Ring of Guilt

by Judith Cutler

  I’d found nothing to buy the whole sale. Where my divvying gift had gone I’d no idea. Perhaps it thought that anyone who was prepared to kill someone just for squirting bleach at her didn’t deserve any profitable treats.

  ‘He’s not talking,’ Freya declared, by way of greeting. ‘And he’s not on our system, as far as we can tell. In fact, one of the lads has a theory that he’s not a UK national.’

  ‘You mean not talking at all? Not just saying No comment to everything?’

  ‘I mean exactly that. He won’t speak to us, or to the duty solicitor. Schtum. Zipped. Whatever. Of course, the fact that we’ve got him in custody, with lots of our people as witnesses, plus the CCTV footage, means we can charge him. There’s even his DNA all over the bottle. His and absolutely no one else’s,’ she added looking me in the eye.

  ‘You’ve probably got me on CCTV,’ I added, ‘threatening him with a brass candlestick.’

  ‘So long as it was only a threat, Lina, we won’t talk about that, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘What you can tell me,’ I said, ‘is who stopped me.’

  ‘No, we can’t. Not at the moment.’

  For can’t, read won’t. Surely it wasn’t Morris? It must be! My heart sang. Yes, that’s right. Sang. Not sank. Though I suppose it would have been sunk, really. What would he make of Harvey? And what would he make of Harvey and me, not the Will of whom Griff had boasted?

  To take my mind off it all, I said, ‘I don’t suppose anyone managed to check if the Broad-Ticemans had a tea bowl sitting under a spotlight? I think it was in a room near the dining room, where I was shown the damaged epergne.’

  She shook her head. ‘Apparently they’re away on holiday.’

  ‘I believe they left some staff to keep an eye on things. Couldn’t someone check? I could, so long I was with you, couldn’t I?’

  ‘In your dreams, Lina. Give me a quick sketch map of where it should be and I’ll get someone on to it. Tomorrow. It hasn’t quite the same priority, I have to admit, as finding Mason.’

  A quick look at her face confirmed the worst. ‘Poor Dilly. And it was all my fault.’

  ‘No it wasn’t,’ Harvey said. ‘It was her killer’s. His and his alone.’

  ‘If I hadn’t wanted to keep my hands so lily-white pure! If I’d made more effort . . .’

  ‘Lina,’ Harvey said very firmly, ‘you made the effort. You got her the cash. You put it in her hand. Apart from tailing her to the loo, and everywhere else she went, what could you have done? You might even have had your throat cut or your brains knocked out or whatever.’

  For a terrible moment I’d been afraid he’d reveal how she’d been killed and betray himself as the killer. Where had that come from? I really was worrying myself this afternoon.

  ‘You know what,’ I said, now horrifying myself by starting to cry, ‘I just want to go home.’

  What I meant was I wanted an evening’s cosseting from Griff – reading a play aloud, perhaps, or watching the DVD of a play or movie he thought I should know. I didn’t mean a polite evening with the three of us, all minding our manners and using the correct cutlery.

  Although he looked tired, Griff probably wasn’t as exhausted as either of us. But he took his role as chaperone very seriously indeed. He allowed us five minutes to say a nice kissy goodnight, and then started moving round in a way that said very clearly he wanted us out of the hallway so he could use the stairs.

  Eventually Harvey took the hint. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow morning. After breakfast,’ he said, with a little jerk of his head in Griff’s direction. ‘And then I suppose we beard your father in his den.’

  Perhaps it was time to do a little bearding on my own account. I marched back into the living room. ‘Griff,’ I said, my heart breaking at the hardness of my voice, ‘we have to talk. You have to talk. You have to tell me why you don’t like Harvey. And, more importantly, you have to tell me why your so-called mate Douggie hates you enough to try to ruin you by attacking me.’

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  ‘It was something you said to me,’ I said, allowing him a teaspoonful of brandy to swirl in a pretty Victorian balloon, as I sat him down in his favourite chair. I found I deserved another glass of wine and sat on mine. ‘That anyone attacking me attacked you. I’m wondering if it’s the other way round. And the only people I can think of are X, Douggie and Aidan. Aidan and I are never going to be best mates, but I respect him far too much to pop him on my list of suspects, which leaves X and Douggie. If you didn’t pay enough booze money, X could kill you with a kitchen knife before dawn, so I don’t think he’d need to be subtle. But Douggie and you go way back, and he put the police on to us. Not something you’d do to someone you liked.’

