by Wendy Holden
Rachel looked at her from the steering wheel. A slight smile played about her piquant face. ‘I like his friend better.’
‘Dan?’ Nell gasped.
Rachel shot her a challenging look. ‘Why not? What’s wrong with him? I know he’s had an affair, but that’s over now. He quite clearly regrets it.’
‘You covered quite a lot of ground,’ Nell remarked, surprised.
‘One tends to with Juno around,’ Rachel said dryly. ‘She asked him whether he thought it was just a moment of madness and whether the poisoning was a crime passionel.’
‘He thought that was a flavour of chocolate,’ Juno put in, without looking up from her book. Nell had noticed that she had the unnerving ability to read, talk and follow another conversation all at the same time. ‘He said there hadn’t been one of those but there had been Eton Mess.’
They postponed the subject until after the return to Beggar’s Roost. Later, with Juno safely in the bath, Nell handed her friend a glass of wine. ‘It’s just a bit surprising, you being interested in Dan,’ she began.
She had expected Rachel to redden, or laugh and say something dismissive. But instead she found herself meeting her friend’s steady gaze.
‘Why surprising?’ Rachel challenged.
‘He might not be quite your type.’
‘How do you know what my type is? I don’t go for intellectuals, if that’s what you’re thinking. Or silver foxes with lots of money.’
Nell, who had imagined both these as perfect fits for Rachel, now wondered if her very short friend looked for her physical opposite in a mate. As well as being enormous, Dan had a certain earthy physicality that was probably very attractive to some women. Perhaps Rachel was one of them.
Of all the unpredictable twists events had taken recently, this, Nell thought, was one of the most unexpected. She would just have to trust that, as Dylan insisted, Dan’s kind heart really was his most marked characteristic. Dylan was also of the view that while Dan was silent, he was deep. She could only hope, Nell thought.
CHAPTER 55
Dylan’s weekend had been dreary. Rachel’s presence at Beggar’s Roost had discouraged him from visiting. Nor had he seen Nell at the hospital on Sunday. They had decided to postpone meeting until after Rachel had gone home.
The maddening thing was that, when he did go to visit Dan, Rachel was all he could talk about. The two of them seemed to have taken the most immense shine to each other, which only made his own failure to impress her more stark.
Restless, dissatisfied and frustrated, Dylan had, on Saturday night, even found himself driving down into the village and the Edenville Arms. Here he had a shock.
Jason, plonking his pint on to the bar, had smiled and asked him, quite conversationally, if he’d seen any famous authors about.
Fortunately Jason was rummaging in the till, so he missed the colour draining from Dylan’s face and the way he gripped the copper bar-top, as if about to fall over.
‘What do you mean?’ he asked, when his throat started working again.
‘Oh, just that someone from a publisher’s in London phoned the other day,’ Jason replied brightly. ‘She was looking for a writer who she’d heard was somewhere round here. Name of Eliot. Can’t remember the name. T. S., was it?’
Dylan had gone cold with horror. Eve was on his tail! But why? He had told her he never wanted to write again. Nor would he, but neither did he want her blowing his cover.
He had built a new life for himself, and Eve, storming in with her powerful personality, might destroy it, and thereby destroy his precious new peace of mind.
Jason’s eyes were on him expectantly. He had not, Dylan realised, given an answer. ‘No,’ he said, rather more loudly than was necessary. ‘I haven’t seen any authors round here.’
Bad news came thick and fast that weekend. A difficult couple of days with Rachel was crowned by an announcement at the hospital. ‘George is leaving us next week,’ Jasjit told Nell as she, Rachel and Nell left on Sunday. ‘We’ve found him a nice home. It’s called Byron House and it has a lovely garden. If you like, you can go with him when he leaves. Help him settle in.’
This was some comfort, Nell supposed. She wondered if Dylan had heard of the place. He worked in a care home garden some of the time. She would ask him, once the weekend was over.
