‘It’s the real tops if we manage to get a mention for one of our clients in the dailies, especially for a company like Freddie French.’
‘But that story isn’t going to do anything to help the sales of baby products,’ she objected.
Cressida was never going to make it in PR. ‘Most of the mentions we get for our clients are of no practical use whatsoever, but the next time the Marketing Director is empire building, he’ll say he needs a much larger budget than all the other departments so he can pay this red hot agency that gets him mentions in the daily press. And by that time everyone will have forgotten that the story was really about a pretty woman and a cat.’
‘Except Stefano,’ Cressida said gloomily, bringing the subject smartly back to her own problems.
‘What can he say?’ I asked with a leaden-footed attempt at lightness. ‘Even in his darkest imaginings surely Stefano can’t honestly believe you’d run away from him to go and do naughty things with the entire Freddie French sales conference.’
She laughed dutifully. ‘But this has all got so complicated. It started off being so simple. We had a row and ... I never meant to leave him for good,’ she wailed. ‘But I’m going to have to now, I’m never going to be able to explain all of this.’
My heart hit my boots. Damn it! Half an hour ago I almost had her sitting in Stefano’s lap, kissing and making up. I took a deep breath and tried to look as if it was nothing. ‘Don’t then. What have you got to explain - that you went to France with a female friend? Where’s the harm in that?’ I embroidered on this theme for quite a bit, she was so worried and tense that I nobly didn’t mention my own pressing concern; viz, that I had assured Stefano I didn’t know where his wife was. I was certain he’d consider it entirely beside the point that when I spoke to him I hadn’t known; that all too clear photograph of me with Cressida was completely damning. He was going to go ape. I could only hope he didn’t lose his rag entirely. I looked at my watch surreptitiously, willing the train to speed its crawling progress through the gardens of Kent so that we could get to Ashford and I could find a phone to ring James.
When I finally got hold of him I rather wished I hadn’t bothered. ‘Where the bloody hell are you?’ he roared down the phone. I held the receiver a prudent inch away from my ear. When the noise level slackened a little I put it back and said, ‘Has there been any trouble?’
‘Of course there has, you blithering idiot,’ he snarled. ‘Just imagine Stefano’s reaction when, after telling everyone that his wife was at a health farm, she appears on television rescuing a cat in France. Why the hell didn’t you warn me that the pair of you were about to become media stars?’
‘Television? How can we have been on television? We didn’t even get rescued till mid- afternoon.’
‘Modern communications, sweetie,’ James said in an annoyingly sarcastic tone. ‘And bad luck that there weren’t any earthquakes or hooligans to take the place of a nice little human-interest story. It was just a small filler at the end of the news using still photos but enough to do the damage.’
I wondered if I should commit hari kari now before Stefano or James did the deed for me. ‘We didn’t know anything about it.’ For the next two or three minutes I metaphorically licked his boots as I apologised in a humble voice that I’d never normally use to any member of my family, especially not him.
My self-abasement worked. Eventually he said in a more mellow tone, ‘Stefano’s beside himself with rage, and apparently now convinced you’re right up to your pretty little neck in it. One of the gossip columns picked up on Cressida’s going abroad without him and led with an article this morning asking if there was trouble in the Buonotti marriage - and saying that Cressida and I continued to be very good friends. The inference was obvious.’
I closed my eyes in dismay and leaned my head against the side of the hood over the phone. ‘Has Stefano contacted you?’
‘He wouldn’t lower himself. But he moves quickly. The police were around yesterday morning to ask questions about the theft of Count Buonotti’s china collection and other “artefacts of value” from his country establishment.’
‘Oh, no,’ I breathed. ‘But why would they take Stefano’s word that you’re connected with it?’
‘To start with, being stinking rich means you get listened to more than your poorer cousins. Also a witness claims he saw a car with the same number plate as mine parked in the woods by the house the night the china is supposed to have gone missing.’ I made a sort of squeaking noise and James laughed. ‘Unfortunately for Stefano some kind warden had my car taken to the pound that night so even the least intelligent copper can work out I wasn’t using it as a getaway vehicle, but I daresay it won’t take Stefano too long to come up with some other way to pin it on me.’ There was a pause and he added in a weary voice, ‘Could you ask Cressy if she wouldn’t mind ringing the police and telling them what she’s done with the wretched stuff?’
