False Pride

by Veronica Heley

  Bea got out her phone again while calling instructions up to Piers. ‘I’m off in a minute. Needed back home. Drop in at my place to collect the key to the mews cottage on your way, right, and don’t forget to pick up your mobile? I’ll take a taxi …’

  Before she could key in the number, her phone rang again.

  A woman this time. ‘Is that Mrs Abbot? It’s Magda here.’ Her voice was high with tension.

  Magda. Lucas’s housekeeper, who’d got Bea involved with the twins and the vanishing jewellery and corpses galore. Had Lucas been found?

  ‘Yes, Magda? How are things?’

  ‘Oh, all right, really. Well, except … we’ve been with the police, and they’ve taken the body away, but they said I can’t stay here, especially since it’s my bedroom, if you see what I mean. You did say, didn’t you, that I might be able to stay with you for a couple of days until I can find another position …?’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ said Bea, mentally giving herself a slap. What on earth had possessed her to offer this lightweight woman some hospitality? Magda reacted to difficult situations like cardboard in a downpour. Bea said, ‘I’m not at home at the moment, but am taking a cab to get back there as quickly as possible. It will probably take me about half an hour. You remember where I live?’

  ‘Oh yes, of course. The police were ever so kind but they wouldn’t let me take anything from my room.’ She tried on a laugh for size. Not a success. ‘I’ll need to drop in to a supermarket some time. I haven’t as much as a toothbrush to my name.’

  ‘Well, I might be able to—’

  ‘No, no. I couldn’t think of it. I’ll manage. You’ve been so kind. I couldn’t put you to any more trouble.’

  No, of course you couldn’t think of it. Only, someone is going to have to make up the spare-room bed and supply towels and find some food, and prepare a meal for you. It will be no trouble at all!

  Bea told herself not to grind her teeth. Her dentist had warned her it destroyed the enamel. ‘Before you go, Magda – is Mrs Tarring with you?’

  ‘Yes. She’s ever so upset. She’s going straight home to have a nice hot bath and watch the telly in her dressing gown.’

  Which is just what I’d like to do. Unfortunately I can’t duck responsibility for other people. Not like some!

  Bea said, curbing impatience, ‘That sounds sensible. Would you like to put her on the line for a moment?’

  ‘Well, I would, but she’s just on her own phone at the moment. Shall I get her to ring you when she finishes?’

  Bea lost it. ‘Just tell her that it’s definitely Kent Rycroft who’s in hospital. Not Lucas.’

  ‘Ow!’

  A clatter. Magda had dropped the phone? Muttered imprecations. A sharp voice telling someone to pull themselves together. Then Mrs Tarring picked up Magda’s phone. ‘Yes, Mrs Abbot? You have some news?’

  ‘We’ve checked around. We spoke to Shirley Rycroft, whom we found at Kent’s place – which has also been turned over by someone. Shirley says she found the front door open and the place ransacked, but she had keys to the place in her hand. She didn’t want to inform the police, though I do think someone ought to do so. Shirley’s manner was … evasive. I’m not sure what she was doing there. Anyway, when we told her that Kent had been attacked and taken off to hospital, she said she’d go there to see him. She said she thought it must be the twins who’d attacked Kent.’

  Long, slow breathing. ‘The twins? She really thinks …?’ A crack in the voice.

  ‘Yes. Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’

  ‘Why would the twins attack him?’

  ‘How many billions do the Rycrofts have?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose money might be a motive, but Kent does what Lord Rycroft decides … who gets what, and so on. The twins wouldn’t automatically benefit if Kent were out of the way. You say his house has been burgled? Oh, my God! Who knows how … I mean, why would anyone want … the insurance people must be informed, but how would I know if anything has been stolen? This is … it’s all too much!’ Her voice rose in panic.

  ‘Surely the police ought to be informed about the break-in, or whatever it was?’

  ‘It’s not my job … if only Kent were here. I don’t know what to do.’ In a sober tone, ‘I can’t deal with this.’

