The October Cabaret

by Nancy Buckingham

“I heard earlier today that you had arrived,” he went on after a moment, “but I had my lunchtime trade to keep me busy, and I thought it would do no harm to leave calling until you had settled in. But now, Tess, I am here at your service, to offer whatever help you may need.”

  “That’s good of you. There are sure to be things I shall welcome your advice about.”

  “What have you in mind?” His eyes flickered from the Wedgwood vase to me. There was a look in them I couldn’t quite decipher. The smile still hovered about his lips, and I recalled now that Gervaise Duvillard was perpetually smiling. I guess it wasn’t really a smile at all, but just the natural set of his facial muscles.

  “Oh, nothing, special,” I said. “I was speaking generally.”

  “Ah, oui.” He replaced the vase with exacting care, then paced away, fingers linked behind his back. It was odd to watch such a heavy man moving with such delicacy. “I think Maynard would have been relieved to know that you have come to take over his ... his affairs. It is better kept within the family.”

  I gave a rueful laugh. “You’re the only person so far to give me the slightest encouragement. Everybody else seems to think I’m making a big mistake. They all want me to sell and go back to Canada.”

  He swung round, off-guard, so that the glassware trembled on the shelves, and the crystal drops of a Bohemian chandelier shivered musically as though from a breeze.

  “Who has been saying this, my child?”

  “Well, there’s the solicitor, Peter Kemp. You know him, don’t you, because he told me it was you who referred the police to him when Uncle Maynard was found dead.”

  “Yes, yes, I know him. What reason did he give for wanting you to sell?”

  “Just that he doesn’t think I’m capable of running this place. He seems to imagine I’ll be taken for a ride or something. Besides, he’s received an offer for the business. A very good offer, he says, and he wants me to accept.”

  “Who had made this offer?”

  “Peter didn’t say.”

  “And you did not ask him?”

  “He said it was too soon to be naming names.”

  “So.” The sound of Gervaise rubbing his chin was like coarse glasspaper. “Who else has been giving you advice, Tess?”

  Somehow I didn’t want to mention Ben. I said off-handedly, “Pearl Ratcliffe seemed astonished by my plans to keep the business.”

  This time he was unsurprised. “So she has been to see you already. What other things did she have to say?”

  “Well, she explained about the arrangement she had with Uncle Maynard.”

  His eyes flickered. “The ‘arrangement’?”

  So Gervaise was aware that Pearl and my uncle had been having an affair. I could see, though, that he didn’t like Pearl Ratcliffe any more than I did.

  My voice was carefully neutral as I said, “Pearl explained that she worked part time in the shop and she offered to continue on the same basis for me.”

  Gervaise released a breath noisily. “She wasted no time in coming to see you. One would have thought that in the circumstances ...” He halted and began again. “I cannot imagine why she should want to work, when she has a large house and a husband to look after.”

  “What does her husband do?” I asked.

  “He was an insurance broker, but he is retired now.”

  “So he must be quite a bit older than she is?”

  “Considerably. He was a widower, I gather, and she was his office receptionist. For her it was doubtless a most favourable match. Charles Ratcliffe is not only a man of comfortable means, but he is highly regarded. One would imagine that her duties as his wife and hostess would keep her fully occupied.”

  “Perhaps she’s glad to have an excuse to get out of the house sometimes,” I said, half brandishing the banner for women’s lib, half trying to be charitable to Pearl.

  No such charity from Gervaise Duvillard, though. For once his fixed smile was missing as he said, “You must be on your guard against that one, Tess. Remember that this is your business now, and you must conduct your affairs as you wish them to be conducted.”

  “I can’t help feeling a little bit guilty,” I confessed. “I mean, if Uncle Maynard had left the shop and everything to me in his will, it would have been different. But as things are, it’s come to me by default, so to speak.”

  “He would have wished you to have it, my child—be easy in your mind about that. Besides, who else is there with the smallest claim?”

  Pearl? But if her husband was still around—and well-heeled into the bargain—then not so, I guessed.

  “No, there’s no one else.”

