‘Annabelle Straddling-Smith?’
‘I don’t know about Smith but she’s certainly straddling Bernard Holloway!’
Maggie remembered the glimpses they had had, before being sent off on a mission to Moscow, of Miss Straddling-Smith joining the Lord Chairman for breakfast in the Epicure Hotel, and wondered, not for the first time, whatever hidden quality Bernard Holloway possessed which made girls seek him out in hotels and wolf Danish pastries out of despair when he was unfaithful.
‘Bernard’s got no standards.’ Camilla was complaining. ‘Can he be true to a woman? No. He’s like a bloody butterfly.’
Maggie tried to imagine the Lord Chairman fluttering about, pollinating things, failed, and asked, ‘I thought you quite liked that?’
‘What?’
‘Bernard being unfaithful to his wife. With you.’
‘The ghastly thing is he’s being unfaithful to both of us. The ingratitude. After all I’ve done for that marriage!’
‘Which marriage exactly?’ Maggie was puzzled.
‘Bernard’s marriage, of course. Do you think he’d stay with Muriel if he hadn’t got me to cheer him up occasionally? They owe it all to me and now he’s ditching both of us for the sake of a Miss Straddling-Smith – who looks like a horse, if you want my honest opinion. So he can indulge in a bit of dressage behind our backs. Look, you’re really the only person I’ve got to talk to. Should I tell Muriel?’
Maggie looked at Camilla and was surprised to see that the Danish pastry had been abandoned half-way through and that Lord Holloway’s slighted lover was drinking coffee with a sudden and dangerous look of triumph.
‘Mike took it.’ Lucky Bovington was sitting beside Ben on his sofa. He had received her in his dressing-gown and her shiny hair and fingernails, her sanitized beauty and clear decision made him feel scruffy and confused.
‘You don’t mean that?’
‘Oh, yes, I do. I’m sure of it. My husband took the manuscript that night you were at the Moat House.’
‘Did he tell you that?’
‘No, of course not. There are a lot of things he hasn’t told me. He’s a very proud man. He’s ashamed about doing so little for me and that we have to live here in the cold, on not much money. And he can’t get tenure in a proper university in the States. That’s why he took it, of course. To get the money to write.’
‘You’ve seen it?’ Ben asked.
‘He wouldn’t show it to me. He wouldn’t say anything. The English are like that, aren’t they?’
‘Are they?’
‘Scared of their mothers and that horrible old nursemaid they keep on years after the kids grew up. The English are all scared of their nannies.’
‘So I believe.’
‘OK, I’ll tell you how I know about Mike. I took a couple of sleepers that night when you were down at the Moat House. The cold keeps me awake, you see. Well, I’d gone right off but something woke me. It was Mike getting out of bed. I know what you’re going to say but he didn’t go up to the john because that’s another door. Think of it! An en suite bathroom in the ice-house. He went out of the door that leads into the corridor. He must have been gone quite a while. I guess I was asleep before he got back. But I knew damn well he’d got it.’
‘Then I ought to tell you to go straight to the police.’
‘But you’re not going to, are you?’ Lucky smiled.
‘No.’
‘You’re too much of a businessman.’
‘Or tell the rest of the family.’
‘They must never get to know. Look, I need your help. As someone who knows the inside-out of the art world.’
‘You mean as a crook?’ Ben translated.
‘I didn’t say that. But Mike’s got it and he can’t have a clue what to do with it. I figured you would know how to sell it off quietly and no one hears a word about it.’
Ben looked at her, stood up and said, ‘I’ll have to go and see someone.’
‘Someone who might help us?’ Lucky was eager.
‘I very much hope so.’
After he had bathed, shaved and zipped himself into a leather jacket, got the bike out and set off for the grey and damp Cotswolds, Ben felt considerably better. He found Hester Bovington digging out some overblown dahlias with a fork and preparing to plant wallflowers in the bed beside the kitchen garden. She looked up and smiled at him, an odd way, he thought for her to treat the man her son had accused of theft.
‘I’m sorry,’ he apologized, ‘I’m back again. Like the spectre at the feast.’
‘Everything’s going rather wrong here, I’m afraid.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
‘Nanny’s not been well. Not at all well. How on earth are we going to manage without Nanny Tucker? If we lose our tower of strength?’
‘Mrs Bovington’ – Ben started off briskly – ‘about the manuscript ...’
‘You’ve come about that again, of course. Bringing trouble.’
‘No one’s gone to the police?’
‘The police? Good heavens, no! We wouldn’t want that, would we? Not the police. You haven’t found it back in your office or anything? Of course, you haven’t. It’s lost and that’s all about it.’
