“Only that he and Father don’t get on. It’s not at all like Father, really.”
“Do you know the cause of the friction?” Kincaid asked.
“I remember Mummy saying she thought it had something to do with the time Father spent in Surrey during the war.”
“Your father was evacuated?”
“His mother was sure Greenwich would be bombed—they lived just next door. Father still does.” She gestured towards the uphill side of the lane. “So his parents sent him to his godmother’s. She was extremely eccentric—you know, the sort of woman who wore trousers when women didn’t wear trousers.” Jo smiled. “Father adored her. He often talked about her when we were children. Annabelle always loved hearing stories about the family.”
“Did Annabelle know that your father disapproved of Lewis Finch?”
“Oh, yes. He never made a secret of it. Is Gordon Finch some relation to Lewis?”
“His son. And it seems as though your sister was well-acquainted with them both. Gordon Finch was the busker she spoke to in the tunnel that night.”
“Lewis Finch’s son—a busker?” Jo frowned. “How odd.”
“You don’t think it odd that Annabelle defied your father’s wishes about the Finches?” asked Gemma.
Jo shook her head. “Not if you knew my sister. Annabelle was almost as obsessive about the family and the business as Father, but she had a perverse streak. She loved to meddle in things.”
CHAPTER 9
Childhood on the Isle of Dogs, 1870–1970
“Annabelle can’t have left voting shares to Martin Lowell.” Reg Mortimer stared at Teresa as if she had suddenly lost her mind.
She stood in the doorway of his office, a sheet of scribbled notes in her hand. The phone call from the solicitor had come just after lunch, but Teresa had sat for a while after hanging up, trying to absorb the news. “The solicitor wouldn’t mistake something like that, Reg. And she didn’t exactly leave the shares to him—he’s just the trustee for the children.”
“Harry Lowell is ten years old, for God’s sake.” Reg pushed his chair back until it banged against the file cabinet. “Lowell can do anything he wants until Harry reaches his majority, and by that time Hammond’s may have gone to the wolves.”
Teresa closed the door. “You’re overreacting, Reg, surely. Why wouldn’t Lowell want the company to do well, for his children’s sake?”
Reg pulled at the knot of his tie as if it were choking him. “You don’t know what he’s like. Or how he felt about—” He shook his head.
“About what, Reg?”
“Nothing. He’s a bastard, that’s all.” Patches of damp had begun to appear on his starched blue shirt. He’d come in that morning shaved and dressed with his usual smartness, but as the day wore on the atmosphere in the warehouse had seemed to exact a physical toll on him, as it had on everyone.
Teresa had arrived early, taking it on herself to inform the sales and production staffs of Annabelle’s death. She had somehow got through it without breaking down, and they had all made a stunned attempt at business-as-usual. It was when she’d shut herself in the large office she’d shared with Annabelle that her composure had dissolved completely. She had wept again, but now that she’d got it over with she felt a bit more able to cope.
“Martin may not even vote the shares,” she said now, attempting to calm Reg. “He knows nothing about the business, after all.”
“He’s a banker, for God’s sake—he understands finance. And he’ll realize he has the power to affect any decision the board makes.” Reg grasped the front of his desk as if for support.
“He’d have to influence one of the other major shareholders to swing a vote. Annabelle said he and Jo weren’t on good terms, and I can’t see your father or William—”
“You know what we have to do. And we might be able to pull it off, unless bloody Martin Lowell interferes.”
“You can’t mean to approach your father now, with Annabelle—” Teresa swallowed hard.
“I don’t see that we have much choice.” Reg stood, still grasping the desk, looking up at her through the fringe of hair that had fallen over his brow.
Watching him, Teresa tried to recall the comfort she’d felt yesterday in his arms. But now he seemed to be disintegrating before her eyes, and for the first time she felt a little frightened. “Just wait a bit. Everything will be fine,” she added, trying to reassure herself as much as him.
“Will it?” He pushed his hair back with a visibly shaking hand and came round the desk. “I wish I had your confidence, Teresa.” Lifting his jacket from the hook on the back of the door, he stood, his face inches from hers. A fine tracery of red veins showed in the whites of his eyes. “Annabelle didn’t deserve you,” he said softly. “And neither do I.” Then a draft of cooler air touched Teresa’s cheek as the door swung shut behind him.
She went out to the catwalk and stood, staring down into the warehouse long after he had disappeared through the front door. When Superintendent Kincaid rang a few minutes later, she had to tell him she had no idea where Reg Mortimer might be.
STANDING IN THE LANE OUTSIDE JO Lowell’s house, Gemma gave Kincaid a questioning look as he retracted the antenna on his mobile phone.
“No joy,” he reported. “Mortimer is temporarily away from the office. We’ll keep trying.”
Gemma glanced at her watch. “We have some time before our appointment with Lewis Finch. I think we should have a word with William Hammond while we’re here.” She nodded towards the house nestled into the side of the hill above them, its pale aqua door just visible through the trees. “I’d like to see what he has to say about the
