by Nicola Ford
Peter had spoken of Gerald with such love and admiration. The Gerald he’d known was a good man; a man who fulfilled his obligations. But she seemed to be the only other person who believed that.
She unfolded her overcoat and reached into the pocket. Taking out her purse, she extracted a small scrap of paper. Several minutes passed while she remained looking down at the address and telephone number written on it. Finally, she reached into her overcoat once again, this time withdrawing her mobile phone. The battery icon showed low. It must have turned itself on, jangling around in the same pocket as her car keys. Keeping her fingers crossed, she dialled the number and waited. The palms of her hands felt clammy and she could feel her heartbeat quicken. She waited – maybe this wasn’t such a good idea? She was about to flick the button to end the call when she heard a woman’s voice. She hesitated.
‘Yes. Hello. Do you have a room available for this evening? … I’m not sure … One night … Yes, that’s fine … Mrs Clare Hills.’
She took a deep breath, folded the piece of paper and placed it carefully back in her purse.
Clare leant into the wind as she trundled her overnight bag towards the front door of the large Victorian villa. She narrowly managed to avoid being sideswiped by the sign reading Captain Cook’s B & B, which swung violently from its metal bracket.
Before she’d even made it halfway up the rain-slicked brick path, she could see a figure hovering behind the frosted glass door. There had been no other cars in the small pull-in that served as a car park, which explained why her hostess seemed so eager to welcome her. The moment Clare reached the threshold of the porch, a woman in her early sixties opened the door. The fact of the woman’s age hadn’t deterred her from piling a mass of bottle-blonde hair high on her head and wearing a tight-fitting skirt that would have been a bold choice for someone half her age. With less make-up and a more classic taste in clothes, she might have been considered attractive. But the layers of foundation she’d applied with zeal gave her face a hardened, world-weary appearance.
‘Mrs Hills?’
Clare nodded.
‘Come on in out of the rain.’ The woman relieved Clare of her bag as she divested herself of her dripping coat. ‘You look all done in, dear.’
Clare looked down at her sodden shoes. A fog of exhaustion settled over her.
‘Why don’t you go on up and run yourself a nice hot bath and I’ll make us a pot of tea for when you come down.’
The last thing she wanted was an evening making polite conversation. She’d been hoping to get a good night’s sleep before she put her plan, such as it was, into action. But she didn’t have the energy to argue and it might be the best opportunity she’d get.
Clare leant back in the bath and let the warm suds wash over her. Her expedition to Grimsby had, in part at least, been an attempt to run away from the increasingly unpalatable realities of life without Stephen. Up here, no one knew her and she’d relished the prospect of the anonymity. She needed time to think.
She breathed in the sweet delicate fragrance of the rose-scented water. But no amount of soothing bubble bath could expunge the knowledge of the letter that lay in its crumpled and still-unopened envelope at the bottom of her bag next door. At some point she was going to have to read it. She’d put it off for almost a week, wanting to be away from everything and everyone before she could face it. And now as she listened to each relentless drip from the leaking hand basin tap explode onto the cold porcelain below, she had her wish. She felt deeply and utterly alone.
She was well aware who the letter was from. She’d spoken to the steel-voiced young solicitor on the phone the week before it had arrived. He’d told her they would contact her again once they had ‘clarified some of the detail’ of her husband’s ‘financial arrangements’. Something in the way he’d emphasised that last word had made her begin to dread the promised letter. When it had finally arrived, she’d thrust it into the bottom of her handbag and tried to forget about it.
But she couldn’t avoid it any longer. She got out of the bath, towelled herself dry and threw on her robe. Sitting on the edge of the bed, she unzipped her bag and took out the letter. It didn’t actually say much. They wanted her to go down to London to discuss ‘the situation’ with her in person. For a moment, she considered ripping it into infinitesimally small pieces and depositing them in the bottom of the wastepaper basket. But she knew she wouldn’t. She was going to have to steel herself. Things weren’t going to be as straightforward as she’d assumed, and the worst thing about it was that she was going to have to face it on her own.
