Her faith in the police and their abilities to catch murderers, mad or otherwise, was even more touching, George thought. I must tell Gus it’s not all hopeless in the police battle to retain public respect. She smiled warmly at Dawn. ‘I’m sure they’ll catch him, too. So, who else does she – um – suck up to?’
‘Well, there’s Mr Caspar-Wynette-Gondor,’ Dawn said. ‘He’s Lord Durleigh’s brother, like, and she’s all over him too.’ She stopped then, her head on one side. ‘Of course now he’ll be Lord Durleigh, won’t he?’
‘Will he?’
‘Well, I suppose so. I mean the other brother got killed as well, didn’t he? So it’ll be Edward. Oh, there’ll be no holding the old cow now. They really are a lot more friendly. Well, sort of. It’s his mate she’s friendliest with.’
‘Oh?’ George waited, smiling gently. ‘What mate?’
‘The bloke that works on the estate, you know. The agent, Mr Powell. Jasper. One of those fancy names.’
‘Oh?’ George said again, non-committally.
Dawn was well away now. ‘Oh, yes, I think she might be having a bit of an affair with him, to tell the truth. They’re as thick as they can be. Having lunch over at the Bald Monk and all like that.’
The Bald Monk was the pub where George and Gus were staying and she couldn’t help but grimace at the thought of eating there on a regular basis. Fortunately Dawn didn’t notice.
‘I see them there in the evening sometimes, as well as lunch-times. Always got their heads together and chatterin’ away like monkeys. I reckon that’s how she knows so much about things up at Durleigh Abbey. Anyway –’
And then the shop door opened. The woman who had come in was tall, almost as tall as George herself, but a good deal larger, with an imposing bust and extremely handsome legs, a fact which she clearly knew perfectly well, because she was wearing very high-heeled shoes and a rather short skirt on her crimson suit. But the man who came in behind her was still taller than she was. He was carrying a pile of cardboard boxes and he stopped as the woman did.
‘Oh, good morning,’ the woman said. ‘I didn’t expect – Are you – um – being looked after?’
‘Oh, yes,’ George said with a wide smile. ‘I’ve had lots of coffee and I’ve been looking through the magazines as well as at your lovely shop. Your young lady said I could wait for you, as you know the stock best, so I thought I would. I’m in no hurry.’
The woman’s shoulders obviously relaxed and she produced a wide professional smile. ‘I’m so sorry to have kept you waiting. If I’d known – well, it’s my fault,’ she said with an air of great generosity. ‘I can’t blame the girl for not sending a message to me, because I didn’t say where I’d be, which was very remiss of me.’ She looked up at her companion. ‘My dear, would you mind taking those through?’ She turned back to George. ‘Now, what can I show you?’
The tall man looked at George as she glanced up at him. He was about forty or so, she decided, and undoubtedly good looking. He had widely set grey eyes, and his chin was so square with so definite a cleft that it was almost a caricature of a film star’s jaw. Fortunately he was rather lined under his eyes, and his nose was a little crooked, which gave his face charm rather than perfection, and that was far more attractive. He tossed his head slightly so that a lock of thick dark hair which had fallen over one eye was thrown back. The movement had a boyish quality about it that added to his attractions. George, who had always been a connoisseur of male beauty, found herself warming to the woman now standing beside him; any woman with any taste at all would make a friend of someone like Jasper Powell. Because that was obviously who the man was. She could tell by the way Dawn’s colour had come up as soon as she had seen him. It’s never comfortable to be interrupted in the middle of a flood of gossip by the subject of your chatter, George thought, amused.
‘A pleasure,’ he said in a voice that was satisfyingly deep but which had a slight huskiness in it, giving it a rusty quality. He smiled at George. ‘Good morning.’
‘Good morning,’ she said. ‘You look very loaded there.’
‘Oh, I can manage them.’ He winked at the woman beside him. ‘Daffy here makes sure I keep in good practice. In the stockroom, then?’
‘Yes please!’ Daffy said with a brilliant smile. ‘Now, my dear, what can I show you? And would you care for more coffee while I get things out.’
