False Pride

by Veronica Heley

  Bea put on her most innocent face. ‘I forgot I had it.’

  ‘In your dreams.’ He wasn’t in a good mood, was he? He looked at his watch. ‘I’m afraid Lady Catherine is going to be annoyed. I don’t make a habit of standing women up, but perhaps she’ll forgive me when I bring her up to date on the Rycroft affair. May I use your phone to find Lady Catherine’s number and then ring her? I’ve left my new phone charging in the shop. Remind me to collect it before we leave.’

  She handed hers over. He growled to himself as he navigated the systems. ‘Why don’t you get yourself something more modern?’

  She ignored that. Finally he got through to his elderly friend, and brought her up to date. Piers enjoyed giving her the juicy bits and, from the little shrieks of mock disbelief Bea could hear as Piers held her phone loosely to his ear, Lady Catherine evidently enjoyed hearing them. When he’d finished, Piers drew Bea’s coffee towards him, and made inroads on that.

  ‘Feeling better?’ said Bea. ‘Now, it’s really lucky that Lucas’s address book fell into my bag when I wasn’t looking—’

  ‘I said that you should have given it to the police.’ He didn’t really mean it. He produced his notebook and pen and began sketching again. This time it was Magda, all prettied up with a more becoming hairstyle and attention to eye makeup.

  With a sweet smile, Bea said, ‘I’m sure Mrs Tarring will be able to tell the police what they need to know. Now, pay attention. It’s clear Lucas has had this book for years and years. As is usual it’s printed in alphabetical order, but there’s a section at the back which Lucas has used solely for family addresses. Fortunately for me, he’s allocated one page to each person. When someone dies or moves, he crosses out the first address and puts in an arrow to the new one. With a bit of care, you can follow someone’s life history this way.

  ‘The first page is devoted to George, Lord Rycroft, who is Lucas’s elder brother. Two addresses are given: one in London and one in the country. Complete with landline numbers which have remained the same throughout and several mobile numbers, all of which except the last have been crossed out. So far, so good. According to Mrs Tarring, Lord Rycroft is travelling back to London from the country as we speak, so there’s no use trying him at present.

  ‘The next page is for Kent, who is Lord Rycroft’s eldest son. Now, I assume he was married at some point because a couple of people have referred to Kent having a son, but—’

  ‘What happened to Kent’s wife?’

  ‘There’s an entry here for a woman called Elsa, which has been crossed through a couple of times. No new entry has been given. I surmise that she’s either divorced and out of touch, or dead.’

  ‘Unlucky in their marriages, the Rycrofts.’

  ‘You can talk.’

  He protested, ‘Come on; I’ve only been divorced once. You’re carrying on as if I were Bluebeard or Henry the Eighth.’

  ‘The fact that you didn’t actually marry the women you’ve romanced over the years is irrelevant.’ She stopped. ‘We’re quarrelling. Why?’

  ‘Sex rears its ugly head,’ said Piers. ‘Also, you’re worried about Bernice. You’re using the Rycroft business to avoid thinking about her.’

  Bea ignored his reference to sex. She was afraid he was right, as she could still feel the pull of sexual attraction in his presence, but she could not, really could not deal with that at the moment. As for Bernice, he was right about that, too. What was she to do with the child?

  She brought her mind back to the present. The Rycrofts. Well, there was a puzzle which she might as well try to solve. ‘Returning to the page for Kent, there’s only one address and landline number for him, but a number of mobile phones. Then there’s a series of addresses and phone numbers, which seem to chart the progress of a boy called Ellis from one boarding school to the other, then to a college in Cambridge. Finally, in one of the very last entries in this section, Ellis is to be contacted at a flat in an exclusive street not far from where his great-uncle Lucas lives. I think that’s where he’s living now. This must be Kent’s son. Agreed?’

  Piers was sketching again. Was he even listening? She noted the phone number for Ellis, and rang.

  A man answered. A young man in a hurry. ‘Yes?’

  Bea said, ‘Am I speaking to Ellis Rycroft?’

  ‘What?’ An educated voice. Noise of phone being put down. A shout to someone in the flat. ‘Anyone know somebody called Ellis?’ A second voice said something in the distance. The first man’s voice returned. ‘Sorry. I’m new here. Only moved in a while back. There’s no Ellis living here.’

