Guilt Edged

by Judith Cutler

  Why wasn’t I surprised to find a crop of very ordinary ones and one quite spectacular one? All one in one lot? The good one was of a guy in Restoration clothes, long cleft chin, gorgeous hair, his heavy-lidded eyes languorously regarding the world. Was that the right word? Or was it sensuously?

  At least I wasn’t ignorant enough to think I’d happened on a picture of Charles II. But I knew I’d found something. Not that the paperwork agreed with me. Unknown man, unknown artist. From the collection of some guy in Worcestershire, just like the other, ordinary ones. Estimate six hundred to eight hundred for the lot. I nearly squawked in disbelief. If only I’d had time to finish studying that magic book, I might have known something about the good one. And, come to think of it, I’d left the book at Aidan’s. Not that I could have sat down and studied it here. Apart from anything else, that would have given the game away something shocking.

  Yes, that miniature had to be mine. Not even Tripp and Townend’s. Mine. Along with the dross that came with it if necessary.

  So much for Paul’s theory that you only needed the Internet to trade. If I hadn’t been there in the flesh, I’d never have seen any of the precious items I wanted to bid for. Wouldn’t have sensed them.

  Even as I stuck a mental tongue out at him, however, I realized that he might have been right about something else. Phone bidding. No point in arousing interest by bidding for something people didn’t associate with me. Why not do it anonymously, either via the net or by phone? Since, on the whole, I thought I’d rather hear a voice putting in my bids for me, I toddled off to the office and gave them my details.

  Yes! The game was afoot.

  So why was I feeling guilty?

  In the past I’d have self-harmed till I could shut out a nagging doubt. Griff had suggested an alternative: hard work. But even as I geared myself up for yet another evening with nothing more cheery for company than a paintbrush, I puzzled over what felt like a tarnished conscience. My father regarded finding as keeping, no more and no less. Griff’s dictum was buy cheap; sell dear. That was what trade was about. I hadn’t stolen anything. I hadn’t hidden the plate I wanted. I wasn’t the person who’d given what I was sure was a poor provenance for the miniature. So I had done nothing wrong. Could I have done more that was right? Should I have alerted the auctioneer – not a man I knew, even by reputation – to the fact that my antennae were twitching? ‘Hello, my diviner’s instinct tells me your learning and experience are astray?’

  I’d done it professionally in France. I’d told aristocrats their inheritances were dodgy and informed the Prime Minister that he’d wasted money from the public purse. But I hadn’t done it this afternoon.

  As I picked up the figurine I’d marked out for the evening’s work, I let her slip. A hundred pounds’ worth of Chamberlain’s Worcester milkmaid, entrusted to me to have a churn restored to her right arm, lost the other. Just like that. So now – because that was how I did business – I had to do the whole repair for free, explaining that I’d been a careless idiot. The waste of a complete evening and a tiny chip on my reputation.

  It was only as I finished all I could do on the milkmaid for now that I realized what I’d done wrong. Or failed to do right. It was nothing to do with the miniatures. It was that I should have had my eyes open for shady white horses and suspicious Ruskin ginger jars. And I hadn’t, in my lust for goodies, even thought about them. I headed down to the computer and checked. Yes, there they were. Both of them. Tomorrow’s job – and not for me. For Carwyn.

  For some reason I couldn’t concentrate any more. There was no point in risking another breakage, so I did some ungluing and cleaning, before heading downstairs to do some of the boring office tasks that would probably have had Paul rubbing his hands in glee. If only I hadn’t rushed my fence with my offer of payment. I should have sidled up to the idea, saying I couldn’t cope with paperwork, real or virtual, and asking if he would become our office clerk. It was true about the paperwork. Griff had made huge efforts to educate me, but I’d missed years of schooling, sometimes through wagging off, but more often because of Social Services’ inadequacies, moving me from one home to another without any thought of continuity. These days I could write a decent sentence, but then, halfway through a paragraph, I’d forget how I’d begun. And words would float away, just out of my reach. I could see the general shape, but it was only the dear, precious computer spell-check that stopped me making some absolute howlers – malapropisms, Griff called them. He’d taken me to see The Rivals, but I hadn’t been able to laugh at Mrs Malaprop’s mistakes because they could so easily have been mine.