  ‘I don’t know who can,’ said Bea, ‘but I do know that Lord Rycroft needs to be informed of what’s happening. Has he arrived at his town house yet?’

  ‘I’ve left messages. He hasn’t responded. I even gave the police his phone numbers. I had to. I know I may lose my job but …’

  ‘You did the right thing. Have you any idea where he might be?’

  ‘None. I wish I had. This is just too much.’ The phone clicked off.

  Bea agreed. It was all too much.

  She dialled for a cab, helped carry some of Piers’s belongings out to the van, reminded him to call in for the key before he went to the mews and departed the scene with a sigh of relief.

  Oh, for a nice, quiet cup of tea and a biscuit.

  The taxi was able to park almost directly outside her house. The relief, to be back on home ground! She paid the taxi off, and he drove away.

  Something was wrong, but she couldn’t work out what it was. And then she did.

  The alarm on the wall above her bedroom window was yammering fit to deafen everyone in earshot. One of her neighbours had a key to her house for use in emergencies, but he must be away for the weekend. The others would be furious at the noise.

  She let herself into the house. She’d thought a couple of times about having a new alarm which connected to the police station, but had done nothing about it because the house was rarely empty … which wasn’t really a good reason.

  That omission might have been a mistake.

  She turned the alarm off in the hall, and stood there, listening. And looking.

  Nothing seemed amiss in the hall. She could see through to the kitchen from where she stood by the front door. The kitchen looked undisturbed. She took a couple of steps along the hall until she could see into the big living room, which ran from front to back of the house. All seemed well, there.

  Something … someone … shuffled.

  A rat? Bea started, and put her hand to her heart.

  A weak cry. ‘Anyone there?’

  A man? Who …?

  Downstairs in the agency rooms?

  How could that be? When she left, hadn’t she locked the door to the stairs that led down to the agency rooms? She couldn’t remember. Perhaps she hadn’t.

  She ditched her handbag but took out her mobile phone. Her finger hovered over the speed-dial to the police station. The door to the stairs hung open.

  ‘Who is it?’ she said, keeping her voice level.

  ‘Help!’ A man’s voice? One she didn’t recognize.

  Someone who’d broken in from the street? Who’d come down the outside stairs to the agency rooms?

  She mustn’t let her voice tremble. ‘Show yourself!’

  A groan. ‘I can’t. Help …!’

  A burglar? Who’d hurt himself, breaking in?

  She took the inside stairs, keeping to the wall. Slowly.

  There was no one on the stairs.

  There was no light on in the agency rooms. It might be a nice sunny spring day outside, but the rooms in the basement were not over-supplied with windows and they kept the lights on in the agency rooms during the day.

  ‘Help!’ the voice repeated. ‘Help us!’

  Us!

  Bea nearly screamed. ‘Us’ meant … the twins?

  No, surely not!

  Down in the jungle, something stirred …

  There was a huddle of men crouched down by the door which led to the area steps. The door hung open, partially off its hinges. Two men had come down the area steps, bashed in the door to the agency rooms, and got no further.

  The twins were locked together.

  One was supporting the other, holding his brother closely, arms
tight around him. His eyes were wide, scared … of what?

  The other had his eyes closed. His mouth hung open.

  His tie was off, his shirt open.

  His legs sprawled, loosely.

  At least they didn’t seem to be in danger of attacking her.

  Neither of them shifted position when she appeared.

  ‘Help?’

  She peered more closely.

  One of them seemed to be alive, all right. The other wasn’t moving.

  Bea hung back, well beyond the reach of the twins’ powerful arms. ‘What’s the matter? Why are you here?’

  ‘Get an ambulance, bitch! Don’t argue! Do it!’

  Cautiously, ‘Is this a trick?’

  ‘No trick. Get moving!’

  The second twin appeared to be unconscious. Bea rang for an ambulance. That done, she asked, ‘What happened?’

