by Nina Jon
He shook his head. “Shouldn’t have to.”
“I do so hope not,” Jane said. “I’d rather not have to see the look of hurt and disbelief on the faces of all those he’s lied to.”
“No, that’s our job, unfortunately,” Inspector Boyd said. “Breaking news like that to people’s never easy. We get training, but it’s always hard.”
“I have to warn you that Orla Wilson is unlikely to believe you at first.”
“My guess, Mrs H., is that she’ll never believe it, even if and when he pleads guilty. We see a lot of that kind of thing in this job. Had a husband once whose wife tried to kill him by poisoning his curry. She even told us how she’d done it, and what she used, but he still didn’t believe it. He still visits her in jail, telling everyone who’ll listen that she’s innocent. Too painful for him to accept the truth, poor bugger.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Fifteen Minutes of Infamy
Alone at last, Felix quietly completed the crossword at the kitchen table. He’d just put his pen down when Penny ran into the kitchen and began pulling at his arm. “You’ve got to come with me now, granddad,” she said.
“Who says?”
“Grandma.”
He reluctantly got to his feet. Penny took his hand and half-dragged him into the front room, where Miles sprawled on the floor, Susannah sat in an armchair and Mirabella lounged on the sofa. Penny ran across the room and climbed up on her mother’s lap, as Mirabella pointed at the TV and shouted, “It’s us, it’s us. We’re on breakfast TV.”
To Felix’s horror, one of the breakfast television presenters held open a morning newspaper, displaying the photograph of him with Mirabella taken on their doorstep the day before.
“This is an interesting story, Judy,” the breakfast TV presenter said. “Mirabella Dawson-Jones and Felix Dawson-Jones are a married couple who live in Failsham, the small market town in Hoven which has found itself the centre of international attention.”
“And maybe you could remind everybody, Ben, why this small town has found itself the subject of such speculation,” his co-host asked him.
“As if we need to be reminded,” Felix said miserably, slumping down next to his wife on the sofa.
Miles grinned at his sister and niece.
“Well, Judy,” breakfast TV Ben said. “Failsham’s market square is due to be modernised, which will mean that a very old wool shop, which we now know has been trading from there for centuries, will be knocked down. Furthermore, the three sisters, all in their eighties, who still run the wool shop…”
“… and who are now known to be Britain’s oldest retailers,” Judy said.
“Yes Judy,” Ben said, “will be forced out of the home they have lived in for all of their lives.”
Felix Dawson-Jones leapt to his feet and began pointing at the television.
“They will end their days in a beautiful new home,” he roared. “I would like to live in their new home. Is this objective reporting? Is it?” Felix shouted helplessly at the television set.
“And how are Mr and Mrs Dawson-Jones involved in all of this?” Judy asked her co-presenter.
“Well, Judy,” Ben began, “it’s actually Mr Dawson-Jones and the Rev. Mrs Dawson-Jones because Mrs Dawson-Jones is in fact the local rector.”
“A rector, being a caring person, would naturally want to help the three sisters keep their little shop open,” Judy said.
“Naturally,” Mirabella said, whilst her husband threw his hands up into the air and said, “Could this be any more one-sided?”
“Naturally,” Ben also said. “The Rev. Dawson-Jones is in fact spearheading the campaign to keep the shop open.”
“And a very successful campaign it’s turning out to be,” Judy said.
“It certainly is,” her colleague agreed, adding, “however her husband is a member of the council who want to knock down the wool shop.”
“Good heavens!” Judy feigned. “Boo! Hiss!”
“Boo! Hiss!” Penny mimicked.
Felix buried his head in his hands, whilst beside him, his wife beamed.
“Is this causing arguments in the Dawson-Jones household?” Judy asked.
“Yes,” Felix Dawson-Jones said darkly, from the comfort of his living room sofa.
“No,” Ben said brightly, from the comfort of the breakfast TV sofa. “Quite the contrary apparently. The Rev. Dawson-Jones has been quoted as saying that she and her husband have been happily married for over twenty years, and in such a length of time as that, even a couple as happy as them, can’t be expected to agree on every issue.”
“Well let’s hope everything turns out for the best,” Judy said. “Maybe we should invite Mr and the Rev. Dawson-Jones on the show?” she added.
Felix found himself poked in the ribs by his wife.
“Wouldn’t that be nice?”
“I’d rather be boiled in a vat of oil,” he replied.
“That photograph of you, Mum, is very flattering,” Miles told her. “They’ve made you look younger and slimmer than you really are,” he said cheekily. “That means the press like you when they do that.”
“That’ll be why they’ve made me look petulant and slightly deranged,” Felix said, in despair.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Angela
Jane hadn’t slept well. She knew reporting Peter Wilson to the police was not only the right thing to do, it was the only thing she could have done, this however, didn’t make her feel any better. How typical, she thought to herself. There you are, a decent woman, beating yourself up over the actions of somebody else who will never appreciate or care about the pain and emotional carnage he’s caused others.
The morning looked as though it would at least be sunny. Rather than sit around moping, she decided to start her dahlia tubers and with her gardening bag in hand, walked over to her greenhouse.
