False Pride

by Veronica Heley

  ‘How grateful?’ He looked at her from under his eyebrows. She wondered why, and then got it. He was waiting for an invitation to stay on for supper. Should she invite him? Perhaps.

  No, she wouldn’t. Not this time. She was tired and he was pushing her too fast. She said, ‘I hope you have a quiet evening. If you want to use the microwave, I’ve put all your ready meals in the cool bag. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got guests to look after.’

  He accepted that. ‘I’ll get my tools and go. But I’ll be on call if you need me. Switch that alarm on when I leave and don’t turn it off for any reason, right?’

  She saw him off as the delivery boy arrived with their take-away food. Bea paid and Mrs Tarring came out of the sitting room to help her carry the food into the kitchen. Then Bea went back to the hall to switch on the alarm. It seemed to be working all right. Perhaps Piers was a better electrician than she’d thought.

  Mrs Tarring was hovering, unwilling to settle. ‘I must explain, we didn’t want to bother you when you were so busy, but we remembered you said there was a spare key in the kitchen, and we found one so that Magda could go off shopping straight away. She said she’d be better off doing it alone. I didn’t argue. I’m bushed. But perhaps I can help you with making up the bed for her?’

  ‘And you thought it might be a good idea for us to pool our ideas? Shall we make up the bed now?’ Bea led the way up the stairs. ‘So, where do you think Lord Rycroft and Lucas have gone?’

  Mrs Tarring said, ‘I don’t know where they are. It’s been driving me crazy. I’ve even been wondering if Lord Rycroft has refused to respond to my calls because I’m not supposed to contact him at weekends. Perhaps he’s so angry with me that he … I’ve been trying to work out where my loyalties lie. It’s difficult. My predecessor in my job was sacked because he tattled to some tabloid journalist. His own fault entirely. He admitted it. He’d got drunk and talked about … well, you don’t need to know about what.’

  Bea extracted clean linen from the cupboard and took it into the spare room. ‘I’ve heard one or two bits of gossip. Would that have been about Mrs Nicholas or the twins?’

  Mrs Tarring grimaced. ‘Neither. Lord Rycroft was married twice, and the least said about that second wife, the better.’ She shook out a sheet and, with Bea anchoring the other side, tucked it over the mattress. ‘What I have to decide is whether the situation is serious enough for me to talk about the family or not.’

  ‘I don’t have a loose tongue.’

  ‘That’s what I keep telling myself. But I also keep telling myself that as the police have taken over the killing of Owen and the attack on Kent, there is nothing that I can usefully say that would help.’

  ‘Except find Lord Rycroft and Lucas? Did you tell the police about Lucas removing the jewellery from the bank and then disappearing?’

  ‘No. It didn’t seem relevant.’

  ‘Come on, now, Mrs Tarring. You know it’s all tied up in one untidy bundle; the twins need of money, Owen’s bad behaviour, and his body being placed in Magda’s bed. You know or suspect much more than you’ve told the police. Right?’

  ‘They didn’t want the background.’

  ‘You mean that you didn’t tell them how Owen’s arrival started all this off?’

  ‘I don’t know that that is so, but I agree that … Mrs Abbot, I may be completely wrong. If I tell you the strange thoughts that have been passing through my head, it must be in confidence. One moment I think that if I don’t tell the police what I suspect, Kent’s assailant may never be brought to justice. And then I think that it doesn’t matter because it couldn’t have been Owen, because he was already dead when Kent was attacked. So now I don’t know what to think.’

  ‘Kent is not dead yet.’

  ‘Thank God. I don’t know what we’ll do if he dies.’

  ‘You don’t feel the same obligation to find Owen’s killer?’

  Mrs Tarring pummelled a pillow into submission. ‘Owen was a … I don’t know how to describe him.’

  ‘A scam artist? A hustler?’

  ‘He was a genuine Rycroft. I know. The family checked. He really was the old lord’s son.’

  ‘But he was a slimy toad?’

  Mrs Tarring barked out a laugh. ‘Shall I do the duvet cover?’

  ‘Owen wasn’t content to be granted a place in the sun, but wanted to exclude others from it? The family was getting along fairly well until he came along and upset them, weren’t they?’

