by Anne Baker
‘If you put the bolts on, Aunt Goldie,’ Chloe said as she kissed her goodbye, ‘he won’t be able to get in.’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHLOE HAD NOT ENJOYED her day out as much as she’d expected. Aunt Goldie had worked herself up into a terrible state and moaned about everything. Having her purse stolen had upset her, of course, but that was no reason to go on at Mum as she had. Chloe hadn’t realised how jealous Marigold was of Helen’s luxury life and fantastic garden. When Rex had wanted to take her round it to see the improvements, she’d refused to budge from her chair.
She’d made it horribly obvious she wanted to move in and share what Mum had. Chloe knew that had been on the cards since Gran had died, and she couldn’t blame her. Aunt Goldie had had a hard life and her house was miserably cold in winter. But Mum had spent years getting her place just as she wanted it, and she’d have to be a saint to want Aunt Goldie permanently with her.
When Adam had driven her into Manchester this morning, they’d discussed the situation.
‘Marigold and Mum have never got on,’ she’d said. ‘I don’t think it would be a good thing for them to live together.’
‘That’s only half the reason.’ Adam had turned to smile sardonically at her. ‘Rex is probably staying there at night, doing with your mother exactly what you and I are doing. The sixties have loosened everybody up, you know. And why not?’
‘I don’t know about that.’ Chloe was doubtful. ‘I can’t see Mum . . .’
‘You’re as strait-laced as the rest of your family,’ he’d laughed.
Adam had called him, ‘Your mother’s toy boy,’ but when Rex had put them on the train, he’d kissed Chloe and Lucy goodbye almost like a father.
‘I like Rex,’ she’d told him.
Rex had gone out of his way to cheer things along, but he hadn’t succeeded. He’d kept Lucy amused for most of their visit, and now the rocking of the train was lulling her to sleep.
When Chloe got Lucy and her pushchair off the train in Manchester, Adam was waiting for them. She was tired and her skin felt tight after being out in the fresh air for most of the day. She was glad she’d prepared a cottage pie for tonight’s dinner. All she had to do was put it in the oven to heat through and brown the top, and she’d brought a spring cabbage from Mum’s garden to have with it.
‘I’m tired too,’ Adam said. ‘I’ve been out all day as well.’ While he opened up the house, she lifted Lucy to carry her in. That woke her up and made her cry. Chloe knew she’d be hungry too by now.
Adam was irritable. ‘Shut her up for a minute. There’s a strange noise, can you hear it? A sort of drip-drip?’
He went to investigate. Chloe had Lucy on her shoulder as she hurried to light the oven. The most urgent thing was to find Lucy some supper, but for that she had to put the child down. She’d brought a rug to the kitchen so that Lucy could stretch and roll on the floor to get a bit of exercise. It wasn’t what she wanted now; she drummed her heels on the floor and opened her mouth to scream with all her might.
Chloe had thought Lucy could share some of their cottage pie, but she was in no mood to wait for that to heat up. She was in the habit of making up batches of baby food and freezing them until they were needed. She brought out a packet of fish pie with peas and was about to fill the kettle when Adam came rushing down in a panic.
‘We’ve got a leak. Total disaster. For God’s sake, shut the baby up. I can’t think while she’s making this racket.’
He pushed Chloe out of the way to get under the kitchen sink and turn off the water supply.
‘Come and help me. I can’t believe the mess. There’s a leak in the loft, the water’s pouring through the ceiling in one of the spare bedrooms.’
Chloe followed him upstairs. ‘Thank goodness it’s not over our bedroom or Lucy’s.’
‘It’s a bloody disaster wherever it is. The bed is saturated and so is the carpet on the landing. It’s been dripping most of the day. Look at the ceiling!’ It was bulging.
‘Oh my goodness.’ Chloe was as shocked as he was.
‘I’m going up in the loft. Find me some buckets or bowls, something to catch this water in.’