  Griff’s colour was returning. But he didn’t speak, just nodding to encourage me.

  ‘The police option didn’t work, did it? So he needed an alternative. I would bet today’s takings he knows the Broad-Ticemans. He’s the sort of man who’d naturally delegate – wouldn’t soil his hands with dirty work. And he’s probably university educated – he’d know about DNA traces and stuff. And maybe, just maybe, he didn’t want to have my name on a card in the British Museum.’ And I did, very much indeed.

  He bit his lip. I’d never seen him so frail and vulnerable. ‘I never thought . . . I’m not a man to bear grudges. And you’d have thought that Douggie, since he’s risen so far in the world, way above our good selves, would have had the grace to forgive and forget. It was way back in the days that being gay was illegal, my love. I was trying to pretend to be straight, as were so many like me. I flirted a great deal with the prettiest women in town, but obviously – let’s just say, I wasn’t the marrying sort. But one young lady I dallied with – I’m sorry to use such dated terms, but that was how we thought of women in those days – was supposed to be young Douggie’s property. She wore his ring, after all. But she was a freer spirit than he, and preferred her jewellery to be more recent in origin than his choice. More recent and from Bond Street. I was certainly not offering a ring, but she saw an actor with a little money as a more attractive proposition than the underpaid and academic Douggie. Actually, she saw a lot of men as more attractive than Douggie. Somehow he’d got himself engaged to someone your generation would assuredly call a slag. You could say I did him a service.’

  ‘And did you tell him that?’

  ‘Possibly. In the heat of the moment. But he went on to marry – someone else – and I came out. And I assumed we were all adults. What I wonder, however, is if he thought you were my blood granddaughter. Which would, all these years later, have brought into question the plea of homosexuality I offered him in mitigation.’

  ‘You actually told him you were gay? Wasn’t that a bit of a risk?’

  ‘A few years, a very few years, earlier it might have been. But by then we were well into the Sixties, and the 1967 Act was in sight. But to hold such a grudge . . . I can’t imagine anyone doing so.’

  ‘So would you rather blame X? I’ve always worried that you didn’t pay him enough.’

  ‘My love, X can’t read or write. And with all the cheap booze he sinks I don’t think he’s well enough to make the sort of plans that have circled round you. I’d rather blame Arthur Habgood. Unless he really is your grandfather.’

  ‘Harvey says when he can’t get his way, he’s vengeful. He may well have his knife into someone else by now. Hey, vengeful’s a good word. I wonder where that popped up from. He doesn’t move in the Broad-Ticeman sort of circle, and I bet Douggie does. And with their art exporting activities, the B-Ts would know all sorts of folk who didn’t speak much English and would accept a dirty job as part of an immigration scam.’

  He held up his hands. At least they weren’t shaking any more. His eyes were as shrewd as ever. ‘What’s this about people who don’t speak much English? And would do dirty jobs?’

  My turn to bite my lip. ‘You’ll have noticed that Harvey wasn’t wearing a jacket at supper time. It wasn’t
because he found the central heating too hot. It was because someone had doused it in bleach. Aimed for me. I wasn’t going to tell you in case it upset you. And now it has.’ I allowed a drop more brandy to fall into his glass.

  ‘The police know?’

  ‘Yes. And I’m afraid they’re going to have to know about X and about Douggie.’ But not, if I could help it, about Titus. ‘I bet he doesn’t like the fact that Douggie means something so not respectable on the streets.’ I explained.

  ‘At least you’ve found something to cheer me up,’ he said, chortling.

  ‘And at least you’re not scratching and your face has gone down,’ I said, ‘so there are two more reasons to be cheerful. But there is just one more thing, Griff. What’s Harvey done to get up your nose?’ I waited. ‘Do you know something I should know? Like he’s married?’