‘I hope she didn’t take it to France in her suitcase. They were dropping the suitcases out of the window into the boats with terrific crashes. Her new one has a dent in it already.’
‘Then she can present Stefano with the pieces, I don’t care,’ said James. ‘It’ll get him off my back at least.’
I was beset by a new worry. Was that the really stupid thing she’d done? Smashed some of Stefano’s china? Still, best cross that bridge when and if. ‘We’ll set off straight away. Where will you be? The shop or your house?’
‘At home, I think. The bloodhounds are still at my heels, so it’d be best if you don’t bring Cressy here.’
‘Something the matter?’ asked Cressida as I got into the car.
‘You could say so,’ I retorted grimly, gunning my poor little car into reverse and shooting out of the car park at a faster speed than it was used to. I filled her in on the latest developments. To my annoyance she seemed far more concerned about the gossip column piece than the suspicions the police had about James.
‘Once the police find they have no evidence he’s behind the thefts they’ll have to drop it. I do wish Stefano would stop thinking that James is behind everything, but then he must be beside himself,’ she added indulgently. ‘He adored that collection.’
My head swivelled in her direction and I nearly drove into a parked car. How could she sound so innocent? Was she a schizophrenic or something, someone with no recollection of what she’d done? ‘Cressida,’ I said carefully, ‘of course he’s beside himself. Particularly because he knows quite well it was actually his wife who took it.’
‘Me?’ she said. ‘Me? I didn’t take his china. I wouldn’t be so stupid.’
CHAPTER 14
Luckily there was a long patch of empty curb for me to draw into otherwise there might have been a serious accident. I took a deep breath. ‘But, Cressida, you said you had. In that horrible dining room in Folkestone, remember? You said you had a right to it.’
‘I do,’ she repeated stubbornly. To what’s mine. I took the two bonbonnieres Stefano gave me. Even if he didn’t really mean me ever to take them from his collection, they’re still mine to do with as I please. And I couldn’t have left “Love conquers all” behind.’ Her voice was redolent of misted eyes and fond memories. Then she sat up and said crossly, ‘And I’m not a thief either.’
Given the merry dance she’d been leading me her righteous indignation was a bit excessive, but it still didn’t stop me from feeling both pretty stupid and more than a little embarrassed. Then what is it that you’re selling? I thought it must be the china.’
‘Just how thick do you think I am? Stefano would tear me into tiny little pieces if I even thought of selling his things.’ She looked down into her lap as if some very nasty thoughts had just occurred to her and said in a low voice, ‘It’s some of my jewellery, so I can pay for something urgent - something I don’t want Stefano to know about.’ Or me, judging by her uninformative expression. ‘And they’re pieces my grandmother left me so it’s not eve
n as if I’m selling Stefano’s presents,’ she added in an offended tone.
She was gripping the door handle convulsively as if about to jump out of the car in high dudgeon and make her own way back to London. ‘Cressida, I’m sorry.’ This was the second time in five minutes that I found myself grovelling. It was becoming tiresomely familiar. ‘But Stefano told me himself you’d taken the whole collection. I presumed he knew. It seemed unlike you,’ I said quickly, seeing her face still set in lines of offence, ‘but I thought maybe you were getting back at him. I wasn’t to know that when you said you had a right to it you were talking about two pieces, not thirty.’
‘Forty-three,’ she corrected absently. ‘I suppose it was a natural enough mistake,’ she said with just a hint of offence left in her voice, as if her probity should automatically have been above suspicion. She put her hand to her mouth in dismay. ‘Gosh! No wonder Stefano’s so ragingly furious if he really believes James nicked the whole china collection.’
‘And took his wife too, which is worse.’ At long last she appeared to be appreciating the gravity of the situation. ‘You may not believe it, but I reckon you’re slightly more important to Stefano than the china.’
