by Liz Fielding
‘He doesn’t let his prudery show when he’s talking to Dad. I’ve heard him. Yes, Mr Edward. Of course, Mr Edward. Three bloody bags full, Mr Edward.’ Melanie had lived most of her life in Australia with her own mother. When she was angry she became very Antipodean. ‘He missed his vocation. He should have been a butler. He would be a whiz at putting the lower classes in their place.’
Claudia swallowed a smile. ‘Darling, try to understand. Elaine French and Edward Beaumont were portrayed as the perfect couple, on stage and off. It might have been a public relations creation but Phillip thought it was true. Everyone did. That’s one of the reasons the theatre’s full night after night. I’ve been dressed up to look exactly like my mother and you’re Beau’s love child. The nation’s prurient curiosity simply cannot resist the temptation to see what we’re like together.’ She grinned. ‘Dad might be a good actor and no slouch as a director, either, but when it comes to marketing he really does deserve one of those little gold statuettes.’
For a moment Mel remained tense and angry then, with a little shudder, she let it go. ‘Sorry. I shouldn’t let it get to me. It’s just that everyone thinks your mother was a saint and that mine was no better than she ought to have been. It’s a bit hard to live with.’
Claudia hugged her. ‘We know that’s not the truth and you shouldn’t care what Phillip thinks.’
Mel rested her head on Claudia’s shoulder. ‘I know. But I’m not as strong as you.’
‘Rubbish. You’re a Beaumont, strength comes as standard. Now go and have a good time at your party. Just don’t forget we’ve got a matinee tomorrow.’
Mel groaned. ‘I loathe matinees.’
‘At least you can put your feet up between performances. I’ve got to rush off to the television studios to accept a cheque on behalf of the hospice.’
Mel grinned. ‘And get loads of publicity for that new television serial you’re in. It starts next week doesn’t it?’
‘Don’t remind me. I’ve got half a dozen interviews lined up already, mostly at the crack of dawn.’
‘My heart bleeds for you.’
Claudia laughed. ‘Brat,’ she said. ‘Fizz would never have dared to speak to me like that.’
‘If you believe that you don’t know Fizz as well as you think you do,’ Mel contradicted her. ‘But she’s a lot nicer than either of us.’
‘Nicer than me,’ Claudia countered. ‘You’re not so bad, considering.’
‘Considering what?’ Mel demanded, hands on hips.
‘Considering that you’re an Australian, of course.’
It was a running gag between them and Mel, dropping into the flat vowels of her home city, responded in kind. ‘Oh, really? Well let me tell you that for a Pom you’re not so dusty yourself.’
‘Compliments, compliments,’ she said, laughing. ‘I could listen to them all day, but hadn’t you better go and get changed if you’re going to a party?’
Melanie gave a little yelp of dismay and dived back into her dressing.
Back in her own dressing room, Claudia picked over the messages left at the stage door by her admirers, along with countless single red roses. She was surprised to discover a certain discontent that Gabriel MacIntyre had not, after all, persisted in his efforts to see her.
She had the feeling that he wasn’t a man who would easily give up anything he wanted. Or maybe she imagined more in his kiss than he had intended. Maybe he always kissed like that.
She climbed into a pair of close-fitting designer jeans and a silk shirt that clung to her figure emphasizing her well-shaped bosom and her narrow waist. Then she flicked a comb through her hair, leaving it loose about her shoulders. She had gathered the red roses together and pushed them into a vase already stuffed with similar offerings that stood on her dressing table. The letters were swept up and dumped into her bag to be read and, if necessary, answered at leisure.
Then as Phillip appeared in the doorway she caught sight of the yellow roses abandoned on the chair and in a moment of weakness went back for them.
Phillip gave the flowers a doubtful glance. ‘You’re not taking those home with you, are you?’ he asked.
Claudia smothered a strong inclination to tell him that it was none of his business. She was trying to be diplomatic and that would hardly be a good start.
‘Don’t you like them? I think they’re very pretty.’
