The Chief Inspector's Daughter (5 page)

Her husband gave an abrupt laugh. ‘Don't waste your time,' he jeered. ‘Jasmine doesn't need any sympathy; she's got it made, we all know that.' His wife frowned at him, and retired to replenish her plate. Paul Pardoe looked at his plate, finding it half-empty again. ‘Anjou
rosé
,' he muttered contemptuously.

‘A romantically pretty drink,' observed a horn-rimmed man with thin flat dark hair who had pushed his way forward to reach the bottles. He was Tait's height; rotund, but fashionably dressed with a silk scarf filling the open neck of his shirt. He poured himself a generous glassful of wine, held it up to the light, and shrugged. ‘Hardly a man's drink,' he continued in a plumply patronizing voice, ‘but appropriate for a romantic novelist, eh Paul? An ideal drink for the ladies, bless them.'

He bestowed a salacious smile on Alison. Tait, who had been hoping to leave her and ease himself into Jasmine Woods's orbit, thought that it might perhaps be advisable to stay put.

The newcomer introduced himself as George Hussey; dear Jasmine, he said, switching his leer in her direction, was positively one of his favourite customers.

‘Antiques,' explained Paul Pardoe without enthusiasm. ‘George has a shop in Thirling.'

‘An out-of-the-way village for an antique shop,' commented Tait.

Hussey gave him a pitying glance. ‘I am known,' he stated. ‘Customers come to me from all over the Eastern counties, and from Holland, Belgium and Germany – when one is known, one's location is immaterial. Customers beat a path to my door.'

Tait twitched an eyebrow in acknowledgement. Alison, emboldened by half a glass of wine, commented that Jasmine Woods, at least, had a very short journey.

‘Dear Jasmine,' said George Hussey. He leaned forward, extracted a cheese straw from a dish, ate it in small neat bites and dabbed his lips fastidiously with a handkerchief that matched his silk scarf. ‘She used to visit my shop when she lived in Essex. I was one of the first dealers in this country to see the potential of netsuke, and I was able to encourage her to start her collection. My prices were ridiculously low, of course – this is the trouble with antiques, one so often ends up enriching one's friends at one's own expense. But as soon as Jasmine left Thaxted and came to this house she sought my help to furnish it, so I feel amply repaid; by that and of course by her friendship. A charming woman, don't you think?'

Alison nodded, wondering whether there was going to be an opportunity to speak to Jasmine Woods during the course of the evening. Paul Pardoe looked sceptical, and chomped an untidy handful of cheese straws with large yellow teeth, scattering flakes of pastry about him.

Tait put one hand under Alison's elbow and steered her away. ‘Let's find someone more congenial to talk to,' he muttered, impatient to join his hostess. ‘Like dear Jasmine herself—'

Jasmine Woods was still surrounded by men and the girl hung back, letting Tait join the group. On a side table there stood a pile of copies of a brand-new romantic novel, presumably her hostess's latest. Alison opened the top copy, after a slightly guilty glance over her shoulder to make sure that she was unobserved, and began to read.

Once again, Jasmine Woods had set her story in the early years of the twentieth century. This time the location was a mountainous Balkan kingdom, and the heroine was an English girl who had gone out as companion to the wife of the British ambassador just before the start of the First World War … and there, on the first page was a description of the girl, as vivid as if she were alive: shading herself from the fierce Balkan sun with her parasol as she walked in her elegant long white dress and magnificent hat across the dusty main street of the half-barbaric, half-feudal capital city, with its veneer of early twentieth-century manners and modernity that – according to the blurb – concealed but could not suppress the surging revolutionary spirit of the people and in particular of Constantine, the half-English bastard son of the king himself …

‘Enjoying it?' said a friendly, amused voice beside her. Alison looked up, two-thirds of the way through the first chapter, and blushed to find herself eye-to-eye with the author. ‘Keep it, if you'd like to,' Jasmine Woods went on. ‘My publisher sends me a pile of complimentary copies and I'm often hard put to it to find willing recipients. This is supposed to be a party to celebrate its publication but I doubt if anyone except my sister will deign to accept a copy, so you'll be doing me a favour.'

