A Whiff of Scandal Read online

  Dan looked at her over the top of his beer. ‘Me neither.’

  ‘She didn’t seem too cross,’ Rose said hopefully. ‘At least her head didn’t spin round.’

  ‘It will,’ he assured her. ‘She’s just saving it for later.’

  ‘I’m sorry if I made you late.’

  ‘It’s not your fault. She knew where I was.’ He looked at her and his eyes were soft and soporific in the fireside glow. ‘Gardenia doesn’t have enough to occupy her mind – she let’s little things worry her.’

  Rose picked up her Perrier. The glass was freezing. What on earth was she doing drinking cold water on a day like this? It was a day for frothy hot chocolate with whipped cream or for boiling up snow and ice and drinking beefy Bovril. She put the glass down again. ‘What does she do?’

  ‘Do?’ Dan pursed his lips in thought. ‘I’m not sure that doing is a concept Gardenia understands. She just is. She does that very well. If that counts.’

  ‘Doesn’t she work?’

  Dan shook his head. ‘No.’

  ‘But she looks after the house?’

  Dan shook his head again. ‘No. We have a cleaner.’ He took a drink of his beer, smacking his lips as he drew the glass back to his chest. ‘She cooks occasionally. When we’ve had a row. So she’s cooking more often these days.’

  That woman shouldn’t be called Gardenia, Rose thought enviously, she should be called Riley – she certainly has his life. ‘What does she do all day?’

  ‘You don’t look that beautiful by accident. It takes a lot of time and effort. And money,’ he said as an afterthought.

  Rose flushed. So they might row and fight and have different views about what they wanted from life but he still finds her beautiful. ‘It must make conversation difficult,’ she remarked tartly, regretting it as soon as she’d said it.

  ‘Not for Gardenia. She can talk endlessly about Neighbours, Home and Away, Emmerdale, Brookside, Coronation Street – you name it, Gardenia knows about it. For someone who has so many aspirations socially, she’s amazingly content with observing the rigours of fictitious people’s tangled lives. It’s just a shame that I don’t watch any of the soaps.’ His face hardened momentarily. ‘I’m too busy working.’

  Rose felt abashed. ‘Now I’m the one that’s prying.’

  ‘This is the most taxing conversation I’ve had for a long time.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  A smile appeared on his lips, a slow, serious smile. ‘It wasn’t a complaint.’

  ‘I take it Cassia doesn’t work either.’ It was better to get this back on more neutral ground. Cassia was a different kettle of fish to Gardenia. Trout rather than the finest caviare. Old trout. Not that much older, well into her forties probably but dressed considerably younger. You could tell that her husband had practised his trade on her. Several times. She, too, was beautiful, but somehow you could tell that she’d picked it all out of a catalogue. Her features were perfect on an individual basis, but they didn’t quite hang together properly. A bit like Michael Jackson’s nose which stuck out like a sore thumb – if that wasn’t mixing her metaphors too thoroughly. In Cassia’s case, too, the whole was certainly less than the sum of the parts.

  ‘Ah, well, you’d be wrong.’ His face held a supercilious look. ‘She’s a minor celebrity round these parts. Well, Cassia would like to think so. She presents a show on local radio – Bucks County FM or something.’

  ‘What’s the show about?’

  Dan shrugged his shoulders. ‘I have absolutely no idea. I’ve never had the good fortune to listen to it. Probably gossip – it seems to be Cassia’s forte. It’s on in the mid-afternoon, I think, when all good builders are hard at their graft.’

  ‘Well, you do surprise me.’ Rose gave an approving look. ‘Hidden talents.’

  ‘I wouldn’t get too carried away. I’d hardly call it a serious job. It only takes her about three hours a week. That’s hardly likely to keep her in the style she’s become accustomed to.’

  ‘It’s a start, though.’ A puzzled look crossed Rose’s face. ‘It doesn’t explain why she’s had her face all cut up like a jigsaw, if she’s only on the radio.’

