False Diamond--An Abbot Agency Mystery

by Veronica Heley

  Bea ushered her into Maggie’s office and showed her to a seat. ‘Milk and sugar in your tea? Did you get to finish your lunch before the sky fell on you?’

  The child sat, wary, wide-eyed. ‘I wasn’t hungry.’ A tiny voice, barely audible.

  Bea handed her a cup of tea and indicated the biscuit tin. ‘You hid the ring in your boot? It must have been painful to walk on.’

  Dilys twitched a smile. ‘Yes, it was.’

  ‘May I see it?’

  Dilys placed it on the table. Bea gave it a cursory glance and decided the old terror next door knew what she’d been talking about. The colour was wrong. The cut was flashy but didn’t convince. Zircon, definitely.

  ‘Did you want a diamond for an engagement ring? Personally, diamond rings make my hands look dirty. I prefer sapphires.’

  Dilys wriggled. ‘Daddy introduced Ben to a jeweller friend of his and arranged for him to buy me a diamond ring. And he did. It was a beauty.’

  Past tense. Was a beauty.

  ‘You call your husband “Ben”?’

  ‘His full name is Benjamin Benton, but most people just call him Benton.’

  ‘You were not consulted about the ring?’

  ‘No, it was a lovely surprise.’

  ‘And a relief, too, if you were already pregnant?’

  The girl ducked her head.

  Bea wondered if the girl had been consulted about her options at that stage, either. As the aged Mr Holland’s only child, she could have had the baby and been well looked after, without being pushed into marrying a man of doubtful quality.

  Dilys breathed, ‘He loved me to distraction. He begged me to marry him. He went down on one knee. It was wonderful. I’d never thought such a thing would ever happen to me.’

  Bea diagnosed a terminal lack of self-worth. ‘Your father was pleased?’

  ‘Oh yes. Ben was head salesman of the company and it was as if it were meant. Daddy bought us the sweetest little town house and we had a lovely wedding at our country place, but we didn’t go abroad for a honeymoon because I was being sick all the time.’

  Bea could see it all. The men arranged everything to their satisfaction, and the girl – pregnancy sick and immature for her age – had gone along with it. ‘When did you first notice something was wrong with the ring?’

  A wriggle. ‘Nothing’s wrong with it.’

  ‘Dilys, I can’t help you if you don’t come clean. Of course you noticed. Most young brides wear their engagement ring all the time—’

  ‘Well, I didn’t because I was being sick so much. I was worried about it slipping off my finger and going down the sink.’

  ‘Let me guess. Ben said he’d get it altered for a better fit for you, but when it was returned from the jewellers you didn’t wear it then, either, because it felt and looked slightly different.’

  The girl recited, ‘He loves me, he only thinks of what’s best for me.’

  Bea sighed. ‘You keep saying that he loves you, but you don’t say that you love him.’

  A tinge of colour. ‘Of course I do.’ The wide eyes became wider. Terror loomed.

  Bea said, in her softest tone, ‘You’re afraid of him. Does he hit you?’

  ‘No, no, no!’ Tears threatened. ‘Of course not.’

  A lie? ‘Then what are you afraid of?’

  ‘Nothing. He’s just … He can be very sharp. If he knew that I’d let you see the ring, that you were trying to make me say awful things about him … I really do love him. Of course I do.’

  ‘But …?’

  Dilys gulped. ‘It’s not his fault. It’s mine. He gets frustrated because I’m so stupid. I need to understand how silly I’ve been, so that I don’t show him up in front of other people.’

  ‘He criticizes you?’

  ‘It’s for my own good. I mean, I knew the business wasn’t doing so well, and I thought that I might be able to help, because I used to go into the office and help out before I was married, but he made me see I’d be worse than useless.’

  Ouch. Bea held on to her temper. She wanted to slap someone, and that someone wasn’t Dilys. ‘How is he with the children?’

  ‘Oh, fine. At least, with the boys. They’re so like him, take after him, he’s so proud of them, you wouldn’t believe how much he indulges them.’

  ‘I seem to remember you have a little girl as well.’

  ‘My little girl is like me, a bit stupid, you know? But he only tells her off for her own good.’

