Peter Lovesey - Murder on the Short List

This was her window of opportunity. She’d been sent here for the weekend by the theatrical agency to help with the role play. Inspired by what she had heard, she was about to act a role of her own. She stepped to the front, scythed a path through the admirers and placed a hand over his arm. “If you don’t mind, Julian, there’s someone you should meet upstairs, in your suite.” To his adoring fans she said, “He’ll be back, I promise.”

It worked. In the lift, he said, “Who is it?”

“Me.”

His amazing blue eyes widened. “I don’t understand.”

“I’ve seized the day.”

The moment he laughed, she knew she’d succeeded. He was still high on the reception he’d got. When they entered the suite, she put the do not disturb sign over the doorknob. The sex was sensational.

They had a weekend in Paris and a Concorde trip to New York. Nikki found herself moving in circles she’d never experienced before. Royal Ascot. Henley. Her drama school training came in useful.

They married in the church in rural Dorset where her parents lived. She arrived with Daddy in a pony and trap and after the reception in Dorchester’s best hotel, she and Julian were driven to the airport in a stretch limo. The honeymoon was in Bermuda. Julian paid for almost everything. Daddy couldn’t have managed to spend on that scale.

“It’s no problem,” Julian said. “I’m ridiculously well off. Well, we are now.”

“You deserve to be, my darling,” Nikki said. “You’ve brought sunshine into so many lives.”

They bought a huge plot of land in Oxfordshire and had their house built to Julian’s design. As well as the usual bedrooms and reception rooms, it had an office suite, gym, games room and two pools, indoors and out. A tennis court, stables and landscaped garden. “I don’t want you ever to be bored,” Julian said. “There are times when I’ll be away.”

Nikki was not bored. True, she’d given up her acting to devote more time to homemaking, but she could not have managed both. When Julian was at home, he was forever finding new windows of opportunity, days to seize. His energy never flagged. He got up at five-thirty and swam a mile before breakfast and made sure she was up by seven. Even in her drama school days she hadn’t risen that early. Actors work to a different pattern.

He had each day worked out. “We’ll plant the new rockery this morning and clear the leaves out of the pool. This afternoon I’ll need your help fitting the curtains in the fourth bedroom. This evening the Mountnessings are coming for dinner and I want to prepare an Italian meal, so we’ll need to fit in some shopping.”

Nikki suggested more than once that most of these jobs could be done by staff. They could afford to get people in.

“That goes against my principles,” Julian said. “There’s immense satisfaction in doing the jobs ourselves.”

“One day I’d like to sit by the pool we keep so clean,” she said.

“Doing what, my love?”

“Just sitting — or better still, lying.”

He laughed. He thought she was joking.

In bed, he showed no sign of exhaustion. Nikki, twelve years younger than he, was finding it a trial to match this energy.

At such a pace, it didn’t take long for the house to be in perfect shape, all the curtains and carpets fitted, the pictures hung. Nikki had looked forward to some time to herself when the jobs were done, but she hadn’t reckoned on maintenance.

“Maintenance?”

“Keeping it up to the mark,” Julian explained. “We don’t let the grass grow under our feet.”

In the middle of their love-making the same night, the thought occurred to her that he regarded this, too, as maintenance. From that moment, the magic went out of their marriage.

What a relief when he went to America for a week on a lecture tour. He left her a maintenance list, but she ignored it and lounged by the pool every day watching the leaves settle on the surface and sink to the bottom.

When he returned he was as energised as ever. Jet-lag was unknown to Julian’s metabolism. “So much to attend to,” he said. “If I didn’t know better, I’d almost think you’d ignored that list I gave you.”

He was as active as usual in bed. And up before five next morning. He’d heard some house martins building a nest under the eaves above the bedroom window. They made an appalling mess if you didn’t do something about it.

When Nikki drew back the bedroom curtain she saw his suntanned legs right outside. He’d brought out his lightweight aluminium ladder. His feet, in gleaming white trainers and socks, were on one of the highest rungs. She had to push extra hard to open the window and force the ladder backwards, but she succeeded. And let the sunshine in.

A Christmas at home wasn’t ever in Laura Thyme’s plans. Where was home? She’d hurled a large stone through the front window of her last one. Her two-timing cradle-snatcher of a husband Nick had blighted all the nice memories of that place. She tried to think of herself these days as a free spirit. Tried, because deep inside she hadn’t entirely got the man out of her system. He still had the capacity to hurt.

Well, she was sure of one thing. She wouldn’t dump herself on either of her grown-up children. They would have plans of their own, and quite right, too. If Matthew or Helena looked forward to pulling anything on Christmas Day it wasn’t a cracker with their mum. They really were free spirits, long past the stage when Laura made it her business to know who they were sleeping with.

As for Rosemary — her gardening oppo, Dr Rosemary Boxer, the ex-academic with the happy knack of finding wealthy clients with ailing plants — she’d be the perfect company for a festive lunch, but she had an elderly mum living alone. Last weekend Rosemary had called to wish Laura a merrier time than she was expecting for herself.

The result: Laura was house-sitting.

She was alone in The Withers, a large Jacobean house in Wiltshire. Two of her oldest and richest friends, Jane and Michael Eadington, were having three weeks in the Canaries. A call at the end of November had set it up. “We’re in such trouble, Laura. You know we’ve got these silly orchids that are Mike’s latest hobby? Our daughter Maeve — the model — was going to look after them and now she’s got a chance to do a series of shows with Calvin Klein in New York. Could you, would you, will you, please, be our fairy godmother?”

Sorted.

Even after discovering that the house had another resident — Wilbur, the rescue greyhound.

She’d driven the Land Rover down there on Christmas Eve. For all its mechanical uncertainties the ancient four by four was ideal transport for the country. She overheated only once, and the car didn’t overheat at all. She was just in time to see the Eadingtons off. A quick introduction to the orchids, six trays of them in the conservatory under banks of fluorescent tubing. Hurried instructions about the central heating, persuading Wilbur to wear a coat for winter walks and what to do in a power failure. Firm orders not to be in the least concerned if anything broke or went wrong. “It’s all replaceable, darling. We’re just so pleased to have you here. Treat it like your own home. Raid the freezer, watch the DVDs, drink the wine in the cellar, have an orgy if you want.”

For a few minutes after they’d driven up the lane Laura wondered if she’d done the right thing. The house seemed bigger than she remembered from the last visit. She’d never once set foot upstairs. The orchids were in flower, but didn’t look pleased at being handed over to her care. Winter was supposed to be the flowering season, but some of them were wilting. Mike had talked about misting and humidity levels and feeding. She didn’t want any casualties. She returned to the vast space the Eadingtons used as the living room.