False Diamond--An Abbot Agency Mystery

by Veronica Heley

  Oh well, every woman knows that, in times of stress, the bra is the best place in which to hide something.

  There were sounds of movement down below. The washing machine had finished its programme. How did Ginevra propose to dry the bedding? Over the banisters? In which case, she’d be coming upstairs any minute now. Perhaps she had a drier downstairs as well as a washing machine? Bea couldn’t remember, but fervently hoped so.

  Trying not to rush, she refolded the clothes she’d taken out of the suitcase and replaced them. Turned the key in the lock.

  She’d been kneeling on the floor. Got up, wincing. Knees …

  She hobbled over to the mantelpiece and replaced the keys in the lamb’s pot.

  Now for the loo. She really did need to go, now. Into the bathroom. Yes, it did still smell of that dreadful night.

  ‘Bea, are you all right up there?’ Leon, calling up the stairs.

  ‘So sorry, Leon. I can’t seem to … Just one more go and I’ll be right with you.’

  Flush the loo. Wash her hands.

  Tidy her hair. She was having a bad hair day. She was overdue for a cut and blow dry, and for a manicure. The skin around her left eye was still yellow rather than peach. Oh well, let Ginevra preen herself in the knowledge that she was both beautiful and young, whereas Bea was neither … today. Tomorrow, Bea told herself firmly, was another matter.

  She made her way down the stairs, holding on to the banister, and into the living room.

  ‘Feeling better now?’ Ginevra didn’t even bother to meet Bea’s eyes.

  ‘Sorry to be so long.’ Bea avoided answering the question.

  ‘All right, now?’ said Leon. ‘I’ve called a minicab so that we can take these bags off Ginevra’s hands. All right, my dear?’ He smiled down at Ginevra, who managed to blink tears into her eyes as she drew his head down so she could kiss his cheek.

  Bea registered the fact that Ginevra was perfectly willing to make a conquest of this much older man, but was not going to allow him her lips or to think he could take advantage of her, ahem, body.

  They retrieved their coats and Bea’s handbag before loading the boys’ clothing and toys into the taxi. A tight squeeze. Leon got out his smartphone, frowning at the emails which appeared on it.

  Bea didn’t approve of people using their phones in company, so gave a tiny cough.

  ‘What did you find out?’

  ‘Mm?’ He gave her half his attention. ‘No paperwork to be seen. Diaries, everything gone. She says they even emptied the waste paper basket. You’ve got the memory stick, though?’ He held out his hand for it, his eyes still on his emails.

  ‘I’ll have a quick look at what’s on it first, see if there’s anything which would help us find Dilys, and then I’ll let you have it. I know you need the information straight away so I’ll put it in the post to you tonight, or forward you the contents by email if you wish.’

  ‘Mm?’ His eyes were on his smartphone. ‘My brother is sending a car to pick us up. He wants to see you, straight away.’

  Bea was not amused. ‘You forget, I have an agency to run and –’ a glance at her watch – ‘I have people coming in to see me this afternoon. What’s more, I haven’t had any lunch, even if you have.’

  ‘I’m sure he can get someone to rustle up a sandwich for you. I’ll tell him we’re on our way, shall I?’

  Words such as: ‘Tell him to stuff it,’ hovered on the tip of her tongue, but she bit them back. ‘Tell him I am otherwise engaged. Which I am.’

  He raised his eyes from his smartphone for a second. ‘He won’t like it.’

  ‘I dare say. Now, what did you learn from Ginevra?’

  ‘Mm? Just let me text him …’ He did so and looked up, but kept the smartphone in his hand. ‘Not much. She says she’s twenty-three years old—’

  Twenty-nine?

  ‘But I’d add a few more years to that. Shrewd businesswoman on a small scale, a partner in a fashion boutique, doing well, she says, even in these difficult times. They have a van for deliveries. Not married but keeping her eyes open for a “significant other”. Rents a one-bedroom flat over some shops. Probably not above cheating the Income Tax people if she can. She had her laptop up and running. Her spreadsheet looked competent enough. Says she hasn’t seen much of Benton in recent years, owing to some disagreement about dividing the assets when their parents died. She didn’t think much of Dilys, whom she’d only met a couple of times.’