  “Then, accept what is rightfully yours and be thankful.”

  The phone rang, and with a muttered apology I picked it up. “Pennicott’s Emporium.”

  “You sound splendidly efficient.” It was Peter. “I’m just ringing to ask how your first day is going. Finding it a strain?”

  I detected a hopeful note in his voice, and I slapped him down. “On the contrary. How are things coming on the legal side? I guess you’ll be wanting to see me soon to sign documents?”

  “No rush on that score. But it needn’t stop us seeing each other, Tess. There’s a good play at the Theatre Royal this week ... a pre-London tryout. I checked and they’ve got a couple of seats for this evening, so how about it?”

  “No, I can’t manage this evening, Peter. Thanks, all the same.”

  He sounded really disappointed. “Tomorrow, then?”

  I liked Peter, despite his being too ready to talk to Pearl about me. But I wasn’t ready to commit myself to anything until I knew what Ben might have in mind.

  “Look, I’m sorry, but I just don’t know when I’ll be free. Can we leave it for the moment, please?”

  “Okay, if I must. Don’t hang up for a minute, though. I wanted another word with you regarding that offer I told you about.”

  “I’ve already told you no,” I said grimly.

  “But things have changed. I’m fairly certain I can get him to up his price.”

  “Him?” I floated.

  “The man who wants to buy. As a matter of fact, I’m authorised to tell you that he’ll spring another twenty percent if you twist his arm. You won’t do better than that, Tess, anywhere.”

  I sighed wearily. “I can’t talk about it now, Peter. I’ve got someone here. But please take my word for it, I’m just not interested. Sorry, I can’t stop and chat.”

  I hung up before he could say anything else. Gervaise had wandered nearer the window and was watching a family group outside - Italians, by the look of them - who were pointing interestedly at our display of Chelsea figures.

  “That was Peter Kemp,” I told him.

  “So I gathered.” His fixed smile became more positive, nearly reaching up to his eyes. “I was going to suggest that you might care to be my guest at the bistro this evening, Tess, if you wouldn’t mind a host who is absent in the kitchen much of the time. But I am clearly far too late. Your evenings seem to be at a premium.”

  “I’m sorry. I’d have liked that, Gervaise. Could we make it some other time?”

  “But of course. Any evening, my dear. You need not tell me in advance/ Just come round, and a table will be found for you. Now, I won’t keep you any longer.” He moved to the door, then paused and glanced back. “Always remember, I am there if you need me. You have only to ask.”

  “You’re very kind,” I murmured.

  “I mean this seriously, you know. Maynard and I were very close, you understand? So if anything puzzles you or troubles you, anything at all, then you must come straight to me. You can rely on my confidence.”

  “I know I can, Gervaise. But you make it sound almost as if you expect me to run into trouble.”

  He wasn’t amused. “Just bear in mind what I said, my dear.”

  Within seconds of his going, I remembered the photographs I’d picked up at the chemist’s this morning. I went to the door to call him back,
thinking he’d be interested to see them. But he had already disappeared round the corner.

  I took the little packet out of my shoulderbag and spilled the contents on the writing table. It was a letdown to find that the coloured prints were not personal snaps at all, but photographs of various objects d’art. Spreading them out with one finger, I recognised several of the items... a candelabrum in ormolu and bronze, a beautifully engraved wine goblet with a twist stem, a pair of little equestrian figures depicting the young Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, and a carved ivory fan. But four of the prints were all of the same piece, and this I did not recognise. I felt convinced it was something I couldn’t have overlooked had it been anywhere in the shop.

  I studied these four pictures keenly. They showed a rectangular pot with a lid, pictured from each of its four sides, so that the painting in each of the four reserve panels could be seen ... exquisitely executed little pastoral scenes, bordered with thick gilding against a background of rose Pompadour. It looked to me like a piece of Sèvres porcelain, and very valuable. Far outclassing in its rarity, I’d have thought, the general run of stock at Pennicott’s Emporium.