  ‘Dunno.’ The twin who was conscious drooped, then pulled himself upright. ‘Something in the bottle of drink we found in the car. We were on our way … can’t remember where now.’ His brow corrugated. ‘Where was it? To see Lucas and that bitch of his? She’d lied to us, hadn’t she? But we couldn’t remember which number it was, so we went back to the office to check. Only there was no one there, was there? Saturday and all. Bro said you’d know which number it was, so we came round here, only you weren’t in, and we tooled around a bit, thinking, like … and I was driving, it was my turn. We shared the drink. It was a warm day …’

  He slumped over his twin, his eyes closing.

  Had they been drugged? One of them seemed comatose – if not dead – while the other seemed to be on the verge of falling asleep. She’d heard that it was best to keep people talking who’d taken drugs, so she said, ‘I don’t understand why you broke in here.’

  He jerked awake. ‘What?’ He looked around him. Was he not sure where he was?

  ‘We were waiting for you, weren’t we? In the car. Where were you? Bro dropped off and I couldn’t wake him. I got him out of the car and up the steps to your front door, and I rang and rang on my mobile till the battery ran down. Bro’s phone fell out of his pocket when I was getting him out of the car and smashed … You should have been at home, bitch! Where were you?’

  ‘I had to go out,’ said Bea, deciding not to explain where she’d been. She glanced at her watch again. How long would the ambulance be?

  ‘When you didn’t come, I got Bro down the steps and bashed open the door here … what do you want with such a big door, eh? And the alarm went off, fit to kill, and I thought that was good, that’d fetch you, or a neighbour … but nobody came.’

  Tears stood out on his cheeks. He snuffled. ‘Why didn’t anybody come? You should have come!’

  ‘The neighbours who have a key must have gone away for the weekend. I was supposed to be in. Only, you set us looking for Lucas …’

  ‘I’ll kill him when I see him!’

  Someone rang the front doorbell, hard. Bea fled back up the inner stairs, afraid that at any moment now the twins would rise up and attack her from behind, drag her back down to the agency rooms and …

  But no, she made it, panting, to the hallway, without having been tackled.

  ‘You took your time!’ complained Piers, looking tired, leaning against the wall. She remembered that he’d been knocked out that morning. She thought he probably ought to be in bed, being nursed by soft-footed, soft-voiced, attentive nurses, preferably size eight with big boobs.

  Which she’d rather fancy herself. Well, not the boobs and …

  I’m rambling. Do I tell him about the twins? No. The ambulance will be here in a minute and will take them off my hands.

  She tried to pop her senses back into their right boxes. What did he need to know about the cottage? She said, ‘I’ll fetch the key. I’ve been renting it out for holiday lets so the electricity and gas are on and there’s a landline phone which I don’t suppose anyone will use, but it got left there and I’m still paying the bill.’

  She kept spare keys in a special box fixed to the back of one of the kitchen cupboard doors. The keys for the cottage were on a key ring with a list of instructions about this and that. She snatched it up and ran back to the hall, only to realize that a spare key to the front door had got tangled with it.

  She dithered, wondering whether to remove that key or not. Giving it to Piers would be tantamount to inviting him back into her home, and that she didn’t want to do.

  Or did she?

  She hesitated and was lost.

  He grabbed the keys, said, ‘Thanks!’ and disappeared.

  She watched him climb into the front of the removal van and saw it pull away. She wondered what he’d done with his car. He hadn’t used it that day and hadn’t suggested they use it, either. Had he said something about selling his old car and getting a new one? She couldn’t remember. Lots of people didn’t keep a car in London nowadays, because of the problems of parking and/or garaging it.

  An ambulance drew up.

  Thank God for that.

  She waved the paramedics in.

  TEN

  Saturday early evening

  Bea showed the paramedics the way through the hall and down the stairs. ‘I’ve been out for some time. When I got back I found the alarm ringing and that two men had broken in to the agency rooms down below. Both are very poorly. I’m not sure, but one might be dead.’

  The twins hadn’t moved. They were clasped together in life as in death. One was still breathing, though his eyes were at half-mast. The other seemed to be out of it.