Chloe rushed back to the kitchen to get them. It went through her to hear her baby crying like that, and it was almost more than she could bear to ignore her, but she ran back to Adam with a bucket and a washing-up bowl. He’d pulled a table underneath the trap door and balanced a chair on top; now he was ready to swing himself into the loft. She handed up the utensils.
‘At least it seems to be stopping,’ he said between clenched teeth. ‘Push that bed out of the way, will you?’
She did what he asked before shouting, ‘I’m going, I’ve got to see to Lucy.’
Lucy was still screaming at the top of her lungs, her face was scarlet and she’d rolled off her mat. Chloe picked her up and tried to comfort her. She felt hot and sticky and looked totally woebegone. ‘Sorry, love. Sorry – a domestic emergency.’
She found enough water in the tap to fill the kettle and put it on to boil in order to heat Lucy’s fish pie. Then she took her to the bathroom to change her. There was just enough water left to sponge her down before putting on her night clothes. Lucy was still having an occasional shudder against her shoulder. The fish pie was thawed but barely warm when she took her back. Lucy didn’t care, she gobbled it down.
Chloe warmed some fresh milk and put it in a bottle, then took Lucy up to the nursery and sat down to feed her. The baby was soon sucking hard; Chloe knew this would settle her. She closed her eyes, feeling bone weary.
Adam came to rest his head against the door frame.
‘What a day,’ she said.
He’d calmed down. ‘I’ve found a plumber, he says he’ll be round in about an hour. It’s the one who refitted the kitchen for me last year.’
When she’d put Lucy down for the night, Chloe went downstairs to see about dinner. The cottage pie was golden brown and filling the kitchen with mouth-watering scents, but there was no water to boil the cabbage or even wash it.
Adam was slumped at the table drinking beer. He got up to refill his tankard and poured a glass of wine for Chloe. ‘Never mind the veg,’ he said. ‘Let’s eat what’s ready, we’re both famished.’
‘We’ll have it here in the kitchen,’ Chloe said. They ate their meals in the dining room in considerable style, but it took time and energy to organise.
‘OK, we’ll feel better when we’ve eaten.’
The plumber arrived while they were finishing off last night’s gooseberry pie. As Chloe tidied up the kitchen, she could hear them going up into the loft and running down again to fetch equipment from the van outside. She checked on Lucy and found her fast asleep, looking her angelic self.
Chloe’s feet squelched on the landing carpet and Adam came to the trap door in the ceiling to speak to her. ‘It could be worse. I thought the main water tank had burst, but it’s not that.’
‘It’s pretty bad,’ she said. ‘Everything’s dripping on this side of the house. What caused it?’
‘The plumber thinks it’s too much modern technology on old pipework. He thinks the thermostat failed and the water’s been boiling in the hot water tank. He’s replacing some of the pipes.’
Chloe climbed up on the table to look into the loft. The plumber was crouched over the pipes using a blowtorch on them. Adam was busy moving boxes and packages out of his way. She was surprised to find so much stuff had been stacked up there.
‘What are all those parcels?’
‘Nothing,’ he said, dropping his voice.
‘They have to be something.’
‘Just stock.’
‘Why bother bringing stock up here?’
He turned uneasily to look at the plumber, but he was making too much noise himself to hear what they were saying. ‘To get it out of the way.’
‘But it’s difficult to reach when you want it.’
She’d never seen Adam go up into the loft until
now. He often kept pieces of porcelain and silver in his study, and occasionally a piece of furniture was put in the conservatory.
‘Yes, but I wanted to store it for a while. The market for this sort of thing was depressed. I thought it might improve.’
‘Has it?’
‘Yes, a little. Can you pass me up some towels?’ he asked. ‘There’s a couple of pictures here that need wiping down. The last thing we want is water damage on them.’
He brought them down to the landing to unwrap the wet packaging and dried them very carefully. Then he slid them under their own bed, where it was dry. Chloe was puzzled. She’d had time to study the paintings. They were in matching ornate gold-painted frames, and looked like nineteenth-century oil paintings of a family. One showed them in a garden with a grand house in the background. The other depicted them with horses and dogs. She was curious.
