‘Hmph!’ The sound was part approval, part disbelief, Norman Woolerton running a hand over his bald head and squinting at the computer screen before him. ‘You seem to be getting there at last.’
On the other side of his desk was the sombre figure of Delilah Metcalfe, the young woman clad in black, having come straight from a funeral to a meeting with her bank manager. Who also happened to be a family friend, married to Delilah’s father’s cousin and known more commonly, outside the confines of his office, as Uncle Woolly.
There was nothing woolly about the man when it came to banking, as Delilah could testify. Six months ago he’d hauled her in for a frank talk about her escalating debts – her small cottage and her business premises mortgaged and her two enterprises, a website-development company and a dating agency, failing to yield sufficient turnover to cover her costs. Insolvency had been looming and Norman Woolerton had been determined to make it as painless as possible by refusing to extend Delilah’s loans, there being no point in throwing more good money after bad. But Delilah had put forward a passionate defence, begging him for one further extension, just enough to tide her over the rough patch that had followed her divorce. She’d backed up her faith in herself with detailed spreadsheets of projected income, talking about the growing dating agency membership, the fact that she’d taken on a tenant in her office building.
It had been enough to sway the bank manager. But not enough to turn him into a fool. So he’d put a time limit on her attempts to pull herself back from the brink. Six months.
With those six months having passed, Norman Woolerton was pleasantly surprised to see from the information in front of him that the lass was almost there. There’d been a small but steady upturn in subscribers to the Dales Dating Agency; the IT side of the business had pulled in a couple of decent accounts; and then there was the work Delilah had been doing with Samson O’Brien’s detective agency. Not to mention a substantial payment more recently from local farmer Clive Knowles, described as a consultation fee.
‘I didn’t realise there was scope for setting up websites amongst farming folk,’ said Norman, indicating the substantial figure that had been handed over by Mr Knowles.
Delilah blushed, shaking her head. ‘That’s not what it was for,’ she murmured.
‘So what kind of consultation was it?’
‘Marital.’
Norman blinked, picturing the unkempt man who lived out past Horton on a farm that was as badly kept as its owner. The fact he was a confirmed bachelor was a matter of course, for what woman in her right mind would take him and his ramshackle premises on? Hence there was more than a touch of astonishment in the bank manager’s next words.
‘Clive Knowles asked you for advice on getting wed?’
A brief nod from across the desk was the only answer. Norman looked at the computer screen, at the sizeable deposit and then back across to his client.
‘I take it from this you were successful!’
‘Kind of,’ muttered Delilah.
Norman Woolerton stared at her. Reappraising her in light of what she’d achieved. For Delilah Metcalfe – a woman with such a chequered history when it came to love, not to mention already being divorced and not yet thirty – had been ridiculed when she set up the Dales Dating Agency. But here was evidence that she knew what she was doing.
‘Any sign of more lonely farmers asking for similar advice?’ he queried, ever the businessman. ‘Because another couple of payments like that and you’ll really be out of the woods.’
‘Not that I know of. Besides, it was a fluke.’ Delilah’s head dropped and her shoulders slumped, causing Norman to regard her with narrowed eyes, like a spreadsheet refusing to yield its secrets.
It was strange. The lass should have been jumping up and down, celebrating the fact that she was well on the way to turning her businesses into profit. Yet she was the most subdued he’d seen her since . . . He cast his mind back to the dreadful days three years ago when Delilah’s world had been rocked: first by the death of her brother Ryan while on duty out in Afghanistan; then by the repeated philandering of her husband, Neil Taylor, and the break-up of their marriage.
Young Delilah hadn’t been one to mope. Instead she’d thrown herself into rescuing the enterprises she’d set up with that rascal Taylor. But she hadn’t been herself, her warm smile not often seen. All that had changed of late, though. To be precise, since last October when Samson O’Brien had returned to Bruncliffe and opened his detective agency in the downstairs office of Delilah’s building. Since then, the two of them had become quite a team, solving cases together. And getting into all sorts of danger, from all accounts. Delilah had seemed to be thriving on it.
