Farm Fatale Read online

  But she was almost ready. The gilt body polish having been thoroughly applied by Consuela earlier—"For Christ's sake, be careful. I'm Cleopatra, not bloody Tutankhamen"—all that remained was to dust brown eyeshadow down the sides of her nose, a trick picked up from the early days to make it look thinner. Legions of makeup artists may have described her nose as Grecian, but even Samantha knew it needed work to make it Helen of Troy and not Zorba.

  No doubt the premature arrival was the vicar. He'd telephoned earlier explaining that he had a couple of dying parishioners to attend to and would she mind if he popped in before things got going. Although whether he meant the parishioners or the party, Samantha was not sure. People died at the most bloody inconvenient times, she thought crossly, cursing as one gilded toenail snagged in the strap of her gold stiletto sandal.

  But she had to keep on the right side of the vicar. The ghost situation was getting ridiculous. Even Consuela had heard something shrieking in the gazebo, although that could well have been Sholto, whose stress levels had gone off the meter as the day of the party approached. The straw that broke the camel's back had, appropriately enough, been the nondelivery of a much-anticipated pair of stuffed dromedaries intended to create a desert atmosphere at the marquee entrance. Having to substitute them with a couple of stuffed sheep from a design shop in Cobchester had, Sholto had declared, driven him almost to his wits' end. "Not very far, then," Guy had observed, prompting Sholto to resign and then, possibly mindful of his fee, retract. Given the speed with which The Party had been put together, Sholto had demanded and been granted an enormous premium.

  After the party, Samantha vowed, she'd have a go at the vicar about the spooks again. Get the bloody local bishop involved if necessary. The pope himself if she had to.

  Spraying almost an entire bottle of Shalimar into the air before her, Samantha swept through the perfumed cloud and proceeded magnificently downstairs.

  Her guest was not the vicar however. It was that rather handsome journalist—Martin or something—she had met in the church a couple of days ago. Acutely aware of the need to balance her turban, Samantha inclined her head in gracious welcome. Unfashionably early he may be, but Martin had been an inspiration. Had it not been during their conversation that she'd had the brilliant idea of erecting a marquee on The Bottoms' lawn, thus sidestepping the whole issue of undesirable apparitions—apart from Guy, that was—spoiling the occasion? "How wonderful to see you," Samantha said in queenly fashion, stretching a hand out for him to kiss.

  "You look wonderful," muttered Mark, feeling suddenly shy as his lips slid about the back of Samantha's greasy gold hand. Draped in the brilliantly colored, clinging silk, she looked, he thought, spectacular. She'd descended the staircase like a head-spinning hybrid of Mata Hari and Scarlett O'Hara. A diamond the size of a quail's egg nestled in her navel, while her breasts, thanks to Cleopatra's cantilevering, stood out like two golden rockets ready for launch.

  Such was the weight of her false lashes, Samantha's eyes were almost completely closed. The effect was to give her an air of freezing hauteur, and Mark quailed as her contemptuous glance lingered on his jeans and crumpled gingham shirt. "This is supposed to be an Arabian Nights party," she said crisply. "You don't look remotely Eastern. Unless we're talking Norwich."

  Mark felt that if he'd had a hat in his hands, he would be twisting it.

  "Come upstairs," purred Samantha, who had just had a very good idea. Half terrified, half excited, Mark was unable to believe his luck. He had not expected their collaboration to start so immediately. Let alone so physically. For this seemed undoubtedly what she had in mind.

  "This way," Samantha breathed, looking deeply into his eyes with a laughing, kohl-ringed gaze as they reached the top of the stairs. "This is my bedroom."

  Mark swallowed. Were his Mrs. Robinson fantasies about to be fulfilled? As he followed her through an arched doorway into a room dominated by a vast, canopied bed and blazing with floral wallpaper, the sound of "Greensleeves" boomed out once more in the hall.

  "Quick," urged Samantha, pulling him inside the room and closing the door. "There isn't much time. Get your clothes off."

  "Ees the vicar, madam," Consuela screeched up the staircase. On the other side of the closed door, Mark smiled slowly at Samantha. The sense of her closeness—at least the scent of her Shalimar—was overwhelming him. The idea of a man of the cloth waiting downstairs, albeit only the happy-clappy vicar, gave the already charged situation an extra frisson of excitement. Mark closed his eyes, opened his mouth, and leaned forward, expecting to feel the touch of Samantha's brassy lips, the glistening tip of her tongue.

  Instead he felt something scratchy in his arms. Mark snapped open his eyes to discover not Samantha but a pile of gold and silver material, pinned to the top of which was a label marked "Aladdin." He looked up in horror.

  But Samantha had already swept from the room.

  ***

  "Well, good luck, darling." Bella's voice floated airily down the line. "From what you've been saying, you'll be the belle of the ball. Your outfit sounds divine."

  Rosie stared at herself worriedly in the smeared mirror of the compact she held in her other hand. Doubts about her appearance had begun to creep in. Was her hair glamorously tousled or did it look like a nest occupied by a problem family of birds? Then there was the suit. The fact that Mrs. Womersley thought she looked wonderful suddenly seemed neither here nor there. It was, after all, the opinion of someone who frequently appeared in public in curlers and carpet slippers.

