Ring of Guilt (10 page)

Whether he'd deign to explain might depend on how he viewed Sanditon. Was he just a punter, a besotted middle-aged beau, or a serious rival – always assuming Will fancied me half as much as I fancied him?

No point in hanging around to find out. ‘I found a corpse the other day,' I said flatly. ‘I expect he wants to talk about that. And, as you've probably already noticed, policemen tend to hunt in pairs.' Time to get more assertive, maybe. ‘Sergeant Kinnersley, as you can see, this isn't a good time. Mr Sanditon's got a long-standing appointment to collect an item I repaired for him.' So I earned brownie points for authority, even though I was lying through my teeth.

Griff seized the gifts and did his best to spirit them away into the kitchen, as if all punters appeared with interesting payment in kind, not nice boring cheques. As he returned, he said, ‘I'll make an appointment for you to see these gentlemen, shall I? In our business diary?' he added, in case I wished my mobile phone on him. Griff shuddered with horror at the thought of anything except a paper diary.

‘Yes, please. I think tomorrow afternoon's free. Mr Sanditon, do you want to see the patient?' I gestured to the stairs, praying that despite my haste I'd shut my bedroom door so he wouldn't see the chaos on my bed and dressing table.

I think some of Griff's love of the theatre must have rubbed off on me. As before, I'd placed the vase dead centre of the work table. Things like the packing case and invoices were tucked out of sight.

I switched on all the lights at once.

Sanditon's face was all I could have asked for.

At last, when he'd turned his baby in his hands and examined it from every angle, he put it back and turned to me, eyes glowing. Then he did something that really took me by surprise – he kissed my hands. It's a gesture I always found really sexy, and I blushed all over again.

And then yet again, because I had to ask him for payment before the vase left the building. It was one thing Griff was absolutely adamant about, I explained, so pleased I remembered the word I almost dropped the envelope with the invoice in it. Better that than the vase, I suppose.

There was a tap on the door.

Will popped his head round. ‘Griff says you've worked a miracle and I ought to see it.'

‘So long as you look, not touch, young man,' Sanditon rapped out. ‘Unless your insurance still covers it, Ms Townend?'

I didn't think he was joking. Keeping the vase base firmly on the table, I turned it gently. ‘That's the handle I repaired,' I said. ‘Or was it this one?'

‘Wow,' Will said, with what sounded like reverence. ‘You built it up from nothing?'

‘Yes. I was just about to hand over the fragments of the original to Mr Sanditon, Will. See you tomorrow afternoon? Make sure Griff puts the appointment in the diary, won't you?' Did that sound flirtatious or if I was just helping the police with their enquiries?

He didn't budge. ‘Why does he need to see the fragments?'

‘A little detective work I've been doing,' I said. I added, ‘If you don't mind, that is, Mr Sanditon?'

I'd put the shards in a box on the shelves. ‘Here,' I said, fishing one out, and showing one end to both men, ‘you can see that this surface is dirty. The one it matched on the vase was the same colour.' I picked out another. ‘This also has one dirty end, which also matched a dirty patch on the vase. So what you had was two major cracks running almost all the way through – but not quite. It was an accident waiting to happen.' Sanditon pulled a face – he didn't like the expression any more than Griff did. ‘I've made a note of it in my statement of original damage.' Although I spoke to Sanditon, I flicked an eye to make sure Will was registering it too. ‘Maybe it ex . . . exon . . . lets you off the hook.'

‘Let's not worry about that now,' he said quickly. ‘You've done the job as well as I could have hoped for. Better. Congratulations.'

I slipped our credit card terminal discreetly on to the table; even though there were only three of us in the room he covered the pad and tapped with great secrecy. It was all the same to the terminal, which chuntered a bit and produced a slip.

I didn't know Will well enough – hell, I didn't know Will at all! – to hint him away tactfully, and in a sense Sanditon was still paying for my time. He was certainly paying for me to wrap his property. So I said bluntly, ‘OK, Will – show's over. See you tomorrow, then? Here?'

He frowned. For an awful moment I thought he was going to tell me to present myself at Maidstone nick for DNA and fingerprinting. Instead he just nodded once and went back downstairs.

