Tait, the divisional crime prevention officer, gave her his official frown. ‘I take your point, of course; naturally you want to keep the pieces where you can see them. But you must realize that a collection like this makes your house an obvious target for burglars. One of them got in easily enough last night. You were lucky this time, but with the publicity you’ll get when that magazine article appears—’
He gave her a friendly lecture and she listened meekly, nodding with contrition as he took her on a tour of her inadequately secured windows and doors. She promised to call in a reputable locksmith; Tait told her that he would come again to make sure that she had done so. She offered him a drink and Tait – remembering that he had officially gone off duty half an hour earlier – accepted. Another half-hour passed rapidly and agreeably before he rose reluctantly from his armchair.
‘I hope we meet again,’ he said. ‘Socially, of course.’
She stood back and considered him, an incipient smile denting the corners of her mouth. Making up her mind how far she intended to go? Tait grinned at her in return, quietly confident.
‘Why not?’ she said pleasantly. And then: ‘As a matter of fact I’m having a party next Friday evening, to celebrate the publication of my new book. Would you like to come? Any time after nine.’
She was eager, then; so much the better. But she must have sensed his complacency because she added quickly, ‘Bring a girl, if you’d like to. There’ll be too many men anyway, there always are at my parties. Yes, do bring a girl.’
Not a bad idea at that, Tait thought: a useful way of entertaining one of his local girl-friends at no expense, combined with an opportunity of becoming better acquainted with an attractive older woman. What more could a man ask for?
He thanked her, and followed her to the door. ‘And remember,’ he added, ‘from now on, if you hear any suspicious noises in the night, dial 999 from your bedroom. Don’t come down to investigate. You could get yourself killed doing that, you know.’
Chapter Two
In his office at Breckham Market Divisional Police Headquarters, Detective Chief Inspector Quantrill looked through his sergeant’s report on the previous day’s work.
‘This woman,’ he said, skimming the last page. ‘You’d think she’d have more sense. Doesn’t she know that it’s asking for trouble to have her house described in a magazine article? It’s an open invitation to any villain who wants easy pickings.’
‘She realizes that now,’ said Tait. ‘The abortive break-in on Monday night really shook her, and the article hasn’t even been published yet. She showed me an advance copy. No address given, of course: just the information that she lives alone in a delightful country cottage set in a big garden in unspoiled North Suffolk, not far from sleepy little Breckham Market … you’ve read the sort of thing.’
‘Squit,’ agreed the Chief Inspector with Suffolk dismissiveness. He knew too much about country life to have any time for people who imagined it to be idyllic. ‘And I suppose there’s a photograph, to make the place easily identifiable?’
‘Of course. But because there’s no address in the article, and because her telephone number’s ex-directory, she thought that no one would be able to trace her.’
Quantrill sighed over the folly of it. ‘She’s not just inviting trouble, she’s begging for it … How come she’s featured in a magazine, anyway?’
‘Publicity. She’s a romantic novelist.’
‘Hah!’ said Quantrill, who had no time for romantic novelists either. ‘Jasmine Woods … that’s not her real name, then?’
‘Yes it is. She married a man named Potter, but preferred to use her unmarried name for her books.’
‘Hmm. Yes, well, that’s understandable. What happened to Mr Potter?’
‘They’re divorced.’
‘Very romantic,’ observed Quantrill censoriously. He had been brought up to believe that it is morally wrong for married couples to admit that they have made a mistake; a marriage, he thought, was something you were stuck with and had to make the best of. ‘And does this magazine article make it clear that she’s got a houseful of valuables?’
‘Clear enough – it mentions her love of jade and netsuke, and that’ll draw the intelligent professionals.’
‘Jade and what?’ Quantrill asked.
‘Netsuke – they’re miniature Japanese sculptures in wood and ivory,’ Tait explained authoritatively, without a flicker of shame from his stiff fair eyelashes. ‘They were used in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as toggles to fasten the men’s purses to the sashes of their kimonos. They’ve been completely undervalued until recently, but now they’re fetching a packet.’