‘So that’s it,’ Nell said to Rachel. ‘It’s all over for his own place. His garden.’ The thought was dreadful. What would happen to his cottage now? Could he keep it if he wasn’t living there?
‘Someone will let you know, presumably,’ Rachel said. She seemed uninclined to indulge Nell on any point. She had given her a pep talk on Sunday and persuaded her, among other things, that she needed to tackle Angela about her lack of work space. She could not, Rachel pointed out, keep ping-ponging between the different departments of Pemberton for ever.
True, Nell knew. She now had swathes of material, all of which would have to be written up. She needed a place to sit down, and a computer of her own.
On Monday morning, she rang the Director of Human Resources.
Angela, in her office, heard the phone with dread. She had been expecting this call and her heart was booming within her. The results of her tests were due from the hospital; was this them?
She lifted a hand but it shook so badly Angela put it back in her lap. ‘Shall I get it?’ Gail called from down the corridor.
‘No,’ barked Angela. No one else must know about this. So many people hated her; they would either feel she deserved to be ill, or they would sympathise. Angela couldn’t decide which was worse.
‘Hello?’ she said hesitantly into the receiver. ‘Angela Highwater, Director of Human Resources speaking.’
‘Hello, Angela, it’s Nell. I need an office,’ the other end said firmly.
Angela glared at the wall. The fist not holding the phone clenched so hard her chipped nails drove painfully into her palm. Of all the people in all the world. Angela’s fear and fury now roused itself for an outlet.
‘We don’t have any bloody offices!’ she roared.
Nell held on. Her ears were ringing, but she was determined to tough this out. ‘But I’m literally working from my kitchen at the moment.’
‘And you’ll have to carry on doing that!’ yelled Angela. ‘We don’t have an office. OK?’
Gail popped her head in. ‘Excuse me, Angela, but actually, we do. There’s the one next door here, the big one that’s been empty since Ros left . . .’
There was a thump as Angela’s shoe hit the door.
Nell rang Julie. Perhaps, for the moment, she could borrow some space in her office.
The capable Weddings Manager sounded unusually distracted. It was not difficult to guess why.
‘What’s the latest?’ Nell asked. ‘Jed and Carly still having a candlelit ball?’
The other end groaned. ‘It’s been a hell of a job sourcing all the candles. They’ve needed hundreds to fill that massive ballroom. Needless to say, Jed and Carly wanted ones made with authentic methods, to cast an authentic glow.’
‘Surely all glows are the same?’
‘You’d think so. But I’ve got to find some historic ones anyway. As well as a food historian.’
‘But why?’ The American nuptials were clearly spiralling out of control. Julie was now hunting for an expert in eighteenth-century banquets to supervise the serving of the wedding breakfast. ‘Carly’s insisting on salmagundi, flummery and braised cheeks.’
‘Sounds painful.’
‘It is, it is,’ Julie groaned. ‘And even that’s not all.’
Jed and Carly, Nell now learned, wanted their guests to dress up in authentic period costume and take on the roles of characters from Pride and Prejudice. ‘The best man has to be Mr Bingley and the vicar is being asked to be Mr Coll
ins. They haven’t asked the rest of us yet to dress up and be servants, but it’s only a matter of time.’
Nell grinned. ‘Count on me if they do. I love fancy dress.’
‘You might regret saying that.’
Never, Nell thought. After all the help with Beggar’s Roost, there was nothing she would not do for Julie.
The phone call from the hospital had still not come through by lunchtime and Angela’s nerves were stretched to snapping point. While she could not drink alcohol, she felt she might feel better if she could look at it. She headed for the Edenville Arms.
That this was a mistake was obvious as soon as she entered Pumps. Angela felt almost overpowered with the urge to wrench the gin bottle off the bar wall and drink the lot.
‘Spritz, is it?’ Jason trilled, inadvertently rubbing salt into the wound.
As Angela scowled at him, he fixed on his best professional beam. He had some news for her.
‘George Farley’s going into a home.’