There, she filled a shallow plant tray with compost, laid the roots across it, sprayed them with water and placed the tray in direct sunlight. This didn’t take nearly long enough. Neither did watering the sweet pea seeds she’d planted the month before, nor deadheading and watering her other greenhouse plants. Even after spending some time tidying up her greenhouse, she still felt uneasy about the events of the last few days. She wondered what else she could find to distract her. She knew what she’d do – she’d prune her Yew tree. Ordinarily that would be a job for her gardener, but extraordinary times called for extraordinary measures.
Donning thick gloves and a padded jacket to protect her against the brambles, she set about the task with the Play for the Day playing in the background on the radio. It was strenuous work, and the gloves and jacket just made her hotter than she would otherwise have been. Nonetheless, the time went quickly. The Play for the Day ended with someone being pushed down the stairs by an unknown assailant. They should get a private detective in, Jane thought to herself, while on the radio, the programme’s presenter said, “After the news, I’ll be interviewing the president of the Jasper August society, John Stem. If you want to know who Jasper August is, and why he needs his own society, listen on.”
Jane almost fell over. Good heavens, she said out loud. Now this she had to hear. She quickly made herself a cup of tea and took it with her to the conservatory, where – warmed through by the under-floor heating, the tea in her hands and her legs raised up on a footstool – she settled herself down, feeling far more relaxed than when she’d woken up.
On the radio, the presenter said, “You’ve come to tell us how sketches of a beautiful young woman called Angela, have resurfaced decades after they disappeared? Am I right?”
“You are.”
“Please tell the listeners how the sketches were discovered and why their discovery completes a story?”
“I was at home one morning, pottering about, when I received a telephone call from a good friend of mine who happens to be the owner of an art gallery,” John Stem said. “He was telephoning me with the most extraordinary news �
�� an old lady had just walked off the street with none other than the missing Jasper August sketches of Angela, under her arm.”
“Old lady,” Jane repeated sarcastically, suddenly no longer so relaxed. “Old lady?”
She calmed herself down enough to be able to listen to the rest of the interview.
“I drove straight there,” John Stem continued. “The minute I saw the sketches, I knew they are authentic.”
“How?” the interviewer asked.
“For a number of reasons. We know from August himself that they existed. He’d described them in some detail, and the collection of sketches we’d been given, matched those details exactly. Besides, I’d know that unique technique of his anywhere. August could even use charcoal to portray personality. I knew in my gut they were by him, long before Fonebies authenticated them.”
“Where have they been all this time?”
“The lady’s husband acquired them somehow or other, many years earlier. Neither of them realized their true value. He has now died, and she decided to sell them. She chose the gallery she did at random, thankfully. Another gallery might not have realised what they were.”
“Did you give the old lady a good price for it?” the interviewer teased.
“Not you too,” Jane said tersely.
“I can assure you we paid her the full market value. She should be one very happy lady.”
“Well she’s not,” Jane said.
“It must have been a wonderful moment, when you knew it was yours.”
“It’s a dream for all of us in this business, that one day something like that will happen, but that it happened to me. I can’t express how I feel in words.” He sounded almost as though he was too overcome to continue.
He wasn’t the only one who was emotional. By now Jane, who had heard herself described as an old lady too many times, was fuming. Sixty-three-year-old Jane didn’t think of herself as being old. She also found it intensely irritating to be described as old by someone clearly older than herself. Old lady, she muttered. Well, we’ll see who lives the longest, John Stem, she thought to herself. Still angry, she picked up the secateurs again and began to violently prune a hybrid rose, which, until she started pruning it, had stood in the corner of the conservatory looking rather sorry for itself. When she’d finished, she was surrounded by rose cuttings. She always found gardening cathartic, and pruning the rose bush had done the trick. She was beginning to feel less annoyed. Her mood was further buoyed when the presenter announced a scoop. It wasn’t only the whereabouts of the sketches of Angela which had now come to light, but so too the whereabouts of the real Angela – the flesh and blood woman once painted by Jasper August.
“She’s in the studio, and we’ll be talking with her after the weather forecast.”
Wow, thought Jane. This was the woman she’d heard Graham Burslem describe as, ‘half fire-breathing dragon, and half she-wolf.’ Well, this should be entertaining, at least, she thought, rather hoping she was about to hear a woman even more prickly and difficult than Jane herself felt. She lay the secateurs on the rose cuttings, dropped her gardening gloves on top of both, and stretched out in her wicker chair. She wanted to be comfortable to hear to this.
“You must understand, I’d only just turned eighteen when I met Jasper,” she heard Angela explain, minutes later. “We were young and so in love, at least I was, and I like to think that Jasper was too,” she giggled. “I can’t tell you how in love with that man I was. That’s probably why I never married; no one has ever come close to him in my affections. He was the most charismatic and attractive man I’ve ever met, but then I had gone to a convent school, so I didn’t have a great deal of experience to fall back on,” she added. “That Jasper chose me for his muse was beyond my wildest dreams. I would have done anything for that man, anything. I probably still would.”
Jane slowly turned her head to stare at the radio. Something about Angela’s words made her feel very troubled indeed.
