Guilt Trip

by Judith Cutler

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  A Selection of Recent Titles by Judith Cutler

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  A Selection of Recent Titles by Judith Cutler

  The Lina Townend Series

  DRAWING THE LINE

  SILVER GUILT *

  RING OF GUILT *

  GUILTY PLEASURES *

  GUILT TRIP *

  The Frances Harman Series

  LIFE SENTENCE

  COLD PURSUIT

  STILL WATERS

  The Josie Welford Series

  THE FOOD DETECTIVE

  THE CHINESE TAKEOUT

  * available from Severn House

  GUILT TRIP

  A Lina Townend Mystery

  Judith Cutler

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author's and publisher's rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  First world edition published 2012

  in Great Britain and in the USA by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

  9–15 High Street, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM1 1DF.

  Copyright © 2012 by Judith Cutler.

  All rights reserved.

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Cutler, Judith.

  Guilt trip.

  1. Townend, Lina (Fictitious character)–Fiction.

  2. Antique dealers–Fiction. 3. Aristocracy (Social

  class)–Fiction. 4. Detective and mystery stories.

  I. Title

  823.9‘2-dc23

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8142-7 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-84751-414-1 (trade paper)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-221-4 (ePub)

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

  This ebook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

  Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland.

  For Kam and Nutan Chudasama, whose shop, open all hours and all weathers, is the beating heart of Kemble.

  Acknowledgements

  This novel could not have been written without the help of Dr Ian Simpson and Dr Chris Goldie, the staff of the Gloucestershire Royal and Cheltenham Hospitals and especially Dr George Asimakoplous and the staff of Bristol Heart Institute; huge thanks to them. I am deeply grateful too to Rev Michael Sanders and Rev Paul Youde, for kindness beyond the simply pastoral.

  Lastly, thanks to Steph Richardson and Shane Forkner, for their brilliant ideas for titles for this and, I hope, future Lina novels, and to Ivor Higgins, for his meticulous and generous oversight of the finished manuscript.

  ONE

  Sometimes you go to an antiques fair, take one look at what’s on offer, and wonder why you bothered to turn up. Why anyone bothered, actually, whether they were punters or dealers like me. This particular fair was clearly a dud, though it was billed as a prestige event in what claimed to be one of Kent’s premier hotels, the Mondiale, in Hythe.

  They’d put out glossy literature and reduced space rental prices to entice dealers to the new venue. But we knew from the moment we set up our stall one Thursday morning in early September that we had made a mistake. There were very few old friends there. The newcomers seemed to be selling not good quality antiques, but stuff that I’d technically describe as tat, more suitable for a bottom of the market car boot sale.

  Always keen to make people feel at home, Griff left me to finish arranging our goods and went round to say hello. He was soon back. ‘I know I’m not to everyone’s taste,’ he said sadly, passing me a paper cup of overpriced and undernourished coffee, ‘but there are so many stony faces that you’d think this was a tax office. Perhaps these mauve slacks were a mistake?’

  ‘People are probably just scared,’ I said, thinking of my first fairs with Griff, when I was little more than a feral teenager, in whom he’d seen something worth rescuing. ‘Stage fright,’ I added.

  ‘All the more need for old-timers like me to greet them and make them feel at home.’

  I hugged him. ‘Nowt so queer as folk,’ I said, in a dreadful attempt at a Northern accent guaranteed to make him wince. He’d started out, like many antiques dealers, as a professional actor needing to make money while he was ‘resting’, as he and his friends described being what other folk called unemployed, and could produce accurate accents at the drop, as he said, of a script. ‘Now, are you happy with these lights?’ I prompted him. ‘Or should I put an extra spot on that garniture?’

  Head on one side, he inspected the trio of late nineteenth century Spode vases. ‘To make them a little less vulgar?’ He sighed.

  He’d been very downhearted recently, though he’d denied it when I’d asked him if there was a problem. He might have been anxious because there was less and less trade around – at least, selling person to person, which he enjoyed more than anything. Now we made far more of our money selling on the Internet than in our shop or at fairs, which he found terribly unexciting and impersonal. There was always a chance that he was simply bored.

  I’d better be upbeat as I tweaked a light. ‘Or to make them more eye-catching? Some people like OTT, after all. There. They look positively glamorous.’

  He rolled his eyes.

  Ignoring him, I said briskly, ‘Now, if you’re happy, shall I go for a little prowl myself?’

  It wasn’t unusual for dealers to come across items that were good value but which didn’t fit with their usual stock-in-trade. We specialized in mid-value Victorian china, but would stretch our dates if we came across something special. Once Griff had dealt mainly in treen, but while a lot of people brought me their precious china and porcelain to repair, I’d never learned how to restore wooden items to my satisfaction, so we’d decided to run down that side of the business.

