Silver Guilt (14 page)

‘Even so. I mean, members of the aristocracy aren't ten to a penny, not the old families at least. And if we're related I ought to meet the head of the family – he must be sitting on loads of really great stuff.'

I went very quiet, and let him rant on. Clearly, although he didn't say it in so many words, he'd have liked to get his hands on some of Lord Elham's loot. This was a side of him I'd not seen before.

So I got blamed for not taking him along to Bossingham Hall, when I didn't know if his father was even alive. Fortunately a wave of punters swept in, or I might have snapped at him, though possibly not enough to return the ring with a dramatic gesture. As it was, I turned on my heel and returned to the safety of Griff's stand.

I thought the fair would have been far too small and undistinguished to attract the likes of Morris, but to my surprise he strolled in just before I hoped to break for a coffee with Piers, to wrap my hands round a warm mug and to rebuild bridges. I didn't like being on bad terms with people, but Griff said it wouldn't do him any harm to realize that he had upset me and that he was in the wrong. So perhaps Morris was heaven-sent. We exchanged no more than a nod – he must be on duty. But eventually he wandered over and, to my surprise, paid hard cash for a Ruskin spill vase, not the incredibly precious high-fired
sang de boeuf
, but a very pretty pale iridescent blue.

I knocked off 10 per cent for cash.

‘Without being asked! Lina, are you well?'

‘Standard practice, Morris,' I assured him, as I wrapped the vase in a great deal of bubble wrap. I'd have hated the lovely fragile thing to get chipped or worse.

He held the Sellotape as I snipped it. ‘This is just the thing for my mother's birthday.' With hardly a pause, he added, ‘Any news I should know about? OK, Lina, something's upset you – what's up?'

I shrugged. I wasn't about to blurt out all about my tiff with Piers or my fears about Darren Harris – especially in front of a load of folk with nice active purses.

‘Something is,' he insisted. ‘Do you want to join me for a drink when you've packed up?'

‘Not round here – just in case, you know . . . If anyone recognizes you . . .'

‘So would I be arresting you or turning you into a grass?'

Griff completed a sale on a nice piece of Gaudy Welsh and joined us. ‘It might be better to continue your conversation chez nous, Mr Morris. Eightish? I'm sure there's enough casserole for three.'

‘Thanks.'

I shoved the vase into one of the sale organizer's official polythene carrier bags, which should surely become rare antiques themselves any day now. ‘Enjoy your purchase,' I said in a very public voice, and waved him off.

‘Morris seems a decent man,' Griff said, as we left the car park.

‘He's still a policeman. I wish you hadn't invited him. I want to find out about Darren myself, to—'

‘To protect your father? Some might see him as a vulnerable old man prey to an unscrupulous young fraud. If he is, he needs all the protection the law can give him – not just a daughter, no matter how willing. Think about that, sweet one. And don't worry – I shan't say anything about him to Morris, not without your permission.'

I reached – it was a long stretch – for his hand and squeezed it. If only I could have trusted my father – if only I could have trusted anyone! – as much as I trusted Griff.

Even though the central heating was going full blast, I set a match to the fire and shooed Griff upstairs to have a hot bath. The hand I'd squeezed had been icy, even colder than mine. Meanwhile, I laid the table for three and opened the bottle of red wine that Griff told me would go well with the casserole.

Morris arrived almost immediately. ‘Thank God for car heaters,' he declared. ‘Why didn't the hotel turn the heating up? Something to do with the hot coffees they were selling, not doubt. Lina, a real fire! What bliss!'

‘I didn't want Griff going down with pneumonia,' I said, trying to tease something out of the fuzziest part of my brain. ‘He's in the bath with a nip of whiskey.' Some of the stuff Piers had given him, as it happened. ‘I don't know if it's a good idea, but he says his granny swore by it, and she lived to be ninety-eight. Would you like a drop yourself? Or Griff's other remedy, hot chocolate?'

He wandered into the kitchen after me. ‘Just to get the business end of the conversation over with first, Lina – some more stuff's disappeared from Bossingham Hall. Ivory. Oh, that's better,' he said, holding the mug of chocolate like a hot water bottle.