As he had hoped, Angela brightened slightly. Revenge, finally, on at least one of Ros’s enemies. And one of Nell Simpson’s friends, more to the point.
Angela hoped that it was one of those dreadful homes where they doped the old people with drugs and beat them. That was the least George Farley deserved.
‘I wonder what’s going to happen to his house,’ Jason mused. ‘It belongs to the estate, am I right?’
Angela gave a jerky nod. The Farley cottage was a nice old place, in its way. Hopelessly old-fashioned, of course; he probably hadn’t bought a new stick of furniture since 1942. There wasn’t even a fitted kitchen.
The Director of Human Resources took another, musing, sip of her spritz. Actually, the fact that the Farley place would be free could be useful. She wanted to move from the penthouse in the converted cotton mill. People had left the development before, saying they’d heard strange noises in the night; children crying and so on.
Angela had always scorned this, claiming to sleep eight undisturbed hours without fail. Recently, however, she hadn’t. And last night she had woken to see something actually standing by her bed. It had been there only a second, not long enough to really be sure. But it had been the size and shape of a very small person.
She did not plan to reveal this, however. The official reason for any move would be that it was more convenient to live near Pemberton. Commuting, even the short distance between the village and the local town, was getting tiring. Quite a lot of things were getting tiring, although Angela was trying hard to ignore this.
And so the Farley cottage would be perfect. She would move in, get rid of George’s crappy old stuff and drag the place into the twenty-first century. She would install a wet room, a state-of-the-art kitchen and a big plasma screen. Pave over that messy garden to make a patio with outside heaters and a deck.
By the time she left the pub Angela was feeling almost cheerful. It might actually be quite pleasant, to live in the village.
To live, full stop . . .
When would the hospital call to give her the all-clear, damn them?
Lost in these thoughts, Angela did not notice the woman crossing the car park towards her. She had walked straight into her before she realised she was there.
‘Sorry!’ exclaimed the other, even though, strictly speaking, it had been Angela’s fault. Angela did not acknowledge this, however, but looked the woman coldly up and down. She was small and slimly built with a shining cap of short dark hair. She wore a fitted pale blue dress, very plain, but obviously very expensive. Her legs were bare, but perfectly smooth and tanned, and she wore a pair of elegant low-heeled slingbacks. Her impeccable appearance reminded Angela of how much she herself had let things slide recently. But what else was she to do? She hadn’t had the energy . . .
‘Excuse me,’ the woman said, opening a smart bag and taking out a sheet of paper. ‘My name’s Eve Graham and I work in publishing. I’m trying to track down a writer who used to work for me. I’ve heard that he’s moved up here. Have you seen him?’
Angela remembered Jason saying that a London editor had called the pub, but she knew nothing about any writer and was about to say so in no uncertain terms. But then her angry glance skimmed the photograph on the press release, presumably of the author. Something about it caught her attention. Angela tipped her head to one side and squinted at it. Was that face familiar? ‘What did you say his name was?’
‘Dylan Eliot,’ Eve replied. Her tone was pleasant, but disappointed. This strange, irritated woman had initially looked as if she recognised him, but now, at the mention of his name, that recognition was fading from her face. Angela thrust the sheet roughly back at Eve.
‘He might not be calling himself that, though,’ Eve suggested hastily. She had intended to be careful about this possibility, as there was a chance that Dylan had made friends who knew about his past and were prepared to cover up if anyone came enquiring.
This woman, however, didn’t look furtive at the new suggestion. On the contrary, a crazed light had leapt into her eyes. She grabbed the paper back from Eve and stared again at the picture of the author. ‘Yeah, I know him.’
Eve gasped. ‘And he lives round here?’
Angela nodded. She felt she had the measure of the situation now.
It was not possible that this Eve woman was really after Adam Greenleaf, or Dickie Eliot or whoever she had said he was, because he had once worked for her. Who would come up here from London just for that? No, it had to be something else, the motive must be sex. They were, or had been, in a relationship of some sort. Angela’s little eyes gleamed. Given that Adam, damn him, now seemed to be in a relationship with Nell Simpson, sending this Eve person after him would make things seriously complicated.
