by Clare Chase
I looked at him.
A faint smile crossed his lips. ‘And as for jealousy,’ he said, ‘don’t even go there.’
‘You could have told me what you were up to.’
‘Like I said, you still seemed keen on Seb. I thought if I was honest, you might not believe me, or even that you might be stung into telling him what I thought. And then, when Lawrence saw you both arm in arm, heading for an evening out, that seemed to confirm my worst fears.’
He registered my expression. ‘I almost called you after Terry told you I’d approached Jez for information,’ he said.
‘Almost?’
‘I was worried what he’d told you would convince you I was the murderer Seb said I was. I thought that if I rang you he might be the first person you told, once you’d put down the phone.’
‘But I sent you that text just before, asking to meet up.’
He looked at me. ‘Yes, but don’t forget I was under the impression you and Seb were an item by then. It did occur to me that he might have put you up to getting in touch.’
I looked down for a moment, rapidly running through all the conversations he must have overheard. ‘So after I’d talked to Seb, you knew I’d be at End House.’
Darrick looked at me. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘And what’s more I knew you were being set up. I’d been convinced that Seb was a murderer, but at the same time I couldn’t break his alibi. When I went to see Mel, she was absolutely insistent that he’d been with her the night Julia died.’
I thought back to the evening I’d seen Darrick visiting Seb’s ex. ‘I was there.’
‘What?’
‘When you went to question Mel. I’d gone to her place with the same idea. She’d been refusing to see me and I wanted answers. At first I thought maybe it was because I’d started working for Seb; he said she’d always been a bit jealous. But it was weird. Her reaction was so extreme. I still don’t really know what to make of it.’
Darrick looked thoughtful. ‘She was very uncomfortable when I went to talk to her. I came to the conclusion that she was telling the truth about being with Seb when Julia died, but all the same, she was clearly hiding something.’
‘So what’s your bet?’
He shrugged. ‘My bet is she always knew it was odd that Seb suddenly had enough cash to help her rent the gallery. And she probably connected it with Julia’s death. Who knows, if she saw Seb and Maxwell-Evans meet up, she might even have had an inkling of what was going on between them. And if she had any suspicion at all, and ignored it, that makes her tacitly culpable.’
He sat back in his seat. ‘Meanwhile, Seb was on high alert, knowing his past secrets were under threat, and wanting to cover all the bases. He could have let slip you might come asking questions, without ever openly acknowledging the real truth. He’d have known she’d effectively agreed to be an accessory once she accepted his money without asking where it came from. If she was living with years of pent up guilt, that would be a good reason for cutting you dead. She was probably worried as hell you’d say something that would make her feel obliged to come clean. Being able to lie to herself must have kept her sane over the last fourteen years; break that ability, and she’d be broken too.’
That did make a lot more sense than her avoiding me out of jealousy. ‘So what happened next, once you’d decided Seb’s alibi was probably sound?’
‘As soon as I heard Toby Mason had been killed I got a mate to check up on his whereabouts, just to be absolutely sure he wasn’t responsible. It didn’t take long to confirm that he was still at home in London. I reassessed the situation. Suddenly it looked as though he wasn’t guilty of either murder. But he was clearly working hand in glove with whoever was.
‘The moment you ended the first half of your conversation with Seb, I called you. God, you were suddenly so vulnerable, Anna. I guessed he wanted you dead and there you were, in the middle of nowhere in a state of shock, ready to do anything he told you. When you answered I thought I was going to be able to warn you, but I assume as soon as you realised it was me you threw the phone down.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, putting my head in my hands. ‘I thought you wanted to get me to talk so that you could try to work out where I was.’
He took my hand. ‘Yes, just a little more trust wouldn’t have gone amiss …’
I gave him a look. ‘Faults on both sides I’d say. So if you knew I was being set up, did you also know who would be waiting for me?’
‘I had a pretty good idea,’ he said. ‘When we had dinner at The Midnight Hour you mentioned one of Seb’s tutors had collected art.’
I nodded. ‘I remember.’
‘I started to dig around to find out who that might have been and it wasn’t long before I had Maxwell-Evans’ name. At the very least, I reckoned he might have taken the artworks off Seb’s hands. As soon as I knew Seb wasn’t our killer, he went to the top of my list.’
‘So when did you arrive at the cottage?’
‘Just after you and Maxwell-Evans did. But I couldn’t intervene straight away. I had to be certain I could overpower him in one hit; otherwise you’d have been as good as dead anyway.’ He gave me a look. ‘It was you forcing him to drop the knife that gave me my opportunity. I’d have gone for it at that point anyway of course; there was nothing else for it, but the outcome would have been a lot less certain. One false move and I knew he could have stuck a blade into you.’
‘But how did you get in?’
‘The back door,’ Darrick said. ‘I was wondering how the hell I would be able to reach you in time, but for some reason it was unlocked.’
It suddenly came back to me. Of course. ‘I’d left it unlocked myself, after I’d been outside to fetch some coal. I suppose it would never have occurred to Maxwell-Evans to check it.’ It seemed so odd now to think that at that point in the evening I’d been devoting my time to anything as mundane as getting warm.
