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  Bea gaped at him. Was he really proposing . . .? Without benefit of clergy, so to speak? What was she supposed to get out of such an arrangement? His company, when he felt like it?

  From his point of view, it would be a good move. It would save him renting another flat; he’d have a housekeeper and cook on site; and yes, he probably meant to share her bed when he felt randy.

  It was true that every now and then she’d wondered what would happen if he made a move on her, as he did on so many other women. He was undoubtedly one of the most charismatic men she’d ever met, but . . . no, No, NO! She wasn’t even going to think about going down that road.

  She closed her eyes and clenched her fists. Should she hit him or kiss him?

  He put his arm around her and pressed his cheek to hers. ‘Take your time. Till the end of next week, perhaps?’

  She didn’t want to kiss him. But she definitely wanted to hit him.

  He kissed her ear. ‘I know I’ve a reputation as a randy old so and so, and I can’t promise never again to chase a pretty pair of legs, but you and me – it’s different, isn’t it? More loving friendship than lust. I think it might work now we’re both older and have learned tolerance. Besides, you need someone to look after you.’

  He looked at his watch. ‘How about a spot of lunch? I’ve got someone coming at three.’ He picked up a black jacket and checked for keys and wallet.

  Bea felt distinctly shaky. With rage. What would happen if she boxed his ears, or kicked him where it would hurt most? Not that she’d ever done that to anyone, and she wasn’t sure her fashionably slim skirt would allow her leg to swing up so far, but that’s what she wanted to do, all right. How dare he! HOW DARE HE!

  He took the portrait of the mayor off his easel and replaced it with an almost finished one of a fiftyish, heavy-set blonde, who even at this early stage of the painting had a steely look in her eye. His next sitter?

  Bea told herself to calm down. Act normal. ‘Piers, you’re not thinking of retiring yet, are you? Well, I don’t want to retire, either.’

  ‘I know it’s difficult to let go, but there comes a time when—’

  ‘I am far from that time. In fact, I seem to have taken on another of what you once called my ‘dirty’ crimes. Have you ever come across a composer called Jeremy Waite?’

  ‘I wouldn’t have, would I? Unless he wanted his portrait painted. Come along. Time for lunch.’ He held the door open for her to precede him.

  ‘Or a woman called Eunice Barrow? A high-paid barrister.’

  ‘Not my line. What have they done?’

  ‘I’m not sure. Piers, have you ever been put in a compromising position by a woman you’ve been to bed with?’

  ‘What would I have to lose? My reputation as a lady’s man? Besides, I don’t pay for sex. Why should I? I get offered more than I can reasonably cope with.’ He took her arm. ‘There’s a decent enough restaurant round the corner here, vegetarian. Are you talking about the Badger Game? A married man with a lot to lose is discovered in bed with the wrong woman and pays up rather than owns up?’

  ‘With a twist. The girl says she’s under age – but doesn’t intend to go to the police.’

  ‘Nasty. I can’t say I’m attracted to very young girls. I never was, and I’ve noticed that nowadays they have a regrettable tendency to call me “Daddy”.’

  ‘As in sugar daddy?’

  He held the door of the restaurant open for her. ‘As if. To my mind a woman is only interesting after she’s been around a bit, though I can’t say I fancy plastic breasts and puffy Botoxed skin.’

  Bea couldn’t help but be gratified. At least she hadn’t gone down either of those roads. They ordered; pasta and a bottle of good wine.

  He looked at Bea and through her. ‘I wonder . . .’ Shook his head at himself. ‘The Badger Game? They say your hairdresser is better than a father confessor; that he sees all, hears all, never judges. My sitters usually want to talk, too. At first they tell me what wonderful people they are, how much they’re loved, admired, revered. Etcetera. I don’t really listen. Most of it’s pie in the sky, anyway. After a while they tell me their worries about their health and their families and so on and so forth. But sometimes . . . Now you’ve said . . . But I see so many . . .’

  ‘You think one of your sitters may have been caught that way?’

  ‘You tell me your story, and I’ll see if it reminds me of anything.’