Yet here she was, looking like the weight of the world was upon her.
The bank manager didn’t know what to make of it. Nor did he know how to address it, being far more at ease discussing profit and loss than anything personal, even when it pained him to see one of his favourite people looking so glum.
‘Anyway,’ he said, clearing his throat, ‘whatever you’re doing, keep it up. Another couple of months of this kind of growth and you’ll really be on solid ground. This love lark clearly pays!’
There was a strangled noise from Delilah, who then coughed, stood, and came around to the other side of the oak desk that served as a barricade to every other client except her.
‘Thanks, Uncle Woolly,’ she said, kissing his cheek. She managed a small smile and as the door closed after her, the puzzled bank manager couldn’t help thinking that something was ailing Delilah Metcalfe. Something that was beyond his professional help.
‘Who’s a good boy, then?’
The large grey dog sitting upright by the radiator in the reception area of the bank turned his head at the sound, an eyebrow raised in what could be classed as query. Or hauteur. From behind the safety of the glass partition that separated her cashier’s position from the rest of the foyer, Mrs Pettiford couldn’t interpret the look. Suffice to say, it wasn’t one of affection.
‘A good doggy,’ she persisted, nodding her head at the regal Weimaraner, his pale eyes fixed on her now.
It was a quiet morning in Bruncliffe’s bank. A morning she’d wished she’d not had to work as it had prevented her from attending the funeral that had taken place within the stone walls of St Oswald’s down on Church Street. Not that she’d known Pete Ferris. Well, not personally. She didn’t associate with that kind of person. But one had to admit that his life – and subsequently his death – was fascinating. A poacher. Slinking around the hills with his gun and his lurchers, living beyond the line of legality. And then killing himself.
It was most annoying to have missed the sending off of such a character. Especially as such occasions often proved fertile ground for the harvesting of gossip. So, as she stood behind her counter with no customers to entertain her, Mrs Pettiford was feeling more than a little left out. Hence she was trying to make conversation with Delilah Metcalfe’s dog.
‘Not long now,’ she cooed. ‘Mummy will be out any minute.’
Although that might not be true. For Mrs Pettiford knew a bit about the state of Delilah Metcalfe’s finances and the concerns Mr Woolerton had about them. Rightly so, too. The bank couldn’t afford to be propping up frivolous concerns like a dating agency, especially if it wasn’t paying its way. If asked her opinion, which regrettably Mr Woolerton never sought to do, she would have added that it was high time the youngest of the Metcalfe brood settled down to a proper career. Something with prospects. Like working in a bank.
Even if that bank was quieter than Mrs Pettiford ever remembered it, no longer filled to bursting point on market days with a queue of farmers out the door, the floor left as mucky as a shippon at the end of winter. Those days were gone. Now entire mornings went by without a single person coming through the double doors, despite the fact that this was the last bank standing in Bruncliffe, the two others having pulled down their shutters for the final time over a year ago, one now a fancy cafe, the other an Indian restaurant. It was a sorry state of affairs. And when she allowed herself to think about it, her own position no longer seemed the safe haven it had always been—
The rattle of the front door and the low woof of greeting from the dog pulled Mrs Pettiford away from such morbid thoughts as her first customer of the day entered.
‘Good morning,’ she said, smile in place.
She was rewarded with a wan-faced nod of acknowledgement from a middle-aged woman, dressed immaculately in a cashmere jacket, moleskin trousers and smart ankle boots, none of which had come out of Betty’s Boutique on Back Street. Which was hardly surprising, as Mrs Pettiford’s customer was none other than Bruncliffe royalty – Nancy Taylor, wife of the successful estate agent Bernard Taylor, who was also the town’s current mayor. She was a woman more at home in the boutiques of Harrogate and one who wore her wealth well.
