False Pretences

MURDER AT THE ALTAR

MURDER BY SUICIDE

MURDER OF INNOCENCE

MURDER BY ACCIDENT

MURDER IN THE GARDEN

MURDER BY COMMITTEE

MURDER BY BICYCLE

MURDER OF IDENTITY

MURDER IN HOUSE

FALSE CHARITY

FALSE PICTURE

FALSE STEP

FALSE PRETENCES

This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author's and publisher's rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  

This first world edition published 2009

in Great Britain and 2010 in the USA by

SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

9–15 High Street, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM1 1DF.

Copyright © 2009 by Veronica Heley.

All rights reserved.

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Heley, Veronica.

False Pretences. – (An Abbot Agency mystery)

1. Abbot, Bea (Fictitious character)–Fiction.

2. Women private detectives–England–London–Fiction.

3. Detective and mystery stories.

I. Title II. Series

823.914-dc22

ISBN-13: 978-1-7801-0038-8   (ePub)

ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-6833-6   (cased)

ISBN-13: 978-1-84751-205-5   (trade paper)

Except where actual historical events and characters are being

described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this

publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons

is purely coincidental.

This ebook produced by

Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thanks are due to my IT friend Mark, who was kind enough to talk this technically challenged writer through the unusual computer procedures which feature in this book.

ONE

B
ea Abbot ran a domestic agency which didn't ‘do' murder – except that every now and then she found herself dealing with just that. At sixty years of age, she thought she ought to take it easy and let her two young protégés handle routine cases, but what might be routine to some could be murder to others.

Bea couldn't concentrate.

Sometimes she could go for a whole day and not think about Hamilton. For whole weeks at a time, she was able – just – to live with the fact that she'd never see him again. And then, wham! Down she went.

She stared at the email on her computer screen, trying to make sense of it. Her phone was ringing. She could hear it but couldn't make herself respond.

Stop work? Walk away from it all?

No, she couldn't. This was a working day, and if she didn't work, she couldn't pay her two assistants' wages, or keep the house going. So work she must. Only, she couldn't concentrate.

She considered a crying bout and decided against it. Tears didn't help; they only gave her a headache. Friends were no help, either. They said, ‘How well you're coping. But of course you've always been strong.'

Aren't strong women occasionally allowed a day off on which to weep?

No tears allowed in working hours. She got up, needing to move, trying to shift the depression that threatened to overwhelm her. She checked the collar of her plain white shirt in the mirror and saw that she was now looking every day of her sixty years. All the care she'd taken to have her ash-blonde hair cut in a becoming style, and her still fine ‘eagle' eyes, couldn't disguise the fact that she was over the hill.

The phone stopped ringing. And started again.

She put both hands over her eyes, and then moved them to her ears, trying to block out the sound.

It was no good. She would have to take some time off.

She walked out of her office through French windows into the seclusion of the back garden. Wrestling a reclining chair into the shade under the sycamore tree, she collapsed on to it.

It was very warm. Almost too hot. She told herself there were only so many days in the year when the sun shone in a blue sky, unhindered by cloud, and that she should make an effort to enjoy it. She told herself to count her blessings, and couldn't. In her head she knew that she had much to be thankful for, but in her heart . . . ah, that was where the trouble lay.

She wriggled her toes free of her sandals and ordered herself to lie back, close her eyes and let the world go hang itself.

Only, as soon as she cleared her mind of one worry, another leaped into its place. At least there was no rain forecast, which was a blessing since she wasn't at all happy about the guttering at the top of the house. Neither of her live-in assistants had complained about the drip-drip tack-tack noise outside their rooms when it rained, but Bea could hear it in her bedroom immediately below them, and she knew that some time soon the guttering would have to be replaced. At enormous cost, no doubt.

Then she was expecting a phone call from Max, her self-important Member of Parliament son. Had she really promised to go with him to a ‘do' that evening? Unfortunately his wife was heavily pregnant, and Max had asked Bea to substitute at some important political function or other. Boring, boring. Bea wasn't looking forward to it.

There wasn't anything much she
did
look forward to nowadays.