  The paramedics were efficient. One took a sniff and looked resigned. ‘Drunk, both of them.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Bea. ‘I think they’ve been drugged.’

  ‘Intoxicated. Believe me, missus. Can’t you smell it?’

  Now they mentioned it, yes, perhaps she could smell something. Oranges? She’d hesitated to get close to them in case they’d grabbed her.

  The paramedics looked at the broken door and put their heads outside into the area to assess how to get the bodies out. ‘Did they get drunk, fall down the steps and couldn’t get up again?’

  Bea shrugged. ‘I got back to find them like this.’

  One of the paramedics said, ‘I’ll get the chair.’ He departed up the outside steps.

  The other produced a clipboard. ‘Names?’

  Bea said, ‘Rycroft. First names unknown. I’d never met them till today. They forced their way into my house earlier this morning looking for a relative of theirs, and were most unpleasant when they didn’t find him. Eventually they left. I’d hoped never to see them again, but when I returned to the house this afternoon, there they were.’

  The paramedic was checking vital signs. ‘Binge drinking can do this to you. They’re both still alive, but … well, we’ll do what we can. Do you know what they’ve taken?’

  Bea said, ‘One of them was still conscious when I arrived. He talked about sharing a bottle of something they’d found in their car. A sports car, I think. It must still be outside. The bottle may be in it.’

  ‘Vodka, probably.’ He stood up. ‘Flavoured with orange juice. They’ll find out at the hospital.’ He looked at the broken door. ‘You’ll need to get that fixed.’

  ‘I’m fully aware of that,’ said Bea. ‘It’s a Saturday afternoon and it’s not going to be easy to find someone to sort it today. Any ideas?’

  They hadn’t. She thought of asking Piers to help. He did know one end of a tool from the other but had only a basic knowledge of electrics. He’d probably fuse everything in the house while trying to restore the broken connection. Besides which, she didn’t really want to ask him for a favour.

  While the paramedics went about their business, she retreated to her office at the back of the house and tried to raise someone, anyone, who might be able to put the door back into position and reconnect the alarm.

  She failed. No one was free. They could come on Monday. They would charge a fortune. She worked her wa
y down the list in the Yellow Pages. Without success. She tried the alarm company; ditto. She got some good advice, which boiled down to nailing up the door to repel boarders, and making sure the alarm was reconnected.

  Which did bother her. If she couldn’t restore the alarm, wouldn’t the baddies all be beating a path to her door?

  There were noises off as the paramedics strove mightily to remove her unwelcome guests. She tried to ignore them.

  She remembered that the police must be told of the break-in because she’d need a report in order to make her case to the insurance people and the alarm company.

  She could scream! She gritted her teeth and applied herself to the phone again.

  More noises off. Bea was pretty sure one of the twins was past help, but the other might survive, if he were lucky. She did not watch their removal.

  She got through to the police eventually. They took details of the break-in but said that as the miscreants were being removed, the case was not urgent and she should make a formal report on Monday.

  ‘We’re off, then.’ The larger of the two paramedics poked his head round the door of her office. ‘You might want to clean the floor where they’ve been lying.’

  Ugh! She’d been afraid of that.

  Finally she had explored all her options bar one. So she rang Piers on the landline at the mews cottage. Fortunately he was there and picked up. She explained the situation, and he said he’d be there in ten.

  By the time Bea had cleaned the floor where the twins had been lying – about which the least said the better – Piers arrived, carrying a toolbox. Bea filled him in on what had been happening.

  ‘Drugged, you think?’ He sniffed the air. ‘Oranges?’ He heaved the door back into place. It teetered, threatening to fall back on him. She added her weight to his, till it was roughly back in its frame once more.

  He said, ‘They used some force, didn’t they? The hinges have been partially wrenched off the door jamb, and the lock’s been torn out of the woodwork. I doubt if I can mend that. How do you fancy getting a new door, steel-lined?’

  ‘Heavens! Do I need to live in a fortress?’