He looked at me. ‘Anna, I know I’ve behaved like a devious, lying bastard ever since we first met, but I can assure you that’s totally out of character. At least, when I’m dealing with lovers …’
‘Hmm.’
‘Would you be prepared to put it down to unfortunate circumstances, and start all over again?’
I thought for a moment. ‘On one condition,’ I said.
He raised his eyebrows.
‘That you take whatever it is you put on my phone off again before our relationship goes any further.’
‘It’s already done,’ he said, with a small smile. ‘I did it last night while you were in the bath.’
After breakfast we had to see the police, and then we sat in a coffee shop, peering out at the passers-by on Main Street.
I disrupted the pretty pattern the waitress had made in the cream on top of my mocha. ‘I still don’t understand why all this happened now, so many years after Julia’s death,’ I said.
He sighed. ‘Complete chance. I’d been abroad for a while and when I came back I went for a drink with Lawrence. There’d been a sale of three of Goya’s lost drawings recently and he mentioned it, which made me think of Julia. I wondered aloud what had happened to her, and whether she’d ever done anything more about the drawings she’d had.’
‘God how awful! You didn’t even know she was dead?’
He shook his head. ‘We were never in regular contact. I met her at my cousin’s wedding where she’d been doing some waitressing for the catering company they’d used. We got chatting and found we got on.
‘She was attractive and, when I took the picture you must have found, I managed to get her in. I suppose I hoped I might see her again.’
In spite of myself I felt a twinge of jealousy.
Darrick went on, ‘It was actually at the wedding that she told me about the drawings.’
‘So did you see her again after that?’ I asked, taking a sip of my drink and trying to keep my tone light.
He stared down into his cup. ‘Just once. I took her out to dinner.’ His ey
es came up to meet mine for a moment. ‘She seemed so sad, Anna. We talked more about the drawings, and she said how her boyfriend, who knew about these things, had rubbished her ideas about them. I didn’t know who the guy was, but she didn’t sound happy with him. Before we finished the meal, I arranged to go back home with her that night, look at the pictures, and give her my opinion.’
He sighed. ‘We had a few drinks, and when we left the restaurant, whilst we waited for a taxi, we ended up in each other’s arms.’ He shook his head. ‘I was bang out of order there. I knew she was with someone, and vulnerable, and I was several years older than her.’
My insides were taut – a weird mixture of sorrow for Julia, and a pang of something I didn’t want to acknowledge.
‘Things got quite passionate. She kissed me back; she was drunk too. But then after a minute or two she pulled away and said she couldn’t, because of her boyfriend. And then when the taxi turned up she changed her mind about me going back that night to look at the pictures. I got the driver to drop her home first. There were tears in her eyes as she got out, and that’s my last memory of her.’
‘You never saw the drawings?’
He shook his head, his face ashen. ‘We made contact by phone and set up a provisional date, but then I got called away on a job.
‘I emailed her, though, recommending an expert who’d be able to help.’ He turned to me. ‘And apologising for the way I’d behaved. It was six months before I was back again, and although I wondered periodically how she’d got on, I was involved with other things and I never took the trouble to find out.’
‘And then when Lawrence said she’d died?’ I prompted.
‘When Lawrence said she’d died, he mentioned in the same breath that, at the time, she’d been going out with Seb Rice, who we all know so well now – by reputation if nothing else. I was stunned. I remembered reading about his girlfriend in some magazine article, but I had no idea it was the Julia I’d known. Once the two sides of the story came together, I began to wonder what had happened to those drawings.’
I shivered and we sat in silence for a moment.
‘I did some investigating,’ Darrick said, ‘and found there’d been a sale of Julia’s belongings after she’d died, but that there were no records of any lots that matched the artworks she’d told me about.
‘It seemed so likely that Seb had taken them, and more and more probable that he’d killed her in order to do so.
‘I felt awful. I’d taken advantage of her vulnerability, and then walked away, just when I might have been able to help. If I hadn’t made that pass at her, I’d have gone home with her that evening, identified the drawings, and she’d be alive now. Once I knew what had happened I had to find out the truth. It was the only thing I could do. Talk about too little, too late.’
I reached forward and touched his hand, and he met my eyes for a moment.
‘When I got to work,’ he went on, ‘I found Seb’s alibi was weak. For the crucial part of the day the woman who’d proved his innocence was the woman he’d ended up marrying. I imagined he’d taken the risk that Julia, who knew almost no one, had told very few people about the drawings.
‘Of course, I didn’t know whether Julia had told Seb she’d met me, or if she’d mentioned that we’d discussed their possible worth. It was Radley’s reaction to my presence at the private view that convinced me she must have.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘That business of her saying she’d seen me take your photograph was an outright lie,’ he said. ‘And why make that claim? The only reason I could think of was if Seb had already worked out who I was, and was determined that you and I shouldn’t go pooling our knowledge. I suspect he told Radley to say whatever she liked, so long as it put you off seeing me again.’
‘So between you coming into the gallery and Radley coming to find me he’d tracked down your real identity?’