  ‘I think Cassia’s ambition is like her credit card, it knows no bounds. She’s ever hopeful of a phone call from the producers of Richard and Judy to say that Judy’s been given the chop and could she hot foot it instantly to London to sidle up next to Richard “the boy wonder” Madeley on the sofa.’ Dan drained his glass and put it on the table. He stretched his arms above his head and cracked his knuckles. Rose shuddered. She would have to tell him about the joys of Benzoin oil one day, the Castrol GTX of the aromatherapy world, before his fingers locked into a mass of gnarled arthritic joints. ‘Besides, if you had a husband in the trade it must be tempting to get him to do a few little jobs on the side. Though I’m not sure if I’d be too keen to let my other half loose on me with a sharp scalpel.’

  ‘It would probably be better than a blunt one,’ Rose said philosophically.

  Dan laughed and stood up. It was obviously time for him to be going, which was a shame. She’d been enjoying his company, but it wouldn’t do to forget that he was someone else’s. Someone whom she couldn’t even begin to compete with.

  ‘I don’t know about you but I’m starving. Do you want something to eat?’

  Rose contemplated the remains of the blackboard, ridiculously glad of the chance of a reprieve. ‘I’ll have ham, egg and chips,’ she said. ‘And beans.’

  ‘Which stable did you get your appetite from?’ Dan quipped.

  Rose feigned hurt. ‘I’m a growing girl.’

  ‘It’s nice to see someone with a healthy attitude towards food. Although I’m not sure that even I would class Reg’s angina special as healthy.’ He picked up her half-empty glass of Perrier. ‘Do you want something stronger than this to wash it down with?’

  ‘I’ll have a double brandy and Diet Coke, please.’

  ‘Diet Coke?’

  She clasped her hands over her knees and looked at him through her eyelashes. ‘I don’t want to grow too much.’

  ‘Perish the thought.’ He smiled and headed towards the bar, ducking the low beam with practised non-chalance.

  When Reg brought their meals they ate in comfortable silence. Dan had shown good sense, and a similar blatant disregard for his cholesterol levels, and had joined her in the angina special. Both shunned the finer points of good breeding and ate with a heads down, elbows out relish. When they had finished, Reg cleared the table with surprising alacrity and piled the fire high with more logs. They hissed and spat in protest and pushed plumes of heady wood-scented smoke past the shining horse brasses that adorned the fireplace and into the snug.

  Rose’s jeans were bursting at the seams – just punishment for squeezing that final chip in. She relaxed back in her chair and closed her eyes, feeling the warm glow from the fire massage her cheeks. A low, contented groan escaped from her lips. ‘I could just do with going to bed for an hour now.’

  ‘Mmm, me too.’

  She opened one eye sharply to check for signs of a lecherous gaze, but Dan had his eyes closed too and looked, as far as she could tell, the picture of innocence. ‘Or a walk,’ she said quickly.

  ‘Well, we could probably do the latter without causing too much of a scandal in the village.’ He opened one of his eyes and it met her one open eye squarely. Rose flushed an even deeper shade of red. So he had been thinking along the same lines. Flirt. The butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-my-mouth look was just a facade. ‘Have you been up to Woburn Woods yet?’

  ‘No,’ she said guardedly.

  ‘Do you fancy it?’ He clasped his hands behind his head, looking as if he had no intention of going anywhere in a hurry. ‘You’ll have to get some boots, it might be a bit muddy under the trees.’

  ‘I don’t know . . .’ Why was she being such a wimp? Was it because there was nothing more in the world she’d like to do right now than go tramping through some muddy woo
ds with Dan? Did the thought of wanting to be with him frighten her so much? Yes, it did. She never wanted to need anyone again. She wanted to be hard, independent, strong-willed, aloof, untouchable, unhurtable. An island.

  ‘Well,’ he said lazily, ‘do we stay here and become pub potatoes or do we go and be recklessly energetic? The choice, as they say on Blind Date, is yours.’

  There was another choice. One that Dan had failed to mention. She could say no to both of the appealing options and go back to her own quiet little world and do something safe and solitary, like washing her hair or cleaning the oven or finding some socks to darn.

  ‘Don’t you have anything you should be doing?’ Her voice sounded pathetic and feeble. If she was going to make excuses, at least she should make her own and not rely on him to bail her out.

  ‘Probably,’ Dan answered. ‘But nothing that would threaten the very fabric of Great Brayford if it didn’t get done.’ He turned to look at her. ‘Do you have to get back?’

