don’t find the source.
“He’d take the mail before I finished sorting it. He’d shut his door on phone calls with clients. He kept his file drawers locked.”
“And Caspar didn’t? ”
“Why should he? Clients’ investment information is confidential, of course, but it’s not like it’s a matter of national security.”
“Not unless you’re doing something unethical, or illegal,” said Gemma, and Juliet nodded.
“So I started to suspect. I just couldn’t work out what he was doing. And all the while I thought I was crazy for even entertaining the idea. Then, one day, when Piers had gone out to lunch, I noticed that one of his fi le drawers wasn’t quite shut. I was standing in his office, trying to decide if it was worth the risk to have a peek, when he came back.” Juliet glanced up from the brandy she hadn’t tasted since she’d begun to talk. “I remember I jumped, and I must have looked guilty,
but he smiled. Piers always smiles. But, just for an instant, I saw something in his eyes.” She swallowed. “Afterwards, I tried to convince myself I’d imagined it. I suppose I should be grateful I’ve led such a sheltered life that at first I didn’t recognize it for what it was.”
Gemma nodded, understanding what Juliet meant, and why she was reluctant to name what she had sensed. She had seen it, too, only a few times, but those glimpses into the abyss would stay with her for the rest of her life.
Juliet glanced at Toby, who was now flying his puzzle pieces rather than trying to put them together, with suitable sound effects, and seemed oblivious to their conversation. “You don’t expect . . . ,” she went on slowly. “Not in your friends, acquaintances, business partners . . .” She shook her head as if to clear it. “Not long after that, the way Piers treated me began to change. The friendly hand on the shoulder escalated to pats on the bum; the mildly flirtatious comments got more suggestive. But it was all still subtle enough that I didn’t want to make a scene, so I tried to pretend I hadn’t heard, or that I hadn’t understood what he meant. I started to dread going in to work, or being left alone in the office with him.
“There was something so calculated about it, so inevitable, as if he’d worked out a plan and he never doubted I’d go along. But maybe that’s hindsight.”
“But you didn’t go along.”
Juliet met Gemma’s gaze, memory like a bruise in her eyes. Her chest rose and fell more quickly, but she kept her voice low. “He cornered me in his office, one day when Caspar was out calling on a client in Macclesfield. I had to kick him to get him to let me go. It was only after that, when he knew he couldn’t seduce me, that he started to turn Caspar against me.”
Chapter Twelve
The house stood sentinel at the head of the lane that led to the old dairy barn, the outlines of its four turreted chimneys just visible against the faintly luminescent dusk. The Victorians did themselves proper, Babcock thought as he pulled into the drive, although always at the expense of those less fortunate. He could never see a house like this without thinking of the legions of capped and uniformed maids who had scurried from floor to floor, rubbing their work-reddened and swollen hands against their starched white aprons.
Tonight, however, the house held more than insubstantial Victorian ghosts. Lights blazed from the ground- floor windows, so perhaps he would be fortunate enough to find Piers Dutton at home.
If the house was illuminated, the drive was dark as pitch, he discovered as he climbed out of the car. Muttering under his breath, he picked his way to the porch, where only a dim light burned. If Dutton could afford the upkeep on this pile, surely he could spring for a bulb bright enough to light the entrance, he thought sourly.
Stamping the snow from his feet, Babcock rang the bell. A moment later he was rewarded by the sound of footsteps in the hall, and the massive door swung open to reveal a man he assumed to be
Dutton himself. “Can I help you?” the man asked peremptorily, but his tone was more curious than hostile. In designer denim and corduroy, he looked every inch the country gent.
“My name’s Babcock. Chief Inspector Babcock. If I could have a moment of your time, Mr. Dutton?”
For just an instant, Dutton’s face expressed the alarm felt by the most honest of citizens when confronted unexpectedly by the police.
Then he smiled and said, “Ah. This is about all the commotion down the lane, I take it.” His accent was the sort of public-school drawl that raised hackles on the back of Babcock’s neck, his manner welcoming, with an easy condescension that was more offensive than Tom Foster’s outright contempt.
Waving Babcock into the hall, Dutton closed the door against the encroaching cold before continuing. “I was out last night and most of today, so I seem to have missed the excitement. I’ve only just heard about it from a neighbor.”
“Would that have been Mr. Foster?”
Babcock must have given something away in his tone, because Dutton gave a conspiratorial grunt of laughter. “I take it you’ve met?
A half dozen messages on my BT CallMinder, no less. Tom Foster seemed to be certain I could supply the solution to the mystery.”
“And I take it he was disappointed?” Babcock asked lightly.
“Infinitely. Not only did I not know the identity of the mysterious infant, I suggested he should mind his own business and let the police do their jobs.”
“That must have gone over well.”
“Like the proverbial lead balloon. He rang off in a state of high dudgeon, and I can’t truthfully say I’m sorry. Perhaps he won’t call back for a bit.”
While Babcock might privately agree with Piers Dutton’s opinion of his neighbor, he thought Dutton’s remarks not only rude, but designed to foster a false atmosphere of camaraderie between them. It made him wonder if the man had something to hide or if he simply s
manipulated as naturally as he breathed. In any event, it would do no harm to let him think he’d succeeded.
“Considering your spirit of cooperation, I assume you won’t mind answering my questions,” he suggested, smiling amiably. “So that we
Dutton glanced round, as if considering whether he could keep him standing in the entry hall, then said, “I suppose you’d better come through here.” He led the way into a sitting room on the left—or what Babcock supposed should more properly be called a “drawing room.”
You certainly couldn’t say “lounge” in this house.
His first impression, after the relative severity of the hall, was of opulence run amok. The colors ran to rich burgundies and deep blues, and everything that wasn’t gilded seemed to be velvet. But then his eye picked out a leather armchair, and he saw rugs in manly Ralph Lauren–esque tartans draped here and there over the furniture. A large Christmas tree stood by the front windows, and the room smelled sharply of fi r.
A half dozen candles gleamed from the heavy mahogany mantel, adding to the flickering warmth of the fire burning in the grate. Babcock thought it was a surprisingly feminine touch—he knew very few men who would bother with candles of their own accord—but there was no other hint of a woman’s presence.
For all Piers Dutton’s apparent disdain for his neighbor, he, like Tom Foster, offered Babcock neither a seat nor a drink. An open bottle of wine stood on a side table, and a half- filled glass on the mantel reflected candlelight from its claret depths, but while Dutton positioned himself with his back to the fire, he didn’t pick up his drink.
A laptop computer sat open on the ottoman in front of the leather chair, but the screen faced away from Babcock’s curious gaze.
When he was a boy, his great-aunt Margaret, annoyed by his cease-less questions on one of her infrequent visits, had called him “elephant’s child.” It wasn’t until many years later that he’d read Kipling and discovered the source. Time had not cured him of this malady,
but at least now he had an excuse for his per sis tent curiosity. He’d begun to edge casually towards the
