A finer end - Deborah Crombie [43]
The conversation moved on as they progressed through poached salmon with dill sauce and new potatoes, but there was a distinct feeling of unease at the table.
After the salad, Winnie served a lemon roulade that she readily admitted was store-bought. “I don’t have the patience for sweets,” she said. “They’re too fiddly—all that measuring and sifting.”
“Why bother when you can buy things like this?” Fiona took the last bite of her portion with a contented sigh. “Mind you, I’ll expect this the next time I come for lunch.”
“Not too soon, I hope,” her husband said. “Or my gallery walls will be bare. Fiona’s been doing more lunching than painting lately.”
“Painter’s block, would you call it?” asked David Sanborne with interest.
“Something like that,” Fiona replied tersely, casting an injured glance at Bram.
“Coffee, anyone?” Winnie said brightly, and received a relieved-sounding chorus of affirmatives.
“I’ll help, shall I?” Andrew offered as they rose to return to the drawing room.
“Jack and I can manage,” Winnie shot back, and the look Andrew gave Jack could have drawn blood.
Returning to the drawing room after he had helped Winnie clear the table, Jack made an effort to ignore Andrew. He slipped Handel’s Dixit Dominus in the CD player, and as the conversation flowed around him, he thought of what he and Simon had discussed. Was it possible that they were right in thinking it was the Abbey’s lost chant Edmund wanted them to find?
Winnie’s recent warning about Simon crossed his mind, but he dismissed it easily enough. Surely Winnie had been mistaken—perhaps overly zealous in the defense of her dead friend. And if not—if Simon had done such an unscrupulous thing, Jack could not believe it was more than an isolated incident that Simon had later regretted.
Hoping for a moment alone with Winnie, he went back into the kitchen. She stood at the worktop, her back to him, stacking cups and saucers on a tray. He placed his hands on her shoulders and bent to kiss her exposed shoulder just above the neckline of her dress. She relaxed against him, and he wrapped his arms round her.
But before he could speak he felt a prickling at the back of his neck, and a small current of air. Turning, he saw Andrew Catesby standing in the doorway, watching them.
“Oh, good, Andrew—you can carry the coffee,” said Winnie, as if nothing were amiss, but Jack had seen the venom in her brother’s eyes.
With a forced smile, she handed Jack the cheese tray, and as he left the kitchen he heard Andrew say, “Not very fitting behavior for a priest, fawning all over him like a common tart.”
Winnie snapped something in reply that Jack couldn’t quite make out. He’d turned back, determined to intervene, when Winnie came out of the kitchen, cheeks flaming.
“Winnie—”
“Later. We’d better serve the guests.”
They returned to the drawing room, and when Andrew had joined them, David Sanborne said, “Nice choice, the Handel. I believe that’s what the Somerfield choir is doing at Christmas this year—am I right, dear?” He glanced at his wife.
“Our Nigel’s hanging on to his soprano part by a hair, I’m afraid. We’re all praying his voice will hold another few months.”
“It must be frustrating for boys that age, being neither fish nor fowl,” said Winnie, her color still high. “And then just when they’ve got themselves sorted out, grown a bit of hair on their chests, they have to move up and deal with Andrew.”
“I do what I can,” Andrew said. “Vile, back-stabbing little buggers, most of them. Your son excepted, of course.” He nodded at the Sanbornes.
David Sanborne grinned. “Sixth-formers shaping up this year, are they?”
“As well as they ever do, meaning it would take a miracle to make historians out of them.” He gave Jack a malevolent glance. “Montfort here is an amateur historian of a sort—why don’t you tell them about your interest in the history of the Abbey?”
The bastard, thought Jack, groping for an acceptable answer. “Just a bit