  He shook his head. ‘I don’t know anything, anything at all. But he’s a good deal older than you and is clearly a man of the world, as we used to say. Most of all,’ he added with a funny little smile, ‘he wanted you to leave Tripp and Townend and join his firm.’

  ‘And I told him – and you – right at the start that I wouldn’t.’

  ‘But that was before you started to fall in love with him.’

  ‘And that was before I had this divvy thing,’ I whispered, crouching beside him so I could bury my face in his shoulder. ‘Not about a plate or a ring or anything. About Harvey. I heard this voice in my head, wondering what he’d tell his wife about the jacket. My divvy voice. I told myself it wasn’t working, because it hadn’t taken me to anything I should buy. But it was.’

  ‘And have you asked him?’

  I pulled away gently. ‘Not yet. I’m waiting for the moment. I don’t think I’d want to be in his company too much if he is, because I really do fancy him and you know I don’t do married men. Full stop. We’re going to take those photos to Bossingham Hall tomorrow, remember, so I’ll wait until that’s out of the way.’

  Griff nodded reflectively. ‘It’ll be interesting to see what Elham makes of him. He’s an old soak, just like X, but, again, just like X, he does have these extraordinary moments of insight. And in his own weird way he loves you, my child.’ He looked me straight in the eye. ‘And that’s another reason why you won’t leave Kent, isn’t it? Because you don’t want to leave him.’

  I kept him waiting a long time. Even that bloody clock struck. ‘I certainly don’t want to leave him to his own devices. Not halfway through my restoration project. He’d go back under within a week without someone to keep an eye on him. And I could scarcely ask you to.’

  ‘You know, if I thought you were really happy with Harvey, in Devon or wherever, I just might. But he’s not a project, loved one. He’s your own flesh and blood.’

  I helped him to his feet so I could hug him. ‘He’s not my family though, is he?’

  There was no point in setting off very early to Bossingham Hall, so I called Freya and told her about Douggie. She heard me through, occasionally stopping to check a fact.

  ‘And this all started then?’

  ‘Assuming the non-body was a false start, yes. It was the day after our meeting with Sir Douggie that I attracted Will’s notice.’

  ‘And then you attracted it in a rather different way. OK, I don’t suppose anyone ever died of a broken heart. So this Sir Douggie’s top end of the market, and would know the Broad-Ticemans. Ought to be Broad-Ticemen, oughtn’t it? As it happens, I’ve sent Will round to look at their place this morning, to check on that bowl. OK, it’s fine art, not heritage, but what the hell . . . I shouldn’t imagine he’ll be long. Will you be on this number?’

  ‘No. I shall be out on family business. And Griff will be at the dentist’s. As for Mrs Walker, who knows?’ We shared a laugh. ‘But you can always try my mobile. Freya, I know you won’t want to tell me, but have you run Mason to earth yet?’

  ‘I don’t, and we haven’t.’

  ‘Have you really, really hunted near the place where we found the body, Will and I? Because – I don’t know why. All that ground cover, I suppose . . . Not a lot of CCTV cameras, either,’ I said with more conviction. ‘And maybe more treasure . . . And Freya, just one more thing. And this is really, really important. Get the latest on Bernie Winters’ health. I know he’s on sick leave, you see . . .’

  ‘Any moment I’m going to have you down as one of those nutcases that phones in with helpful suggestions about where we can find Madeleine McCann,’ she said.

  ‘I know. But all the same.’

  She covered the phone and spoke to someone.

  ‘Any moment I will,’ she said. ‘But not quite yet.’

  I’d phoned to warn my father that I should be bringing the digitally enhanced photos I’d promised, plus the man who owned the originals. I didn’t mention the cake and biscuits Griff had provided, and didn’t warn him about the Beamer, because I’d assumed I’d be driving our van. But if Harvey was prepared to risk his suspension on that track, who was I to argue?

  ‘Does all this ring any bells, Harvey?’ I asked, as he picked his way towards the house, the car making much less of a meal of the jolts than the van did.

  ‘None at all. I was born and bred down in Devon and tend to regard Kent as outer darkness. And as for the photos, you’ve seen they’re all taken too close to walls to get any idea of the building as a whole.’ As the full glory of the house hit him, he gasped. ‘This is lovely, isn’t it? And it might be yours, one day?’