‘Yes,’ she said to Eve. ‘He lives round here all right. And I can tell you exactly where.’ Using a nearby car bonnet as her desk, she drew a swift, rough map showing the way to Bess’s Tower.
‘Thanks so much,’ beamed Eve. ‘I’ll head up there now.’ She stretched out a hand to shake Angela’s. ‘I’m so grateful to you . . .’ Eve hesitated. ‘I’m so sorry. I don’t know your name.’
Angela was about to tell her, then she, too, paused. Another cunning thought was forming. Dickie Eliot didn’t have the monopoly on pseudonyms. And for her to use this one would properly put the cat among the pigeons. ‘Nell,’ said Angela, turning away to her car to hide her smile. ‘Nell Simpson.’
Since Jason had broken the news about Eve, Dylan had not emerged from Bess’s Tower. Going into the village represented too much of a risk. Nell was coming to see him at the tower tonight, after work and taking George to his new care home. She had visited Dan for him on Sunday, along with her fearsome friend.
Being a fugitive in Bess’s Tower had its advantages, Dylan thought. He could go on the roof. He was on it now, leaning over the parapet and looking down over the estate.
This being a summer afternoon, Pemberton was at its busiest. A long, unbroken line of cars was snaking slowly to the estate entrance, each one pausing briefly at the little wooden gatehouse to hand over cash for the car park, or flash a membership card.
The car park itself was ablaze with metal. Family groups in pale summer clothes, the old ones going slowly, the younger ones laden down with picnic bags, the children skipping ahead, were moving from their vehicles towards the entrances to the house, garden and the first of the many loos.
Dylan gazed across the park: the bright green grass, the feathery spread of cedars, the fluffy clumps of elms, the dark crouch of yew. And here were the Pemberton gardens, with paths as thin as pencils between rose gardens and rock gardens. The ponds looked no bigger than ten-pence pieces, the statues were dots and the cascade of water was a mere narrow silver thread. The great house from this vantage point looked like a model of a stately home rather than a real place where people liv
ed and worked. He could see the little entrance doors on to the roof leads, the gilded urns between the more prosaic chimney stacks, the balustrades and the statues. He could see behind the great front pediment with the figure of a helmeted goddess on the top.
It was so peaceful, up here, Dylan thought. He felt safe and hidden; no one, least of all Eve, could possibly find him. The very thought was ridiculous. The green glade stretched about him, sunnily empty. The dappled light danced and birdsong swelled in his ears.
Suddenly, he heard a twig snap. And another.
Dylan bent over the parapet. No one down that side. He crossed swiftly to the opposite wall. Another twig cracked.
Someone was coming. Could it be tourists? But they never got this far up. A visitor?
Dylan was about to dive back downstairs, but then a woman emerged from the trees at the far side of the clearing. He saw her pause; saw her eyes travel up to the top of the building.
He ducked down before she could see him, his heart thudding. He had recognised that slim, elegant form. His first instinct was to crouch there out of view until she gave up and went away, but he knew she would not give up. He was going to have to talk to her. Eve had tracked him down.
CHAPTER 56
Byron House had been easy enough to find. The taxi driver who took Nell and George there had heard of it. Nell had braced herself for a stream of criticism, but he had only good things to say.
The home seemed to bear out this positive report. The outside was not beautiful but its modernity included refinements lacking in George’s former accommodation. Central heating, for one thing. The radiators were not needed now, in the blaze of midsummer, but they’d obviously be useful in the winter.
‘Looks comfortable,’ she remarked brightly as she and George looked into the day room. It was full of cheerful red sofas and there was a piano, as well as a telly being watched by a couple of residents. They looked happy, Nell was encouraged to see.
George did not reply. He had said hardly anything since they’d got here. He seemed absent, almost worryingly indifferent.