  Bea said quickly, ‘Don’t put the phone down! Look, this is really urgent. We think his father’s been taken to hospital—’

  ‘What? Hold on a mo. I’ll get someone …’ Down went the phone again.

  More voices offstage.

  Phone picked up. A different voice, deeper. ‘Ellis doesn’t live here any more. You say his father is in hospital? But he’d know, wouldn’t he?’

  ‘A man answering the description of Ellis’s father was found at the studio of a friend of mine this morning. He’d been attacked and was in a bad way. The police and an ambulance were called and he was taken to the hospital. We are trying to find a member of the family to confirm his identity and take charge.’

  ‘If what you say is true, then shouldn’t it be the police asking for Ellis?’ An intelligent response.

  ‘It should be. Yes. But they are relying on the Rycrofts’ administrator to help them sort out the question of his identity, and she’s otherwise engaged. My name is Mrs Abbot. The artist is a friend of mine. Neither of us knows any of the Rycrofts by sight. I’ve been called in by one of the Rycrofts’ housekeepers to see if I could help. We honestly don’t know if it’s Kent Rycroft in hospital or one of his cousins. That’s why we’re trying to contact Ellis.’

  A long moment in which the man thought about how to reply. ‘Look, I can’t help you. Ellis is dead. He died in an accident on his bike, nearly three months ago. He was a mad cyclist, out all hours of the day. Cycled to uni and cycled back. London traffic did for him. It was a shame. We miss him.’

  ‘You shared the flat with him?’

  ‘Yes. The flat is owned by his family. They allowed us to stay on and we pay them rent. There’s four of us now. It works out pretty well. Look, I’m on my way out now. I have to meet someone in half an hour, so—’

  ‘I’d be grateful for any information you can give me about Ellis’s death. If I give you my phone number, do you think you could ring me back when you’re free to talk?’

  He had been well brought up. He huffed and puffed a bit, but took down Bea’s number. And rang off.

  Bea clicked her phone off. Maybe he’d ring back, and maybe he wouldn’t. She said, ‘Kent’s son Ellis is dead. Lucas ought to have crossed his name off in his address book, but hasn’t. Perhaps because he cared for the boy and didn’t like to strike through his name? It was a traffic accident. That’s the third member of the family to have gone missing. I can’t think why, can you? What is wrong with the Rycrofts? The black sheep Owen is dead, the twins are on the rampage, and we’re running out of names to pin on the man in hospital. It must be Kent, mustn’t it? What on earth is that you’re drawing?’

  He turned the notebook so that she could see.

  He’d drawn himself sitting on a pavement, holding up a placard saying ‘Homeless’.

  Bea’s lips twitched. She’d been waiting for him to make a move on her, and here it came. Bea had asked Magda to move in for a few days, but she hadn’t asked Piers to do the same although, yes, he was also technically homeless at the moment.

  If he moved back in with her, how soon would it be before he wanted to move into her bed?

  She’d kept him at a distance for years. Did she really want him back in her life?

  She’d got used to being on her own. Well, except for her ward Bernice, of course. Bea enjoyed eating when she wanted, and what she wanted. She could get
up and go to bed when she liked. She could read in bed and turn the light off when she wished. She didn’t have to pick up men’s socks or smelly shoes from the floor and deal with them. She had control of the television remote. She didn’t have to guard her tongue or fit in with anyone else’s timetable.

  She was lonely.

  Yes, but how lonely?

  In some ways it would be good to invite someone else into her life but … yes, but. Piers was a tom cat. He couldn’t help himself. Even in his sixties, he was attractive to the opposite sex.

  He was drawing, again. Her face leapt into life on the page. He said, ‘You’ve worn well.’

  She knew that. So had he.

  He said, ‘I’m not penniless. I have investments. A couple of houses which I rent out. I could go to a hotel, or rent another flat, but I’m tired of living out of a suitcase. I’ve lived all over the place, in penthouses and garden flats, but I’ve not been able to make a home for myself since the day you threw me out.’

