Guilty as Sin

by Judith Cutler

‘Let’s not talk about dying now,’ Fi said briskly. ‘Can you hear that? That’s an ambulance on its way.’

  ‘Life’ll be so much better when you can see properly again,’ I said. Anything to keep her with us.

  ‘I’d love to see your face,’ she said, reaching for my cheek. ‘Yours and your dear girl’s. Look after her, Bossy. And you look after him, Evelina.’

  ‘Of course I will.’ I had to try to speak normally; my sobbing wouldn’t do her any good. As the paramedics filled the doorway, I added, ‘Now, these nice people will make you better. I’ll come in the ambulance with you.’ I pressed her hand, kissed her cheek.

  ‘Not going to dwindle.’ I think that was what she said. ‘Balloons!’

  I held her hand to my chest so she’d feel my heart beating, and just talked. Nonsense, I suppose. But they say hearing’s the last sense to go.

  Suddenly, her eyes opened and she said, with amazing clarity, ‘Do not resuscitate. I absolutely forbid it.’ Her head turned slightly towards me. ‘Good night, my darling. Remember, balloons. And Mop.’

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  However much I wanted to hide my head under the duvet, clutching Tim and howling, I had to get up. Freya had texted me to say she wanted to see me in Maidstone at eleven to disentangle all the threads. Which of us was to pull which thread I’d no idea. In any case, I had that statement to make.

  All I told Mary and Paul was that Griff was away for a few days and that Dodie had died. If they assumed it was a matter of ripe old age, that was fine. They would hold the fort as they always did, entirely competent, and I hoped a good deal safer now Maidstone police station was crammed to the gunwales with the criminals that had once threatened Mary – and me, of course.

  What had happened to Phil? And how could I have forgotten to ask about him? Fear gripping my stomach, I made myself look in on the pharmacy en route. The kindly and competent ladies behind the counter, renowned for never flapping, were in headless chicken mode. There was no sign of Phil, one whispered to me, or of Angus, or even a locum. No, Phil wasn’t taking any calls, and – her voice dropped lower – there was no sign of anyone at his cottage. When she asked what I thought, it seemed better not to voice my fears. The trouble was, which did I fear most, that he was a victim or a perpetrator?

  There were other fears to deal with when I saw Pa and Titus getting into a mini-cab outside the police station. Neither saw my frantic gestures, but theirs were the first names I shot at Freya as she came down in person to sign me in.

  ‘The name Pargetter mean anything to you? Yes? Well, Titus has just given us enough information to see him die in jail.’ Thank God Griff didn’t get him to handle our icons. ‘OK, that may not be long away, because he’s clearly a sick man, but they’ve also given us some of his contacts’ names – and guess who figures amongst them? One of your old friends.’

  Mouth dry, I think I swayed.

  ‘That’s right. Arthur Habgood. You weren’t thinking it was that louse Sanditon, were you? Actually, are you all right?’

  ‘A friend died last night. In my arms.’ I found I was shaking.

  Before I knew it I was in that soft interview room again.

  ‘Does Griff know?’ she asked, the moment I’d explained.

  ‘Not yet. I need to tell him myself. I even left a large notice in her house forbidding the church visitors to tell him. Pa needs to know too. So let’s get the news of the living out of the way so I can go and do what I have to do. What are you doing?’ Tapping at her phone didn’t seem particularly helpful.

  ‘Texting Daniel. He’s a good parson. He’ll help you. OK, where do we start?’

  ‘All the Tony Blairs. Spencer and Honey apart, of course. Freya, cut to the chase. I need to deal with Dodie’s death, not play games. Spencer, Honey – what about Blakemore senior?’

  ‘He didn’t soil his hands doing the dirty work. So his face isn’t indelibly red. He was pulling Spencer and Honey’s strings, of course, and involving them in the family business. Which I really do not like. You probably don’t either, since their brief was to first try to suborn you, and when that failed to keep an eye on you.’

  ‘Like Spencer shoving me under a lorry?’