  "What does Mark think of it?" Bella asked, hitting, as usual, the bull's-eye on Rosie's worry target.

  "He hasn't seen it yet," she confessed. "He wasn't here last night."

  "Where was he?" Bella sounded indignant.

  "No idea. He didn't leave a note."

  "Didn't leave…?" Bella gasped. "What the hell are you supposed to think?"

  Think? thought Rosie dully. She was too exhausted for that. Having sat in the suit for hours in order to surprise him when he got home, Rosie's hopeful anticipation had turned to anguished panic when, by midnight, Mark had still failed to appear. His recent behavior faded into insignificance as Rosie, frantically dialing every police station and hospital within a twenty-mile radius, imagined him lying in an intensive care ward or, much worse and more probable, bleeding to death in the emergency room. Her search proving fruitless, she had gone to bed but had not slept, in the faint hope that he would come home in the early hours. Her eyes now felt as hard, dry, and heavy as golf balls and ached with exhaustion.

  "Do you think he's in London?" Bella asked.

  "I don't know. Why?"

  "No reason," Bella said. "Except I hear on the grapevine that he's been sacked from the newspaper."

  "Sacked?" A small, weak ray of relief penetrated the dark turbulence of Rosie's mind. Sacked. The weekly agony would at last be over. "Oh, God. He'll be devastated. That must be what's happened. He must have gone away to…think about things."

  "Bloody cheek," snapped Bella. "I can't believe he never even told you. Well, actually, I can. But aren't you furious?"

  "Well, yes, I am," Rosie said hesitantly. The hope was growing in her heart that now the column had gone, the old Mark might return. It was not too late, after all.

  "Apparently they're planning to replace him with 'Champagne Moments.' You know, that party column by—"

  "Champagne D'Vyne. Matt Locke's ex-girlfriend. The one who broke his heart and all that," Rosie interrupted, feeling real fear once again. If Mark knew that, he'd be at the bottom of the Thames. No doubt about it.

  "Well, you needn't be so dismissive. Matt'll be at this social event of the rustic year, I take it? This party?"

  "Possibly." She felt irritated with Bella. Not least because the hours she had recently spent pacing about the cottage had unearthed yet more evidence of Ptolemy's brief but devastating visit. Bits of chocolate trodden down into the spaces between the floorboards, chewing gum under the kitchen
table, and sticky sweets under the cushions, to mention but a few.

  "So you're going to the party? On your own?" Bella sounded astonished.

  "Yes."

  By the time morning had arrived, the one decision Rosie had made was to go to Samantha's party. Perverse though that seemed in the circumstances—Bella, for one, clearly thought so—there was method in Rosie's madness.

  Given the fuss he had made about being invited, there was no doubt that if Mark was alive and on the planet, he would be there.

  "That weird farmer's not going as well, is he?" Hoping it would excite her sympathy, Rosie had told Bella about Catherine, the cow shed, and the sheepnut salesman, but it seemed to have had the opposite effect. "Confirms everything I said," Bella had said grimly. "He's got an ax to grind. I told you."

  "No, he's not invited," Rosie said sadly.

  "Good."

  "Glad you think so."

  "Look, darling," Bella said. "I know things aren't exactly going your way at the moment, but you're not the only one with problems. My boiler burst last night."

  "Oh, dear." The boiler was one of the few appliances in the cottage yet to self-destruct, but Rosie supposed it was only a matter of time. Whenever it rained, there were so many leaks that the water dripping into the various buckets sounded at times like Concerto on a Theme by Severn-Trent Water.

  "It was dreadful. Simon was away and Tolly was spending the night in the science museum, so there was really only one thing for me to do."

  "Fix it?"

  "No. I went to stay at the Berkeley."

  ***

  Going to a party on her own was embarrassing enough. But walking through Eight Mile Bottom looking like something from Boogie Nights set new levels in Rosie's experience of personal discomfort. Pressed into a wall with embarrassment, Rosie heard the roar of a tractor behind her. Jerking the bulky machine up onto the pavement as effortlessly as if it were a pony, Jack stopped the engine.

  It seemed to Rosie that Jack looked at her for a long time, his eyes moving steadily from where the suit clung to where it flared. She tossed back her hair from her shoulders and wished the jacket didn't reveal so much cleavage. Even if, in her case, there wasn't that much to cleave. "That one of my aunt's?" The usual wry smile was wider, more appreciative.

  She nodded. "Thanks for the tip."

  "You look great." He paused. "You on your own?"

  "No, well, not really. I'm meeting Mark there," Rosie awkwardly assured him, wondering, through her fog of tiredness, whether she still wanted this to be the case. She was, she knew, as purple as the lobelia on the nearby wall.

  "Have a good time." Jack started up the engine again and lumbered off the pavement just as a Mercedes stuffed with pashas obviously bound for the party came up the High Street behind him and hooted.

  Rosie waved after him, her stomach heaving with a mixture of guilt and regret, then started up The Bottoms' infinitely long and relentlessly winding gravel drive.