  ‘Does he criticize you both in front of the boys?’

  Dilys wrung her hands. ‘The boys understand how silly we are. It’s all in good part. They laugh, he tells them to laugh, and I don’t like it much, but … I wish I were dead.’ Dilys hung her head. Her arms went around her shoulders. Her hair hung over her face.

  ‘Your dying won’t help your children.’

  ‘That’s what I keep telling myself. I have to learn how to be a better wife and mother, I have to be honest with myself, and when I’ve done something awful, I must apologize and try to do better.’ The girl’s tears overflowed once more.

  Bea was silent. Sybil’s instincts were correct. Benton was a turd of the first water. Could you have a turd of the first water? No, that was for diamonds, wasn’t it? Oh, forget it. ‘Assuming that he did substitute a fake for the original diamond, have you any idea what he did with the money? Another woman?’

  Dilys mumbled into her hankie. ‘No, no! He wouldn’t! He loves me.’

  ‘Gambling debts?’

  ‘Oh, no! How could you think that!’ She seemed genuinely shocked at the idea.

  It must have been another woman, then. Dilys would have guessed as soon as it happened, but not dared to do anything about it. She had no brothers, her father was a broken reed and her husband was a bully. What’s more, Benton was now managing director of the firm which provided them all with a living.

  All Dilys had on her side was an aunt. And what an aunt! Dilys ought to be grateful to Sybil, but probably wasn’t.

  Bea wondered what sort of mistress would have taken Benton’s fancy. Someone blonde and full-bodied. A total opposite to the dumpy, badly-presented little girl he’d seduced and married.

  ‘He took the money from the diamond and gave it to his mistress?’

  Dilys blew her nose. ‘You don’t understand. It was a boy-girl thing from before we were married. He stopped seeing her when he met me but she’d got into debt and he wanted to help her out, so … Anyway, he told me all about it when I noticed about the ring, which I did straight away, and he said it was all right because everything he had was mine, and mine was his, and it had got him out of a terrible hole. Of course, I understood how it had been, and we agreed never to mention it again.’

  ‘How do you know the affair’s not still going on?’

  ‘She died.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Oh, yes. She was run over late at night soon after that – in the October, just one year after we were married – in a quiet cul de sac. He was so shocked. He told me the next day, just gave me the facts, couldn’t talk about it. He said he wasn’t going to think any more about it and I shouldn’t, either. He’s very sensitive, you see. I have to remember that.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Bea, not believing a word of it. ‘Now, shall we go and get that ring appraised?’

  TWO

  ‘We can’t!’ said Dilys, delving into her handbag with fingers that shook. Trying to find a hankie?

  ‘Watch me!’ said Bea, pushing a box of tissues towards the girl.

  ‘You don’t understand. I can’t upset things or we’ll all be ruined. Auntie—’

  ‘What about Auntie?’ said that redoubtable female, entering the room. Dilys stifled a scream. ‘I’m bored, hanging around, waiting for you to see sense. Are you ready to have the ring appraised yet? Mrs Abbot, I was sure I could rely on you.’

  Dilys said, ‘Auntie, you startled me! We mustn’t do anything to upset Ben or we’ll all be out on the street.’
<
br />   ‘Tell that to the birds!’ The mink coat seated herself on a typing chair. She’d been followed in by the man in the shadows, but he still didn’t seem interested in taking a hand in the game.

  Dilys took a tissue and began to shred it. ‘Daddy gave Ben some shares in the company when we got married. And he asked me to give him mine for his last birthday, to add to those he already had. So I did.’

  ‘What!’ Sybil Holland’s face paled under the make-up. The blusher on her cheeks stood out by contrast.

  ‘Yes,’ whispered Dilys. ‘So you see, Ben can’t be touched. Daddy will always support Ben, you know that he will, and now he can outvote you so there’s nothing you can do about it. I’m so afraid that if Ben gets bored with me, he’ll sue me for divorce, and we’d lose our house and have to take the children away from their schools and live in a rented flat somewhere, and I’d have to go out to work which I know I wouldn’t be any good at, and then the children would run wild and get into trouble and end up in prison and I can’t bear the thought of it.’