I held my forehead.

‘Are you all right?'

‘It's just something I have to . . . No, it's no good. It'll come at its own pace or not at all.' I shook my head. ‘Ivory? Not that collection in the display cases in the library? You're joking! They must be worth—'

‘Going on for a million, according to my sources. I suppose you haven't seen your father playing chess with a highly desirable set, Lina?'

‘My father, play chess?' But it was just the sort of thing Titus Oates might do. No, Titus was a forger, not a thief. What Griff called a subtle distinction, but no less real for all that. ‘You mean, in a frogged velvet dressing gown in front of the fire?'

‘In his jeans in the kitchen for all I care. Or –' he paused as the drain gurgled with Griff's emptying bathwater – ‘in the bath. I take it he'll be down any minute?'

I couldn't stop a snort of laughter. ‘He was an Actor, Morris.' I mimicked an old-fashioned thespian. ‘An entrance will be made – when you least expect it.'

He joined in. ‘At least he'll come down to a nice cosy room.'

Cosy like my father's. Whereas the Hall itself was icy cold. And the CCTV had merely stared back at me.

I sat at the kitchen table. ‘Morris. Bossingham Hall was icy cold. It shouldn't have been. Someone was accused of breaking a plate the other day. She didn't: it was so badly cracked it could have come apart any time. Especially if it was sub . . . sugg . . . subjected to changes in temperature. No, don't look at me like that. It's a long story and I'll try to fillet out the important bits.' I took a deep breath and concentrated. ‘I think someone's switched off the heating and the humidity protection. Which is pretty bad news. But – and this is where I've been trying to get to – I don't think their CCTV is working either. Has anyone checked their burglar alarms?'

He produced a notebook. ‘Why should anyone turn off the heating?'

‘Like the hotel did, to save money? Even though they weren't trying to flog poor coffee. Pretty short term savings, but you never know. The whole place is weird,' I said, explaining about the staff quarters and the breakages policy. ‘But I can't see how stopping cameras having a nice swivel round is going to save any fuel.'

‘Neither do I,' said Morris, writing hard. ‘Not when they assured me when I went that it had been serviced recently.'

‘I saw a load of security firm vans there one day, so they're probably telling the truth.'

‘Do you think one of the cleaners switched things off by mistake?'

‘They are not cleaners as in Mrs Mop,' Griff declared, making us both jump, as I'm quite sure he intended. ‘And it takes a great big mistake to switch off what I should imagine are three quite separate systems. That wine should be nicely chambré by now, angel heart.'

He and Morris shook hands heartily, and then he turned his attention to the supper.

‘I'd like another look round your father's rooms, Lina. Unofficial. Could you fix that?'

I shook my head. ‘How soon would unofficial become very official indeed? He is my father, Morris. A pretty crap one, but my father.'

‘What about his other children? Is he in touch with them? He is, isn't he? You've got too honest a face to dissimulate, Lina.'

‘I might well have – if only I knew the meaning of the word.'

Griff, stirring the casserole, turned and raised an eyebrow. ‘Lie,' he mouthed.

‘Just give me a name, Lina,' Morris urged. ‘Then I can do all the dirty work and no one will know you've had anything to do with it.'

‘You want me to dob in my own brother?'

‘If you know he's nicked a million quid's worth of ivory, yes, frankly, I do.'

I pushed away from the table. ‘I don't know anything of the sort, Morris. But we do know that someone employed by the trustees left the hall itself vulnerable.' That was a word Griff had taught me quite early on; for some reason it had stuck better than some of the others. I even remembered to pronounce the ‘l' in the middle. ‘Couldn't you start there? See if a trail leads anywhere?'

His face was suddenly as hard as when I'd first seen it at the NEC. ‘Obstructing the police is a criminal offence, Lina.'

My chin went up. ‘
Obstruct
? I'm not even withholding information. I don't have any bloody information. All I know is that one of my father's many sons has turned up in his part of Bossingham Hall.'

Griff said quietly, ‘He
says
he's Lord Elham's son, my dear one, but have you checked his provenance? Now, Morris, can I press you to a glass of sherry? Or are you a G and T man?'