  Think of those holey socks, she told herself, and the grease in the oven – and the grease in your hair. Say yes – now! ‘No,’ she said, giving a light-hearted shrug of her shoulders to show her conscience that she had completely and utterly defied it.

  ‘Well, that’s settled then. Momentous decision made.’

  She knew he was joking, but that’s what it felt like to her. In her heart, she knew it was a mistake. It was wrong to get to know him, to get to like him, to get close to him. She might want to be an island, but there was no doubt she’d just put her foot on the ferry back to the mainland. Why had she given him the ‘poor little me’ routine earlier today? Wasn’t that the start of her carefully constructed barrier coming down?

  ‘We’d better get going before we lose the light,’ Dan said, uncoiling himself reluctantly from the chair and stretching.

  ‘You don’t look very keen.’

  ‘It’ll be great once we get out there.’ He helped her on with her coat and she felt all hot and bothered even though they had moved away from the immediate heat of the fire.

  The air outside was strikingly cold against her burning skin, but it felt refreshing, clearing her head instantly. ‘Wow, this’ll certainly blow the cobwebs away.’

  They walked up Lavender Hill until they reached the end of her lane. ‘I’ll go and get the Discovery while you get your boots. I’ll only be a couple of minutes. Do you mind if I bring Fluffy?’

  ‘Fluffy?’

  ‘The hound from hell.’

  Rose laughed. ‘No. I’ll wait for you at the end of the lane, so that GCHQ don’t see us going out together.’ She nodded towards Anise and Angelica’s house.

  ‘We’re not doing anything wrong. Gardenia won’t mind and you’ve got no one to answer to.’ He was right, after years of bowing to Hugh’s sensitivities she was her own person again. She wasn’t so sure that Gardenia would be pink and tickled, though.

  ‘Yes, but when did anyone in this village put two and two together and get anything less than five?’

  ‘This is different. This is one and one.’

  ‘Yes,’ Rose nodded sagely. ‘And just think what they could make out of that.’

  Chapter Nine

  ELECAMPANE

  A dark brownish oil with a woody odour and honey overtones. It is difficult to blend with other oils. Elecampane is widely regarded as a severe irritant. It should never be used on naked skin. Valued as a vermifuge – i.e., for use in expelling intestinal worms.

  from: The Complete Encyclopaedia of Aromatherapy Oils by Jessamine Lovage

  Coughing briefly to clear his throat, Detective Constable Bob Elecampane pressed the bell. Forcefully. Its ring echoed emptily through the hall of the neat little terraced house. There was a stained-glass plaque stuck to the window in the front door with a clear plastic sucker. It said ‘Home Is Where The Heart Is’ and this redoubtable statement was reinforced by a big, red heart underneath it. The door was painted red too and next to it was a bare trellis entwined with the equally bare twigs of some sort of climber that waited for the warmth of spring to bring it back to life. A cracked terracotta pot stood next to that. The winter pansies that someone had so lovingly planted in it had collapsed into a sad, green mess under the pressure of several days of hard frost. Their pretty smiling faces were scrunched up and soggy, flopping listlessly over the side of the pot.

  He looked down the road while he waited. A Land Rover Discovery drove past, containing a large, woolly dog. It eyed him inquisitively through the rear window. The driver was paying more attention to his pretty passenger than the road. There were five identical houses in the row, each one with a variety of lovingly planted dead things in pots outside. He wasn’t much of a gardener. Actually, he wasn’t a gardener at all. There wasn’t much call to be a gardener when you lived in a bachelor flat in the conurbation of Conniburrow. But he did know a pansy when he saw one. He peered through the frosted glass of the window and wondered if she had been the one to plant them.

  The neck of his denim shirt felt too tight, even though his top button was open, and it was chafing him where he had shaved. He had tried to get it as smooth as a baby’s bum. Unfortunately, he’d succeeded in not only removing all of his bristles but half of his skin as well. Still, it had stopped bleeding long enough for him to take the bits of toilet roll off. If the glass hadn’t been frosted he could have had a quick look to see that it was okay. But, as it was, he’d have to do – she could take him or leave him. He leaned against the wall feeling like something out of The Professionals.