  Although the front of the house was in darkness, shrieks of laughter and the clink of glasses indicated a party under way in the garden at the back. The smell of smoke and spices hung heavily in the gathering dusk. Rosie swallowed. Her palms were suddenly clammy with fear. She would know no one apart from Mark. If, indeed, he was there.

  The heavy oak door of The Bottoms was so crowded with an array of objects in decorative brass that Rosie had difficulty locating the doorbell at first. Then she spotted it above the engraved letterbox, to the left of the door knocker shaped like Shakespeare's head. A cross-hatched center of a brass Tudor rose.

  Rosie raised her hand to the bell. Christ, she suddenly thought, glancing at the back of her fingers. The fake tan she had hurriedly slapped on her face, chest, and hands was now fully developed, and the full extent of how badly she had applied it was becoming horribly apparent. The back of her hand looked like a sunset in sepia. Her front probably looked more camouflage than cleavage. The chill evening air ruffled her nipples as, panicking, Rosie pulled back the lapels of the jacket to peer at her breasts.

  "Still there, are they?"

  Rosie gasped and whipped her hands back together so swiftly that her knuckles collided painfully. A wary-looking man with a pinched face was picking his way toward her with the loping stride of a dog.

  "Sorry," he said, looking penitent. "That was a bit rude of me."

  "Doesn't matter," muttered Rosie.

  "What are you waiting for?" asked the man, gesturing at Samantha's brass-festooned door. "Don't you want to go in?"

  Rosie clenched and unclenched her fists. "Not really. I don't like parties very much," she muttered.

  "Me neither." The stranger gave her a strained smile. "Particularly fancy-dress ones. Which is why I didn't bother." Looking at his crumpled jeans, ancient baseball boots, and experienced-looking hooded top, Rosie—possibly for the first time in her life—felt ridiculously overdressed.

  "Do you know the woman giving this bash?"

  "Mrs. Guy Grabster?" Rosie fished the invitation out of her pocket. The fact that Mark had failed to take it hadn't worried her. No doubt he had memorized every detail. "No. I've never met her."

  "Me neither. She sounds pretty scary. Some sort of film star, isn't she?"

  Rosie shrugged. "I don't really know. I'm no good on famous people, I'm afraid."

  "That makes two of us." He seemed, Rosie noticed, to speak with feeling. He also had very good teeth. As he revealed them further in a hesitant smile, she felt slightly better. With luck, everything would be all right. With more luck, Mark would be inside. And, luckiest of all, he would not have found out about Champagne D'Vyne.

  "Oh, well," he added, looking at the doorbell. "I suppose we'd better go through with it."

  Rosie stabbed the Tudor rose, then leaped back, startled, as "Greensleeves" bonged loudly out of a concealed speaker in the ivy surrounding the lintels. A closed-circuit camera swung simultaneously out from behind one of the mullions. Black and white and intensely decorated, it was unlike any Rosie had ever seen before.

  "Bloody hell," said the scruffy stranger. "Original Elizabethan closed-circuit. Half-timbered, no less."

  The door flew open to reveal an Amazonian figure whose impressive and gleaming gold breasts were barely restrained by a bra of magenta silk sparkling with gold sequins. Her face was almost entirely obscured by a gold turban heaped with jewels, as well as an astonishing amount of makeup.

  Nevertheless, Rosie recognized her. She realized that, subconsciously, she'd been expecting all along to see her again. At least, since an incident involving a Jaguar a couple of weeks ago. The identity of the woman persecuting Jack about his herd and his free-range henhouse suddenly struck her as well. Of course. Who else?

  "Hello, Samantha," she said.

  ***

  Damn it, Samantha seethed as she beckoned them in ungraciously. She really had thought it would be him this time. With the help of the ever-resourceful Sholto, who happened to be a Matt Locke fan, she'd been studying every permutation of his famously flamboyant stage persona, every outfit he had ever worn, to be sure not to miss him when he arrived. But so far nada. Instead, it was some woman with scruffy hair who seemed to think she knew her and some bloody builder's laborer. The one she'd lent the elastic band to, by the looks of it. Still, she'd best let them in. Country gentry often looked like cleaners, in her experience. At least they had invitations, even if the laborer's was crumpled and covered in coffee rings.

  "I thought you said you didn't know her," Rosie's companion hissed as they were borne down the hall on a tide of revelers in turbans.

  "I didn't realize I did," she confessed. A procession of waiters carrying platters piled with food suddenly forced their way between them. As the scruffy stranger, looking terrified, was swept away on a tide of falafels, it occurred to Rosie that she had never found out what his name was. Oh, well. Taking a deep breath, she prepared to wade into the crowd to look for Mark.

  Snatches of conversation ebbed and flowed i
n her ears.

  "Yes," a large old pasha was observing to a woman dressed as Lawrence of Arabia. "She's appallingly rude about him. Going around mocking him for buying his own furniture. Bloody cheek, I'd say, coming from someone who's had to buy her own castle."

  "Absolutely," agreed Lawrence of Arabia.

  "If you can call it a castle," added the pasha witheringly.

  Were they, Rosie wondered, talking about Samantha?