Inkier Than the Sword (The Falconer Files Book 3) Page 8

  As he entered his house and hung up his coat, he called out to the cats, and was surprised when there was no response. Unless they were out in the garden, they usually greeted him with great enthusiasm, but he could hear noises from the kitchen, so they couldn’t be out hunting. What on earth were they up to, to keep them away from welcoming him home?

  What they were up to involved two broken plates, a salmon steak considerably depleted in size, and a very messy kitchen floor. As Falconer entered the kitchen, Tar Baby and Ruby sat under the kitchen table watching a criminal action happening right in front of their eyes. On the floor in front of the sink sat Mycroft, hunched over what was left of the salmon and chewing enthusiastically, his jaws ceasing only when he heard his master shout very loudly.

  ‘You little sod! That was my supper!’ he greeted his beloved seal-point Siamese, now exposed as a thief.

  Chapter Seven

  New Cards

  Thursday 7th January

  I

  Although the cards club had been Gabriel Pryor’s only real interaction with the social life of the village, his death, nevertheless, had repercussions that sent out ripples further than he would ever have imagined, had he been alive to observe them.

  Buffy Sinden woke up early that morning, alone in bed, and, if not exactly happy with that, at least reconciled that her previous way of life had not been the way to a stable and happy future. Although the letter had truly upset and frightened her, to think that someone had been observing her behaviour and knew her medical history, which she had believed was strictly between her doctor and herself, she was aware of what an empty existence she had been leading.

  It was nearly a week into the New Year, but, even if a little late for resolutions, she determined to change, and find some self-respect. She had, in effect, been pimping her own body in the vacuum that her life had become, since her first termination at the age of seventeen, and it was time that she came to terms with what had happened in the past. She needed to move on and start leading some sort of life. Her emotional development had been halted after that first destructive relationship, and she could see, now, that it had coloured her view of men, and of life in general, ever since.

  It may be a bit late in the day to stop acting like a cheap tart and throwing herself at whoever signalled that they were available, but better late than never. She wasn’t too old to meet Mr Right. In fact, she thought she had, at one point, but that relationship had bitten the dust like all the others, only this time there was a divorce involved but, fortunately, no children.

  At the thought of children, she stuck out her lower jaw in determination. She may have been around the block a few times, but she was, in fact, only thirty-five. She had time yet to meet the right man and have a family: perhaps lead a more conventional life, and even find that so-far-elusive Holy Grail, happiness.

  All in all, Buffy decided, on reflection, that letter, although cutting, cruel, and censorious, had been a wake-up call for her, and had maybe even done her a favour. She didn’t want to end up like Monica Raynor, still chasing eternal youth at fifty-two, and directing all her energies to keeping her many assignations and flings secret from her husband, Quentin.

  Buffy determined to engage in no further physical relationship until she really knew the other person involved. Her new goal would be real contentment, not the casual buzz she had sought previously in her disastrous short-lived liaisons and one-night stands.

  Feeling buoyed-up with this new goal, she thought she would treat herself to a little visit to Monica this lunchtime, and see what the older woman thought of her new grand plan. In fact she’d give her a ring at home now, before she left for work. Even if she were cynical enough to pooh-pooh her new outlook on life, at least Buffy would have the moral high-ground, and she felt she could do with a bit of that at the moment. It had been a long time since she had been in that position, and she looked forward to it, as eagerly as a child looks forward to a bag of sweets.

  II

  Monica Raynor had no idea that Buffy had plans to make her feel tawdry and cheap about her little affairs, but was concerned, at the moment, with changes in her own life. Gabriel Pryor’s demise, although not directly affecting her day-to-day existence, had made her think. Life really was too short to let little irritants sap your energy, she thought, as, once more, she looked around her messy and dirt-encrusted kitchen.