‘Oh, no, no thanks.’ George, who feared she might be on the way to caffeine poisoning if she drank any more, shook her head and stood up. ‘Dawn has been most generous with it already.’
‘Oh, so she told you her name?’ The woman looked sharp suddenly and George could have cursed herself for being so careless.
‘I asked her,’ she said. ‘I always do. I’m George Barnabas. Hi!’ She held out her hand towards the woman. ‘And you are …?’
‘Daphne Morris,’ she said after a moment. ‘How d’y’do.’ But the sharpness had gone and George relaxed. ‘So, what sort of things are you looking for?’
‘Oh, I just don’t know!’ George looked rueful. ‘You know how it is. I don’t know what I want till I see it. I thought a dress – a party dress, you know? But one I can wear during the day as well if necessary.’
‘Oh, dear me, yes,’ Daphne Morris said. ‘It’s so difficult for businesswomen, isn’t it? Having to attend meetings all day and then go straight on to a party.’
She’s fishing, George thought. Wants to know what I do. And she smiled at her. ‘You’re so right. I suppose every working woman has that difficulty. So, what do you suggest?’
Mrs Morris moved across the shop towards the bead curtain. ‘Well, I’ll see what I think is right for your size. Let me see, twelve?’
‘Something like that,’ George said, knowing perfectly well that in some very sleek garments she felt better in a fourteen but not wanting to admit it. ‘It depends on the cut.’
‘Everything always does,’ Daphne Morris said and went in through the bead curtain just as Jasper Powell emerged. ‘I’ll see you later, Jas?’ she said quickly. ‘As usual?’
‘Of course.’ He smiled down at her and looked about to bend to kiss her cheek but she shook her head slightly.
George was sitting down again on the suede chair, and she smiled up at him with as wide and ingenuous a smile as she could conjure up. ‘Such a lovely day,’ she said. ‘A real joy to be in the country.’
‘We’ve had better weather,’ he said dryly, because the sky outside had indeed clouded over. ‘But at least it’s not raining.’
George, who had mentioned the weather only because she had been taught this was the polite way to start a conversation with a stranger in Britain, glanced at the window. ‘Yes, indeed,’ she said with vague heartiness. ‘It’s so difficult when it rains. Especially if you’re delivering goods. Makes them wet. That must make life very hard for you.’
He laughed then. ‘I’m not precisely a delivery boy,’ he said. ‘In spite of appearances.’
George showed a nice line in pretty confusion. ‘Oh, I’m sorry. I saw you bring the boxes, so I thought –’
‘Just helping a friend collect some stuff from the station,’ he said.
‘So you have a more interesting job,’ she said brightly.
He looked down at her and the creased face closed a little more as he smiled, a long slow smile. ‘Indeed I do. Like you, I dare say.’
Daphne Morris appeared at the bead curtain again and came out with a couple of garments over her arm. Her eyes glittered slightly as she looked from Jasper to George. ‘Oh, I thought you’d gone!’ she said with a tight smile.
‘I’m just on my way.’ He went over to the door and hesitated for a moment. ‘See you later, Daffy. Take care.’ And he went, leaving Daphne Morris staring after him, her face blank.
‘He seemed very nice. It’s so good to have friends to help you, isn’t it, when you’re in business?’ George said.
‘Mmm.’ Daphne had clearly been somewhere else, deep inside her head, a
nd now she looked at George. ‘He just carried the boxes up for me from the station.’
‘Of course.’ George was a little startled at the sudden intensity with which Daphne was looking at her. ‘It’s such a help, as I say, having friends to join in. That’s what’s so good about living in the country, isn’t it? In cities we’re all just too selfish to care for anyone but ourselves.’
‘Yes.’ Daphne seemed to seize on that. ‘You’re so right. We are very helpful to each other here. Now, let’s see. What do you think of this?’
This was a slender dress in deep blue. George looked at it, thinking of the last dress she had bought and how expensive it had been, and bit her lip, for it was clearly marked at four hundred and fifty pounds. Outrageous, she thought, but this is an investigation and sometimes you just have to do what you have to do.