The residents’ lounge was small but comfortably furnished. A large bay window gave a view over the tops of rows of slate-roofed houses to the sea beyond, an aspect that seemed to provide the only visible connection with the erstwhile seafarer whose name the establishment bore. Clare’s hostess was sitting on a large well-worn sofa in front of a living flame gas fire that paid passing homage to art noveau sensibilities.
The older woman patted the vacant seat next to her, inviting Clare to join her. ‘I thought you might like a slice of sponge to go with your tea. It’s home-made.’
Clare shook her head. ‘I’m fine, really.’
‘Go on. A nice piece of Victoria sponge never did anyone any harm. And if you don’t mind me saying so, you look as if you could do with some feeding up.’
Her hostess clearly wasn’t going to take no for an answer. ‘Alright, just a small piece.’
Up until now, her quest had proved a welcome distraction from her more mundane worries. But whatever her assumptions had been about the woman before she arrived, now that she was sitting here face-to-face with Jim Hart’s mistress, Joyce Clifford appeared to be a thoroughly decent and kind human being.
Clare’s head was throbbing and she was finding it difficult to concentrate on the task in hand. Deception didn’t seem to agree with her. ‘You really shouldn’t have gone to all this trouble.’
‘It’s no trouble. It’s a bit quiet here at the moment.’
‘It must be difficult out of season.’
‘To be honest, dear, it’s a bit quiet any time these days. There’s not much call for British seaside holidays when you can go to the Costas for half the price and ten times the sun. I’ve got my regulars, of course, but most of them are getting on a bit.’ She leant towards Clare and smiled. ‘It’s nice to have some younger company.’
Clare accepted a huge slab of sponge cake, noting the wedding ring on the woman’s hand. ‘Does your husband run the B & B with you?’
‘Husband!’ She looked confused. ‘I gave marriage up as a bad job years ago.’
‘I didn’t mean to pry. It was just that in the phone book it said Mrs Clifford.’
‘I got divorced not long after I moved here. People weren’t as broad-minded in those days. They liked their landladies respectable.’
‘And that didn’t include divorcees.’
Joyce Clifford shook her head. ‘Keeping the Mrs and the ring helped smooth things over. People assumed I was widowed. They didn’t like to talk about that sort of thing. It embarrassed them.’ She took a sip of her tea. ‘But what about you? I don’t get many attractive young ladies driving expensive sports cars staying here. Not unless they’re trying to get away from something – or someone.’ She glanced down at Clare’s wedding ring.
For a moment, Clare wasn’t sure how to respond. This wasn’t going at all as she’d planned. She was meant to be the one asking the questions. She plumped for keeping it simple. ‘My husband died a few months ago.’
Joyce reached over and patted the top of Clare’s hand. ‘I’m sorry, dear. I sometimes forget not everybody’s experience of men is the same as mine.’
Clare was touched by the unexpected display of warmth. ‘You didn’t consider remarrying?’
‘I had a bit of fun in my younger days. There was somebody I thought I might have made a go of it with once. But I should’ve known better.’
Clare fel
t distinctly uneasy about the disarming candour with which Joyce Clifford was revealing her feelings. She couldn’t go on with this pretence.
‘Mrs Clifford …’
‘Please. Call me Joyce.’
‘Joyce. I need to be honest with you.’ The older woman smiled nervously. ‘I didn’t choose your guest house at random.’
Joyce’s shoulders drooped. ‘I did wonder.’ She hesitated. ‘Has this got something to do with Gerald Hart?’
Clare nodded, trying to disguise her surprise. It hadn’t occurred to her that Joyce Clifford might have been expecting her.
Joyce closed her eyes. When she opened them again, all colour had drained from her face. ‘When I saw in the papers he’d died, I wondered how long it would be before I heard from his lawyers.’
‘Oh no, you’ve got it wrong. I’m not a lawyer.’ How could she explain why she was here? ‘I’m sorry, Joyce. I should have been straight with you from the start, but I wasn’t sure how to broach the subject.’
