Ring of Guilt (15 page)

I think.

I'd never been colder or wetter or more scared. Not since I was a kid, at any rate. I was about to fall into the van as if it were Griff's arms when Titus grabbed me.

‘On any DNA database?'

‘No.'

‘Course not, or bloody Habgood wouldn't be on to you for a gob-swab, would he?'

‘But—'

‘Easily bend a policeman, get what he wants. Give me your foot. Oh, sit down if you must.' He grabbed my wellies, one by one, filled them to the brim with mud and rolled them in more mud. Then he slung them, hard as he could, into the deepest, thickest bit of hedge. He did the same for his own on the other side of the road.

‘What are you waiting for? Get your heater on, woman. And get moving.'

Slipping shoes on to numb feet, I obeyed.

‘Pity about all the stuff on the sides of your van. Never thought of being more discreet? Nice anonymous set of wheels like mine is what you want. How you going to explain all this to Griff then?'

‘I've been wondering about that myself.'

‘Flat tyre. Had to get it sorted. My mate back end of Ashford'll alibi you if needs be.'

‘But I never lie to Griff.'

‘So you'll tell him you spend the afternoon strolling hand in hand with me? I don't think so. Here's my wheels. No, don't stop close by, silly cow. Up the road a couple of hundred yards.'

I obeyed. As I pulled up, I ventured one question. ‘What was all that with the rope?'

‘Never heard of patterans? Gypsies leave clues for their mates to track them.'

‘But I didn't think we wanted to be tracked.'

‘'Course we didn't. That's why we came back the same way.'

‘So why did you cut of the end and throw it up the tree?'

‘Because it was all soaked in aniseed, see.'

‘Aniseed?'

‘Give the little doggies something to sniff at and go that way. God, don't you know nothing?'

‘Not a lot.' I must have sounded as dismal as I felt.

Suddenly he grabbed my chin and turned my face towards him. ‘None of that, doll – d'you hear me? You might not have your GSCEs and stuff, and you'd get lost in a wood, but you're as bright as they come. Got your dad's genes, and that old bugger Griff's polished them up something lovely. Understand?' He shook my head slightly. ‘All you want to worry about now is not going wandering about the woods with some old bastard you hardly know. Fucking stupid.'

I put my chin up. ‘Not as fucking stupid as wandering around on my own.'

‘As it happens, no. But you want to ask yourself what you've achieved. You've lost a pair of wellies and missed an afternoon's work. You've found a police crime scene and something no one wanted you to get into and you didn't get into.'

‘What do you think it was?'

‘From all this stuff about the rings, not to mention my little souvenir, I'd say you're right. It's an archaeological site. But I don't know, any more than you do.'

People raiding a site like that would be total menaces.

‘So, all in all, not a good afternoon's work, doll. Plus you've got to invent some cock and bull story for Griff. So I tell you something for nothing – don't do this again. OK? 'Cos I might not be there to look out for you.'

‘At least I know the aniseed trick,' I said.

This time he squeezed my cheeks, quite lightly. ‘So you do, doll, so you do.'

With that he was gone.

‘We had yet another hunt for his mother's engagement ring,' I told Griff. ‘And he tipped over boxes – piano music – and made so much mess I had to tidy up a bit.' It was all true, more or less. ‘And he talked a bit more about Granny Baird.'

‘Nanny, sweet one. A granny is quite different. Has he run her family to earth yet?'

‘He still wants me to try. But I can't, Griff, I can't.' For some reason I put my hands over my face and cried. Real tears, too. Mostly caused by trying to pull wool over his eyes, actually. But we had a hug, and a nice drop of some home made cherry brandy one of his clients had given him for Christmas and everything seemed better. Mostly, at least.

At three in the morning, it wasn't roots in the badger's sett, but a hand, and the rest of the body too. And it changed before my eyes into the one I'd found and never tried to rescue.

T
itus had been right. I was left with a slimy conscience and nothing more. In fact, the more I thought about it, the less I wanted to think about it. Particularly as I'd bet the whole shop that Titus wouldn't hand over to Will or anyone like him the coin he'd trousered.

