Something Stupid

by Victoria Corby

  She put out a hand to stroke him and he instantly lumbered heavily on to her lap. She winced. I’d been bustling around, putting my suitcase in my room, scanning the outside of my mail to see if anything really alarming had arrived in the last week like my bank state­ment, jamming the kettle on for a much-needed cup of tea, trying to get my recalcitrant cat to speak to me, checking the answer machine in case there were any loving, miss you messages from Daniel (there weren’t), or any words from James (several, all rather irritable). I fast forwarded Darian’s message, deciding to listen to it later when I was feeling stronger, and assessed the contents of the fridge to see if, as usual, Liv had run us out of all the staples. I’ve never been quite sure why, when she is the one who doesn’t work during normal shop opening hours, it was always me who trolled around the supermarket on Saturdays stocking up. Or maybe I am. If Liv does it she comes back with an extra large jar of black bean paste and no loo paper. I sighed. Oh, well, black sugarless tea is very good for the figure.

  I hadn’t taken much notice of Cressida except to be glad that, unlike so many guests, she had the sense to sit down and keep out of the way while I was having my five frantic minutes. But her intake of breath as she received Horatio’s leaden weight full on her stomach penetrated even my bustle. She was leaning back her head, eyes closed, cheeks ashen white. ‘Are you all right?’ I asked, though people often pale when Horatio jumps on them.

  She grimaced. ‘I keep on getting a tummy ache and I’m a bit queasy too. I’ve been feeling sort of like this, but not quite so bad, ever since we left for Paris. I expect it’s just the stress I’ve been under.’

  I nodded knowledgeably, though I’m the sort of dis­gustingly healthy person who only ever suffers a headache as a result of excessive consumption of cheap plonk so I have absolutely no idea what a stress-induced stomach ache is like. But it sounded uncomfortable. She assured me it was perfectly all right to leave her alone so I went off to see James with my slightly uneasy conscience soothed by my own nobility in making up my bed for her and tucking her up with a hot water bottle, a trashy novel and Horatio as chief weigher down of the duvet. And the phone. My initial churlish suspicion that she might be putting it on a bit to avoid being pressured was dispelled by seeing the colour of her face, no one could fake that, but sympathetic as I was she wasn’t getting out of making that call. With a wan smile she promised that as soon as I rang her from James’s with the number she’d be on the phone. Tell that to the Marines, I thought, quite prepared to find her conven­iently asleep when I came back. Too bad. In that case I’d set the ball rolling by ringing the police myself.

  I was slightly disappointed to see that James must already be at home as I’d been rather looking forward to seeing him being followed by his guard dogs. To start with I’d love to know how they managed to find a parking space in this crowded street from where they could conven­iently watch the house. The nearest one I’d been able to find was around the corner, and quite useless unless you had a very long periscope.

  James answered the door on the first ring, throwing it wide and enveloping me in a bear hug. I automatically returned it, throwing my arms around him and hugging him back. Well, you do, don’t you? He leaned back, keep­ing his hands linked around my waist, and bent forward to kiss me briefly on the lips. It took all my self-control not to respond with pennants flying. ‘Are you pleased to see me or is this a show put on for the neighbours?’ I asked, keeping a stem check on my hormones.

  ‘Laura, if you’d let me I’d show you just how pleased I am to see you,’ he murmured, eyes dancing, slipping his hands inside my coat. My nerve ends went into overdrive. ‘But it would be more seemly inside, behind a locked door.’

  ‘Certainly not,’ I said in my best schoolmarmish man­ner, gently pulling myself free before I could change my mind. I picked up my tote bag, holding it in front of me like a chastity belt. ‘We’ve got things to do, we can’t afford to waste time on inessentials.’

  James looked highly offended. I smiled at him placatingly. ‘Have I got a lot to tell you. But first...’ I fished in my bag and got out a couple of bottles of wine and an extremely smelly cheese which had been responsible for a lot of suspicious sniffing on the train. ‘I bought you a present.’

