was sporting designer stubble and the beginnings of a reasonable thatch of hair. It suited him. His clothes were as unkempt as usual. And that didn’t suit him.

  Evonne threw up her hands. ‘Come in, why don’t you, Mrs Abbot? It’s visiting time at the zoo.’ She pushed Connor into the flat before her. ‘You, you’ve slept in your clothes again. Go and have a shower, clean yourself up. Think about where you’re going to move to.’

  ‘Moving out?’ said Bea.

  The girl picked up some newspapers and tried to shove them into an already overflowing bin. ‘He’s given us one week to move out. He’s gone all heavy Victorian, doesn’t want his name sullied by being dragged through the newspapers again. He doesn’t know anything about Donald, and don’t you dare tell him! He’s got himself into a state about the caretaker’s death though I can’t for the life of me think why. As I told him, it had nothing to do with us. We didn’t even know he was missing till Oliver came asking for him, and it was an accident anyway.’

  Connor hadn’t obeyed her order to have a shower and was still hanging around. ‘I bet it was that tart from number seven who grassed on us.’

  ‘What?’ The girl picked a cushion up off the floor. ‘What do you mean?’ She changed colour as understanding dawned. ‘You mean she told him about the call-girl cards and our visitor the other day? But . . .!’

  Bea kept very still. Surely the pair must have known that Evonne’s daddy was one of Carmela’s clients? Well, perhaps not. These two were not in the habit of monitoring who came and went in the building.

  Evonne pummelled the cushion in her hands. ‘No, she wouldn’t tell, surely. She was just as much of a victim as I was. And Donald’s out of it now.’ Another thought struck her. ‘You don’t think Donald would go to the papers about it, do you? No. Why would he? It would only show him up for the scumbag that he is.’

  No, it wasn’t Donald’s dirty tricks which might put them in the newspapers, but it might be the caretaker’s death. Carmela hadn’t wanted to believe there was anything untoward about it, but Bea’s interest might have made her rethink. Her loyalty to Sir Lucas was well established. She knew he needed to avoid a bad press.

  Cynthia was not likely to talk, and the troublesome Tariq had departed, but there on the ground floor were a couple who had already been in the papers for their part in the riots. No jobs, no means of support. What else might they get up to? Yes, it was worth while Carmela tipping off Evonne’s father – who was probably at his wits’ end what to do about his daughter anyway – and who had in consequence overreacted by ordering the girl out of his flat.

  Evonne threw the cushion at Connor. ‘You stupid, good-for-nothing berk! None of this would have happened if you hadn’t lost your job and become such a slob. I can’t bear to look at you! Get out of my sight!’ She was quivering with rage. When he didn’t move, she screamed at him; ‘Get out! Now!’

  He shrugged and sloped off to the kitchen.

  The girl’s shoulders heaved. She put her hands over her face. ‘Sorry! I shouldn’t let him get to me.’

  Bea put her arm about Evonne and led her to the settee. ‘You really do care for him, don’t you? Or you wouldn’t be so upset. Would it be such a bad idea for you to get out of this place, make a fresh start? Have you anyone you can stay with?’

  ‘A school friend, I suppose. Sleeping on her sofa. That it should come to this! I had such plans when I left university and set up with Connor. And now what! No job, no flat, no future.’

  ‘What did you study at university?’

  ‘Oh, the usual. Business studies. Along with a thousand others.’

  ‘Are you computer literate?’

  ‘Of course. Who isn’t! Where will Connor go? He doesn’t have any family in London.’

  ‘What skills does he have?’

  ‘A degree in literature. A fat lot of use that is. He refused to do teacher training, and he’d have been no good at it, anyway.’

  ‘If he had some training, could he wait at tables?’

  ‘Mm? I suppose so. He’s presentable enough when he scrubs up. But he wouldn’t want to do that, would he?’

  ‘Faced with the prospect of no bed and brea
kfast, or taking a low-paid but worthwhile job; which would he choose? Is he so self-destructive that he’ll lose you and start sleeping on the streets rather than work for his living?’

  Evonne twisted her hands, didn’t reply.

  Connor had come in behind them. ‘What sort of job are you offering?’

  ‘I run a domestic employment agency. Here is my card. If you present yourselves there tomorrow morning, appropriately dressed and in your right minds, I’ll see if one of my operatives can find something for you both.’

  They stared at her. Evonne bit her lip, frowning.