  So Bea related Jeremy Waite’s history, giving full weight to the little man’s oddities.

  ‘He refused to pay up, and he confessed to his wife and his boss? Brave of him.’

  ‘To tell the truth, I don’t think it seemed real to him. He thinks about music all the time; and I mean, All The Time. Except when he’s thinking about food. And he’s undersexed, definitely.’

  ‘He’s missing a lot.’

  Bea shot him a look in which fury was nicely blended with frustration. Unfortunately, he was finishing off his glass of wine and failed to see it.

  He looked into the distance. ‘Henry . . . Something. Another fat cat, honoured by the Queen for services rendered to some obscure charity or other. Three sittings; no, four because he changed his mind halfway through. Started solo but changed to a joint portrait with his wife. I thought at the time he was paying conscience money for some peccadillo or other by including her. A sour piece, but she’d inherited money. Henry . . . who? What was his name, now?’

  ‘You keep records. Can’t you find out?’

  ‘True. I photograph all the portraits before they leave the studio, keep them in an album, and of course there’s a card index for the years before I got a computer. But there’s someone else. Asian. A doctor? No, not him. He was into boys, not girls.’

  Bea pulled a face. ‘Ugh.’

  ‘Be realistic, my dove. I couldn’t afford to pick and choose in those days. But you want someone recent?’ He tapped the table, reminding Bea of Jeremy’s five-finger exercises. How was Maggie getting on with the little man? And what about the work Bea had promised to do for the girl?

  Piers covered the bill with his gold card, which also reminded Bea of Jeremy and his problems. She looked at her watch. ‘I must be going.’

  ‘Mm. So must I. Tell you what, I’ll have a look through the album when I’ve finished this afternoon, see if anything jogs my memory. I have a mental picture of a small man with a bald head, tubby as all get out . . . but who he was and why . . .? No, it’s gone. I’ll ring you if I turn anything up, shall I?’

  He held the restaurant door open for her to leave ahead of him. ‘Take it easy, won’t you, Bea? I don’t like to think of you getting mixed up with the seedy side of society.’

  She felt a rush of affection for him and accepted a kiss on her cheek without demur. Even though he had his own agenda, he did seem to care what happened to her.

  Friday afternoon

  There were no taxis in sight, but it wasn’t that far to walk home, and she could do with some time to herself.

  She knew exactly what to do about Piers’ proposition. The very thought of it made her bubble up with indignation. The nerve of the man!

  She supposed some women might have fallen on his neck and settled for the occasional bout of fun and games as the price of having him move into the house.

  How dare he!

  Well, she wasn’t playing. Come to think of it; in the past she’d probably had more fun and games with him than he’d had with any of the other women he’d favoured over the years.

  The thought made her smile.

  She checked her mobile. No messages. Good. Which meant that Maggie was dealing satisfactorily with Jeremy and . . . she began to laugh. What would Max say when he learned that his mother had taken yet another orphan of the storm into her house? She could just imagine it. ‘Mother, you do realize you can’t sell the house with a sitting tenant!’

  Mm. Well, Jeremy might well like to move in for good – as did Piers – but she wasn’t playing landlady to either of
them. No way.

  She swung into her road and went straight down into the agency rooms. The women all stopped working and turned to look at her.

  Why?

  ‘Oh, Mrs Abbot; I’m afraid he couldn’t wait any longer.’ Ianthe, fluting away.

  ‘I did try to ring you, to remind you, but you must have switched your phone off.’

  She hadn’t. So, what was going on? The back of her neck prickled. She went through into her office and Ianthe followed. Something nasty was stirring in the woodshed. So, what was it this time?

  Ianthe closed the door behind her and dropped her voice to a whisper. ‘He wasn’t best pleased, I’m afraid. I told him you must have got held up somewhere—’

  ‘I don’t remember making any appointment for this afternoon.’

  Ianthe put both her hands over her mouth. ‘Oh, but you must remember . . . Mr Jackson, from the agency in the High Street? He wrote suggesting . . . I know I put the letter in your folder, and you said I should deal with it, so I suggested a suitable time. I know I put a memo on your desk about it this morning. He was very upset that you’d forgotten.’