  The rest of the house was in a similar state, as neither she nor Quentin had managed to muster the necessary enthusiasm and energy to do anything about it. As she stubbed out her cigarette – supposedly forbidden since the first of the month, but she had had a lot on her plate, and that poisonous letter hadn’t helped – she thought back to the days when old Potty Pounce had come round three times a week to ‘do’ for them.

  In those days, everything had been spick and span. All the wooden furniture sparkled with polishing, carpets were vacuumed, work surfaces were spotless, and no washing-up spilled out from an already full sink. As well as cleaning, dear old Potty had tackled the clothes washing on Monday mornings, the ironing on Wednesdays, and the bed linen and towels on Fridays.

  How silly she had been to fall out with her over a bit of adjustment to her hours. Although business was abysmal, Potty’s wages had been a bargain when one considered how much time she saved them, not only in trying to keep the house in order, but also in looking for things that had got mislaid, or buried under the mess and squalor.

  She’d made her mind up! She was going to go and see Potty – Hilda – smarm, schmooze and, if necessary, beg her to come back. She was sure Quentin would agree that if she could get the Pounce woman to come in on, perhaps just Tuesday and Thursday mornings, for she now went to Hermione’s on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, it would be worth it financially, just to restore some order to their lives.

  Gabriel’s death would be a lesson to her, not to be petty in the future, and not to hold grudges or cut off her nose to spite her face. It was Thursday and she knew that Hilda cleaned for Tilly Gifford on a Thursday afternoon. She’d take a little stroll down to Foxes’ Run at about two-thirty – God knows, they were hardly likely to be snowed under with clients – and throw herself on the old woman’s mercy. She might not be good for anything else, but by thunder could she clean!

  Decision made, Monica Raynor’s mind returned to the here and now, and she was surprised to find that she had another lit cigarette in her hand, and there were five butts stubbed out in the ashtray. Well, what could anyone expect, with the pressure she’d been under lately?

  And she had lunch with Buffy Sinden to look forward to. She could confide in her about the difficulties of meeting Rodney Kerr, without either Quentin or Roma getting a whiff of suspicion. They had only managed to meet once or twice, what with Christmas and everything else at this time of year, but she had hopes of at least a couple of months of extra-marital high jinks, before caution forced their trysts to cease.

  If she managed to restore the services of old Ma Pounce, it would give her more time to arrange and attend liaisons, and to savour the possibilities of the situation, without being haunted by the thought of floors to mop, lavatories to clean, and all the other sordid jobs that running a household encompassed.

  III

  It would appear that Hilda Pounce was in for a windfall of extra cleaning work and a useful addition to her meagre wages, for when Charles Rainbird opened his shop for the first time that year – it hadn’t seemed worth the effort before today, as nobody would be out scouring for antiques so soon after the festive season – he looked around him at the accumulated dust of weeks, and his heart sank.

  He just wasn’t the kind of man to knuckle down and enjoy cleaning his stock. OK, so he wasn’t as masculine as old Vernon, but he had enough trouble keeping standards up to scratch in Mill Cottage, without the burden of all this wood and glass. And then there was the silver; and the brass and copper. Auctions might like things ‘fresh to the market’ – in other words, filthy – but his customers expe
cted everything to be immaculate, or they demanded a heavy discount, and that wasn’t the way to make a fortune in this game, now was it?

  His thoughts turned to Gabriel Pryor, and how he had been found hanging from the bannisters, but everything in his house usually beautifully tidy, and all the chores up to date. It was no good! He was going to have to remedy his situation, so that he could concentrate on the accumulation of lots of lovely money, before he, too, hanged himself in despair.

  In the past, he had employed old Potty Pounce, and he had to admit that she did a marvellous job of making everything look as if it had been lovingly cared for for the whole of its life. They hadn’t parted on such bad terms, with him claiming that the financial climate was forcing him to rein in his expenses, and he saw no reason why he couldn’t approach her to return, claiming, quite truthfully, that he couldn’t manage without her, because her work was an asset to his business, because it had been. He just hadn’t realised it in his ire at her snooping.

