she asked.
‘Not personally. There are master keys in the estate safe. For emergencies.’
‘Or when a tenant does a runner,’ she said, taking the phone from him.
‘It is her?’ he asked about the woman in the photo.
She nodded. ‘It was taken in the late sixties, before she married my grandfather.’
Her grandmother had been the height of fashion with her dark hair cut in a sharp chin-length bob by a top London stylist, her huge eyes heavily made-up, her lips pale. And the dress she was wearing was an iconic Courrèges original design.
She handed it back to him. ‘How did you know this was gran?’
‘I didn’t until I saw her last night, but it was obvious she was related to you. The likeness is unmistakable.’
‘But she was …’
She stopped. Her grandmother had been the pampered daughter of the younger son of the Earl of Melchester. A debutante. An acknowledged beauty.
One of the girls in pearls who’d featured in the pages of Country Life.
While the Amerys were a solid middle-class family, it hadn’t been the marriage her father had planned for his daughter. No minor aristocracy to offer inherited wealth, park gates, maybe a title, so Elle’s grandmother had been pretty much cut adrift from her family when she’d married Bernard Amery.
‘I don’t look a bit like her,’ she said instead.
‘Not superficially, maybe, but you have her mouth. Her eyes. Basil recognised you,’ he pointed out. He looked again at the letter. ‘Is your grandmother about?’ he asked.
‘No!’ She shook her head. ‘You can’t bother her with this, Sean.’
‘You haven’t shown her the letter?’
‘Not yet.’ Once her grandmother had read it, Elle would be well and truly lumbered. And not just with an old crock that would cost a fortune to tax, insure, keep running. There were the obligations, too.
Oh, no, wait.
The connection had been made. He knew he’d brought Rosie to the right place and as far as Sean McElroy was concerned there was nothing more to be said.
She was already lumbered.
It was true, nothing good ever came out of a brown envelope. Well, this time it wasn’t going to happen. She wasn’t going to let it.
Whatever her grandmother had done for him in the past, Basil was going to have to sort out his own problems. They had quite enough of their own.
‘They seem to have been very close,’ he said, looking again at the letter. ‘He says she saved his life.’
‘He’d have had a job to end it all in the village pond,’ she told him dryly. ‘No matter what time of day or night, someone would be sure to spot you.’
‘Your grandmother, in this case. No doubt it was just a cry for help, but she seems to have listened. Sorted him out.’
Her ditzy, scatterbrained grandmother?
‘If that’s the case, why haven’t they seen one another for forty years? Unless …’ She looked up. ‘If she married his brother, maybe they fell out over her. She was very beautiful.’
‘Yes …’
‘Although why would Grandpa have removed every trace of his brother’s presence from the family home? After all, he got the girl,’ she mused.
‘Of course he got the girl. Basil is gay, Elle.’
‘Gay?’ she repeated blankly.
‘Could that be the reason his family disowned him?’ Sean asked.
‘No!’ It was too horrible to imagine. ‘They wouldn’t.’
‘People do. Even now.’
‘They weren’t like that,’ she protested.
Were they?
Sean was right. Forty years was a lifetime ago. She had no idea how her great-grandparents would have reacted to the news that one of their sons was gay. Or maybe she did. Basil had mentioned his mother in the letter. If she’d still been alive, he’d said …
You could change the law but attitudes took longer, especially among the older generation.
As for her grandfather, Bernard, he’d been a slightly scary stranger, someone who’d arrived out of the blue every six months or so, who everyone had to tiptoe around. Breathing a collective sigh of relief when he disappeared overseas to do whatever he did in Africa and the Middle East.
‘Whatever happened, Gran can’t be bothered with this. She’s not strong, Sean.’
As always, it was down to her. And the first thing she’d have to do was go through the diary and cancel whatever arrangements Basil had made. If she could work out what they were.
‘What does this mean?’ she asked, flicking through the notebook again.
Sean didn’t answer and she looked up, then wished she hadn’t because he was looking straight at her and those blue eyes made her a little giddy. She wanted to smile, grab him and dance. Climb aboard Rosie and ring her bell.
She took a deep breath to steady herself.
‘It says “Sylvie. PRC” Next Saturday'?’ she prompted, forcing herself to look away.
‘PRC? That’ll be the Pink Ribbon Club. It’s a charity supporting cancer patients and—’ He paused as he tightened the final screw in the plug.
‘And their families,’ she finished for him, the words catching in her throat. ‘I know.’
‘It’s their annual garden party on Saturday. They’re holding it at Tom and Sylvie MacFarlane’s place this year.’
‘Where’s that?’
‘Longbourne Court.’
‘Oh, yes, of course. I’d heard it was occupied at last.’
‘I saw the signs advertising the garden party when I passed the gates. Basil mentioned it when he asked me to change Rosie’s oil. I got the feeling he’d volunteered to help because it meant something special to him.’
‘He should have thought of that before he bet the farm on the turn of a card,’ she said, suddenly angry with this man who appeared to have absolutely no sense of responsibility. Worse. Didn’t have the courage to face them and ask for help, but left someone else to do his dirty work. ‘But then, from his letter, he appears to have made a life’s work of letting people down.’
‘You’re assuming that it’s a gambling problem.’
‘You were the one who mentioned it as a possibility,’ she reminded him.
‘Grasping at straws? Maybe that was the problem with his family,’ he suggested. ‘Maybe he’d flogged the family silver to pay his creditors.’
‘Not guilty,’ she said, earning herself a sharp look. ‘And I thought you said it was a recent problem?’
‘He’s been living on the estate for less than a year, so what do I know? Maybe he only gambles when he’s unhappy. A form of self-harming?’
No, no, no … She wasn’t listening.
‘I can’t have Gran involved in anything like this, Sean.’
‘All he’s asking is that she—or, rather, you—keeps Rosie’s business ticking over.’
‘Is it?’
‘That’s what he put in the note he left me.’ He looked again at the letter to her grandmother. ‘This does make it