  And there was the memo. And, of course, the letter from Mr Jackson would be in her folder. Neither had been there earlier that day.

  Bea recalled a film called Gaslight, in which the heroine had been driven to the edge of sanity by her husband trying to make out that she was going mad. A black and white film.

  Bea, however, was not a black and white person. She was more of a 3D, full Technicolor type, and she was beginning to wonder if Ianthe was playing some kind of double game, trying to ease her employer out of the agency. Though why . . .? Could Ianthe have got wind of Max’s plans for Bea to sell up and move out?

  This needed to be thought through, but not at this minute. ‘Never mind, Ianthe. Let’s check that you have the right mobile number for me, shall we? Because I didn’t receive any call from you this afternoon.’

  Ianthe recited it.

  Bea shook her head. ‘Out by one digit. There’s not an eight at the end, but a nine. Would you like to alter your records so that we don’t have this mix-up again? Now, have you found Maggie’s draft estimate for me? I promised to get it off today.’

  ‘Oh, but . . . I don’t think . . .!’

  ‘Then I suggest you go and look for it, now. And if you’ve changed the password since this morning, I’d like you to write the new one down and give it to me straight away.’

  Ianthe faded away, looking distressed. Looking as if she were about to cry. Humph. Had she really expected Bea to dissolve into tears and beg Ianthe’s pardon for making so many mistakes? And pigs might fly.

  Bea pushed her chair back and put her feet up on her desk, which was something she had never, ever, done in her life before. But this was a crisis. For some reason Ianthe was trying to make out that Bea had become too inefficient to run the agency.

  Once she’d got that straight in her mind, Bea realized that she really, really did not want to go. And why should she, for heaven’s sake?

  Bea came to a decision. ‘I’m going to find out exactly what’s going on here – and then put a stop to it!’

  SIX

  First, Bea considered what she knew of Ianthe. The woman had been manageress at a small domestic agency which had collapsed that spring, leaving her without a job.

  The Abbot Agency had been looking for someone with managerial skills; Ianthe had applied and been taken on.

  Since arriving at the Abbot Agency, Ianthe had managed to clear out all the trusted old staff, and she had replaced them with others of her own choosing. The volume of work had shot up, and to meet the demand . . . Ah, yes. That was it! To meet the demand Ianthe had called on the services of men and women who had previously been employed by the agency which had gone bust – but, to judge by the letters in the complaints file, those particular people had not been up to standard. Result: the Abbot Agency’s reputation for solving their clients’ domestic problems had gone down, while their turnover had increased.

  Unacceptable.

  Bea had a horrid feeling that it was going to be next to impossible to turn the clock back. If she told Ianthe not to use any of the incompetent people from the failed agency, there would be a shortfall of trained staff to meet an increase in demand.

  It seemed Ianthe was happy enough to take on all comers at the moment, which brought her judgement into question. She was definitely not the best person to vet new staff. Besides, she had more than enough to do as it was.

  Suppose . . . suppose Bea persuaded Miss Brook and Celia to rejoin . . .? No, no; they wouldn’t be happy to work under Ianthe, would they?

  Bea took her feet off the desk because the backs of her legs were killing her. She rubbed her calf muscles. No wonder women didn’t usually put their feet up on their desks.

  Next: Mr Jackson. Bea had met him a couple of times on semi-social occasions. He ran a big employment agency nearby. He was not noted for discretion or for supplying exactly what his customers requested. Gossip said that he had eyes bigger than his stomach, and that he wanted to be King of the domestic scene. Twice over the past few years he’d approached Bea with offers to amalgamate – which she’d refused.

  Now Ianthe was pushing his advances forward again. Or was she? She’d certainly succeeded in making her staff think that Bea had ‘forgotten’ an appointment with the man.

  What did Ianthe have to gain by making out that Bea was losing her grip? If the agency closed or was sold, surely Ianthe would lose her job and have to start looking for another?

