False Pretences (19 page)

‘What? Where did you hear that? I didn't think anyone knew that . . . nonsense, Mother. Lettice is ambitious, of course. Any intelligent woman would want to get on, wouldn't they? And yes, it's true that I did introduce her to . . . No, I won't say his name. But it turned out that he wasn't . . . well, interested.'

‘Gay, was he?'

‘That is neither here nor there. The fact of the matter is that you encouraged Nicole to go out and spend money that we haven't got.'

‘I thought you agreed—'

‘A little dress or two, of course. But when I got home last night, the flat was littered with expensive—'

‘Of course, Piers might want her to wear something entirely different.'

‘What?'

‘Piers. Your father, the portrait painter. When he paints her.'

‘WHAT!'

‘Mm.' Bea sipped her tea, now cooled enough to drink. ‘I don't know whether he'll want to paint her at your place or in his studio. The light in your flat might not be good enough. But you can arrange all that with him, can't you?'

He gaped, beyond words.

Bea sighed, reached for a sandwich, bit into it.

‘But Piers doesn't . . . I mean, he charges the earth.'

‘That's all right. It's all in the family, after all.'

Max took a turn around the room. Stopped in front of the portrait Piers had done of Hamilton, his adopted father. It was a good portrait, for Piers had captured Hamilton's strength, humour and goodness. The eyes followed you around the room.

Automatically, Max's hands went to straighten his tie. ‘I did think, one day, that Piers might want to paint me, but when I broached the subject he said he only painted elderly, ugly and super-rich people. So why Nicole?'

‘Because he promised to pay for the guttering at the back of the house here to be replaced, and he can do this if he paints a few beautiful women on the side, so to speak. It's a commercial proposition for him. He wants a sort of Mother-Earth-cum-Juno look. All ripeness and blonde beauty. I don't think Nicole needs her hair colour lightened, but perhaps eyelash dying? I'm told it does wonders for a girl's morale.'

‘What's that? The guttering needs replacing here?' He tried to look out of the window, lifted the blind, let it flap down again. ‘Why didn't you tell me? That's going to cost an arm and a leg, and I just don't have that kind of money to spare, especially with Nicole on a spending spree.'

‘Piers said he'd pay for it, and if he doesn't, the agency will. Oh, and by the way, Nicole doesn't know about the portrait yet. I thought you might like to break the news to her.'

She could see the idea sink into his mind and become a pleasant proposition. While he was mulling this over, she said, ‘Of course, you might have to fend off some of your friends who'll also want their portraits painted by him, but it's not everyone who has a beautiful, pregnant wife; a project interesting enough to appeal to Piers.'

A tiresome thought struck him. ‘Yes, but Lettice—'

‘I'm afraid she'll be a little jealous,' said Bea, polishing off the last sandwich. ‘Perhaps it will spur her on to find another sugar daddy.'

Max reddened. ‘I'm not—'

‘I expect you've been too soft-hearted, helping her out financially. But now that will have to stop, won't it?'

‘Er, yes. I mean, I've never . . . Well, only once or twice.'

Bea brushed down her skirt and stood up. ‘Well, I'd better get back to work, and you'll want to give the good news to Nicole, won't you? Tell her Piers will be ringing her soon to discuss what he'd like her to wear, and so on. It's great that she's over her morning sickness now, isn't it?'

‘Er, yes.'

She walked him to the front door and saw him out. Once he'd gone, she leaned against the wall, closing her eyes, breathing long and slow.
I think that went all right, didn't it, Lord? And let me say again, ‘Thank you'. For getting Oliver and Zander out of trouble, for leading Cynthia to us just at the right minute. And please will you keep an eye on poor Nicole and tell me what to say to Maggie and oh dear, is she going to throw a tantrum about us giving Zander a bed for the night?

The phones downstairs kept on ringing. Cynthia had a good telephone voice, low-toned, with clear diction. She would be looking for a top job now, perhaps in one of the ministries? She'd make a good civil servant.

Maggie had not gone to help Cynthia but was crashing around in the kitchen. Oh dear.

Bea pushed herself off the wall, lifted her chin, pulled in her stomach. On with the next. Could they afford to take on more help at the agency? They were always extra busy when staff went on holiday – or were under investigation by the police – and, now that Maggie was often out all day, they could do with some help. But could they really afford it?

ELEVEN

S
upper for five. Bea and Maggie, Oliver and Zander, plus Chris Cambridge, who had attached himself to Oliver's side. Chris reminded Bea of a puppy who's overjoyed to see his master again after a day spent apart.

‘Did they really lock you up in a cell? How long was it before the duty solicitor arrived? Did he believe you when you said what had happened? What do you mean, “How could you tell?” Oh, you mean it was his job to believe you, but that you weren't sure that he did? Well, how did it feel to be locked up?'

Maggie was playing the non-cooperation card because Zander had been invited to supper. Maggie was sullen. Maggie was monosyllabic. Maggie said she rather thought she'd go out for supper if Bea didn't mind. Maggie had cried her eyes out when she thought Oliver was in trouble, but the moment he walked back in through the door she turned her back on him and pretended he wasn't there.