  I was keeping an eye out for people who might have set something aside for us. I was also sniffing out bargains they didn’t know they had, like a water diviner coming upon water in a desert. Not that I always told them how good their bargains were. I might be a divvy, but I wasn’t a saint.

  As I mooched round, a familiar figure emerged from the shadows. Titus Oates. Even in a brightly lit room like this, he always managed to get the dimmest corner. He dealt in old
books and manuscripts, nine-tenths of his stock absolutely spot on. I didn’t ask about the rest. Ever. Especially as he employed my father to produce it.

  Glancing around the room, he raised an eyebrow, turned down his mouth and shook his head. Never again, his face said. He didn’t need to use words.

  Neither did I.

  Completely satisfied with our conversation, we drifted apart. But then he summoned me back with a minute jerk of his head. ‘Sad about Croft. Bankrupt. Topped himself.’ And he was gone.

  Croft had made genuine reproduction antiques – never pretended they were anything else. Brown furniture was at an all-time low: maybe repro was as bad. Maybe with Griff in his present mood I wouldn’t pass on the information. I cogitated while I continued my prowl.

  An old friend who dealt in old linen had found a Victorian spectacle case I might like. It wasn’t china, obviously, but we had a regular customer who’d come to prefer spectacle cases to our usual stock and would take practically any we could find; we were still hunting for an elusive Tunbridge-ware one for her. Another mate produced a scruffy little bourdalou priced at a tenner that really did not sit well with his collection of garden and other tools. Griff had dinned it into me that all our deals must be done with honour and honesty, and I liked the guy, anyway. In fact, it might have been his accent I’d mimicked earlier, come to think of it.

  ‘Dave,’ I said, checking the piece carefully, ‘you do know this is Derby?’

  ‘It could be Ashby de la Zouch for all I know about it. Just some sauce boat with flowers on.’

  ‘Flowers, yes. Sauce boat, no. It’s a sort of Portaloo.’

  ‘You what?’

  ‘His Lordship could nip out of his coach and pee against the hedge. Her Ladyship certainly couldn’t. So she’d use one of these.’

  It took him a moment to work it out. ‘A posh potty? Bloody hell. So what’s it worth?’

  ‘On your stall, who knows? On ours, it might just fetch two hundred and fifty to three hundred pounds on a good day.’

  His eyebrows shot up. ‘Eh, for a little ’un, you know a lot, don’t you?’

  ‘Do you want me to sell it on for you – just take commission?’

  ‘I said I’d sell it, and the price was a tenner. I can’t go back on that.’

  ‘We’re stuck then. I can’t take it at that.’ Arms akimbo, we glared at each other.

  He broke first. ‘What say we split the difference, lass? And you can buy me a pint if you make more. Eh, now I can tell my dad I’ve done what he always wanted me to do: I’ve changed trades, and I’m into plumbing. He’ll be right taken aback – same as when I said I was marrying Pat and moving down south. Mind you, being a Yorkshireman he quite likes the freebie holidays he gets down here by the sea.’ He gestured, with a huge curling thumb, at the stall opposite Titus’, in a corner as dark as his. ‘Hey up, have you seen that load of crap over there? Go on, take a look. And smell. They’ve used modern glue and modern varnish. Enough to make your hair curl.’

  These days a lot of people gutted old dressing-cases and writing slopes to convert them into more user-friendly jewellery boxes, but most dealers did their best to make the alterations sympathetic. Not these people. I tried not to look at the cheap ugly fabric linings; they weren’t even stuck in neatly. On the other side of the stall, there were other boxes that mercifully hadn’t been converted. Some were dreadfully battered, needing help to get them back to a little dignity. Others, including a couple of Edwardian mahogany dressing-cases, had had chips roughly filled and then been varnished to within an inch of their lives, so much that even the so-called hidden drawers – little flat hidey-holes in the base opened by pressing a discreet catch – were sealed shut. I didn’t know whether to be sad or furious. These had been places where women with no privacy could hide things that were precious – perhaps a letter or so, or maybe cash or a keepsake. You could scarcely see them on a top-class box. You couldn’t see them at all on these. The silver bottle tops were still tarnished – inexcusable – and one or two bent where they’d been forced in the past. Since silver’s so soft, it would have been the work of minutes to press them back into shape.

  What were they daring to ask for these poor orphans of some unknown storm?

  The stallholder, glued to his mobile, had his back to the room, as if daring any customers to approach. So I checked the prices myself, only to be defeated by the code. Most of us used some sort of shorthand when we priced things, if only to tell us how far we could drop a price and still make a profit while making a quick sale. It was easy enough for another dealer to work out: if we keep an eye on other people’s stalls when they’re on snack or loo breaks, we need to be able to help possible buyers, after all. Those on this stall meant nothing at all to me. Nothing. But then, I didn’t have any proper education to speak of, and probably someone like Titus would crack it in no time. I decided that I must ask him next time our paths crossed.

