Dearest Enemy

by Alexandra Sellers

  “And you, of course, found it.”

  He wasn’t at all surprised. “You found it, too,” she said.

  Math nodded. She came into the room and up to him. He reached up to rest his arms around her waist and dropped a kiss against her stomach.

  “I broke the lamp before I’d seen it all. What is it? Is it a mine?”

  “Probably. Not a recent one.”

  “What, then?”

  “There are a few crumbling wooden artefacts, a couple of arrowheads. It probably hasn’t been worked since Roman times.”

  “What—lead?”

  He shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe gold. The Romans did mine both in Wales. Maybe tin. I don’t know enough about the geology of this area.”

  “Where does it come up?”

  “In the fortress. The shaft marked out of bounds.” He stood up. “I haven’t had lunch, have you?”

  Shaking her head, she followed him out to the kitchen. “It’s so exciting!” she said, as he poked in the fridge, looking for inspiration. “Aren’t you excited by it?”

  He came out with lettuce, cheese and eggs. “Well, it has its drawbacks. You’re very excited.”

  “Of course I am. Don’t you see it’s the way they came in?”

  “The way who came in?”

  “The arsonists. Whoever st—” She coughed. She had almost said “Whoever stole the tapestry.” “Whoever started the fire. They found the petrol in the passage and dragged it through into the cellar, and then escaped again via the tunnel. Can’t you see that?”

  He was beating eggs in a bowl. “Yes, I can see that. What I still can’t see is why.”

  She looked at him. That was the question. Why. And who. And whether anyone but Math could have a motive.

  * * *

  “Hello, Elain, forgive me for disturbing you,” Rosemary said.

  “No, no, I wasn’t working,” Elain said. “Do come in.”

  It was true—she had been lying on her bed reading the Mabinogion, and had dozed off over it. Rosemary’s knock had startled her awake, and she had jumped up without thinking and opened the door. Too late she remembered the painting of the hotel fire still on the easel, and the Mabinogion sketches scattered around the room. She had been trying to immerse herself in the epic. Elain didn’t care who saw her work once it was completed, but an unfinished piece was vulnerable. Especially to someone like Rosemary.

  “Have a seat,” she said, and turned quickly to open her paint case. The four clamps that held a wet oil painting were empty, and she quickly reached for the picture she was calling The Fire.

  “Have you recovered from your fall?”

  “Oh, yes. It wasn’t serious. I didn’t turn an ankle or anything.”

  “I suppose you went down the tunnel again.”

  If she admitted that, she might start a trend of adventuring, and she didn’t want everyone finding out about the way the tunnel continued. “No, I was out prospecting for new views, as it—”

  “Oh, my!” Rosemary cried in a high voice.

  At the sound of stifled panic in her voice, Elain turned. But Rosemary was merely gazing at the sketches from the Mabinogion.

  “How very interesting!” she began, in a tone that was already sending cold chills down Elain’s creative spine. “I wonder...” As quickly as she could, Elain piled them all up and turned the stack face down.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t like anyone to see an unfinished work,” she said. It was rude, but she couldn’t afford to be polite.

  “But could I not just see—” Rosemary broke off. She looked at Elain oddly. “I quite understand.” She clasped her hands together like a games mistress at a girls’ school. “I came to enlist your cooking skills for tonight’s meal. It’s Monday again.”

  * * *

  “What is it this time?” Elain demanded at the kitchen door. “The Carry On gang?”

  Math was standing over the stove with Myfanwy’s huge white apron wrapped around him and an egg lifter held up in his hand, watching a saucepan intently. Jeremy was standing, wringing his hands over a bowl of flour wrong way up on the floor. Vinnie, her face dusted with more flour, was energetically beating eggs. Mudpie and Bill were sniffing the flour, but without much hope of finding it edible.

  At the sound of her voice, Math turned. “Are you suggesting we don’t know what we’re doing?” he asked with a grin.

  “How do you get flour up off the floor?” Jeremy demanded, gingerly lifting the bowl. “Is there some way to save that lot?”