‘Your mother hated them,’ he said, as if that was the last word on the subject. ‘“Never trust a man who sends yellow roses,” she said to me more than once.’ And her mother was undoubtedly an authority on the subject. ‘Of course she would only accept white roses. Even from Mr Edward.’
‘I know.’ The white roses had been part of the Elaine French image and were banked around her dressing room on a first night like a virgin’s boudoir. Claudia pulled a face. ‘Actually, Phillip, I’ve decided I don’t trust men full stop,’ she said, a little sharply. Then, ‘Present company excepted, of course. Roses, however, are something else and the colour of these will go perfectly with my new curtains. Shall we go?’
When he stopped outside her door Phillip offered to see her up to her apartment, check it out for her.
‘You can’t be too careful,’ he said. ‘A woman living alone is very vulnerable.’
‘I know,’ she said. No one better. ‘And I am careful. I had an alarm installed a few weeks ago.’ The strain of the day was beginning to take a toll and she’d had all the enthusiastic reminiscences about her mother that she could handle. That, and the lingering scent of tobacco that filled Phillip’s car and clung to his clothes even though he had refrained from actually smoking during the drive.
By the time she had climbed the stairs to her apartment, her ankle was throbbing in time with the graze beneath her eye and all she wanted to do was fall into bed. She slid her key into the lock, opened the door and groped to reset the alarm before it woke the neighbours.
It wasn’t switched on.
Claudia frowned. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d forgotten to set it, but after her fright this morning, she’d been so careful. At least she thought she had been careful. She hesitated for a moment in the hall wondering whether to run back downstairs and tell Phillip she had changed her mind.
He had insisted that he would stay until he saw a light come on.
But if he came up she would have to make him coffee and it would be an hour before he left. Instead, she ran through the last moments before she had left for the theatre. The taxi driver had been hooting impatiently. It had been a rush.
The flat was absolutely quiet, the only sound her heart pounding in her ears. She was just letting her imagination run away with her. It was that damned letter. But she didn’t turn on the light and she left the front door open before edging along the wall to the kitchen, pushing open the door with a nervous little shove.
It was dark inside, only the electric green colon on the microwave clock winking at her to warn her that there had been a power failure in her absence. Could that have knocked out the alarm?
She tried to remember what the man who had installed it had said. The sound of the refrigerator starting up made her jump and for a moment she leaned weakly against the door frame while her heart returned to something approaching a normal beat.
‘Idiot!’ she said, and switching on the light she began to laugh at her own stupidity. ‘Stupid, stupid-’
Then the front door banged.
She spun around, heart right back in her mouth, pulse rate racketing like an express train. Who’s there? The words formed in her head, a silent scream. Because she couldn’t speak, couldn’t call out for help.
Her throat had closed with fear, her tongue become thick and rigid as a plank of wood and her voice, the lyrical, laughing voice with which she enchanted hundreds of people every night, deserted her as a dark clad figure detached itself from the shadows of the hall.
CHAPTER THREE
‘FRIGHTENED, Miss Beaumont?’
The voice
was low, gravelly, its very softness making it more, not less threatening. It was also familiar and with the familiarity came unrestrained fury and Claudia boiled over.
‘What the hell do you think you’re playing at, MacIntyre? You frightened the wits out of me.’
‘That was my intention.’ He stepped out of the shadows and the dark clothing was nothing more threatening than a suit with the collar turned up to cover the betraying whiteness of his shirt.
‘You wanted to scare me?’ Claudia’s voice had returned with a vengeance and she used it. ‘Is that what you usually do when a girl tells you to get lost?’
‘Making people think about their safety is what I do best. Whether they’re packing a parachute, or being threatened from some unknown source. I normally charge heavily for the experience, but in your case I’ll consider it reward enough if the next time you come home and find your burglar alarm has been interfered with you’ll remember how you felt just thirty seconds ago.’
‘Remember?’ Claudia knew without doubt that she would never forget that momentary feeling of numbing helplessness.
