The Treacherous Heart

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  Contents

  Cover

  Titles from Cynthia Harrod-Eagles by 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

  Titles from Cynthia Harrod-Eagles by Severn House

  Novels

  ON WINGS OF LOVE

  EVEN CHANCE

  LAST RUN

  PLAY FOR LOVE

  A CORNISH AFFAIR

  NOBODY’S FOOL

  DANGEROUS LOVE

  REAL LIFE (Short Stories)

  KEEPING SECRETS

  THE LONGEST DANCE

  THE HORSEMASTERS

  JULIA

  THE COLONEL’S DAUGHTER

  HARTE’S DESIRE

  COUNTRY PLOT

  KATE’S PROGRESS

  THE HOSTAGE HEART

  The Bill Slider Mysteries

  GAME OVER

  FELL PURPOSE

  BODY LINE

  KILL MY DARLING

  BLOOD NEVER DIES

  HARD GOING

  STAR FALL

  ONE UNDER

  OLD BONES

  SHADOW PLAY

  THE TREACHEROUS HEART

  Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  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.

  First published in Great Britain 1998 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

  Eardley House, 4 Uxbridge Street, London W8 7SY.

  Originally published in paperback format only

  in 1978 under the title Never Love A Stranger

  and pseudonym of Emma Woodhouse.

  This eBook edition first published in 2018 by Severn House Digital

  an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

  First published in the U.S.A. 1998 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS INC of

  595 Madison Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10022

  Copyright © 1978, 1998 by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles.

  The right of Cynthia Harrod-Eagles 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

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8784-9 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-962-6 (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

  CHAPTER ONE

  ‘Eight o’clock, Anne, love. Time to get up. I’ve brought you a cup of tea.’

  Anne struggled upwards through the mists of sleep at the sound of her father’s voice, and with an effort raised herself onto her elbow to take the cup and saucer from her father’s hand.

  ‘Thanks, Dad. You shouldn’t bother, you know,’ she said sleepily. She didn’t really like tea in bed first thing in the morning, especially not such a huge cup of strong, dark-brown tea, but Dad did it to be kind, and she couldn’t hurt his feelings.

  ‘Oh, it’s no trouble, love. Have to keep the workers happy, you know!’ He smiled as he said it, but Anne knew that underneath his cheerfulness he didn’t really like her to go out to work. His ideas were so old-fashioned that he thought young ladies should stay at home and wait to get married. Anne smiled as her father took himself off to let her get up in privacy. Those days were long gone – if they ever existed! Nowadays, a girl expected to have to work, and happiness came from accepting that, and making the work as interesting as possible. If you took an interest in everything you did, Anne found, the days passed quickly and happily.

  However, there wasn’t time today to philosophise: it was Thursday, and Thursday was market day in the town of Market Winton where she and her father lived. Anne listened for a moment to make sure where her father was, and then opened the window of her room and poured the tea carefully into the flowerbed outside. Dad had only taken to bringing her tea in the mornings since Mother died, almost a year ago. Anne thought he did it partly because he was lonely for Mum and wanted to fuss over someone, and partly because he thought Anne was lonely. She did miss her mother, of course, but Mum had been ill for a long time, and her death had been what the doctors call a merciful release.

  Anne looked out of the window to see what sort of a day it was going to be. It wasn’t much of a view from any of the windows – the back side of Winton Parva Station, a piece of waste ground deep with nettles, rose-bay willow herb, yarrow and rusting cars, and the tiny strip of ‘garden’ Dad had planted between the low wooden fence and the house. He managed to get an amazing amount out of that tiny strip, she thought. He had a passion for the old-fashioned flowers – wallflowers, pansies, stocks and the like – and in among the beds of bright, rich colour, he also grew some vegetables, surprisingly successfully.

  Mind you, he did have plenty of time to potter about between trains. Dad was the station-master of Winton Parva, and the fact that he was the sole member of staff showed how little traffic there was on the line now. The job was, in fact, a kind of semi-retirement for him, and he had been given it after losing a foot in an accident on the lines some years ago. Dad was very philosophical about his disability, and always attempted to make light of it. He even joked about the accident itself, referring to it as the day the Waterloo train ‘caught him on the hop’.

  ‘Your mother was never happy with the move down here,’ Dad had told Anne once. ‘She looked on it as coming down in the world. But, you know, though I never let on to her, I think I like it better here. It’s peaceful, and I’ve got my bit of garden, and my bike to take little trips out. I don’t think I’d want to move away now.’

  The sound of the 8.09 down train jerked Anne from her reverie, and she hastened to wash and dress and get out to the kitchen. Dad always started breakfast before the 8.09; Anne finished the preparations and they ate together before the 8.35 up train called him away again and gave Anne her signal to set off for work. Dad arrived promptly and shrugged off his uniform jacket and hung it on the back of the door before sitting down at the narrow table.

