Deadly Desires at Honeychurch Hall Page 20

  Tony and John withdrew the gurney from the rear of the ambulance and gently lifted Angela onto it.

  David turned to watch and let out a cry of surprise. Pushing me aside he stepped toward the gurney. “Angela? What the hell are you doing here?”

  Incredulously, Mum and I looked from one to the other.

  “You know her?” I exclaimed.

  Angela’s eyes snapped open “David! Oh! I can exthplain. I’m tho thorry.”

  Chapter Twenty-one

  David was storming around the kitchen. His face was so purple that I was afraid he’d have a coronary. I had never seen him so angry.

  “But I don’t understand.” I felt incredibly upset and confused. “Why would she do such a thing?”

  “I told you,” David fumed. “Angela Parks is a close friend of Trudy’s.”

  “Who is Trudy?” Alfred hovered from the doorway, no doubt intrigued by all the raised voices. He was now 75 percent covered in primrose-yellow paint and reminded me of a perky canary.

  “Trudy is David’s wife,” Mum said.

  “Ex-wife,” snapped David.

  “Angela is an actress,” said Mum.

  “I thought she was the housekeeper?” said Alfred.

  “Oh for heaven’s sake,” said Mum. “She was pretending to be the housekeeper.”

  “Well. She certainly fooled me,” said Alfred.

  “She fooled all of us,” I said, although from the beginning I had had a funny feeling about her.

  “I knew her accent was fake,” Mum declared. “She was so over the top as well! All those stories about being a servant. Remember what she said about ‘ethnic minorities’? What a little liar.”

  “Lies, Mother?”

  “We’re not talking about me,” said Mum hotly.

  “How did Angela get the job here in the first place?” David demanded.

  “Apparently, she wrote to Mrs. Cropper and asked for the position,” I said. “Angela claimed that she’d grown up on the Lindridge estate in North Devon somewhere. It had burned down so she moved south.”

  “Lindridge?” David gave a snort of derision. “Yes, it burned down alright but it burned down in 1962.”

  Mum and I exchanged looks of dismay. “We weren’t to know,” said Mum. “Anyway, why on earth would she want to work as a housekeeper?”

  “I just told you why! She’s an actress.” David ran his fingers through his hair. It stood up on end. It was the first time I had ever seen him lose his groomed demeanor. “This is all my fault.”

  “Of course it’s your fault,” said Mum.

  “Why is it his fault?” Alfred chimed in.

  “We used to joke about Angela’s fascination for Downton Abbey,” said David with disgust.

  I noted the “we” as in David and Trudy.

  “Where is Downton Abbey?” Alfred asked.

  “It’s a television show!” Mum cried.

  “Angela was determined to get on the show,” David went on. “She thought that by working as a real housekeeper, it would give her an advantage.”

  “Hmm. That makes sense,” said Mum. “Renée Zellweger did the same thing for Bridget Jones’s Diary. She worked for a real publishing house to prepare for the role and no one recognized her.”

  “No.” I said. “I don’t believe it was just about that. It’s too much of a coincidence. Angela has been spying on me and your wife put her up to it.”

  “Ex-wife,” David said.

  “So now you’re saying it’s Trudy’s fault,” said Mum. “Typical.”

  “Who is Trudy, again?” Alfred asked.

  “I don’t care whose fault it is,” I said coldly. “I think you should leave, David.”

  David’s jaw dropped in surprise. “Don’t be silly.”

  “No one calls my niece silly.”

  “Niece?” David regarded Alfred with confusion. “Who are you?”

  “Please! No more,” I cried. “Just go.”

  David stepped toward me. “Kat, please listen. I’m just—”

  “You heard what she said.” Alfred may be small and currently bright yellow but I could tell he was spoiling for a fight. Alfred raised his fists.

  Startled, David took a step back. “Of course!” He snapped his fingers. “You worked in the fairground. No. Something to do with a traveling boxing emporium?” A strange expression crossed David’s features. “I think I know what this is about.”

  “What. Exactly?” I demanded.

  “I’ll handle it,” said David grimly. “I’ll talk to Trudy.”

