Guilt Edged

Table of Contents

A Selection of Recent Titles by Judith Cutler

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Epilogue

Footnote

The Lina Townend Series

 

DRAWING THE LINE

SILVER GUILT *

RING OF GUILT *

GUILTY PLEASURES *

GUILT TRIP *

GUILT EDGED *

 

The Josie Welford Series

 

THE FOOD DETECTIVE

THE CHINESE TAKEOUT

 

The Frances Harman Series

 

LIFE SENTENCE

COLD PURSUIT

STILL WATERS

BURYING THE PAST *

 

* available from Severn House

 

 

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author's and publisher's rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

    

First published in Great Britain and the USA 2013 by

SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

9–15 High Street, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM1 1DF.

ebook edition first published in 2013 by Severn House Digital

an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

Copyright © 2013 by Judith Cutler

The right of Judith Cutler to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Cutler, Judith.

Guilt edged. – (A Lina Townend mystery; 6)

1. Townend, Lina (Fictitious character)–Fiction.

2. Antique dealers–Fiction. 3. Aristocracy (Social

class)–Fiction. 4. Detective and mystery stories.

I. Title II. Series

823.9'2-dc23

ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8293-6 (cased)

ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-423-2 (epub)

Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

This ebook produced by

Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland.

To my dear son Jon,

and the unemployed army of talented young men and women desperate to do a fair day's work for a fair day's pay

This novel could not have been written without the generous and inspiring help of Philip Allwood, auctioneer and raconteur extraordinaire, who took me behind the scenes at Moore, Allen, Cirencester, and freely shared his expertise and love of antiques. It goes without saying that he and his team are nothing at all like Brian and Helen Baker's completely fictitious firm.

Lina and I both found invaluable information in
The Portrait Minature in England
by Katherine Coombs (V and A Publications, 1998), for which we are truly grateful.

‘T
alk to me about a horse? What do you mean, someone wants to talk about a horse?' Tearing my eyes from the blank computer screen they'd been glued to for heaven knows how long, I turned to Mary Walker. She might technically have been just an employee of Tripp and Townend, Antique Dealers, of Bredeham, but she ran the shop part of the firm as if it were an outlet of Harrods, at the very least. Why should she imagine I'd want a horse, especially just at this moment? For goodness' sake, didn't I have enough to worry about?

Then another thought struck me. ‘I didn't run it over or something, did I? Or make it jump or bolt or whatever horses do?' I could have done. My mind hadn't exactly been on my driving last night.

‘It's not a real horse,' Mary Walker said gently. She'd been alternately bracing and soothing ever since she'd arrived for work, trying to work out what tone to adopt. Her smile was apologetic. ‘China. A model horse.'

She nodded as I repeated the words, my throat as dry as my lips. ‘We don't have any model horses,' I managed to whisper.

‘The lady doesn't want to buy. She wants to sell. I've told her it's outside my remit, and that you might not be available, of course.'

‘But you think I ought to be?' Swallowing hard, I surrendered to Mary Walker's kind pressure on my shoulder and got up. After all, I wasn't making much progress with Internet trade, and in my current state, I'd do more harm than good if I tried to do my usual job, which was the restoration of precious china. Grabbing the home phone handset, just in case, I followed her to the shop. And why not? I reminded myself that wherever Griff was, however he was, I needed to keep our business ticking over, even if all I wanted to do was cower under the duvet with Tim the Bear, Griff's best ever present, for company. I was an antiques dealer, I told myself firmly, and that meant dealing: buying as well as selling.

But I'm also what we call in the trade a divvy – someone with a nose for good things amongst a pile of dross. Or – occasionally – a nose for bad things. And this was the nose that, despite everything, was twitching now.

‘It's china,' the woman said softly. ‘A horse, like I told your boss.'

I let that pass.

Aged about fifty, she was discreetly made-up and quietly dressed – just the sort of person you'd run into in an M and S Foodhall. Her smile was both gentle and polite. In fact, I could see nothing to justify my immediate surge of suspicion. I wished I could: I never knew if I simply had a weird instinct, or if my eyes picked up things my brain didn't have time to process quickly enough, so I was in fact unconsciously drawing on knowledge. Certainly, last week's dowsing for dross in the homes of the Best People in France had been based on good, solid book-learning, underpinned by Griff's patient teaching. And yet – and yet … Griff would sometimes quote Hamlet's comment that there were more things in heaven and earth than could be explained by simple science.