Darrick nodded. ‘I think so. It wouldn’t take long to flash my picture round a few of his contacts and come up with a result.’
‘And yet they let me believe they couldn’t identify you until much later.’
Darrick nodded. ‘Seb spent his whole time judging what information it would be helpful to let you have: what would be most likely to put you off me and what would act as the best smokescreen to disguise his real involvement.’
‘And what made you decide to go to the private view in the first place?’
‘I wanted to know more about Seb.’ He paused. ‘And there was always the chance that I might meet the woman of my dreams, obviously.’
‘It was pretty risky.’
He gave me a crooked smile. ‘I like risky.’
We left Keswick on Tuesday. My car wouldn’t start, so I got it relayed home and Darrick drove me.
It was a peculiar feeling, heading back to London, like coming out of a darkened cinema into the daylight again. I was blinded by normality: the M6 traffic and the closing gap between me and Hampstead. I suddenly realised it was less than two weeks until Christmas. I’d hardly given it a thought.
‘I’m due to meet a woman about a handbag tomorrow,’ I told Darrick, suddenly thinking it might be handy to sell some after all, given my impending drop in income.
He raised an eyebrow.
‘I’ve taken to making them in a small way, and this person runs a crafts gallery. She said she’d like to put them on show.’
‘Sounds good,’ Darrick said. ‘Who is she?’
‘Someone called Nadine Constantin.’
‘Nadine! I know her from years back. I used to lodge with her sister when I first came to London. You’re in for fun in that case, and she’s got great taste. Of course,’ he said, ‘they might still want you at the gallery.’
I shook my head. ‘It’s like you said. Seb only got me in there because he wanted to keep an eye on me. I thought the atmosphere was pretty odd when I started, and now I know why. No one else had any idea why he’d brought me in.
‘I think he must have coerced Radley into being nice to me, at least at first, so that I wasn’t put off. But she was obviously starting to get fed up with him bossing her around. I suppose she’ll take charge now.’ We’d already heard that Seb had been arrested, and that morning it had been front-page news too. Photographs of him being led away from the gallery in handcuffs were set alongside the picture of Maxwell-Evans with the royals that I’d found on the internet previously. Seb was looking at the ground, trying to avoid the cameras. One of the headlines read, ‘How the mighty have fallen.’
I shook my head at the thought. The past, and the friendship I’d imagined I’d shared with him, made me ache inside.
Darrick glanced at me and must have read my expression. ‘I think people with criminal minds are born with a bit missing. They can form relationships with people but then drop them in an instant if they become a threat.’
I nodded. I knew he was trying to make me feel better. And he didn’t officially know that Seb and I had once been lovers, though I reckoned he’d guessed.
By the time we reached the outskirts of London it was gone five o’clock.
‘So where now?’ Darrick said, as we joined the North Circular.
‘Home I suppose,’ I replied. I realised I’d sighed as I’d said it. I was conscious that, in spite of all the horrors of the weekend, I didn’t want this time to end. Leaving the knife-wielding maniac behind was obviously a plus, but I’d enjoyed the bit afterwards: it being just us, cut off from the rest of the world.
There was a momentary pause as Darrick changed lanes.
‘Hampstead home, or Primrose Hill home?’ he asked, looking ahead at the traffic.
I glanced quickly across at him.
‘I love my flat,’ he went on, still looking ahead as a motorbike cut in in front of us, ‘but I think I’d like it a whole lot better if you stayed over more often.’ He grinned, glancing round at me for a second. ‘I like the idea of knowing where you are. Any time you visit, I swear I’ll do my utmos
t to keep the place free of psychopaths.’
‘That’s certainly a persuasive argument.’
‘I’m full of those,’ he said, and suddenly his tone was serious. ‘Especially when I’m after something that really matters.’ And then he glanced at me again, and the look in his eye set off a whole new wave of emotion.
We were both silent for a moment.
‘In any case,’ he added at last, ‘what would happen if you went back to Hampstead now?’
I watched his hands on the steering wheel. ‘Well Sally would want a full-scale rundown of my exploits for a start,’ I said.
‘Which I’m sure you’ll want to give her at some point, but possibly not tonight. And your cousin?’
‘Alicia? Oh, I expect she’d content herself with giving me a blow-by-blow account of every mistake I’ve made since deciding to drive up to Cumbria.’
He gave me a sidelong glance. ‘Primrose Hill?’
‘Primrose Hill,’ I agreed.
* The End *
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About the Author
Clare writes fast-paced romantic mysteries, using London and Cambridge as settings. Her influences include JD Robb, Janet Evanovich, Mary Stewart and Sue Grafton. Brought up in the Midlands, she went on to read English at London University, then worked in book and author promotion in venues as diverse as schools, pubs and prisons. More recently she’s exercised her creative writing muscles in the world of PR, and also worked for the University of Cambridge. Her current day job is at the Royal Society of Chemistry.
Her writing is inspired by what makes people tick, and how strong emotions can occasionally turn everyday incidents into the stuff of crime novels. It would be impossible not to mix these topics with romance and relationships; they’re central to life and drive all forms of drama.