The next half-hour was fun, and she became absorbed in it, almost forgetting why she was there. That somehow worked in her favour, because Daphne Morris became more and more relaxed and in consequence chattered more.
Not that George learned a great deal more than she already had from Dawn, who was now buried somewhere in the back of the premises, though she did get confirmation of some things. But none of them seemed to George to matter too much.
Mrs Daphne Morris was indeed a crashing snob of the worst kind, boasting steadily of the high social calibre of her clients and her friends. Listening to her, George had the impression that the first thing that Lord Durleigh’s female guests did was rush to Sloane’s to stock up their wardrobes; that everyone in the district who had any hope of being regarded as of any style at all shopped there too; and that Daphne Morris herself was persona very much grata everywhere she went. A regular guest at all the best houses, was how she put it.
George tried a little probing as she wriggled in and out of one lovely dress after another, chewing her lower lip as she pirouetted in front of the mirror, because many of them suited her exceedingly well. But she still managed to keep her goal in sight, and asked artless questions as offhandedly as she could.
Was Jasper Powell a person of local importance? Indeed he was; a close friend of Mr Edward Caspar-Wynette-Gondor, as was Daphne herself, of course, and indeed lived in the adjoining house to Edward, since he now worked as his agent. At one time, when Edward had first met Jasper, Daphne said, he had been one of London’s top chefs, and he still cooked like an angel, whenever he could persuade Mrs Lyons, who looked after them both, to let him into the kitchen.
‘She does get away with so much that an ordinary member of the domestic staff never could,’ prattled Daphne as she circled George to look at the fit of a remarkable garment in dark brown suede trimmed with fur, which had a price ticket that ran into four figures and which, to George’s relief, did not suit her at all. ‘But she was Edward’s nanny from babyhood, and you know how it is with those old-retainer types.’ And she laughed prettily. George managed not to show in her face how ridiculous it all sounded. Old retainers indeed, in the last decade of the twentieth century.
‘But she loves Jasper as much as Edward, almost, though of course not quite since he was always her favourite nursling over his brothers, and she lets him – Jasper, you know – cook for us occasionally. We have the most delightful supper parties!’ She laughed merrily yet again as she displayed her highly superior lifestyle to her customer.
Eventually George felt she had to go. She doubted there was any more she could get out of Daphne; however hard she tried to bring the subject round to the actual ownership of the shop, Daphne slid away from it, and anyway she had Dawn to fall back on, she told herself. I’ll tell Gus she has a phone number for the owner of the shop; that it’s a different name to Alice Diamond, but not so different it couldn’t be made up to cover Alice’s identity, but not too carefully. Arabella Dee: absurd, she thought. But I’ll hand all that over to Gus.
She had to choose something to buy, of course, and opted for a rather handsome confection of pleated silk in a deep amber shade that suited her well, and cost a mere three hundred pounds, which, compared with everything else she’d been shown, was downright cheap. It needed altering, however, since it was somewhat too big on the waist and hip (which comforted George absurdly, until she reminded herself she’d had to opt for a size fourteen to accommodate her generous bust measurement) and she made complicated arrangements with Daphne for this to be done and the finished garment to be sent to her London house.
It was close to eleven when she eventually left the shop. The sky was still overcast and she pulled her coat collar up to cover her neck because of the chill in the air. She would have to make her way back into the square to see if she could find Gus, and turned to the kerb to cross the road.
There were now several cars parked outside, with their rear ends to the kerb, noses pointing out into the street. The closeness of them made it hard to find a place where she could get between them and across the road, so she walked along to where there seemed to be a vehicle parked further out than the rest, which would give her room to get over the road.
She reached her chosen crossing place with some difficulty, walking with her head down to keep the now really cold wind out of her face, and not looking at the big car that she thought offered her the crossing space she needed. She walked past the adjoining one and turned and then, as she did so, the big car suddenly sprang into life as the driver, whom she had not noticed was in it, switched on the engine.