  “What should we do about Angela?” said Mum. “Tell the police?”

  “Tell them what?” I said. “She’s in hospital. Isn’t that punishment enough—anyway, I don’t care. All this does is validate my decision.”

  “Yes, yes, so you keep saying,” said David, exasperated. “I’ve already told you that ship has sailed. They’ve found a new host anyway.”

  “I’m not talking about Fakes & Treasures. I’m talking about you and me.” I was close to tears. “It’s humiliating to say nothing of how horrible it was, just watching Angela being trampled on—”

  “Let’s all have a nice gin and tonic—”

  “I don’t want a gin and tonic, Mother!”

  “Kat, my divorce—”

  “Didn’t you hear what she said, Dylan?” Alfred chimed in. “She doesn’t want you—”

  “That’s right,” said Mum. “She’s moved on.”

  “Which is why I came by,” said David. “My friend at the ministry called me about Prince-Avery.”

  “Who is Prince—?”

  “Shut up, Alfred,” we three chorused.

  “Is he the one with the walking cane?” Alfred ventured gingerly.

  “There was a scandal that was hushed up,” David went on.

  “I’m not interested,” I said.

  “Your friend is rather too fond of the bottle. He was acting as a consultant on a project—the name of which I agreed not to reveal—when he caused a fatal car accident. He went to prison for a year.”

  “So I heard.” But I hadn’t known about the prison sentence.

  “A year?” Alfred scoffed. “That’s nothing!”

  “Prison?” Mum exclaimed. “Good God!”

  “And there’s something else,” David said. “I have a contact with the UK Border Agency—”

  “You’re so well connected, Dylan.” Mum’s voice dripped with sarcasm.

  “Todd Gray, I know,” I said impatiently. “We’ve had dinner with him lots of times.”

  “Todd has access to a vast database of people who enter and leave the United Kingdom.”

  Mum gasped. “Everyone? Every time?” She looked at Alfred and I caught him giving her a reassuring nod. “Even ferry crossings to Jersey?”

  “What? Why Jersey?” David seemed thrown by the question.

  “No reason,” said Mum quickly.

  “As part of my job as an international art investigator, the information the UK Border Agency can provide is highly valuable.”

  David’s tone had grown more self-assured and pompous—he actually reminded me of Shawn. It was a side of David I never liked.

  “What kind of information?” Alfred suddenly didn’t seem so confident. “Aren’t they just looking for terrorists?”

  “Yes. Terrorists. Thieves. Fraudulent transactions—yes, yes, yes! Let me finish!” David rolled his eyes at me and went on. “The point is, Valentine Prince-Avery has been spending the last several months in East Africa. So I don’t see how he can be acting as a consultant on this new high-speed train from a different continent.”

  “Actually, you’re wrong. He’s been visiting the Zanzibar Archipelago. Pemba Island to be exact,” I said. “He’s entitled to a holiday, isn’t he?”

  To say that the wind was knocked out of David’s sails was putting it mildly. “You knew?”

  “Valentine told you?” Mum said, surprised.

  He hadn’t but I couldn’t stand David’s smu
gness any longer. “But thanks for clarifying things for me, David. You just can’t stand to lose, can you? It is over between you and me. It has been for a long time.”

  Shock registered on David’s face. He looked to Mum—who stood arms akimbo and was visibly gloating—and Alfred, who brought up his fists, again.

  “Mum, Alfred—please. Just leave us for a minute.”

  They filed out of the kitchen.

  “You’re serious, aren’t you?” said David.

  “Yes. Yes, I am.” And I was.

  It was finished.

  David bit his lip. He stood awkwardly just staring at me. “Right. Okay.” He extended his hand. “No hard feelings?”

  After a moment, I took it. “None.”

  David thrust his shoulders back and headed for the kitchen door that opened into the field behind. I wanted to warn him that it was muddy but no words came out of my mouth.

  He didn’t look back.

  A split second later, Mum and Alfred were back in the kitchen. I knew they had been eavesdropping but I was too tired to argue anymore. I sank into a chair and put my head in my hands.