  “Oh, no!” said Vinnie softly, just as Elain said drily, “Not if you’re planning on feeding it to us after.”

  “But that was the last in the tin,” Jeremy replied, still worriedly gazing at the mound of flour.

  Mudpie was making scraping motions on the floor, trying to bury the offending mess. Bill sat on the floor, grinning up at Elain, while his friendly tail cut a swath through the pile of white stuff.

  Jeremy shrugged. What he wouldn’t accept from Elain and Vinnie by way of judgement, apparently, he was prepared to accept from the animals. “Do you think there’s any more flour, Math?”

  “Try the basement stores,” Math said, and then they all thought of the same thing at the same time, looked at each other and laughed. “But not the secret stores,” he added.

  “Of course,” Vinnie told them, “during the war, one would have picked that up and used it. Not once Bill and Mudpie had been at it, though, I suppose,” she added doubtfully.

  Jeremy wrung his hands. “It’s a real mess now, isn’t it?”

  Elain said, “I’ll look after the disaster if you like. You carry on cooking.” He gratefully left her to it, and disappeared down the stairs. Elain found a broom and held Bill still while she dusted off his backside and tail. “Your animals seem to have a thing about sitting in edible commodities,” she observed to Math.

  “With Bill it’s just fair comment,” Math said. “Mudpie was operating on the feminine principle.”

  “Which is what?”

  “A little attractive scent...”

  Elain, efficiently clearing up the mess, snorted with laughter and then, inhaling flour dust as a result, sneezed. “Whisky for perfume?” she asked disbelievingly.

  “That was no whisky. That was my Highland malt.”

  “What can I do now?” she asked when the floor was clean.

  “Sit and talk to us,” said Math. “Three cooks are already enough to spoil the broth, as you see.”

  “Oh—Rosemary told me I was needed down here.”

  “Jeremy stepped in.”

  For no good reason, she was suddenly remembering what Raymond had said about Jeremy. “He’s also eroding his principal. At the rate he’s spending, he’ll be without funds in three or four years.” Would Jeremy have the contacts to sell the tapestry, no questions asked? she wondered idly.

  And who else might need the money? It was a question she ought to be looking at. Not Vinnie—her deal with Math meant she was here for life. Even if she had stolen the tapestry, she’d have been unlikely to burn down her home to disguise the fact.

  She thought of Rosemary and the scene that had just passed in her room. Something had surprised her, made her suspicious of Elain. Suddenly Elain remembered that she had been putting away the painting of the fire when Rosemary had had that odd, immediately suppressed reaction. Yet why should that upset her? She must have known it was painted from imagination.

  “You’re preoccupied tonight,” Math said gently.

  Elain came to with a blink to find him bent over the back of her chair, smiling down at her. She smiled, because it was impossible not to smile at Math. But though she wasn’t really aware of it, the smile was shadowed by a frown deep in her eyes.

  “What’s up?” Math asked, and in spite of herself, she felt comforted. “What’s worrying you, Elain?”

  Of course it showed. She wasn’t really of spy calibre. She’d never before had to be on a job so intensely, or for so long. She’d never fallen in
love with a suspect before, either. It was hard for her to hide her feelings from Math.

  She glanced around the room. Jeremy was on the other side of the kitchen, mixing something in the magimix. Vinnie had disappeared. She began hesitantly, “Has it ever occurred to you that—that someone might have started the fire in order to disguise the fact that they’d stolen the tapestry?”

  If he’d been concerned before, he was staggered now. “What?” So far as she could tell, it was pure surprise. “The tapestry stolen? Why do you think so?”

  “Because there’s no other obvious motive.”

  “You can hardly call this obvious. Unless—what makes you think the tapestry didn’t burn?”

  She wished she could tell him the truth. “I don’t know. The fire was started right under that room, wasn’t it?”

