The Deadly Dance - M. C. Beaton [29]
Agatha rang Patrick’s mobile and asked him. “You didn’t notice either,” Roy heard her say. “Any way of finding out? I know it seems odd but I’d just like to know. All right, thanks. I’ll see you in the office on Monday.”
“Don’t you work weekends?” asked Roy when she had rung off.
“Usually. But I told everyone to have a rest. We’ve all been working long hours.”
Emma watched from the side window of her cottage as Agatha and Roy drove up. She saw Roy lift a travel bag out of the boot and then follow Agatha indoors. To Emma’s old-fashioned mind, a man stayed overnight with a woman for only one reason. It was disgusting. He was obviously years younger than Agatha. She wondered if dear Charles knew of this liaison.
She went back downstairs and looked at the details she had copied out of the Peerage and Baronetage. Charles owned Barfield House in Warwickshire. Her heart began to thump as she envisaged a plan. He had taken her for lunch twice. They were friends. She had heard Agatha trying to contact him but did not know Agatha had been told he was abroad. In the morning, she could drive out to his home and say she was working on a case in the neighbourhood. No harm in that. No harm at all.
The nights had turned blessedly cool, but the morning mists dispersed rapidly. Saturday promised to be yet another scorching day as Emma motored along the Fosseway into Warwickshire, her hands damp on the steering wheel with nerves, an ordnance survey map on the passenger seat beside her.
She turned off the Fosseway and down long narrow country lanes, searching for Barfield House. She nearly missed the entrance because there was not the name of the house on the gateposts but a sign saying “Private.” Emma drove a long way up a wooded, twisting drive. Perhaps she would have turned back if the road had not been too narrow to make a turn. Then she was out of the woods and the road ran through fields. She drew onto a grassy verge as a tractor approached. The tractor stopped alongside her and the driver asked, “What are you doing here? This is private property.”
“I am a friend of Sir Charles Fraith,” said Emma crossly. He nodded and touched his cap and drove on.
Emma headed onwards, round a stable block, and there, suddenly, was the house.
In her dreams and fantasies about Charles—and they were many—Emma had imagined a Georgian mansion with a pillared portico. Barfield House was one of those Victorian mistakes. It was not even Victorian Gothic but built in the fake medieval style beloved by the Pre-Raphaelites. It was a large building with mul-lioned windows which sparkled in the sunlight.
“Here goes,” muttered Emma.
She rang the bell set into the stone wall beside an enormous studded door.
A faded elderly lady answered the door, “Yes?” she asked, her pale grey eyes raking up and down Emma’s long figure. “I am here to see Charles.” “What’s your name?” “Emma Comfrey.”
“And he was expecting you? He’s gone abroad.” “No, but we’re friends and I happened to be working in the neighbourhood and—”
“Not collecting for something, are you?”
“NO!”
“Who is it?” she heard Charles calling. “Wait!” commanded the woman.
Emma waited. The woman retreated into the house and left the door open. Emma heard her calling, “Charles! Where are you? Eve got some creature on the doorstep asking for you.”
Emma, all newly blonded hair and new sky-blue linen suit, felt herself shrinking.
It was no use. She couldn’t go through with it. She turned away towards her car.
“Do you want to see me?” called Charles’s voice from the doorway.
Emma reluctantly turned.
“Good heavens! It’s Emma, isn’t it? And looking glamorous,” said Charles gallantly.
He was wearing a striped dressing-gown over a pair of blue silk pyjamas. His feet were bare. Emma stared at his feet as if mesmerized.
“Now you’re here, come in,” said Charles. “Have some coffee.”
“That woman called me a creature,” said Emma, still looking at his feet.
“That woman is my aunt and she calls everyone