  He brightened, insisting that we go into the kitchen and open one of the bottles at once. I wasn’t about to refuse. I felt I needed it. Wine relieves tension, whatever the source of that tension. Even if it is six foot two and showing a disturbing tendency to act out of character. I’m not a heavy drinker - well, definitely not what you’d call alcoholic or anything - just someone who likes to have a glass of wine from time to time, or rather more often to be honest, but even I was beginning to think that once this was all over I’d better go on a liver-relieving stint for a bit. At least a few days.

  The kitchen had what estate agents call ‘plenty of potential’; in other words it hadn’t been touched for the last thirty years apart from the modern day bachelor essentials of a microwave and a state of the art fridge with ice dispenser. When James opened the door to stow away the cheese I saw that its gleaming glass shelves held little more than half a lemon, two bottles of tonic, several bottles of white wine and a half of champagne. With its feeling of being somewhere food wasn’t prepared the kitchen bore an uncanny resemblance to the one in Daniel’s flat, though his had less alcohol in it. The other difference was that James’s kitchen was a shining monu­ment, despite its age, to the efficiency and hard work of his cleaning lady. Every surface shone, the windows gleamed even in the dark, the cloths had been rinsed and hung out to dry over the sink, Barker’s bean bag must have been hoovered that morning since there was hardly any trace of deadly persistent black Labrador hairs over the red paw print fabric; I was sure that if I looked the wall behind the cooker would be clean and free of grease. A memo board above an empty vegetable rack held a list of messages in neat curly writing: ‘Paid milk bill, £4.36’, ‘Gas man came to read meter’, ‘Out of floor polish, will buy more Monday’, ‘Please don’t let Barker bring his bones into the house’.

  I had a feeling this last was a plea from the heart made many times before. ‘Where is Barker? I thought you said you were borrowing him?’

  James was showing by his fancy wrist movements as he uncorked the bottle that if the antiques business failed he could always get a job as a barman. ‘Back with Harry.’ He looked up. There were lines around his eyes that hadn’t been there when I’d left for France. ‘I thought it better to have him settled elsewhere in case the police turn up and haul me off to the clink.’

  ‘You don’t really think they will, do you?’

  He poured wine into two glasses and pushed one over towards me. ‘I sincerely hope not. As yet they don’t have enough to go on to get a search warrant - but from what I know of Stefano he’s willing and able to give them all the evidence they need.’ He waved his hand around vaguely. ‘I don’t care. They can go over this place with a fine tooth comb, but if they search the shop - well, it’s like the tax people. They’re going to go on looking until they find something. And they probably will.’

  My glass stopped halfway to my mouth. ‘James, you don’t really deal in hot antiques, do you?’

  He stared at me long and hard in a manner worthy of Lady Bracknell. ‘What do you think I am?’ he asked coldly. ‘A crook?’

  His glare was so blighting that I almost shrivelled on the spot, but now that the doubts had been raised they had to be answered. ‘You tell me,’ I snapped. ‘Stefano said you were. I didn’t believe him.’

  James’s mouth relaxed fractionally. ‘Thank you for those few words of support,’ he muttered in a way that suggested it might be some time before I was forgiven. ‘And that was a bit rich coming from Stefano since he’s hardly in a position to throw stones at anyone’s glass houses.’

  ‘Are you afraid that he might have planted something in the shop?’ I said, eager to make amends.

  James ran a hand through his hair. ‘It occurred t
o me. But since we always watch anyone we don’t know very carefully, it’d be difficult to do it without being seen. And I check what they’ve touched after they’ve gone, too. No, what I meant is that there’s bound to be something, somewhere in the shop, that I bought in good faith but which didn’t belong to the person who sold it. Pa used to have a regular, a little old lady who’d bring in a bit of silver whenever she had a bill to pay. It turned out that every time she went to see her brother she’d go away with something or other of his in her handbag. But if the police find something a bit dodgy and they’re in a bad mood - which they probably will be with Stefano breathing down their necks - they aren’t going to say, “Oh, what bad luck, it happens to everyone sometimes.” They’re going to book me for handling stolen property. And then they’ll really take me apart.’