‘I’m afraid it disappeared down here. Everyone seems to be accusing everyone else of stealing it.’
‘Everyone?’
‘Lucky thinks her husband did it.’
‘Has she said that to anyone?’
‘To me.’
‘Ridiculous woman! She ought to go and live in a greenhouse. She must have a rotten circulation.’
‘And Hector thinks I did it.’
‘You, Mr Glazier?’ Hester seemed astonished by the suggestion.
‘Well, I had it down here and it vanished from my bedroom. He’s complained to Klinsky’s.’
‘Oh, dear. Poor you! You’re not in any sort of trouble, are you?’
‘Not much. I think I managed to resign before they sacked me.’
‘Nothing like that was meant to happen, I’m sure.’ She looked at him, deeply concerned.
‘Don’t worry too much. I’ve always rather wanted to live in Florence. Only one person I’ll miss ...’
‘You’re in trouble, Mr Glazier’ – Hester was sure of it – ‘and I’m sorry. I’m sure Nanny Tucker will be quite distressed to hear that. I don’t think that was the intention at all.’
‘I don’t see why Nanny Tucker should care about my problems.’
‘All the same, I do think she’ll want a visit from you. As soon as she knows you’re in trouble.’
Nanny Tucker’s bedroom was small, one of the old servants rooms at the top of the house. It was cold and filled with the sweet smell of illness and old age. There were dozens of knick-knacks, photographs of the two boys at all ages and of young Malcolm, shells, presents from the seaside, and a lot of pictures of the Royal Family. Nanny lay in bed, down but not entirely out, wearing her glasses and cardigan as Hester put a tray of supper on her lap. Ben sat in an upright chair at the bedside, talking in the slightly too loud a voice he used for invalids. Hester was worried when Nanny Tucker showed no interest in the food she had been brought. ‘Have some of that nice soup, Nanny,’ she said.
‘Nice soup? You didn’t make it, did you?’ Nanny Tucker examined it closely.
‘No, Nanny. Out of a tin,’ Hester admitted.
‘Well, thank God for that. She was never a cook,’ Nanny confided in Ben. ‘Not even when she was a child. When others would be making gingerbread men in the oven, she was always out in the garden. Or it was her rabbits.’ She lifted a spoonful of soup, sniffed it doubtfully and forced it down. ‘Later on, when she married Mr Bovington, we always dreaded the girl’s night off. Hester’s Castle Pudding! Lay on the stomach like lead, it did. I reckon that’s what carried poor Mr Bovington off in the end, although he was never that strong, God knows. What carried him off was indigestion, what he got on the girl’s night off.’
‘Nanny, you say t
he most terrible things.’ Hester smiled, it’s the truth, Hester. Nasty medicine, the truth is, I know, but it gets you cleared out in the end. I shan’t be eating any more of this, that’s for certain. You can take the tray away.’
‘Thank you, Nanny. You won’t tire Nanny out, will you, Mr Glazier?’
‘Oh, it would take more than him to tire me out. That I can tell you!’ When Hester had gone with the tray, Nanny Tucker started her inquisition, ‘She had you out in the garden, did she?’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘I hope you wrapped up warm.’
‘It wasn’t very cold.’
‘That’s what you all say, “It wasn’t very cold, Nanny”. And the next day you’re sneezing your heads off and using up handkerchiefs. Hester said as you were losing your job. You’re not to do that!’
‘I’m not quite sure how I can help it.’ And then he asked her, ‘Have you got something to tell me?’
‘That was never intended, not that you should lose your job.’
‘What was intended, actually?’
The old woman leaned back on her pillows and sighed heavily, remembering the past. ‘They was always a difficult pair of boys. All right on their own sometimes, but always quarrelling. Well, they hated each other, wanted to score off each other in nasty ways. I reckon that’s why Master Mike’s behaving like he is with Mrs Hector.’
‘With Mousekin?’ Ben was astonished.
‘She’s not such a Mousekin as all that, I can tell you. I expect she led him on. And now she doesn’t sleep with Master Hector. Well, I’ve caught Master Mike creeping along the corridor, in his jim-jams. A “corridor creeper”, that’s what Mr Bovington used to call his like.’
‘So that’s what he was up to!’ But nothing was clear, nothing was solved.
‘Always a dirty little boy, he was. In the holidays from his first school I’d catch him, hands in his pockets! If you know what that means.’
‘Yes, Nanny, I’m afraid I do. He and Hector always quarrelled?’
‘The whole time. There was a row about a train set their father bought for Christmas. They fought over it, of course. Endless. And their mother cried over it. And their father couldn’t stop it. So I did what I had to.’