  ‘He was a liar and a thief. At least, I’m not absolutely one hundred per cent sure that he stole things, although I suspect that he did. He certainly stole reputations. He had a wicked tongue and could twist anyone’s actions against them. I told you how he nearly got me the sack, didn’t I? Did you know he managed to get the girl he’d assaulted sacked? He claimed she’d been filching from the petty cash. I didn’t believe him, Kent didn’t believe him, but the old lord said we had to take Owen’s word for it and she had to go. Kent and I arranged for her to be given six months’ pay and a good reference so that she’d leave quietly.

  ‘When Owen found out, he was furious. He accused me of stealing the money and threatened to go to the police about it. Fortunately Lord Rycroft understood that Kent and I had acted that way to avoid publicity. It saddened him, but he was adamant that Owen had been misunderstood and was not to be blamed in any way. In fact, Lord Rycroft went out and ordered a new car for the lad to compensate him for what he called our “unpleasantness”. The next day Owen strutted into the office and told me I’d better start looking for another job, because I was next for the chop! I told Kent what Owen had said and he reassured me that my job was safe, but if Owen had managed to persuade his father that I had been stealing from the firm or something, I don’t know what would have happened. I suppose that gives me a motive for killing him. Only, I didn’t.’

  ‘No, you wouldn’t have put him in Magda’s bed.’

  Mrs Tarring smoothed the clean duvet cover into place. ‘No, I wouldn’t. That was horrible.’

  ‘Why do you think it was done?’ Bea put some clean towels in the en suite, and checked that there were some toiletries on the shelf above the basin.

  Mrs Tarring avoided Bea’s eye as she tweaked the pillows into a better position. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Yes, you do. Someone in the family thinks that Magda and Lucas might eventually get together—?’

  ‘I don’t think it’s ever crossed Magda’s mind.’

  ‘No, I don’t think it has. But she is very fond of Lucas, isn’t she? Does he reciprocate, do you think?’

  Mrs Tarring shook her head. ‘I think he’s too set in his ways to notice. He’s something of an eccentric, is Lucas. Totally absorbed in his studies. I believe he’s highly thought of, in his own way. But … how can I put it? Not one for social gatherings. He doesn’t come on to women, isn’t interested.’

  ‘What would happen if Magda were to climb into his bed one day – not that she would, of course – but if she did, well, do you think something might happen? She’s a pretty woman and fond of him. Don’t you think someone might have been watching that situation carefully, and put Owen in Magda’s bed to frighten her away?’

  A tiny nod. ‘Perhaps. She’s a good girl, is Magda. She’s a natural homemaker but no great intellectual prize, not up to his weight. After this is over, I think you should find her another man to work for, perhaps an older man who is looking for comfort in bed.’

  A banshee wail shook the house.

  Bea started for the stairs. ‘Oh, no! It’s the alarm. It must be Magda trying to get in.’ She skittered down the stairs, looked through the door panel and saw that there was no one outside. She tried to silence the alarm. It wouldn’t stop! The neighbours would be furious! She ran down to the basement. No, the door onto the street was still intact, securely bolted, just as Piers had left it.

  The noise was appalling. She ran up to the hall again. Mrs Tarring was standing under the alarm panel, hands over he
r ears. She shouted, ‘I don’t think it’s Magda!’

  ‘I know!’ Bea attacked the alarm again.

  Silence.

  Oh! My!

  Bea leant against the wall. She felt quite limp. If the alarm was going to go off when no one had touched the door then … what could she do about that?

  At that inappropriate moment, Bea’s phone rang. It was Bernice’s mother, enquiring if the girl had rung Bea yet, because she still hadn’t been in touch with her mother.

  Bea tried to switch her mind from one problem to the next. She soothed, and promised to ring as soon as William was back from sailing. Yes, she knew she’d promised to ring back before, but she was sure that there was nothing to worry about. No doubt Bernice was having a wonderful time and had forgotten to reassure people who ought to have been informed.

  Someone turned a key in the lock and let themselves into the hall. The alarm didn’t go off because Bea hadn’t re-set it, had she?

  This time it was Magda. ‘I’m back!’

