Cast a cold eye, p.1
Cast a Cold Eye, page 1
CHAPTER 1
The party was still in full swing, but it had been over for a long time as far as the pair from the Advertiser was concerned, Matt could see.
The young reporter, bored out of his mind, accepted his third glass of champagne, or maybe his fourth, shot his cuff to look at his watch yet again, and rolled up his eyes at the photographer.
Well, it wouldn't be his kind of party, would it? No music, no dancing. Not even outside in the spacious gardens as it would have been a few weeks earlier, before October set in.
Instead, polite chat and restrained laughter in the elegant surroundings of the Lethbridge drawing room here at Brome House, all rich, deep colours, dark panelling and antique furniture.
Not his scene at all. Experience told Matt what it felt like to wait like this, wishing your host would get on with the knitting—the speeches, the toasts, whatever—so that you could get your story and get the hell out of it, and back to civilisation. In this case, on the road from Brome to Lavenstock.
Matt grinned in sympathy, and then, as Caroline came up to him, he forgot all about the pair.
Clive Lethbridge wasn't anywhere near ready yet to wind up his party. He was very obviously enjoying it, basking in the congratulations which fell upon him like manna as he circulated among one group and another. Expansive, flushed with the triumph of his success, having his hand pumped and his back slapped, Clive was a man on the crest of a wave.
A telephone rang somewhere in the recesses of the house, and presently Clive's secretary, a mousy girl with round, thick-lensed spectacles, sought him out, catching him between groups. Briefly, as she spoke to him, Clive stood very still. Then with his heavy, purposeful stride, he left the room.
It was some time before he came back, and it was perhaps only his wife, Caroline—and Matt, who was as usual watching her reactions—who noticed the difference in him.
"Excuse me a minute, Matt." Pushing back the smooth wing of dark hair that fell across her cheek, giving Matt a glimpse of her slow, sweet smile, Caroline left him with only the faint drift of her elusive scent and the touch of cool fingers on his wrist. He watched her walk, graceful and unhurried, her dress a drift of soft dove colour, to the table by the window, where Clive was pouring himself a stiff scotch, downing it in one go and then pouring another.
Matt caught a sideways view of their reflections in the dark window. Standing beside Clive, completing the picture of the pair they presented to the world, Caroline's petite slenderness was a piquant contrast to Clive's big, heavyset frame. An unusual, intriguing couple. With a sharp twist of irony Matt thought, not for the first time, that the coarse-grained Lethbridge had at least shown a redeeming streak of sensitivity in choosing Caroline for a wife. Her money, of course, could not have been a disadvantage, either.
All right;one had to respect the man, professionally at any rate. He was a demon for work and extremely competent—in a fairly run-of-the-mill way, yet with occasional flashes of something like inspiration, now flowered into the astonishing, soaring vision personified in the architectural model set on the table in the centre of the room, together with the photographs of its final realisation, humbling Matt as he looked at them yet again. What standards was a man judged by, after all?
With more force than was necessary, Matt ground out the stub of the cigarette he shouldn't have been smoking. If he'd any sense, he would pack the job in, shake the dust off his feet here and now, tell Conti that he'd either have to find another architect than Clive to collaborate on the production of the book, or find another writer. But he knew he was only making noises. It was too late; he had long since gone beyond the point of no return.
Often lately, in the sleepless reaches of the night, Matt regretted having allowed Conti to persuade him into accepting the commission, but he was well aware that, given the chance again, he'd make the same decision. The work had brought him into touch with Caroline, who, besides being Clive's wife, worked as a publisher's reader for Conti. And for the second time in a year, he found his life and its direction turned upside down.
