‘Routine stuff.’ Adam was smiling at her. ‘Every month they make up a list of stolen property and circulate it through the trade in the hope that if some of the articles come up for sale, we’ll recognise them. I couldn’t help them.’
Chloe was full of suspicion now. ‘It sounded more than that. They were asking about you.’
‘No,’ he said, ‘not really. I’ll start to cook. I’ve got some steak for dinner.’
Feeding Lucy always gave Chloe a quiet time to think, and it seemed obvious to her that Adam was trying to pass off the police visit as one of little importance. But he’d not wanted her to come home and find them here. He’d been very anxious; she’d felt his tension when she’d gone to his study and he’d been extraordinarily grateful for what she’d told the officers. What exactly had she said?
It came to her then like a bolt from the blue. May the fifteenth? When had Gran died? Lucy finished her bottle, and Chloe tucked her under her arm and ran down to the kitchen to consult the calendar. She’d not been here on May the fifteenth. She’d stayed in Liverpool with Mum, waiting for Gran’s funeral.
She could feel the strength ebbing from her knees; they felt like rubber. The police had been asking her about Adam’s movements. Without thinking, she’d provided him with a false alibi. That was why he’d been so grateful.
Adam was at the stove. She whirled round on him. ‘What were you doing on the night of the fifteenth of May? It was you they were checking on, wasn’t it?’
‘There’s no need to worry, Chloe . . .’
‘I wasn’t here that night. Why did you let me say I was? I wasn’t thinking. The police will think I’ve lied. I’ve got to tell them it was all a mistake.’
She was heading for the phone in the hall to look up their number in the directory. Adam’s arms came round her and the baby in a hug, pulling her to a halt. ‘No, there’s no need, love.’
‘Yes, they could charge me with wasting police time.’
‘It wasn’t all that important.’
‘But it is . . .’
‘No, that wasn’t about me. You’ve got it all wrong. They’ll just drop whatever it was they were inquiring about. It’s all over now.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes, no need to give it another thought.’
Chloe was afraid that Adam was not as honest as he should be. That he could deny he’d done anything wrong with such an appearance of innocence made her want to believe him. It was what he’d said on the phone beforehand that gave her grounds to worry, and the fact that clearly he didn’t want her to contact the police. It left her anxious, but she did nothing, and as he’d predicted, they heard no more from them.
Chloe couldn’t bring herself to do anything that might cause a rift between her and Adam, but it took her a while to put the incident out of her mind.
As the weeks went on, Chloe began to feel better. She had more energy and with a little experience she found taking care of the baby was easier. She pushed Lucy to the shops regularly, and once a month or so she took the train to Liverpool to see her mother. She’d struck up a friendship with another girl called Dulcie, who’d been in the same ward having a baby at the same time. They took their babies to the child welfare clinic to be weighed and to the local park on fine afternoons.
Chloe didn’t want another baby for a while and knew that Adam’s precautions were unreliable. It seemed that Dulcie was of like mind, so they went together to the family planning clinic to get the pill. Adam thoroughly approved of her taking over that responsibility.
He spent the odd day working from his study, phoning and catching up with his paperwork, but the telephone often rang while he was out. He was relying on Chloe to take work-related messages for him from clients, shops and auction houses. She was interested in what he was doing and offered to type letters for him on the portable typewriter he had. Adam seemed glad to take her up on that and gave her books on antiques to read so that she’d understand more of what it was all about. Occasionally, clients and colleagues came to see Adam at home and Chloe would help to entertain them. She tried to involve herself more with his business because it was an interest she and Adam could share.
She felt she’d settled down to motherhood and was enjoying her very comfortable station in life. She was proud of Adam’s ability to provide so well for them and eager to learn as much about it as she could.
One morning, Adam had arranged to visit a saleroom in Derbyshire. Before he set out, he ran upstairs to the nursery, where Chloe was dressing Lucy.
‘Chloe,’ he said, ‘a man by the name of Newcombe is going to bring in a clock and some silver this morning. Get his phone number and tell him I’ll ring him back this afternoon when I’ve had time to look at them.’
‘Are you going to buy these things?’