Then, the following day, something weird happened. A woman near Dover phoned, telling me she wanted me to look at an epergne, to see if I could repair it. Since it was too large to bring to the shop simply on the off chance, she would pay me for a house call. Her address was Mattock Farm, which suggested a pair of wellies might be in order. I'd have to stop and buy some more – probably that wonderful village shop would oblige. I took some first aid items; not the human sort (we had a box in both vans), but for ornaments, so I could do an immediate repair. If the patient needed hospitalization, then I had a large plastic box and plenty of tissue and bubble wrap to hand.

Before I could agree with Griff that dancing attendance on a client at her home was not part of my job description I set off. I didn't like high-handed folk who brayed instructions at me, and would normally have told her so. But since I'd shopped for my father the day before, I could offer to do a Waitrose shop for Griff, which cheered him up considerably.

It took me almost as long to get into the Broad-Ticeman residence – after a heart to heart with their entry phone – as it had to get from Bredeham to the estate near Dover. The firm providing the security was the same one that looked after our premises and also that archaeological site, so I knew that somewhere there was a camera to smile at – and probably another not meant to be seen.

At the end of a metalled road at least a mile long, I saw the farm. It was very grand indeed for a mere farm; part medieval hall, I thought, part Elizabethan (even I knew that) and a bit of early Georgian thrown in. I don't suppose it would have pleased someone who knew about architecture, but I rather fell for its haphazard roofline and random windows. If someone at junior school had told me to draw a place for Cinderella to hang out in, I would have come up with the same sort of thing.

I wasn't sure whether I should ring the front door or hunt for a servants' entrance, so tried my luck with the front. I was admitted by a sallow wisp of a woman whose English was limited to the word, ‘Sit.' She pointed to a chair. I sat.

The entrance hall – Georgian – was full of pillars and niches for statues. They were mostly empty. But the walls were full – pictures from ceiling to wainscot. It was like a jumbled art gallery. You could see patches of different colour on the silk-hung walls where large pictures had been replaced by smaller ones. There was nothing in particular that grabbed my attention: I've never gone for the self-conscious and self-satisfied family portrait.

At last the museum-like calm was destroyed by the patter and skid of feet on marble, and I was surrounded by dogs, all intent on jumping up at my throat. I cowered in the chair.

‘Don't be so silly!' came one of those voices that you know cost £20k-plus a year in school fees.

Me or the dogs? It was hard to tell. But the dogs – it turned out that there were only two – fell back and sat down. I managed to stand.

‘Phoebe Broad-Ticeman,' the voice said.

Its owner was about five eight, size ten and in her early thirties. She also had a really nice smile and held out a friendly hand.

I stood and took it. Suddenly I was charmed into liking her. Maybe they teach that at posh schools too. With lots of giggles at the absurdity of one of the pictures, supposedly of a woman but clearly posed by a man, she took me through to a cave-like dining room, with a low Elizabethan ceiling (the plasterwork was no more than average) and tiny windows pretty well covered with ivy and other creepers. The wind was lashing them so fiercely I feared for the old brittle glass. On an oak refectory table with a sheen that must have given generations of housemaids tennis elbow to maintain, stood the most hideous early Victorian epergne. It was as bad as if Mrs B-T's perfect smile had a gold tooth right in the middle.

Why she couldn't simply have unhooked the broken part and brought it to the shop in Bredeham, I don't know. It was all that was necessary. One easy movement. I swathed it in bubble wrap, and explained the repair procedure, and how long it would take. All very professional, especially as I had those dogs bounding round me as if they had springs on their legs.

Actually, in spite of everything, I quite took to Mrs B-T. She might have indulged the dogs but, taking me to her private sitting room, with what looked like a Romney over the fire, she was generous with apologies, cake, excellent coffee and a deposit on the repair (her idea, not mine). She even pressed me to see some of the other glass about the place, every single piece a hundred times better than that epergne. Then the china, including a full early Worcester dinner service. I had to stop myself dribbling.