  After no more than twenty minutes, I fancied a drink. One of Griff’s best hot chocolates. No Griff to make it, of course, and I had to agree with him that drinking-chocolate needs full-fat milk, not the red-top I’d made him use when his heart problems started. For some reason I still bought it even though he wasn’t here to worry about.

  Forget the hot chocolate, then. I prowled round, checking and double-checking every lock and camera. At last I stopped myself. What was I up to? Sometimes I behaved like this when thunder was brewing, but it was just a miserable murky autumnal night, with rain in the air swiftly becoming thick swirling mist.

  At least that made one decision for me. It wasn’t a night to drive to Tenterden. I’d have been soaked through by the time I’d got the car through all our security, and though the trusty Fiesta had fog lights, the roads just didn’t encourage a random visit. And a phone call would have scared Griff half to death and made him insist on coming home to keep an eye on me. Actually, that was just what I wanted. Even an overnighter at Pa’s would have seemed halfway attractive if only I’d remembered to get bedlinen and curtains.

  Eventually, I did what I should probably have done an hour ago. I headed to bed and to Tim the Bear.

  And awoke with a huge jump in the middle of the night. A pulse racing, heart pounding sort of jump. The sort that has you frozen in bed, listening for intruders.

  Tucking Tim firmly between the pillows, I reached for the old swagger stick Pa had given me in the belief it was now legal to whack intruders round the head. I couldn’t see it. And then, ever so slowly, considering how poised for fight or flight I was, I realized I needed to switch on the bedside light to see. Normal: we don’t have street lights in Bredeham, of course, so when it’s dark, it’s dark. Not normal: the bedside light didn’t work. Nor did the main light.

  At last I had the swagger stick in hand and could feel my way downstairs. The sensors picked up even this stealthy movement and the security system emitted a set of increasingly hysterical beeps, until I prodded in the area code number. Once in the kitchen, I wasn’t greeted by friendly greenish glows from the microwave or the oven clocks. So the power was out, as well as the lights.

  We had one clever burglar if he’d managed to throw the mains switch.

  Even though I knew the alarm system was still working, I was ready to scream. I clamped my hands across my mouth. Better me than someone else. Breathe, Lina, breathe from your diaphragm.

  Once the panicky whooshing in my ears subsided, I made myself listen. Griff’s favourite clock. That was all. No, it wasn’t. There were lots of other noises, but from outside. Car alarms? No, house alarms.

  Damn me if I didn’t head into the living room to check. The sensor got very ratty. I withdrew smartly and re-set it.

  By now I’d just about recalled that though our alarm system had a huge battery back-up in the attic for when the power failed, other houses became either noise machines or burglars’ paradises. To save power, the cameras shot fewer frames. The sensor beep was quieter and less frequent. The exterior alarm remained silent – unlike those of several of our neighbours, intermittently lighting up the street. So it was a general power failure.

  So why did I still feel twitchy?

  On impulse I called the night-time equivalent of Geoff, the screen-watcher. This was what we paid our massive bills for – someone to tell us our property w
as intact. Answering first ring, the man grunted his name: Phil. I’d not come across him before, never having bothered the night shift in the past.

  Phil didn’t sound reassuring. ‘No street lights in your location,’ he said.

  ‘Never are,’ I said, explaining.

  ‘But there’s no one making your floodlights come on. So everything should be fine. Let’s just have one look-see. House, OK. Inside and out. Shop – fine too. Hang on, there’s a car parked just opposite. Let’s see what I can see … Yep. There’s someone in it, pretending to be asleep.’

  ‘Pretending?’

  ‘Why should someone sleep in a car in a village street?’