  She knew that, too. She considered her options; she could offer him the tenancy of the mews cottage she owned at the end of her road. She garaged her car on the ground floor, but the upstairs rooms formed a self-contained flat, which she had been letting out on lucrative short-term holiday lets. The flat was vacant at the moment.

  He said, ‘I can’t beg. I won’t beg.’

  No, she knew that, as well.

  If she invited him back into her life, there would be fireworks now and again, but they knew one another so well that – on the whole – it would be, well, fun. Though ‘fun’ was not usually a term you would apply to a marriage between people who were verging on retirement. On the other hand, would Piers ever retire? Probably not. He was at the top of his game so there’d be no money problems with him around … not that she had any money problems herself, as the agency was going well, and she had no need to retire either.

  Bea admired his talent, brains, his honesty, and his wit. But she knew him all too well. After a period of good behaviour, he’d start to take notice of other women and the cycle of love and betrayal, which had crucified her when they were married, would start up all over again. She’d married within a year of leaving school … too early, yes. He’d been still at art school and she’d just secured her first office job. At first it had been bliss. But soon after their son was born, he’d started to fret at the boundaries of family life and to respond to other women’s lures.

  She’d been so badly hurt by his infidelities that it had been years before she could allow herself to look at another man. Then her dear Hamilton had come along and swept her and her son into his arms and they’d had a comfortable and comforting marriage for so many years. She’d ached and grieved when Hamilton eventually died.

  Could she bear to suffer so much again? Or, would she not mind so much if history repeated itself? After all, she was much older and wiser now.

  He set his notebook aside. ‘So, what’s next?’

  She was grateful that he had changed the subject. She stood up. ‘Next, we visit the address Lucas has written down for Kent, who is his nephew, right? There’s only one address for Kent so it doesn’t look as if he’s one to move around. Bring that notebook of yours. We may need it for identification purposes. You probably noticed there weren’t any family photographs in Lucas’s flat. He wasn’t much interested in the family, was he? However, Kent did have a son, Ellis, so hopefully we’ll find he had taken photographs of the two of them together.’

  ‘Then we’ll know if it’s Kent or Lucas in the hospital, right? You’re good at this, aren’t you? Remind me to come back for my phone later.’

  Kent lived in a three-storey mid-terrace early Victorian house, narrow but elegant, in a road not far from Lucas’s home. As in Bea’s place, there was a basement flat reached by an outside staircase, and steps up to a pillared porch on the ground floor. The window-boxes had been filled with spring bulbs and ivy, and everything from windows to paintwork looked as if it had been polished. The plane trees in the street outside were beginning to shoot forth green buds.

  They mounted the steps to the front door, which was ajar. Not by much. The householder might have left in a hurry and failed to close it properly as he left, or someone had just gone in and failed to slam it shut behind them.

  Bea rang the bell and waited, listening hard to see if there might be movement inside. Piers watched a ‘yummy Mummy’ walking her little dog on the other side of the street.

  ‘Yes? What is it?’ A woman in her late thirties appeared in the doorway. Another Rycroft? Straight blonde hair tucked behind her ears, no eyebrows to speak of, a sleeveless, cotton-mix dress drooping around a bony body. No makeup. Flat ballerina shoes. She seemed to be both wary and bothered about something.

  Bea said, ‘Forgive us for calling unannounced. I’m Bea Abbot of the Abbot Agency and Mrs Tarring has asked us to help her locate Kent Rycroft. This is his house, isn’t it?’

  Piers gave Bea a look which meant, ‘Leave this to me.’ He stepped into the hall, pushing the girl back before him. He said, ‘I’m so glad we found you at home. You are …?’

  She didn’t want to let them in. Only, Piers had already managed to get in. ‘I’m Shirley Rycroft, but …’

  There’d been a telephone message from someone called Shirley in Lucas’s waste-paper basket, hadn’t there? Was this one of the distant cousins?

  Piers bestowed a Grade V smile upon Shirley and, despite herself, she twitched a smile back. ‘There’s been a spot of bother. Mrs Tarring suggested Kent might have returned home. This is his house, isn’t it?’

  Bea shut the door on the outside wall, so that they were all three standing in a close group. The hall was of a reasonable size with doors open to a sitting room to the right and a kitchen further back. Light poured down from a tall window at the head of a flight of stairs ahead.