  “Alfred’s worried about the bank in Jersey,” said Mum. “Will David cause us any trouble now that you’ve really ended it, Kat?”

  “I told Iris not to worry,” said Alfred. “As long as she did what I told her, she’ll be fine.”

  “Of course! I wouldn’t dream of trying to touch my own money without your permission, Alfred,” said Mum. “Would I, Kat?”

  “Leave me out of this, please.”

  “If you need more money, you let me handle it. You heard what Dylan said, there’s a record of people who come in and out of the country.”

  “But surely, if you’re a British citizen you don’t need a passport,” said Mum. “So if you don’t show a passport, then how would they know you had come in or out of the country? What do you think, Kat?”

  “I have no idea,” I said again.

  “Oh God!” she cried. “Would David say anything about me being Krystalle Storm?”

  “Let’s hope not.” David’s reaction this evening had made me realize that despite all his faults and his messy marriage and ugly divorce, he wouldn’t do anything to hurt me. Maybe he really had loved me as much as he was capable of loving anyone.

  “That’s all right then.” Mum poured herself a gin and tonic and downed it in one go.

  “I’ll drink to that! And I would if I had one,” said Uncle Alfred.

  “You can’t have one until you’ve finished painting that front room—wait! This isn’t about you. This is about me!” Mum’s eyes widened. “Of course! This is all about me!”

  “It’s always about you, Mother.”

  “If Angela was Trudy Wynne’s friend, that explains why she was asking all those questions about Krystalle Storm! The little minx! All that Ravishing Romantics Book Club and the rumors that I live here.”

  “Which you do,” I reminded her.

  “Remember when Vera sent those e-mails to Trudy Wynne just before she died?”

  “Claiming to know who Krystalle Storm really was,” I said. “Yes.”

  “Um. Can I ask…?” Alfred raised his hand gingerly. “Who is Vera?”

  “No!” Mum and I chorused.

  “Trudy Wynne must still be pursuing that lead!”

  The phone rang in the kitchen and we all looked at each other. “Alfred, you answer it,” said Mum.

  “The Stanford residence,” said Alfred. He jumped to attention. “Yes, m’lady, I am Alfred Bushman.” As he listened, his face was wreathed in smiles. “Yes, very much so, m’lady. I can start tomorrow. Yes. She’s right here.” He offered me the phone. “For you. It’s the dowager countess.”

  I braced myself for questions about Angela’s accident with the cows but instead she got straight to the point. “Is Mr. Chips with you?”

  My stomach turned right over. In all the excitement following the cow incident, I had completely forgotten about Edith’s little dog. I felt paralyzed and couldn’t think of a thing to say.

  Alfred swiftly stepped up and whispered in my ear, “Tell her you’ll bring Mr. Chips back in a couple of hours.”

  I repeated what Alfred had said and hung up. “Why did you say that?” I said, wondering if my day could get any worse. “How did you know what she was asking me anyway?”

  He tapped his forehead. “I’ve got gifts, luv. He’s off hunting. We’ll find him—but he’s in trouble.”

  As if on cue, there was a powerful crack of lightning that illuminated the kitchen in phosphorescent light. A deep rumble began to sound from the bowels of the earth, culminating in a deafening boom of thunder. Rain hammered down on the roof, pelting the windowpanes.

  “We’d best get to it quickly,” said Alfred. “Where did you see Mr. Chips last?”

  “Cavalier Copse,” I said.

  “We’ll all go,” said Mum. “Three pairs of eyes are better than one.”

  “And bring a couple of towels,” Uncle Alfred added. “We may need them.”

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Dressed in heavy raincoats and bearing flashlights, a shovel, some rope, and an old towel in a plastic carrier bag, we set off across the fields in a ferocious downpour.

  Angela’s brush with death continued to play on my mind. “I had no idea that cows could move so fast,” I told Alfred for what had to be the umpteenth time. “The moment Mr. Chips broke for cover, she just made a run for it.”

  “Cows don’t like dogs nipping at their heels,” said Alfred. “But it was clever of the girl to play dead.”

  “She fainted. I thought she was dead.”

