A Whiff of Scandal

by Carole Matthews

  ‘Rose Cottage?’ His face twisted into a grimace.

  ‘That’s what I’m going to call it.’

  ‘That’s a bit naff, isn’t it? Rose Cottage, Lavender Hill.’

  ‘For a man whose taste in house names runs to Builder’s Bottom, I would have thought that you’d be the last person in a position to criticise.’

  ‘Yes, but at least Builder’s Bottom has character.’

  ‘Rose,’ she said firmly, ‘happens to be my name. And this, unless I’m very much mistaken, is my cottage. I would have thought it was quite appropriate.’

  Dan looked unconvinced. ‘It’s a bit big for a cottage.’

  ‘It’s got lead windows.’

  ‘And the church has a lead roof – or it used to have – but that’s not a cottage.’

  Rose put her hands on her hips. ‘Why, exactly, are we standing here arguing about the relative merits of my choice of house name?’

  Dan put his hands on his hips and squared up to her. He cleared his throat with a cough. ‘Because, quite frankly,’ he mimicked her tone, ‘I’m too frightened to go home.’

  Rose’s face broke into a smile and Dan smiled back. He picked a lock of her uncombed hair and twisted it in his fingers.

  ‘Try to sort this out with Gardenia,’ she said softly. ‘You owe her that.’

  ‘I know.’ He let her hair fall back to her shoulder and turned towards the door.

  ‘Who knows, she may be more understanding than you think.’

  ‘I think Ronnie Kray was probably more understanding than Gardenia.’

  ‘Well, just go and get it over with.’ Rose opened the front door for him. ‘Good luck,’ she said.

  ‘I’m going to need it.’

  ‘Quite probably,’ she agreed.

  ‘Just one thing.’ He turned back to her. ‘You said on the phone to Gardenia that you could explain it all. What exactly were you going to say?’

  ‘Are you looking for a crumb of hope?’

  ‘A whole loaf.’

  She shook her head. ‘I haven’t the faintest idea.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Dan smiled. ‘You’re a great help.’

  ‘Go on, she’ll be worried,’ Rose said.

  He leaned on her doorframe. ‘Would you think I was awful if I said I wanted to kiss you?’

  Rose flushed. ‘I’d think you were stupid.’

  ‘I’m a builder. I have a perfect excuse.’ He stepped towards her and slid his arms round her waist.

  ‘Dan, this isn’t very sensible. What about the Westons? The spy station that never sleeps.’

  ‘It’s Sunday morning. They’ll be at church. You know Anise, she never misses a chance to show everyone how righteous she is.’

  He kissed her cheek, along the line of her jaw and her nose, with light, flitting kisses before his mouth found hers and settled there. She was melting quicker than a bar of Galaxy left on a radiator. ‘Dan,’ she said breathlessly as she broke away from him.

  ‘I know.’ He gave her a wry smile. ‘It’s time I was going.’

  He turned and walked up her path, waving casually in the air, but without looking back. There was less of the Norse god about him this morning, more of an ageing beatnik, but that didn’t make him any less attractive. Rose closed the door and went to clear last night’s debris from the lounge.

  There was a strange smell in there. Rose sniffed the air. Stale coffee, stale booze and something else she couldn’t quite place. She would have to get her aromatherapy burner going with something nice and fresh, like lime or grapefruit oil, to take this terrible pong away.

  She smoothed the cushions on the sofa, patting the one which bore the indentation of Dan’s head with more tenderness than was strictly necessary. When she bent to lift the tray from the coffee table, she found the cause of the smell. It was Fluffy’s yak rug, the discarded Viking cloak, lying on the floor by the sofa. Holding it at arm’s length, she carried it out to the garage and deposited the reeking rug on top of the work bench. How on earth Dan had managed to spend the evening with this disgusting thing draped round his shoulders, she could not imagine. It probably wouldn’t be appropriate to ring him now and tell him that he’d forgotten it.

  Returning to the house, she carried the tray into the kitchen and washed the cups. The coffee-stained flannel was way beyond recovery. With a sigh of regret, Rose consigned it to the bin.