‘Yes, Miss Beaumont. Remember. And instead of behaving like some stupid female in a television drama going to investigate the noises in the attic, get out as fast as you can and call for help.’ Claudia, momentarily speechless, just stared at him. ‘You’ve had a shock. Would you like me to make you a cup of tea?’
The sheer matter-of-factness of his offer snapped her out of her temporary paralysis. ‘No,’ she declared, ‘I wouldn’t. What I want is for you to go. Right now.’
He ignored her invitation to leave. Instead, he put his arm around her shoulders, eased her through the kitchen door and encouraged her onto a stool before crossing to the sink to fill the kettle.
‘Aren’t you just a little bit curious to know why I wanted to talk to you this evening?’
Of course she was curious but Mac’s impassive face gave her no clues. Well, two could play that game. Anyone who had gone to so much trouble to get his own way wasn’t going anywhere until he had unburdened himself. She wasn’t about to make it easy for him.
Neither did she want him to see just how much he had frightened her. So she propped her elbows on the breakfast bar, rested her chin on her hands to keep them from shaking and waited for him to enlighten her.
He took his time, making tea despite the fact that she’d asked him not to, finding his way around her kitchen with apparent ease. Claudia refused to be impressed. He could have been in her apartment for hours, made any number of cups of tea while he was waiting for her to fall into his nasty little trap.
Nevertheless, she had to admit that he was a pleasure to watch as he set about the task with efficiency and an economy of movement. Men, she had long ago discovered, had a way of making the simplest domestic tasks appear so difficult that women lost patience with them and took over. Most men. Gabriel MacIntyre did not fall into that category. So she watched him. And when he turned with two steaming mugs of tea, he saw that she was watching him.
She didn’t blush, she didn’t look away covered in confusion. She was twenty-seven years old. Quite old enough to outstare any man. For a moment he returned her gaze and challenged that assumption. Then, as Claudia felt the unaccustomed heat rising to her cheeks he let her off the hook, leaning forward to place one of the mugs in front of her. ‘It’s weak,’ he said, ‘but I couldn’t find any sugar.’
She was furious with him, with herself even more. ‘I don’t have any use for it,’ she told him.
‘I rather suspected that was the case. It’s a pity. You might need it when you’ve seen this.’ He lowered himself onto a stool on the other side of the breakfast bar and took an envelope out of the breast pocket of his jacket. ‘You asked me this morning why I switched parachutes.’ He opened it and tipped the contents onto the counter in front of her. ‘I switched them because I found this poking out of the one you packed.’ Claudia watched as he fitted the pieces of photograph together, then very slowly pulled them apart again so that she could be left in no doubt as to the intended message. He looked up at her. ‘Have you any explanation to offer?’
‘Explanation?’ The word made no sense, but then she wasn’t thinking very clearly. Her eyes flickered across the kitchen to the bin where she had flung that horrible letter after she had shredded it with trembling fingers. Could that letter have been a genuine threat? A chill feathered her spine and saliva gathered warningly in her mouth.
‘What I’m asking, what I need to know,’ Mac persisted, ‘is whether this could have been a publicity stunt that misfired?’
Claudia swallowed hard, sipped the tea, then dragged her attention back to the man sitting opposite her. ‘Publicity stunt?’ She pushed her hair back, desperate for something to do with her hands. For a moment they had stopped shaking. Now the tremor threatened her entire body. ‘Of course it wasn’t a stunt. What kind of sick idiot would engineer something like that?’
‘I’m asking the questions.’
He didn’t care how she was feeling. All that tea and sympathy had been so much guff. That somehow stiffened her response. She wasn’t about to be put through the third degree in her own home by a man who had broken in and scared her half to death just to prove how easy it was.
‘Why?’ she demanded. ‘If it was a stunt it didn’t work so why are you getting so steamed up about it?’
‘Because someone messed about with a parachute in my care. I intend to find out why and by whom. I’ve got my own security to think of.’
His security? Oh, la di da.
‘You should have lined us all up against the wall and interrogated us this morning,’ she snapped. ‘I’m sure you carry thumb screws on your key ring.’
