Deadheads (28 page)

But the knowledge of her weaknesses had given her a knowledge of her strength too, and by the time he entered the lounge she had summoned up her spirit of resolution once more.

Unfortunately the man she was resolved to confront was not quite the man who came through the door. It was Patrick all right, but instead of the small reserved smile and the gentle peck on the cheek she would have expected, he advanced with a positive beam on his face, caught her in a full embrace and kissed her almost passionately.

'Hello,' he said. 'It's good to be back. These are for you. Where's Di?'

'She's at Mary Jennings'. Patrick, thank you . . . but
buying
flowers . . .
you?'

These
were a bunch of roses, carefully wrapped in tissue paper.

Patrick sat down, relaxing into the deep armchair with a positive grin on his face.

'Even Rosemont doesn't have
every
variety,' he said.

Carefully she removed the paper. There were five of them, rich golden blooms on long stems, a couple of them opening to reveal a scarlet flush and emit a sweet, delicate perfume. Daphne, fairly expert perforce, could not identify them.

'Darling, they're beautiful. What are they?'

'There's a tag, I think,' he said off-handedly.

She looked. Wrapped round the stems was a green plastic nurseryman's tag. She read it, then once more, still not understanding.

Type - hybrid tea.Variety - Daphne Aldermann.

'You mean, this is their name?' she said in bewilderment.

Patrick threw back his head and laughed in pure delight, a sight almost as bewildering as the rose-tag.

'Yes,' he said. 'Yes, yes, yes! You don't remember, do you? I told you years ago that when I bred a rose worth naming, I'd call it after you.'

'Yes, I do remember, but I thought that it was, well, just a compliment, a romantic way of speaking . . .'

'I always mean what I say,' said Patrick seriously. He jumped up and moved to the fireplace. She had never seen him full of such nervous excitement.

I started on this one five, no, six years ago. I knew it had potential after the first blooming, but I'd been disappointed before. Three years ago, I reckoned it was good enough to send to the Royal Society's trial ground. I was right. It got a First Class trial certificate. And what's more, it just won a Gold Medal at the Society's show.'

'This is marvellous,' she said. 'Marvellous. Patrick, I'm so . . .'

She wasn't sure what she was except that she was no longer ready for the immediate confrontation she had planned. Indeed it was beginning to dawn on her that many of the explanations she had hoped to elicit by confrontation might now be given to her, undemanded.

'And I'm not finished,' Patrick went on. 'I've signed a deal with Bywater Nurseries. It'll be in their next catalogue. They're going to produce it commercially!'

'Patrick! Why didn't you say anything?' she cried, but there was no stopping him.

'And
that's
not all,' he said. 'Not only have I put you on the Garden Centre stalls, I'm putting you into the bookshops too. You know how I keep careful notes of everything I do in the greenhouse? Well, I showed them to a publisher. They said there was a book in it, an account of all the trial and error that's gone into producing
Daphne Aldermann.
They're going to launch the two of them together, the book and the rose. It's a gimmick, of course, but they seem delighted with it. And what's more important, they're commissioning me to do what I've always wanted to do, that is, write a full and detailed history of the rose!'

Daphne shook her head, not in denial but in bewilderment. All this excitement in him, for
months
at least, and yet not a word, not a sharing.

'Darling, are you all right?' asked Patrick, momentarily diverted from his euphoria.

'Yes, of course. It's all so overwhelming. It's marvellous, but it's a shock too.'

'A shock?'

'Yes. I never guessed. I mean, you never said anything. All this, and you never said!'

'No, I never did,' he agreed. 'It was all so uncertain. Or rather, I couldn't believe it myself till it was all settled yesterday. But I never hid anything either. It was all there to be seen, what I was doing. The writing, the roses. It was all there.'

Was it a reproach? She didn't know. And she didn't want to know either. A reproach would have to be answered. Or accepted. But she was in no mood to accept reproaches. At least, five minutes ago she hadn't been in any mood. Now she was not altogether certain what mood she was in. These revelations explained many things perhaps - his preoccupation, his secret excitement, even his apparently ill-founded optimism about the future. Oh God! She suddenly realized the implications of her misinterpretations. They had led to Dandy Dick's bed and to a police investigation. Guilt and resentment were warring in her. It was her fault, it was his fault; she had been uninterested, he had been secretive; nothing had changed, everything had changed.