  My heart did a funny little dance. I knew only one person likely to park up to catch me first thing in the morning – someone who was fairly sure of his welcome, but not sure enough to wake me up at midnight or thereabouts. For all I knew it wouldn’t ever work, for all I knew I’d made the right decision, just at that moment I’d have given anything to let Morris into the house.

  Phil clearly thought he’d asked a question I didn’t need to answer. Rhetorical. ‘Looks like obbo to me. Anywhere you can check from? Upstairs window? Don’t let anyone see you.’

  ‘Phil, it’s pitch black out there – no street lights, remember, and it’s getting really foggy.’

  I could almost hear him grinding his teeth at my stupidity. ‘There’s a burglar alarm on the house he’s nearest to. Every time it flashes on and off you can see him. Come on, Mrs Tripp, if there’s enough light for your camera to pick it up …’

  He’d obviously passed his customer relations course with highest honours – or not.

  The only window looking at that particular angle was in the bathroom, and it involved putting a stool on the loo seat, holding on to the blind for dear life and, since the window only opened about three inches, peering through a very narrow gap. It wasn’t a regular manoeuvre of mine. Yes, there was a car. A very old Subaru: he must be talking about that. Unfortunately, the eerie blue light didn’t reach as far as the sleeper’s head or face.

  At this point my heart stopped dancing. That wasn’t Morris’s sort of vehicle, not at all. But it was vaguely, very distantly familiar. I could picture it somewhere.

  Inching down, I sat on the edge of the bath to consider.

  Griff had made me play endless memory games – objects on trays I’d have a minute to scan, before he whipped them away and told me to list them. And of course my job had helped – repairing a badly smashed vase was like doing a three-D jigsaw. So I told myself I could do it. I could. But the more I insisted, the less I could conjure the image. I was just picking up the phone to call Phil and report failure when it came to me: I’d seen a car just like it in Baker’s Auction House’s car park. It wouldn’t be Brian and Helen’s. They sported his and hers Beamers, come to think of it, which said something about the state of the auction trade. Could it possibly be Tristam’s?

  And if so, what on earth was he doing outside our shop?

  EIGHTEEN

  One thing was certain: I was not going to find out tonight, as I told Phil when I reported back.

  ‘Lovelorn swain, is he?’ He cackled at his take on village life.

  ‘Could be. He’ll be a cold lovelorn swain by the morning, won’t he?’

  ‘You’re a hard woman, Mrs Tripp. I’ll cast a beadie over him from time to time, so you can go and get your beauty sleep.’

  Tristam’s car had gone by the time I woke up to a chilly house in the morning. So there was still no power. When I phoned the emergency helpline I got a recorded message assuring me that they knew about the problem and were working hard to solve it. Well, they’d hardly say that one man and his dog would have a look when they’d finished their breakfast. Local radio was more informative. Someone had nicked a whole lot of cable from our local substation and replacing it would take till noon at the earliest.

  Great. Last night’s mist had become fully-fledged fog, so with no lights the chances of finishing any delicate repair work were zero. Nothing I could do using the computer, either.

  I called Paul and Mary to suggest they didn’t come over till there was some reason to open the shop: like lights, a till and a working credit card terminal. I left a large handwritten notice to that effect on the door. I phoned Carwyn, but he wasn’t in the office and wasn’t expected back till noon the following day. Great.

  So leaving the cottage and shop under Geoff’s eagle if far distant eyes, I set off on foot to Brian’s premises.

  They were, of course, in darkness too. Brian, phone clamped to his ear, was too busy trying to locate an emergency generator to do more than flap a hand; Helen stared longingly at the coffee machine; the office staff huddled together as if their mobiles would provide heat. But where was Tristam? There was no sign of his car.

  ‘Oh, he looked like death so I sent him home,’ Helen said, offhand. Then her eyes gleamed. ‘Of course, if I’d known you were hoping for a tryst with him …’

  ‘I hope you breathalysed him first,’ I said unkindly, cutting across her little joke. Or whatever.

  One of the office staff abandoned her phone, turning to me with huge eyes. ‘Tris? Was he ill?’

