by Granger, Ann
‘One other matter, Monty,’ she began.
‘What?’ asked Monty, eyeing her warily. ‘You’re not going to produce any more of my wrong-side-of-the-blanket kin? I can’t be doing with any more.’
‘I wasn’t thinking of your family. I was about to mention Seb Pascal and Mrs Sneddon who were using the room upstairs . . .’
‘Your Superintendent Carter told me about that,’ Monty said crossly. ‘It doesn’t matter a damn now, does it? They’re not going to be using it again. Any problems arising from that are all theirs, nothing to do with me! You’ve taken Pete Sneddon’s gun away, I assume? Silly bugger, why did he have to go blasting it off at Pascal’s petrol station?’
‘Yes, we have his gun and he won’t be getting it back. His licence has been revoked. Nevertheless, we’re keeping a close eye on him until his trial. However, without wanting to harp on about it, Seb and Rosie were trespassing, Monty, and you may want to consider bringing some civil charges . . .’
‘No, I don’t,’ snapped Monty. ‘I’m just glad I never walked in on the blighters. I walked in on my father and Penny’s mother and that was enough. I wouldn’t have wanted a second experience like that, thank you! They kept the place tidy up there, I’m told?’
‘Very tidy,’ Jess agreed. Tidier than Monty had kept the rest of the house.
‘Oh well, then,’ said Monty. ‘They didn’t cause me any trouble. They only caused trouble for one another. I don’t want to talk about it any more.’
The door opened and Hilda looked into the room, smiling brightly. ‘I’m just about to make some coffee. Would you both like a cup?’
‘Oh, for pity’s sake . . .’ groaned Monty.
‘Yes, please,’ Jess said hastily. ‘That would be very nice.’
‘Don’t encourage the woman,’ begged Monty.
Hilda, ever resolute under fire, beamed at them. ‘I won’t be a tick.’
‘Monty,’ Jess said when Hilda had gone, ‘that was a bit unkind. She’s being very helpful.’
‘You should know me well enough by now, my dear,’ said Monty stiffly, ‘to have learned I don’t like being helped.’
‘I like being helped,’ argued Jess. ‘I’m always grateful for help.’
‘That,’ Monty said, ‘is because you’re young and can still do things for yourself. Help isn’t a necessity for you. When you’re as old and as decrepit as I am – though I hope you never are such an old ruin as me – you won’t be able to do things and you will hate other people drawing your attention to it.’
He pushed himself up out of his chair and ambled towards the sideboard. ‘I’ve got something for you. I don’t want it and I don’t know what to do with it. You might as well have it.’
‘I can’t accept a gift, Monty!’ Jess protested in alarm.
‘You haven’t seen what it is, yet.’ Monty stooped awkwardly and rummaged in the cupboard. He emerged backwards clasping something to his chest. Returning, he set it down on an ancient bridge table near Jess’s chair.
It was a round tin, very old and scratched, still sealed with yellowing tape. On the lid was an illustration showing a coat of arms similar to the one above the door of Balaclava House, but here flanked by a smug lion and a palm tree.
‘It’s Bickerstaffe’s boiled fruit cake,’ said Monty, indicating it with a wave of his hand. ‘It’s probably the last one in existence. Must be fifty years old or very nearly. It’s an historical artefact. I can’t throw it out. You take it. Only for heaven’s sake, don’t try and eat it.’
Jess, Detective Sergeants Morton and Nugent, with Detective Constables Stubbs and Bennison, all stood together with Ian Carter in a circle round the cake tin. They looked, Jess thought with amusement, as if they were all going to break into some sort of New Age ceremonial dance. There was something very totem-like about the ancient sealed tin.
‘Blimey,’ said Stubbs, breaking the silence at last. ‘Are you going to open it? I don’t mean eat it. Just to look at it, make sure it’s really in there?’
‘It’ll be all horrible and manky!’ protested Bennison. ‘It’ll probably smell, too.’
‘Don’t see why,’ argued Stubbs. ‘My mum’s still got a bit of her wedding cake in a tin. It’s dried out and crumbled and you wouldn’t eat it, but it’s not smelly.’
‘Why’s she kept it?’ demanded Bennison. ‘What is she going to do with it?’
‘What are we going to do with this?’ Carter interrupted.
There was a moment’s silence while they all gazed at the tin again.
‘Chuck it out,’ suggested Morton. ‘The old bloke should have got rid of it years ago.’
‘It’s an antique, you can’t just bung it . . .’ protested Stubbs, in his role of upholder of tradition. ‘There are museums with that kind of stuff in them. We were all taken on a school trip to one, when I was a kid. It was arranged like a Victorian grocer’s shop. It had rusty old tins just like that on the shelves.’
