False Impression Read online

  ‘For the hate mails and death threats?’

  ‘Oh yes. They all knew about them, even if they didn’t all take part. Durrell left a couple more of his men – I tell a lie: one of them was a woman – to start taking more statements while he, Leon, myself and Dilys, with Hari spreading menace around him, moved up into the big house. All quiet down below; a secretary person at a desk, who dropped the phone when she saw us coming and ran away. Mrs Evans tried to stop us at the top of the stairs. Leon picked her up and dumped her to one side. You should have heard her squawk. Shouted she’d have the law on us. Durrell showed his badge and said he was the law. Leon pushed past her and tried the door to his brother’s rooms. Locked. He demanded Mrs Evans hand the key over. She said she didn’t know what he was talking about, but Durrell informed her that he had a warrant to search the premises and that Valentine, Jennifer and Allister were already under arrest. She handed over her keys. So we got in all right.’

  Bea said, ‘Briscoe?’

  A heavy sigh. ‘Mm. Alive, as of an hour and a half ago.’ He stopped eating, had a sip of coffee. ‘What we saw, it upset me and Durrell, never mind Dilys. Her father was in a hospital bed with the sides up, his wrists taped to the sides. No bell within reach. Lying in his own filth. He wasn’t conscious, which I think was a blessing. Dilys called his name, but he didn’t respond. I think, I hope, he’s merely been sedated. Leon, cool as you please, took a couple of photographs and rang for an ambulance. Leon’s a tiger when he gets going, isn’t he? Not a sign of emotion. “Do this, do that!” and it is done. Dilys, Leon and I followed the ambulance into hospital. Not just a private room, but a suite so that Dilys and Leon can stay with him. Briscoe’s got tubes coming out all over him now. The doctors are not sure if he’s going to live or is too far gone. If his kidneys have packed up …’ He shrugged.

  Anna said, ‘What about Hari?’

  ‘He vanished when we located Briscoe. He asked me to tell you tenpin bowling was on for tonight, and he’d ring you to fix the time. I told him you might not be up to it, after the rough treatment you’ve been having, and he grinned and said it was up to you to set the pace.’ Keith sighed. ‘At least you know you can see him tonight. I’m afraid Dilys won’t be so—’

  ‘Resilient?’ said Bea, pushing her cup towards Orlando for a refill. ‘Never fear, as soon as she’s got a minute, she’ll be on the phone to you. She knows a good thing when she sees it.’

  Two phones rang. Everyone groped for their mobiles. Keith and Orlando found theirs. Anna and Bea looked at one another and exchanged smiles.

  Anna said, ‘No phone call for us this time. Actually, I have no idea where my phone is.’

  ‘I suspect Hari always means what he says,’ said Bea. They watched as Keith murmured into his phone. No prizes for guessing who’d rung him. She sighed. ‘I’d better go down to the agency and see what’s up. It’s Saturday. We work half a day then. Carrie said she’d be in.’

  Orlando snapped off his phone. ‘Who does he think he is? Oh, he comes running now he thinks I’m in the clear, but it was a different matter earlier, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Your friend Charles?’ said Bea. ‘A murder enquiry does tend to skew things.’

  Orlando snorted. ‘More like he wants to be able to introduce “my friend, Lord Lethbury!” I’ve got his measure now, and I’m not going back to him. You’ll let me stay on for a bit, won’t you, Mrs Abbot? I’m fully house-trained and can cook a bit when I’m not working.’

  Bea didn’t know what she felt about that. ‘But Orlando, you’ll be getting something from your father’s estate, won’t you?’

  ‘That’s what Charles was saying, which didn’t endear him to me, my dears, not one whit. My father always threatened to leave everything to the Tory Party or the National Trust. If I’m left enough to cover the funeral, that’ll be as much as I can hope for. Just as well. I’m not cut out to be landed gentry. Too, too boring. I like what I do for a living, and I’d hate to live in the family house.’

  Anna had his measure, too. ‘You might want to buy yourself a penthouse sometime?’