  He frowned as though what she said was really making him think. Then he shook his head. “It can’t be. The loss assessor took samples of the burnt fabric. If it wasn’t the tapestry, they’d know about it.” He looked at her. “They can date the fabric, even though it’s been burnt.”

  “Did the loss assessor tell you that?”

  He shrugged. “He didn’t have to. It’s just something I know. It’s the kind of thing archaeologists do, you know.”

  So at least he could not have hoped to fool the insurance company by stealing his own tapestry and then claiming it had burnt. He was innocent of that fraud.

  “They haven’t said any—” She broke off as Jeremy silenced his machine.

  “Right, then! Here’s the batter,” he called, coming across the room with a big bowl.

  “What are we having?” Elain asked brightly.

  “Crêpes,” said Jeremy. “Math’s forgotten specialty, apparently.”

  * * *

  They all sat at the round table again, as was the custom now on Mondays. It was Elain’s fourth Monday, which meant she had been here exactly three weeks. She marvelled that a life could change so profoundly in three short weeks.

  Math was beside her tonight, and she remembered that first night, when she had been so relieved not to have to sit beside him. She had been nervous of him, thinking him dangerous, not even guessing that she thought him dangerous because she was so powerfully attracted to him. She almost laughed now, looking at him, to think she could have been so blind. Math was so sexy, so warm, and his eyes were so full of promise when he looked at her. She must have taken it all in subliminally, but not a drop of it had reached consciousness.

  It was ridiculous to suspect him of anything, and she knew it suddenly and clearly. For a start, if Math had had some reason to want to torch his own hotel, he would never have risked people’s lives to do it. She knew that now. Except for these past few nervous days, she had always known it.

  There was someone else. Some other reason. Whatever the logic of the situation said, and most of it pointed to Math, the logic was wrong. There was some factor she hadn’t discovered yet, that was all.

  She smiled into his eyes, eating the food he had cooked, and made up her mind. Raymond would bellow if he found out. He might fire her. But she didn’t care. Tonight, she would tell Math everything. Maybe he had information she didn’t. If they pooled their data, they might come up with something.

  “So, we all take turns, do we, on Monday nights?” Brian Arthur asked ponderously, when they had finished dessert. He hadn’t spoken much up to now. “I’m not a fancy cook, myself. Shepherd’s pie, bangers and mash, I’m your man for that.”

  “You’ll be staying on, will you?” Elain asked sweetly, mistrusting his genial stupidity.

  He looked at her, the stolid look that Raymond sometimes adopted, hiding his brain behind a surface slowness. “Well, you know, next week. You’re here permanently, are you?”

  Ouch. “Not at the moment,” she said.

  “Working girl, are you?” he pursued. He had the knack of rooting for information while looking as though he were only laboriously trying to make social conversation.

  “Yes, I am,” she said dismissively, smiling and turning to Vinnie.

  But before she could open her mouth on a word, Brian Arthur said, “What do you work at, then?”

  For a horrified moment, she thought he knew and was baiting her. Then she told herself that that was impossible. He was asking questions as she had done, to try and get a lead, somewhere to start looking her up.

  “I paint pictures,” she said flatly. “What do you do, Brian? I mean, you’re a working boy, are you?”

  Davina tittered nervously at the blatant hostility in her tone.

  “Oh, this and that,” he said, avoiding the answer with an ease that infuriated Elain. “You make a living, do you, painting?”

  He was way ahead on points. Trying to see a way out of where he was heading, Elain felt herself getting tongue-tied.

  Math stood up. “I’ve got a phone call to make this evening,” he said, excusing himself. He squeezed her shoulder in a wordless signal that she knew meant he hoped she’d go to his flat.

  She flicked a smile up at him and gave the most invisible of nods, but Vinnie was smiling away at them, so she doubted anyone was fooled.

  Brian Arthur said his good-nights not long after, and Elain wasn’t sorry. She didn’t want to have to deal with him any more tonight. They all stood and began clearing the table, and Olwen came out and collected the trolley. People began moving in the direction of the sitting room, but Elain went on to the stairs.

