False Charity

by Veronica Heley

  Tea. Hot. Strong. She made herself some in a mug, and took it out through the sitting room and down the outside stairs into the garden. The sycamore tree provided shade there, and on one of the loungers lay Piers with a glass of wine at his elbow. He’d opened the bottle of wine he’d brought. Naturally.

  He said, ‘You’re up, are you? Still feeling jet lagged?’

  Which meant she must be looking her age and more. She let herself down on to the other lounger, and sipped tea. ‘Where are the others?’

  ‘Playing cops and robbers. You’ll have to watch young Oliver. Got an imagination that shocks even me. Playing detective’s keeping Coral off the booze. No news from the hospital, which is good news, I suppose. Wouldn’t a glass of wine do you more good than that stuff?’

  She shook her head. The tea was just right. How she’d longed for a really good cup of strong English tea while she was abroad. It was one of the last things that Hamilton had asked for. Oh, dear Hamilton, I miss you every minute of the day.

  Piers sipped wine. ‘I’m amazed at myself, I really am. There I was, thinking I could drop in on the grieving widow, pat her hand a few times and perhaps conduct a light flirtation before going on my way. Instead I find myself encouraging a caterer to flout the tax laws, coming the heavy father over a computer fraudster whose activities will undoubtedly land him in jail some time, and consoling a runaway bride that I don’t even want to get into bed with. Old age has suddenly overtaken me.’

  ‘Is Maggie a runaway bride?’

  He snorted. ‘Who knows? Who cares? They’re your problem, not mine.’

  ‘Then why are you still here?’

  ‘Because Maggie promised to cook supper for us and then book me into a hotel. I want to do a couple of quick sketches before I leave, if my wrist doesn’t pack up on me.’

  Bea wondered if he would want her to change before he sketched her, and if so, what she should wear.

  He said, ‘That flaming hair against bilious green. Pure rag doll. Maybe I can work it up into something.’

  He wanted to sketch Maggie? Not Bea? She swallowed tea, and calmed her heartbeat. Luckily she hadn’t said anything to reveal the fact that she’d thought he meant to paint her.

  Maggie came bustling down the garden with a tray of sausages and kebabs. ‘Thought we could eat out here. Max often had a barbecue here in the evenings. Eat it with our fingers. No washing-up. Mind if I light up now?’ She pulled the cover off a gas barbecue, and started it up.

  ‘That’s new,’ said Bea.

  ‘I expect they’ll want to take it away, but we might as well use it while it’s here.’ She fiddled with controls. ‘Can the others come out now? We’ve got something to report.’

  Bea nodded. ‘I’ll watch, if you like.’

  Maggie gave her a doubtful look, clearly wondering whether Bea could be trusted. Then went off, calling to the others that it was safe to come out now.

  ‘Are we such ogres?’ Bea wondered, shifting her chair so that she was nearer the barbecue.

  Piers poured himself another glass of wine. ‘If you want to play cops and robbers, it’s nothing to do with me.’

  Maggie chivvied Coral and Oliver out into the garden, bringing a bowl of tiny red tomatoes and some fresh bread rolls with her. Coral carried pickles and her mobile phone, but Oliver carried a sheaf of papers.

  ‘Any news of June?’ Bea asked Coral.

  Coral shook her head. ‘Jake rang. No change. They’re putting her on bed rest to try to stop the contractions. Jake’ll let me know if anything happens, and in the meantime, playing detective takes my mind off things.’

  Bea nodded. ‘So, Oliver. What have you found out?’

  ‘It’s all three of us, working together, Mrs Abbot.’

  ‘Call me Bea, please.’

  He blushed. Couldn’t quite manage it. ‘Well …’

  Bea wondered if the generation gap really was so great he couldn’t manage to call her by her first name.

  Maggie produced a barbecue fork which looked as large as a trident, and started to lay food out on the grill. She nudged Oliver. ‘Go on. You start.’

  Oliver said, ‘I thought the first thing to do was to make a list of everything we knew about them, which is quite a lot, really. We’ve got their letterheads and their brochures for a start.’ On the table he placed a folder. ‘This is all the stuff Coral kept.’ He extracted some returned cheques and several pieces of paper, some of which had been folded in three to act as fliers, and others which looked like covering letters.