  I mused about the purpose of these photographs, and about the Sèvres ones in particular. There would be a simple answer, of course, and I only needed to ask Pearl Ratcliffe. Yet I knew that I wasn’t going to ask her. My thoughts spun back to my first encounter with her this morning, the challenge, the dislike in her amber eyes; and later, those strange, tension-charged moments when I’d interrupted some kind of quarrel between her and the arrogant young man. There was no getting away from it, I didn’t like Pearl one bit, didn’t trust her. And neither, it was plain, did Gervaise Duvillard. And yet Uncle Maynard must have had faith in her to let her work as his assistant. Or had he been blinded by infatuation?

  Was I being stupid to let Pearl stay on, feeling as I did? I’d be able to manage without her, though it would be a rough ride on my own. But what excuse could I give her for changing my mind so quickly? She had done nothing, so far, that I could reasonably criticise, and Peter Kemp would think I was crazy if I backpedalled now.

  I wondered if maybe Ben could tell me anything more about the woman. I’d ask him this evening. And while I was about it, I thought, as I gathered up the photographs and slipped them back in my bag, I’d ask him about these, too.

  Chapter Five

  As we slid through quiet country lanes in the car that Ben had borrowed while his own was being repaired, I’d been giving him an edited rundown of my life in Canada. With the windows down, a fresh evening fragrance was reaching us ... new-mown hay and the soft breath of a million trees. And drifting from the hedgerows, tangling into my senses, the sweet summer scent of honeysuckle, reminding me of just such an evening as this, six years ago ... was Ben remembering, too?

  “What I can’t understand,” he said, pulling onto the grass verge to let a farm tractor get past, “is why you gave all that up for something as chancy as running your uncle’s shop in the Lanes.”

  “Chancy? He did well enough for himself.”

  “Your Uncle Maynard was a wily old bird. Nobody made a monkey out of him.”

  “And nobody’s going to make a monkey out of me.”

  “Let’s hope not, Tess.”

  I retained a dignified silence until, two minutes later, we swung into a gravelled car park and drew up by a rustic colonnade with a riot of red and yellow roses. Beyond, at the end of a stone-paved walk edging a lily pond, stood the village pub, The King’s Arms. What a prosaic name for such a gem of time-burnished beauty. Mellow red brick, lichen-covered roof, and little latticed windows thrown open in welcome to the balmy evening. From within came a murmur of conversation and the seductive chink of glasses.

  “Oh, it’s gorgeous, Ben.”

  “So are you,” he said, his eyes on my face as he helped me out of the car. The words had tripped out lightly, but the pressure of his fingers as we walked up the flagstone path was the sort to make bells start clanging in my head.

  Ben had booked a table, and while we waited to be summoned we sat at the bar on high stools.

  “How did your first day go, Tess?” he asked.

  “Not bad for a start. We made two very satisfactory sales ... me one, and Pearl the other.”

  “Are you and Pearl Ratcliffe getting on okay?”

  Here was my opening. “Is there any reason why we shouldn’t?”

  Ben looked back at me, deep into my eyes. “So you don’t like her.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Your tone of voice did. Why keep her on if that’s the way you feel?”

  I reached forward to top up my vodka with the rest of the bitter lemon.

  “Pearl really knows her way around the antique business, so she must be an asset, surely?”

  Maddeningly, Ben didn’t offer any comment, but regarded me with an expression that hovered midway between amused and puzzled.

  “Of course I know very little about her,” I went on, “but she must be good or Uncle Maynard wouldn’t have left her in charge when he went off on a day’s buying, which apparently he did quite often. I mean ... well, she must have been far more than just an ordinary sales assistant.”

  He grinned. “So rumour has it.”

  I continued, as a strict sequitur, “I was told that Pearl’s husband is quite a lot older than she is. What’s he like? Do you know him?”

  “Only by hearsay. His name often crops up in the Evening Argus. I gather that he made a pile out of insurance brokerage, and now he enjoys the fruits by making his mark in local affairs.”

  “Are there any children? By his first wife, I mean.”