‘You wouldn't like to stand where he was standing, would you?' I asked.

‘Why?'

‘Because you're between me and the wrapping paper and bubble wrap.'

For some reason or other, now Sanditon had his vase back, all the kissing hands and gifts tailed off. That was fine by me, so long as the choccies were as good as the meal we were eating.

Because Griff was such a good cook, and we ate so many meals on the road, we tended not to go to local restaurants, even when they were getting a reputation for fine dining. So although it was only five minutes from the cottage, I'd never eaten at the Two Bays at Bredeham before – trees, not seaside, incidentally. Maybe I'd have preferred a jolly brasserie, but I was a sucker for widely spaced tables, lots of white linen I didn't have to wash and iron and waiters who knew their way around the menu. I was a little bit worried when Sanditon charged the pre-dinner champagne to his room number. He wasn't the sort of guy who expected payment in kind for a nice meal, was he? But there was no sign that this was anything but a business meeting. In fact, if he hadn't been so much a man of the world I'd have had him down as shyer than Will.

For conversation, he went into so many details of my restoration work I felt tempted to offer him an apprenticeship. But the food – although it was introduced on the menu by such terms as
To Commence
,
To Follow
and
Starches and Greens
– was too good to cut short with a silly quip, so I answered politely and occasionally ventured questions of my own about his stock and how he found it. The object that had brought us together, the vase, sat in its box where a third place setting would have been put. It was only when he excused himself between courses that he picked it up and presumably locked it in his room. I'd had enough champagne to speculate privately on the sort of sexual antics that might break it all over again.

So what was this all about? It sure as hell wasn't the usual way of celebrating a good repair. Otherwise I'd be on a constant diet. As it was, maybe I should give the
To Finish
course a miss.

It was only over coffee that he made the proposition I'd feared. No, not the bedroom one. The one I'd already dismissed without a thought. That I might leave Tripp and Townend and become a junior partner in Sanditon Moyles, Moyles being no more than a ghost on the letter heading. Even if he'd wanted me as senior partner my response would have been the same.

‘I'm more than happy to do any restoration work for you, Harvey. And, if necessary, prioritize it like I did your vase. But my home's here, with Griff, and there's nothing that could drag me away from him.'

He gave a rueful smile. ‘I suppose I should have expected that. But you must think of your own future, Lina. A woman like you shouldn't be tucked away in a sleepy village in an unfashionable part of Kent. Any part of Kent, actually,' he added bitterly.

‘Ah, the M25 trapped you, did it? It does that to everyone. And you should see the M20 during Operation Stack, when they park all the lorries on it,' I added helpfully.

‘I didn't mean just that – though yes, being cut off from the civilized world is a problem. But you must think in the longer term. Mr Tripp is hardly in the first flush of youth.'

It was a good job I'd declined the
To Finish
offerings, or he might have had a plateful of something sweet and sticky in his face. ‘So you want me to abandon my dearest friend just as he's likely to need me most? I don't think so, Harvey.'

‘He could move too,' he said, but there was something about his voice I couldn't work out.

‘Abandon his old cronies?' Not to mention his lover, but that was none of anyone else's business. I delivered – what was the term? Griff had taught it to me only the other day – I delivered the
coup de grace
in a slightly sickly tone: ‘In any case, I couldn't leave my father.'

He pulled a face. ‘I thought that that was Arthur Habgood—'

‘Mr Habgood thinks he might be my
grand
father, and has been pressing me very publicly to take a DNA test,' I said, deciding rather late that he didn't need to know all about Lord Elham. ‘But who'd want a grandfather who sells restored goods as perfect?'

‘Does he?' For the first time he really sat up and took notice. ‘Really? Are you sure? I bought a pretty majolica plate from him the other day – a commission,' he added, as if he didn't normally soil his hands with items that far down the food chain. ‘What have I said?'

I managed to choke back my laughter to polite levels. ‘I hope you checked it very carefully. Because one of my apprentice pieces was a majolica plate. I sold it as restored. And Arthur Habgood, the man who wants to claim me as his own flesh and blood, put it on his stall as perfect. Have you still got it? Then maybe you want to take another look at it.'

