The Riverboat Mystery (Jenny Starling #3)(9)
This would not do!
‘Well, I suppose I should inspect the cupboard space on board. I don’t want to take any food that might spoil.’
‘Oh, we’ve got a refrigeration unit on board, didn’t you see it?’ Tobias asked, as proud as any father talking of his daughter’s prowess.
Jenny, thoroughly delighted now, admitted that she hadn’t seen it, and she followed him happily to the galley to be shown a small but handy fridge, tucked away under the sink.
*
Hundreds of yards away, in a neat and newly renovated cottage in the middle of the village, David Leigh looked up from his desk and glanced through the window towards the river.
He should be at the office, by rights, but Archie Pringle, senior partner of Pringle, Ford & Soames, Solicitors, had been more than happy to give him the afternoon off when informed that the junior man had been invited to join Lucas Finch on a weekend river cruise.
Not only was the Stillwater Swan something of a celebrity around and about, having been featured in several lifestyle magazines and local newspapers, but Pringle, Ford & Soames would be very happy indeed to get their hands on some of Lucas Finch’s much-vaunted business dealings. It was well known that Finch had made the majority of his fortune in biscuits, and owned several factories that still produced such delights as ‘Jimmy Jammy Fingers’ and ‘Peach Puffs.’ There was a lot of mileage to be got out of a biscuit king, so Archie Pringle was more than happy (if a little envious) to let his junior have a little leeway in the hopes of landing some of Finch’s business. And if, as rumour had it, the start-up money for Lucas’s empire had been a shade, well, shady, then that was just too bad. In this uncertain economic day and age, it paid even well-established and respectable solicitors not to be too choosy who they did business with.
David Leigh, however, was not feeling particularly grateful for his unexpected leisure time. In fact, as he looked out at the river and thought about tomorrow morning and the start of the cruise, happiness was the furthest thing from his mind.
He pushed the papers he’d been working on away and rose to his feet, feeling stiff-necked and badly knotted up. It was his nerves, he knew. The tension was getting so bad that he thought, just sometimes, that he might go stark staring mad any minute now. He felt like he wanted to scream and rant and rave, but didn’t dare to, because he was not sure that he would be able to stop once he’d started.
Instead, he walked slowly towards the window, and his eyes went immediately to the almost fairy-like figure of his tiny wife, who was busy picking some raspberries at the bottom of the garden. She looked incredibly lovely, dressed in a pale, floating summer dress, her ash-blonde hair blowing in the breeze.
Although the doctor had assured them that she was indeed three months pregnant, she still looked as slender as a reed. At only five feet two, with tiny wrists and ankles, David could hardly imagine her big with child.
He sighed, then winced as a haunting note filled the air. At the bottom of the garden, Dorothy Leigh looked up and frowned. She knew the sound well, of course. Everyone who lived in Buscot did. It was the hauntingly lovely steam whistle of the Stillwater Swan.
Brian O’Keefe must be testing the boilers in preparation for the cruise tomorrow.
Dorothy paused in picking the luscious, tart berries, a small frown tugging at her pale brows. She wasn’t looking forward to tomorrow. Or Sunday. She wished, in fact, that they weren’t going at all.
She knew that Lucas Finch had what her mother coyly called ‘a thing’ for her, but it was not the thought of fighting off Lucas’s rather coarse passes that worried her.
Her green-eyed gaze turned back to the house and she thought she saw a figure step hastily back from the bedroom window. Not possible, of course. David was hard at work on old man Filey’s last will and testament. The silly old goat was always chopping and changing it about, much to the amused annoyance of his loving kith and kin. He’d probably left his imagined fortune to his cat this time, or to his sour-faced sister, who was, for some reason, currently in favour with the old man.
Dorothy sighed and resumed picking the berries. If asked, she couldn’t have said quite why she was so uneasy. She only knew that she was. She just couldn’t shake off a feeling of . . . well . . . of doom, almost. Her old granny would condescendingly have put it down to her condition, but Dorothy knew it wasn’t that.
There was something wrong with David.
But she knew that her husband would only give her one of his long-suffering, lightly amused looks if she tried to ask him about it, so she didn’t bother. But a wife knew these things.
And so she went on patiently picking berries, and wishing that Lucas hadn’t asked them out on the boat.
Inside the house, David Leigh walked back to his desk and pulled out a piece of paper. He looked at it for a long, long time, his face curiously pinched and grim. Yet anybody looking over his shoulder wouldn’t have seen anything remarkable about the correspondence at all. It was simply a lengthy, handwritten letter from one of Pringle, Ford & Soames’s clients, outlining some conveyancing work that he wanted done on a property out Faringdon way.
But what David Leigh did next might well have surprised any observer.
Slowly, carefully, and on a separate piece of paper, he began to write an exact replica of the letter. Word for word. And in handwriting that was fast beginning to look indistinguishable from the real, original thing.