‘What was that?’ Strangely, Ben felt he knew the answer.
‘Packed it up in its box and put it all out for the dustman. Nasty medicine, but it cleared up the trouble in the end.’
‘And the Dickens manuscript?’ he asked her gently.
‘You should never have found that thing in the first place. Soon as Hester told me, I told her what it would bring. Trouble!’ Her voice was tired after a lifetime of children quarrelling. ‘You should have heard them. Whose is it? Who’s having the money? How soon are we going to get our hands on the cash for it? I’m the eldest. Well, I’m the cleverest. No, you’re not. Yes, I am. Arguing their silly little heads off until it was long past their bedtime, just like they did over a packet of Smarties. Only one thing to do.’
‘So you took it from my bedroom?’ Ben understood.
‘Little Mr Know-It-All, aren’t you? Well, you’re going to know all about it in a moment. I wouldn’t want you to suffer for it.’
‘So?’
‘Tell them it’s lost,’ I said to Hester, ‘tell them it’s gone. So they can shut up arguing and finish their tea. “Oh no,” she said, “they’ll find it, wherever I put it!” So said, “You get rid of it entirely, there’s a good girl, Hester. Nasty medicine,” I said, “but it’ll put things right in the end.” I will say one thing for Hester, she was always obedient.’
‘Thank you for telling me.’
‘That’s all right. Nanny’s tired now, dear. Time for my forty winks.’ She took off her glasses, folded them and put them on her bedside table. Then she closed her eyes.
When Ben went to say goodbye to Hester she had the bonfire going again, smouldering under a pile of hedge clippings with occasional little spurts of flame. He told her that Nanny Tucker was sleeping and he was going to ride back to London. She put on some more clippings with her fork and told him she loved bonfires, so good for the soil, which was much enriched by burning things on it.
‘I suppose,’ he said, ‘it depends on what sort of things.’ He noticed, among the ashes and blackened twigs, a charred scrap of paper covered with words, crossed out and rewritten. ‘I think that’s yours.’ He stooped, picked it up and handed it to her.
‘It was mine, wasn’t it? I could do what I liked with it.’ So she found a flame to consume it completely.
‘She burnt it? Isn’t that arson or something?’ Lord Holloway was appalled.
‘Bad luck on Dickens,’ Maggie agreed.
‘Bad luck on all of us?’ Ben said. ‘We’ve lost a Dickens story.’
‘Rather hard luck on Hector Bovington,’ Holloway thought. ‘A most distinguished Member of Parliament.’
‘Yes, let’s look on the bright side.’ Ben cheered up.
‘Things aren’t altogether bad,’ Maggie agreed.
The good cheer was broken by a telephone call to the Lord Chairman. They heard him say, as brightly as he could manage, ‘Ah, Muriel. You’re coming in? Yes, of course, I’m free. Absolutely.’ And then they learned the full horror of the situation. ‘You’re coming in with Camilla Mounsey? You both have something to say to me?’ He put the telephone down then and sat looking, Maggie said afterwards, like a man about to shrink to half his size. He muttered, ‘Business meeting,’ and so they got up and left him to his fate.
Ben had something to show Maggie, another object of his desire of which she had every right to be jealous. In half the Chairman’s parking place, gleaming, glimmering and, no doubt, ready to go, was Ben’s new BMW K1100LT, on which he offered Maggie a lift home, confident that no girl could resist it. She didn’t and they went for a long drink before they parted.
And the unhappy Holloway, confronted by his formidable wife and dauntless mistress, found himself completely at the mercy of this unholy alliance. When he asked Muriel, in a strangled sort of way, if she had found out, she looked only faintly amused and said, ‘Of course, I found out! How could I help finding out? You made it so obvious, ducking into improbable restaurants, hiding in doorways, making ridiculous telephone calls on the extension at home.’
‘He can’t be discreet about anything,’ Camilla agreed. ‘I think he wants people to know.’
‘It’s his past, in supermarket advertising,’ Muriel suggested.
‘Yes, I suppose it’s that.’
‘I’m so very sorry.’ The Chairman was looking pathetic and puzzled by his wife’s faintly pitying smile. ‘Oh, don’t bother to apologize,’ she told him. ‘You don’t imagine I minded about Camilla, surely. She’s a nice woman really, and old enough not to do anything stupid. Also, she gave me time to get on with my own life, which I don’t intend to tell you about. But we’ve talked it over, Camilla and I, and we’ve come to a clear decision.’
It was Camilla who delivered the joint verdict which the Lord Chairman received with his head bowed, ‘You’ve got to give up Annabelle Straddling-Smith!’
Under the Hammer Page 23