  ‘Not as far as I know,’ I responded coolly. ‘He just spent last night slumped behind the wheel of that car of his outside our shop. The security people didn’t spot him till midnight and I wasn’t about to toddle down in my nightie to offer sympathy and a hottie bottle. Not with the security cameras following my every move,’ I added.

  ‘But what if he’d died?’

  There didn’t seem to be an answer to that. Eventually, I settled for something neutral. ‘All I want to know is why he should choose my cottage to park by. Which is why I came down,’ I told Helen. ‘To ask him.’

  Tris’s fan pushed forward again. ‘I could call him? Text him?’

  I nearly snarled, ‘So could I.’ But I’d been young and in love once. I produced the most grown-up smile I could, horribly patronizing. ‘I’d prefer to speak to him face to face, thanks.’

  Since there were still a couple of hours to go before the power was likely to come on again, I headed out to Smeeden. It wasn’t a particularly pretty Kentish village, but it did have a small antiques and collectibles fair every Thursday – so small, and so focused on collectibles rather than genuinely old items, that Griff and I no longer took a pitch. The question was, would it have electricity? It did. So I handed over my one pound entrance fee and strolled round casually, just like any other punter.

  Battered teddies; Dinky cars with no paint; lots of Fifties’ china; a huge area of second-hand books. There were a few more interesting stalls, at one of which I found for fifteen pounds a mauve Fieldings’ Devon lustre planter, just right for one of the plants Griff had acquired while he was in hospital. A willow-pattern meat dish – genuine Chinese, would you believe it? Not hugely valuable, but worth much more than the fiver I had to fork out. Another root around unearthed a Shelley bonbon plate, which I bought just because I liked it – and, come to think of it, it matched a couple of other items in store so I’d have a set to offer, which was always more profitable.

  Next, a stall groaning under model animals. Normally, I wouldn’t even have paused, but Puck and his friends had given me an irritating interest. Yes, Puck’s cousin, in brown, was there, badly chipped and on offer at fifteen pounds. I didn’t have the least inclination to buy him and embark on the spot of restoration Rob Sampson might have encouraged me to do to improve the price. What I liked much better was a little model of a cat. It was only about six inches high, a purply-grey colour, with far bigger eyes than it should have had and its paw on a cartoon-like mouse. But Tom and Jerry it was not. I didn’t know anything about it, but my divvy’s instinct was working overtime, so I would have coughed up the sixty quid the stallholder was asking without turning a hair. I might have asked for – and probably got – trade discount, but I preferred not to. As it was, with hardly a haggle, I got it for fifty. Just to
show there was no ill-feeling, I pottered around a bit longer, buying some home-made cakes (at the WI stall) as a bonus.

  The power came on just as I opened our front door. The return of civilized life. Computers. Lights. And – in response to my phone call – Paul and Mary.

  I wanted to nip down to Tenterden to show Griff the cat and pick his brains about its identity, so at about four I phoned to invite myself to supper. Griff sounded delighted but cautious – the fog was already getting thick, and he didn’t want me to take any risks. How about tomorrow evening, weather permitting?

  It was no more than murky in Bredeham, but, since they’d not seen a customer all afternoon, I sent Mary and Paul home early, as usual locking up the big yard gates behind them. This was one time when our fortress was vulnerable – the gates were, of course, heavy, and even at my briskest I couldn’t move them quickly. In the past I’d have been carrying keys – now, in the most recent upgrade, we’d changed to touch pads. Griff hated them because he was always afraid he’d forget at a crucial moment.

  The first was closed, and the second halfway there when a figure appeared. In an instant what was really no more than mist seemed to become the sort of swirling fog you imagine at the start of Great Expectations, but at least it wasn’t Magwitch that materialized on the pavement outside. It was Tristam.

  I couldn’t read his expression at all. If I’d been him, I wouldn’t be best pleased. In fact, I might owe him an apology: I’d given away information about him he’d no doubt have preferred to keep to himself. Whatever sort of conversation was about to take place, it was going to take place in front of our cameras. Leaving the gate ajar, I stepped into the street.