light to stop flickering. She let her eyes adjust to the glare and then slipped on her spectacles. The rest of the kitchen was in darkness, everywhere still and quiet.
Carefully, she lifted a box down from the shelf in the pantry. Inside, a diary and a filofax were neatly wrapped up in a curl of tissue paper. Her man had delivered two, or so her resident house boy had informed her. She glanced up at the other box, not that there was really time to look in that either now.
They had been delivered while she was out at Jack’s memorial supper. She stood the box on the butcher’s block and thumbed through the contents. No photographs, nothing that she could use. Alicia knew exactly what she hoped to turn up, and of course there might be other things too that could be of value, one could never be certain what would be trawled up. All she needed was one positive piece of evidence and Guy Phelps would be on his way to Westminster.
‘Alicia, darling, are you down there?’ Edwin Halliday MP’s silky-smooth orator’s voice followed her down the back stairs. Alicia glanced over her shoulder as she slipped the lid back on the cake box.
‘I won’t be a moment, Edwin, go back to bed, darling.’
They went back a long way, Alicia and Edwin, even if their links and the liaisons had always been very tenuous. Neither had any long-term plans for the other. They met at party Conferences, weekend think tanks, networking retreats and funerals. She undid the top two buttons of her negligee and folded her spectacles back into their case.
‘Just getting another bottle of Krug,’ she called, snapping off the pantry light. ‘I won’t be a minute.’
If Edwin hadn’t been so bloody honest she might have recruited him to help her win Fairbeach for Guy. She hurried back upstairs to bed. Perhaps the man she had hired would be able to turn up something else. They had a little more time.
‘Post for you, Mrs Hall,’ said a disembodied voice over the security speaker.
Dora glanced out of the office window. The new morning looked uninvitingly grim, but at least there was no sign of the reporter from the Gazette. She stood her cereal bowl beside the computer and pressed the call button, swallowing down a mouthful of cornflakes.
‘Morning, Javid, just stick it through the letter box, will you? Or do you need me to sign something?’
The postman coughed. ‘Do you think you could come down?’
Dora yawned and tied the belt of her robe tighter, before hurrying downstairs. Javid stood on the doorstep, grinning sheepishly, rain dripping off the peak of his cap. In his arms, he was holding a large damp cardboard box. She waved him inside out of the downpour.
‘Don’t tell me, let me guess. I’ve finally come up on the Reader’s Digest prize draw?’
‘Not exactly. Are you taking mail in for someone called Catiana Moran? The address is the same, I think.’
Dora pulled open the flaps of the box and took a letter from the pile inside.
‘Catiana Moran, above the shoe shop. Gunners Terrace, Fairbeach.’ She held out her arms. ‘Sounds like that’s meant for here, Javid. Better pass them over.’
He screwed up his nose. ‘Have you taken in a lodger, Mrs Hall?’
Dora shook her head. ‘Not exactly, Javid.’ She gave him a tight smile and struggled back upstairs.
She tipped the box out onto the kitchen table and picked up a knife. ‘Dear Catiana …’ the first letter began.
Just after one o’clock, Dora shook out her umbrella and stepped from the biting, driving rain into the warmth and subdued social noises of Filbert’s Restaurant.
The maitre d’ smiled warmly in her direction. ‘Hello, Mrs Hall. How very nice to see you again.’
Dora smiled. ‘How are you, George? How’s the family?’
‘Very well, thank you, and yourself?’
Dora nodded her reply.
‘Mr Roberts is already here. Would you like me to take your coat?’
Dora shook her head and headed towards the rotund figure of Calvin Roberts, who was sitting at a corner table, watching the rain trickle down the French windows. He turned as she approached him and frowned. ‘Christ, you look rough.’
Dora pulled out a chair and slipped her coat over the back.
‘Well, how very nice of you to notice, Calvin. Actually I feel a lot worse than I look. Maybe you’d like to cast your eyes over these.’ She took a bundle of envelopes out of her handbag. ‘Just a small selection of this morning’s post.’
Calvin opened the first one. ‘“Beloved Catiana, I have read all your books, I think …”’ He reddened, hastily scanning the rest of the first page. ‘Sweet Jesus, this guy is wasted writing fan letters, maybe I should fix him up with a contract.’
Dora glared at him and pulled a sheet of paper out of another envelope.
‘“… You should be ashamed of yourself, you painted Jezebel. Tar and feathers aren’t good enough for perverts like you,”’ she read in an undertone. ‘Then there’s the religious ones, the ones who want to take me away from all this, marry me, make mad passionate love to me, tie me to a bed and cover me in honey and whipped cream –’
Calvin grinned.
Angrily, Dora grabbed the first letter out of his hand and stuffed it back in the envelope. ‘Well, what are you going to do about these?’
Calvin puffed out his cheeks. ‘You know what they say about publicity. I mean, it shows interest, people have taken the time to write.’
Dora snorted and pulled a copy of the local paper out of her handbag.
‘In that case you’ll probably be interested in this as well. I picked it up this morning to read the report on Jack’s funeral. Page three.’ She shook the paper into submission. ‘Here we are: “Home of Local Porn Queen Broken Into by Vandals.”’
There was a picture of Lillian Bliss above several column inches credited to one Josephine Hammond. Lillian’s picture was obviously a studio shot, a pouting master class photographed against a luxurious backdrop of foliage.
Calvin shrugged, leaning forward to light a cigar from the candle in the centre of the table. ‘The girl at the Gazette rang me for a few comments. She must have picked the call up on the police radio.’
A waiter handed them their menus.
‘I’m not sure I want to eat,’ Dora said.
Calvin feigned astonishment. ‘Good God, now I really am shocked. I’ve heard the profiteroles are very good here. Surely you can be tempted?’
Dora snorted and jiffled the chair closer to the table. ‘Be serious. How would you feel?’ she snapped brusquely.
Calvin’s face settled into an expression of