Joyce moved to the dresser that stood against the far wall and took out a bottle from the cupboard beneath. ‘I think I could do with something a bit stronger than tea.’ She poured two large schooners of sherry and returned to the sofa, carrying the two glasses and the remainder of the bottle perched on a tray. ‘How did you find me?’
‘Through Peter.’
‘Young Peter. But he didn’t …’
‘He inherited Gerald’s estate – and his obligations.’
There was a tiny but audible intake of breath from Joyce. ‘He knows?’
Clare nodded. ‘About the payments. Yes.’
Joyce’s face was a mask of terror. ‘Oh God! What am I going to do? If I lose this place I’m finished.’ She put her sherry glass to her lips and drained it to the bottom.
This time it was Clare who extended a sympathetic hand to her companion. ‘That’s not going to happen.’
‘You can’t know that. He’s not going to want to keep paying me, is he? Not now he knows about me and his dad.’
‘I’d be lying if I said he was happy with the arrangement. But he doesn’t have a choice. It’s a condition of Gerald’s will that Peter keeps paying you.’ Joyce looked as if someone had commuted her death sentence. ‘And he’s not going to interfere if that’s what you’re worried about. He told me he wasn’t interested in his father’s other life.’
‘So why did he send you?’
‘He didn’t. Coming here was my idea.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Look, I’m an archaeologist.’ It felt strangely satisfying to say that after all this time, even under these rather bizarre circumstances. ‘I’m part of a university team working on the Hungerbourne dig.’
‘But that was all done and dusted forty years ago.’
‘When Gerald died we found the excavation archive in the manor.’ Clare could see that Joyce was struggling to reposition her thoughts. Maybe it was time she tried a different approach. ‘You were involved in the dig, weren’t you?’
To Clare’s surprise, Joyce blushed. ‘Only because of Jim. So we could see one another without George – my husband – getting wind of it. Not that it did me any good in the end.’
‘Why not?’
‘George found out. He went mad. It wasn’t the first time he’d given me a backhander, but this time it was bad.’ She hesitated for a moment as if paralysed by the memory. ‘I knew if I didn’t get out then and there I might never do it.’ The remembered fear in Joyce’s eyes conveyed the truth of her words.
‘Is that when you and Jim decided to leave?’
‘He promised me he’d leave Estelle. So when George found out, I pleaded with Jim to go away with me. He laughed and told me to grow up. Said he’d got plans and they didn’t include a “common little piece” like me.’
‘So he didn’t leave with you.’
Joyce replenished her glass and looked around her. ‘Does this look like the sort of place Jim Hart would be caught dead in?’
Clare hesitated for a moment. ‘Joyce, I’m not sure there’s a polite way to say this so I’m just going to ask. Were you pregnant when you left Hungerbourne?’
‘Pregnant!’ Joyce snorted, her face reddened by a cocktail of anger and sherry. ‘Now I see your game. Like father, like son. Peter wants to know if there are any other little Harts running around who might want a piece of Gerald’s estate.’
‘No, Joyce, I promise. It’s not like that. Peter’s a successful architect. He’s a wealthy man in his own right. He really isn’t interested.’ How could she convince her? ‘Do you remember the Jevons sun disc?’
‘I should. I dug one up just like it.’
‘Well, the Jevons one has disappeared and I’m trying to find it.’
Joyce’s expression signalled her mistrust. ‘Why the interest in me and Jim?’
‘I thought Jim might have had something to do with it.’
Joyce said nothing, and for several minutes the two women sat in silence. Clare felt deflated. She’d really thought she was getting somewhere. But just as she was starting to think she’d misjudged things, Joyce drained her sherry, placed the schooner firmly on the tray in front of them and let out a long sigh. ‘I’ve got no reason to protect the bastard now. Jim was in trouble.’
‘What sort of trouble?’