‘How can I help you?’ asked Mrs Pettiford, as her eyes took in the fine cut of the woman’s clothes, the subtle accents of jewellery and the exquisite leather of her handbag, trying not to let her jealousy show. Or her surprise at seeing the ugly black holdall the woman was placing on the floor, the one jarring note in what was otherwise style perfection.
‘I need a statement for our account. The bank’s website is down,’ said Mrs Taylor.
‘Oh. Right.’ Mrs Pettiford’s heart lifted. The website was down again – another cyberattack no doubt. Last time it had seen a huge influx of customers coming through the doors and, even though most of them had been irate at the inconvenience, for the woman behind the counter it had briefly felt like the old days when her position had been one of value. ‘I can give you up to six weeks’ worth of transactions but anything beyond that will need to be posted to you, I’m afraid. Is that sufficient?’
‘It’ll have to do.’
‘Business or personal?’
‘Personal . . . actually, make it both, please.’ Nancy Taylor shifted on the other side of the glass and stared down at the holdall. There was something about her not as self-composed as her tailored clothing would suggest, fingers tapping on the counter briefly before she thrust her hands into her pockets.
That movement – the suddenness of it; the stealth of it. It caught the bank clerk’s attention, but only for a second as the printer chose that moment to start its usual trick of chewing up paper.
‘I think it’s not awake yet,’ Mrs Pettiford simpered, pulling out the ruined pages and resisting the urge to slap the damn machine like she normally would. ‘There you go.’ She passed the reprinted pages under the partition. ‘Is that everything?’
‘Yes. Thanks.’ With her left hand firmly in her pocket, Nancy Taylor pushed the statements into her handbag, picked up the holdall and walked out of the door.
‘Well,’ murmured Mrs Pettiford as the bank settled back into silence. ‘Not exactly talkative, was she?’
The Weimaraner didn’t even look up from where he was now lying on the ground. But the bank clerk was unaware she’d been snubbed. Her mind was too busy trying to work out what it was she’d just seen. Something about Nancy Taylor. Something about those slender fingers tip-tapping away—
A door in the back of the building closed and the sound of footsteps roused the Weimaraner in a way Mrs Pettiford’s attempts at conversation couldn’t, a low whine emitting from his long throat as he looked hopefully towards the far corner of the room. And sure enough, Delilah Metcalfe emerged from the corridor, a smile fleeting across her pale face at the enthusiastic tail-wagging of her dog.
‘Sorry, Tolpuddle,’ she murmured, untying his lead. ‘Didn’t mean to be so long.’ She began heading for the door, the dog pulling her on in his desperation to be outside. ‘Thanks for keeping an eye on him, Mrs Pettiford. Bye.’
Unusually for a woman known for her garrulous nature, Mrs Pettiford didn’t reply. She was staring at the counter. At the precise spot where Mrs Taylor’s hands had been only moments before. It was only as the door to the bank closed behind Delilah that a sudden spark of comprehension lit up the clerk’s face.
Those slender fingers. That’s what it was! They’d been bare!
With no band of gold decorating the left hand, it could only mean one thing. And then there was the ugly holdall . . .
‘She’s leaving him!’ Mrs Pettiford exclaimed to the empty room. ‘The mayor’s wife is leaving him!’
This dazzling insight, perhaps the richest vein of gossip Mrs Pettiford had ever unearthed in a lifetime of digging, was only marred by one thing – that it hadn’t happened slightly earlier when there had been someone in the bank to appreciate the brilliance of her deductions. And who better to have been the first person to share this shock revelation with than Delilah Metcalfe, former daughter-in-law of the for-now Mrs Taylor?
But Mrs Pettiford didn’t spend long ruing her missed chances. After all, Delilah wasn’t the most receptive of audiences when it came to scandals, having starred in a few herself. And besides, this was sensitive material. The kind of thing that, if got wrong, could really backfire, the mayor having plenty of powerful friends in the town. So instead, the bank clerk stored the nugget away. She would do a bit more surreptitious digging around the subject and bide her time before unleashing this earth-shattering news on the unsuspecting folk of Bruncliffe.