  The woman said, ‘If Mrs Tarring sent you, I suppose that’s all right. But Kent isn’t here. I don’t know where he is.’ She gestured to the sitting room. ‘I’ve only just arrived. Someone’s been here, searching for something. I was thinking I ought to report it to the police, but Kent hates publicity so much that I was waiting for him to decide whether to or not. I’ve tried ringing Mrs Tarring, but there’s no reply. I don’t know what to do.’ She did indeed have a mobile phone in her hand.

  Bea brushed past Shirley into the sitting room. No family photographs were on display, so that was a dead end. The furniture was comfortable without being fashionable. The Rycrofts didn’t seem interested in fashion, did they? Drawers had been pulled out, the contents of a bookcase tumbled over. Yes, someone had been searching here, in the same way that Lucas’s flat had been searched.

  Shirley sniffed. ‘I’ve tried ringing Kent, but he’s not answering his phone.’

  Bea explained, ‘That’s the problem. A man who might be Kent was attacked at my friend’s house this morning and taken off to hospital.’

  ‘Hospital?’ Huge eyes, with tears in them. ‘Kent has been mugged? Oh, that’s terrible. Is he all right?’

  Piers leafed through his notebook and held it out to her. ‘Is this Kent?’

  She looked, and recoiled. Colour flooded her face and left. ‘That’s not Kent. It’s Owen! Where … why …?’ She staggered. Sat down. Put a hand to her mouth. Was she going to vomit? She was pale enough. Shock.

  ‘Are you all right? Do you want some water?’

  Shirley shook her head, dumbly.

  Piers said, ‘Sorry to have given you such a fright. I’m an artist. Call me Piers.’ He produced one of his slightly crooked, charming smiles. ‘I paint portraits for a living. I was expecting Lucas Rycroft to call on me this morning but he didn’t turn up.’ He leafed through the book again and held up another drawing. ‘Is this Lucas?’

  Shirley frowned. ‘No! No, that’s Kent. Why have you drawn him?’

  ‘It’s not Lucas?’

  Wide eyes. ‘No, no! Uncle Lucas ties his hair back. And he’s really old.’

  �
�And these two?’ Piers turned pages.

  She peered at the drawings. ‘That’s the twins. They’re cousins. I mean, we’re all cousins. Why have you been drawing them?’

  ‘Your twin cousins came to my studio demanding that I produce Lucas who had got delayed en route to meet me. They seemed to think I was hiding him, and were rather rough in searching the place.’

  ‘Searched like this, you mean?’ She gesticulated to the mess behind her.

  Bea didn’t think the twins had searched the studio in the same way. They’d overturned things, torn things off the wall. This was a comparatively genteel effort.

  Piers produced his smile again. ‘I have no idea of their real names, but I gather the twins are known in the family by the nicknames of Tweedledum and Tweedledee.’

  ‘Yes, that’s true.’ Colour was coming back into her face. ‘I think that sometimes they’re a bit … naughty. What was that about Owen?’ Her hands closed convulsively, and sweat stood out on her upper lip. Her eyes switched this way and that.

  ‘He’s dead.’

  She jumped. Put her hands to her mouth, stared into the distance. And said … nothing.

  Shock.

  Bea tried for a gentle tone of voice. ‘We’re worried about Kent. You do know who we mean?’

  She nodded, hands still over her mouth, eyes wide with fright.

  Her reactions seem extreme. Or am I being unkind?

  Piers said, ‘After the twins left my place, I went looking for Lucas, who’d failed to turn up at my place. I didn’t find him. On my return home, I found a man lying in the hallway. He’d been attacked and was unconscious. And you say this is Kent?’ He held out his notebook to her.

  She took one look, shrank back within herself and began to rock to and fro. ‘Yes, that’s Kent.’ Her voice sounded rusty. She cleared her throat. ‘Is he badly hurt?’

  ‘He’s in hospital. I gave the police the name of Lucas because that’s who I was expecting to visit me, but I couldn’t be sure of my identification. You’ve confirmed that it is Kent who was attacked. Have you any idea why?’