  He smiled and flicked his dishcloth at her. ‘Now you’re talking. Oh, and Mrs Abbot, that Carrie did come up earlier when I was cleaning up in the drawing room and asked if I could wake you, and I said no, and she said she could manage by herself, and to tell the truth, I didn’t altogether like her tone. But there, we have to make allowances, don’t we, because I don’t suppose she liked mine, either.’

  ‘Thank you, Orlando,’ said Bea. ‘Have you really cleaned up in the drawing, er, sitting room? That’s brilliant.’

  ‘I fear the rug is past it. Shredded by shrapnel. Well, glass, anyway.’

  Bea nodded. She’d thought as much.

  Flump! Squawk!

  Keith had put his head down on his arms and had fallen asleep, which had caused Winston – who’d been sitting on his lap – to tumble down on to the floor as Keith relaxed.

  ‘We’ll put him on the settee next door,’ said Bea. ‘He’s earned a few hours’ sleep.’

  ‘I must go,’ sighed Anna. ‘My car’s at the station in the country. I’ll get a cab home and start getting back to normal.’ Bea suppressed the thought that with Hari in her life, Anna was not going to fall back into her usual routine.

  The landline phone rang, and this time it was for her. Carrie, putting through a phone call from an old client who needed attention.

  EIGHTEEN

  Bea went back to work. She gave Carrie a raise and took on another girl to replace the defaulting Jennifer. She looked for but failed to find another mirror and hearth rug as good as those she’d had to throw out, but she did get a contract gardener in to repair the ravages Jennifer had wrought in the garden.

  Orlando stayed and, once he’d understood Bea was not prepared to wash and iron his clothes, proved to be a thoughtful house guest and a reasonably good cook. He introduced her to sushi – which Bea didn’t care for – and a special lamb curry, which she did. He failed to ask her before he repainted his bedroom, but she had to agree the colour he’d chosen was an agreeable one. It turned out his father had made a will when Orlando had first gone to boarding school and had failed to amend it. So in due course he would inherit the old house and the companies his father had owned. He didn’t give up work and said he’d rather not use his title either. They both agreed there was plenty of time to decide what he wanted to do in the future but that for the moment he could rent the upstairs flat from Bea during the week and go down to the family place at weekends. He said that his distant cousin was still in situ and refused to move and that she drove him mad … but on the other hand he did realize it was in his best interests to let her stay and housekeep for him. For the time being.

  Anna returned to work, wearing her hair up during the day and down at night. She bought some new boots for Bea as a gift and several new outfits for herself, choosing lower necklines and shorter skirts than before. She also had her eyelashes dyed. She kept to herself what she did in her evenings. In the daytime Anna and Bea had a series of meetings to consider how best to synchronize the two businesses, and they booked themselves into a spa for a weekend of pampering.

  Keith cut back his working hours so that he could pick Dilys up from the hospital every evening and take her out for a meal. He dropped in to see Bea most days, telling her that he was only looking after Dilys until she found her feet. It was, he said, a difficult time for her and he was being there, like an elder brother, to help her through it. Bea told him it didn’t matter much what he said or thought, as Dilys knew exactly what she wanted and would no doubt get it.

  Leon rang every day at five o’clock, which was, he said, his changeover time from tycoon to hospital visitor. He was always at Briscoe’s side in the evenings, when Dilys went out with Keith. Bea longed for his presence and found these conversations unsatisfactory. He could barely hold back his anxiety for his brother and was distracted by the necessity of having to take over so much more of the business affai
rs of Holland Holdings. He mourned the loss of Adamsson, whose body had been formally indentified from dental records. He said how much he missed seeing Bea, but she knew that if he’d been given the choice, he’d still sit with his brother every evening. Sometimes he asked after the cat Winston, or how Orlando was doing. But she could tell his mind was centred on Briscoe’s fight for life.

  Briscoe woke up on his second day in hospital. He was confused. His first words were, ‘Don’t hit me!’ And then, wonderingly, ‘Where am I?’ When he saw and recognized Dilys, he said, ‘Now don’t fuss, there’s a good girl.’