Zander behaved beautifully. Apart from slightly darker shadows under his eyes, he seemed to have come through his ordeal better than Oliver. He apologized to Bea for presenting himself in yesterday's shirt and thanked her for offering supper. He said he was supposed to collect some of his stuff from Mrs Perrot's later that evening, was waiting for a phone call to say when the police had finished with his room. He gave Maggie one long, considering look, and seeing that she didn't wish to acknowledge his presence, asked Bea if there was anything he could do for her.

Bea turned away from an almost empty freezer. ‘Can you magic food out of thin air? The cupboard is bare. Shall we get a takeaway?'

‘Chinese?' said Oliver, his usually well-brushed hair falling over his forehead, giving him a rakish, devil-may-care look.

‘Chinese will do me,' said Chris, suspending his questioning of Oliver long enough to state a preference. ‘Now, tell me in detail, don't miss anything out . . .'

‘I hate junk food,' said Maggie, close to tears.

Bea put her arm around Maggie and held her tight. She spoke softly into her ear. ‘It won't do us any harm to eat junk food for once. Oliver's safe now. One other thing; Zander had to give the police an address where he could stay tonight, so I said he could come here. Can you cope?'

Maggie shrugged. ‘The bed's always made up.'

Zander found the fast-food menus they kept by Maggie's cookery books and said he'd take orders. Did they deliver? Yes, they did. Fine.

Bea started counting seats round the central table-cum-work surface in the kitchen. They had four high stools. They'd have to bring in a chair from the sitting room – or could they perhaps take everything down into the garden and eat there al fresco?

With a start, Bea remembered that she'd left Cynthia all by herself in the agency rooms, and she rushed down to see how she'd been getting on.

Cynthia was packing up for the day. ‘I've done what I could. Maggie came down for a while to show me how to access the computer, but I'm afraid there was so much going on that I only had time to take messages from everybody. I said you'd ring back tomorrow.'

‘Bless you. You couldn't by any chance help us out tomorrow as well, or even for the rest of the week? We're all at sixes and sevens. I hope we'll be able to get back to routine tomorrow, but we've lost so much time I don't know how we're going to manage. We'll pay you well.'

‘Why not? I've got a couple of interviews on Friday, but I'm pretty free till then. Nine thirty tomorrow?' She departed, smiling.

Bea decided not to look at the stack of messages which had been left for her and went back up the stairs to find Zander on the phone, placing his takeaway order, while Chris was still bombarding Oliver with questions. Maggie, pretending she wasn't interested, was buffing up some cutlery.

‘So what did you discover on the bad man's computer?'

Oliver exchanged glances with Zander and shrugged. ‘I suppose it's all right to talk about it to you lot, but if one word of this gets out, I'm dead, understood? Mr Cambridge told us to report to the Trust office at half past seven, by which time the cleaners should have gone. In fact, we had to wait for them to leave, and it was nearer quarter to eight before we got in. Mr Cambridge then joined us, bringing his own laptop and memory sticks. Zander had his keys, of course, so we could get into the Dishonourable's room.

‘Mr Cambridge sat me down at Denzil's computer and asked me to transfer all the files on to a couple of memory sticks. He gave me the password, “Kylie”, which is the name of that girl in the village pub, isn't it? Anyway, it worked. I downloaded everything on to the memory sticks and started to open up the folders. At first it looked like just a whole load of porn. The folders had titles like “Maids in Waiting” and “Skirts Ahoy!” I didn't particularly want to enquire any further, but Zander insisted that he'd seen Denzil working on his computer with the screen showing spreadsheets, emails and business letters. Only there weren't any folders marked “Business” or “Staff”. Every single folder had a soft porn title. Mr Cambridge said this showed Denzil's puerile sense of humour.

‘He took one of the memory sticks and transferred everything to his laptop. Zander did the same, using one of the office computers which is not currently in use. I stayed on Denzil's original computer.

‘Mr Cambridge divided up the tasks. I was to look at the top twenty folders, Zander the bottom, while he poked around to see what had been deleted or put in the HP Gallery, was on emails and so on.

‘The first three folders I opened contained soft porn, and nothing but. The next was titled “Distaff Disturbances” and bingo! It was a file for staff addresses, salaries, wages, holiday times, etcetera, both for the city office and for the one in Kensington.'

‘That might be useful,' said Bea. ‘I'd like a copy of that sometime.'

‘Will do. “Bossy Boots!” contained a list of dates and payments to someone unknown. Not large amounts. Fifty pounds roughly once a month. Mr Cambridge guessed the payments might have been for the previous office manageress, who'd been very thick with the dead man. Then there were more folders of soft porn. I don't like to think,' he said, virtuously, ‘of the sort of man who needs a shot of porn before he starts work in the morning.'

Bea said, ‘Yes, but did you find anything for Corcorans?'

Zander nodded. ‘I found it under “Shrinking Violets”. I don't know why he named it that. Mr Cambridge didn't know, either. Dates and invoices covering a period of ten years. But it looks straightforward till you realize how inflated the figures were.'

‘But I,' said Oliver, ‘found the record he'd made of kickbacks under a file marked “Discount Debs”, cross-referenced to “Shrinking Violets”.'