‘Ah,’ said Quantrill, accepting it as a fact that there was no limit to the breadth of his sergeant’s knowledge; that, he assumed enviously, was what a good education did for you. ‘Well, we shall have to keep an eye on that particular patch of unspoiled North Suffolk in the near future.’
‘I intend to,’ said Tait.
‘Oh yes? Attractive, is she?’
‘Very. And she’s invited me to a party on Friday.’
‘She’s probably planning to have you for supper afterwards. You want to watch out with older women, boy,’ Quantrill advised him kindly, from hearsay not personal experience. ‘They can get their hooks into a young man and ruin his career.’
Tait smiled confidently. ‘Don’t worry about that, sir, I can look after my own interests. Anyway,’ he added fairly, ‘she’s nowhere near old enough to be my mother, you know. And she did say that I could take a girl with me to the party.’
‘Generous of her. Jasmine Woods …’ Quantrill scratched his chin. ‘I’m sure I’ve heard the name.’
‘Two romantic novels a year for the past ten years, and every one a bestseller, apparently. Perhaps Mrs Quantrill reads them?’
‘More than likely,’ said her husband disparagingly. ‘It must pay, then, this writing business?’
‘According to Jasmine Woods, it certainly does.’
Quantrill fumbled in his trouser pocket, looked at his small change, and found that he would have to break into a pound note to buy them a pint of lunch-time bitter apiece at the Coney and Thistle.
‘We’re in the wrong job, Martin,’ he said.
Chapter Three
The Quantrills lived at Number 5 Benidorm Avenue, a road built in Breckham Market by a local developer in the late 1960s and named after his favourite holiday resort.
The houses were semi-detached. Quantrill had been a sergeant when he had first taken out his mortgage, and a semi was all he could afford; a step up, anyway, from a police house. He and Molly had been so proud of their status as owner-occupiers of a brand new house that he had had great difficulty in preventing her from giving their property a name, instead of using the number. The prevailing fashion had been to concoct house names from the abbreviated names of the owners, or of their children. Quantrill, with apprehensive guesses at what his wife might suggest if she put her mind to it – Doug-Moll? Jen-Al-Pete? – insisted that they lived at Number 5, and fixed the numeral to both front door and gate to prove it.
On the day after Alison’s return, four of the family sat at supper trying to think of something to say to each other. It was a meal from which Quantrill was frequently absent, because of the irregular hours he worked. Left to themselves, he knew, Molly and fourteen-year-old Peter ate sandwiches in front of the television set. He preferred to fry bacon and egg for himself when he came in, and to eat it in peace in the kitchen.
But Alison was home, for the first time – apart from quick weekends – for eighteen months, and so a display of family solidarity was called for. As on the previous evening, the meal had been set in the dining area of the main room, under the supervisory stare of a herd of wild elephants, one of Boots’best-selling framed prints. To Peter’s chagrin the television set had been turned off. Conversation was required, but with Alison melancholic and Molly fretting over her and trying to coax her to eat, it w
as hard going.
They had all, Alison included, made a special effort to be bright the previous evening; fortunately there had been Jennifer, her elder sister, a nurse at Guy’s Hospital, to talk about. But now the topic of Jennifer was exhausted; Peter was sulking over a missed television programme; Quantrill and his wife had nothing to say to each other; and Alison had resumed the desolate air of a space traveller who has landed on an uninhabited planet. Quantrill wondered guiltily how long it would be before they could all stop pretending to togetherness and revert to their usual practices; a fried egg in the kitchen, with the East Anglian Daily Press for company, had never seemed so desirable.
‘Are you warm enough, Alison?’ Molly asked. The houses had been built when electricity was a relatively cheap fuel, and the room was heated by a system of ducted air. There was a fireplace, but it had been designed merely as a decorative feature to house an electric appliance disguised as a blazing log. Quantrill hated the phoney fire, disliked ducted air heating, and was appalled by the running costs of the system; but as he could not afford to move, this seemed to be yet another part of his life that he was stuck with.