G
riff and I have a pact that neither pesters the other for details of their dates. But I knew that he'd have given anything to be a fly on the wall at the Two Bays, because he must have been as intrigued by the flowers and chocolates as I was.

So as I popped our breakfast eggs into their pretty Worcester basket weave egg cups the colour of the anonymous policeman's blush, I said truthfully, ‘I wish you'd been there last night. I had this endless stream of questions about my work, followed by a spiel about how I'd do better working for him.' I tried to slip that in so casually he wouldn't notice. ‘And then he told me he'd bought a plate from Arthur Habgood.'

Griff's eyes twinkled as I'd hoped they would. ‘Not
the
plate!'

‘Who knows? But it scared him rigid. He could scarcely bundle me into a taxi quickly enough. And I couldn't stop giggling – the driver must have thought I was pissed.' Griff – and to do him justice, Harvey – had insisted on a cab even though the restaurant was only fifteen minutes' walk away. OK, twenty minutes, in those boots.

He frowned – he hadn't missed the bit about leaving him after all. ‘I think you'll find, sweet one, that at this time of the day the word is
drunk
.'

I shook my head. ‘That makes it sound as if I was rolling round completely legless. There must be another word, Griff, surely. Merry? Yes, very merry . . .' While he cracked his egg, I continued, ‘And since I can't ever imagine a discussion with Harvey Sanditon about English words, I have to say I told him I'd never consider leaving you.'
Or my father
, I added under my breath. Those were words Griff wouldn't want to hear any time of the day or night. They rather surprised me, actually. ‘In any circumstances.'

‘Unless young Will sweeps you off your feet. Or that rather strangely coloured young man he brought with him. Was it a liver problem? Or an excess of badly faded fake suntan?'

So Griff was happy again. He always got waspish when he was afraid, and was his usual gossipy self when his mind was at rest.

‘I could ask him? Or Will, of course? What time are they coming round, by the way? No? Is there a problem?'

‘I suspect they wished to discuss something in more official surroundings. But I persuaded young Will you'd be more forthcoming in a room you were familiar with – I fear I had to hint at traumatic experiences in your younger days, my love, when the police were inclined to intimidate and bully you. So here it will be, round about eleven – but don't expect the friendly flirtation to continue, especially if the liverish lad is present.'

I reached the bottom of the egg before I asked, ‘Do they really suspect I've done something wrong? I don't want to dob in poor Dilly—'

‘Another deeply unpleasant word, sweetheart! But I suppose it's no worse than
grass up
or
snitch on
. In any case, how can it be in any sense a betrayal? You've handed over the receipt so they know exactly where it came from.'

I fished out the empty shell and turned it upside down so that it looked new. ‘I was actually going to say,
poor Dilly's husband.
Titus says he beats her. And I'm just wondering if he beat her because she sold the ring so cheaply.'

Griff slopped coffee. ‘Wherever did that idea come from? I'm used to your being a divvy when it comes to objets d'art, my love – but not your coming out with strange theories about people. Without any evidence, I have to say.'

‘Sorry. But it figures, Griff.'

He shook his head. ‘It may well. But you can hardly quote Titus Oates' opinion.'

‘Not if I want to stay on speaking terms with him,' I agreed. ‘So I'll say nothing but do a bit of sniffing around at the next auction or fair.'

‘You will be careful, dear one? For while I might pooh-pooh your theory, it doesn't mean it's wrong. And you're more precious to me than any number of rings.' He watched as I speared my spoon through the empty shell, and then leant over to smooth my hair. He didn't need to say what he was afraid of, did he?

The demure and quietly coloured top under my everyday suit told the two policemen that I meant business, not possible flirtation. I also wore my less threatening boots, the sort that I can wear all day at a fair and never notice. Apart from that, I was as neat as Griff could make me: after vetoing lip gloss, he'd fluffed my hair a bit, and wiped off almost all my blusher. ‘Pale and interesting, that's the look. Someone they could rely on in the witness box.'