‘I like them,’ she said. ‘Who is the artist?’
‘Nobody you’d have heard of,’ he said easily. ‘Fortunately I’m insured, so I’m not too upset.’
Nevertheless, the leak gave them a good deal of extra work. The damaged bedroom ceiling had to be taken down and replastered. The wet carpets had to be replaced both in the bedroom and on the landing. Adam counted himself lucky that he’d only recently recarpeted the stairs and was able to match the pattern exactly.
Fortunately, too, it was summer and they could have all the windows wide open to hasten the drying of things that couldn’t be taken out. Adam believed in doing the job properly and had considerable redecoration done at the same time. Soon his house was immaculate again.
It was autumn before Chloe saw Adam bringing down some of the boxes and packages she’d seen stored in the loft.
‘I’m going to put these in the next auction at Deepdene’s in Chester,’ he told her.
She saw he’d brought out the two paintings he’d stored under their bed. ‘Is that a good sale to put paintings in?’ she asked.
‘One of the best.’ He smiled.
He was out all day and told her he’d entered quite a lot of stuff in the sale. He was out all the following day too. When he came home, he came to the kitchen where Chloe was preparing their evening meal.
‘Things were going for good prices in Chester today,’ he told her. ‘Most of my stuff made more than I expected.’ He was rubbing his hands together in high good humour.
Chloe was surprised. ‘The Deepdene’s sale was today?’
‘Yes, that pair of pictures did especially well. They were a real sleeper.’
‘They’d have suited this house. I’m surprised you didn’t want to keep them.’
Adam was getting a bottle of beer from the fridge; he sat at the kitchen table to drink it. ‘I wasn’t that keen on them.’
He was busy emptying his pockets and sorting out the bills and receipts he’d need to put in his accounts to keep them up to date. That done, he threw his empty beer bottle and some papers he didn’t need into the kitchen rubbish bin and headed towards his study. The bin was full and the sale catalogue slipped off the top and on to the floor.
Chloe picked it up, and on the spur of the moment flicked through it, looking for the stock Adam had put in. He usually pencilled in the margin the prices his pieces made, and she wanted to know if the artist and the family she’d seen pictured had been named.
She couldn’t find any of them. She went back to the front of the catalogue and looked through it more methodically, keeping an eye out too for the silver candlesticks she’d seen Adam packing up to take. None of his things were listed in the catalogue. She felt mystified and took it along to his study to slide it on his desk.
‘The things you entered in the sale aren’t listed,’ she said. ‘Why not?’
He looked up at her, no longer in high spirits. ‘The auction house had already sent the list to the printers when I took them in. I was too late.’
‘You only took them yesterday,’ she said, more mystified than ever. Adam was very organised; he was usually on top of his job. ‘Why didn’t you put them in earlier?’
‘I forgot all about the stuff in the attic.’
Chloe wasn’t sure she believed him.
As the months went on, Chloe was learning more about the antique trade and finding it fascinating. Adam found books for her to study and talked her through any interesting pieces that came his way. She’d also learned how to get out and about with a toddler in tow, and Adam often took them with him when he was working.
Lucy was beginning to say a few words. She was now a pretty little moppet with thick blonde curls, and both she and Chloe were becoming known in the auction houses and antique shops of the north-west. Chloe found that the staff made a great fuss of Lucy, and were only too willing to answer her own questions and teach her the finer points of the trade. She felt that living with Adam was giving her a fuller, more interesting life and she was enjoying it.
They went with him to a small auction house near Congleton where he went regularly. Even Chloe was beginning to feel on friendly terms with the staff. The sale was over for the day and she was waiting for Adam to pay for what he’d bought and load the pieces into his car. She had Lucy on her hip and was passing the time of day with one of the auctioneers when a policeman came in with some printed lists and gave him a copy.