Molly, on the other hand, enjoyed the trouble-free cleanliness of electric heating. She worked part-time as the local doctor’s receptionist, and was on the committee of the Women’s Institute as well as being an active member of the Breckham Market and district amateur operatic society, and she had quite enough to do without coping with a real fire. She enjoyed the sight of the simulated flames flickering over the simulated log; cosy, and with no messy grate to clear up afterwards.
‘Alison,’ she repeated patiently, the skin at the outer corners of her mild brown eyes puckering with concern, ‘are you warm enough, dear?’
The girl continued to stare down at her unwanted food, absently pushing a long strand of hair behind her ear when it threatened to dip into her plate. ‘Yes, thank you,’ she murmured.
Molly give a bright, uncertain smile. ‘That’s good,’ she said.
She longed to know the reason for her daughter’s sudden homecoming. An unhappy love affair, that was obvious; but Molly would have liked the detail, the who-with and the how-far and the what-next. Douglas had assured her that there was nothing to worry about and had instructed her not to plague the girl with questions, but it was not his edict that deterred her. She had asked Alison nothing because she knew perfectly well that her daughter would not confide in her.
Molly Quantrill very much regretted the lack of closeness in her family. She blamed it, to a large extent, on the influence of the grammar school; she was proud that her daughters had gone there, but at the same time she resented the fact that the girls had grown so far away from her. What with that and with Douglas’s rapid promotion, from sergeant to chief inspector in four years, she felt left behind, unregarded. Even Peter, her favourite child – now making bored one-handed inroads into his food, with surreptitious contributions to the cat – had grown secretive. Perhaps that was to be expected with an adolescent boy, but a girl ought to be closer to her mother; she herself had told her mother everything—
Well, not everything, of course. Molly glanced at Alison and then at her husband. The girl had such a look of her father about her, and Douggie as a young man had been darkly handsome; still was, despite the scattering of grey hairs, and the weight he had put on. Molly remembered the irresistible way he had gazed at her soon after they had first met, the pleading look in his green eyes, the persuasiveness of his tongue … no, she hadn’t told her mother everything, not by a long way. Perhaps she had no right to expect her own daughter’s confidence.
‘Eat your supper while it’s hot, Alison,’ she said. ‘And Peter, do sit up and use your knife and fork properly. And stop encouraging that cat, or it’ll have to go outside.’
Quantrill cleared his throat and prepared to contribute to the conversation. Ordinarily he made a point of never mentioning any aspect of his work at home, but anything that seemed likely to divert his wife’s attention from Alison was worth a try.
‘Tell you who young Martin Tait went to see yesterday, Molly. A woman writer who lives out at Thirling – Jasmine Woods.’
Molly’s mouth fell open with excitement. ‘Jasmine Woods! She’s my favourite author.’ Her eyes shone at her husband over a poised, pallid forkful of cauliflower and mashed potato and Bird’s Eye cod-in-butter-sauce. ‘I never knew she lived in Suffolk, never mind three miles from here! She’s not in any trouble, is she?’
‘No, of course not,’ said Quantrill. ‘Martin was just making routine enquiries. He seems to have made a good impression on Jasmine Woods, though. She’s invited him to go to a party and to take one of his girl friends.’
‘The lucky boy!’ Molly’s plump face looked dewily maternal, envious of her husband’s sergeant’s good fortune. ‘Oh, if only we could go instead, Douggie …’
‘It’s not me she fancies,’ pointed out Quantrill, who hated being called Douggie.
Molly straightened her back. ‘I should think not,’ she said primly. ‘After all, you’re a married man—’
Quantrill would have liked to comment that even married men are human, and that fancying – or loving, come to that – takes no account of marital status on either side; but he prudently filled his mouth with overdone cauliflower instead. No point now, when last year’s love for another woman had finally dulled to an intermittent ache, in arousing his wife’s suspicions. Her gullibility was a permanent reproach to him. Apparently it had never occurred to her, when he offered to buy the sheepskin coat that she coveted, that he was making a belated attempt to ease his conscience.