  Debris cleared, the lounge was returned to normal. Rose surveyed the room sadly. Dan seemed to fit into it so comfortably, yet after a bit of cushion-plumping and the washing of a few dirty dishes – and the disposal of Fluffy’s urine sample – there was no trace that he had ever been here. She touched her face, tracing her fingers softly over her jawline, her neck, her lips, thinking back to Dan’s kiss on the doorstep. The room might be back to normal, but she certainly wasn’t. She knew it wasn’t going to be as easy and as quick to clear the feel of Dan’s kisses from her skin. Like the coffee-stained flannel, she felt permanently and irretrievably marked.

  Anise Weston wasn’t at church. It was the first time she had missed the morning service since Lent last year, when she had been struck down with a severe bout of Chinese influenza. Those foreign bugs never agreed with her, just like foreign food. It was mercifully rare that Angelica produced spaghetti bolognese, which looked like dog food on a skein of undyed wool. And tasted much the same.

  She had woken, in the early hours, feeling particularly unwell and was convinced it was one of Mrs Took’s ‘Viking’ sausage rolls. They were frozen, she could tell, and there was a certain unpleasant sogginess to the bottom and a telltale singeing of the top that denoted a careless cook. It would be the last time she would ask Mrs Took to cater for a church social. The woman simply hadn’t got what it took, buckling under the pressure like that. It was shameful for a woman of her age. Years of living with Angelica’s culinary disasters should have given her a keen eye for those with a disposition for cooking. It had been a mistake to ignore her misgivings and now she was paying for it. She had a throbbing headache and was feeling nauseous deep in the pit of her stomach. And dizzy. But that was probably due to the fact that she was at the top of the stepladder.

  She had seen Builder’s Bottom leaving the house of ill repute across the road. Snogging – that was the term these days – with that ‘nice young lady’ in full view of Lavender Hill in the same clothes that he wore at the Viking evening. Anise smiled smugly to herself. Now find Miss Butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-my-mouth trying to deny her licentious associations with the male gender.

  Anise reluctantly let the binoculars hang round her aching neck like a lead weight, while she scribbled the details of the assignation she had witnessed across the leylandii in her notebook. If only Angelica had been here to witness it. If she saw the evidence with her own eyes, she wouldn’t be so quick to act as counsel for the defence.

  She was in cahoots with the girl, Anise could tell. Only the other day, when she had been tidying Angelica’s drawers for her while she was out shopping, she had come across some aromatherapy oils. Clearly, that woman was starting to have a corrupting influence on her sister, whose first and foremost fault was that she had always been as pliable as putty. Their parents had gone through a terrible time trying to retain some sort of control over her. Yo-yo knickers, she was called in the village. It was no wonder Angelica felt an affinity with the harlot on the other side of the lane. Then there was that awful business with the married man. That had taken some living down and Anise always took the opportunity to remind her of it.

  Saints preserve us, aromatherapy at her age! Whatever next? She would be taking Ecstasy next and going to raves with a baseball cap on back to front. Could it be that Angelica was having another menopause? Was there such a thing as a senile menopause? There was reputed to be a male menopause, even though they didn’t have the necessary equipment. And there was certainly senile dementia. It could just be that. There might be nothing to worry about at all. Angelica could simply be going senile. It was a comfor
ting thought. She would have to have words with her about it.

  Chapter Twenty

  SALVE FOR INTENSE SADNESS

  Chamomile Roman, Lavender, Sandalwood, Geranium. There are times when intense sadness can pierce deep into our souls, leaving us bereft and breathless, bound in our pain. The end of an affair can often leave us unable to move forward, with our emotions mentally handcuffing us to the past. This oil will prove the perfect salve. Its gentle, healing properties will provide comfort for the raw and wounded.

  from: The Complete Encyclopaedia of Aromatherapy Oils by Jessamine Lovage

  Melissa didn’t want to have tea with DC Elecampane. Or custard creams. Or bourbons which, if she had allowed him to talk to her, he would have discovered she didn’t like anyway. They had a habit of leaving slimy brown bits in your teeth which you didn’t discover until hours later.

  She didn’t think she wanted to have sex with him again either. He was starting to want more than she was prepared to give for £69.99. It wasn’t that she didn’t like him. In some ways that was the trouble. She had actually started to look forward to his visits, and looking forward to doing ‘the ironing’ was a very sad way to live.

