Maxim Jakubowski - The Mammoth Book of Best British Mysteries 6

Quietly, he collected his clothes from the wardrobe. He would shower in the other bathroom rather than risk waking her. He’d stayed too late the night before with Olivia, falling asleep next to her perfumed softness. “You see,” she’d whispered as he climbed reluctantly out of her bed, “It’s time to let Molly know. It’s for the best, darling. I wouldn’t want to keep you in a dead marriage if it was me.”

He sighed. He still cared for Molly. Of course he did. But… The image of Olivia, fair-haired, beautiful, and most of all young rose up in front of him.

Anthony Richardson had met Molly when she was twenty-one. He was handsome, in his thirties, sophisticated and successful with his own chain of exclusive designer stores. She was a graduate from St Martin’s College, with a degree in ceramics and a talent for design that was yet to be fully recognized. She was beautiful, of course. She had to be. Anything less than beautiful would have done. And she wasn’t just beautiful, she was one of the most talented ceramicists he had ever met. Her designs had a quality he had never seen before, designs that her current employer had dismissed because people who want cups with feet on them and smiling teapots tend to be limited in their appreciation of style. It was an added advantage that she was very young and not very confident.

It was serendipity. Molly needed a Svengali. Anthony needed her talent. His business, though successful, had reached a plateau. He worked by finding good designs and importing them, but a lot of other people were doing the same thing and there was nothing to distinguish his company, Richardson Design, from the mass. The continuing success of his shops depended on his having something new, something distinctive, something that no one else had. And in Molly, he had found it.

Molly Norman Ceramics became the cornerstone of his company, Richardson Design. RD, the discreet silver logo that marked his company, became a byword for the best in fine china.

Anthony was a good husband. He kept the business running well and provided a comfortable, even luxurious, home for her. And though any man has a need for variety that even a young, talented and beautiful wife can’t entirely fulfil, he kept his infidelities low key and away from home.

The marriage was a success. Except that they didn’t have children. Not really. Molly had got pregnant a few years into their marriage but the child was born defective – Down’s Syndrome, the doctors said. A Mongol. Anthony believed in calling a spade a spade. He had made sure that there were no more children. He wanted no more defectives in his family.

Molly made a reasonable job of raising the boy who was now fourteen, a lumbering presence in the house. She insisted on private schooling, which was an irony Anthony found hard to bear. A real son would have gone to Eton of course, but Dominic… “He’s a lot more able that you give him credit for,” Molly had said sharply. “I want him to be able to earn some kind of a living.” In fact, the youth would be a drain on his resources forever.

And then, just a week ago, Olivia had hit him with the bombshell of her pregnancy. “Don’t worry, darling,” she’d said briskly. “I can deal with it. I know you’ve got problems with…” Her eyes, dark-lashed, flickered sideways to the photo of Molly that stood where it always did, on his desk.

And he realized what the dissatisfaction with his life was. He had achieved the material success he craved. Now he needed the personal fulfilment of knowing there was someone to carry on that success. He wanted a son, a proper son, not one with a lolling tongue and an incoherent voice, one that only a mother could love. He wanted a son he could be proud of. He finally understood why men of his age took up with younger wives. They achieved success with their first wives and raised a family with their second and it was an unfortunate trick of nature that prevented women from doing the same.

“You were late last night.” Molly came into the room, tying the cord on her dressing gown. Her hair was untidy and she looked pale.

“Yes.” He didn’t elaborate.

One thing that had been holding him back from the final decision was that once he’d asked her for a divorce, the company would lose Molly’s talents and – at a time when he was planning a major expansion – he would have to give a large part of his wealth to her. He had discussed this with Olivia who happened to be a lawyer specializing in the divorces of the wealthy and powerful. The company, she suggested, was his. Molly was an employee, not a joint owner and she had earned a good income through the years. As for her leaving, well, the company was more than the Molly Norman range of ceramics and anyway, Richardson’s had the copyright on the Molly Norman name and all the designs she’d done for the company over the years.

He could find and promote another designer. Molly was probably getting a little passé now, a little past her prime creatively as well as physically.

He’d have to get his lawyers on to it. He didn’t want a prolonged fight.

He realized he hadn’t heard what she was saying. “… start training Tim as an assistant today. He’s really very…”

“What?”

“Tim. He’s been with us for six months now. He loves the pottery – he knows the work – he’s helped me often enough and…”

A few months ago, she’d taken on a youth from some charity she was involved with that looked after people with so-called “learning difficulties”. The young man was another Dominic, another flat faced defective with a protruding tongue that stumbled and spluttered over the few words he could manage. The pottery needed a general dogsbody – someone to make the tea and sweep up, the kind of work he was fit for and there were grants available for companies who took these people on, so Anthony hadn’t argued.

But now Molly was planning to spend good money training this man, this Tim, as an assistant in the pottery, letting him load the kiln, even let him switch it on and keep an eye on the firing. “No,” he said.

He saw Molly’s puzzled frown. “I told you last week. I’ve already promised…”

He vaguely remembered her mentioning something. It was typical of Molly to drop something important into her general chat. She probably did it, knowing he wasn’t paying attention. “Then you’ll have to un-promise.” He saw her open her mouth to argue – she could be stubborn sometimes – and said, “I’ll see you later.”

He left the house, intending to go straight to the office. Instead, he drove to Olivia’s. It was time they made some decisions.

Tim Sergeant was cleaning up in the workshop. Every morning when he came in, he mopped the floor to clear up any dust that had settled in the night. At the end of each day he cleaned up all the dropped clay, all the spatters of glaze, all the wood ash and bone meal for the colours that Mrs Richardson used on her pots, leaving everything clean and scrubbed for the next day. Then in the morning, he came in early and mopped everything again so that the decks would be cleared (Mum) and ready for the beautiful things that Mrs Richardson made.

He liked the pottery in the early morning. It was quiet with no one to distract or confuse him. He liked the wheel with the seat where you could sit and make it spin with a treadle. He did that now, pretending he was throwing a pot and making it grow under his fingers like Mrs Richardson did. When he’d first started, he’d been afraid of the kilns, especially the big gas one. The first time he’d seen flames come shooting out of the little hole in the door, he’d gone away and hidden, but Mrs Richardson had explained the kiln was supposed to do that.