  Piers languidly reached out to feel the quality of the paper. ‘Not quality paper. Laser printed. Not embossed.’ He held one piece up to the light. ‘Common watermark. Home-produced, I’d say.’

  ‘That’s what I thought,’ said Oliver, eagerly. ‘Given a quarter of an hour I could turn out a copy of that letterhead on any computer with a scanner and laser printer attached.’

  ‘A forger in the making, eh?’ said Piers, removing his attention.

  Oliver flushed.

  Maggie shot Piers a dark look, but nudged Oliver to continue. ‘Go on. Tell them what else we found out.’

  Oliver addressed himself to Bea. ‘It was a false address. Coral, you tell it.’

  ‘It’s a good address, just north of Notting Hill Gate,’ said Coral. ‘Most of the houses have been turned into flats with speakerphone entry, but there’s one or two businesses as well. Discreet plates beside the door, that sort of thing. That particular address had two flats above a convenience store, on the corner of the main road but not actually on it. I looked for the name of the charity, but it wasn’t there. I rang the bells for the two flats, but no one had ever heard of them. So I gave up. Oliver tried a different tack.’

  ‘I looked the address up on the Internet,’ said Oliver. ‘The ground floor is a corner shop and newsagent and I wondered if they might act as an accommodation address for a fee. So I primed Maggie with what to say and she rang them on her mobile.’

  Maggie flourished her trident, turning sausages over. ‘I gave a false name, said I’d let my flat and was going away for three months on business. I said I needed someone I could trust to look after any letters that might come for me in my absence. They quoted a price, and I agreed to it. I think the shop acts as an accommodation address for the charity. Letters sent there would be held till … whoever … came to collect them. That’s how the charity manages to fool people into thinking they’ve got offices in a decent street.’

  ‘What we could do,’ said Oliver, ‘is write a letter to the charity and try to deliver it by hand, see if they accept it. If they do, we’ll know I’m right.’

  ‘Good for you,’ said Bea, surprised at how thorough he’d been.

  ‘I expect he can do crosswords as well,’ said Piers, looking bored.

  Oliver decided not to hear him, though his ears went pink. ‘Next, the phone number on the letterhead. If you look closely, you’ll see that the original number has been crossed out and a mobile number put in its place. I rang the original number. It’s the Bolivian Embassy.’

  ‘Someone has a sense of humour,’ said Piers, sitting up and taking notice.

  ‘What about the mobile number?’

  ‘Out of service. I’ve heard that it’s easy enough to get a mobile. You steal it or buy one in a pub or at a car boot sale, or in fact just go to Woolworths and buy a pay-as-you-go phone. You use it for a short while and then throw it away so it can’t be traced back to you.’

  ‘What about the charity number at the bottom of the paper?’ asked Bea.

  ‘Bogus. Yes. By one numeral. That’s clever, that is. If challenged they could always say it was a misprint.’

  ‘What about the names of the people who were supposed to be on the board of the charity?’

  ‘All well-known names, celebrities of the older generation, people with titles, that kind of thing. You can’t speak to them except through their secretaries, or agents or whatever. I only managed to speak to two, but neither of them
had ever heard of this charity. I left some messages on the websites for two more, and they may get back to us or they may not, but I think we can assume their names were taken in vain.’

  ‘Particularly,’ said Maggie, triumphantly, ‘since Oliver worked it out that one or two of the names have been misspelled. Coral agrees with him. They can both spell,’ said Maggie, with the awe of one who couldn’t.

  ‘That’s true,’ said Oliver, eyes shining as he got into his stride. ‘Once we saw that, it showed me the way forward. You see, the eye glances over a misspelling. The brain records what it expects to see. I read down that list of names and at first I was impressed. Then I began to check up. Coral helped here.’

  ‘I read all the glossies,’ said Coral, looking embarrassed. ‘Who’s having whose baby and stuff like that. I see these people from time to time when I’m catering, and it’s nice to know who they are.’ She pointed out a name on the letterhead. ‘This man here is not a Sir but a Lord. This woman spells her name without an “e” at the end. There should be a hyphen between this double-barrelled name. Do you see?’