  Bea rethought her offer. ‘Make it Wednesday morning. You may need to shop for suitable clothes. And Connor; let your hair grow.’

  Connor said, ‘Why would you want to help us?’

  ‘The easy answer is: because I can.’

  ‘You think we’re worth it?’ The girl was doubtful.

  ‘I think,’ said Bea, trying to sort her thoughts out, ‘that you’d be better off out of here.’

  ‘If we get ourselves jobs, it’s odds on that Daddy will let us stay.’

  ‘If you get yourselves jobs, you can find your own accommodation and be independent.’

  ‘But we like it here.’ Even to her own ears, the girl sounded doubtful. She looked at Connor. ‘We were fine here at first, weren’t we? We had friends round and could go out and enjoy ourselves. Our first home together. It was great.’

  ‘Can you pinpoint what went wrong?’

  ‘Well . . . Lavinia, the old biddy across the hall, used to get on my nerves, shouting at us every time we came in and out—’

  ‘Wanting us to run errands for her. I didn’t mind at first, though she did smell rather ripe—’

  ‘She used to catch me by my arm with her stick, nearly had me over a couple of times, so I started sneaking out the back way until the caretaker caught me and . . . between the two of them—’

  ‘We laughed about it at first—’

  ‘And then we didn’t.’ The girl’s mouth turned down. ‘And those dreadful old women upstairs kept knocking on the door and telling us we should be happy to help someone in need, and that if we weren’t working, we could at least spend time with Lavinia, and I said she wasn’t our problem and then I got the full lecture about young people being totally selfish and not caring about others and I expected them to bring out some tract at any minute and tell me that I must be born again, or something.’

  Connor grinned. ‘They’re quite something, those two. Reminded me of my great aunt, rest her soul. But it was too much for babble-mouth here, and she didn’t half let fly with the Anglo-Saxon.’

  The girl tried not to smile. Didn’t quite succeed. ‘Oh you!’ She hit his arm, and he hunkered down on the settee beside her.

  ‘And then,’ said Bea, ‘she died. Were you there?’

  ‘We were down in Devon, weren’t we? A long weekend with some friends. It was a relief, really. That sounds awful, but you know what I mean? We heard when we got back. It was strange at first, seeing her door closed whenever we went out. Then her grandson – was it her grandson or her nephew? Can’t remember. Anyway, he arrived and the door was open and he was taking stuff out and putting it in a rental van, so we looked inside and said “Hello”, as one does, and he bit our noses off, saying it was no use our scavenging around as Lavinia had left everything to him, and he wasn’t into the business of letting us have keepsakes.’

  ‘Which was a laugh,’ said Connor, ‘because who’d have wanted anything Lavinia had?’

  The girl nudged him. ‘Carrie Kempton did, didn’t she? Don’t you remember how cross she was about it? She said that after all they’d done for Lavinia, the least he could do was let them have some keepsakes. I think she had her eye on a Derby tea set the old dear had in a cabinet on the wall. Anyway, the house clearance people came and took the rest and now the place is empty. Waiting for probate, I suppose. I don’t know how many years she’d got left on her lease. Not many. I suppose Sir Lucas will buy the rest of the lease off the nephew, do the flat up, and put it on the market again.’

  Bea’s phone rang. Oliver, wondering where she was.

  ‘I’ll be right up,’ she said. She left a card for each of the two youngsters, thanked them for their time, and left them to argue about looking for a job or trying to change Daddy’s mind about turning them out.

  Bea took the lift to the sixth floor. The building was very quiet. Was everyone having an afternoon nap or dozing after Sunday lunch?

  The decorators were not at work today, and there was no sound from Professor’s flat as Bea climbed the stairs to the penthouse.

  Normal life resumed when Oliver let Bea into Lady Ossett’s flat. From the kitchen came the sound of a television competing with Maggie shouting something out on her mobile phone, while a kettle shrilled.

  The television was also on in the sitting room, but muted. The view from the windows today was of lowering clouds and the promise of rain. No, of snow. As Bea watched, a few more flakes drifted across her vision. Followed by a few more. She shivered, though it was warm enough inside the flat.

  Oliver said, ‘Lady Ossett phoned a moment ago. She’s still out with the Professor, having tea somewhere in Richmond, but she said she’d like Maggie to prepare something light for supper on their return. Maggie complains, but obeys.’

  Bea nodded. ‘Can you use Lady O’s computer?’

  ‘I suppose so. What do you want?’