  Bea finished the call to Bernice’s mother and called out, ‘How did you get on, Magda?’ Then she reset the alarm. Wouldn’t you know, it went off again! Gritting her teeth, she cancelled the signal. Again. Better to have no alarm at all than for it to misbehave when it felt like it.

  Magda was hanging about with packages. ‘Is there a loose connection somewhere? My parents’ alarm malfunctioned in the middle of the night once. It went on and on. It was awful.’

  Bea summoned up a smile for Magda. ‘No one can deal with it till Monday. Did you get everything you needed? Good.’ And, including Mrs Tarring, ‘Let’s all go and eat, shall we? We can talk afterwards.’

  Her mobile phone rang again. She answered it as she led the way to the kitchen. ‘Yes?’ She was terse.

  It was Piers. ‘I’m worried about you. Are you all right?’

  ‘Sure. We’re about to eat. Did you find the food in your cool box?’

  ‘Yes, and I picked up my new phone which is now fully charged. But I can’t settle. Shall I come round? Is the alarm all right?’

  She couldn’t cope with him tonight. ‘It’s fine. See you tomorrow sometime.’ She clicked the phone off and started to unpack the food they’d ordered.

  Magda was drooping with tiredness by the time they’d finished eating, and Bea suggested her guest might like to have an early night. Magda agreed. Bea made her a hot drink and filled a hot-water bottle for her to take up to bed. ‘Sleep tight.’

  Wanly, Magda pulled herself up the stairs and disappeared into her room. This left Mrs Tarring and Bea to clear the table and settle in the sitting room with a hot drink each.

  ‘Now!’ said Mrs Tarring.

  Bea said, ‘May I suggest we concentrate on one thing only, and that is trying to get in contact with Lord Rycroft and Lucas.’

  Mrs Tarring threw up her hands. ‘I’ll try again.’ She dialled different numbers, listened, shook her head. ‘The same. Lord Rycroft’s phone seems to be out of service. He’s probably forgotten to charge it. And Lucas’s is the same. Neither of them can be trusted to look after modern phones. I can’t get through to Lord Rycroft’s town housekeeper, either. Any ideas?’

  ‘Let us think this through. You know Lucas and I don’t. I think his actions today tell us a lot about him and his relationship with his family. So let’s try to reconstruct what happened to him this morning. You’ve heard Magda’s version which, for the moment at any rate, we’ll take for gospel. At breakfast time this morning someone sent Lucas instructions to get the jewellery out of the bank, and included a key to the strong box. Who had access to the key for the safe deposit box?’

  Mrs Tarring replied. ‘Lord Rycroft used to keep the key, but I think he probably passed it over to Kent some time ago. He’s been gradually passing more and more stuff over to Kent to deal with.’

  ‘Is it just old age? Is it true that Lord Rycroft has been showing signs of Alzheimer’s?’

  ‘I really can’t make up my mind. His housekeeper – not the one at the London house, who is really only a glorified cleaner and an awful fusspot, if you’ll pardon my French, but the one in the country – she’s been there many, many years, quite settled into the life there, and an excellent cook. Well, she’s not one to tattle, but some time ago she called me to say she was worried about His Lordship. She said he’d been ordering stuff on the Internet, stuff he didn’t need and says he didn’t ask for. She said he’d become somewhat forgetful. He’d told the gardener to do such and such, and then couldn’t remember why. I told Kent what she’d said and he went down to see his father. When he returned, Kent said His Lordship seemed perfectly all right to him, but had complained that someone was playing tricks on him, ordering stuff in his name and so on. He refused to see a doctor. Kent told me he didn’t know what to think.’

  ‘There are two possible explanations. One, Lord Rycroft might really be going doolally; perhaps getting paranoid, thinking someone was getting at him? And two, someone really has been playing tricks on him. Which?’

  ‘I’ve thought and thought. I really don’t know.’

  ‘You think it was Lord Rycroft who authorized Lucas to take the jewellery out of the bank?’

  Mrs Tarring was wretched. ‘Why would he? That’s what I don’t understand. And, why did he ask Lucas – who hates getting involved in family business – instead of Kent, who’s been wonderful, looking after everyone for ages.’

