A woman at the next table turned her head at the sound of Dominic’s raised voice.
Adam slumped in his chair feeling as though the stuffing had been knocked out of him along with the last lingering belief that Arabella was the love of his life.
He’d come in here with a spring in his step, nervously looking forward to sharing Dominic’s excitement before he set off for Leicester. Instead Dominic had pointed out what he knew deep down to be the truth about himself and his marriage. Dominic had made him feel weak and ineffective, and he hadn’t finished yet.
Half rising up from his chair, Dominic leaned forward.
‘And don’t bother to lecture me about putting booze and birds before my studies. Let’s face it, Dad, you’ve got no right to lecture me on that score. Anyway, I’m far more responsible than that.’
Adam watched his son stalk off down Milsom Street, feeling oddly grateful that he’d at least been allowed to pay the bill; a little gratifying, feeling he was giving his son something, though very little. Too little too late.
Arriving home he closed the front door with Dominic’s stirring outburst still ringing in his ears.
The eighteenth-century mansion echoed more loudly than usual to the fall of his footsteps over the marble floor. Most of the furniture was already moved out. What remained was in boxes ready for the removal men to take it to their new place, a second-floor apartment in the Royal Crescent. The place sounded empty. He felt pretty much the same way.
Due to the cost of maintaining the mansion, his idea had been to downsize financially as well as moving to a smaller place.
‘We only need an apartment,’ he’d said to her. That was after he’d told her that his property development company had gone belly up. The bank had repossessed the mansion, hence the true reason they had to move out, and not because they wanted a slice of city culture, the excuse Arabella trotted out as being the reason for their move. Not that it was a big secret. News travelled fast in the small but perfectly formed city of Bath.
Arabella had insisted that if they were to live in a rabbit hutch it had to be an upmarket rabbit hutch, the Royal Crescent no less.
He’d saved little financially from the intended move, though he’d badly needed to. But Arabella would have her own way. She had no intention of downsizing her inflated ego and upmarket status. And so, under pressure and prolonged silence on her part, he’d caved in.
Wandering from room to room, intrigued that the house that had been home echoed with the silence of emptiness. He’d expected her to be here, but she wasn’t. He was surrounded by cardboard boxes and packing crates.
In the kitchen he found a box containing a few bottles; all that remained of their impressively stocked cellar. There was just one bottle of cold white wine amongst the red.
He poured himself a large measure and knocked it back. His meeting with Dominic had stirred something buried deep inside. It was the look in his son’s eyes, the hurt he’d always denied existed for her sake – because it would upset Arabella and he loved Arabella – or at least he used to.
Within minutes one glass followed another and soon there was only a third left in the bottle.
‘Oh well,’ he murmured with a sigh of resignation. ‘Mustn’t let it go off.’
He poured another glass, gulped, and gulped again. He didn’t usually drink so quickly but he had to face his wife – when she got home. He was going to tell her about meeting Dominic today, and that he would be visiting him at university.
He paced the kitchen as he thought it through. Yes. That’s what he would say first. After that … …
His courage began to melt like cold ice cream on a hot day. This wouldn’t do. It wouldn’t do at all.
Pausing before a white-throated cymbidium that had grown too big for its pot, he took a series of deep breaths.
‘Now look here, Arabella,’ he said, addressing the profusion of cerise coloured flowers. ‘They’re my children and I insist they come to visit me at our new address. You can always go out if you don’t want to see them.’
His voice was strong. But then, he was there all alone and the orchid he was staring down wasn’t likely to retaliate.
Well you could invite them without her knowing,’ he said out loud. ‘How about sending her away for the weekend? Somewhere luxurious and suitably expensive. A health spa or something?’
He sighed. ‘Shame it would only be temporary, Adam old chap.’
The sound of the front door slamming caused him to jump. Wine slopped from his glass.
‘Adam?’
Her voice rose like a perennial question mark at the end of his name. It made him feel as though a cheese grater was being dragged down his spine.
