Chapter One

 

‘How extremely vulgar.’ Sophia Egerton raised her ebony cane and pointed up to the large banner suspended above the upper floor of her detached Georgian house. The banner proclaimed ‘Happy 90^th Birthday, Sophia’, in yellow letters on a peacock-blue background. Balloons of red, blue and yellow hung from the banner and blew in the chilly, but surprisingly light October breeze. ‘Do you think I’m in my second childhood and amused by such infantile contrivances? Get Sullivan to take it down at once!’

‘But Mother, the twins organized it specially. They thought you’d be pleased.’ Penelope’s plump face pinched a little. ‘Don’t you like it?’

‘Hmph. The twins, you say? All right, leave it, if Adam arranged it. Perhaps it’ll grow on me. Though you can still get Sullivan to take it down first thing tomorrow.’

‘Of course, Mother. Whatever you say.’

‘Of course whatever I say. It’s my birthday, isn’t it? I’m the birthday girl. Now, Penelope, give me your arm. I’m cold and wish to return inside.’

Penelope, used to obeying her mother’s demands, did as she was bid and slowly, they made their way back up the short drive with its thick hedge either side and planted-up mini roundabout and through the glossy black front door with its delicate fanlight. Inside, the two women made their way across the expanse of original black and white tiled hallway, Sophia’s cane tap-tapping, to a small, cosy sitting room at the back of the house. It was only recently that Sophie Egerton had insisted on moving in here from the spacious drawing room at the front of the house, complaining that the larger room was too difficult and expensive to adequately heat. Her sister, Alice, whom she had taken in twenty years earlier and whose sitting room this had until then been, had accepted this incursion with a bad grace and had only stopped her muttered complaints when an exasperated Sophia had eventually reminded her that she was a charity case.

‘I feel the cold,’ Sophia had complained at the time. ‘That big room has too many draughts.’

To her daughter’s suggestion that she should wear a cardigan, her reply was a contemptuous: ‘Like you, you mean? I hope I haven’t yet given up a preference for style over comfort.’

And indeed, Sophia Egerton was stylish. She was still slim and erect, but it wasn’t the scraggy skinniness of so many old ladies; she had enough flesh on her bones to ward off that particular danger. She still held herself well, hadn’t developed the so-called dowager’s hump of old age and, apart from the cane, walked straight-backed and unaided. Even the cane leant her a certain style, with its ebony wood and horse’s head handle. The cane had once belonged to her husband, dead now these twenty years, but Sophia had taken to using it when she hit seventy and arthritis had made her limbs stiffen. Although it was October, she wore a lacy cream top that came to a point, front and back. It was by L’oiseau, The Bird, her own fashion house. She always wore their own creations. She considered herself to be a good advertisement, even now. The top was high-necked in that elegant Edwardian style and like most of her clothes, had the advantage that it covered up her old lady’s neck.

She wore her silver hair in a French pleat with an intricately twisted antique silver comb whose provenance said it had belonged to Marie Antoinette. Altogether, she had much more élan than her daughter, who had, on hitting the menopause, abandoned the pursuit of a slimmer figure and embraced the matronly look with relief. She took after her maiden aunt, of course. Alice Pickford had always been on the plump side and, at eighty-seven, was sixteen stone and even plainer than in her youth. Like the divorced Penelope, Alice lived with her sister and, like Penny, had done so since the death of Sophia’s husband, Tom, twenty years earlier. Certainly, Thomas Egerton would never have tolerated the two women residing with him while he had been alive. Neither woman, not even his own daughter, was his sort, being plain and lacking wit, unlike Sophia, who still retained both the beautiful bone structure and the biting wit that her good looks had always allowed her to get away with.

Penelope settled her mother in the high-backed armchair by the fire, opposite her Aunt Alice in her identical armchair. Alice scowled at this latest  invasion of her privacy. Penelope exhaled on a gentle sigh and said, ‘I’ll go and see how Dahlia is getting along with the food for this evening’s party.’