Lucy said, ‘Me, me,’ and put out her hand. The policeman made a great show of presenting her with another copy. ‘Tank you,’ she lisped.
‘Just the May list of stolen property,’ the police officer said to Chloe as he chucked Lucy under her chin.
‘To make sure we don’t auction off stolen property.’ The auctioneer smiled.
Lucy began to suck on the list. Chloe took it from her and examined it. ‘Do you see much stolen property?’
‘No, not here. But we need to keep our eyes open and be aware that it could happen. We act as agents, you see, and though we might be perfectly innocent, if stolen goods appear in our catalogue we might be charged with fencing.’
‘But it can’t be that easy to auction off stolen property,’ Chloe pointed out. ‘After all, the goods are on display to the public for days before the sale. That gives everybody time to pick out anything suspicious.’
‘It should, but the canny ones bring their goods in as a late sale. Probably the day before the auction takes place. That way they miss having stolen goods described in our catalogue and there are fewer records by which stolen property can be traced.’
Chloe held her breath. Was this what Adam had done?
‘Once the sale takes place,’ the auctioneer went on, ‘the stolen goods go to a new home and the new owner believes them to be rightfully his. Possibly he’ll keep them for decades. It’s very unlikely then that the thief will ever be caught or the goods recovered.’
Chloe could feel perspiration breaking out on her forehead. This explained why Adam had kept stock hidden in their loft for months if not years, and then brought it in as a late sale. It had to be, there was no other reason. The staff at the auction houses saw a lot of him and probably thought he could be trusted to put things in late. Her heart was pounding and she was struggling to appear her normal self.
Fortunately the auctioneer started to play with Lucy. He told her his wife was expecting their first baby and he was hoping for a daughter as pretty as hers.
She was glad when Adam came looking for her, but she couldn’t look him in the face. Once Lucy had been strapped into her car seat and he’d started to drive home, Chloe settled herself in the passenger seat and closed her eyes. She was shaking inside. She’d had to quell her suspicions about Adam more than once in the past, but this brought them all rushing back. She had a dragging feeling in her gut. Adam was handling stolen property, he was a petty crook. She needed to think hard about this.
When they reached home, Chloe gave Lucy her supper, bathed her and put her in her cot. She got their dinner of beef casserole on the dining room table and had a glass of red wine in her hand. Then she was able to push the polic
e list of stolen property across the table to him.
‘Tell me, Adam, what you kept hidden in the loft, was that stolen property?’
He was gulping down his food, ignoring her, but a guilty flush was spreading up his cheeks.
‘I’m pretty sure it must be. Otherwise why enter it for auction the day before the sale?’
He was angry. ‘It was convenient that way.’
‘It was stolen!’
His cutlery crashed down on his plate. ‘What if it was?’ he barked.
Chloe swallowed hard. ‘Did you steal it?’
‘No, I did not.’
‘Then you must be fencing it, and that’s no better. Now I know how you can afford all this,’ she said, waving her hand round the exquisitely furnished dining room. ‘This is worse than conning pensioners to part with their property for a fraction of its value, though you no doubt continue to do that. It’s a criminal offence, Adam. It could get you into trouble.’
‘You do exaggerate.’
‘Don’t try to play it down. You could be caught and sent to prison.’
‘I take care not to get caught, and I’m not sure it would rate a prison sentence if I was.’
‘I don’t know about that, but it’s completely dishonest. What about your reputation? If this becomes common knowledge, people won’t want to deal with you.’
‘And your reputation is whiter than the driven snow, of course.’
‘I don’t know about that either. If you were charged with fencing, the police would look at me again. Don’t forget I mistakenly gave you a false alibi.’
‘More fool you.’
Chloe shuddered. ‘Would I be able to convince them I was innocent? I live with you and must see what you’re up to. They’d think I was helping you handle stolen property, and that scares me.’
‘Oh for God’s sake, don’t start worrying about that, it isn’t going to happen.’ He started to eat again. ‘And stop nagging, I can’t stand it.’