Chapter Eleven #2
‘Ha!’ barked Sidwell-Plant. ‘So what do you say, Miss Armstrong? Honestly, I’m such a duffer myself I don’t mind how good or bad my opponent is – I just want to play. One day I’m going to beat that idiot Bridgewater, and the only way I’m going to manage that is to practise.’
I bowed again. ‘Oh, well, in that case, how could I say no? Set up the table and I’ll find a stool to stand on.’
There were footstools at the other end of the room that people had been using during the recitals, and by the time I returned to the snooker table Sidwell-Plant had already replaced the coloured balls on their spots and was dropping the last of the reds into the triangle.
He fussed with it briefly, getting it into exactly the right place, and then hung the wooden triangle at the end of the table.
Lady Hardcastle handed me a cue. ‘Your snooker bat, m’lady.’
Sidwell-Plant barked again. ‘Ha! Would you care to start, Miss Armstrong? I’m rather afraid I’ve been set up here and I’d like to see how bad it’s going to get for me.’
I fussed about with the stool and then made a performance out of getting the cue ready before playing a perfect opening shot that left Sidwell-Plant trapped behind the reds.
‘Ah. I see. It’s going to be like that, is it? Well, I suppose I ought to be used to losing by now.’
‘To your good pal Granville Bridgewater,’ said Lady Hardcastle.
‘Well, to everyone, actually. But especially Gran, yes.’
He took his shot and opened up the pack.
Lady Hardcastle watched. ‘Is Bridgewater really an idiot?’
‘Depends who you talk to,’ said Sidwell-Plant. ‘JB thinks the sun shines out of his fundament.’
‘But you know different? We’ve just been talking to Dotty, and she—’
‘Don’t tell me, she wants you to have a word with me to see if you can persuade me not to go to JB with what I know.’
‘She does. And what is it that you know?’
‘Didn’t she tell you?’
I took my shot and potted one of the loose reds.
Lady Hardcastle stepped out of my way as I rounded the table with my stool to line up on the black. ‘She did, but I wanted to hear your version.’
He shook his head as I potted the black and lined myself up perfectly for another red.
‘For some while, dear Mr Bridgewater has been embezzling money from JB’s various private trusts.
In truth he wasn’t an idiot about it, and he’d covered his tracks rather well.
It was only by chance that I queried one of the payments and uncovered a pattern of systematic theft going back a couple of years.
The theft was bad enough, but he had betrayed a trust. As JB’s legal representative he had been given control over several accounts and had been trusted to look after a fair amount of JB’s British interests. ’
‘And is that why you intend to go to JB?’ asked Lady Hardcastle. ‘Because he betrayed his trust?’
My turn at the table continued.
‘It’s my duty as JB’s accountant to advise him of any discrepancies, but, yes, I find myself particularly enraged that a fellow professional could do such a thing to his client. It’s an outrage that cannot be tolerated.’
‘You’re not prepared to give him time to repay the money he stole?’
‘I wonder if Dotty Dorothy told you quite how much money is involved. I wonder if the poor woman even knows. It would take him years to repay it, even were he inclined so to do.’
‘I take it he isn’t.’
‘He is not.’
I potted the black again. ‘Did you take Dotty’s necklace as a down payment?’
He laughed. ‘No, that wasn’t me. I assumed Gran was setting up some sort of insurance fraud. I certainly wouldn’t put it past him.’
I was back on to a nicely placed red. ‘Is it your sense of propriety that’s stopping you from divorcing your wife?’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘She tells everyone she meets that she has a lover and wants you to divorce her, but you won’t.’
‘I expect you’d rather kill him,’ said Lady Hardcastle.
‘I can’t say I hadn’t thought of it, but fate rather solved that one for me when he died on Friday.’
I potted another red. ‘So it was Everett?’
‘Who else could it have been? She’s always cosying up to him on weekends like this. It must have been him. So good riddance. Perhaps she’ll stop her foolishness and get back to a normal married life now.’
‘She wasn’t exactly cosying up to him this weekend,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘She was positively furious with him when he verbally attacked Clarice.’
‘That’s Speedy’s standard reaction to everything. She’s a furious lady. But I know she was tupping him and I’m not sad the vile little man is gone.’
The last red went down and I lined up for one more go at the black before clearing the table. ‘It makes sense. There’s a definite likeness between the two of you.’
He laughed. ‘There is not.’
‘No,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘I can see it. Similar height, similar colouring.’
‘Except that he was a complete cad,’ said Sidwell-Plant.
I put down the yellow. ‘Oh, you’re as different in character as two men could possibly be, but physically, she definitely has a type.’