‘Leave her alone,’ Sophia commanded. ‘Dahlia is perfectly capable of organizing a small buffet party without your assistance.’ Sophia’s lips thinned. ‘So where are the twins? Out buying more balloons?’

Penny gave a nervous laugh. ‘No, Mother. I don’t know where they are. They went to the supermarket earlier with Dahlia to get the party makings.’

‘The twins? At the supermarket? I wouldn’t have thought they even knew where it was.’ She gave a tiny chuckle. ‘Particularly not Adam.’

‘They’re both single, Mother and live on their own. Of course they know where the supermarket is. They both do their own cooking, too.’

‘About time that changed. Three grandchildren in their thirties and not a child between them. When are they going to reproduce is what I’d like to know? Even I can’t live forever and I’d like a great-grandchild in my arms before I die.’

This was a recurrent theme and Penelope gave her stock response. ‘They’re young yet.’

‘In my day, thirty was middle-aged. And their sister’s thirty-eight, with no sign of a child. Already her fertility must be dangerously reduced. The three of them are going the right way to persuading me to leave all my money to the Cats’ Home.’

‘But you don’t like cats, mother,’ Penny mildly pointed out.

‘I don’t like childless thirty something grandchildren, either. I’d had you, your brother, and four miscarriages by the time I was twenty-eight. They’re not gay, are they? God forbid that one of my grandchildren should be gay. They’d inherit nothing from me, that’s for sure. Homosexuality was against the law in my day.’

Sophia’s pronouncements brought a softening of Alice’s facial muscles. They almost relaxed into a smile.

‘Don’t be silly, Mother, of course they’re not gay. Both Eric and Caroline have been married.’

‘And divorced, with no sign of another wedding breakfast.’

From her corner of the fireplace, Alice piped up in a querulous voice, ‘And who knows the real reason why? All these modern divorces cite nothing more than unreasonable behaviour and neither of them will tell me anything more than “it didn’t work out, Auntie.” You’re right, Sophia. Could be because they discovered they preferred their own sex.’

Sophia banged her cane on the floor to silence her sister. ‘Be quiet, Alice.’ She turned back to her daughter. ‘I want my line to continue. Your brother died young, so I have to rely on your family.’ Her tone of voice, if not her choice of words, implied that this was not a state of affairs she relished.

‘Why don’t we forget about it for today, Mother, and decide what you’re going to wear tonight?’

‘I’ve already told you that I’m not yet in my dotage. Don’t treat me like an old dodderer by trying to decide what I’ll wear. I know what I shall wear.’

‘But, Mother, I was only trying to– ‘

‘I know.’ Sophia sighed. ‘Forgive me. I’m a bit tetchy. I’m feeling my age today. I felt so much younger when I could say I was in my eighties.’

‘It’s much the same when you’re my age.’

‘Oh, sixty-six is nothing these days. By now it’s probably the new thirty, as those ridiculous women’s magazines have it.’

‘I wish my body felt like it was thirty.’

‘Wait till you get to ninety, then you’ll know all about bodies. Now, what’s for lunch?’

 

Detective Inspector Joseph Rafferty stretched languorously before the living room fire, looked through the upmarket gift catalogue that his sister Maggie had given him and tried to put his mind to coming up with some ideas as to what they could buy his ma for the triple celebration: it would have been his late and favourite gran’s ninetieth birthday and was the thirtieth anniversary of his father’s death as well as what would have been his seventieth birthday. Strange to die on your birthday. Dad had died because he’d celebrated too well the night before his birthday and had got careless on the scaffolding on the actual day. But at least he was in good company. Wasn’t it Shakespeare who had died on his birthday? Llewellyn would know.

He lifted his glass and took a contemplative sip of his Jameson’s whiskey. He still wasn’t sure they should even be buying Ma anything for this triple whammy occasion. He thought it morbid. It seemed strange to be celebrating their long-dead father’s birth and death day and even stranger to be buying Ma a present for it. It was his sisters’ idea of course, and one he’d been reluctantly talked into. Rafferty’s father had died when he was twelve. At least he’d thought he was twelve when his Da had died, but his sister, Maggie had gainsaid him.