  ‘How about this: if the old man really is paranoid, perhaps he’s got to the point where he doesn’t even trust Kent, but prefers to drag Lucas into the game? No. I prefer to think someone was playing tricks on him, for reasons which I’ll explain in a moment. Let’s follow the trail of the money. Lucas receives his instructions. He may not be streetwise, but he’s no fool, so he double-checks. He makes a phone call to someone to check that this authorization is in order. Who did he ring?’

  ‘Kent, of course. There’s no one else. Or … his brother?’

  ‘No, Lucas interrupted his early breakfast to make that call. He was going on to have his hair cut and meet the artist, remember? Lord Rycroft wasn’t disturbed at his breakfast until much later in the morning. So it’s Kent whom Lucas phones. Kent says he knows nothing about it. That throws them both into a flap. They consider the possibilities. In the first place, if the authorization is genuine and signed by Lord Rycroft in a fit of paranoia, then His Lordship is no longer fit to be trusted with important matters and it would be best to remove the jewellery from the bank and put it somewhere he couldn’t get at it. If it’s some joker – and I suspect they were both thinking it might be Owen – then the sooner the assets are placed elsewhere, the better. Do you agree?’

  Mrs Tarring nodded. ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘Now Lucas already had an engagement that morning. He decides he can fit in getting the jewels and meeting Kent if he takes Magda with him to hold onto the loot while he gets his hair cut. So he agrees to follow instructions. His mind must have been in a whirl. Was his elder brother really going bonkers or was someone trying to get hold of the family’s jewels for some nefarious reason? He retrieves the jewellery and gets into a cab with Magda on his way to the studio. The next thing that happens, according to Magda, is that Lucas takes a phone call in the taxi. He confirms to his caller that he’s got the jewellery and gives him the address of the studio. Can we make an educated guess who that someone was?’

  ‘Kent, of course, confirming their arrangement. Lucas had arranged to meet him at the studio.’

  ‘I think so, too. So Lucas, Kent and Magda are all on course to meet at the studio. The alternative theory would be that Lord Rycroft had phoned Lucas to make sure he’d got the jewellery, but that doesn’t make sense because we don’t think he heard about the removal of the jewels until he had breakfast later that morning. And it was a phone call he received – not one he made – which caused him to change his plans. He abandoned his breakfast and set out in his car for London. And we can guess why, can’t we?’

  ‘He’
d just been told the jewellery had been taken out of the bank.’

  ‘If he’d authorized it, then why would that be a surprise and why would it cause him to change his plans for the day?’

  Mrs Tarring grimaced. ‘That’s true. So he didn’t know about it, which means that we can discard the idea he’d organized it himself.’ She thought about it. ‘You think it was Owen who’d set up a plot to get control of the jewellery and that he intended to blame Lucas and Kent for stealing it? But wasn’t he dead by that time?’

  ‘He may have set up the scam only for someone else to take a hand in the game. Could Owen have got the old man to sign an authorization without his realizing what he was doing? Perhaps by sliding it in among some other papers?’

  ‘I suppose he could. He did have permission to visit Lord Rycroft whenever he pleased. He was always down there, running little errands for his father. But, how did he get the bank key?’ Mrs Tarring rubbed her forehead. ‘Kent kept duplicates of the keys to all our properties in a locked cabinet in his office. Owen has been in and out of our offices every day, getting underfoot. It’s true that the cabinet is often left unlocked during the day when maintenance men need access. The same goes for the safe. We are all in and out … any one of us could have taken the key, including me. Only I didn’t.’

  ‘All right, let’s suppose for the moment that the scam was set up by Owen, who intended to use it to discredit Lucas, Kent and possibly, you. What stopped it going through?’

  ‘Owen got himself killed.’

  And you don’t care who did it, do you? All you care about is Kent.

  Mrs Tarring said, ‘But Owen can’t have attacked Kent because he was already dead. It must have been the twins.’

  ‘No, that’s not right. In the first place the timing is off, because the twins were here, trying to find out where Lucas and the jewels were, when Piers went out looking for Lucas at the barber’s. Who else is there?’

  Mrs Tarring didn’t want to think about that. Her eyes switched right and left.