  Ben raked his fingers through his thick dark hair in a characteristic gesture I remembered so well. “I seem to recall there was a son who went out to Australia. Apparently he liked it there and decided to settle.”

  “But that’s not how it worked out for you?”

  Ben glanced at me, questioning. “You know about... Australia?” His obvious surprise sent pain shafting through me. Did he really not remember what the two of us had talked about on that very last evening? Was it possible that the conversation, so indelibly imprinted on my own mind, should have been completely erased from his? Well, I certainly wasn’t going to remind him.

  “Uncle Maynard wrote us about that year you spent in Sydney.” And because that seemed to give the event altogether too much import, I floundered on, “He ... he used to keep us abreast of all the news about the various people we’d met in Brighton.”

  Lying wasn’t my scene, and I wasn’t any good at it. Ben watched me blush, then said lightly, “Fine. So I don’t need to go into the boring details.”

  At that moment a waiter came to say that our table was ready, and Ben and I made our way through to the restaurant.

  I paused at the threshold of the lovely room, catching my breath. Huge, age-blackened beams supported the ceiling, once, perhaps, the stalwart timbers of an Elizabethan ship of the line. The walls were oak, too, the linenfold panelling lovingly polished and studded with shields and other heraldic emblems. In winter, I guessed, beech logs would blaze in the great stone fireplace, but now an oval-shaped copper vessel held an arrangement of flowers against dark-green foliage.

  “Ben, it’s beautiful!” I exclaimed. “I’d forgotten that places like this existed.”

  The table we were led to was by a leaded window that looked out to the fragrant garden. The sun’s dying rays slanted in, casting a pattern of golden diamonds across the linen cloth.

  I only needed one glance at the menu. “It’s got to be the Roast Beef of Old England, Ben. Nothing else would be right, here.”

  “The broiled swan is good,” he suggested with a mocking grin. “Or what about a mess of singing birds stewed in asses’ milk....”

  “Roast beef,” I said sternly. “With Yorkshire pudding.”

  Digging my spoon into the honeydew melon I’d chosen for starters, I said triumphantly, “At least there’s one pe
rson who doesn’t think I’m crazy to take on the shop. Gervaise Duvillard.”

  “Who’s he?”

  “A very old friend of Uncle Maynard’s. He owns a restaurant just round the corner from Pennicott’s ... L’Oiseau Bistro.”

  Ben nodded. “I know it, I went there once. Good, unpretentious French provincial cooking, as I remember.”

  “Quite the gourmet, aren’t you? Is that a standard line of patter you use on girls to impress them?”

  His eyes gleamed with vengeance. “I’ve found it works every time.”

  Not even this could stop me drooling over the succulent pink-tinged slices of beef, expertly carved at the table from a giant sirloin wheeled up on a trolley. I finished the meal with gooseberry tart, the pastry so feather-light it would have floated away but for a smothering of thick country cream.

  Over our coffee I said, “By the way, Ben, there’s something I want to show you.” I took the packet of photos from my bag and handed it over. “Tell me what you make of those.”

  He looked through them quickly, and again much more slowly. Then he glanced across at me, his eyebrows quirked.

  “Where did you get them, Tess?”

  I explained, and he nodded thoughtfully.

  “Obviously your uncle wanted to have a record of these pieces for some reason. Maybe he planned to send the photos out to likely buyers. Dealers do that sometimes. This Staffordshire figure, for instance—it’s Gladstone, isn’t it? Perhaps he knew of a collector who’s particularly interested in historical characters.”

  “I imagined it would be something like that,” I said. “But I’m puzzled about those four shots of the Sèvres jar. It’s definitely not anywhere in the shop, and neither can I find any record in the books of it being bought and sold. I made a careful check this afternoon.”

  Ben said slowly, “You seem very sure it’s Sevres.”

  “Don’t tell me it isn’t?”

  “Oh, you’re right. But most people without specialised knowledge wouldn’t be so positive.”

  “Well, I suppose I do have some specialised knowledge in a way. Nobody who studied Madame de Pompadour in any depth could avoid picking up a certain amount about Sèvres porcelain.”