  ‘Does she smoke?’

  ‘What? No, of course not.’

  Hm. So she’d had a visitor who smoked? The partner? ‘What did you make of her personally?’

  ‘Some bodywork has been done, particularly breasts. Maybe bottom as well. She’s a natural blonde but not as fair as she makes out. Some Botox. Not above using her body to influence people.’

  That was a pretty acute judgement, and Bea gave him full marks for it.

  He held up his smartphone again. ‘My brother wants to make you an offer you won’t wish to refuse.’

  ‘To pull his chestnuts out of the fire? How many times do I have to say I’m not interested in taking on H & B? Anyway, why isn’t he trying to get you to do it?’

  ‘I have other fish to fry.’

  ‘Such as?’

  He ignored that. ‘He’s not going to give up, you know.’

  ‘Tough.’ They turned into the street in which Bea lived. She leaned forward, scanning the parked traffic for a biker. None in sight. Good.

  He held out his hand. ‘The memory stick.’

  ‘Do you promise faithfully to tell me if there’s anything there to indicate what’s happened to Dilys?’

  ‘Promise.’

  She wasn’t sure she believed him, but undid the top two buttons of her coat and fished inside layers of clothing for the memory stick. And handed it to him.

  His eyes had followed her every movement. He grinned. ‘Do that again!’

  She had to laugh. ‘Certainly not.’

  His phone rang. He listened, shut it off. ‘There’s a hire car waiting outside your house to pick us up.’

  ‘I’ve got to get back to work. Toss out the bags, and I’ll get one of the agency girls to help me get them down to the office. I’ll see they get to the nearest charity shop in due course.’

  Surrounded by plastic bags, she watched him get into a luxurious car and be driven away. For a fleeting second, she wished she’d gone with him … and then she picked up the two largest bags and hauled them to the stairs which led down to the agency rooms.

  FOURTEEN

  Monday afternoon

  ‘What do you think you’re playing at?’

  Someone – a man – sounded really angry.

  Panting, Bea drew the two bags down the stairs and dumped them in the big office. She didn’t bother to see who was shouting at her, but gestured to Carrie. ‘Can you help me with the rest?’ She was tired and cold and hungry and whoever it was who was shouting could jolly well wait!

  Before she’d reached the top of the steps, Carrie had caught up with her. ‘It’s the inspector, the nice one, except that he’s in a temper today. He’s been waiting for you. Let me help you.’

  Bea nodded her thanks, holding tightly on to the railing as she descended the stairs once more. ‘Can you find somewhere to put these for the time being, Carrie?’

  ‘Sure. There’s been some phone calls, but they can wait. I put—’

  ‘A bag lady is it now?’ Inspector Durrell, normally of an equable temperament, was spitting mad. ‘I’ve been waiting for—’

  Bea lost it. Pushing the inspector before her into her own office, she rapped out, ‘You want to know where I’ve been? I’ve been trying to find out where a poor abused girl might have been dumped by her bastard of a husband. That is, if she’s still alive, which I know you couldn’t care less about, but I do because someone has to care about the defenceless ones of this world who drop through the net. And yes, I know her husband’s dead. Although I’m not usually one o
f the Hang ’Em and Flog ’Em brigade, and I am quite aware that I ought to be wailing over the death of his sons – though, if you’ll pardon my French, they were the sort who could have done with the birch being applied to their pampered little bottoms – I would very much like to … Oh!’

  One of her most august – and elderly – clients was sitting on Bea’s settee, reading a magazine, with a pot of tea on a tray beside her. This was a client you would normally speak to in subdued tones, remembering to use the correct form of address. She opened events, was a patron of this and that, worked hard for various charities. She and her husband were national treasures. Normally, the lady would have had her personal assistant telephone Bea or email her if she required attention. So why had she arrived, unannounced and without an appointment?

  Carrie was wringing her hands. ‘Her Ladyship understood you had an appointment elsewhere, but said she’d wait.’

  ‘Thank you, Carrie.’ Bea tried to haul back her temper and return it to the box in which it was normally kept. Only, there was the inspector on her heels, looking thunderous, consulting his watch. Bea closed her eyes, counted to five, opened them again. Was she under control? Halfway.