Clive, whatever his other faults, had been only a moderate drinker since his doctor had told him to lay off if he wanted to keep his weight and his blood pressure down, and he'd already consumed what he regarded as his quota. Caroline felt a prickle of unease as she saw the speed with which he now drank this, then another whisky. He was drinking automatically, staring at his own distorted reflection in the rain-spattered lattice of the darkened window behind the drinks table, his face drained of its ruddy glow of self-congratulation. That telephone call. Maybe it wasn't his reflection he was staring at; maybe he was looking beyond the darkness, to the house on the slope of the far side of the valley, where the Dymonds lived.
"Clive? What's wrong?"
He broke his stare, turning to face her. "What do you mean, wrong?" His voice would have sounded normal to anyone else, but she was too used to his moods not to notice the edge to it, to know that his euphoria had left him. A prominent vein pulsed in his temple, as it always did when he was upset, a dead giveaway. A storm signal for rough weather ahead.
She took a steadying breath. "I meant the phone call. Was it another one of—of those? You look ..." "Desperate" was the word, but not to be used now, with controlled violence just below the surface of his calm.
"It's nothing," he replied with an effort. "I've just had enough of this bloody lot, that's all." He half turned as he spoke, pinning a social smile on to his face, and nodding to someone who caught his eye. "Clear them out, Caro."
It was a command rather than a request, and she bit her lip at the arbitrary tone but deliberately stifled her resentment.
"All right, but you are supposed to be celebrating, don't forget. People aren't expecting to go just yet. And Harry's waiting to say a few words."
"Oh God, yes, Harry." His strong, blunt fingers had tightened round his glass until the knuckles were white. "Harry, by all means. Tell him to get on with it, then."
Harry Waring, Clive's senior partner, smooth and late-fiftyish, rosy with good living, was standing beside the table that held the model, cigar in one hand, glass in the other, having just escaped Clive's new secretary. He took a revivifying sip. God, but she was hard work, no conversation, that one, that Susan—no, Sylvia, Sylvia Johnson, never could remember her name. Difficult to remember her, sometimes—a personality as drab as that potato-coloured dress which did even less for her than her usual dreary skirts and jumpers.
Thoughtfully, he contemplated the model. "Astonishing, isn't it?" he remarked to Matt, who had just joined him.
Astonishing. The very word Matt himself had chosen earlier. "Sure," he agreed, though not altogether certain what Waring had intended by the word. Astonishing as an architectural concept, or merely astonishing for Clive Lethbridge?
Waring said suddenly, "I'd like a word, Royston. Can we fix a time?"
Matt nodded, surprised. "I shall be away for the next week, but when I get back I'll give you a ring. Will that do?"
"Yes, do that if you would. Ah, Caroline." At the sound of her low, slightly husky voice, Harry turned affectionately towards Caroline, who was in his opinion everything a woman should be—pretty and feminine, socially adept, clever, too. Just the right wife for a man in Clive's position—though Clive needed a kick up the pants for how he treated her sometimes.
Caroline smiled at him, the luminous blue of her eyes lighting the habitual gravity of her expression. "Are you ready, Harry?"
Harry had expected, indeed asked for, the opportunity to make a small speech on this occasion, and he would perform with his usual urbanity, Caroline knew, so that when he began she was surprised that it was hesitantly, without his usual fluent composure. After a moment or two, however, he was into his stride, making a polished and graceful performance of it, conceding the honours for the success that had lately fallen on to the firm justly to Clive's brilliant, award-winning design, following its success in a world-wide competition.
There were handclaps for him as well as Clive when he paused appropriately so that Clive, who had by now taken a grip on himself, could acknowledge the accolade, and murmur something deprecating about it all being a team effort. Harry resumed, smiling. Yet Caroline, accustomed to his witty and humorous deliveries, again detected something a trifle forced, almost as if, she thought, he were trying to convince himself as well as his audience of the value of the splendid design, which of course was nonsense, an aberration on her part; no one else appeared to have noticed. Her eyes unconsciously searched the room for Matt, but if she had expected to be able to read on his face confirmation of what he was thinking, she was disappointed.
