The Claresby Collection: Twelve Mysteries (3 page)

“Anyway,” she persevered, despite her mild embarrassment, “it shouldn’t be dull. I’ve asked Simon Forrest along as a make-weight and because he always rather gets on with Delilah’s husband, Conran. They were at school together and neither of them has ever grown up in any meaningful sense. Also, I feel a bit sorry for Simon as he has just lost his job.”

“I didn’t think that lawyers could lose their jobs,” said Rupert, with an uncharacteristically bitter undertone. As one of those men unlikely ever to land a conventional job, he was inclined to be slighting of those who looked like they had successfully manoeuvred themselves into a job for life.

“Well, he was a conveyancing lawyer and a downturn in the property market has hit the firm he worked for quite badly.”

“Poor chap.” Rupert shrugged his large, angular shoulders dismissively. “I feel so sorry for estate agents too.”

“Well, be nice to him, anyway.”

Rupert turned his mild, light blue eyes on Laura. “I’m always nice to everybody.”

“I suppose you are,” she smiled at him fondly. “Don’t mind me; I’m just out of the habit of houseguests. It is only because I’ve got all this money now that I have no excuse to not return a few favours. I thought I might as well ask everyone I owe an invitation to at once and get it over and done with. At least Claresby Manor is big enough to swallow them all up. I’ll give them rooms in all four corners of the house so that they can avoid each other if need be.”

In fact it was the first time in years that Claresby Manor had been heated throughout come November. The boiler had been installed in Laura’s grandfather’s time but still worked very well owing, she speculated, to the fact that they had never been able to afford to run it. Admittedly the long picture gallery and grand oak staircase would always be hopelessly draughty, but she could manage to make the Great Hall quite tolerable if there was a good fire going in the fireplace as well. She hadn’t had a chance to really spruce up any of the rooms, but the faded grandeur of Claresby was sufficient to impress now that it didn’t require the guest to dress in three layers of clothing at all times just to survive. The fact that hot water came out of the taps now, albeit chokingly, she regarded as some sort of miracle.

Laura had delighted in ordering the food over the internet and she and Rupert collected it on the Friday afternoon and companionably stowed it away into the fridges in the rambling kitchen. There were sandwiches, canapés and sushi; also mini jellies, cheesecakes and cupcakes as well as lobsters, shellfish platters and a rather delicious looking salmon and lemon mascarpone terrine. Rupert was alternately popping strawberry and chocolate cupcakes into his mouth as he helped. His long, rangy and rather lopsided physique could accommodate any amounts of food without him ever showing the smallest sign of any real flesh on his body.

“How can you?” Laura wrinkled her delicate nose. “Doesn’t that make you feel sicky and gooey after a while?”

“Yes, but not yet,” came the muffled reply.

“Well, I’ve got two of the girls from the village to come in and cook a full scale roast lunch tomorrow; you should enjoy that. Apart from that, there’s plenty of bacon and eggs, so I can manage the breakfasts myself. Hopefully, after breakfast on Sunday everyone will pull themselves together and push off again. Then it will be just you and me again, thank goodness.”

Even through the cake, Rupert picked up the unintentional compliment of the fact that he was accepted as part of her home and life, despite her oft-mentioned dislike of any outsider. He knew better than to remark about this out loud, even if he had been capable of doing so with a full mouth.

After that, they arranged the Great Hall in a welcoming fashion: baskets of logs ready by the fireplace, the long oak table polished and set with crockery and fairy lights strung around the gargoyles and gryphons of the musicians’ gallery above. Personally, Rupert thought the gargoyles that cropped up both inside and outside the house rather ugly and best left in darkened recesses; but Laura had named them individually as a child and was fond of them. Indeed, one of her favourites bore an uncanny resemblance to Rupert.

The assorted guests started to arrive at about seven. Dishevelled and damp from the stormy weather outside, they stamped their feet and flattened their hair as they entered, lifting their eyes to examining the splendour of the oak panelling and plasterwork ceiling.