‘It can’t be the thirtieth anniversary of Dad’s death,’ he’d protested. ‘Because I was twelve when he died.’

‘No you weren’t. You were eleven. Just turned eleven, at that. I remember,’ said Maggie, ‘you had this desire to be twelve when you’d just turned eleven. You thought twelve was the golden age to be. Ma encouraged you, always saying you were in your twelfth year. Do you not remember?’

‘All I remember is wanting to be older. Old enough to be the man of the house after Dad died and twelve had a nice ring to it.’

‘Well, you weren’t twelve, you were eleven. And Dad’s been dead thirty years this November.’

Rafferty sighed and his gaze returned to the catalogue. He couldn’t recall noting the anniversary in the past; not the tenth one or the twentieth. What was so special about the thirtieth one, anyway? It struck him as an odd thing to celebrate. And he wasn’t exactly one for doing the ‘done’ thing, but he secretly rather wondered if this wasn’t a bit infra-dig, as his sergeant, Dafyd Llewellyn, might say.

And what the hell were they supposed to give her? A fishing rod? A silver beer tankard? Part shares in a fancy woman? Was he supposed to buy her gold jewellery for herself? Or perhaps a gold bricklayer’s trowel? God knew she had everything else she wanted. Was there even a precedent for this sort of thing that they could follow?

Rafferty leaned back against the settee and stared into the fire for inspiration. Not finding any, he turned to his wife, Abra, beside him on the still good-looking leather settee that they’d bought shortly before their June wedding, and mentioned his difficulty.

‘A gold trowel? Are you mad?’ Abra looked at him in astonishment. ‘What on earth would your mother want with a gold trowel? Never mind the likely cost, with gold being the price it is.’ She stretched out a hand and said, ‘let me have a look at that catalogue.’

Rafferty handed it to her with the hope that she would soon be taking charge of the present-buying in its entirety. The family had decided  to club together to get ma’s present; that way, they could buy her something decent. His sister, Maggie, had passed the upmarket catalogue to him, presumably in the hope that he would take over the gift choosing. If Abra didn’t take it up, the baton would be passed back to his sister with expedition.

Soon the room echoed to squeals of, ‘Ooh. I like that,’ and, ‘that would suit me’ and ‘Wow, that is so me.’ that Rafferty, keen to preserve his financial probity, snatched the book back.

‘This isn’t supposed to be about you, my sweet.’

‘I know. More’s the pity.’ Abra had turned down  the corners of several pages and she drew his attention to them. ‘You might bear these in mind for my Christmas presents.’

‘What? All of them?’

‘Yes, please.’

‘Get your hand off my wallet, woman and take another look through. For ma this time.’

Abra sighed and reached for the catalogue. She riffled swiftly through the pages and stabbed various articles with her nail. ‘Your ma would like this,’ a chunky gold necklace with a matching, chunky price tag. Another chunky ditto and a diamond ring the equal of anything Burton had given Elizabeth Taylor. ‘She likes her jewellery heavy.’

‘She does?’

‘God, Joe, for a policeman, you’re terribly unobservant. I don’t know how you managed to get to the rank of inspector.’

Neither did Rafferty. He lacked the academic intelligence that seemed to be all the rage in the modern police service. Luckily, he seemed to have other talents just as useful to a cop – like actually being able to nick villains. But mad extravagance wasn’t one of his attributes. ‘I’m sure ma would be just as happy with something less ostentatious. I thought you women were supposed to dress more discreetly as you got older.’

‘Huh. And I bet it was a man who said it. Sod discretion. Grow old disgracefully, that’s what I say and I’m sure your mother would agree with me. Besides, think of the swanking she can do to the neighbours. You only have a seventieth birthday once and seeing as he died on his birthday, it’s a double celebration of his life. And even if your Dad’s not here to celebrate it, if we’re doing it, we should do it in style.’

Rafferty sighed once more, drained his whiskey and leaned over. ‘How much was that necklace again?’