‘I’m in here,’ he called back.
Steeled to what he had to do, he walked out of the kitchen door, the last of the wine crystal clear in his glass.
Her eyes went straight to it.
‘You’re drunk.’
‘I’m celebrating. Dominic’s got a place at Leicester University. Did I tell you that?’
His courage began to waiver but he managed a weak smile.
Her eyes narrowed and the corners of her mouth turned downwards. Deep lines appeared from jowls to chin. Like a puppet mouth, hinged on rivets, he thought and almost dared voice what he was thinking. He gulped more wine, his double agent antidote to fear and loathing.
‘I saw him today. We went for lunch.’
Her eyes flashed accusingly. ‘You didn’t tell me you were seeing him.’
He blinked nervously. He’d never been much of a rebel – at least not with her. In an alter life, Arabella would have made a good dominatrix; she had the right manner for it. A leather bustier and high-heeled boots, and hey presto … a vision of her wielding a bull whip popped into his mind.
The bubble burst quickly. She looked aghast, as though he’d slapped her.
‘You’re my husband!’
His throat went dry and his palms were moist, but somehow he found the words, words he should have voiced years ago.
‘Dominic is my son. You just have to accept that. It’s certainly time you did.’
‘I’ll do no such thing!’ She had a face like thunder.
He careered on like a horseless cart heading downhill without the benefit of a brake.
‘I’m going to invite my children around to the new place for a house-warming.’
‘Like hell you are!’
‘Why not? They’re my children.’
‘It’s my home. Not theirs.’ Her voice was cold, her jaw stiff as steel.
‘It’s mine too, just like they are.’
Her bottom lip curled outwards. Her eyes seemed to sink back into their sockets like torpedoes getting ready to fire.
Adam felt the knot of fear in his stomach tighten some more.
‘If you insist on this, Adam, then I will leave. Take your choice. Me or your brats!’
It seemed as though all his bravado drained down to his toes. Suddenly he wanted to compromise, make her happy again, and assure her that everything was as she wanted it.
‘Arabella, darling …’
She shook off the reassuring hand that he placed on her arm.
‘Get your grubby paw off me.’
He withdrew like a man with burned fingertips.
‘You never used to say that.’
‘Well I’m saying it now,’ she growled, an ugly redness creeping up her neck and over her face. ‘I have no desire to welcome your disgusting whelps into our new home. And if you know what’s good for you …’
… Disgusting whelps …?
The words burned into his brain. The years of verbal lashings, the trailing along in the wake of a woman growing more selfish with the years, were finally too much to bear. He barely heard what came after because something had snapped deep inside.
Suddenly Arabella was spluttering and gasping. He saw his hands wrapped around her throat, her bulging eyes, the flashing rings on her fingers as she fought to loosen his grip.
>
The next thing he knew was that he was banging on the door of a good friend, one to whom he could confess his terrible sin.
Chapter Four
Honey Driver blinked her eyes open and looked up at the ceiling. A moth, or it might have been a butterfly, was fluttering about the ceiling before making a dive for the window and daylight.
Her phone rang, she checked the number, saw it was Doherty and answered.
‘Honey,’ he said.
‘Stevie. Any bumps and bruises?’
‘Here and there and in very private places. I’ll show you later. Ouch …’
She grinned into the phone. ‘That sounded painful.’
‘Just a twinge.’
‘A little unfit?’
‘I wouldn’t say that. How did last night go?’
‘OK.’ She said it casually, as though the event had been so-so, and no mention of John Rees …‘Saw a few famous faces.’
‘Any professional rugby league players?’
‘Possibly.’
‘But you wouldn’t know one if you fell over one. Right?’
‘I know what they look like – generally.’
After admitting that he was soaking in a warm bath and inviting her to join him, they made arrangements to meet asap.
‘I heard someone threatening to murder somebody else last night,’ she told him.
She heard him make the painful sound again.
