Farm Fatale Read online

  Until this happened, Sir Hadley had always imagined the worst that could befall a man was what had recently happened to him— being forced through Lloyd's losses to sell his ancestral estate to, of all people, a pop star called Matt Locke. Ladymead, a rambling, romantic, towered, and turreted pile, surrounded by a green sweep of parkland, had been in the Bonsanquet family since the fourteenth century. To flog it to some gangly youth in oversized sunglasses had caused Sir Hadley to suffer more acutely than his distant ancestors had against Joan of Arc or his more recent ones had against Napoleon and Hitler (the derring-do of all concerned being commemorated in plaques and tombs in the Eight Mile Bottom parish church). Yet where the might of foreign armies had failed, Lloyd's—coupled with disastrous financial advice—had succeeded.

  Since meeting Samantha, however, Sir Hadley could no longer see what the big problem with selling Ladymead had been. Giving up the historic family estate was nothing compared to finding an estate for this preposterously demanding actress. Small wonder that the sight of Cottage Beautiful struck a worse fear in Sir Hadley's heart than anything his forefathers had felt facing the arrows of the French. The problem was not merely that of pinpointing the perfect village. It was also that Samantha had an additional and constantly changing set of requirements besides the basic components of Chewton Mewsley. During the weeks he had been working for her, these had included a flagpole, a ballroom, and a swimming pool. Now, suddenly, Samantha decided she required a station.

  "A station?" quavered Sir Hadley. His watery eyes watered further. Samantha sniffed the air ostentatiously—on this occasion, as on several previous ones, she suspected Sir Hadley had been waiting for her not outside the branch of Barclays that served as their usual rendezvous (and a cruel reminder to Sir Hadley that the days of deposit accounts were behind him) but at the pub next door.

  "A train station, Sir Hadley." As they got into Guy's Jaguar and drove off, Samantha shot the relocation agent a beady glare and wondered if, given the fact that she was his undisputed master, she shouldn't just call him Hadley.

  The origins of the station idea, Sir Hadley gathered as they drove along, came from a newspaper article describing how David Niven, an actor with whom Samantha had once shared a stage (albeit with almost a year between their respective roles), would greet his weekend guests on the village station platform bearing a tray of Bloody Marys. Samantha, Sir Hadley learned, planned to improve it with a few touches of her own. Champagne cocktails instead of Bloody Marys, for a start. As an unusually diplomatic director had once told her, even perfection could be improved on.

  As they pulled up outside the first house on that day's agenda, a house conspicuously lacking so much as a signal box, Sir Hadley sighed deeply.

  ***

  An hour later, his spirits had not risen perceptibly. Although Samantha had appeared more impressed with the house than he had ever dared hope, he braced himself for the inevitable postshow-round abuse as they came outside onto the lawn. Yet, miraculous as it seemed, his impressions were correct. Lack of station notwithstanding, Samantha was satisfied the property fulfilled most of her criteria.

  "Just look at the daffodils," she cooed, pointing at a yellow patch of crocuses on the lawn.

  The owner, Lady St. Felix, looked at Samantha in amazement. Sir Hadley, meanwhile, shifted from one battered brogue to another.

  "Wonderful, arent they?" Samantha continued in apparent ecstasy. "I so adore wildflowers, Lady St. Felix. Don't you?"

  Any reply Lady St. Felix could possibly have made was drowned out by Samantha's mobile suddenly shrilling "New York, New York."

  Sir Hadley gave Lady St. Felix a liquid and apologetic look. "May I just say again how sorry I am about the floorboards, Catherine," he quavered. "I'm afraid Miss Villiers simply didn't appreciate what the appalling consequences of wearing…"—he flicked a glance at Samantha's footwear—"um, steel-heeled stilettos would be on fourhundred-year-old oak. However, I'm sure you can sort something out with each others, um"—the thought of Lloyd's never far from his mind, he stumbled over the dreaded word—"…insurance."