“Darling; it’s the devil out there!” exclaimed Delilah Hawkes, shaking her wet coat as she took it off, so that everyone else was rendered wetter than she was. Her husband, Conran, a head smaller and looking dark and grumpy followed in her wake. In fact Laura knew him to be a good-hearted, amiable fellow whose only fault was his inexplicable adoration of his demanding and selfish wife. The Hawkes’ were quickly followed by Samantha Pearson, tall, elegant and confidently un-fashionable in her favourite Burberry: a grey chambray trouser suit with a regency blue check cashmere scarf. She cast a disparaging glance in Delilah’s wake and kissed Laura politely on the cheek. Floyd Bailey and Simon Forrest followed concomitantly, Simon blond and dapper and Floyd in a loose linen suit and cashmere scarf not dissimilar to Samantha’s. Suddenly the Great Hall was filled with chatter to the high plastered ceiling with its geometrical patterns and arcaded frieze. True to character, Floyd had made a beeline to the drinks table and poured his spirits neat whilst Simon and Conran fell into easy conversation. Samantha and Delilah, finding themselves thrust together, conversed in slightly frosty tones. The very educated, old-money Samantha rather despised the parvenu Delilah, and Delilah, in her turn, thought the elegant but plain faced Samantha not worth her time – mainly because she had an unfortunate tendency to rate people in accordance with how much they could do for her, and she knew that Samantha would go out of her way to avoid doing her a favour. Laura, with the training if not the instincts of a good hostess, slowly made her way around to all her guests and inquired after their well-being and current traumas, whilst Rupert took care to see that everyone’s glass was kept filled whilst Floyd was kept as far away from the open bottle of Aberfeldy 21 as was humanly possible.

It wasn’t long before conversation became general. Laura knew her guests well enough to anticipate that tempers would at some point become frayed as strong personalities mixed with alcohol and clashed. It was for this reason she was keeping the toad up her sleeve, figuratively speaking. She thought that, at the opportune moment, it would serve as a distraction. As it was, Simon’s mind was fixed on his own redundancy, so employment and un-employment – always an issue to touch raw nerves – became the subject of discourse.

“It’s all right for you,” said Simon, rather resentfully, addressing Laura. “You inherited this place and enough money for several lifetimes.”

“Yes, in the end I did – but if you remember, it wasn’t long ago that I was surviving on vegetables from the garden and expecting to have to sell the place to pay my family’s debts. I agree I was incredibly lucky in the end, but I don’t see why I should apologise for the fact. Anyway, when you are finally destitute, you know you can come and stay in one of the rooms for as long as you need.”

“Can I join you in your bedroom?” asked Simon with a wink.

Rupert bristled visibly but Laura just replied, amiably, “No; I bet you snore and grumble. You can have the blue room – or the stable if you prove to be a nuisance.”

Simon chuckled. “That’s a deal – but I think I’ve got something else lined up. I’m going to specialize in family law – well, divorces. There’s going to be plenty of business in that arena, recession or no recession.”

“So you are willing to batten off the misery of others?” queried Floyd, giving up on the bottle of Aberfeldy 21 which Rupert had placed just out of reach and settling for the Bowmore Darkest.

“I’m a lawyer,” replied Simon succinctly.

“We all struggle from time to time,” Conran commented comfortingly to Simon. They all had reason to know that this was the case. Delilah was a high maintenance wife, not least because her love of the modern art world had led to radical changes in the style of her husband’s formerly quietly prosperous gallery. He was too much of a gentleman to complain about his troubles, but Delilah intervened.

“Conran hasn’t been able to make the Hawkes Gallery pay recently,” she said bluntly. “But, as you will have heard, we are offering the inaugural “Hawkes Prize” for the most challenging work of modern art in 2011! And,” she said with some pride, “we will be out-classing both the Man Booker Prize and the Turner Prize in terms of the value of the award. The winner of the Hawkes Prize will receive one hundred thousand pounds! That is more than twice what the Turner Prize gives their winner.”

“How will you fund that?” queried Samantha, disingenuously. “Also, the value of winning the Man Booker or the Turner Prize comes mainly from the prestige and subsequent publicity. Can you offer those things?”

Conran was seen to wince slightly but Delilah could not be so easily put down. “Oh everyone knows that you hate anything modern, Samantha. I read your blog once and you advocated the destruction of modern art “like the dross and rubbish it is!” – I think those were your very words.”