  The inspector exhaled. ‘When you have a moment, Mrs Abbot?’ And to the visitor, ‘Detective Inspector Durrell, requesting the favour of an interview with Mrs Abbot, which is –’ he bared his teeth in what was meant to be a smile – ‘rather urgent.’

  Her Ladyship seemed amused, rather than annoyed. ‘Please, don’t mind me. I’ve been out shopping all morning and would be delighted to rest quietly until Mrs Abbot is free. I’d heard she champions people who have no voice of their own. Who knows when any one of us might need her?’

  Bea’s antennae registered that Her Ladyship had something personal to discuss. ‘Half an hour?’ Her stomach was rumbling. She said to Carrie, ‘I’ll be upstairs if anything catastrophic happens, such as the end of the world,’ and took the stairs to the kitchen, knowing the inspector would follow. Which he did.

  ‘Food,’ she said, opening the fridge. ‘I’m desperate. Do you want feeding as well?’

  ‘I suppose it would improve both our tempers.’ He picked up Winston and went to stand at the window overlooking the back garden. He’d calmed down a bit now.

  What could she produce quickly? ‘How about a BLT? I have bacon, tomatoes and, yes, also some lettuce. On toasted brown bread.’ She threw ingredients on to the table. Winston abandoned the visitor to wind around Bea’s ankles, knowing she’d probably feed him even though it wasn’t the right time to do so.

  By way of accepting her offer, the inspector drew up a stool to the table.

  She put the kettle on and got out the frying pan. ‘You realize I’m exhausted?’

  ‘You aren’t the only one. I have been taken off a really interesting case and told to take over from Robins because first he cries “murder”, then he cries “suicide”, and finally he goes off sick. The post-mortem results are not yet through, but someone high up is pressing for the whole affair to be swept under the carpet as quickly and quietly as possible. This would be fine by me if I could only be convinced that suicide is the right verdict. So, before you start spinning me a line, do tell; have you murdered anyone lately?’

  ‘I’ve considered it. But, no.’ Oil into the pan. Bread into the toaster. ‘You’ll have to catch the bread as it pops up out of the toaster.’

  ‘What? Why don’t you get a new one?’

  ‘I will when I’ve got a minute. Here, take this knife and cut up some lettuce and tomatoes for me.’

  He obeyed. ‘I’m told this man Benton slapped you about, and you didn’t retaliate? Pull the other one.’

  ‘It’s complicated, but the short answer is no, I didn’t retaliate. Or not in the way you mean. I was going to get at him another way.’ No need to mention Max’s involvement. ‘Thanks to Maggie and Oliver and their friends, I have an alibi for the day in which Benton and his sons were done to death. Or committed suicide. Whichever. So if you’re looking for a possible murderer, please look elsewhere.’ Lay the bacon in strips in the pan, turn the gas up.

  He pointed the knife at her. ‘His sister accused you of having done it at first. According to Robins, that is.’

  ‘His sister is now aware that I didn’t. I went out to see her this morning to clear the air. By the way, she could do with investigation herself.’

  ‘Really? Why?’

  Bea sighed. She didn’t really know why. ‘She’s got such a silly name.’

  The inspector didn’t laugh, for which she was grateful.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m overtired.’ She turned the bacon over. She could hear the toaster getting ready to eject the bread and cried out, ‘Catch!’

  He muttered something rude, but managed to catch both slices as they flew up into the air. He dropped them on to the table and blew on his fingers.

  ‘Put two more slices in,’ said Bea, reaching for the butter in the fridge. ‘You want your toast buttered, I suppose?’

  ‘Heart attack, here I come. Now look, you can’t go around accusing people of … whatever, just because they have a silly name. Why did you go to see her, anyway?’

  ‘We were looking for a memory stick which Benton carried round with him. It appears that he backed up his emails every night, and since the police took away his laptop and other documents when they thought he was murdered, the Hollands are desperate to have the stick so that they can sort out the mess his death has caused at the firm.’ She shot him a sharp look. ‘And, talking of suicide, were you aware that the chief accountant of the parent company, Holland Holdings, recently committed suicide? That’s got nothing to do with Benton’s death, I suppose?’