‘It depends on what they are. Mr Newcombe says his son is ill and has mortgage difficulties. He’s trying to raise money urgently for him.’ He dropped a kiss on her head and then one on Lucy’s. ‘I’ll see you later. Bye bye.’
About an hour later, Chloe saw an old car draw up on the drive and a very elderly couple come towards the front door, each carrying a bag. She ran to open it and asked, ‘Mr and Mrs Newcombe?’
She thought they looked a rather sad pair and took them to Adam’s study, where she helped them unpack their bags and lay out what they’d brought on his desk.
‘We’ve had these all our married life,’ the old lady said. ‘To us they’re a slice of our history, but are they any good?’
Mr Newcombe smiled at her. ‘Mr Livingstone said he’d give us instant cash for top-quality goods, but if they aren’t what he wants, we’d have to wait for them to be sold at auction.’
The clock was very similar to the mantel clock her mother had sold to help buy the summerhouse. ‘I think he might be interested in this,’ she told them.
Chloe felt she could value it, but knew better than to say so to its owners. Adam was very fussy that she should not talk prices to customers. ‘It raises their hopes,’ he’d told her, ‘and you could get it hopelessly wrong.’
She wrote down their phone number and said, ‘My partner will ring you later this afternoon when he gets home.’
When they’d gone, Chloe went back to take another look at the things they’d brought. Their clock seemed to be of good quality. It had a different name on the dial to that her mother had had, and she knew that could make a big difference to what it was worth. There was a silver tea and coffee set; each piece was hallmarked, but the marks conveyed nothing to her except that they were solid silver and not plate. She got out Adam’s list of hallmarks and tried to fathom them out, but it wasn’t easy and Lucy wouldn’t let her concentrate.
Adam was home before four, in good time to have afternoon tea with her. When he went to his study to view the goods, Chloe followed him and stood in the doorway, interested to hear his opinion. He took the silver coffee pot to the window, where the sun was beaming in.
‘Nice stuff.’ He was enthusiastic. ‘George IV five-piece service, yes, 1827, by Charles Fox.’
‘How much is that worth?’
‘Quite a lot, a good maker. It depends to some extent on how much silver is in it.’
‘It’s an attractive design.’
‘It’s a good weight but I haven’t got big enough scales to find out exactly. It has its matching tray, though, and trays are often lost. I have a client who might like this. Yes, I’m sure he will.’
‘And the clock? That’s like the clock Mum had, isn’t it?’
He picked it up. ‘Same period, early Georgian. This one’s by William Webster. Very nice brass dial. It’s worth more than your mother’s.’
‘I’m glad,’ Chloe said. She’d felt sorry for the old couple.
Lucy had crawled after her, but finding her mother’s attention was elsewhere, she let out a howl of protest. Chloe picked her up and kissed her to comfort her. She’d taken only a couple of steps along the passage when she heard Adam speaking on the phone. There was no enthusiasm in his voice now.
‘Of course they are worth something,’ he said, ‘and I’ll be happy to buy them from you. But I have to tell you that silver is losing its popular appeal; housewives don’t want the bother of cleaning it these days. That means it’s losing its value in today’s market. The clock? It’s handsome, but dozens of similar ones were made and that also affects the value.’
Lucy was chuckling softly and rubbing her face against her mother’s. Chloe waited silently, listening for the amount Adam was about to offer for them. In order to learn, this was what she needed to know.
When Adam named the figure, it rooted her to the spot. She’d expected him to offer at least twice that. She was filled with sympathy for the owners, who no doubt had hoped for more in order to help their son. Adam was still talking. It seemed the couple were about to accept his offer.
‘I’ll make out a cheque for you,’ he said. ‘You can either come round and collect it, or I’ll put it in the post for you.’
She heard the phone click down on its rest and went back to the doorway.
‘I thought that stuff would be worth more than that,’ she said, balancing Lucy on one arm so she could pick up the teapot. ‘It’s pretty, I like it.’
She turned to face Adam, and the look on his face spoke volumes. She sucked in a deep breath. This surely must be proof that Adam was not honest. ‘That’s not a fair price, is it?’
He looked guilty and blustered, ‘I have to do the best I can for myself.’
‘But that’s cheating.’