  Lady St. Felix flared her nostrils in a strikingly similar manner to the lions rampant guarding her ancient front door. Her eyelids, permanently half closed as if to shield her from the appalling vulgarity of the world, drooped still further. They closed finally as the sound of Samantha shrieking into her mobile rent the air.

  "Is that you, Russ? What do you mean what the hell's going on?"

  Although Sir Hadley and Lady St. Felix were edging ever farther away from Samantha, Russ's response was still audible.

  "I mean what the hell's going on?" exploded the agent, a distance of two hundred and fifty miles and a crackling mobile line not diminishing his fury in the least. "I tell the Country Clinic producer you'll turn up to rehearsals, beg him not to write Christabel out of the script, and what happens? You fuck up. There's no bloody sign of you at the studios."

  "Excuse me," Samantha interjected haughtily. "I've had another rather major creative project taking up all my available time recently, actually."

  Sir Hadley shuddered and wondered if it was too early for a drink. He jumped as the digitally remastered force of Russ's fury squawked from Samantha's end of the telephone.

  "Good," snarled Russ. "Because you sure as hell don't have this one anymore. The Country Clinic director's sacked you. And I'm sacking you as well. I'm sick of your attitude. Who the fuck do you think you are? Vanessa bloody Redgrave?"

  "Certainly not," snapped Samantha. "I specialize in a different type of character altogether. Nor am I a revolutionary communist."

  Lady St. Felix's liver-spotted hand flew to her brooched and collared throat.

  There was a strangled yowl, a crash, and then the line went dead.

  Samantha shoved her mobile back into her bag. "Fuck you as well," she muttered.

  "Is something wrong?" Lady St. Felix asked icily.

  "Everything's fine." Samantha beamed stagily. "More than fine, in fact. I don't mind telling you this, Lady St. Felix—may I call you Catherine?"

  Lady St. Felix's violet-veined eyelids flicked up a little.

  "I'm very impressed with your house, Catherine," continued Samantha.

  Lady St. Felix's mouth remained a quivering line. For her, as for Sir Hadley, Lloyd's cast a long and expensive shadow. Her stockbroker's recent advice to invest heavily in the dot-com revolution had also proved overoptimistic. Even lighting and heating were optional extras now, and having to sit in the dark every night with only a wind-up radio and two pairs of thermals for company was rapidly succeeding in breaking the proud St. Felix spirit that, in centuries gone by, Cromwell's army had ignominiously failed to do. Even so…

  Lady St. Felix looked in anguish at Sir Hadley, who shrugged helplessly. She could expect no comfort there, of course, Hadley having recently sold Ladymead lock, stock, and Elizabethan cannon barrel to some scruffy-haired yowler who had apparently grown up on a council estate. To think that between them they had inherited the entire surrounding area. If only they had inherited a grain of financial common sense with it.

  "There's just one thing, Catherine." As Samantha, musingly, stretched out her nails and examined them, the sun caught the vast, uncut diamond ring Guy had given her last Christmas.

  "And what, Miss Villiers, is that?"

  "Well, Catherine, it's not that big, is it?"

  Lady St. Felix flinched. How dare the woman? Must she really endure this insolence? Had family pride sunk so low? She raised her withered chin to reveal two slack ropes of wattle running down into her collar and concluded that it probably had.

  "It seems a perfectly respectable size to me, Miss Villiers," she faltered. "Generations of St. Felixes, including my ancestor, Wee Gervase, who was over seven feet tall, have grown up here without complaint. Indeed, the house has been admired for centuries as the epitome of small country-house perfection. 'An exquisite jewel,' is how Sir Nikolaus Pevsner referred to it…" The proud St. Felix spirit quaile
d and the last of the line suddenly found herself unable to go on.

  "You only have to read the agency details." Sir Hadley stepped in, waving a handful of papers at Samantha. Having scented closure, he was anxious for some very useful—not to say essential—commission not to slip through his fingers at the last minute. The Bottoms seemed to fulfill most of the appalling woman's requirements, after all. As did the village it was in, now that she'd finally and thankfully dropped the station clause. Sir Hadley crossed his fingers and hoped she would not start inquiring about airfields.