  ‘I don’t see why it should have.’ A guarded tone. ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘I have a suspicious mind. The Hollands are desperate to get hold of some information that Benton’s supposed to have put on a memory stick, saying it’s all to do with a reorganization of Holland and Butcher. But it crossed my mind to wonder – it’s probably an absurd leap of imagination on my part – if Benton had got himself involved in murky doings at the parent company.’

  ‘Really?’ He was stonewalling. ‘Now, why should you think that?’

  She shrugged. ‘No real reason. My chief interest in the memory stick is to see if it contains any information as to where Benton might have stowed his wife.’

  ‘The girl in the bath? She exists?’

  Bea suspended operations with her spatula to point it at him. ‘You’re thinking Dilys might be as fictional as Benton’s previous girlfriend who was run over – or not – in a cul de sac, one October? Well, Dilys is real enough. As to the alleged girlfriend, are you sure there really was no such person?’

  ‘There was no such death.’

  ‘Which means Dilys lied, or was lied to. I tend to think the latter. Benton as a liar is a plausible thesis.’ She slapped butter on to the first of the slices and cried, ‘Catch!’ as the toaster clicked, preparing to eject the next.

  ‘Ouch!’ He caught and dropped two more slices on to the table.

  Bea said, ‘What I want to know is, why did Benton lie about having a girlfriend? I mean, it’s the sort of story which is going to upset your wife, so why tell her?’

  ‘He lied because he needed to account for stealing the diamond.’

  ‘And lied about his girlfriend’s death because he didn’t want Dilys to go telling tales to the Hollands, who might have urged her to divorce him? Do you think he continued the liaison? It would account for the fact that he spent very little money on the house and on his wife and daughter … Although to be fair, he did seem to give the boys whatever they wanted. You’ll have to look at his finances, I suppose. They’d show if he was keeping a mistress tucked away somewhere. A pity that Dilys didn’t scream about it at the time as it might have saved her years of abuse and a dip in the bath.’

  ‘She did tell you about it.’

  ‘Only because her aunt spotted that the
girl was wearing a fake diamond and I was able to get the truth out of her. Dilys’s story was that it was all in the past.’

  Bea built the sandwiches into a pile, used the big knife to cut them in two and slid half on to a plate for the inspector, keeping the rest for herself. ‘Poor, lost kid. I wish I knew where Benton had stashed her. You can follow that up, though, can’t you? Ask at the hospital who took her away?’

  With a mouth full, he said, ‘I’ll try. My immediate concern is to decide between suicide and murder. Let’s suppose it was murder. What’s your take on that?’

  Also with her mouth full, she said, ‘It did cross my mind at first that the Hollands might have taken exception to his carryings on and decided to do something about it, but they wouldn’t go in for infanticide. They’d do away with adults, yes; I wouldn’t put it past any of them. Children; no. They would think that, with a strict education, Dilys’s boys might be trained to be of use to the family business. Nurture overcoming nature. I’m not sure that I agree with them about that, but that’s the way they’d think. Also, they’d be conscious of the bad press they’d get if they were known to have done away with two small boys, however obnoxious. Just think what the rumour of two boys being murdered in the Tower of London did for the last of the Plantagenets. That story rumbled on for centuries.’

  ‘You really think the Hollands capable of murder?’

  ‘Who isn’t? Mind you, they’d not soil their hands by doing it themselves. The old man would say to one of his underlings, “Get rid of that idiot, Benton.” The order would be passed down the line until someone, somewhere, contacted a hit man and got the job done.’

  ‘The Hollands are that ruthless?’

  ‘The old man is, but I really don’t see him getting rid of Benton at this point in time because it’s left the firm in a right old state and not only is he very conscious of his profit and loss account but he relies on the staff at Holland and Butcher to keep his house and estate running smoothly. He wouldn’t put up with meals being late on the table, or a chauffeur appearing for duty without his uniform. I may be quite wrong, as I’ve never actually met him. Want some tea or coffee?’ She switched on the kettle without waiting for an answer.