‘Tell me later. I need to rub something in.’
‘Wish I was there.’
‘Wish you were too.’
After ten minutes beneath a warm shower, her head cleared and her body tingled. Various thoughts trooped through her head like a battalion of chocolate soldiers, mostly to do with the night before.
John Rees led the march followed by the famous and not so famous celebrities, the woman in pink and the threat to kill she’d overheard in the ladies loo. Threatening to kill someone had to be taken with a pinch of salt. People made the threat all the time. Mostly it didn’t mean anything.
John Rees had been lovely, though a little distracted, a little out of character. She wondered if he had a new love in his life; not that she was necessarily his old love. Nothing like that. Well. Not exactly. There was, or had been, a smouldering between them. Then Detective Inspector Steve Doherty had come along. She’d made her choice.
‘Still,’ she murmured, ‘just because you’re on a diet, doesn’t mean to say you can’t study the menu. Or have a little nibble now and again …’
She called a halt.
‘No. That’s naughty,’ she said, shaking her head and going back for one more pass beneath the shower head.
Doherty’s invitation to take a bath with him, plus John Rees, and sex in general. had made her hungry. Passing through the kitchen, she grabbed a sausage, a piece of bacon, and a fried egg, squashing the lot between two pieces of bread.
OK, it was unhealthy, but it was quick to prepare and devour between people checking out and staff checking in for the day shift.
All she had expected to see in reception were guests checking out after demolishing a far-from-healthy full English breakfast. Instead she found toilet rolls.
‘They have just been delivered,’ said Anna, their hard-working Polish chambermaid. ‘I think there are many more than usual. They would not all fit into the store room.’
Honey stood open-mouthed. The toilet rolls, packed in sets of twelve, were doing a fair interpretation of the Pyramid of Cheops.
‘I don’t believe it.’
‘It’s true!’ Anna sounded almost hurt. ‘See? Here is the delivery note Leski gave me.’
Honey frowned. ‘Leski? Our usual disposable delivery guy is called George.’
‘George has retired to go fishing in Scotland. We have Leski. He is Hungarian I think. Or Romanian. I am not sure. Anyway. He is foreign and he speaks very poor English.’ Anna tossed her head, her expression disdainful of somebody who hadn’t yet mastered the language of his adopted country. ‘And I think he is thick.’
Honey studied the delivery note. The total delivered was printed in ordinary everyday numbers that anyone could understand no matter their origin.
‘You’re right,’ she said to Anna. ‘He is thick. It says here one hundred and twenty packs of twelve toilet rolls. I think we have at least one thousand two hundred packs.’
The manager at Mister Mops Disposables was a man named Bernie Maddox. He used to be self-employed before working for them. Honey was privy to his history and ready for anything he might throw at her.
Number one excuse, he was telling Honey that their new driver had got himself lost.
‘In Bath? Do you wish to elaborate on that?’
‘Why the hell should I? He got lost. That’s it. Right?’ His tone was brusque. Telling him the customer was always right wouldn’t cut the mustard – and mustard had a big part to play in Bernie’s history.
‘Bernie. Calm down. I’m not asking you for Dijon mustard on my burger. I’m asking you for the plain truth.’
‘You know me?’
‘You shot a guy between the eyes.’
‘It was only ketchup,’ he barked back, though sounded surprised that she knew about the scandal attached to his former profession of hot dog salesman.
His hot dog stand had been situated in a lay-by on the A46. He’d never done that well selling hot dogs, beefburgers, and beverages on account of his attitude to the public. Bernie didn’t like dealing with the public.
‘I’m just reminding you. I’m Honey Driver, hotel owner. I know how the public can get to you.’
‘The customer isn’t always right, you know!’
‘This one is. Do your current employers know that you shoot people?’ Complaints hadn’t been tolerated at Bernie’s hot dog stand.
‘I don’t use a gun!’
It was true. He’d squirted the customers with mustard or ketchup from a squeezy bottle.