  The shadowy man laid his hand on Dilys’s shoulder by way of comfort.

  The harridan’s face was a picture of shock, horror!

  Bea looked from one stricken face to the other and wondered how much Max had known about all this.

  ‘So you see,’ said Dilys, sniffing, ‘we can’t query the ring, and we can’t say anything to anybody about it.’

  Sybil took a deep breath. Her colour was returning to normal though there was the very slightest suggestion that her head shook on her neck. ‘I see that I have been remiss, involved as I have been in my own affairs, and living so far away.’ She caught Bea’s eye. ‘Florida. The climate agrees with me, and the society in which I move is … But I ought not to have let things slide.’

  Bea began to like the old dear.

  Sybil’s lips tightened. ‘I only came over this time because my brother got into a panic about … Though I’m sure it’s a storm in a teacup. But, added to the cut in my Holland and Butcher dividend, it caused me to cancel a cruise to the Bahamas. Looking back, I see I’ve been living in a fool’s paradise. I hadn’t bothered to keep abreast of developments.’

  Dilys said, ‘There’s nothing whatever we can do about it. I begged you not to go on and on about the ring and—’

  ‘Now, what on earth do we do? And don’t say “nothing”. I am not accustomed to sitting down when hit by a truck. Up and at ’em, I say.’ She chewed on her lip, then turned to face Bea. ‘Well, now you know how things stand, Mrs Abbot, your involvement becomes a matter not just of convenience but of life and death for everyone concerned.’

  ‘No,’ said Bea. ‘Wouldn’t touch it with a bargepole.’

  ‘I dare say you do recoil from the prospect,’ said the mink coat, getting to her feet and, incredibly, lighting another cigarette. ‘I can quite see it would mean a move out of your comfort zone to come to our rescue, but there it is; it appears we’ve all got to take action if we’re to survive. You’ll want to speak to your son about this, no doubt. I’ll leave you my card. Ring me tonight or tomorrow morning before ten. I have an appointment at the osteopath’s at eleven and he lives in some far flung suburb which is probably inhabited solely by members of the third world living on benefits. And don’t tell me I shouldn’t say such things, because at my age I’ll speak as I find. Now, you can get one of your girls to summon me a taxi, and I’ll be out of your hair. Dilys, I’ll drop you off on the way home, right?’

  Bea saw the two women off into a taxi before returning to her office to open the window, despite the chilly air outside, and let herself relax into her chair. She passed her hand across her eyes.

  What a mess!

  Could Max really have got himself tangled with the affairs of H & B? So much so that he’d be in financial trouble if Bea refused to help them out? Sybil had hinted as much, but … No, surely Max wouldn’t have been so naive. Or would he?

  Perhaps the lady had been shading the truth – Bea wouldn’t put it past her to do so – and Max was not heavily involved.

  But if he was …?

  Bea reached for the phone and paused with hand outstretched, for someone – a man – was sitting at the back of the room. The man who’d kept to the shadows throughout that difficult visit. He’d come in with the two women, but not left with them.

  She stilled her breathing. He was no threat, was he?

  He stood up, smiling. A tall man of about her own age. Solidly built, wearing an expensive camel-hair car coat over a good, grey pinstripe suit. A tan, a gold signet ring, an excellent haircut and shave. Mid to light brown hair and plenty of it, somewhat unruly. Dark brown eyes, smiling, smiling. A slightly crooked nose hinted that he was no pushover.

  ‘May I congratulate you, Mrs Abbot, on your skill in dealing with my tiresome relatives? You are everything they said you were.’

  She glared at him. ‘And who might you be?’

  ‘Leon, the black sheep of the Holland family. Much younger brother to Hector and Sybil. An afterthought, as you might say. In fact, a total shock to my parents. And before you jump down my throat, may I assure you that I have nothing whatever to do with the firm of Holland and Butcher or with the parent company, Holland Holdings. I have no money invested in H & B. What’s more, I have no intention of pumping money into a sinking ship, and my reading of their balance sheet inclines me to think the company is going down as inevitably as the Titanic. My sister invited me to have lunch with her to meet my almost unknown niece, whom I had last seen when she was at school and monosyllabic about everything except some pop star or other. I accepted without realizing we were booked for melodramatics.’