  ‘And the well known comedians who were supposed to supply the cabaret?’

  Coral said, ‘Never turned up. Either time. They got substitutes in at the last moment. Not much cop.’ Her enthusiasm ebbed away, and she looked tired. ‘I don’t see that this gets us any further on.’

  ‘Oh, it does,’ said Oliver, full of enthusiasm. ‘I’m beginning to get the feel of how these people think. There’s one last thing; the letters were signed by a man calling himself Graham Briggs. There’s no-one of that name in the phone book, but I tried Directory Enquiries and they didn’t know of one either. Of course, he might be ex-directory.’

  ‘Supper’s ready,’ cried Maggie, and they all gathered around, eating with their fingers, saying ‘Mm,’ and ‘This is good.’ Even Coral perked up with food inside her.

  The French window upstairs was thrown back against the brickwork, and the newcomer said, ‘So there you all are!’

  Wednesday, early evening

  For all her pretended calm, Lena was ready to bite someone by the time Noel returned in mid-afternoon.

  ‘Noel, wherever have you been?’ she demanded.

  Noel took a seat, leaning back, hands in pockets, not a care in the world. ‘Am I late? I took the receptionist to lunch, didn’t I? Nice place, you’d like it.’

  ‘Noel!’ She tried to keep calm. ‘We were worried sick!’

  He examined his perfect fingernails. ‘I thought it could go on expenses. The little chick was all over me. I didn’t give her the cheque for the hotel until I dropped her off, so they can’t get it into the bank today. There’s been no hue and cry yet. The barman had only just started work at the hotel, and no one knew much about him. They were livid when he didn’t turn up this morning. Short staffed, it seems. They haven’t even got round to reporting him missing yet. In a couple of days we’ll be out of here, with different names. There’s nothing to worry about.’

  He drew a stack of envelopes out of his breast pocket. ‘I called round the shop in the Grove on the way back. The usual. More requests for tickets for Saturday, cheques, dunning letters.’

  He held them up, just out of Richie’s reach. Richie tried to take them, and Noel pulled his hand back, laughing.

  Lena said, ‘That’s enough, Noel. You’re such a child, sometimes.’ But her tone was indulgent, and both men understood what that meant.

  Seven

  Wednesday, evening

  Down the steps from the sitting room came Max, dressed in a suit despite the heat of the summer’s evening. His eyes looked anxious, but he dispensed approving smiles all round before bending over Bea to give her a hug and kiss her cheek.

  ‘I see you’ve found the domestic staff. Mother, I must speak to you.’ His eyes were on Piers, who looked as if he were wishing himself elsewhere.

  Bea hoped Max wasn’t going to make a scene as she didn’t think she could cope. She said, ‘How long is it since you two met?’

  Max said, ‘He used to come to school to watch me bat, the year I was captain of cricket, but he never spoke. Hamilton pointed him out to me.’

  Piers got to his feet. ‘I was in the House of Commons when you made your maiden speech, too. Do we shake hands, do you think?’

  Max coloured up, but put out his hand to shake.

  Bea tried not to grin. ‘Too, too British, both of you. Max, have you eaten? Piers, pour him a drink.’

  ‘Not wine,’ said Max. ‘I have to go back to the House soon. Mother, may I have a word in private?’

  ‘Of course, dear.’ She handed him a sausage in a roll and led the way up the stairs to the sitting room, cool and shadowy in the early evening.

  Max followed, holding the hot dog as if it were burning his fingers. ‘Mother, it’s so good to have you back, you’ve no idea how much I’ve missed you and Hamilton. I keep thinking that I can ask him something and then remembering that I can’t. And now there seems to have been some sort of misunderstanding about the house, which is quite ridiculous. Poor Nicole doesn’t know whether she’s coming or going.’

  Oh yeah? thought Bea.