  To Leon, he said, ‘What took you so long?’

  When told that Angharad was under arrest, he wept with relief. The police found evidence that he’d been given many different drugs to break his spirit and make him malleable to her demands. He’d held out, more or less, sometimes able to reason that Leon was not trying to undermine him, sometimes floating in a sea of doubt and confusion … and eventually drifting away into unconsciousness.

  Now, safe at last, and understanding how he’d been taken to the brink of death, tides of fear still swept over him, when he would weep and cling to Dilys and Leon, begging them not to leave him alone.

  He wept more when he heard that his old friends Lethbury and Adamsson had died, but he had no more interest in business, saying that it was up to Leon to take over now. When interviewed by the police he said that he’d been ill and could hardly remember what had happened. There’d been nightmares, in which a menacing figure had warned him that Leon and Dilys were plotting his death but that Angharad would save him, if he did what he was told. He remembered little more of that time. He said some days he couldn’t even remember what his name was and on others Angharad had been furious with him because he’d been too weak to sign his name to some paper or other.

  The doctors warned the family that the prognosis for Briscoe was poor. His kidneys were failing, and even if a transplant kidney could be found, he was unlikely to survive the operation. He couldn’t return home as he needed to be nursed round the clock.

  He lived for ten days. His sister Sibyl returned from the States with little Bernice, in time to see him before he died.

  After a while, news trickled back to Bea that the police discovered Mr Adamsson senior had been found wandering along a country road in a disorientated state. He’d told the police a confused story about having been abandoned in a lane by some people who’d promised to give him a better place to live, and he was now safely lodged in a nursing home, paid for by the sale of his house. Alzheimer’s had set in with a vengeance, but he enjoyed having good food served to him at regular intervals. His belongings were found in a shed at the back of Valentine’s garage and restored to him in due course.

  And, yes, it transpired that Valentine had been involved in Angharad’s schemes from the start. It was Angharad and Denver who had told Leon’s chauffeur to leave his job, and it was Valentine who had tampered with the brakes on Leon’s Rolls and subsequently arranged for his courtesy car not to start. It was Denver who had tried and failed to run Leon down in the road: just as well, said Leon, as Valentine would have made a better job of it.

  It was Valentine who had killed Adamsson, Lethbury and Margrete Walford, and then disposed of Adamsson’s body and his car. It was he who had opened the gas taps at the college, but it was the security men who had padlocked Anna into the building by mistake. And it was the kitchen helper at the college who had put Anna’s car out of action.

  It was Angharad and Denver who lured Lord Lethbury and Adamsson to the car park … and later sent identical messages for Orlando and Leon to join them. It was Angharad who sent Bea the toy cat and organized the maintenance department’s office to make the hate phone calls and emails. How much or how little Jennifer knew was open to conjecture. Certainly, she had known about most of what had been going on and had enthusiastically sought a job with the agency in order to learn what she could and to do as much damage as she was able. But she told so many different stories about her guilt or innocence that it was hard to know exactly how culpable she had been. As Valentine’s wife – yes, indeed, they were married – she probably knew more than anyone else, but the difficulty was going to be to prove it.

  Valentine, Denver and Angharad Evans were held without bail for trial. Against Inspector Durrell’s advice Jennifer was eventually granted bail and, predictably, disappeared. Two members of the security squad were also charged, bailed and lost their jobs. Leon asked Hari to find him replacements.

  At first the media went to town on the arrests. And then they went quiet. Too quiet, thought Bea, scanning the financial pages every day.

  She guessed Leon was up to something. If only he would take her into his confidence! But there, he’d always been the same, hadn’t he? He was a loner. He couldn’t change his ways now.

  It was one of the most infuriating things about him.

  Eight days. Nine. Ten. Absence does not make the heart grow fonder, but drives it into whiny mode. She wondered why she’d ever been weak enough to allow him into her life when he could cut her out of it like this. All right, she knew he was busy, but he could spare time to keep the home fires burning, couldn’t he? Yes, he was a single-minded so-and-so, incapable – unlike women – of doing more than one thing at once. But, she felt neglected. If this was what the future held, then she wanted none of it.