  ‘He chickened out.’ She reached for my hand and held it – a most un-Freya like gesture. ‘I’m glad he did. And I’m quite glad you declined to work for his dad. He’s a bad lot: not only did he have a team of heavies in Bredeham, he actually had another team working on St Dunstan in the Dunes, chiselling out a reredos at exactly the same time – quite an empire he’s built. But we got a tip-off – some career criminals still respect churches, it seems – and nabbed them too. He was miles away, of course, busy having a row with his mother, him and his brother. Yes, Fi checked – still working six hours after she should have clocked off, bless her.’

  ‘Tim and Tiny … Can they be charged with hastening Dodie’s death?’

  ‘It’d be the icing on the cake if they could, wouldn’t it? We and the Crown Prosecution Service will be looking at every possible charge. Robbing the old lady apart, they’ve done inestimable damage to our heritage, and to other people’s. The trade in stolen church and other historical artefacts runs right across Europe. It looks as if I shall be seconded to the national team to help sort it out. Robin and I will have to take you up on that babysitting offer of yours, if that’s still OK?’

  ‘You know it is. Can I ask you a few more questions? Phil the Pill – why didn’t he try to help me?’ It came out as more of a wail than I liked. Anger would have been altogether better.

  ‘That’s our fault. Ours and your security service’s. We thought he might be acting as obbo. Well, not me, someone whose common sense had gone AWOL. And then, when they realized he was kosher, they took him back to one of the response vehicles for his own safety. His and Angus’s. They didn’t want him yapping at men with guns. So it seems as if Phil’s on the side of the angels. Even so …’ She looked at me meaningfully.

  I gestured – that was irrelevant at the moment. ‘But he’s in the clear? Excellent – the village needs him. But why’s he not at work this morning?’

  ‘Some idiot put some of those instant plastic handcuffs round Angus’s mouth. It took a while to get them off. I think Phil and Angus were probably at the vet’s earlier – should be back at work by now though, surely to goodness.’ She looked at her watch and nodded disapprovingly at the notion that Phil might be skiving.

  ‘Hmm. More to the point, Pa and Titus: they went off looking perky enough. Do I take it they’ll be able to finish this big project of theirs?’

  She grinned. ‘It’s so amazing, isn’t it? It’d almost be lèse majesté to arrest them.’ Her phone chirruped while I breathed a huge sigh. But why did Freya know about whatever it was and not me? Alone in the playground again, it was hard not to let my lip tremble. ‘Excellent. Thanks.’ She cut the call. ‘Daniel’s picking up Griff from Tenterden; he’ll know how to tell him, and all the other members of his congregation involved. Robin’s dropping Imogen off with one of his parishioners and coming over to take you to your pa’s – he knows him of old, after all.’ She coughed with what might have been embarrassment and looked at me under her brows. ‘Do you want me to suggest Carwyn gets compassionate leave?’

  ‘Him and Conrad? No, there’s no point in poking sleeping dogs, with or without plastic binding round their muzzles. I’m just glad it’s easier for people to come out these days. But Robin’s a really good idea. Thanks for contacting him. Freya, why do I feel so flat? I should feel something about Honey and Spencer’s involvement … What an idiot I was to think she wanted me just as a friend.’

  ‘But you stood firm when they asked for your services, Lina, remember that. And Daniel says to tell you something else.’ She patted her mobile. ‘That whenever he spoke to Dodie, which was quite a lot recently, she told him she wanted a quick end.’

  I nodded, trying not to sob. ‘She didn’t want to dwindle.’

  Which is what I told Pa, in his st
rangely clean living room. He and Titus had already broken out the bubbly to celebrate getting on the right side of the law for once. And it didn’t seem at all wrong to toast Dodie’s memory in another bottle. It was the way Pa would always deal with tricky things, and I was his daughter, after all. Robin was more cautious in his consumption: he’d be the one driving down the still-unrepaired track, after all.

  ‘We’ll have her wake here,’ Pa declared. ‘No, not here in my rooms. Far too ordinary. I’ll tell the trustees we’ll have the yellow saloon for the day.’

  He did too, and got his way. Dodie had hers, too. To go with her statement ring and amber beads, I found Dior stilettos and a fabulous Chanel suit for her last journey. Mop, decked in a new bow, was going with her to meet her Maker, who, Daniel declared in his sermon, must surely have a soft spot for teddy bears. I said in my brief, tough-to-articulate eulogy, I hoped He might have a similar weakness for balloons: if in life Dodie had had them tied to her wheelchair, now the whole hearse bubbled with them. Her sons weren’t amused, but it might be hard to smile when you were handcuffed together. As they shuffled out of the church between two burly security guards – it seemed that keeping an eye on villains wasn’t in the police remit any more – I caught up with them.