  ‘I don’t know what to say to her. I thought it was all settled, and I still think it’s the best solution for all concerned. Not least for you. Hamilton was so worried about how you’d cope without him. He asked me to look after you, to see that you didn’t fall to pieces …’

  As if I would! thought Bea. And then, Well, maybe I could, if I allowed myself to.

  ‘… and so we arranged, he and I, what should happen if, when, well, you know. He did hope to get back to England, but he knew he’d never be able to run the business again. I said I’d do whatever he wanted …’ He looked around for somewhere to put his hot dog, and deposited it on the mantelpiece next to Hamilton’s photograph.

  Piers came into the room and sat by the window with his glass of wine.

  Max gave Piers an uneasy glance, but continued. ‘… And that’s what I did. I went down to the South Coast on three separate occasions and looked for the sort of accommodation Hamilton had in mind near to a golf course, and I got Nicole to come with me the last time and we selected a couple of places which were just what Hamilton said he wanted, and now—’

  Bea interrupted. ‘Dear, dear Max. You’ve been to such a lot of trouble for me, but my dear boy, you should have talked to me about it first. Those nice quiet places on the South Coast aren’t at all my thing. I’m a city girl, Max. I’d die of boredom down there.’

  Max swallowed. ‘I hear what you’re saying, and of course I respect it. But as Nicole says, it’s come as a bit of a shock to learn that you’re going to throw out everything Hamilton wanted for you.’

  ‘Wanted for himself, dear. Not the same thing. If he’d lived, I’d have gone along with it because he was very dear to me and I knew he was on his way out. I never said I didn’t like the idea when he was alive because I wouldn’t have hurt him for the world, but now, I can.’

  Max rubbed his eyes. ‘I can see that. It’s just that when I mentioned it to Nicole she thought it solved all our problems. She’s been so excited, making plans for the future. It still seems to me that … though of course I see your point of view … but I don’t like to disappoint Nicole. It’s going to be so hard for her if she has to start looking for another place, and what we could afford wouldn’t be anything like this. You do see how I’m placed, don’t you, Mother?’

  ‘Nicole must find you a place that she can do up to her own taste. I love this house and I can afford to live in it for the time being, so that’s what I’ll do. Long term, I really don’t know.’

  ‘You know Hamilton thought the world of you, and was really worried that you’d be taken for a ride when you were all alone, and lonely.’ He didn’t actually look in Piers’ direction, but Bea got the message.

  Piers snorted into his drink. ‘Hamilton asked me to look after her, too. And here I am, rather against my better judgment, I must say. To b
e frank, Bea, I’m almost of the same mind as Max. Are you sure this big house with all its memories, isn’t going to be a burden to you, rather than a pleasure?’

  Bea thought about that. The house had four bedrooms, and she’d be occupying only one of them in future, with a creepily dark basement below. She’d arrived home to a houseful of people but in a few days’ time it would be just her, rattling around in a too-quiet house, with all its memories of Hamilton still in place. How long could she stand that?

  Then a house needed constant maintenance. The garden would need caring for; that sycamore tree ought to be lopped again. The basement needed redecorating. Possibly rewiring. Wouldn’t she be better off, not have so many cares, if she moved into a little flat? Not on the South Coast, of course, but somewhere else in Kensington?

  Coral had come to stand in the doorway, unseen and unheard. She said, ‘What about me? If you two have your way, I can say goodbye to my money, my daughter will be homeless, and Oliver and Maggie will be thrown on the street.’

  Max shook his head. ‘Coral, it’s sad but true that you’ve made your bed and must lie in it. My mother couldn’t possibly take Hamilton’s place in the agency.’

  ‘I second that,’ said Piers, downing the last of his wine.

  Bea didn’t know what to think. She was annoyed that Max believed her incapable of running the agency, even though the thought of the effort involved gave her indigestion. If Hamilton had been here, would he really have wanted her to move into a happy retirement home? And if she did, what would she do with herself all day?

  Well, what was the alternative?

  What she wanted more than anything was to go to bed and lie there watching television, with someone bringing her drinks and tasty foods every now and then. She could afford it, couldn’t she? Hamilton had made sure of that, what with investments and insurances and pension plans, and so on and so forth.