Responding to my nod of encouragement, she swallowed and fished her horse, thickly quilted in bubble-wrap, from her basket, a good old-fashioned wickerwork one I took an immediate fancy to. ‘I understand it's a collector's item,' she said; it sounded more a declaration than a simple statement. ‘My mother-in-law used to like models, especially of horses. I hate to part with it, but you know what it's like these days – redundancy … debts …'

Thank God I didn't. Our shop trade might be poor, but the Internet kept us going very nicely, and the recession had actually helped me by sending items for restoration my way that would once have been dealt with by in-house museum restorers. There was even the prospect of some work for my boyfriend Morris's aristo contacts in Paris. Though I wasn't at all sure today whether I wanted to trade on that relationship. Assuming it still was a relationship.

Without speaking, I laid on the counter the sheet of green baize we keep to protect both the glass itself and any item the customer wants to look at. Or – very rarely – wants us to look at. Why on earth had she chosen us? We did very little buying like this, our stock coming from sales and fairs, and some trading with mates.
Buy cheap and sell dear
was Griff's motto, and had, naturally, become mine. And how could you buy cheap from a woman reduced to selling a cherished heirloom?

‘She said it reminded her of her own horse,' the woman continued, with something of a catch in her throat. ‘A countrywoman – mad about them. Of course, all her horses are long gone now.' She sighed deeply.

Mistake. If you want to tug my heart strings don't go for
the privileged past now reduced to penury
story. Look around our cottage and the shop and you'd see comfortable middle-class writ large. But that was Griff's doing. My background, after my mother's death, was an endless succession of foster and care homes; privileged I was not. I had come into Griff's life because my last foster mother decided that Griff needed someone to look after him – or maybe that he needed someone to look after. Whichever it was, if it hadn't been for Griff's endless love and patience, I'd probably be in jail by now. Or dead. Dirty needles and unprotected sex, that sort of existence.

It really wasn't a very good idea to be thinking about Griff, was it? But I think she took my teary sniff as a sign of sympathy.

‘So this is the one we hung on to longest. Poor Puck – I hope you'll go to a good home.' She sniffed too.

I think I was supposed to ask what had happened to the original horse, the one that this Beswick model resembled. But what if I got the answer, ‘Glue factory'?

Beswick model horses come in all shapes and colours and sizes and are like Marmite: you like them – or not. My pa quite liked gee gees, at least those running races on Channel Four, so perhaps he'd have appreciated this white jobbie more than I did. Griff, a townie to his fingertips despite having lived in the same Kentish village for years, would not. Once I'd ventured to describe a model foal as cute – which it was. Griff had sniffed, audibly, and told me I was damning it with faint praise. To tell the truth, Griff thought horses were terrifying creatures, with sharp bits on five corners, and incontinent to boot. I had no strong feelings either way, never having been through the pony stage when I was a child.

‘They're quite rare, these white ones, aren't they?' the woman prompted me. ‘Collector's items,' she repeated.

They might well be. I could have been honest and told her I didn't have a clue. We specialized in middle to upper range Victorian china, and though we were venturing more and more into the twentieth century, as the taste for Art Deco grew, this definitely did not include twentieth century model animals. But Griff had told me that admitting ignorance was never a good move: it was better to play for time. And it wasn't just his advice that made me say, ‘We'd need to do some research before we could even think of making an offer. Can you leave it with us?'

‘There was one on TV that fetched six hundred pounds,' she said, which didn't seem to be an answer to anything.

Perhaps I should have told her point-blank that even if we bought it, it wouldn't be for the retail price – we had to be able to make a profit on it. Instead, I said mildly, ‘A preliminary investigation won't take long. Can you wait a few minutes? There's a nice tea room halfway down the village street.'

‘Leave something that valuable? With you?' Her tone was decidedly less pleasant.

I didn't tell her I dealt with items worth ten times that on a daily basis. And sometimes a hundred times more.

‘I don't like to let it out of my sight,' she grumbled.