  In fact, there was nothing stopping him just turning the ‘open’ sign to ‘closed’, and slipping down to Prince Albert Terrace now, to plead his case to her. He knew that several people had dispensed with her services in these harsh ‘credit crunched’ times: had he not used, somewhat dishonestly, the same excuse himself when he told her he would not be requiring her services again? Well, he had been wrong. He needed her back, and he would just have to be more careful in the future, wouldn’t he?

  IV

  Hermione Grayling typed the words ‘THE END’ on her ancient manual typewriter, pulled the sheet of paper out with a sigh of contentment, and added it to the other eight hundred and nine piled up on the table beside her. That was another saga to go off to her typist, before the whole thing went to her publisher for editing and proofreading. She already had an inkling of what the next enormous tome would be about, and had been making preliminary notes for the last day or so. She could safely leave the idea to simmer as she had now finished this lengthy and complicated family story, and take a few days of well-earned rest, to relax and revel in her success at the completion of another money-spinning string to her bow.

  Patting the ancient Underwood, she smiled fondly at it. It was the machine she had used since her first book had been accepted, and she now looked on it as an old friend, as well as a good luck charm: not that she needed good luck. She had enjoyed an unexpected level of success with her writing, and felt, as she always had, that the fates smiled upon her and her chosen occupation.

  She certainly earned enough to justify still writing her stories on Old Faithful, for she could easily afford the services of someone to present them in whatever format was required now, and if she was a little slapdash here and there with her spelling or her grammar, Mrs Who’s-it – she could never remember her name, even though she had worked for Hermione for over twenty years – would sort it all out for her, and put it into an immaculate state, before her editor got her hands on it.

  Even this lady’s name escaped her in her euphoria at reaching the end of another book, and she had edited Hermione’s books since her fifth or sixth volume, and always kept an eagle eye on the plot, in case Hermione had made any little continuity errors, or got her names or dates in a muddle. Really, she was another treasure. Lifting her hands to her head and running her fingers through the wild mass of curls that was her wig, she shouted out loud for joy at a job well done.

  And thinking of treasures, her mind turned to the thorough job that Hilda had done yesterday with her sideboards, even if she’d left her a load of rubbishy old papers to burn on her return from Dimity’s. That, of course, led her mind to what had happened when her cleaning lady had gone down to Barleycorn Crescent. Poor Gabriel!

  When they had been playing cards the other evening, nobody had the slightest inkling that he might be contemplating suicide, or that he might, even then, be dead, hanging in his own hall, life extinguished by his own hand. With a quick thought of how fleeting life really was, she decided that her next book could go hang – an unfortunate choice of words, but she ignored it, lest it ruin her good mood. With the realisation of mortality in the back of her mind, she came to a decision. She was going to book a flight, and high-tail it off to her house in Barbados. It was January, it was cold, and it was miserable, and she wanted some sunshine to warm her bones.

  January really was the pits, and she was very happy with her new property investment. Previously she had owned a house in Morocco, but she soon found out that it simply wasn’t easy being a woman in an Arab country, and had sold it in favour of a Caribbean hideaway. And she still had the condo in Florida and the villa just outside Nice, if she fancied a change. She really was a very lucky woman.

  As minds do, hers immediately returned to someone who had not been very lucky, and whose fate she had been distracted from by her decision to spend a few weeks in the Caribbean. Whatever could have made Gabriel so desperate that he took his own life? She had not known him very well, as a card player, more than a friend or acquaintance, but there must be others who had had a bit more to do with him than her. Her curiosity was definitely aroused.

  The possibilities for speculation and gossip were endless, and she went into the drawing room to make a few phone calls, maybe get some of the card club together in the Ox and Plough for a jolly good gossip. Nothing as gruesome or exciting as this had happened in Steynham St Michael in all the years she had lived here, and it seemed such a waste not to make the most of it. Removing her address and telephone number book from its usual resting place in the drawer of the telephone table, she lifted the receiver and began to dial.