  ‘Breakfast ready, is it, love?’

  ‘Just coming. Many on the train?’

  ‘Quite a lot. Some holidaymakers with tents and a bunch of soldiers. And a crate of pigeons for Tom Jenkins. Could never see any sense in pigeons, myself, unless you eat ’em. Can’t pet ’em or play with ’em. Take ’em a hundred miles in a box on a train, let ’em out, and go home again. Where’s the fun in that?’

  ‘Not much fun for the pigeons, either, I shouldn’t think,’ Anne said, bringing the two plates to the table. They ate in silence for a while, and Anne watched her father covertly, knowing what was coming next.

  ‘Rabbits, now, I’ll give you rabbits. Nice, pretty, fri
endly creatures, no smell to speak of, and a lot of nice eating on a rabbit. Rabbits I can understand – but pigeons!’

  ‘You haven’t the room for rabbits,’ Anne said, as she always did when her father brought up the subject. He had always wanted to keep rabbits, but her mother had had such an aversion to them that he had never done more than talk wistfully about the idea. Now that mother was gone, he reverted to the subject more and more often, but what Anne said was true – there was no room.

  ‘There’s all that waste-land. That’s a terrible waste of good land, cars and junk and weeds. I could clear a little bit of that and …’

  ‘You couldn’t. It’d be trespassing,’ Anne said firmly.

  ‘It’s Railway land,’ her father said simply.

  ‘Yes, but it isn’t attached to the house. It’d be trespassing. You know how tough the Railways Board was when Romilly Jones dug up that patch and grew cabbages on it.’

  Her father sighed and reached for his cup.

  ‘I suppose you’re right. But I’d like a few rabbits. Keep me out of mischief between trains.’ His eyes gleamed. ‘But I suppose you’d know all about trespass and so on. I ought to take your word.’

  The Romilly Jones business was one of the few court cases which had been handled by the firm of solicitors for whom Anne worked. They dealt mainly with land and conveyancing and other documentation, but they had taken on the case partly because of Anne’s interest, and partly because there had been some thought of contesting ownership of the land in question. But Romilly Jones, a local layabout reputed to be part gypsy, had bitten off more than he could chew in taking on British Rail, and had been soundly beaten. Anne found it a useful check on her father, who tended to look upon everything to do with the railways as belonging to him.

  ‘Well,’ said her father at last, pushing his chair back, ‘I’d better get across for the train. Leave the washing-up, love, and I’ll do it later.’

  ‘O.K., Dad,’ Anne said. ‘I’ll see you later then.’

  ‘Yes, of course, market day today. Well, bring Joe back for tea if he’s time,’ Dad said, pausing at the door to add wickedly, ‘there’s a man who’d understand rabbits!’

  And he was gone, leaving Anne laughing. Ten minutes later she was on her way herself, cycling the mile and a half into the centre of Market Winton to the office in Church Street of Messrs. Wilson and Paul, Solicitors and Commissioners for Oaths. The ten minutes were spent putting on her careful makeup and attending to her hair. In the wake of seeing the film of The Great Gatsby, Anne had had her hair restyled in the fashion of the thirties, shorter at the back, jaw-length at the front, and very smooth and straight, which made the most of its dark brown thickness and its copper lights. It suited her rather piquant features, her high cheekbones, large eyes, and small, full mouth, and she complemented the hairstyle with the makeup of the same period.

  It took care to achieve the right effect, and since it couldn’t be hurried, she always set aside enough time in the morning for the task. Anne was not by nature a methodical girl, but when she had applied for the job as secretary to the firm, she had been taken on on a six weeks’ trial basis, because the head of the firm, Mr Cass, had thought her too young and probably too flighty for the position. For six weeks she had kept up a mind-boggling effort to appear mature, steady, efficient, methodical and reliable … all the things she was not.

  The effort had been worth it, for she had been confirmed in the position, and now, four years later, she was still there, and much valued by both partners. The sustained pretence had by now become such second nature to her that she almost was all those things they thought her to be, and since she strove to make her job interesting by getting absorbed in the business the firm transacted, she was also becoming quite knowledgeable in legal matters, which added to her air of staid respectability.

  Her natural sense of fun had to be kept for her time off, for evenings and weekends, and it was that side of her which made her so look forward to Thursdays – market day. At ten to nine the town was already busy, with cars pulling trailers making their slow way through the narrow streets to the market ground, and cattle-lorries scraping another layer of stone off the corner of the public house which jutted out at the junction of Cow Lane and Market Street. The town of Market Winton had never been designed for motor traffic, and later in the day it would be full of cursing motorists losing themselves in the temporary one-way systems.

  Anne herself had had experience of these one-way systems, and her private opinion was that they had been designed by the police as a punishment for those drivers who were perverse enough to bring their cars into the town centre on a Thursday. Once in the system it was impossible to get out again, for whatever turnings you took, you always ended up in the Town Square, half a mile from the market. Eventually, you yielded to the inevitable, parked the car alongside the horse-trough, and walked the rest of the way.