  Of course she missed him but told herself she’d get over it.

  He phoned, yes. But their conversations were not lover-like. He seemed distant, distracted. Impersonal.

  She tried to match his manner. Twice she arranged to be out at the time he rang.

  She met her ex-husband for an evening at the theatre and managed to converse in semi-sensible fashion. She visited Max and his growing family and sympathized with their current problem of having to find a nanny or au pair for the children. Except for this domestic problem, Max was in charity with the world. He’d forgotten his previous scare about Holland Holdings being due to collapse and was full of the joys of spring as he’d been offered a good price for his shares in the Holland Training College. Max was cock-a-hoop, full of his financial expertise. Hmph! said Bea to herself, thinking he’d have done better to hang on to the shares which would no doubt appreciate in value.

  She had her front door repainted, didn’t like the new colour. Had it redone.

  Leon sent her gifts. One was a superb diamond pendant on a platinum chain. As promised. She’d been thinking about how she’d feel when he put the chain around her neck and admired the pendant, but delivery by courier was … well, it was as if she’d been paid off for helping him. She dropped the pendant into the bottom of her jewel box, thinking she’d return it to him sometime.

  A superb rococo mirror arrived, a genuine antique. And a sheepskin rug. Ordered online, delivered by courier. She told herself it was no use refusing his gifts as she’d earned them. She thanked Leon by email. Orlando installed the mirror and spread out the rug, chattering the while. She thought she much preferred silence.

  Normal life resumed. Her ex-lodger Maggie confirmed that she was indeed pregnant. Sybil Holland took little Bernice over to see Maggie in her new flat and pronounced it ‘a dolls’ house’. Bernice also visited her mother and Keith and announced with a sigh of relief that that was one less thing to worry about and didn’t Bea think Uncle Leon had managed things beautifully? And Sybil actually agreed.

  Another of Bea’s worries was laid to rest when her other old-time lodger, Oliver, returned from university for a long weekend to inspect Orlando. ‘Wary’ on both sides. But at least they didn’t come to blows, and Oliver did say as he left that it was good for Bea to have someone else living in the house for the time being.

  On the tenth day Leon rang at lunchtime to signal that the waiting was over. Yes, Briscoe had died, peacefully, with Dilys on one side of him and Sibyl on the other. Leon regretted he’d been out at the time, but he’d seen his brother the night before and they’d talked of this and that
and the future before Briscoe had fallen asleep. The doctors had done their best, but it had been Briscoe’s time to go. Funeral arrangements, etcetera, would now be occupying his mind, but was she free for supper the following evening?

  First she thought she wouldn’t go, and then thought she might as well. It would save her cooking, and the new dress could do with an airing.

  As Bea descended the stairs there was a ring at the front door.

  Keith, looking harassed. ‘Bea, for heaven’s sake, tell me what to do. Dilys rang me this afternoon and said Briscoe had died and could I collect her, which I did. Then she asked to see my house, and she … she’s moved in! She said I’d offered her a job as my housekeeper, and of course I did say that, but now she wants me to collect all her belongings from you … not that there is much, she says. She wants to know if I’ll take her in the clothes she stands up in, and of course I said “yes”, but I’m sure she doesn’t really mean it. Tell me what to do!’

  Orlando appeared from the kitchen, oven gloves on his hands. ‘I packed up all her stuff ages ago. I’ll bring it down for you, shall I?’

  Keith tugged at his hair, which was much shorter than it had been. His beard was still closely cut and well shaped, too. He was also, Bea noted, wearing a fine leather jacket and new jeans. He looked good, almost sexy.

  She said, ‘I suppose she’s putting clean sheets on the spare room bed as we speak?’

  ‘Well, yes. But—’

  ‘You’re having wedding nerves, Keith. The sooner you get hitched the better. Think of the delicious supper she’ll have waiting for you when you return.’

  Bea thought, but did not say, that by the end of the week, Dilys would have reorganized his kitchen, moved the furniture around in the sitting room and thrown out all his oldest clothes.