Guilty Pleasures

Never having had a teddy bear when I was young, I was now the proud possessor of three. Two were very smart indeed, Steiff collectors’ bears, complete with buttons in their ears. One looked smug enough to remind me of Aidan, who’d given him to me; the other always looked a bit furtive, possibly because Morris had used him as a sort of farewell and apology mixed.

The third bear, not collectable at all, was far more precious. He was Tim, a present from Griff. Tim had accompanied me on various travels and always gave me sound advice in the middle of the night if I couldn’t sleep. It was he who, having suggested I shove our highly-illegal pepper spray in my pocket, joined me at the supper table – we’d got a new takeaway in the village, and although I was sure their speciality, chicken tikka with salad in a huge naan bread, was crammed with cholesterol and other things I wouldn’t let Griff anywhere near, it was the best comfort food I knew. I hadn’t had any lunch, after all.

Tim insisted I mustn’t get any on his fur, but then made it quite clear I’d put off phoning Bruce Farfrae long enough. It was true. Since the Crime Scene team had finished with the cottage, I’d given it a spring-clean. I’d also changed all the towels and sheets, though I couldn’t have given a single reason.

Making sure that the security system was active, not to mention having locked up very securely, I headed, with Tim in tow to supervise, to the office. I could have phoned Bruce, but thought an email might be better: it wouldn’t disturb him if he had a rare evening with his wife, who apparently stayed at home when he was off on his adventures recovering stolen antiques, and I could sort out exactly what I wanted to say before I said it.

So far, so good. And then the front doorbell rang, I jumped out of my skin and Tim fell across the mouse and made me accidentally click the SEND button. So much for careful preparation.

Tim thought he’d better stay where he was, face down. Gripping the pepper spray, I headed for the security monitor and toggled it so I could see our guest. At first I didn’t make sense of what I saw. Then I focused more clearly and realized I was eyeball to eyeball with a bedroll strapped to a rucksack. There was a tousle of blond hair beyond.

It’s one thing sharing a takeaway curry last thing at night – Robin had turned up with that, too, and I found I could tuck in again – but quite another sharing breakfast with someone still crumpled from a night on the living-room floor, which he’d had to leave early not because I’d disturbed him but because the carpet-cleaning expert was ready for action. We caught whiffs of whatever he was using, although we closed the living room and kitchen doors.

Robin had had more of the wine I’d produced than was good for him and was silent to the point of miserable. Hung-over, probably, if I wanted to be less than charitable. I’d been up hours before him and had already sent a follow-up email to Bruce Farfrae, explaining the situation and apologizing for the note of panic in the tru . . . truc . . . truncated one I’d sent by mistake. Thank goodness for spellcheck.

‘I want you to introduce me to Bugger Bridger, Robin,’ I told him as I tipped grilled bacon, sausages and tomatoes on to his plate. ‘Go on, a full English is supposed to be the best remedy for a bad head. Scrambled eggs? Fresh from the farmer who looks after our caravan. And Griff made the bread himself.’

When his plate was nothing but a smear of tomato ketchup and a trace of golden yolk, I said, ‘So when do we set out? I can leave the shop in Mrs Walker’s hands.’

He shook his head. ‘Look, I don’t see how we can possibly go and knock at a guy’s door and ask how he came into possession of two items and why he wanted to ditch them. Because that’s what he did. He got rid of them. Didn’t want them any more. Not our job to suggest he shouldn’t.’

‘You’ve got this wrong. It’s not saying he should have kept them. It’s finding the best place for them to go if he’s really happy to be rid of them.’

Bugger Bridger’s house was very disappointing. The Edwardian architect hadn’t considered that the countryside usually had different houses from middle-class suburbs, and this had an air of simply being plonked on to the available space and having been embarrassed by its surroundings ever since. Lurking behind a high beech hedge, it turned up its nose at the farm buildings behind it, the other side of a straggle of privet and some chain link.

A large man with a brick-red face appeared in response to my tug on a long cast iron bell-pull. He looked over my shoulder, registering the van, Robin’s poor old car and Robin himself. ‘I was expecting you.’ His salt and pepper moustache and eyebrows quivered, but not exactly with pleasure.

Whatever greeting I’d anticipated, it wasn’t that. Then it dawned on me. ‘My father’s been round, has he, Colonel Bridger?’

Why had my father gone to the trouble of summoning a taxi – and the state of Bossingham Hall’s approach track was such that some taxi firms had blacklisted him – and missing valuable viewing or forging time, just to visit a neighbour he’d ignored for years? And not say why I was coming? Perhaps he’d thought that Robin would chicken out of accompanying me, and that my virtue was in peril.

The more I proved I was a woman who could deal with most things, the more he appeared to think of me as his little girl. Since he’d scarcely seen me for more than a dozen hours when I was a child, I found this very strange. But I was also irritatingly touched that he might want to stop Bugger Bridger trying out his preferences on me.

Bridger opened the door a centimetre wider. ‘You too, vicar, though I haven’t a clue what you’re here for – the fête was last week, and I gave Fi some stuff for you.’

‘Townend? What sort of a name is that for Elham’s daughter?’ He glared first at Robin, then at me, as though we were equally to blame. But he stepped into the tiled hall – Minton, by the look of them, and all perfect. Perfectly clean, too, with a strong smell of beeswax polish battling it out with what was probably Flash. One of my foster mothers had been pretty well hooked on the stuff, so much so that I’d come across one of her other foster children scrubbing herself in the bath with it, in the belief – I shuddered to remember it – it would make her white. White as these walls, which had no pictures or anything else to mar their whiteness.

‘I took my mother’s name,’ I said quietly, adding, because I didn’t want to wash the dirty family linen in public, ‘for business reasons. And it’s because of my work as an antiques dealer that I’m here.’