  Looking from one smug face to the other – they weren’t yet prison-pale and had been allowed to wear classy suits from their old lives – I told them what I thought of them: ‘You don’t belong to the human race. Imagine those long-term raids on your mother’s property, when you have more than enough of your own. And what about corrupting your own children, to the extent they ignored their lovely grandmother entirely – they even made jokes about old people as though they no longer deserved respect. You turned them into criminals – you made them befriend me so that I’d work for you. When that didn’t work, you wanted them to kill me. Even a rat had more soul. Even a louse.’ Add in a few expletives and you get the message. Add in blows to their faces. And a head butt or two.

  But I didn’t say or do any of those things. It was as if someone had laid a calming hand on my shoulder, pinioned me when I surged forward.

  Did they drop their eyes in the face of my silent scorn? Not a bit. They oozed the most loathsome sense of entitlement – only resentful, it seemed to me, that they’d been caught out. And they’d just left a church they’d employed other vile, venal men to desecrate. Holding the gaze of first one then the other, I said the only words appropriate to such a time and place: ‘May God forgive you.’

  One day I might forgive them myself. But not yet. Sorry, God, I’ll work on it.

  While they went back to custody, everyone who’d made Dodie’s life better, from the care-worker who’d given her the red scarf to the retired podiatrist who’d helped find non-dwindling shoes, came back to the Hall in a convoy of minibuses so they could all get tiddly. Pa had sold a fine jade carving to pay for the booze; the village deli catered, charging only the cost of the ingredients; Afzal chipped in with tiny savouries and some remarkably vivid Indian sweets.

  Phil, closing his pharmacy early out of respect, was there of course, with a partly shaven and strangely subdued Angus. Freya had come to the funeral to represent the police and then stayed behind for reasons best known to herself, despite all the pressures on her time. She gave me a reproving look every time she saw Phil and me exchange a word.

  No one wanted to leave early, which turned out to be a good thing. With no explanation, an hour or more into the wake, Pa despatched me to the hall to find the dinner gong: ‘Bash it as if you’re announcing the credits to a movie.’

  I did. And very therapeutic it was too. When I returned, he took my hand, said, ‘Ever since my daughter and I came back into each other’s lives, she’s been determined I should turn over a new leaf – not one to forge a document on, incidentally. And now I have, and, apart from Lina, the leaf is my proudest creation. Ladies and gentlemen, please accompany me to the library.’ With remarkable grace, he indicated that Griff was to take my other hand. Perhaps he was afraid I’d faint. And I might have done. There, in a beautifully lit glass case, was Magna Carta.

  ‘Commissioned by English Heritage and the British Library,’ he said. ‘To celebrate the anniversary of Runnymede. The originals can’t tour the length and breadth of the land. This, and the other five I’ve worked on, can. And I’d like to dedicate them all to Dodie’s memory.’

  Who could argue with that? No one here. Everyone’s glass mysteriously filled again and another toast was drunk.

  But then a nondescript man sidled up to me. I’d taken him for a security guard, since he’d seemed glued to Magna Carta. But it seemed he wasn’t. ‘There is one more thing you have to do for Lady Boulton,’ he said quietly, passing me a business card: Derek Waters, LL B and a lot of other letters. A solicitor? What had I done? ‘I’d like to speak to you in private. I had hoped to do so here today, but I can see that it would be inappropriate. Might I ask you to come to my office tomorrow morning?’ He fished out his iPhone. ‘Would eleven be convenient?’

  Looking at his unsmiling face, I rather thought it would have to be.

  TWENTY-NINE

  Though Pa and Griff both insisted – separately – that one of them, but not the other, should accompany me to Mr Waters’ office, I told them that this was something I had to do alone.