  "Bloody stupid address, though, isn't it?" Samantha rapped out suddenly. "The Bottoms, Eight Mile Bottom? Imagine that on my Smythson's notepaper. Writing paper, I mean."

  Lady St. Felix, whose own Smythson days had long been succeeded by Basildon Bond ones, swallowed. "I can't say the address has ever troubled the family once in several hundred years. The family crest even makes a virtue of it." She waved an arm toward the carved motto over the doorway. In Fundi Nostri Fidemus—Devoted Are We to Our Bottoms.

  Sir Hadley, desperate for Samantha not to lose interest and all too aware of that mounting on his own debts, shook the estate agent's details again.

  "'An exceptional Grade I listed country house of great historical interest set in superbly maintained gardens and grounds with far-reaching views,'" he intoned. "'An example of secular Jacobean building at its finest, The Bottoms boasts a number of historical features including a priest hole, molded plasterwork ceilings, heraldic fireplaces, and stone-flagged floors throughout. Five large bedrooms, three fine reception rooms, attics, vaulted cellars—'"

  "Mmmm," said Samantha.

  "The historical features really are tremendous," pressed the impecunious baronet, finding an unexpected and possibly atavistic determination and tenacity in adversity. (Perhaps his father had been wrong. Perhaps he would have cut it at the Battle of Crécy after all.) "'The priest hole, for example…'" He stuttered and stopped. Surging into his memory came the tricky few minutes that had followed his client's suggestion that a power shower be installed in the hallowed place of the St. Felix family padre's civil war concealment.

  "And the decor could do with some work," Samantha had added, looking scornfully around at the white-plastered, flag-stoned surroundings of the Great Hall. "I mean, there's no wallpaper or anything—half the place isn't even bloody decorated, for Christ's sake. Bit of a cheek considering the price you're asking. And look at this!" Samantha slapped her palm with contemptuous force against a crumbling section of fourteenth-century wall. "All these bits of wood showing through. You can see all the foundations."

  At this, there was a sharp, quivering intake of breath from Lady St. Felix. For the seconds before the proud family spirit reasserted itself, she looked as if she was about to faint. "That," she had said with steely dignity, "is wattle and daub. Original and of great historical value."

  Shuddering at the recollection, Sir Hadley tuned back to the conversation. "But, anyway, The Bottoms isn't the largest house in the area, is it?" Samantha was demanding.

  Lady St. Felix flared her medieval nostrils. "Well, of course Ladymead is considerably larger in size…"

  Samantha put her hands on her hips and raised an interested eyebrow. "That's the massive place outside the village, isn't it? With towers and flagpoles and everything?"

  "Ladymead is no longer on the market," Sir Hadley pointed out bitterly. "The Bottoms, on the other hand—"

  "Who's bought Ladymead?" Samantha cut in.

  "A very, ahem, successful composer of, ahem, popular music," said Sir Hadley, desperate not to dwell on the subject. "Goes by the name of Matt Locke. Something of a recluse, I believe. Very rarely seen in the village. Now, to return to the subject of The Bottoms…"

  Samantha sighed extravagantly, plunged a stiletto heel into the immaculate lawn, and started to wheel around on it.

  "…although, admittedly, not the largest in the area, The Bottoms is by far the largest house in the village." Sir Hadley blinked in astonishment as inspiration most unexpectedly struck. "The grounds, in fact, are so large that the local amateur dramatic society used them for their outdoor production of Half a Sixpence only last summer."

  "What did you say?" Samantha's head whipped around.

  "The manor is, ahem, the largest house in the, um, village…" Sir Hadley tried hard to remember the magic formula.

  "Not that." Samantha's eyes shone with a hard sparkle. "About the amateur dramatic society."

  "Oh, it's quite all right," Lady St. Felix interjected. "They're not the sort one reads about in the papers—having affairs and murdering one another and all that sort of thing. They're frightfully civilized. Run by Dame Nancy—she's terribly respectable."