“For five years of my life, I supported his career completely,” Angela continued. “I even dropped out of university. It was I who worked at all manner of things just to support him, so he could paint. He was consumed by his art and so was I. At one time, I was working as a secretary during the day and a waitress at night, and all Jasper was doing was painting, but I didn’t mind. I believed he was a genius and still do.
“I knew he’d be successful one day and he was, but that success came at a price. Jasper was completely at ease with his growing celebrity, but I was not. I felt out of place at the type of events we began to get invited to. Everyone wanted to talk to him. No one was interested in me, quiet, mousey Angela. While Jasper circled the room, I’d spend most of the evening alone, nervously biting my nails, hoping I didn’t make a fool of myself, if anyone did get around to speaking to me. All these events were the same. Jasper chatted easily, basking in the compliments he was paid, while I was ignored and overlooked. Needless to say, I started making excuses not to go and he stopped inviting me. I don’t think he resented me not going, quite the opposite. I think he felt he deserved a more glamorous girlfriend. Certainly the girlfriends he had after me were very glamorous indeed. By the end, we were living different lives and it was time to go our separate ways. We split up when I was twenty-four and I wasn’t to speak to him again,” she said sadly.
Angela’s words weren’t spoken in bitterness, in fact, to Jane they came across as quite the opposite. Jane thought Angela was still besotted with Jasper August.
“I’m amazed to read about myself as being discovered. I really am. I can’t believe that anybody is interested in me, a middle-aged spinster.”
Jane didn’t want to hear any more. She got up and turned the radio off. She stood motionless by the radio for some time, staring at it in a mixture of horror and disbelief, replaying Angela’s words in her mind. Oh my God, she said to herself, as the truth dawned. Despite being on her guard, despite all the investigations she’d made, somehow she’d allowed herself to become a party to a con trick. She’d been taken in by the oldest trick in the book. How could she have been so gullible?
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
The Duties of a Public Servant
Felix didn’t ordinarily suffer from paranoia, but he did not think he was imagining it when he felt people were pointing at him, or sniggering at him when he took his morning stroll into the town centre. Nor did he think he was imagining a slightly sarcastic tone to the words, “Morning Mr Dawson-Jones,” used by the girl behind the counter of his favourite coffee bar, when he purchased his coffee and muffin.
Ordinarily he would have chosen a seat by the window, but today he decided to sit at a corner table, his head buried in a newspaper. The only comfort he could draw from all of this was the conversation he’d overheard between his wife and daughter, when he’d walked past the study and heard Mirabella exclaim, “What on earth are we going to do, Susannah? I didn’t think we were going to get anything like as many orders for wool as this? How are we going to deal with all of this? We can’t just ignore them. You’ll have to go to the post office to buy envelopes and stamps.”
“If orders keep coming in like this, we’ll be doing this for the rest of the day and still be no further forward,” he heard Susannah say. “I don’t resent helping the Bailey sisters out, but if people keep ordering wool from them at this rate, they’ll out-live us.”
He’d tittered as he’d left the house. He tittered again when he remembered it, settling down to drink his coffee and read his paper. A little while later, Felix popped the last of the muffin into his mouth and drained his second coffee cup. He folded up his newspaper and strode out of the coffee shop to walk home.
Back at the rectory, didn’t find his wife and daughter furiously packing wool as he’d expected. Instead, he found Mirabella waiting for him pensively.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“I’ve just received a telephone call. The Bailey sisters have locked themselves in their wool shop and are
refusing to leave it.”
“What about New York? Isn’t that today?”
“They don’t want to go anymore.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Blue Moon Art and Crafts
I
Jane literally ran to the phone and called Graham Burslem’s mobile phone number. The number had been disconnected. She called his home number and left a message on his answer phone, asking he call her back straightaway. She also called the number she had for Lionel Scott, but it too was disconnected. Finally she called the Beech Hill Art Gallery. A young woman answered the phone and said, “Blue Moon Art and Crafts.”
“I thought this was the number for the Beech Hill Art Gallery,” Jane said.
“That’s closed down.”
Jane took a deep breath and continued, “I’m trying to get hold of a Graham Burslem. This is the only number I have for him. I wonder if you know him, or how I may get hold of him?”
“I’m sorry. I’ve never heard of him.”
Jane closed her eyes and replaced the receiver without saying a word.
She arrived at the Blue Moon Art and Crafts shop, less than an hour later. The notice next to the door, proclaiming Lionel Scott the gallery’s owner, had disappeared. Still short of breath, Jane opened the door and stepped inside. A young woman, presumably the young woman who answered the phone, sat behind the till. She smiled at Jane as she stepped into the shop. The shop sold ethnic jewellery and clothes, natural beauty products, trinkets, cards, scented candles and other miscellaneous items aimed at the young female market. The shop was devoid of customers.
“You wouldn’t happen to know what happened to the man who ran the art gallery that was here before – the Beech Hill Art Gallery – would you?”
“Its owner wanted to retire and my dad bought the lease from him,” the young woman said.
“When?”
“A few months back.”
“But I was only at an exhibition at it a few weeks ago,” Jane asked.
“That wasn’t the same gallery.”