  I was just about to pop into the shop to say goodbye to Griff when I heard raised voices. Déjà vu! No, it was Griff and Paul talking. Paul still hadn’t found a financial backer for my take-over bid, by the sound of it, and Griff was quite frantic. So I walked across the yard, and then walked back again, calling cheerily. One glance at Griff’s face was enough to show me how desperate he was. Had those tests shown something really nasty? None of my previous attempts to probe had worked, and clearly this wasn’t the time for another. But I set off for Canterbury and Mr Waters’ office with a heavy heart.

  It was housed in one of Canterbury’s lovely old buildings, though I sensed that Waters might really be a glass and stainless steel man. But his coffee came in a silver pot, and the cups were china. Three cups. He looked impatiently at his watch – several times – and made a few remarks about the previous day’s activities: the service went well, the rector spoke well, the wake went well, and Pa’s bombshell – no, it didn’t just go well, it was impressive. He might have been a dentist making conversation while he waited for a local anaesthetic to work before he dug into a tooth. I responded as enthusiastically as if he was.

  At last voices in the outer office heralded a knock at the door and the grand entrance of a TV expert in Oriental art. Without lights and (possibly?) make-up, Wesley Jago’s face was rather more interesting, and his smile as charming (and alarming) as Harvey Sanditon’s. I put his age as somewhere in the early sixties, and silently admired a very fine signet ring, as good as Noel Pargetter’s magnificent specimen. He took one sip of his coffee and set the cup and saucer aside on the mega-desk. Mine joined it, the very smell putting me off. At this point Waters dug behind his desk and produced a cardboard box, which he laid midway between me and Jago.

  ‘Before I open this, Lady Boulton required me in her will to read the accompanying letter to you, Ms Townend. Are you ready?’

  Though I was terrified of hearing her voice from beyond the grave, I nodded. There was no one, not even Tim the Bear, to hold my hand.

  ‘My darling child,

  You have given me more than pleasure in the few weeks of our friendship, reminding me of the good things of life. You bought me clothes and a reincarnated Mop. You brought back into my life my dear lover, Bossy. Both he and Griff, whose company gave me hours of gentle pleasure, love you dearly, and want a future for you, though neither feels confident of providing it for you.

  I want to thank you for what you brought to my cottage, and thank Bossy and Griff too. The only way I can think of doing this is to leave you what little my marauding family have left me. It should be enough to make you independent of them – though I can’t imagine for an
instant your ever abandoning them to the sort of life my family left me. But if ever you need your own roof over your head, you now have mine. I have no doubt you will make it beautiful. But you need a beautiful life of your own too, and accordingly I leave you my dear rat netsuke (I hope you’ll keep him for ever), the little box of treasures locked behind that fake socket and the contents of the loft strongbox, which I advise you to sell. Mr Waters can assure you that I was entirely in my right mind when I made my will and if some of the words in that are his not mine it is because I wanted to make everything watertight.

  I leave you with all my love and I hope a few happy memories too.

  Your devoted friend,

  Dodie Boulton

  Perhaps Jago understood I simply could not speak. While Waters produced the rat netsuke, which found its way straight into my hands, he busied himself opening the cardboard box and laying out its contents – the netsuke from the loft strongbox, of course. He picked up a couple at random, and then more and more, deliberately arranging them in some sort of order neither I nor, to judge from his expression, Waters could fathom.

  At last he turned to me, his face inscrutable. ‘As you know from your own work, Ms Townend, there are good and bad examples of all types of artefacts. It has taken me half my lifetime both here and in Japan to study netsuke, and I will be more than happy to pass on some of the information I have gleaned to you. I should imagine from your reputation in the world of antiques you’d prove a worthy student.’ He dug in his sleek briefcase and produced a book which he signed and passed to me with a smile. ‘With my compliments. You might want to read it before you take my advice about the sale of these masterpieces.’

  My mouth said, ‘Masterpieces? I don’t imagine you use a word like that lightly.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t. Believe me. Now, you see this semi-circle. What do you make of it?’

  The last thing I wanted to do was perform my divvy’s party trick. But I almost felt Dodie’s hand on my shoulder. ‘They’re truly mine? I can handle them?’ Yes, the trick I used to persuade customers to buy worked just as well on me. They were mine. And then I knew the answer to his question. ‘This end is the bottom end of the collection, and this the top.’ Perhaps I should have made that a question, out of politeness, but it came out as a statement.