  Eventually, there was the tap of high heels on parquet floor – he knew she would be no respecter of floor coverings. Her type never were. She opened the door and stood there chewing. He flicked open his warrant card. ‘CID,’ he said brusquely. He glanced down the village lane to see that no one was watching. Behind him he thought he saw a net curtain flicker. ‘Is PC Cox at home?’ he asked. ‘Frank Cox?’

  ‘No. You know he’s not.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘He’ll have just started his shift.’

  He swallowed and hoped that she didn’t notice his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. She obviously wasn’t going to make this easy for him.

  ‘Perhaps it’s just as well, Mrs Cox. I’d like a few minutes of your time, if that’s possible.’

  ‘There’s no need for this, you know. I was expecting you.’ She opened the door and let him pass. The hall smelled of Mr Sheen furniture polish, potpourri blended with cheap perfume, and Johnson’s baby oil.

  He followed her into the lounge. It was neat and tidy, if a bit girly. Everything was covered in flowery patterns and frills – curtains, suite, cushions. There were ornaments on every conceivable surface – china trinket bowls, little glass vases, cute animals made out of what looked like papier-mâché. And squeezed among them, photographs of her and Frank, everywhere. It was all very homely, if a bit fussy for his taste. What had he expected? Red velvet and black satin? Probably. But it wasn’t like that these days.

  They stood there facing each other and, suddenly, despite going over it in his mind ten thousand times this morning, he didn’t know what to say. That would have surprised some of his colleagues back at the station, particularly those who had recommended he visit Mrs Frank Cox. DC Bob Elecampane, lost for words.

  She was wearing a short Lycra skirt – very short – black. And high-heeled shiny black shoes. But no tights. Her top was tight and low-cut and red. He hadn’t been too far off on the colour scheme then. Quite a bit of her thingys were showing and they were pale and plump and sort of perched on the edge of her T-shirt and looked as if they could pop out at any minute given the slightest encouragement. It did cross his mind that it was a bit of a funny way to dress for this time of year, although it was warm in here. Very warm. He cleared his throat again. ‘As I said, Mrs Cox,’ his voice sounded high and unnatural, more like a cartoon detective than the real-life rough, tough law enforcement officer that he was, ‘I’d like a few minutes of your—’

  ‘Yo
u’ve got an hour,’ she said. ‘That’s what we said on the phone. And you can call me Melissa.’

  ‘Thank you.’ He cleared his throat again and hoped that he wasn’t sickening for something. There were a lot of nasty bugs about. ‘Certain irregularities have been brought to our attention at the local constabulary, er, Melissa.’

  She glanced down at the bulge in the front of his faded jeans. ‘The last time I saw anything brought so much to attention, it had a flag flying at the top of it.’

  ‘Er, quite,’ he said.

  ‘Now then, Detective Constable Elecampane – Bob. I suggest we get down to business. You’ve only got an hour. We’re wasting valuable time chatting like this, pleasant though it is,’ she added kindly.

  ‘Er, quite,’ he said again. His brain seemed to have jammed on one phrase.

  ‘I think you’ll find what you really came for is upstairs.’ Melissa looked at him in what he supposed was a seductive fashion. She had smoke-grey eyes. Not cheap smoke. Not Woodbine or Embassy Number One smoke. Something more exotic. Smoke from those expensive black cocktail cigarettes that women don’t smoke any more. ‘Come on then,’ she said. ‘Follow me.’

  Er, quite, popped unhelpfully to the front of his brain, so instead he said nothing and followed her obediently up the narrow staircase. The bedroom had been decorated by the same hand as the lounge. There were swathes of pink flower-sprigged frilled curtains, which matched the wallpaper, which matched the duvet cover, which matched the cushions, which matched the lampshades on the tables at either side of the bed. It looked as if she had copied it lock, stock and barrel from between the pages of Bella or Woman’s Own. She smiled with pride as she showed him shyly into the room and for a moment he wanted to turn and run down the narrow stairs, out of ‘The Home Is Where The Heart Is’ front door and out past the frost-bitten pansies. ‘It’s very nice,’ he said.

  ‘Gratton’s catalogue,’ Melissa informed him. ‘Garden of Romance. Appropriate, don’t you think?’

  ‘Er, quite.’

  She walked to the window and pulled the curtains. ‘Nosy neighbours,’ she said by way of explanation.