‘Maybe I should have,’ he replied, in the same cool manner, ignoring the thumb screws remark, but not denying it. ‘But this morning I thought I knew who had done this. I was mistaken. So, was it a stunt?’ The last four words were rattled at her like pellets from a gun.
‘No,’ she declared, instinctively backing away from him. ‘Of course it wasn’t.’ She felt defensive, ashamed that he should think she could be involved in something so nastily tacky.
He saw her reaction and pressed her for a answer. ‘You’re quite sure?’ he insisted. ‘Think about it.’
Claudia thought about it. Her considered reaction was the same as her instinctive one. Her agent knew better than to involve her in anything of that kind; he was on knife edge with her already over a carelessly drawn contract that had cost her a lot of money. The only other alternative was Barty.
Barty was something of an unknown quantity, but she was pretty sure that if he had been involved, it would have been handled with rather more skill. For a publicity stunt to work a whole lot of people had to know about it. On that basis alone would have been a flop. But if it wasn’t her agent and it wasn’t Barty, who had taken so much trouble to cut up her photograph and put it where she would find it? Claudia wasn’t sure it was a question she wanted to ask.
Mac wasn’t so reticent. ‘Claudia?’ he prompted, reminding her that he wasn’t going away until he had an answer. And if that was what it took to get rid of him...
‘If Barty had organised a stunt like this,’ she said, very slowly, ‘it wouldn’t have failed. There would have been a reporter and a press photographer on hand. And he would have ensured that someone reliable would have found...’ She reached out to touch the photograph, then snatched her hand back and put it over her mouth. It had to be connected with the letter. And that meant only one thing. Whoever had written it had meant every word.
‘Reliable?’ Mac prompted.
She raised her lashes to meet his questioning eyes. ‘Someone in on the stunt. Someone who would have known how to make a fuss. The technician who hooked up the power pack probably. Why didn’t you say something?’ she demanded. ‘If I’d known why you’d changed the wretched thing I wouldn’t have been so...’ She made a little gesture.
‘So what?’ Mac asked.
But it was stupid to be scared. It was just a prank. It had to be. The alternative was too dreadful to contemplate.
When she didn’t answer, he continued. ‘I didn’t say anything because at the time I thought I knew who had done it. I didn’t think it would help you to know about it. And I didn’t believe she would have tampered with the parachute. In fact I know she didn’t, because I checked it after you’d gone. Which is why I wondered about a stunt.’
‘She?’ The penny dropped. ‘You were protecting Tony’s wife.’
‘She’s pregnant, a bit overwrought, which is hardly surprising under the circumstances.’
‘What circumstances?’
‘He’d told her he was going to a regimental reunion and she asked me if I was going. Not unnaturally I didn’t know what she was talking about. Then she found a ticket for tonight’s show in one of Tony’s pockets.’
‘You should have told me,’ she insisted.
‘Why? Since the object of the exercise was to frighten you, if I’d told you about the photograph I’d have done Adele’s work for her. And I didn’t want you scared.’
‘You amaze me. I had the impression that “scared” was the very least of the many fates you were wishing on me this morning.’
‘Did you?’ He seemed momentarily taken aback. Then after consideration he conceded that she might be right. ‘Maybe I was less than sympathetic after you had ploughed into my car and attempted to demolish my hangar.’
‘I didn’t do it deliberately.’
‘Pardon me?’ he said, with every appearance of disbelief. ‘I thought you did.’ Claudia had known she had made a mistake the minute she’d said it, but it was too late to do anything about it now. She would just have to sit and take it. ‘A question of choosing the lesser of two evils, wasn’t it?’ Mac continued. ‘I do hope Barty James was suitably grateful.’
‘Barty James is a pain in the backside. And if you think my driving leaves something to be desired, his has to be experienced to be believed.’
‘You did say fast,’ he pointed out. Then he lifted one shoulder slightly. ‘But if I’m entirely honest with you,’ he continued, ‘I did have another reason for not telling you about the photograph.’