He came across the room and sat beside her.

'Are you all right?' he asked anxiously.

'Yes. Of course. Just a bit overwhelmed.'

'Yes me too.' He laughed boyishly, looking about twenty. 'I thought it might all fall through and I wanted to spare you that. But when it didn't, I wished I'd had you with me. I missed you.'

'Did you?'

She turned her face towards him. He kissed her gently.

'Yes. I did.'

He kissed her again. Suddenly there was no doubt about the passion there.

'Patrick!' she said with the instinctive alarm of one not accustomed to such things in such locations at such times.

'Diana's out, isn't she?' he murmured. 'And you're not expecting anyone, are you?'

Oh Christ! The police! she remembered. But she didn't say. Twelve o'clock, they had said they would call. She squinted round Patrick's head at the ormolu clock on the mantelshelf. It was just after eleven. Surely the police wouldn't be early?

But who cared? Some risks were made to be taken. She drew Patrick down towards her and embraced him with arms and mouth and long slender legs.

Their love-making was short and savage as if they had both been simmering just below the boiling point through many hours of foreplay. Drained, they lay on the cool woodblock floor, clinging to each other like spent swimmers.

Time for talk without fear or reproach. Hardly words. More like the murmur of the sea.

'You should have told me.'

'Yes. But you always seemed so calm, so self-sufficient, I didn't feel able to involve you in my hopes and perhaps disappointments.'

'That's how
I
seemed? Calm and self-contained?'

'Yes. Or perhaps I feared, which would be worse, that my hopes wouldn't involve you. It was a project so dear to me, I couldn't have borne for it not to be dear to you also.'

'Oh Patrick.'

She drew him even closer. Above their naked bodies the clock ticked on.

'Not that it matters,' she said, after a while, 'but will there be much money in all this?'

He drew back a little and smiled at her and said, 'Some. Not a fortune. But more to come, perhaps. At least it means I'll be able to make my peace with Dick Elgood.'

'Elgood?' she sounded more alarmed than she intended, less than she felt.

'Yes. It's been bothering me, all this unpleasantness about the financial directorship. Dick clearly doesn't want me. And I've never been all that keen, but it seemed silly to miss a chance. But now, well, at least I know where I am at the moment. I can do the job I've got now standing on my head. There'll be minimum interference with the books and the roses.'

'You mean you'll withdraw?'

'That's what I mean.'

'Oh, I'm so glad.'

And in her gladness and her relief that it was all over she found herself launched on a description of Elgood's allegations and the police investigations. But she had not gone far before a slight tension in the naked body in her arms triggered off an awareness of her own foolishness. Nothing good lay at the end of this road. Desperately she looked for an escape route. Ingeniously she found one, chattering on like the idle female gossip she hoped to be taken for.

'I got all this from Ellie Pascoe, you know, the policeman's wife I've been telling you about. We almost fell out about it, it was so absurd, well, I think she thought so too, that's why she told me.'

'Mrs Pascoe told you about her husband's work? Not very discreet. Or loyal. And you didn't tell me.'

He sounded not suspicious but surprised. And speculative.

'I didn't know what to say. Oh Patrick, we've both been stupidly reticent, haven't we?'

She kissed him passionately and caressed him intimately. It was the right response. She felt the tension in his mind relax as the stiffness between his legs returned.

And then as he rolled her over on her back once more her eyes caught the clock face. It was ten to twelve.

'Oh hurry, hurry, hurry!' she cried.

He hurried. As they got dressed she breathlessly explained about the police visit and its reasons.

'You mean all that haste wasn't passion?' he said.

'Yes, of course, most of it, I mean, I'm sorry,' she began. But when she looked at him, he was smiling.

In the event the police were ten minutes late, and though Daphne still felt certain that the evidence of the recent activity in the lounge was clearly there for the professional eye to see, she found she did not give a damn.

'Hello,' she said to Peter Pascoe. 'I've been looking forward to seeing you in the flesh.'