I'd have said that Morris was as thrown as I was by Griff's question. I couldn't yell obscenities at a guest, any more than the guest could arrest me: that must have been Griff's thinking.

Nothing more was said about my half-brother till the meal was over, with Morris and Griff chatting away as if they'd known each other since the year dot. I'd managed to contribute a bit, but not much – I'd been worrying what I should reveal, of course. What if Darren Harris was a fake? What if he was intent on robbing Lord Elham, and maybe even the Hall's trustees? I didn't owe him anything, and rather thought he owed my father a couple of grand.

Griff fussed off to make coffee, leaving the two of us alone. Funnily enough, though Morris didn't present me with a ring, he did remark on it.

‘A present from my boyfriend,' I said shyly.

‘Do I know him? Is he another dealer?'

‘He sells collectibles,' I said. ‘Piers Hamlyn.'

Something registered. I'll swear it did. But Morris just shook his head. ‘You'll have to introduce me.'

Griff, returning with a cafetière, sighed hugely. ‘I was afraid you wanted to question him, too, Morris. You must allow my dearest one a nice boyfriend, even if you may not applaud her taste in brothers.'

I said sulkily, ‘I don't even know what my taste in brothers might be. I've never met the guy.' And then I recalled a few of Lord Elham's words – that Darren had made a point of turning up when I wasn't going to be there. If my father was suspicious, dozy old soak that he was, perhaps I didn't need to worry about family loyalty. ‘Maybe you'd be able to tell me, Morris, if it's worth scraping his acquaintance.'

Griff smiled and nodded. I'd got the phrase right.

Morris merely nodded.

‘Darren Harris. But Morris, if he's not already on your books, leave him till last in your enquiries – please.'

‘Consider him left. But if he is on my books, what then?'

T
hough I hadn't heard from him since our disagreement three or four days ago at the Ashford fair, I was still wearing Piers' ring, and collecting admiring looks for it. From time to time I thought about phoning him, texting him at least, but from one of my parents I'd inherited a nasty stubborn streak. As for the ring, he'd probably ask me to give it back, so I might as well enjoy it while I could.

Except there was something about it I wasn't enjoying. Was it my divvy's instinct at work?

I asked myself the questions I'd ask a punter who wanted my opinion. Firstly, what was its provenance? For some things, like pictures and that wretched Hungarian silver tray, which Morris had promised to return next time he saw me, provenance was vital. For a ring like this, it was tricky and hardly worth bothering with, so long as you could see the hallmark on the band. In this case one declared it was made in Birmingham, way back in 1879. So it was the right age to have a silver mount for the stones, as opposed to the stronger platinum claws used later. Why it had travelled to Dublin to be sold, goodness knew. But I thought of all those rings on Josie's stand, and had to admit that rings fetched up all over the place.

So that was all right, then.

Or not.

Was there another problem? Sometimes, as I'd told Morris, it wasn't instinct so much as eyes that operated – like the time I'd clocked the Meissen figure amongst the Staffordshire ones. I'd better trust them now.

Griff was having lunch with Aidan. Good. Knowing it would offend him, I didn't want him to know what I was doing. I switched on my bright work-lights and scrunched my jeweller's magnifying lens into my eye socket. My hands were curiously steady, given what I was doing. I started with the main stone, that lovely pigeon's blood ruby. If anything it was even better under the harsh light than in romantic candlelight. Nothing wrong there. So I started on the diamonds surrounding it. The first two were fine. I told myself I was being foolish. But that didn't stop me looking at the next. And then the next.

When I looked at the next, I could have been sick. It might have been a diamond, but it was so poor it was hardly worth fitting. The next was fine. I worked my way systematically round.

The majority of the stones were good quality. Not nearly as good as the ruby, but good enough. But three were poor. Really, really poor.

When had they been put in? When the piece had been made, when the general gleam might have stopped lovers' eyes noticing? Or more recently? The ring was so filthy it was hard to tell. Not just dirty, but really filthy – as if someone had done the gardening in it. Twice. A quick slosh round in cleaning fluid made everything come up nicely, but told me nothing.