It felt like an age. Sitting there waiting for his boss to come storming out and sack him. Knowing that when it happened, his fledgling career as an estate agent would be over, for such was the power of Taylor’s in the area that few would hire someone rejected by that agency.
Despite the perilous situation, somehow Stuart Lister managed to work, fingers busy on the keyboard creating a digital file for the latest tenant. But all the while, his nerves were stretched taut, sweat gathering on his top lip, his breath that of a cornered animal, fast and shallow.
There was no way out of this. As soon as Mr Taylor tried to open his filing cabinet, he would know something was up. The missing key, for starters. And when he opened the unlocked drawers and found all of the high-end rental properties missing from the files, he would come looking for Stuart. For the young man, it was tempting to simply get up and leave before he was fired.
The muffled sound of a ringing mobile made him turn towards the closed office door and he heard the rumble of Mr Taylor’s voice.
A distraction. Thank God. Although Stuart knew it was only prolonging the inevitable. At some point his boss was going to discover the extent of Stuart’s betrayal. He’d mucked it all up, trying too hard to impress. He was an idiot.
It had seemed like the perfect plan – if a bit risky. While on the computer the day before, Stuart had noticed a backlog in the inspections on some of the rentals Mr Taylor oversaw. Three of the houses were supposed to have had their six-monthly visits at the end of April but there was no record of those reports having been completed. As the entire IT system was in the process of being overhauled by Delilah Metcalfe, Stuart hadn’t liked to jump to conclusions, thinking that maybe it was simply a glitch and that the paper files would show that the inspections had in fact been carried out.
His first instinct had been to ignore the omission. Bernard Taylor had never been the most considerate of employers, but the last couple of weeks he’d been even worse, taking out his moods on the office furniture and his staff. And while this unpredictable behaviour held the silver lining of giving Stuart the excuse to strike up conversations with the lovely Julie – there being nothing like a shared sense of being treated unfairly for breeding camaraderie – it was mostly Stuart who bore the full brunt of Mr Taylor’s temperament. So, for someone who shunned confrontation, asking his more-irascible-than-ever boss if he was doing his job properly wasn’t a move Stuart favoured. Best just to let it lie.
But that morning, arriving at work to an empty office and no prospect of anyone being around for at least an hour – his boss out with rental clients, Julie on her training course and the cleaner, Ida Capstick, long finished and gone – Stuart had seen a way to show his resourcefulness. He’d have a look at the paper files himself. If there had been an oversight, he’d find a way to raise it with Mr Taylor without revealing that he’d been checking up on him. Because, Stuart had reasoned as he made the decision to be proactive, with the way his boss had been acting lately, he needed a hand or the business was going to suffer.
Taking the files without permission had seemed like a sensible option.
How then, had it come to this? Mr Taylor about to discover the extent of his employee’s errant behaviour, an abrupt dismissal looming.
A loud curse from the office and Stuart felt his stomach curl tightly in on itself, long fingers clenching into tense fists. Footsteps and then the office door being flung open.
‘Stuart!’
The shout made the young man jump. He turned slowly towards his fate, his boss advancing on him, hands on hips, face puce.
‘Yes, Mr Taylor?’ Even to his own ears, Stuart sounded scared.
‘If anyone calls, I’ll be out for an hour,’ snapped Bernard Taylor. ‘Get that fridge sorted before I get back.’
Stuart Lister watched in bemused relief as his boss stalked past his desk, across reception and out of the front door. It was only then that the young estate agent felt the air rush back into his lungs, hands shaking as his fists unfurled.
Somehow he’d dodged a bullet.
He reached for the pile of folders that he’d retrieved from the floor, papers sticking out all over the place from their fall. He’d sort them out and then put them straight back in Mr Taylor’s filing cabinet without delay. No more trying to impress. No more initiative. It wasn’t worth it.
But the first piece of paper he picked up changed all that. His hands went still and he found himself staring at a rental contract.
It was odd. Odd enough to make him rethink. And this time his actions weren’t driven by anything other than curiosity.