She turned to Elizabeth. “I had this brilliant idea while I was in the greengrocer’s,” she said eagerly. “Dear old Mr. Partridge was telling me about Costa Rican bananas—did you know that they grew bananas in Costa Rica?”
Elizabeth knew a great deal about Costa Rica, but Mrs. Feckler hadn’t waited for an answer.
“I said I’d have three when I suddenly thought what about building out over my kitchen.”
“I see,” said Elizabeth politely.
“And it’s an even bigger step from the plans to the finished building,” warned Frank Mundill. “Clients don’t always realise that either.”
“But I do.” She turned protestingly to Elizabeth. “Tell him I do, there’s a darling.”
“I was turning out a bedroom,” said Elizabeth obliquely, conscious that she must look more than a little scruffy. Mrs. Feckler was wearing clothes so casual that they must have needed quite a lot of time to assemble.
“And I was wasting your poor uncle’s time,” said the other woman, sensitive to something in Elizabeth’s manner. She rose to go. “But I do really want something doing to my little cottage now that Simon has said he’s coming back home for a while.” She gave a little light laugh. “Mothers do have their uses sometimes.”
Elizabeth assented politely to this, silently endorsing the sentiment. She would be so thankful to see her own mother again. Mrs. Busby hadn’t come back to England from South America for her sister’s funeral because she couldn’t travel by air. Pressurised air travel didn’t suit a middle-aged woman suffering from Meniere’s disease of the middle ear. Even now, though, both her parents were on the high seas on their way home from South America. They had been coming for a wedding…
Frank Mundill was still studying the piece of paper that Mrs. Feckler had given him. “I’ll have to think about this, Veronica, when I’ve had a chance to look at it properly.”
He was rewarded with a graceful smile.
“Give me a day or so,” he said hastily, “and then come back for a chat. I’ll have done a quick sketch by then.”
Mrs. Veronica Feckler gathered up her handbag. “How kind…”
Elizabeth Busby waited until Frank Mundill returned to his drawing office after showing her out. “I came about a picture,” she said.
He sank back into the chair behind his desk and ran his hands through his hair. “A picture?”
“Three pictures, actually,” she said.
He looked up.
“Three pictures,” she said, “that aren’t where they were.”
“I think I know the ones you mean,” he said uneasily.
“Ophelia.”
“It’s been moved,” he said promptly.
“I know,” she said. Frank Mundill wasn’t meeting her eye, though. “And a river one and a beach scene…”
He didn’t say anything in reply.
“The beach one has gone,” she said.
“I know.” He was studying the blotting paper on his desk now.
“Well?”
He cleared his throat. “Peter wanted it.”
“Peter?” Her voice was up at high doh before she could collect herself.
He nodded. “I knew you wouldn’t like that.”
“Peter Hinton?” She heard herself pronouncing his name even though she had sworn to herself again and again that her lips would never form it ever more.
Frank Mundill looked distinctly uncomfortable. “He asked me if he could have it.”
“Peter Hinton asked you if he could have the picture of the beach?” she echoed on a rising note of pure disbelief. “He didn’t even like pictures.”
He nodded. “He asked for it, though.”
“That sloppy painting?” She would have said that detective stories were more Peter’s line than paintings.
“Let’s say ‘sentimental,’ ” he murmured.
“That’s what I meant,” she said savagely. “And you’re sitting there and telling me that Peter wanted it?”
“So he said.” Frank Mundill was fiddling with a protractor lying on his desk now. He gazed longingly at the drawing board over in the window.
“It wasn’t something to remember me by, I hope?” All the pent-up bitterness of the last few weeks exploded in excoriating sarcasm.
“He didn’t say.”
“St. Bernard dogs aren’t a breed that are faithful unto death, are they?” she said, starting to laugh on a high, eerie note. “If so, he should have taken the imitation Landseer.”
“Not that I know of,” said the architect coldly.
“That would be too funny for words,” she said in tones utterly devoid of humour.
“I’m sorry if you think I shouldn’t have given it to him…”
“Why shouldn’t he have a picture?” she said wildly. “Why shouldn’t he have all the pictures if he wanted them? Why shouldn’t everybody have all the pictures?”
“Elizabeth, my dear girl…”
“Well? Why not? Answer me that!”
“If you remember,” Frank Mundill said stiffly, “I wasn’t aware of the provisions of your aunt’s will at the time he asked me for it.” He gave his polo-necked white sweater a little tug and said, “Strictly speaking I suppose the picture wasn’t mine to give to him.”
That stopped her all right.
“I didn’t mean it that way, Frank,” she said hastily. “You know that. That side of things isn’t important.” She essayed a slight smile. “Besides, there’s plenty more pictures where that one came from.”
“You can say that again,” said Frank Mundill ruefully.
“Sorry, Frank,” she said. “It’s just that I’m still a bit upset…” Her voice trailed away in confusion. Collerton House and all its pictures—in fact the entire Camming inheritance—had come from Richard Camming equally to his two daughters—his only children—Celia Mundill and Elizabeth’s mother, Marion Busby. Celia and Frank Mundill had had no children and Marion and William Busby, only one, Elizabeth.
When she had died earlier in the year Celia Mundill had left her husband, Frank, a life interest in her share of her own father’s estate. At his death it was to pass to her niece, Elizabeth…
“There’s no reason why Peter shouldn’t have had a painting if he wanted one,” she said, embarrassed. “It isn’t even as if they’re worth anything.”
Mr. Hubert Cresswick of Cresswick Antiques (Calleford) Ltd. had confirmed that when he had done the valuation after her aunt’s death. Very tactfully, of course. It was when he praised the frames that she’d known for certain.
“It’s just,” she went on awkwardly, “that I never thought that his having that particular one would be the reason why it wasn’t there on the wall, like it always was.”
“I should have mentioned it before,” he mumbled. “Sorry.”
“No reason why you should have done,” she said more calmly.
What she really meant was that there were a lot of reasons why he shouldn’t have done. Peter Hinton’s name hadn’t been mentioned in Collerton House since he’d left a note on the hall table—and with it the signet ring she’d given him. A “Keep off the grass” ring was what he’d said as he slipped it on his finger.
It didn’t matter any longer, of course, what it was called. Elizabeth had returned the ring he’d given her—in the springtime, “the only pretty ring time”—the one with “I do rejoyce in thee my choyce” inscribed inside it, to Peter’s lodgings in Luston.
That devotion hadn’t lasted very long either.
Frank Mundill picked up the sketch Mrs. Veronica Feckler had left on his desk and appeared to give it his full