  Unless . . . unless Ianthe was working on behalf of Mr Jackson? Unless Mr Jackson had promised Ianthe something substantial for bringing the Abbot Agency down?

  Which sounded fine until you remembered that Ianthe wasn’t working to destroy the agency, but to build it up. Or so it seemed. The figures were all good. If a balance sheet were produced tomorrow, it would place the agency in an excellent position for sale to the highest bidder.

  Could Ianthe be working for another, different agency? A larger one, perhaps, who had plans to take over Bea? Well, no; because if that were the case, surely she’d be trying to drive down business so that the agency could be sold at an advantageous price to the buyer?

  Speculation. Not a single fact in sight.

  Time was creeping along, and Bea still hadn’t typed out Maggie’s estimate.

  She went into the main office, to find the staff closing up for the day.

  ‘That estimate!’ Ianthe was distractedly flitting around. ‘Has anyone seen poor Maggie’s estimate? Oh, Mrs Abbot, I don’t know what to say, I really don’t, because we can’t find it anywhere, and we’re going to be too late to catch the post if we’re not quick.’

  ‘Is this it?’ The newest recruit to the office retrieved some papers from her waste-paper bin. ‘This is her writing, isn’t it?’

  ‘Oh, my goodness!’ Ianthe overdid the thankfulness. The newest recruit hadn’t realized she was meant to lose the papers, not find them, had she? ‘Well, of all things!’

  ‘Thank you.’ Bea took charge of the papers. ‘I’ll see to it right away, so leave the power on, won’t you, Ianthe? And –’ to the new girl – ‘your name is Anna, isn’t it? Can you write down the current password again for me? Oh, thank you. That’s excellent. Have a good weekend, and see you all on Monday.’

  Ianthe pressed her hands together. ‘Oh, but Mrs Abbot, what shall I say to Mr Jackson when he calls back, which he said he’d do before we went home this evening?’

  ‘Make sure the phone’s switched through to my office and leave it all to me.’

  Bea watched them all leave. She didn’t give Ianthe a chance to reboot her computer in order to change the password again. Or to turn off the power.

  She wondered at herself for being so suspicious. Ianthe didn’t really mean any harm, did she? Or did she?

  The office looked desolate when they’d gone. Bea checked that the door was locked to the outside world and went back through
into her office with a sense of satisfaction. She liked being on her own. She liked being the one who made things happen. She tested the password Anna had given her to see if it was different from the one she’d been given that morning. It was different, yes. And it worked. Good.

  She looked in vain for an email from Oliver. There was none. Oh well, if he didn’t care to contact her, she wouldn’t bother to contact him. He would be getting all the news from Maggie and CJ, anyway.

  Quickly and efficiently she typed up Maggie’s estimate, put it in an envelope and called up a courier service to have it delivered that evening.

  Mr Jackson didn’t ring. Hm. Well, she certainly wasn’t going to chase him up.

  But Maggie, now. What was the girl up to?

  On the heels of that thought came the sound of the front door opening above, with a lot of puffing and panting.

  ‘We’re back!’ cried Maggie. ‘Just unloading from the taxi.’

  Friday early evening

  ‘Listen, Nance; the man who runs the coffee shop, name of Jason, says the little man didn’t come back last night, but turned up with a tall, skinny girl this morning and piled a whole load of his stuff into a taxi.

  ‘So I scooted round there, only to miss them by a couple of minutes. Jason says the landlord’s livid at the damage to the flat and is threatening to sue the little man for everything he’s got. Well, I helped Jason to nail a big sheet of ply over the door to the flat, and he promised to let me know the moment anything else happens. Where do you think he’s gone? To the Abbot woman?’

  ‘I don’t want you stirring up any more trouble—’

  ‘I might drop by there, see if he’s around. Or I could get their telephone number and ring them, ask for him by name . . .’

  Friday early evening

  When Maggie had said they were unloading the taxi, she hadn’t exaggerated.

  First she dumped a couple of plastic bags in the hall. ‘The burglars didn’t touch the bedroom, and this is about half of his clothing.’