Alison stammered her thanks, asked if she might have the book autographed and followed Jasmine Woods to a writing table. She was disappointed that there was no evidence there of the novels in production, but only some sheets of writing paper with the Yeoman's heading, a pottery trough of purple crocus, and a framed photograph of Jasmine Woods and a girl in her mid-twenties standing together in long dresses at some formal function. In the photograph the writer was holding a silver bowl, which Alison recognized as the one which stood on a shelf above the desk.

‘The trophy's on loan for a year,' explained Jasmine Woods. ‘I belong to a writers' association, and they very kindly presented me with it at a dinner last autumn.' She gave a deprecating laugh. ‘A sort of long service and good conduct prize, I think. The photograph was taken at the dinner. That's Anne Downing my secretary – or at least she was my secretary, until last month. She was invaluable. She'd been with me for two years, and I hated letting her go, but she felt that she needed a change. I must admit that I miss her even more than I thought I would.'

For a moment, Jasmine Woods looked unusually downcast. Then she shrugged, and her face brightened. ‘Ah well, that's the way it goes. I'll get a replacement eventually. I've advertised, and interviewed one or two girls, but unfortunately their spelling wasn't good enough. My secretary must be able to spell impeccably, you see – one of us has to, and I certainly can't!'

Alison met her hostess's eye for the first time, saw the laughter in it and began to giggle. They were still chuckling together when a tall man with dark curly hair, greying sideburns and a long pointed nose ambled up to join them. He wore a leather jacket and a white silky polo-necked sweater, and held a half-full glass of wine negligently in a long thin hand.

‘The new “novel”, Jasmine?' he said, glancing with amused disdain at the book she had just handed Alison. His voice was classless, but his vowel sounds unmistakably originated from somewhere north of Trent Bridge: there was no mistaking, either, the inverted commas that he chose to place round the word ‘novel', and his opinion of his hostess's work. His loftiness was emphasized by the fact that he kept his heavy-lidded brown eyes fixed on some point in the middle distance six inches above her head, as though she were completely beneath his notice. ‘Which one's this, then?' he went on. ‘Number twenty-five? Your silver jubilee already? You turn them out at such a rate that I get confused.' He gave the ‘con' a tell-tale north-country emphasis.

‘It's number nineteen, actually,' said Jasmine Woods smoothly. ‘I've barely come of age … Alison, this is Jonathan Elliott, who lives in Thirling. My famous neighbour – a
real
novelist, as I'm sure you know.
Three Point Turn
was short-listed for the Ford Prize last year, wasn't it Jonathan? I really must read it again.'

When it came to inflection Jasmine Woods was no amateur either. She delicately inserted a barely perceptible pause between the last two words. Elliott stiffened. For all his relaxed appearance, there was a tension about him; an intensity, despite his throwaway style. Alison looked uncertainly from one to the other, sensing that she was a spectator at some long-playing needle match, and would have edged away if Martin Tait had not appeared at her side with friendly words for her and eyes only for Jasmine.

Their hostess introduced the two men. ‘I was just going to say to Alison that Jonathan is best known as a television critic. Have you seen him hosting the late night Books and Writers programme? I believe he does it splendidly, but unfortunately it's on ITV. I know it's stuffy of me, but I do so much prefer the BBC. Don't you find, Jonathan, that it inhibits serious discussion when you know that your viewers are going to be distracted in the middle of your programme by dog-food commercials?'

‘Not at all,' Jonathan Elliott informed the air above her head. ‘I'm grateful to the dog-food manufacturers for the generous fees they enable the television company to pay me, but the source of my income doesn't mean that I have to pander to my audience. The quality of discussion on the programme isn't affected by what goes on during commercial breaks. We may be hemmed in by exhortations to buy Doggo and Woof, but we still keep our intellectual integrity.' He glanced down for a moment at his hostess, his eyes flicking over her face and her clothes: ‘Which is more than can be said of anyone who deliberately writes to please a mass market – wouldn't you say so, Jasmine?'

‘Ouch!' protested Martin Tait on her behalf. She shook her head, refusing his support; her eyes were lively with the enjoyment of battle.

‘Jonathan is a novelist too,' she told Tait, ‘but unlike me he has intellectual aspirations, so his books have only a limited appeal. They're elitist. I believe there isn't much demand for them outside university campuses and the trendier districts of London.'