  By now the stallholder, still talking down his phone, was watching me every inch of the way. I had an absurd suspicion he was even talking about me to whoever was at the other end. Shaking my head, as much to clear it of silly ideas as to show I didn’t fancy anything he was offering, I stalked off.

  Continuing my circuit, I checked another newcomer’s stall. I introduced myself and said as many pleasant things as I could. The woman’s response was cool to icy, so when I spotted a pretty Swansea cup and saucer for far less than I’d be able to sell it for next time we were in Wales, I didn’t talk up her price for her.

  Accusing eyes glared at me. Full of guilt, I turned quickly. Thirty heads and faces stared in my direction. It took me a moment to realize that they all belonged to busts and Toby jugs. I didn’t mind the busts, but I really loathed the jugs, probably because we had a regular client who bought every one she saw, regardless of condition. I got to restore the whole lot, always under pressure because she wanted work done yesterday. Perhaps it was a rare Toby jug calling me on her behalf? No. No, I didn’t think so. It was a dusty Parian bust, of all things, of a serious-looking man with a beard. It was always weird when I got summoned by something I knew nothing about, but that was what was happening here. Was that a signature there? And a date? Two dates? I coughed up the trade price the stallholder was asking, just twenty pounds, and took Beardie back for Griff’s approval, just as if he were a new boyfriend.

  But Griff was on the phone, talking with more animation than I’d seen for weeks. I tucked my purchases under the skirts of the counter to show them to him later.

  By now Griff was sounding very regretful, shaking his head and repeating that he couldn’t, simply couldn’t. He was sorry, but no. And he cut the call, his mouth turning down dreadfully at the corners.

  It would have turned up again if there’d been any customers to charm, but there weren’t.

  ‘Look,’ I said, pointing at the empty room. ‘I can fight off all these seething masses. We’re only a few hundred yards from Waitrose. Why don’t you go and see what you can find?’ As he hesitated, I added, ‘I bet the lunches they sell here are as bad and overpriced as the coffee. A nice salad and a fresh roll would go down a treat. And some of that nice Victorian lemonade, just to remind us that it’s really summer.’

  ‘Only just,’ he said, adding gloomily: ‘Autumn will be on us before we know it.’ But he pottered off all the same.

  Normally, I could phone Aidan, Griff’s long-term partner – in the other sense – and ask him to suggest something to bring back his smile. A few days in London doing all the shows and catching up with old friends would have been ideal. But Aidan was in New Zealand, with his dying sister and the rest of his family, who, I gathered, simply assumed he was a bachelor about town and had no notion of his real relationship with Griff. They phoned and Skyped, but as I was all too aware, virtual people weren’t the same as real live warm ones in the same room. Not at all.

  If I let my thoughts drift to Morris, my boyfriend, who was currently on secondment from the Met Fine Arts S
quad to Interpol in Lyon, I’d soon be as miserable as Griff. When he’d accepted the posting, we’d assumed he’d be able to get back to England pretty well every weekend, or that I’d go to him. But his bosses kept rescheduling meetings, and sometimes his daughter was ill, and . . . No! I wouldn’t start resenting the fact that he couldn’t always be there for me. He did his best, after all. But sometimes . . .

  Perhaps a bit of lippie might cheer me up; it ought to stop other people asking what was wrong. But Griff had dinned it into me that no one ever applied slap in public. Ever. So reaching for a compact was off limits, although only a few punters had strayed in. They looked as if they’d missed the turning for the beach. I’ll swear some were carrying towels and shrimping nets. None of them seemed to know what to do next. Not spend their ice cream money at Tripp and Townend’s stall, that was for sure.

  A nod from Titus in response to my lifted eyebrow told me he’d keep an eye open so, grabbing the bourdalou and shoving the lipstick in my pocket, I nipped off. Washed with the hotel’s best water, nothing else, it came up even better than I hoped, the little blue and green sprigs and the gilt lines standing out beautifully against the white ground. I was so pleased I almost forgot the lippie.

  When I returned to the hall, however, I was very glad I hadn’t.

  In the dead centre stood this tall woman, looking as out of place with her elegant clothes and exquisite shoes as the bourdalou had done amongst Dave’s garden spades. She held one hand to shield her eyes, like an intrepid explorer scanning a distant shore. Gradually, her gaze moved from one stall to the next.

  I had time to scuttle to ours, where I found myself standing, just like my colleagues, more or less to attention. We might have been servants greeting the lady of the house. None of us so much as fidgeted, though some of us might have wanted to curtsy. I certainly did, until I told myself that but for a quirk of fate I might have been a Lady, or something similar. At this point my chin went up, all of its own accord.