‘I’m good at slanting things a certain way, and I’m a customer. They’d believe me.’
A promise was made to remove the surfeit of toilet rolls.
Honey put down the phone.
‘Oh. And we have no metal polish left,’ Anna added.
‘I don’t care. We can nip out for one if we have to.’
‘I need it for the knives and forks.’
‘One can is enough and last time I looked, we had about a dozen.’
‘Is anything else missing?’
Anna shook her head, leaned forward and lowered her voice. ‘It might be Sir Cedric. Sometimes he wears a sword. Ms Mary Jane told this to me.’
Being stunned by the comments of staff and customers was a common occurrence. Anna’s fitted that category.
‘A man phoned,’ Anna said suddenly before Honey had any time to impart advice about believing all that Mary Jane said. ‘I wrote down his number.’
Honey took the piece of paper Anna handed her, expecting Doherty to have phoned. She recognised John Rees’s number and looked at her watch. It was a little early for him to be ringing her. She frowned. ‘I’ll take it in my office.’
Her office was situated immediately behind the reception desk and was a world apart from the rest of the hotel. It held a fancy desk she’d bought at auction, a mahogany swivel chair and oodles of filing cabinets. Not that she acquainted herself too closely with filing. Lindsey was best at that though these days the records were mostly stored online.
Honey did have a computer, but it was linked into Lindsey’s computer and Lindsey ruled the IT scene. Honey was content to leave things to her. Besides, this desk, this chair, were NOT ergonomic. The word hadn’t been invented when they were made.
Anyway, the coffee pot was on the go, spitting and gurgling on a triangular table that fitted neatly into an awkward corner.
While the coffee gurgled, she returned John’s call. There was no response from John’s phone, only a ‘Hi. This guy isn’t here at present. Be sure to leave a message and I’ll get back to you.’
‘I’m just returning your call. Ring me when you can.’
John Rees heard the phone but was otherwise engaged.
‘Don’t you want to answer that?’
John Rees shook his head. Adam Rolfe turning up on his doorstep hadn’t been too much of a surprise. Even a worm can turn and poor old Adam had been crawling along on his belly for long enough, but he hadn’t always been that way. John knew the man as he had been. He’d changed completely when he’d met Arabella Neville.
He guessed who’d phoned. He’d called her on a whim meaning to suggest they meet, have a bottle of wine together, or just a coffee. Then Adam had called and everything changed.
Adam Rolfe sat with head bowed, shoulders tense. He was clenching his fists so tight that his knuckles were as white as his face.
‘I nearly killed her, John, I nearly did.’
‘But you didn’t kill her, did you. Here take a drink.’
Adam took the tumbler and sipped the Jack Daniel’s. Jack Daniel’s was the only drink besides wine and coffee that John kept on the premises. He liked it so he figured everybody else could like it or lump it.
Thoughtful and calm, John poured himself a similar measure of the same drink. He was recalling the night before and seeing Arabella wearing a pink chiffon scarf around her neck.
‘It was so easy,’ said Adam. ‘Easier than I ever envisaged. My hands were around her neck, and …’
His gaze was fixed on the bottom shelf of John’s wall-to-wall fitment. Even here, in John’s flat, books dominated the room. Most were here by choice, not purely overspill from the shop as some would presume. His favourite books were here, lovingly lined up and dusted frequently. They included early editions of Dickens, Homer’s Iliad, Ben-Hur and the Decameron. There were others he hadn’t read, but their spines were delectable. John Rees liked books for their looks and their touch as much as their contents.
Adam was stiff with tension. John refrained from patting him on the shoulder and telling him all was well. He feared that if he touched him he’d fall apart.
‘You’ve had quarrels before.’
‘Not like this,’ said Adam shaking his head. ‘I enjoyed doing it. It made me feel so powerful, so very much in control, just as I used to be.’
Death of a Diva: A Honey Driver Murder Mystery (Honey Driver Mysteries Book 9) Page 3