He was leaning negligently against the wall, a little apart from the rest, a tall, rangy man with a fading tan, straight, grey-threaded fair hair and contrastingly marked dark brows. A strong, mature face, experienced and knowledgeable. He was thirty-six and looked older, and there was a wry quality about him, a way of looking at himself as well as others, that might just, one day, turn to cynicism. At that moment, as if at some prearranged signal, he turned his head and their eyes met, and things carefully unspoken between them ever since they had been introduced were suddenly and silently said.
Caroline felt a wave of actual faintness. It was as though some support to which she had been desperately trying to cling for weeks had given way, and she was adrift, fighting breathlessly against a tide that was inevitably going to carry her away, into forbidden waters. Desperately, with an almost physical effort, she forced herself and her attention back to what was going on.
Harry had finally finished. Glasses were being raised, the photographer's bulbs flashing. The young reporter's usually laboured shorthand flowed under the influence of the champagne. Caroline was asked to pose with Clive for a photograph which would be on the front page of next week's Advertiser. Clive was asked for a quote. And then the party was really over.
CHAPTER 2
Clive was in the habit of working at home one day per week, more if he happened to be pressed. It gave him personal space, time to catch up on the backlog of correspondence which accumulated during the week, and to review his plans without constant interruption. There was peace here, unlike his main offices in the centre of Birmingham, where everyone was on top of everyone else and there was no room to swing a cat. He had to have this mid-week change of gear; he needed it —especially today, the morning after the celebration party.
For by God, he thought savagely, simmering with controlled rage as he remembered yet again, no slimy-tongued anonymous telephone caller was going to mess up his life!
He'd managed so far to ignore the insinuations and threats — well, let them get on with it and see how far they were prepared to go. Nobody was better at brinksmanship than he was. He'd had plenty of practice.
So. He sat quite still for a moment, taking a deliberate hold on himself, then opened his diary, without which he swore he couldn't function. His secretary noted down his appointments and sometimes also reminders of Caroline's social commitments so that they shouldn't clash. He had the habit of using the book almost like a scratch pad, jotting down the odd thought or calculation, sometimes making a quick sketch as an idea occurred to him, as well as making his own notes of things to be done each day. On principle, he always made this list longer than he could reasonably be expected to accomplish . . . yet rarely was it left unfinished at the end of the day. It was his way of driving himself, of going that bit further and therefore getting one up on the next man, which was, he figured, the way any thrusting, successful man should operate.
At length, he shut the book with a decisive snap and leaned back in his chair.
He saw with satisfaction that today the weather at least was in league with him, the morning very warm for early October, after the previous day's rain. There were still roses on the bushes outside the open french window, the perfume drifting in. MacAllister would see Brome House at its best, and not need too much persuasion to put his money into financing the project. Because now, now was the time to do it, to approach MacAllister with this latest success behind him. His gaze rested on the Svensen Centre model, now standing on a small table beside the window, and he smiled.
Situated out here, midway between Lavenstock and Birmingham, the location of Brome House was convenient, the setting idyllic. He had cultivated the habit of bringing business associates and prospective clients here, so that they could meet and discuss their business in a leisurely manner. A walk round the garden, drinks on the terrace, lunch afterwards in the gracious dining room—no need to take anyone out to lunch when Caroline, with the help of Janice Wharton, could provide better food than any local restaurant, and act as hostess at the same time. It was all part of the softening up process, which almost always worked.
Clive smiled again, hitched his chair forward and began work on a pile of routine papers, but his mind still circled round his cherished plan. She would come round, he told himself—he'd find a way to make her see his point of view. He was confident of his ability to find some means of putting pressure on her, making her agree to do as he wished. He fully intended anyway, Caroline or no Caroline, one way or another, to go ahead, but it would be easier with her support.