I think she was as bored as I'd have been in her situation, in her thirties, stuck three miles up a drive you could only get into when you'd charmed an entry phone. No near neighbours, obviously. No children. No job. She even looked wistfully at the silver-gilt clock and said it was awfully near lunch time and did I fancy some soup.

I almost said yes. But some words came out of my mouth I hadn't known were there. ‘I'm so sorry, but much as I'd love to I've got another job to go to.' I hope I sounded politely regretful. Actually I couldn't wait to get to my feet and be off. Looking at my watch, I said, ‘They'll think I'm never coming.'

Did I feel a cooling of the atmosphere? Hard to tell, because she shook my hand nicely enough, but handed me over to the maid to get rid of. At least it felt like that.

Wondering what had gone wrong took me all the way back to her gate and along the main road to Hythe. Why, when I'd loved the place and liked its owner, had I wanted to beat such a rapid retreat?
Been desperate to escape
would be another way of putting it.

All the way from the lemongrass to the sherry and then in the checkout queue I pondered. But none of my theories seemed to work.

I'd warned Phoebe Broad-Ticeman it would take time to do her repair to my satisfaction, but I did move it up the list a bit more than I should have, because it was simply fiddly, not hard. Without explaining to Griff, of course, I worked late several nights to make up for the hours I'd wasted in the woods. And then I phoned her, saying I'd bring it back when it was convenient.

‘I'll collect it myself,' she said. And put down the phone.

She turned up an hour later. The moment she arrived, she looked at her watch (?just for the record, it was Gucci, and not the sort you can get discounted on Amazon), and declared she must dash. There was no smile and she didn't so much as look over the contents of the shop. In her haste to go, she almost forgot what she'd come for. Even worse, I had to scuttle after her, reminding her she'd only paid a deposit on the repair, and owed the difference. When asked to be invoiced, I had to point out that our terms were strictly cash.

So the woman who'd wanted my company so much she had offered me soup for lunch had turned into a bored iceberg? Actually, a hostile iceberg. She made me stand, hand outstretched like Oliver Twist, in the pouring rain, while she counted out tenners, fivers and pound coins. I even had to nip back into the shop for a fifty-pence piece to get the change right. So much for a potential friend, I thought, not bothering to wave goodbye to her or her stinking dogs, which bayed at me from the back of her monstermobile.

Griff poured the first glass of the evening and sipped slowly. ‘It's not often one snoops on clients, my angel, but I wonder if we should have a little exploration of Google. Mrs Broad-Ticeman, of course. We might find – who knows what we might find. You see, the name is decidedly familiar. The stage, maybe.'

So with Griff beside me, I Googled. And nearly squeezed the poor mouse to death.

Mrs Broad-Ticeman had a husband, Charles Broad-Ticeman. All the art that hung about Mattock Farm was probably the same as the china that decorated our home – goods that might one day go on sale.

‘A top of the range art dealer! International, not little provincials like Tripp and Townend!' I gasped, moving about the very slick website, and then chased up other references. Not all were complimentary, but most simply fawned. ‘All this might explain the security and the grand house,' I said, ‘but it doesn't explain Mrs Thingy's strange behaviour. She showed me round that house as if I was about to buy it. Or something in it. Something eyewateringly expensive, of course – there was a camera on everything she pointed out.'

Something started to buzz in my brain.

Maybe it buzzed in Griff's, too. ‘I wonder, my love, if we might ask Morris about him.'

‘A nice impersonal email. Maybe from you, not me.'

‘Very well. I'll see to it while you lay the table, shall I?'

Meanwhile, Griff and I had a fair coming up in Bath. Apart from the tussle with the traffic and the one-way system, it was a gig we enjoyed, because Griff had no end of theatrical friends down there, some of them also in the trade, whom he loved seeing. If he was happy, I was happy. So we had to decide which stock to take. As we sat over our breakfast coffee, we started on our list.

‘What about Dilly Pargetter's pendant?' I asked. ‘Bath's a long way from Kent, after all. We should be able to sell it there without anyone recognizing it and accusing me of nicking it.'

Griff looked at me. ‘You don't sound convinced.'