  It was heavy going but when we reached Hopton’s Crest, the rain abruptly stopped and a pale three-quarter moon emerged from behind the clouds. A peculiar mist drifted along the track, creating odd shapes among the scrub.

  “Did you see that?” Mum clutched my arm. “That shape? Moving?”

  “It’s just a hedge,” I said but the truth was, I thought I’d seen something move, too. “It’s a trick of the light—a mix of moonbeams dancing with the mist that creates an illusion.”

  But Mum wasn’t convinced. “Alfred? Did you see that?”

  Alfred waved us to keep quiet. “Stop all your chattering for just one minute.”

  He climbed over the stile and stood at the top of the field with his arms by his side, gazing up at the sky.

  “Mum—”

  “Shh! He’s channeling,” she whispered.

  After a couple of minutes, Alfred turned and beckoned for us to join him. He headed for the boundary that hugged the hedge and ran downhill all the way to the bottom of the field.

  An owl hooted; foxes cried but there was no sound of an answering bark to our repeated calls to Mr. Chips.

  Alfred pointed his flashlight at a series of round holes peppered in the banks underneath the hedge.

  “Rabbit holes and badger setts,” he said. “But he’s not here.”

  Minutes later we drew close to Coffin Mire.

  “You don’t want to go anywhere near there, Alfred,” said Mum. “It’s a swamp.”

  Alfred gingerly took a few steps forward and stopped. Again, he put his hand up and we fell quiet.

  “Please don’t tell me Mr. Chips fell in,” I whispered.

  “No, he’s not in there but—” Alfred gasped. “Jesus, have mercy.”

  “What? What is it?” Mum said sharply. “What have you seen?”

  Alfred turned away. “Later. Not now. Turn off the flashlights and be quiet. I need to concentrate.”

  The wind rushed through the trees with the clatter and chill that I experienced every time I came this way. Mum grabbed my arm again. “Can you feel it?”

  “Don’t be silly,” I said but the hairs stood up on the back of my neck. There was a presence, I was sure of it, too.

  “What’s that light over there?” Mum whispered urgently. “Do you see it?”

  She pointed in the opposite direction away from C
avalier Copse toward a bank of trees where a yellow light shone through in the distance.

  “That’s Bridge Cottage,” I whispered back.

  “Yes, yes, of course,” Mum muttered. “I got all discombobulated.”

  “Be quiet, Iris,” Alfred hissed.

  We did as we were told and stood waiting.

  Another rush of icy cold air swirled around us.

  “Aye, the soldiers are here, they’re all here, wandering around, lost and confused,” said Alfred. “Can you hear the chink of armor? The sound of horse hooves?”

  “No,” I said. And I didn’t want to.

  Suddenly, Alfred turned his flashlight back on. “We’re coming, little fella. Mr. Chips is in the bank, yonder.”

  Most Devon hedges are built on top of earthen banks and like most, too, were home to many woodland creatures.

  Alfred made a beeline for the third hole to the far side of the stile.

  It looked too small for even a rabbit to go down, let alone a Jack Russell terrier. “Surely, he can’t be in there!”

  Alfred put his shovel aside and knelt down at the entrance. “Mr. Chips?” he said gently. “You in there, boy?”

  Far, far belowground came a faint whimper.

  “Thank God!” I exclaimed.

  “He’s there!” Mum said happily. “But how can we get him out?”

  “All right, my boy, we’re here now.”

  Mr. Chips’s whimpers turned into anguished whining.

  Alfred set to with the shovel, digging out the hole as Mum and I held our flashlights so he could see what he was doing.

  “Keep the light at an angle,” he said. “Don’t want to frighten the little bugger any more than he already is.”

  “Told you he could talk to the animals,” said Mum proudly.

  “We’re lucky there has been so much rain,” said Alfred. “The earth is soft. We’ll soon get him out.”

  Alfred suddenly tossed the shovel down, lay on his stomach, and thrust his hand far into the hole right up to his armpit.

  There was a yelp of surprise.

  “He’s got something in his mouth,” muttered Alfred.

  “He’s got my money!” Mum exclaimed.