“I’m not against everything modern,” replied Samantha coolly. “There are innovations I admire, if they demonstrate actual technical skill and artistic merit in the work. I’ve seen some brilliant ipad art, where the artist can change the images displayed daily. I have no problem with modern methods if the artistic content is still there. Now men like Sebastian Fullmarks...” in a tone that promised the deepest vitriol.

This seemed to Laura to be the moment to unveil her new acquisition.

“Funny you should mention him...” she began, tentatively leading them over to where the object was covered with something that looked like a red velvet tea cosy.

Of course discussion broke out amongst them as they compared the merits and demerits of the pickled toad with the diamond eyes. Samantha declared it an abomination that disgraced Claresby Manor. Delilah said it was “cute”.

“Sebastian, eh?” was Floyd’s contribution, as he struggled to focus on the toad. “He used to be able to draw. We were students together. He borrowed other people’s paints and never gave them back!”

“Well I feel sorry for the toad!” declared Simon. “What say did it have in the matter? Cruel, I call it.”

“Oh, I think it must have died peacefully of natural causes,” said Laura, suddenly concerned.

“What’s it in, anyway? Formaldehyde? It will start going off in a while, you know.”

“Actually I believe it is pickled in wine vinegar. I think Sebastian Fullmarks was trying to express something important about the mutability of all life, so perhaps a little bit of natural decay is part of the art.”

Samantha was heard to give an uncharacteristic snort of derision. It was at this point that Rupert decided to mention food and, the sight of the toad not having caused anyone to lose their appetite, they moved away to start on the buffet.

Somehow they got through the evening without any further disagreements. A little political chat did not seem to rouse the same controversy as matters artistic and soon only Simon and Conran were discussing economics as the others basked in the rosy glow of firelight. Floyd was heard muttering about the flavours of caramel and liquorice versus chocolate and toffee as he cuddled two bottles of whisky to himself. Eventually they all wandered up to bed, with the exception of Floyd, who looked immovable; so Laura settled for placing a quilt over him and left him to sleep it off in situ.

The following morning, Laura made her way down to the kitchen to start cooking some bacon. Floyd, still in the Great Hall, did not appear to have moved at all, and wasn’t even disturbed by the sound of Laura rekindling the fire. Soon she had bread ready on the kitchen table along with fresh coffee and heaps of crispy bacon and sausages. Even in a house as large as Claresby Manor the aroma of bacon will reach male nostrils, and Simon and Conran soon appeared and helped themselves to quantities of food. Shortly after Rupert came down too, but he did not make his usual dash towards the breakfast.

“Um, I think it’s gone...” he began tentatively as he entered the kitchen.

“What’s gone?” asked Laura distractedly, turning more bacon in the pan.

“The pickled toad...with diamonds!” said Rupert.

Laura handed the spatula she was holding over to Simon and followed Rupert through to the Great Hall. Sure enough, whilst the red tea cosy was still there, the jar containing the toad had gone.

“Has someone moved it?” asked Laura, agitated – after all, the artefact had cost her around a million pounds.

“Why would they?” asked Rupert reasonably.

Laura spent a few moments looking about the place.

“Perhaps it has been stolen!” she exclaimed.

“I looked around when I first came down and saw it was gone. I can’t immediately see any signs of a breakin, but I haven’t checked all the rooms.”

“You don’t need to,” muttered Laura under her breath. “If you think about it, we have five people in this house all with a possible motive!”

“You can’t really think that. Why would any of your friends take it?”

“Well, Simon and the Hawkes’ are pretty desperate for money – we saw that last night. And Samantha – well, she might consider destroying it as a matter of principle.”

“What about Floyd, there’s nothing suspicious about him.”

“Rupert, everything about Floyd is suspicious; although, I agree, I can’t immediately see a motive for him to steal it.”

“Well, what about me? Do you suspect me? After all, I’ve got less money than either Simon or Conran and Delilah.”

“Don’t be silly,” snapped Laura. “I’d trust you with my life.”

Before Rupert could respond to this touching expression of faith, the two other ladies came into the Hall.

“What’s the matter?” asked Samantha.

“The toad has gone,” replied Laura, slightly sulkily.