‘Can you remember where this museum was?’ asked Bennison. ‘We could send it to them.’
‘I did have one thought . . .’ Jess ventured. They all looked at her expectantly. ‘It’s rather on the lines of what DC Stubbs was saying. The company that bought out Bickerstaffe’s business may have some kind of an archive, documents, biscuit tins and packaging and so on, to do with their company history. We could write to their head office and ask them if they’d like it.’
‘That’s a very good idea,’ Carter said approvingly. ‘I’ll do it.’
The others drifted away, leaving him with Jess.
‘You’ve done very well in this case,’ Carter said.
‘We had a bit of luck, sir, in Tom Palmer remembering he’d seen a photo of Taylor in the magazine at his dentist’s. Any thanks is due to him.’
‘It still had to be put together. You moved very quickly to catch the two women at Colleys’ pig farm. Well done.’
‘Thank you,’ Jess said, reddening.
Carter, too, looked awkward. ‘I was wondering if, by way of celebration, you might like to go out for a drink tonight.’
Jess reddened even more. ‘I would, sir, but I’ve made an arrangement to meet up with Tom Palmer. Of course, we’d be delighted if you’d join us . . .’
Carter looked horrified. ‘No, no, wouldn’t dream of it . . . It was just an idea. Enjoy your evening and give my regards to Palmer.’
He took himself off at such speed, the phrase ‘fled the scene’ came irresistibly to Jess’s mind.
‘Listen!’ she wanted to shout after him. ‘Tom and I are just friends!’ But he probably wouldn’t believe her.
‘All I’m saying, Billy,’ protested Terri Hemmings, ‘is that you ought to think about what you’ll do when you retire.’
‘I’m not retiring, not bloody yet, anyway,’ retorted her spouse.
Terri took up a combative stance. ‘So, when are we going to go and live in Spain as you’ve always said we would one day? What day? You’re nearly at pension age. You’ll be sixty-four next birthday – you could have a bus pass, if you wanted!’
Billy glowered at her.
‘Of course you don’t look it,’ she added in a mollifying tone. ‘No one would think you were nearly an OAP – senior citizen. But you’ve got to think of your health, sweetie. You hardly ever take time off, just a few days at the races now and again. It’s always business with you. Now it’s this Balaclava House deal. All right, it’s going to make lots of money. It’ll also mean loads of work for you and I’ll be lucky to see you. You know we were off to the Spanish villa for a nice break in the sun. I’ve already started packing.’
‘You can still go, can’t you?’ was the reply. ‘I’ll come out and join you when I’ve got this deal all sewn up. It’s at a very tricky stage.’
‘You’ll have a heart attack or something,’ his wife warned. ‘You work too hard for a man of your age.’
‘Will you stop going on about my age!’ shouted Billy. More calmly he went on, ‘I won’t have a h
eart attack. Why the heck should I? I’m as fit as a fiddle. Go and pack for Marbella.’
Terri clattered out, muttering furiously.
Billy moved over to the window and took out of his pocket the photograph showing Terri with Jay Taylor at the races. The police had just returned it, with their thanks for his help. He moved so that the sunlight fell on it.
‘I intend to push this deal through for you,’ he told the grinning image of Jay Taylor. ‘It meant a lot to me that you and I were going to develop this bit of land together. And I’ll see it through, Jay, don’t you worry. A signature on the dotted line and Balaclava House and its land are mine.’
He contemplated the photograph for a few minutes more and continued to address it, this time mentally.
Fate brought us together, that’s the truth. If I never believed in Fate before that day at the races, when we met up, I started to believe in it then. After all those years, eh? And you none the wiser.
He gave a little laugh.
Well, I couldn’t tell you the real truth, could I? I couldn’t tell you why I agreed to come into this deal so quickly, was so keen to work with you. You might have asked yourself why I wanted to tie myself to working with a complete novice. Fair enough, I did think it was a good project, developing that land. There was money to be made and if I was able to steer some your way, it might make up for pretending you didn’t exist all those years. Not that you knew anything about that. Nor was I going to tell you. The last thing I wanted was to have you start calling me “Dad”. I walked away from being Lionel Taylor long, long ago. There was no point in telling you now who I was back then. I’m Billy Hemmings now, Gerald – sorry, Jay! I’ve been Billy Hemmings so long, I can’t believe I was ever that other chap. Besides, there’s Terri to consider, you know. She wouldn’t have understood. She’d have kicked up a hell of a fuss. So I had to keep it all a secret.