  She stopped at her room for a few minutes and then headed up the stairs. Mudpie was waiting at the door.

  “There’s no point rubbing my legs. There’ll be no more whisky for you,” she told the cat sternly. “It would be more than my life’s worth.”

  Either the cat didn’t believe her, or else bore no hard feelings for what was not Elain’s fault. She purred ferociously and arched up on her back legs to rub herself against Elain.

  The light was on in the sitting room. Math was already here. Calling hello, Elain paused to drop a few things in the bathroom, picked up a vociferous Mudpie, and then moved on to the sitting room, crooning and scratching the cat’s ear.

  He hadn’t answered her. Frowning a little, but with no sense of foreboding, Elain rounded the corner into the sitting room. Math was sitting on the sofa, and he had some papers in front of him.

  “Business?” she asked, smiling because she knew that whatever it was, he would stop now. She had that kind of power over him; that he would not want to be doing any more paperwork tonight.

  Then Math looked at her, his jaw clenched, and she knew she was a child playing with a tiger. She had no power over him at all, and she never would have.

  “Math!” she breathed.

  He stood up, facing her. “Do you know a man named Raymond Derby, Elain?” he asked softly, and the look in his eyes was turning her to stone.

  Chapter 16

  “I can explain,” Elain said desperately. But even if there had been something to say, she couldn’t have formed the words. Not with him looking at her like that.

  He closed his eyes as if to ward off a blow. He hadn’t believed it, she saw. Whatever he had been told, he hadn’t believed it until he heard her offer to explain.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. The cat leaped from her arms as she ran across to him. “Math, I—”

  He opened his eyes then, and she stopped as if she’d run into one of the stone walls on the hillside. She stood in the dock of his accusing stare, motionless, her heart thudding. “Let me hear it straight,” he said. “You’re a detective? A private investigator?”

  She swallowed, and the old helplessness came over her, tying her tongue in knots, as it had used to do when they made fun of her. “I was going to tell you tonight,” she cried. “I was going to—”

  “You’re working for the insurer of the hotel?”

  She was silent.

  “Are you the reason they’re refusing to settle the claim? Something you told them? Something you think you found out while
you were getting me to spill my guts in bed?”

  She swallowed, staring at him.

  “Answer me, dammit!” he said harshly.

  “No,” she said. She coughed to clear her constricted throat. “No. They sent me because they suspected you already.”

  “Suspected me? Of what, for God’s sake? A fraudulent claim? The place is gutted. They’ve seen it.”

  She had never seen anything so cold as his eyes. She had been wrong, they were all wrong. Hell was not a place of fire, but of ice. She had died and this was her hell—Math looking at her as if she had never touched him, as though he didn’t think her human.

  “Of arson.”

  There was silence as she counted her heartbeats. How amazing that it should still be functioning.

  “Dammit to hell,” he said, softly and precisely. “You’ve been waiting for me to confess to the arson of my own house? The place went up like bracken. It was pure luck the whole thing didn’t go. We might all have died.”

  “I don’t think you did it. I never believed you did—well, only at first. I’ve been trying to prove you didn’t,” she said desperately.

  He was watching her levelly, but nothing was reaching him. “Innocence doesn’t get proven, Elain. Only guilt. Or do the insurers feel otherwise?”

  “No, I don’t— Of course they think— But I—” She stopped. Nothing was possible. No explanation could excuse any part of what she had done. It stood revealed now in all its unforgivable detail. Even if she had confessed tonight, she saw, there would have been no way to justify herself. She had been dreaming when she thought there was a way out.

  “Math, I love you,” she whispered. “I do love you.”

  He gave a crack of laughter. “I’ll just bet you do,” he said.

  She took her courage in both hands. “You love me. Don’t you?” she pleaded, and she had never been more naked than she was now, under that black, raking gaze that stripped her down beyond skin, beyond bones, right to her heart. And it was being torn from its roots, with a pain that she had felt once before, long ago....

  She knew what he had said before he said it. She had heard it in another lifetime.