  He rested his chin on his hand, staring morosely at his wine. ‘Still I suppose that might mean that the extremely smelly beggar who appeared on Tuesday and accosts anyone who tries to enter the shop will go away. And the man who claims in a loud voice that I sold him a desk with legs married from another piece may decide it’s not worth coming in for the fourth time.’ He laughed grimly. ‘Stefano’s ensuring that if he doesn’t succeed in putting me behind bars, he’s at least going to bankrupt me. That way he can be sure I won’t have the dosh to keep Cressy in the very expensive style to which she’s accustomed.’

  I didn’t know what to say. My own frustrations seemed to pale to nothing alongside this. I reached over and put a comforting hand on his. He looked up and smiled in a way that made me feel I was one of the nicest people around. Certainly his mood seemed to have lightened a bit, for he took a sip of the wine then held up the glass against the light, examining the colour with moody concen­tration. ‘This is very good, Laura,’ he said with pleased surprise. ‘Where did you find it?’

  ‘Somewhere near Bordeaux,’ I said airily. Actually it came from a supermarket, albeit upmarket. ‘As we had a free day we spent it sightseeing. We saw some really nice places.’

  ‘Great! Enjoying yourselves and leaving others to deal with the fallout from your near escape from death,’ he said grumpily. ‘Have you any idea of the fuss there’s been? Luckily it was only Stefano who recognised you from the television - you were on for a second in the background - so I had a peaceful night. But I had Imogen on the telephone every half hour from nine o’clock in the morning demanding the latest news and my assurances that you hadn’t been swept away in the swollen waters of the Garonne. When I pointed out that you’d already been rescued and according to the photograph seemed quite dry, and so presumably had never encountered any icy water, she said I had proved myself to be a cold-hearted little boy when I was eight and I hadn’t improved as an adult.’

  ‘Poor James,’ I said, laughing. ‘What did you do when you were eight?’

  He looked distinctly shifty. ‘I can’t remember,’ he said in a barefaced lie. I’d get it out of him somehow. ‘Imogen was a doddle compared to Aunt Jane who wouldn’t get off the phone. Then there was Katie, Pa, and seemingly every single one of your step relations who preferred to turn to me rather than spend money ringing Paris to bother your mother. It’s surprising,’ he added reflectively, ‘how many people who claim they never look at the tabloids just happened to be glancing through the Daily Mail at the hairdresser’s when they recognised your pic­ture. Sorry, Aunt Jane buys it for her cook.’

  I thanked heaven I had been safely out of touch when all this was happening. I knew only too well how intensely dramatic my family could be - all the disparate parts of it. Whoever coined the term ‘British reserve’ certainly didn’t have their acquaintance.

  James rested his elbows on the table and stared into his glass. ‘But that was nothing, absolutely nothing, com­pared to the hullabaloo this morning when everyone saw the gossip column - which of course they hardly ever read either,’ he said in heavy voice. ‘You’d have thought I was personally responsible for besmirching the noble name of Lovatt.’

  I could just hear Imogen and a couple of the other aunts and their views on men who messed around with married women. I was no longer surprised James had new lines around his eyes. In fact I was surprised his hair hadn’t gone white. I squeezed his hand again. He smiled briefly. ‘I did consider pointing out that Harry’s tried just as hard as me to blacken the Lovatt name but I didn’t think they’d be prepared to listen. And of course today there have been journalists too, wanting me to confirm or deny the story. So I told them,’ he raised his head and looked at me with a touch of defiance, ‘that it was complete rubbish, that in actual fact Cressy was simply taking a break abroad with my girlfriend.’ I didn’t need to ask which girlfriend he’d named. I also had a fair idea of the sort of possessive terms in which James would have deemed it necessary to describe his ‘girlfriend’ too.

  ‘Oh, thank you, James! Couldn’t you just have said that Cressida was with her friend?’ I demanded in exaspera­tion. ‘What’s Daniel going to think when it’s splashed all over the papers that his girlfriend is apparently another’s?’