  Church Street was within sight of the market place, and Anne felt the first tremors of excitement at the noise and bustle that was already building up. She wheeled her bicycle across the road and parked it in the bike-rack behind the new Commercial Union building which was next door to the old grey stone house, on the upper floor of which was her office. She drew the enormous heavy key out of her handbag, unlocked the door, and with a last glance at the market place, went in.

  That she had the key to the office was a sign of the firm’s confidence in her. Mr Whetlore, the younger partner, who lived four miles away at Winton Magna, had the other key. Mr Cass, the senior partner, drove in each day from his large house at Blandford, and relied on one or the other of them to be there first. Mr Cass never came in before 10.30, feeling that at his time of life that was a civilised hour to think of starting work, but Mr Whetlore was keen and also liked to surprise Anne – keep her on her toes, as he put it – and was occasionally in before her.

  He arrived this morning on the dot of nine, and appeared rather disappointed not to have pipped Anne to the post.

  ‘Ah, good morning Miss Symons. On time this morning I see.’

  Anne, with a straight face, pretended to misunderstand him. ‘Good morning, Mr Whetlore, yes, you are on time. I was a little early today.’

  ‘Hmph,’ he said. ‘Well, bring the post in straight away, will you?’ and he disappeared into his office, rather crestfallen. Anne smiled to herself. Round one to me, she thought. Mr Whetlore was the son of the man who had bought out the business from the original partners, Wilson and Paul, and for that reason Mr Cass still sometimes referred to him as ‘young Mr Whetlore.’ Mr Cass was about sixty-eight, so perhaps Mr Whetlore appeared young to him, but since the younger partner was nearing fifty, the title always amused Anne.

  Anne opened and sorted the mail, taking note of one or two matters in which she was taking a particular interest, and then she took the pile of letters in to Mr Whetlore and stood beside the desk while he went through them and took a private look at Anne’s appearance. It was for this ‘morning inspection’ as she called it that Anne took the trouble with her appearance. Mr Whetlore was not above commenting on anything he found wrong. He had a secret dislike of women in offices, and was glad to find fault if he could. At first it had terrified Anne, for it was her first job, and she didn’t know whether she might be dismissed out of hand if anything were amiss.

  Now, four years later, she found the situation amusing, and with all the confidence she had built up over those years she looked upon the inspection as a kind of a game: as she grew more difficult to fault, Mr Whetlore’s standards became more exacting, and the more he tried to catch her out, the more delighted she was to ape the perfect secretary and disappoint him. It was another of the ways in which she enlivened her life, which otherwise might fall into the trap of routine and become dull.

  For routine was one of the things Anne dreaded, even though, inevitably, most of her life was ruled by it. In her secret heart she believed life ought to be exciting and surprising, and she believed that she was the sort of
girl who could cope with excitement and danger. One of her favourite pastimes was reading – she went through two books a week from the library, as well as her magazines – and whenever she read, she plunged right into the world in the book, becoming the heroine, or even hero, in her own mind until dear, sleepy old Winton and the solicitor’s office were far away and forgotten.

  Of course, it was very unlikely that anything remotely exciting would ever happen to her, living and working as she did in a small country town, where the one high spot was the weekly market. But she had inherited from her father a strong streak of the ability to ‘make do.’ He had always wanted a garden, but had to make do with a strip ten feet by three. Into that strip, however, he crammed more than most gardeners got into their whole garden, and she was sure he had more pleasure out of that strip than the owner of a hundred and fifty feet could possibly have. In the same way Anne built up the weekly market in her own mind and extracted every last ounce from it.

  The market was not the only source of entertainment, of course. Like all towns, Winton had its cinemas, pubs and discos, along with various more rural entertainments. Anne enjoyed them all. She liked the jumble sales and whist drives and school concerts and gymkhanas and flower shows. She went to the open day at the army camp and the NAAFI dances and even helped with the old folks’ tea party held in the town hall each December. If adventure was going to seek Anne out, it would have no difficulty in finding her, that was sure.

  At half past ten, while Anne was doing some filing, Mr Cass arrived.

  ‘Good morning, Miss Symons. What a lovely day! I always think it’s especially nice when our good weather falls on a Thursday,’ he greeted her.

  ‘Yes, isn’t it lovely,’ she replied, smiling. She liked Mr Cass, having a private idea that he was really rather wicked, and had a sense of humour which he indulged at young Mr Whetlore’s expense. Mr Cass hung up his hat and coat carefully and brushed them with the flat of his hand. He had bought them when he was first made a senior partner of the firm, and didn’t intend ever to replace them. Then he started on the long trek to his office, on the other side of the room. He moved so slowly Anne sometimes wondered if he’d make it before lunch.