  ‘I’d like you to look up Carmela’s credentials. Is she entitled to call herself a therapist, for instance?’

  ‘I see what you mean. I think anyone can set up as a therapist.’ He set about his task with enthusiasm.

  Bea homed in on the wall where the Lucian Freud portrait had once hung. A Kashmiri rug had been tacked up there instead. It looked good. Of course, it wasn’t worth as much as the portrait.

  She drifted over to the window, to look out over the terraced garden. It seemed increasingly unlikely to her that someone had come up the fire escape on the afternoon of the bridge party in order to poison Lady O. It had been an ‘inside’ job.

  Bea wasn’t sure what it had been meant to achieve. Not Lady O’s death, surely? No, not even Sir Lucas seemed to desire that.

  To frighten Lady O? Y-yes. But why?

  To kill the cat? Y-yes. But why choose that method?

  Oliver lifted his head from the screen. ‘Carmela’s got some letters after her name but I don’t think they’re those of a reputable institution. Ah. Yes. College degrees provided by two American universities, possibly bought over the Internet. Hm. No, neither of them are what you might call trustworthy. She’s a fraud.’

  ‘Not a fraud. She doesn’t pretend to be anything but what she is – and I’m sure she does provide therapy, of a kind. If Donald had gone to her for help I suspect she might have sorted him out. Can you look up Harvey for me?’

  Oliver tapped keys. ‘What for? He writes books. They’re on his bookshelf. He gave me one. He’s the film critic for one of the tabloids. He showed me a book of his cuttings.’

  ‘I like to check everything. Harvey tells us he’s written books and is a film critic, but is he really? He’s a fantasist by profession. He keeps cuttings of reviews someone has written and of books someone has had published but is that someone really Harvey?’

  ‘Oh, come on, now.’ A pause while he tapped away. ‘Yes, he has a website, and yes, his books are all here.’

  ‘Who is his publisher? Is he self-published, or is he with a reputable royalty-paying publisher?’

  ‘Who’s got a nasty mind, then? Yes, here it is. A reputable publisher. Wait a mo and I’ll access their website. Yes, specializing in his field. Both his website and the publisher give the name we know him by. He’s genuine enough.’

  ‘Back to his website. What does it say about the film reviews?’

  Tap, tap. ‘That’s all OK, too. He has a blog. Hold on . . . I’ll get on to that. Yes, yes. His blog covers what he’s seen and what he’s wr
itten about. Oh yes, and he’s on Facebook and Twitter as well. You’re barking up the wrong tree.’

  ‘No porn on his website?’

  ‘Give us a break. No. Definitely not. Yes, he’s interested in young men, but I can’t see that he’s doing anything about it.’

  ‘Apart from pinching your bottom.’

  Maggie came flapping into the room in her flip-flops. ‘Is that Harvey you’re talking about? A scream, isn’t he? I think he’s completely and utterly sexless, but tries to make out he’s gay. It’s probably something to do with his mother denying him a cuddle when he was growing up, or taking away his teddy bear, or something.’ She flung open a window, letting a cold wind in. ‘I’m knackered, slaving over a hot stove. I’m cooking enough for five; us three, my mother, and the Professor, if he decides to join us for supper. Want a cuppa? Carrie Kempton brought us up some home-made chocolate biscuits which look yummy.’

  ‘A cuppa would be good. I won’t stay for supper, but thanks. Maggie, are you coming home tonight?’ Bea already knew what the answer would be.

  Maggie pulled a face. ‘Oh, baby; it’s cold outside.’ She shut the window again. ‘You know I can’t leave her.’

  ‘She’s got the Professor now,’ said Oliver, still bent over the computer.

  Bea said, ‘I’ll find someone to move in with her tomorrow. Oliver, see what else you can find on the other people in the flats, will you?’

  Maggie shook her head. ‘My mother needs someone she can trust. I can put off some of my jobs and do the others in the afternoon, perhaps, when she’s busy with other things. Tea or coffee, everyone?’

  Bea wandered around, looking at everything; looking at nothing. She didn’t like it, but she did think Maggie was right in choosing to stay with her mother. There was still something nasty going on at the flats, and until it was identified and dealt with, Lady Ossett did need someone at her back.

  Oliver looked up. ‘Our Cynthia. She is one terrifying babe! She started from scratch in the lingerie business and is now worth several million. Floated on the Stock Exchange last year. Donald was on to a good thing. A pity he messed up.’