Did he grin faintly and look at the three buttons she had left undone on her blouse as he said, 'Me too.'

Pascoe didn't know how he looked to her, but to him she looked exactly as Ellie had described, a classical English beauty, tall, long-limbed, fair, and sexy with it.

But Aldermann himself, standing alongside her, came as a slight surprise. 'Reserved and watchful' were the words most commonly used of him, and on their one previous meeting he had instantly been aware of the man's privacy, even in giving a stranger a rose.

Aldermann too recalled the meeting.

'Mr Pascoe, how are you? We've met already, haven't we? At Perfecta. I hope there's no plot to burgle my office also?'

He smiled as he spoke, but Pascoe noticed a sudden stiffening in his wife's posture at the mention of the encounter.

'No. I was there on another matter,' said Pascoe equably. 'Sergeant Wield I think you've met also.'

Wield nodded a greeting.

'Of course. How's the window-box, Sergeant?'

'Haven't really had time to think about it, sir.'

'You must make time. Plant ye roses while ye may,' said Aldermann in mock reproach. 'Let me know and I'll pass on a few potted cuttings to you.
Baby Faurax
I think took your fancy. Now some
Pigmy Gold's
and
Scarlett O'Hara's
would provide a really bright setting.'

The man was positively ebullient, thought Pascoe. Outward-going, full of chat. He sensed that something had happened.

He said, 'To get down to business, sir. Mrs Aldermann's probably given you the gist. We've had a tip that your house is next in line to be done by a gang that have been active in this area for a couple of months now. She also probably mentioned the man she found looking around the house who said he was from the Water Board.'

Aldermann glanced interrogatively at his wife and said, 'No, she hasn't mentioned him. But of course I've just got back and we haven't had all that much time for talking.'

This occasioned a kind of splutter from Daphne Aldermann as though she was choking back something. Pascoe felt himself in the presence of secret signals which he did not too much care for. He put on his best official voice.

'Our enquiries have revealed that no such man was sent round by the Water Board. It may well be that this man is connected with the gang I mentioned. And as I gather that you will be leaving the house empty for a couple of nights next week, it is a matter we are taking seriously.'

'Of course,' said Aldermann. 'How can we help?'

'Well, we'll need a list of all the people you would normally inform that you intend being away.'

'That can't amount to many,' said Daphne.

'You'll be surprised, madam,' said Pascoe. 'Especially if you count those who'll find out by association, as it were. I presume you've informed St Helena's that your little girl will be off for a couple of days?'

'Why yes, of course.'

'Then we can assume the teaching staff and the secretarial staff at the school all know. Plus, of course all your daughter's friends and presumably many of their parents.'

'Well, yes, I suppose so. But not even Ellie has suggested that St Helena's is the centre of a crime ring,' said Daphne a touch acidly.

'You amaze me,' Pascoe said, grinning. 'But you see what I mean. Also I'd like to look around and check the layout of the house, look at your alarm system, that kind of thing.'

'Then why don't we divide and rule?' said Aldermann. 'I'll give Mr Wield what information I can down here, and Daphne, why don't you give Mr Pascoe the guided tour?'

Was there something in his voice, a suggestion perhaps? Daphne nodded and said, 'Of course. If that's all right with you, Peter. Oh, I'm sorry, I've got so used to thinking of you as Peter through talking with Ellie.'

'I'm glad she doesn't refer to me as Mr Pascoe,' said Pascoe. 'And Peter's fine. Shall we go?'

For the first fifteen minutes of the tour, their conversation was practical and professional. The alarm system was old but adequate. Pressure mats under all possible entry windows; magnetic switch sensors, flush fitted, on the downstairs doors; and an automatic telephone dialling system. This last was the important item. The house was sufficiently isolated for the alarm bell to disturb nothing except perhaps the odd ploughman on his weary way home who would probably take it for the curfew anyway.

In addition Pascoe made a note of the stealable contents of each room, particularly silverware, ornaments and paintings, the focus of the gang's previous hauls. Not that they showed any particular expertise, taking copies and junk as readily as the genuine stuff. Presumably they had a fence they trusted to sort out the wheat from the chaff without cheating them too much.