‘He was a gambler. It didn’t matter what it was, Jim would bet on it. Money went through his hands like water. He liked the horses, but this time it was cards.’ She hesitated, as if she were weighing something up. ‘He’d got himself in deep and this time it seemed like his big brother wasn’t going to bail him out.’
Clare shifted forward onto the edge of the sofa. This was more like it.
‘It was one night after closing time during the dig. We’d had a lock-in. George used to tip one or two of the regulars the wink and they’d stay behind for a few hands of poker. At the end of the night he went out to see the last of them off and lock up, but he didn’t come back. I thought he’d swanned off and left me to clear up on my own, as usual. But when I went out the back to empty the bins I heard him laying into someone.’
‘Fighting?’
Joyce shook her head. ‘Arguing. George saved his fists for people he thought wouldn’t fight back. He never liked me around when he was doing business so I hung around by the back door where he couldn’t see me.’
‘Could you hear who he was arguing with?’
‘That was the thing. It was Jim. It gave me a hell of a turn, I can tell you. The way George was going at it I thought he must’ve found out about us. But after a bit, when Jim was trying to calm George down, I started to get the sense of what they were saying. Jim told him everything was sorted, but that he’d have to pick his moment because Gerald was so obsessed with security. George wasn’t having any of his old flannel, but when Jim told him he’d be able to pay back everything he owed and something on top, he started to quieten down a bit.’
‘And you think he was talking about the gold.’
‘Well, it makes sense, doesn’t it?’
She nodded. It made a lot of sense. ‘There is one thing I don’t understand. Why was Gerald paying you?’
Joyce looked down at her hands, clutched tightly together in her lap. ‘After George found out about me and Jim, and Jim refused to help me, I was in a right state. I couldn’t go back to the pub – but I had nowhere to go.’
‘What did you do?’
‘There was never anyone around at the dig site at the weekend. So I thought if I could just rest up overnight in the site hut I’d be able to nip back into the pub in the morning when George was out walking the dog and get some of my bits together.’
Clare had a freeze-frame in her head of a young Joyce cowering in the corner of a cold, damp shed. ‘It can’t have been very comfortable.’
Joyce shook her head. ‘It wasn’t, but I was desperate. I was in too much of a state to get much sleep, but while I was lying on the hut floor trying to doze, I heard a car. I opened t
he door a crack to try to see who it was. It wasn’t easy at first – it wasn’t properly light. But once my eyes had adjusted I could see it was Gerald.’
‘What was he doing up there at that time in the morning?’
‘I couldn’t work it out at first. But then I remembered what Jim had said to George about Gerald being obsessed with security. I figured he must be up there checking the site over. It gave him a right fright when he saw me, I can tell you. I must have been the last person he was expecting to see.’ Joyce played with her earring. ‘Gerald was no fool. He knew I’d been seeing Jim. So when I told him George had chucked me out it didn’t take him long to work out why.’
‘How did he react?’
‘He was terrified. Thought I would cause some sort of scandal. He told me I had to leave Hungerbourne for good. Wouldn’t even let me go back to collect my things from the pub. He scribbled his phone number at the British Museum on a finds card, shoved a wodge of notes into my hand and told me to contact him when I’d found somewhere to stay.’
‘What did you do?’
Joyce shrugged. ‘I did exactly what he told me to. I came up here, found somewhere to stay and phoned him. He said as long as I never went back or tried to contact anyone, he’d make sure I didn’t go without.’
‘And he kept his word.’ Joyce nodded. ‘And you kept yours?’
‘It wasn’t a difficult choice. There was nothing for me to go back for.’
CHAPTER SEVEN
Naked save for a rumpled cotton sheet, David lay motionless on his bed, enjoying the warmth of the spring sunshine and pondering the female gender. Clare had seemed restless and irritable since her weekend away. Exactly why that should be was a mystery to him, but then there was a lot about women, and Clare in particular, that had remained a mystery to him over the years.
But this weekend had taken a somewhat different trajectory to the usual and right now he was feeling rather pleased with himself. The smell of bacon cooking wafted up from the kitchen below. He reached for his robe and headed downstairs.