‘I’m not selling anything. If I’d known you were one of that crew I wouldn’t even have opened the door to you, father or no father.’

‘Quite right,’ I countered. ‘There are people out there you really must not trust. But I’ve come about two items you gave away – to Fi, to sell at the fête. A very old book, and a snuffbox.’ I patted the bag they were travelling in.

‘Old book? I like things to look the part. This is my idea of books.’ He flung open a stained oak door, polished to the same degree of brilliance as all the other doors in the hall, and, I’m quite sure, in the whole house. ‘That’s my library.’

The floor, as immaculate as the doors, had a rectangle of what looked like an Afghan rug in the middle, a small oval table in the dead centre. Around the walls were perfectly matched shelves, interrupted in their flow only by the window and the deep-green velvet curtains. And on the perfectly matched shelves were perfectly matched books. All came in the livery of some upmarket book club – the Folio Society, perhaps. In its way, the effect was as bizarre as any slapdash room in my father’s home.

‘Been getting rid of all the rubbish, bit by bit. But there’ll be a few boxes for you next year, vicar, and the year after that. All right and tight in the old stables. Watertight for the gee-gees, still watertight now.’

I thought of the rubbishy kitchen items and the old paperbacks. If other boxes contained items like them, there wouldn’t be any point in opening them in a couple of years’ time. On the other hand, he might have stowed a couple of other precious things without remembering them. ‘Perhaps if I showed you the things that caught my eye, you might tell me something about them.’ I touched the bag again.

We were in a quarry-tiled kitchen, the floor like glass, and the brand-new units – I’d seen some just like them in an upmarket showroom in Canterbury – all with their pristine doors tight shut. From somewhere the Colonel produced a copy of the Sunday Telegraph, spreading it carefully on the marble work-surface.

I produced the folio first. I almost expected him to put on his Marigold rubber gloves to touch it, but he simply poked it with a fingertip.

‘Do I look the sort of person who’d read rubbishy stuff like that? For God’s sake – sorry, padre. Why have you brought it here, anyway?’

‘I just thought it was your book,’ I said mildly. ‘And I just thought . . .’ Seeing his jaw harden into a stubborn line, I changed tack slightly. ‘I want to give this to a museum, but it’ll be far more use to them if they know a little about it. Such as which house all these lovely doorknobs were designed for.’

Biting my lip, I closed the volume and tucked it away. But I couldn’t resist fishing out the snuffbox and teasing it out of the wrap of tissue I’d swathed it in.

‘One man’s junk is another man’s antique,’ I said, with what I hoped was a charming smile. ‘And this is a very old antique. Possibly very valuable.’

‘No point in heirlooms if you haven’t got heirs.’ He drew himself up, straightening his shoulders. ‘If it ever was mine, which it wasn’t, I must have given it to you. Yours to keep, vicar. Not hers.’ He looked at me as if I was some sort of lowlife. Since I had been, I couldn’t really argue.

‘Lina bought it quite legitimately from the bric-a-brac stall, but says she wants to sell it on behalf of the church. To raise funds for us.’

‘The more I know about it, the better chance I have of making an . . . an appropriate sale. As it is, someone might give me a tenner, if I’m lucky.’ I took a risk. ‘My father’s sure he recognizes it. Remembers someone using it. But—’

‘Surprised the old soak can remember his name. Though he had shaved before he came to see me. I’ll give him that. And he hadn’t pissed all down his trousers like he used to. I’ll give this some thought, missy – how about that?’

At last he got the message. ‘The thing is, Colonel, that someone has already tried to steal this twice. One attempt ended in quite serious injury. I’d leave it here with you as an aide-memoire, but I wouldn’t want to risk bringing a thief to your door. And risk to you.’

‘Now what do we do with the wretched thing?’ Robin asked as we stood beside our vehicles. ‘You take it, you’re in danger. I take it, I am. And the rectory, which doesn’t actually belong to me, of course, but to the church, so I don’t want any splintered doors or broken windows.’

I didn’t quite follow his panicky logic. It wasn’t as if the box had some tracking device attached to it. They knew it had reached our cottage because they knew I’d bought it and they’d seen my van. But since he’d put himself out for me, I’d better try and soothe him. ‘Of course you don’t. Robin, you did this for me once before – you got something really precious locked in a safe in the Cathedral—’

‘No. Absolutely not. Mammon!’ But his face softened. ‘On the other hand, there’s bound to be a safe somewhere in Kenninge church. It’s about time I said Matins there. I’ll lock it away when I go.’ His grin might have been wiped from his face. ‘But we’re trying to save the church, aren’t we, not have someone attack it with a JCB to fish the safe out wholesale.’

I blinked. Then I remembered a rash of raids on village post offices in the area, carried out by thieves who didn’t bother with the finesse of guns and masks and whatnot. They simply nicked a JCB and scooped out the complete cash dispenser. ‘Ah. I see what you mean.’ I still didn’t buy his reasoning.

‘Good news: it’s Bruce Farfrae. Bad news: he’s in the USA too.’ And he wanted me to talk to Morris. So I was on my own, unless I could think of something quickly. ‘Before you go off to Kenninge, could you come with me to Ashford? I need to hire a car, and there’s a place there offers a good deal. If we drop off your car at the rectory, and we go together to Ashford and—’

‘I get it: I follow you back to Bredeham, and you lock your nice visible van in the yard and potter round in something less obvious.’

‘Got it in one. And while all this car shuffling is taking place, I may get some ideas about what to do next. Tell me, have you ever seen a house as neat and tidy, not to mention clean, as Bugger Bridger’s? I mean,’ I continued, recycling an expression I’d learned from Griff, ‘talk about anal retentive!’