  Within an hour, she had gathered a respectable crowd, for what she hoped would be a convivial evening, replaced her book in its customary place, and rubbed her rather chubby hands together with glee at the prospect of what was to come, later that day.

  V

  Buffy Sinden and Monica Raynor met at one o’clock in Goldfinches, the little restaurant next to the interior design shop in the High Street. Although Monica had had to make her way from the estate agency at the north end of the Market Darley Road, it was a more private place to meet than either of the pubs, because each table was situated in an oak booth, giving both visual anonymity, and, by the very thickness of the wood and the general background noise of muzak, made it impossible for any of the other diners to eavesdrop on what was being discussed in an adjacent booth.

  Their meal started well, with Buffy confiding in Monica about the anonymous letter she had received, without actually divulging its contents, for that would be too shaming, even for Monica to envisage. So caught up in her own ‘road to Damascus’ moment was she, that she didn’t notice a blush darken Monica’s cheeks at the mention of the letter.

  ‘Well, I should just ignore it if I were you, Buffy. I mean, whatever it said, whoever sent it wouldn’t have the guts to prove it and make it public, would they? Otherwise they would have signed the letter, or challenged you with it face-to-face. Anyway, who do you think sent it? Have you any idea at all? What did the police say?’

  ‘The police just put it in an evidence bag and took it away. I think they rather hoped that there might be others, to give them a bit more of an idea who sent them,’ Buffy answered, again missing the colour that rose in her companion’s cheeks. ‘And as for who sent it, well, considering its contents, which I’d rather not discuss if you don’t mind, then the only person I can possibly think of is Tilly Gifford, and I’d always rather liked her,’ she concluded, finally looking up at Monica.

  ‘Tilly Gifford?’ Monica queried. ‘I wouldn’t have said she had a poisonous bone in her body, would you? I mean, she’s so friendly, and she’s always either laughing or smiling.’

  ‘Oh, I agree, but I simply can’t think who else it could possibly be.’

  ‘Just ignore it, then,’ was Monica’s advice, and was surprised to see her companion’s face glow as if from an inner light.

  ‘I’m not going to do anything of the sort, Monica. It was only the truth,
and it’s made me look it in the face for the first time ever. Whoever sent that letter has done me a favour, not a disservice. I’m going to change. I’m never going to cheapen myself again for short-term happiness – although it wasn’t even happiness when I look back on it. From now on, I’m going to live my life with self-respect, with the hopes and dreams of a normal woman, and not those of an ageing slapper. And I’m going to clean up my living space too. Clean house, clean life.’

  ‘I say, Buffy. That’s a bit harsh, isn’t it, calling yourself a slapper? Don’t put yourself down so much. Remember: to thine own self be true.’

  ‘That’s exactly what I’m going to start to do. My life wasn’t a mad whirl of fun: it was a desperate whirl of disappointment and self-loathing,’ Buffy admitted, fully committed to the cause of being absolutely honest.

  Monica pulled a wry face and enquired, ‘Does that mean you’re not going to be interested in my latest exploits with my new conquest?’

  Buffy looked shocked, although she knew Monica wasn’t exactly faithful to Quentin, and never had been. ‘I don’t understand how you can do it, I really don’t,’ she hissed, lowering her voice as a waiter approached the table to see if everything was all right. ‘You’ve got what I always wanted, and you go risking it all for a stupid little roll in the hay.’

  ‘What do you mean, I’ve got what you always wanted? I thought you wanted lots of men and an exciting life.’

  ‘Yes.’ Buffy nodded sadly. ‘That’s what everyone thinks, but all I’ve ever wanted is what you’ve got. You’ve been married to the same man for, like, forever, and you’ve got your son Adrian. I know he’s grown up now and left home, but you still had him to play with and bring up and – oh, I don’t know – just to love.’