  "How fascinating," said Samantha thoughtfully. Had destiny struck again, providing her with both the perfect country house and the perfect opportunity to exercise her God-given thespian talent? It would seem so. Not only was The Bottoms the largest house in Eight Mile Bottom, the village also boasted a sheeplike bunch of rustics all ready to rally under the banner of her own dramatic vision. When compared to an opportunity like this, even her doubts about the decor paled into significance.

  Samantha beamed at Sir Hadley and Lady St. Felix. "Catherine," she declared in ringing tones, "I think we have a deal."

  ***

  Emerging from the hospital a fortnight later, Guy knew that he was incredibly lucky to have survived a serious heart attack almost unscathed. Except for overwhelming exhaustion (which the doctors claimed would lessen eventually), the only legacy of what had happened was the occasional struggle to find the right word. Yet words had often failed him when he had been perfectly fit, especially where Samantha was concerned. Rarely had they failed him so utterly as when he was taken from the hospital by Samantha and bundled into the Jaguar to find that life as he had known it had come to an abrupt end.

  Discovering that he was jobless was bad enough (although Hufflestein was apparently working on something). But the news that, thanks to Samantha's having sold the house in Roland Gardens to some film star, he was homeless in the bargain had added insult to injury. The final straw was discovering, halfway up the motorway, that she had moved them to some creepy old village in the middle of nowhere. Not just any creepy old village, either, but one called, risibly, Eight Mile Bottom.

  As for the house itself, The Bottoms, words failed Guy again. Apart, that was, from the single syllable why? Or, more to the point, why not some nice old Lutyens-designed pile, why not some comfortable twenties' bungalow? Somewhere the decorating had actually been done.

  Samantha, he discovered, was obsessed with slapping Designers Guild wallpaper up everywhere—not personally, naturally, but through the offices of an entire army of decorators and designers. Was he to spend the rest of his life walking into stepladders, tripping over dust sheets, and encountering wild-eyed young men rushing about with fabric swatches?

  There were magazines everywhere he sat down. Copies of Perfect Gazebo, Estate Beautiful, and the blasted Insider magazine that had caused all the trouble in the first place lay open at worrying advertisements displaying kitchens with chandeliers and Palladian friezes, stained glass–surrounded showers with candle brackets, and bathrooms featuring free-standing rolltop tubs festooned with fleurs-de-lis. Amid the swags, stuffing, gilding, and carving, one thing alone was plain. Samantha's refurbishment was designed to do to The Bottoms the absolute converse of everything Basia Briggs had inflicted on Roland Gardens. Where she had been minimal, Samantha would be maximal. No inch of wall, no centimeter of sofa would go undecorated, uncushioned, unstuffed, or, preferably, all three. All that the two projects had in common was the cost. Renovating The Bottoms would, Guy recognized, be eye-wateringly, ball-squeezingly, agonizingly expensive.

  After arriving at The Bottoms, Guy elected to spend most of each day in bed. His doctors had advised this, but it was also handy to avoid the battle zone downstairs. Even the soft drone of the radio, however, could not quite drown out
the fact that Samantha had rowed over the refurbishment with three different designers during the last two days alone. One had actually been fired yesterday for refusing point-blank to install halogen downlighters in the vast and ancient central beam of the dining-room ceiling. Lying with both pillows pressed to his head, Guy had still been able to hear the finer points of the discussion.

  "But, Miss Villiers, you can't just slap modern conveniences up everywhere. Things have to be carefully restored and concealed. This is a historic house. It was in the St. Felix family for five or six hundred years, after all."

  "Yes, and it looks it," snapped Samantha, gesturing at the plain walls, stone fireplaces, and Jacobean plaster ceilings with contempt. "The place is hopelessly out of date. Look at the painting on that wall over there. It's practically peeling off. The sooner it gets a coat of Umbrian Sun, the better."

  The designer swayed backward on his heels before stalking off over the stone-flagged floor.