An angry exchange of words streamed out of the French windows from her office.

What were the youngsters doing in there, anyway? Computer geek Oliver had his own office beyond Bea's, while Maggie was supposed to be in reception at the front of the house.

A crash. Bea's eyes flew open.

Maggie had dropped something? Maggie could be clumsy and, when upset, she did tend to throw objects as well as words.

Silence.

Bea was not fooled. Something had happened indoors, something that had caused Oliver and Maggie to have a shouting match. Except that eighteen-year-old Oliver did not shout. That wasn't his style.

Prompt on cue, Oliver appeared in the doorway; all bright-eyed intelligence. His hands were raised to his shoulders in apology. ‘Sorry, Mrs Abbot. Maggie says you won't want to know, but I said you should decide for yourself.'

Bea's eyes went beyond Oliver to where another man of mixed race stood, holding a large cardboard box. A man perhaps ten years older than Oliver and several inches taller, a handsome man with a warm brown skin. Bea had never met him but knew immediately who he was: Zander, short for Alexander. Trouble.

‘Mrs Abbot. I must apologize for intruding without an appointment. Could you spare me ten minutes? I've been responsible for a man's death, and I need help.'

His voice was pure chocolate cream. Maggie had gone overboard for this man last year, and had then taken fright and run away from him as fast as she could. Maggie wouldn't want him in her life again. Zander knew that, of course. So it must be something important which had brought him here today.

Bea closed her eyes, hoping she'd been dreaming. Knew she hadn't been. She pulled herself more or less upright. ‘Take a seat,' she said, indicating a folded-up chair nearby. She realized she hadn't anything on her feet and wondered vaguely what had happened to her sandals.

Zander set the box down on the flagstones, pulled up the second chair, opened it out and set it down nearby with a mastery over inanimate objects which Bea was forced to admire.

He seemed to have recovered well from the beating which an erstwhile colleague had inflicted on him. And the knifing, too. Maggie had said he was shaven-headed, but he'd allowed his hair to grow since then, possibly to cover his scars?

Oliver shrugged and padded back into the house, while from a first-floor window came the sound of pots and pans being crashed around. Maggie had retreated to the kitchen and was making her displeasure felt.

Her visitor also looked up at the kitchen. He laughed, a little self-conscious, oozing charm. ‘I didn't mean to upset Maggie.'

Bea felt and sounded sour. ‘But you wouldn't let a little thing like her being upset stand in your way?'

He looked down at his hands. Big hands, well shaped. ‘I did consider it, but you are the only person I could think of who might help me. I know Maggie often works out of the office. She might not have been here today. I decided to risk it.'

Her eyes went to the cardboard box. Something picked up from a supermarket? Not new.

He pulled open a flap and withdrew a bronze figurine of a dancer which he placed on the flagstones beside her chair. ‘Signed. French. Art deco. Worth a bit.'

She touched it with her fingertip. Smooth and classy, like him. ‘Stolen?'

‘Now why would you think that?'

They both smiled, for it was his innocent involvement in some stolen art treasures which had landed him in hospital and his assailant in a coffin.

‘No, not stolen. But not mine, either.' He delved into the box again, and one by one he withdrew and placed on the table: a silver photograph frame, a gold pen, a leather diary, a Thermos flask and some other bits and pieces which must have cost someone a small fortune. The collection was the sort of thing which might normally be found on an executive's desk.

Bea's eyebrows rose higher. ‘Not yours, and not stolen?'

He sighed. ‘I need a witness, someone impartial but with a sharp mind, to go with me when I return these things to the dead man's widow.'

‘The man whose death you brought about?'

He winced. From above came a burst of music. Maggie had turned on the radio. And the television too, probably. Maggie liked noise.

‘All right, you've earned yourself an interview. Let's adjourn to my office so that I can take some notes. If I can find my sandals.'

He retrieved her sandals, and she eased her feet into them. He packed everything back into the box and followed her into her office, which was shady but still rather too warm on that fine summer's day. She switched on the fan.

Seating herself behind the big desk that had once been her husband's, Bea drew a pad of paper and a pen towards her and waited for him to start.