  He shook his sister’s cigarette stubs – there were three of them – out of the window, and closed it. ‘That’s enough fresh air for the time being, don’t you think?’

  He was charming, of course. And knew it. An interesting face, well-used, with sharp creases over his upper eyelids. He sat on a corner of her desk, smiling down at her. Always smiling, telling her without words how much he appreciated her looks and, well, everything about her.

  She found herself smiling back, even while one part of her brain was waving a red flag. ‘You do realize that I’m not going to get involved in their mess.’

  ‘Neither am I.’ He picked up one of the agency cards on her desk. ‘This is your business phone number? Give me your mobile number as well, will you? It might be useful.’

  She didn’t see why it should be, but gave him one of her personal cards as well.

  ‘Care to have dinner with me tonight?’

  She had to laugh. She knew her colour had heightened. ‘Certainly not.’

  ‘I’ve sold my chain of dry-cleaners for a good price, I’m single with no dependants, I am buying a flat in the Barbican for weekends, and I promise I come with no strings attached.’

  She shook her head. ‘Even I can see you come with strings attached. Your powers of persuasion—’

  ‘Equal yours? It would be interesting to discuss them over a decent meal. Our lunch was somewhat, er, curtailed, and I have an appetite for more.’

  He didn’t just mean an appetite for food. He was gazing at her cleavage with appreciation. She hadn’t thought she had much of a cleavage when she’d pulled on a grey jersey wrap-around dress that morning, but he seemed to think she had. Her colour rose further, and she pushed back her chair. Hints of a good cologne wafted towards her. Better than cigarette smoke, of course, but … ‘No, thank you. I have other plans for the evening.’

  ‘Ah. You’ll wish to speak to your son, Max. Of course.’

  ‘You know him?’

  ‘No. But the luncheon was informative. I admire Sybil, don’t you?’

  She said, ‘Yes,’ without thinking.

  He made his way to the door. ‘She doesn’t give up easily, and neither do I. Tomorrow night, shall we say? I’ll send a car for you at eight.’

  ‘No, I …’ But he’d disappeared.

  ‘Bother,’ said Bea. Then laugh
ed. It occurred to her that she’d been working hard for a long time, that the cold, wet weather was depressing, and that she could do with being pampered for a change.

  But. She reached out her hand to ring Max, and the phone trilled.

  Snap! It was Max himself on the phone. ‘Mother, how are you doing? Thought we might have a bite to eat together this evening. The wife and son are still up in the cold north, and I’m all by myself till Parliament reconvenes.’

  ‘I’d like that. There’s something I want to discuss with you.’

  ‘Eight o’clock? There’s a new restaurant opened in South Kensington. Thought we might try that. Capello’s. I’ll book a table now I know you’re free.’ He rang off.

  Bea relaxed. Max was always one of the first to sniff out a new restaurant. He liked his food. In fact, his lean good looks were fast becoming a thing of the past, the outlines of his face and body becoming blurred with good living. It would be good to see him again and to hear news of her delightful little grandson. She missed him when he went up to the constituency in the holidays. Bea knew the other grandparents spoiled him to death, and that they had to have their turn at looking after him, but … Well, she was fortunate to have a son who wanted to take her out to dinner.

  Now, back to work. A long-time client was complaining about the bill, saying the ingredients supplied for her supper party for twenty close friends were substandard. Now, who had been assigned to that event? The client usually asked for … Hadn’t that particular chef been available for some reason?

  She concentrated.

  At a quarter to eight Bea checked to see if her skirt was revealing anything untoward. The current fashion for short skirts meant they were usually worn without a petticoat but she thought they hung better with one. Her new, moss-green skirt went well with an old but still fashionable beaded, cream silk top. So, yes, she looked all right.

  She left a note for Maggie, who was out for the evening. She fed Winston, their overweight cat, shrugged on her dark-grey coat, collected her evening bag, summoned a taxi, set the alarm and let herself out of the house.

  It wasn’t far to the new restaurant, and it looked as if it were becoming popular since her cab drew up in a queue of idling motors, all waiting to deposit their passengers at the front door.