  ‘I daresay he’s far too literary to read the sort of papers that have gossip columns, and that he says he never believes what’s printed in the gutter press anyway,’ James replied with infuriating accuracy. My warm sympathetic feelings were wilting rapidly. They died completely when he added reflectively, ‘And he’ll be able to turn his love-lorn angst into a few beautifully worded paragraphs for his next book so he’ll reckon it was worth it.’

  I snatched my hand away and glared at him. He took no notice. ‘Have you any idea where that story came from?’

  ‘Yup. I haven’t been sitting on my hands doing nothing while you were swanning around the continent. Amazingly enough, the story originated with Cressy.’

  My mouth fell open. ‘Cressida? She told the papers she was having an affair with you?’

  ‘No, of course not,’ he said with an impatient shrug. ‘But she was banging on to her girlfriends at La Cucina about how I’m always there for her and the only one who could help her,’ I noticed with a certain amount of irritation that he seemed by no means displeased that Cressida thought she could put so much trust in her ex-lover, ‘and she needed to see me desperately.’

  He looked at me with raised brows. ‘Do you know what that’s about?’ I shook my head. ‘Arabella and the others were so worried about the state Cressy was in that they couldn’t resist discussing it with all their girlfriends. Naturally by the time the story reached Serena it had been improved somewhat.’

  ‘Serena?’ I echoed.

  ‘I went around to see her on Tuesday to find out exactly what she’d been up to.’ He grinned evilly. ‘She didn’t look happy to see me. Claimed she didn’t know anything about it at first. She told me in the end.’ I wondered, not without a certain amount of malicious enjoyment, exactly what methods James had used. He made a face. ‘She was out for dinner, had a bit too much to drink and someone said he’d heard that I’d got a new girlfriend. It was too much for her. She said in point of fact she knew better and that I’d gone back to Cressy ... It just so happens that Serena’s friend Patrick who was there earns his champagne money by scouting stories for the gossip columns.

  ‘Serena claims that she rang him the next day to say that it had been the drink speaking but he hadn’t believed her.’

  I didn’t believe it either. Serena would never admit that she could get drunk enough to start passing on slanderous stories.

  James’s mouth took on a particularly grim line. ‘She won’t do it again, I can promise you.’

  If I were a nicer person I would have found it in my heart to feel a twinge of sympathy for Serena. But I’m not.

  He ran his finger idly around the rim of his glass. ‘I suppose I might be able to convince Stefano I haven’t laid an improper finger on Cressy for over two years, but I really don’t see how I can make him believe I didn’t whip his china out of some form of revenge for his taking my woman.’ I opened my mouth but he went on,
shaking his head in bewildered fashion. ‘It’s exactly the sort of thing he’d do himself so he’s hardly going to believe me when I say I didn’t have anything to do with it, is he?’ He reached across me for the bottle and refilled our glasses. ‘If this was a novel,’ he said, ‘I’d turn detective so that I could find out who really took that china. Unfortunately,’ he pulled an expressive face, ‘I don’t have a clue how to go about it.’

  ‘You don’t have to. No one took it. It’s in the safe at Hurstwood House.’

  He choked, sending wine spluttering all over the table. I caught the glass just in time before it tipped over, and thumped his back rather ineffectually until he got his breath back. He raised his head. ‘Did I hear you right?’ he asked in complete disbelief. ‘That Stefano has had the bloody stuff all this time? And that he hid it so he could persecute me? I’ll kill him! I’ll—’

  ‘He doesn’t know,’ I said quickly before James could get too carried away. I told him all about the misunder­standing that had led me to think Cressida had the china and how I’d realised she didn’t. ‘I should think Stefano stormed in that evening, found Cressida’s note which he couldn’t read anyway, saw the empty shelves and instantly added two and two to make five. He probably didn’t even stay long enough to talk to the housekeeper before dashing off to London in search of Cressida.’

  ‘Knowing her she’ll have forgotten to tell the house­keeper as well.’ James twisted around and glared at me accusingly. ‘Why the hell didn’t you tell me this before?’

  ‘Because you didn’t give me the chance. First you were groping me, then you were talking too much for me to get a word in edgeways.’

  ‘I don’t grope,’ he snapped back.