Liam Devlin, reached by Michael’s phone, said he would be perfectly happy to meet Miss – Mrs? – Holland at Ashwood. Yes, he would bring the keys out later today if she wanted, although she had better come clad as if for tempest, fire and flood, on account of the entire Ashwood site sinking into a mire after days of rain.
Francesca promised to arrive suitably garbed, hung up, and accepted Michael’s offer of a quick wash-and-brush-up in the rather antiquated cloakroom off the hall. She was a bit tousled and pale from the long journey, and her mouth looked too wide for her face in the way it always did when she was tired or anxious. She brushed her hair, which she had had cut very short after leaving Marcus – it made her look like Joan of Arc after a night on the tiles, but it had represented a very satisfactory two-finger gesture to his simpering blonde and her gleaming shoulder-length hair – and went back to the kitchen to thank Michael for his help.
It was infuriating, having got all the polite thank-yous and interesting-to-have-met-yous, and all the conventional safe-journey farewells out of the way, to encounter a completely unresponsive engine when she turned on the ignition. Absolutely dead. Not a spark.
Fran swore and tried it again, and this time a faint, slightly sinister, smell of petrol came into the car’s interior. Petrol-flooded or waterlogged or something. Third time lucky? She turned the key again, and this time, in addition to the ominous silence, the warning light for over-heating the engine glowed balefully at her from the dashboard. Hell’s teeth. Now there was nothing for it but to go back into the house and find the number of a local garage. The trouble was that it was Friday afternoon and the odds were that no one would be able to come out until tomorrow at the earliest. Which meant she would have to phone Liam Devlin and put off their meeting at Ashwood, and that, in turn, would most likely mean Monday morning before she could get into the place. Bloody, bloody internal combustion engine!
A shaft of light showed from the open door of the house, and Michael’s voice said, ‘It looks as if you’d better come back inside, doesn’t it?’
‘Wretched thing,’ said Fran crossly. ‘I don’t suppose you’d know how to fix it?’
‘You suppose right. What time were you meeting Liam Devlin?’
‘Six o’clock.’
He looked at the car, and Francesca had the sudden impression that he was holding a brief, silent argument with himself. But he only said, ‘You do the damsel in distress role very thoroughly, don’t you?’
‘I didn’t mean to get stranded,’ said Francesca, and heard with annoyance the note of apology in her voice that had always infuriated Marcus.
‘I’m going back to London this afternoon,’ said Michael. ‘So I could drive you to Ashwood – at least, I could if you know the way. And I could wait for you while you take a look round, and then drop you at your house afterwards.’
So this was what the inner argument had been about. His sense of chivalry had been nudging him to make the offer but he had not really wanted to do it, so he had been trying to think of a polite way out. Perfectly understandable. Francesca said, very firmly, ‘Certainly not. I couldn’t possibly put you to so much trouble. I can easily phone Liam Devlin and arrange another meeting.’
‘But if your friend’s been missing since Monday, perhaps you shouldn’t delay matters. Give me ten minutes to lock everything up, and I’ll be with you.’ The smile that made him look unexpectedly mischievous showed again. ‘Chalk it up half to chivalry and half to curiosity. If nothing else, it’ll be nice to have some company on the journey.’