‘I don’t think I’ll put it to the test. I might not get the answer I want,’ she said with a gurgle of laughter, more light-hearted than I had heard her all week. Then her face sobered. ‘I wonder if the thieves took anything else? Oh, dear, poor Stefano. I hope they didn’t get his Canaletto as well. But that’s got a special alarm system attached to the back of it. It’d be very difficult to take it off the wall without setting off all the alarms in the house. I don’t suppose we’ll ever get the china back, it’ll be on the continent by now. It’s too recognisable to try and sell over here.
‘If Stefano would calm down for a moment he’d realise James certainly wouldn’t have taken it,’ she added, rapping her fingers thoughtfully on the dashboard. ‘He knows perfectly well that James is far too streetwise to take the china equivalents of a Gainsborough or a Turner. They’re much too hard to get rid of.’ She sat up and said briskly, ‘We’d better get back to London as soon as possible. At least the two pieces I took have been saved, I hope poor Stefano finds that some consolation. Don’t worry, I’m sure I can convince him that James wouldn’t have been crazy enough to do this.’
I meekly obeyed and started the car, swinging out into the traffic.
She grinned wickedly. ‘It’s a good thing I’ve been pretty comprehensively chaperoned for the time I’ve been away, isn’t it? Even darling Stefi can’t really believe I’d get up to anything under the eye of your mother.’
‘He would if he’d met her,’ I retorted. Cressida seemed curiously unperturbed by the news of a burglary in her house; no skin-crawling revulsion that strangers had been in to invade her space, maybe paw through her belongings, even take some of her own things. Instead she was staring out of the window with what looked uncommonly like a smile of relief. And what had happened to that marked reluctance to speak to Stefano that had led her to make one excuse after another for the last few days? Maybe she felt, I thought with sudden inspiration, that being unjustly accused of theft was going to give her back the moral high ground that she had lost in the débâcle of trying for the baby. After being proved so very wrong Stefano was going to have to be more careful about what he accused his wife of in future. Even if he wasn’t entirely convinced James had had nothing to do with Cressida’s precipitate flight, he was hardly going to be in a position to make a song and dance about it, was he? He might even try to make amends by giving James some business, I thought hopefully, wondering if that would mean that he and I would have to continue, strictly in the interests of verisimilitude of course, to be ‘friends’. I enjoyed this pleasant fantasy for several miles before it occurred to me that it was unlikely Stefano ever felt he had to make amends for anything.
We had reached the suburban sprawl at the end of the motorway which officially calls itself Kent but for all intents and purposes is now part of London when Cressida came out of her reverie and said, ‘I wonder how the thieves managed to work out the combination for the safe? In films they put stethoscopes to the door to listen to how the tumblers fall but I can’t really believe they do it like that, can you?’
‘No,’ I replied absently, concentrating on trying to find a space to get on to a roundabout. It wasn’t until we were going sedately down the road opposite, my car not having the youth or the acceleration to dodge in and out like a boy racer, that I repeated, ‘The safe? But the china was on the shelves in Stefano’s little room.’
‘No, it was in the safe in his study,’ Cressida said in the tone of someone explaining something to a complete idiot. ‘After he went to Milan I thought I’d better do something to put him in a better mood so I decided to have the room repainted. I put the china in the safe for protection - except for my bonbonnieres which I took up to my room.’ She glanced guiltily at me. ‘I know James said I shouldn’t, but I thought it wouldn’t do any harm for a little while.’ She made a face. Then the woman who was doing the paint techniques sprained her wrist so everything was put off for at least three weeks. But I left the china in the safe to save moving it again.’
I frowned. ‘I’m sure that Stefano said when he came back all the shelves in his study were bare. Not that the safe had been broken into. Does he know that you’d put it in the safe?’
‘Of course. At least...it was supposed to be a surprise so I wouldn’t have told him on the phone, I probably put it in my note ... Maybe I didn’t...’