  Melissa didn’t think she had ever liked one of her clients before, not really liked. It was worrying that she had started to look on him with some sort of affection – not affection like she had for her husband Frank. Not solid, dependable, tea and toast in bed every morning type of affection. More sort of squiggly in the tummy affection that she’d never experienced before. But then, she’d never considered her clients as real people before. Not that she’d thought of them as cardboard cutouts or anything stupid like that. It was hard to pinpoint what exactly she did think of them. But Bob Elecampane wanted to make himself too real to her and she wasn’t sure that she liked it.

  He was due in a few minutes and Melissa was dreading it. She, like him, had begun to tire of beating him with household objects. There were only so many variations on a wooden spoon, a spatula and a steak mallet that one could use without inflicting serious injury. And she didn’t want to hurt him – although sometimes just thinking that made her beat him more vigorously. The overriding temptation was to clasp him to her ample bosom and let him nestle there in her womanly harbour safe from the buffeting storms of Milton Keynes’ criminal classes.

  Frank talked about Bob a lot too, which didn’t help. He said that no one liked him at work. He was a pariah. And a git. And he never bought his round of tea in the canteen. Which, in police terms, was real lowlife behaviour. Perhaps that was why she felt the way she did about him. She had a soft spot for hard-luck cases. She had always been a champion of the underdog and the unloved. A sucker for the runt of the litter. And Frank had called Bob Elecampane something very similar to a runt several times.

  At school, while the other kids had made a grab for the best gingerbread man at the playtime tuck shop, Melissa had been more than happy to rescue the one with only one leg, or a crummy arm, or one of its Smartie eyes missing. She couldn’t bear the thought of the misshapen one being left abandoned on the cold counter with no one caring enough to eat it. She had consumed more Jammy Dodgers that were light on their quota of jam to last her a lifetime.

  It wasn’t that Bob was unattractive or misshapen. He was quite presentable. Nearly all of the other detectives she had met had been gnarled and careworn, with greasy, straggly hair and ripped jeans and battered leather jackets that even Oxfam would have thrown in the bin. Sometimes they looked so hardened and villainous, it was difficult to tell them from the criminals. Bob Elecampane wore jeans, but they were as neat as a new pin, endlessly washed until they were as pale as a summer sky, and meticulously ironed with a sharp white crease down the front of the legs. His important little places were all clean, and for Melissa that was very desirable in a man.

  The doorbell rang. It was one of those that could give a plain, ordinary ring and play a selection of twenty-four catchy little jingles, depending on the mood of the householder. Today, it was set to a halting version of ‘You Are My Sunshine.’ She wished she’d had the sense to change it before Bob arrived. ‘You Are My Sunshine’ didn’t sum up the mood of the householder today. Hopefully, Bob wouldn’t take any notice of it or he might get the wrong impression.

  The doorbell rang again. Decisions had to be made, however painful, and some couldn’t be put off for ever. After all, she wasn’t getting any younger. An intense sadness swept over Melissa and she stared into the mirror with an air of abject melancholy. Perhaps Rose could blend one of her wonderful whiffy oils to help her get over this feeling of loss in her life. She sighed with supreme weariness and rearranged her minimalist Lycra creations into some semblance of decency while she went to let Bob in. She hadn’t forgotten that he had departed from their previous encounter without paying her. But she was prepared to overlook that in the circumstances. Even when buying petrol you got a free gift every now and again. What he didn’t yet know was that there would be no more free gifts. Detective Constable Bob Elecampane was about to spend his last hour and his last £69.99 with her.

  ‘You don’t seem yourself today,’ Bob said. They were wrapped in the Garden of Romance duvet, illuminated by the weak, watery sun that had weaved its way into the room through a chink in the matching curtains. He tilted her face towards him and looked deep into her eyes.

  ‘I’m fine,’ Melissa said flatly.

  ‘Is there something worrying you?’ he persisted. ‘Perhaps I can help.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ she repeated. ‘I don’t need your help.’

  Bob shrugged and pulled her closer to him. ‘It’s just that I got the sneaking suspicion that something was wrong today. You didn’t seem as, well, as . . . as enthusiastic, I suppose.’

  ‘I’m sorry about that,’ Melissa snapped, ‘but it was you that wanted to do it this way.’