Jonathan Elliott scowled. He lowered his eyes to look directly at her, jerking his head to toss the dark curls off his high forehead.

‘My novels are
not
elitist,' he said stiffly. ‘If anything they're too easy to read – you've said yourself that they're hilariously funny. What I'm afraid of is that the ordinary reader may enjoy the humour and fail to realize that the books are satirical. I am fundamentally a serious writer, and my aim is to inform my readers about themselves and contemporary society. I am concerned with the human condition – unlike you, Jasmine, with your romantic fantasies for bored housewives.'

Jasmine Woods smiled at him. ‘Your pretensions are showing, Jonathan,' she chided him gently. ‘It's precisely because I'm concerned with the human condition that I write as I do. You have no “ordinary” readers, as you call them, because your books are neither about nor for ordinary people. The society you describe is too esoteric. You've grown so far away from your north-countryworking-class-lad background that you forget what the human condition really is. What you write are narrowly introspective books about and for extra-ordinary people like yourself – the kind of books you praise on your own television programme. Reviewers rave about your books, and I admit that I enjoy their wit, but they're meaningless to the general public. Contemporary society is chiefly composed of the people you dismiss as “ordinary” readers. They neither know nor care about the complicated professional and sexual relationships of fashionable media people in Hampstead, or trendy academics at the new universities. They can't identify with any of your characters. They know from experience that real life is unfashionable, hardworking, uneventful and often ultimately sad – and so what they look for in a novel is an absorbing story that leaves them with a feeling either of satisfaction or of hope.'

Jonathan Elliott was staring over her head again. ‘
Your
readers, perhaps. But then, I have no sense of being part of the same profession as you romantic novelists.' He lifted his glass as though he were about to drain it, remembered that the wine was
rosé
, lowered the glass with disdain and wandered away.

Alison glared at his back and then looked at Jasmine Woods with admiration. ‘I think you won,' she said expressing feminine loyalty. ‘After all, he retreated.'

Her hostess shrugged. ‘He always does.' She met Alison's eyes, they began to laugh together again, and the girl suddenly made up her mind that she could not let slip a wonderful opportunity.

‘Miss – er – Mrs Woods—' she began nervously.

‘Jasmine.'

‘Jasmine … Look, I'm a secretary you know, and I need a job—' She gave a hurried account of herself. ‘The only thing is,' she finished lamely, ‘that my spelling's nowhere near impeccable. It's not all that bad, honestly, but I can't pretend—'

Jasmine Woods looked at the girl with interest. ‘Who am I to demand perfection?' she said. ‘As long as we get on well together we could always look up the difficult words. There's a problem about getting here, though – no public transport from anywhere. Anne solved that by living in, but what would you do?'

‘Oh – I could cycle,' said Alison eagerly. ‘It's only three or four miles from home.'

‘Good. Come and see me tomorrow afternoon about four, then, and we'll discuss it.'

She smiled and left to talk to some other guests. Alison turned to Tait, dazed by her good fortune. The sadness had vanished from her eyes. ‘I may get a job, Martin! Secretary to Jasmine Woods … wouldn't that be wonderful?'

‘Wonderful,' said Tait, a touch sourly. He had been following Jasmine Woods hopefully all evening, and had hardly had a word from her.

‘I say,' said Alison, who had become suddenly animated, ‘wasn't Jonathan Elliott
awful?
He was so rude. He must hate Jasmine, though I can't imagine why.'

Tait scoffed at the girl's innocence. ‘Don't be silly, of course he doesn't hate her! He's after her, and she's not interested, so he's trying to get rid of his frustrations verbally.'

Alison blinked. ‘How do you know all that?'

‘I'm a detective,' he said. ‘I notice these things.'

Martin Tait looked at his watch. ‘I'll have to go in half an hour, I'm on obbo tonight.'

The Chief Inspector's daughter knew all about obbo. She had frequently, in her youth, heard her mother's bitter opinion about a job which took a married man from the bosom of his family and left him sitting all night in a police car on observation duty, waiting for a crime to happen. But her father was a policeman through and through, a man who had no other training and to whom no other career was open. Martin Tait was of a different calibre.