Molly turned to her daughter, glad of something to talk about. ‘You like Jasmine Woods, too, don’t you Alison? I’m reading her latest now – well, not her very latest, there’s such a long waiting list at the library. This one’s called The English Governess. It’s one of her best. It’s all about this girl who goes to St Petersburg before the Russian Revolution—’ her face was pink with animation, and for a moment Quantrill thought that they were going to hear every convolution of the plot; but Molly, whose contribution to the amateur operatic society was confined to the outer fringe of the chorus and helping with the costumes, suddenly felt that she was making herself conspicuous. ‘Well, anyway,’ she finished lamely, ‘I’m just on the last chapter. I’ll pass it on to you, if you like.’
To Quantrill’s pleasure, Alison assented with what sounded almost like enthusiasm. She had actually been taking an interest in what her mother was saying, and he congratulated himself on having introduced a topic that had taken her mind off her problems, if only for a few moments. A pity that she had said so decisively that she didn’t want to meet young Tait, though; Quantrill was confident that, with a little persuasion, his sergeant would have made a point of inviting his daughter to Jasmine Woods’s party.
Molly Quantrill’s mind was moving in the same direction. She had seen Martin Tait several times and had found him charming – well-spoken, flatteringly attentive and just a little awe-inspiring: a very clever and attractive young man, and just the right age for Alison.
She exercised her tact, waiting until she had served her family with canned pears and cream before saying casually to her husband, ‘Isn’t it about time we had Martin Tait to supper again? I’m sure he doesn’t feed himself properly in that flat of his. What about one day this week?’
Quantrill looked at her with surprised approval, and agreed to pass on the invitation. ‘But don’t go to a lot of fuss and bother,’ he instructed his wife. ‘Nothing fancy – the boy’s not a senior officer yet, you know. Something home-made,’ he added wistfully; since Molly had taken on a part-time job she had made it an excuse to give up baking, and he had a weakness for pastry. ‘How about one of your juicy steak and kidney pies?’
But Molly, whose married life had encompassed a number of humiliations, known as well as unguessed-at, enjoyed the exercise of what limited power she possessed. No conscientious wife, she declared with virtuou
s relish, would feed pastry to a man of Douglas’s age and weight; and wasn’t it time that he went on a diet again?
Her husband remembered that he had brought some paperwork home, and strode out of the room scowling. But as he closed the door behind him he rejoiced in the fact that he could hear, for the first time since her return, his daughter’s cheerful giggle.
Douglas Quantrill finished reading the local newspaper, tossed it on to the bedroom floor, yawned, scratched the back of his head and slid a little further down the pillow. Beside him in their double bed, in pink sleeping net and pink frilly nightie, with her reading glasses half-way down her nose and her mouth slightly open, Molly was ingurgitating the final chapter of Jasmine Woods’s The English Governess.
It was unusual for the Quantrills to go to bed at the same time, and particularly unusual for Molly to go on reading after her husband had switched off his bedside light. Often his work kept him out late, but even when he was at home for the evening Molly made a point of going upstairs before he did, so that when he went up she was asleep; or feigning sleep. Tonight, Jasmine Woods was keeping her awake, and not only awake but excited.
Quantrill watched his wife with a mixture of amused tolerance and irritation. Incredible, he thought, that a middle-aged woman could be aroused by a rubbishy book. Her plump cheeks were patched with colour, and the ample frills over her breasts were rising and falling more rapidly than they had done in response to his own attentions for a very long time. He didn’t know whether to laugh at his wife or to snatch the book from her in a fit of jealousy and fling it across the room.
The fact was, he acknowledged, that Molly was still attractive. He propped himself on one Marks and Spencer paisley pattern pyjama’d elbow and looked past the hideous net and the ageing glasses; yes, the pretty girl was still there. Her soft brown hair hadn’t a touch of grey, the tilt of her nose still beckoned him, and the fullness of her cheeks suited her far better than the deep vertical lines her face acquired every time she went on one of her wretched diets. When she looked flushed, as she did now, Molly was definitely desirable.
The Chief Inspector's Daughter Page 2