‘I’ve told you, haven’t I? We dealers have to make our living on the price difference between buying and selling.’
‘But other antique dealers price their stock fairly for their customers.’
‘None of us could stay in business if we didn’t,’ he maintained.
‘You cheated the Newcombes. They must be in their eighties,’ she went on slowly. ‘Selling their belongings is not something they’ve done before. They don’t know what their things are worth and even less about the antiques market. They’re in a hurry, and you could be reasonably sure they wouldn’t try another dealer.’
So this was how Adam was able to afford the fine house and the good life. He was buying top-class merchandise and giving its owners a fraction of what it was worth. Hadn’t he tried to do that to her mother? Why hadn’t she seen this straight away?
‘They didn’t try to push me up.’
‘No, you’d have given them a pound or two more if they had, but it would still be a bargain for you. It’s a form of fraud.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he said angrily, and tried to justify what he was doing. ‘Sometimes I win and sometimes I lose.’
‘Mostly you win.’ Chloe’s voice was sharp. ‘You make sure the odds are in your favour.’
‘I have to. We all have to. It’s not like the civil service. We’re living on our wits.’
She was frowning. ‘I was proud of you, doing so well. You have this fabulous house.’
‘I’ve bought it on a mortgage,’ he said. ‘Not everything goes the way I want it to. Sometimes I make a mistake and sometimes I back a loser. It’s not always easy.’
‘Think of the people you are defrauding out of what is rightfully theirs.’
‘Most have more than they need.’
‘It’s not a question of what they need. Most don’t understand the value of what they’re letting you have.’
‘More fool them.’
‘Adam, you have to keep abreast of values to stay in business. That’s your job, but values are changing all the time and the people you deal with are often old, like the Newcombes. They could have owned what they’re selling you all their lives; some things have been passed down the family.’
He was impatient. ‘I know all that.’
‘You’re cheating them.’
‘Almost everybody cheats one way or another.’
‘No they don’t. Most people are honest.’
‘Chloe, everybody is out to feather their own nest. I’ve been in this business a long time and I’ve seen it time and time again.
‘Last year a man rang me up and asked me to value the contents of a big house. He wanted it done urgently because he meant to sell everything as soon as he could. He took me from room to room, but when I went to push open one of the bedroom doors, he said, “Not in there, my father’s in bed.”
‘As it was mid-afternoon, I said, “Sorry, is he ill?”
‘ “He died last night,” he told me. “I need to move everything to an auction room before I tell the rest of the family, or they’ll strip the place out before I get a look in.” ’
Chloe stared at him in disbelief.
‘At another place, I was followed round by eight members of the family when I went to value the contents. All of them were scared stiff they weren’t going to get their fair share of the pickings.’
Chloe choked. ‘Adam, I’d like to think I could trust you.’
‘Well of course you can. I went to another house where they had hidden money behind the wallpaper and the house was so damp, brown mildew and fungus was growing through pound notes. Not everybody comes from a polite, honest, well-to-do family like yours.’
‘My Aunt Goldie is not well-to-do, but I believe her to be honest.’
‘Everybody has to look out for himself in this trade.’
Chloe tried to see things squarely. She no longer admired what Adam had achieved, she didn’t like his methods, and on top of this, the police had been making inquiries about something he’d done. He’d lied to her about that and she’d provided him with a false alibi.
She knew she should have done something to correct that, but having Lucy bonded her to Adam. She couldn’t earn her own living and take care of her daughter; her only logical course was to stay.
It cooled things between them for a while, but on a day-to-day level they rubbed along together fairly well and things picked up again. Chloe told herself that mostly Adam was making his living by legitimate means. He was generous and he wanted them all to have a good time. It was just that he always seemed to be on the lookout to make the extra pound anywhere he could.
CHAPTER TEN
H
ELEN WAS FEELING HAPPIER about Chloe. She seemed contented with Adam, and Lucy was thriving. For herself, she’d really enjoyed helping Rex set up his new home. It wasn’t quite finished; perhaps it never would be. It was very pleasant to prowl round the shops together seeking exactly the right table lamp or some pretty china. He needed another armchair to complete the sitting room and a blanket chest to stand on the landing.