  ‘Not a chance. It’s all owned by trustees, even the part my father lives in. And when he dies, it will revert to them.’

  ‘You don’t get a bean, then. What a shame.’

  ‘Thanks to Griff I’ve got a damn sight more beans than I had when I was a kid,’ I said, not thinking I needed to tell him about the money in trust for all my father’s offspring, not just me. ‘And with the skills his friends taught me I can always earn more. So long as people keep breaking things. Do you want me to tackle the crack in that Famille Rose plate, by the way?’

  ‘I was afraid you’d never ask. I’ll leave it with you before I go back to Devon.’

  So he did intend to keep in touch with me. Had he bought a damaged plate so he had a reason to? An excuse, if he had a wife? Damn that idea, for insisting on popping up, even as he was helping me out of the car and kissing my hand as he did so.

  My father, standing on the front step, must have seen the gesture, but didn’t remark on it. He was decidedly cleaner than usual, freshly shaved and wearing his London outfit. He was even reasonably sober.

  ‘I’ve found some more photos to compare yours with,’ he said, showing us into his living room. Already on the table were the trinkets he’d shown me before, minus the Cartier watch. Presumably he was keeping that on one side until he’d decided whether Harvey really was Nanny Baird’s true heir. I passed him my magnifying glass, and wandered off to make tea, because, family reminiscences not being exactly my thing, I thought I’d feel a great deal more comfortable in the kitchen.

  I was waiting for the kettle to boil and trying to decide what I felt when I had a phone call. ‘Will?’

  ‘Tell me exactly where I ought to find that tea bowl,’ he said.

  I did. He cut the call.

  Now that was interesting.

  At last I was ready to carry the tray back through, with the jasmine green tea that was my father’s grudging favourite. My father liked good china cups – in fact he refused point blank to use a collection of thick mugs someone had long ago left in the kitchen – and I’d unearthed enough Minton plates to make the whole thing quite jolly. It’d get even more festive if the vintage champagne I’d spotted in the fridge was called for.

  Another phone call. ‘Are you sure that’s where it should be?’

  ‘Positive.’

  ‘Interesting. Because all I’ve got is a ring of dust. Can’t get the staff, can you?’ End of call.

  The two men were shaking hands warmly when I pushed the door open, but
Harvey sprang away to take the tray from me.

  ‘One thing I can’t get hold of is this name of yours,’ my father said, as if he’d not noticed my presence. ‘Sanditon. What sort of name is that?’

  ‘My real name’s not very user-friendly. I was christened Ronald Harvey Biggs. And I think you’ll find Ronnie Biggs isn’t the best name to trade under. My mother was a Jane Austen freak. Hence Harvey Sanditon.’

  ‘The unfinished novel, the one most concerned with trade,’ I said.

  ‘God, and you pretend you’re uneducated!’ he said with affectionate irritation. ‘I wish she was my daughter, sir.’

  Daughter! What sort of Freudian slip was that when it was at home?

  ‘She’s mine and I’m proud of her.’ My father nodded with pride across the room. No, I mustn’t expect a hug or anything like it.

  ‘Do you have any daughters, Harvey?’ I asked, my voice as even as I could make it.

  Harvey went ivory white.

  Even my father noticed and pushed a chair forward, not one he’d cleaned, unfortunately.

  Harvey didn’t sit, but gripped the back. ‘Just a son. Very good at cricket.’

  ‘You should talk to Griff about him. He’s passionate about the game.’ My lips were still working quite nicely. Perhaps I should be grateful for those bloody divvy’s premonitions. ‘So you are Nanny Baird’s relative. What a weird coincidence.’

  ‘No. Nothing’s proved. You can’t see the whole of the toddler’s face in any of them. OK, it’s likely. But it’d never convince a lawyer. And we’ve agreed neither of us needs convincing either way. It’s just a nice theory.’

  My phone again. Freya. ‘There’s been an interesting development or two. Care to come over?’

  ‘I’d need a lift. I’m out in Bossingham, in Lord Elham’s wing of Bossingham Hall. Not the main drive, up a little track off Mann’s Hill.’