I was so excited I could hardly speak. ‘He must have seen those bare shelves and leaped instantly to a conclusion. I bet you’ll find all the china is still safely locked away. It’s wonderful! He’s going to be thrilled. He’ll welcome you back with even wider open arms. You know, the messenger who brings good tidings.’
‘Yes.’ She didn’t sound particularly delighted by the knowledge that burglars hadn’t been riffling through her home after all. In fact she sounded positively put out. More than put out, more as if the bottom had dropped out of her world. I wouldn’t have bet so much as 5p on her not finding some fresh reason not to speak to Stefano.
‘Who are you going to ring first to say the china hasn’t been stolen after all, Stefano or the police?’ I asked cheerily.
‘I don’t know.’ Her eyes were wide and innocent. ‘You know, it might be best to find out first what’s been stolen. I’ll have to contact the police. It might take a bit of time before they agree to tell me, but you do understand that I don’t want to make a complete fool of myself by calling off the whole search if it turns out there’s a container load of other stuff that’s gone missing.’
It’s a good thing I’m not of a betting nature. As disingenuous statements go that one took a lot of beating.
‘Cressida,’ I said indignantly. ‘How can you keep on doing this? We’re talking about James here, somebody you went out with for a year. Someone you’re supposed to have loved, for heaven’s sake. And it’s your husband who’s accusing him of dealing in hot antiques. If this goes on much longer James’s livelihood could be wrecked.’
‘He’ll survive. Most antiques dealers have that sort of thing said about them at some time or other,’ she replied casually.
I gave her a really dirty look, redolent of all that I thought of her extraordinarily cavalier attitude about the mess James was in, at least partially - mostly - because of her. She might not have meant Stefano to think she was eloping with her former lover, but due to her ineptitude at writing legibly and including all the relevant information - to say nothing of indulging in some truly provocative husband baiting - that’s what had happened.
She coloured. I was pleased to see that not even Cressida could manage to avoid the overripe tomato look when blushing, though it faded much more quickly than it does on normal people, leaving her merely looking becomingly flushed. ‘I didn’t mean it to sound like that.’ She sighed deeply. ‘OK. If you can fin
d out which officer is dealing with the case, I’ll give him a ring. That should sort out one problem at least.’ And she lapsed into silence, staring morosely out of the window at the serried rows of bay-fronted Victorian terraces we passed, one after another.
Her taciturn mood was so profound that even I didn’t feel I could break into it to ask where she was thinking of spending the night, still less ask her why she’d apparently changed her mind about speaking to ‘darling Stefi’. I decided to take her to the flat. Doubtless she was hoping I’d offer to put her up anyway, and I supposed it was still close enough to her own flat-sharing days for her not to be totally horrified by a flat lived in by females without a full-time staff to pick up and clean after them. Revved up by James’s experiences I scanned the parked cars as I found a space near the flat to see if they held suspiciously slumped figures supposedly taking a nap, hat pulled down over the nose so that the brim hid the whites of the eyes as my every movement was recorded. It all looked much the same as usual and there were no vans with revolving antennae and a sign saying ‘AA Snoops’ handily written on the side as a clue. I hadn’t really believed Stefano would bother to have my flat watched, but I was still nervous enough to make Cressida stuff that distinctive hair of hers inside her jacket and cram an old rainhat of mine on the top. I have to say that a red plastic bucket lookalike bought for two pounds at the local market didn’t make a particularly felicitous combination with a burnt orange cashmere jacket from Whistles but we weren’t running a fashion parade.
Horatio gave me a decidedly unenthusiastic welcome, taking one look and then expressing his disapproval of my daring to go away for nearly a week without him by turning his back and settling down to lick his stomach. He thawed slightly when I produced the chocolate sardine I’d bought him in France; among the many things which make up Horatio’s unusual diet is milk chocolate as a treat (he also likes spaghetti and sucks up the strands slowly, one by one, which is not a sight for weak stomachs). He ate the head off his sardine, decided to leave the rest for later, and jumped up on to the sofa beside Cressida, making the chainsaw noise which passes for a purr.
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