He seemed to move with an amazing speed. The engine was no sooner turning over than he’d slipped the car into gear and it leaped – backwards. George, with the sudden rush of adrenaline that comes when danger threatens, jumped out of the way, but not fast enough. The back bumper hit her leg with a numbing blow and she felt the heat of blood trickling down it as she battered with both fists on the back of the vehicle, which was now pinning her to the wall of the sweetshop behind. She was completely unable to move and could hardly breathe because of the shock she was in. She had never been so alarmed in all her life.
24
Jasper Powell behaved like a man distraught. Her shouting had made him aware of something wrong and he had driven forwards to release George before switching off the engine and almost falling out of the vehicle to come rushing round to her; but it had made her hoarse and unable to say a word when he reached her side. She just leaned back against the sweetshop window and tried to catch her breath.
‘Oh, my God, I’m so sorry. I didn’t see you there. I can’t imagine how I could have – Here, let me take you to sit down somewhere. We’ll call an ambulance, get you to the hospital and –’
‘No!’ George managed. ‘No. No need. OK.’ And she knew she was. She’d had a very nasty fright and needed time to recover. But no bones were broken. Only the skin of her leg had been scraped, together with her tights, leaving a mess on her shin that looked, she thought, as she managed to gaze down on it, rather worse than it probably was. Her professional mind reassured her ordinary rather panicky one, and she took a couple of deep breaths to soothe herself. Gradually her pulse eased, her breath came back, and she was able to stand up straighter, though it helped to have his arm around her.
‘I’m OK,’ she said. ‘I guess I should have made sure there was no one in the car before I tried to go behind it.’ She looked up at the vehicle then and shook her head. ‘Not that I’d have been able to see you, would I?’ The car was a Range Rover, very high off the road and with its back window partly obscured by wire netting. He looked up and shook his head.
‘I shouldn’t keep that there, I suppose, but I need it for the dogs, and I usually use my wing mirrors very carefully. I just didn’t think this morning. I’m so sorry. Here, we must get that leg fixed. It looks awful.’
‘It isn’t.’ She was feeling better by the moment and by now embarrassed. It was so stupid to walk behind a parked car without checking that it wasn’t about to be driven; all she wanted to do was get away to sort out her injuries in peace. ‘I’m a doctor. I can fix myself easily. I don�
�t need any ambulance.’
‘A doctor?’ For the first time he let his anxious expression relax. ‘That’s a comfort. Are you absolutely certain that –’
‘I’m certain,’ she said firmly. ‘Now, let me just be on my way, please. I’ll go back to the hotel and get it –’
‘You’ll do no such thing,’ he said, urging her firmly towards the passenger door of the car. ‘The least I can do is take you where you can sort it out in comfort. Come on.’
She really couldn’t make the effort to disagree. It didn’t seem important enough. She needed to be taken somewhere, and she might as well go with him as try to argue with him. ‘Well, all right,’ she said. ‘A lift would be nice. We’re staying at the Bald Monk.’
‘It’s as easy to take you home,’ he said. He settled her in the high passenger seat and belted her in as though she were a child. ‘Our Mrs Lyons’ll be furious with me if I don’t, when she hears what happened. And that really would be dreadful.’ And he smiled at her and then hurried round to the driver’s side.
This is so silly, George thought. It’s like something out of a soppy romance. Handsome man nearly runs down heroine, insists on taking her home, and then what? She shook herself mentally. She must have been more shocked than she realized to be thinking so foolishly.
He checked his wing mirrors with a most exaggerated care, caught her eye and laughed and then let in the clutch and the car moved forwards smoothly. She felt odd, sitting so high, used as she was to Gus’s road-hugging car, but the effect soon wore off and she looked out at the passing scenery in a slightly sleepy fashion as he drove through the town’s narrow and now crowded streets. It was odd how sleepy she was, she thought, and then reminded herself of the way injuries led to the production of endorphins, the natural opiates that help control pain. She laughed softly.
He gave her a sideways glance. ‘What’s so funny?’
‘Me, sitting here, feeling sleepy and working out in my head the reason for it,’ she said. ‘Endorphins.’
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