The plan, like a rich fruit-cake, had improved with keeping. He would do a first-class conversion job on Brome House here, turning the whole place into a set of prestigious offices —without, of course, spoiling the leisured country-house atmosphere. Clients liked that sort of thing—and the conversion would be an advertisement in itself. He and Caroline and Pippa would then move to the new house he planned to build on the site he had acquired lower down the valley. It was time Caroline's ideas were changed; it was ridiculous and outmoded these days to think of the three of them rattling around in a house this size, just because her family had inhabited it for generations. A pity the house was still in his wife's name; it had been the only thing he hadn't been able to persuade her to make over when her father's estate had been settled. Caroline could be very stubborn about some things.
He could hear Sylvia Johnson already moving about in the room next door, which she used as an office. It was only twenty to nine, twenty minutes before her starting time. Sylvia, too, worked here on Clive's non-city days, but she was so unobtrusive she never got in the way, and so capable he was beginning to wonder after only six weeks how he had ever doubted anyone could replace Amanda, that hitherto irreplaceable paragon of efficiency.
He reached for a blue file marked "Oddings Cottage." As he did so, the stutter of a motorbike starting up broke the silence of the morning, then roared away.
Clive sprang up and leaped through the open french windows, shading his eyes against the bright sunlight as he reached the gravel drive outside, which completely encircled the house. He was just in time to see the bike disappearing through the main gates. Without stopping to think, he charged across the lawn towards the lodge.
The back door was open. A young woman was standing by the scullery door, taking an overall from a peg.
"Where's Terry gone?" Clive demanded, stepping in uninvited, panting only slightly from his sprint. Though heavily built, a daily stint of jogging was part of his programme for keeping himself fit.
The woman spun round, paused when she saw who it was and what mood he was in, then answered calmly, beginning to roll up the overall, "Up to the university, Mr. Lethbridge. He has a seminar this morning."
"Seminar? Why didn't he tell me that yesterday? I told him then I should want him to mow the lawns if it was fine."
Janiee Wharton tucked a strand of escaping hair more firmly behind her ears, a neat, brown-haired woman in her late twenties or early thirties. "I expect he forgot. It was only Saturday when he did them, wasn't it? His usual day."
"He's not damn well paid to forget! And whether he cut them then or not's immaterial. When I say I want something done, I want it done. All that rain's made the grass shoot up, and I particularly wanted the grounds to look their best today. He knew that—why the hell didn't he tell me yesterday he wouldn't be here?" Clive demanded, thrusting a pugnacious face close to hers, the prominent vein throbbing in his temple.
You know very well why, Janice thought, endeavouring to step unobtrusively back. If Terry bad mentioned the seminar, Clive would have kicked up an almighty fuss, no doubt about that. All right, in the end he would probably have conceded the point because, to give him his due, he never went back on his word, and he'd promised when they came here that Terry could run his studies alongside the job—but the concession wouldn't have been given before he'd left Terry abject and humiliated. And humiliation wasn't something her husband swallowed easily. He'd learned to keep more of a rein on his temper lately, but he'd only stand so much.
Janice's hands were clenched into fists at her side. She wished fervently that Terry would at least try to be diplomatic with (.live —why wouldn't he see that he mustn't throw away this chance which had been given them like another life?'
It was still something so wonderful she couldn't quite believe it, an opportunity for Ferry to get himself qualified for a decent job, to work for a degree, and at the same time have somewhere as incredible as this to live.
"I'll see if I can find time to do the grass," she told Clive.
After all, it was only time that it took. There wasn't much effort needed. You sat on the mower seat and steered the machine round, and the motor did the rest. She'd done it before once or twice, when Terry had an essay due.
"Mrs. Lethbridge will need your help in the house this morning," Clive returned shortly, suddenly coldly formal. "Do I have to remind you that's what we employ you for?"
Quick colour stained Janice's cheeks, but all she said was, "We're well ahead with preparations for the lunch, and if I hurry with the cleaning, I'll get through." She reached for the overall and tucked it under her arm.