‘I don’t have to worry about that now, though – the bounder’s dead. Hopefully she’s got it out of her system, and she and I can get on with married life, as I said.’
With the green and brown already potted, I was on to the blue. ‘So you didn’t see Everett before he died?’
‘I didn’t see him at all after lunch. I played snooker with Bridgewater – who isn’t even a tenth as good as you, by the way – then went to my room.’
‘Was Patience there?’ asked Lady Hardcastle.
‘No. She was probably with him.’
The pink went down easily and I was positioned nicely on the black to finish the game. ‘But, as you say, his death seems to resolve one of your problems. Is there nothing we can do to persuade you to come to some arrangement with Bridgewater?’
‘Nothing whatsoever.’
‘I believe that makes my score 147,’ I said, handing my cue to Lady Hardcastle so she could put it back in the rack. ‘Good game. Thank you.’
We left him brooding.
Back downstairs, we could hear the sound of conversation coming from the sitting room so we headed down the corridor.
Patience was coming out. ‘Hello, ladies. It’s a peculiar atmosphere in there. Again. I’m off to find somewhere quiet to sit. I might play the piano for a while.’
Lady Hardcastle put her hand on Patience’s arm. ‘Your husband is in the drawing room, dear. He’s sulking over the snooker table after Florence thrashed him.’
Patience laughed. ‘Couldn’t happen to a nicer chap. But thank you for the warning – I’ll find another spot.’
‘One thing before you go,’ I said. ‘We were talking to him while I annihilated him and he’s absolutely insistent that you were having an affair with Everett.’
She laughed. A beautiful, ringing, genuine laugh. ‘As if. I’m deeply in love with my doctor, darling. Dr Darcy Lamkin, and he really is an absolute lambkin. Everett, indeed. Can you imagine?’
She walked off, still chuckling.
We entered the sitting room and found two groups. The Bridgewaters were with Clarice, while Lily and Wilson sat at the other end of the room on either side of another of the low tables.
Wilson beckoned us over.
‘Come and join us. We have tea.’ He indicated two empty chairs and then the large teapot on the table. ‘Unless you fancy yet another interminable yarn,’ he added in a low voice.
We sat.
‘Thank you, dear,’ said Lady Hardcastle.
I helped everyone to tea. ‘Patience said there was an atmosphere in here. It seems fine to me.’
‘I think Patience was the cause,’ said Lily. ‘She was sitting here with us and the Bridgewaters were looking daggers at her. I’m not surprised she left. Have you any idea what’s going between them?’
‘Not a clue,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘It’ll be some silly feud, I’m sure. Things will simmer in the background between old friends for years until a chance word brings them explosively to the fore. I’m sure it will pass.’
Lily shrugged. ‘Perhaps. I could do without it, though.’
Wilson nodded. ‘I’ve been wondering what I let myself in for. I like JB and I thought a weekend at the fort with his pals would be a hoot.’
‘Under other circumstances, I’m sure it would have been.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Lily again. She looked at Wilson. ‘But there’s one consolation, at least.’ She grinned.
He grinned back.
I don’t know how Lady Hardcastle was feeling, but even though they’d invited us to sit with them I was feeling decidedly gooseberry-like.
I’ll happily play many roles in life, but I didn’t feel that ‘fake chaperone’ was the best use of my many skills.
If they wanted to canoodle, they should just go off and canoodle.
I was trying to think of a diverting topic for conversation when polite laughter from Dotty and Clarice signalled the end of Bridgewater’s story. Bridgewater’s own hearty guffaw indicated that he’d been much more pleased with it than they had been.
He stood. ‘And on that note, dear ladies, I shall leave you. I have one or two things to attend to.’
We watched him go.
Wilson grinned at Lily again and then turned to Lady Hardcastle and me. ‘I say, would you care to come out for a walk with us?’
I gave Lady Hardcastle my ‘not if you paid me’ look.
‘No, dear,’ she said. ‘You don’t want us hanging around getting in your way.’
‘Are you sure?’ said Lily. ‘We could explore the island together.’
‘We went out there this morning,’ I said. ‘You go. Have some fun while you can. But wrap up warm – it’s absolutely perishing.’
More grinning followed before they both got up and disappeared.
A few minutes later we heard Wilson’s loud, echoing voice from the hall as he greeted Peggy Crawford and asked if she minded them using her kitchen to get to the outside.
Dotty and Clarice were deep in conversation about something or other to do with gardens. I didn’t fancy that so I motioned to Lady Hardcastle that we should leave.