  The handcuffs hung bereft of hands on the ornate posts of the bed. She hadn’t beaten him, she hadn’t tied him up, she hadn’t physically abused him in any way. She had made love to him, tenderly, and had enjoyed it. And, consequently, she was feeling very unnerved.

  ‘And wasn’t it nice?’ he whispered softly.

  ‘Yes,’ she admitted reluctantly.

  ‘So why the long face?’ Bob chucked her gently under the chin.

  ‘You know what you were saying about the animals always being triste après l’amour.’

  He smiled with delight. ‘You remembered, ma chérie.’

  ‘Yes.’ She studied the Garden of Romance wallpaper intently. ‘Well, today I’m very triste.’

  ‘But why, mon petit chou-fleur?’ His voice sounded concerned.

  She looked away from him. ‘I don’t think I want to do this any more.’

  ‘Do you want to go back to the handcuffs and spatulas?’ he said gruffly.

  ‘It’s nothing to do with the handcuffs.’ Melissa turned to face him again. ‘Or the spatulas.’

  ‘Then what is it?’ There was an element of panic creeping in.

  ‘It’s not just you.’ She tried to be reassuring.

  ‘What isn’t?’ Bob sat up in alarm.

  She pulled the duvet round her for security. ‘It’s the whole thing. I’m giving it up.’ Melissa looked at him for understanding. ‘I’m not going to do . . . this any more.’

  ‘Why not?’ There was a paleness about his face, which she was sure wasn’t just because the duvet and the wallpaper contrasted so brightly against it. ‘You’re very good at it.’

  ‘That’s not the point.’ Melissa felt terrible and gnawed absently at a piece of hard skin on her finger. ‘It’s gone too far,’ she said plainly. ‘I’ve got to stop before Frank finds out. I don’t think he’d like it.’

  ‘You don’t think he’d like it?’

  Melissa had the grace to look sheepish. ‘Well, I’m sure he wouldn’t like it, then.’

  Bob narrowed his eyes. ‘What if I told him?’

  ‘He wouldn’t believe you,’ she said without emotion. ‘H
e’d have to see it with his own eyes. Frank trusts me implicitly.’

  ‘Then he’s a bloody fool.’ Bob threw the duvet aside and sat on the edge of the bed, head in his hands, his back towards her. ‘I’m a bloody fool too. I trusted you!’

  ‘I never promised you anything,’ she appealed to his tensed spine.

  ‘I love you,’ he wailed. It was a painful sound, as if he had stood on a nail or a drawing pin or a hedgehog while wearing only flip-flops.

  ‘How can you say that? You don’t know me!’ Melissa pushed herself up in the bed. Her voice was rising and there was a sob lurking dangerously in her throat. ‘I’m a cheap tart that you pay sixty-nine quid once a week to screw. Nothing more. Don’t forget that.’

  ‘But I tried so very hard to forget that.’ He spun round and grabbed her wrist. ‘I wanted it to be so much more than that.’

  ‘It was a business arrangement,’ she said coldly. ‘And now it’s over.’

  He yanked her from the bed towards him – rather ungraciously for one who was professing love not a moment ago, she thought.

  ‘Is that all I am to you?’ he said through clenched teeth. ‘A business arrangement?’

  His eyes were glittering wildly – it was the sort of thing she had read in Scarlet romances, but she had never seen it manifested until now. Frank’s eyes never glittered wildly. It was the sort of glittering wildly that was normally attributed to the baddy, just before he hissed, ‘If I can’t have you, no one else will!’ and then proceeded to tie the heroine to the rail track in front of an oncoming train. The thought sent a little shiver of fear down her back and she suddenly wished that Frank was here.

  Melissa swallowed nervously. ‘This was a business deal. And I am a—’

  ‘Business woman.’ Bob laughed hollowly.

  ‘I didn’t want it to end like this,’ she said placatingly.

  ‘Don’t tell me,’ he scratched his chin thoughtfully. ‘You wanted us to be friends.’

  ‘Yes,’ she agreed quickly.

  He slammed his fist on the stripped pine bedside cabinet and Melissa hoped he hadn’t dented it. She’d bought them from Grattons too and they had cost a small fortune.