Inside the grounds it was easier to see the cat’s cradle of electrical wiring topping the walls. There were electrical booster points at the corners and Charlie assessed the conduit weight powerful enough for a current that could kill. The cypresses were bigger than they had appeared from the approach road, shadowing the drive almost completely from the mid-morning sun. The protection ended just before the front of the house, and the sudden glare was disconcerting. Charlie squinted against the brightness, aware of a woman waiting for him. She came forward as he got out of the car, hand outstretched.
‘I’m Jane Williams,’ she said. ‘Secretary to Lady Billington.’
Charlie was conscious of her aloof scrutiny. It had been hotter that he’d expected on the drive from Rome and his suit was concertinaed. He pulled at the sleeves, trying to straighten them and dry his hands at the same time. She permitted the briefest contact.
‘Lady Billington asked me to look after you.’
Charlie grinned. ‘What does that mean?’
Her face remained blank. ‘It means I’ll conduct you through whatever sort of examination you wish to make of the security precautions of the house.’
Squire’s daughter, judged Charlie: twin-set, pearls and the hunt on Sunday. Except that because of the heat it was voile not cashmere and if she had to work for a living he didn’t expect the pearls were genuine. She probably still rode, though. She was slim and small-busted, with a full-lipped, heavy-browed face. Her dark hair was strained back into a businesslike bun at the nape of her neck and the tortoiseshell spectacles were held like a wand of office in her hand. A fashion magazine image of the perfect secretary, he thought.
‘Lady Billington suggests you join her for sherry later,’ said the girl.
‘All right.’ accepted Charlie. He noticed that the fountain motif had water coming out of a cherub’s nipples.
The secretary led the way into the villa through a side door. Charlie felt the chill of air conditioning and saw that the windows were tinted against the sun, in addition to the Venetian blinds. The floor was black and white marble, like a chessboard, and halfway down the corridor there was another fountain. This time the water was spurting from a fish’s mouth. There were recesses and alcoves with plinths and urns, and from them trailed tendrils of evergreen plants. She stopped at the beginning of the corridor that seemed to run the length of the house and said, ‘What exactly is it that you want?’
‘Reassurance, I suppose,’ said Charlie. ‘To know that the security is still good.’
‘Sir Hector is very security conscious,’ she said curtly.
‘So it would seem. Is that electric circuit on the wall operated every night?’
‘By a time switch,’ she confirmed. ‘It prevents human error, someone forgetting. There are floodlights, too, along the beach.’
‘What about the house?’
‘Why don’t you see for yourself?’
There were restraining fixtures on the majority of the ground-floor windows, preventing their being opened more than six inches. There were two sets of French windows, one at the side overlooking the seaview verandah and the other at the front of the house, leading out onto the wide driveway. On each were two sets of breaker points, to sound an alarm if contact was interrupted. In addition there were pressure pads beneath the carpeting. The same protection was installed at all the doors. There was the main entrance, the minor door through which they’d come into the house, one leading out through the kitchen and a fourth out onto the verandah, separate from the French window. Charlie followed behind the secretary from place to place, checking the details against the protection listed upon the file copy he had brought from London.
‘Are these manually activated?’ he asked, testing her.
‘Time switch again,’ she said.
‘But you can override it if you want to?’
‘Of course.’
‘Shall we see?’
‘Whatever for?’
‘To guarantee it works.’
‘Why?’
‘I would have thought that was obvious.’
‘We weren’t advised this would be necessary.’
‘I’ve only just decided it is. Bells that don’t ring aren’t an awful lot of good, are they?’
‘These work.’
‘Have you tested them?’
She moved her feet, uncomfortably. ‘No.’
‘So we’ll check, shall we?’
‘But people will have to be warned: one alarm sounds directly into the local police station.’
‘You’d better warn them, hadn’t you?’
‘Are you sure it’s necessary?’
‘Positive.’
She turned on her heel and flounced out, leaving him in what he supposed was a drawing room. Over the marble fire-place, the unspeakable in hunting pink pursued the unseen uneatable. The English scene seemed curiously out of place among the classical ornaments and carvings, which Charlie supposed were genuine. There was no sense that anyone ever visited the room except to dust. He ran his finger along the top of a side-table. They did that well enough. It was fifteen minutes before Jane Williams returned.
‘Are you ready?’ she said.
‘If you are.’
Her face was expressionless. ‘What do you want?’
‘Is the alarm set?’
‘Yes.’
‘The police warned?’
‘Yes. I told them we’d be testing for an hour and they were to ignore it during that time.’
Charlie went to the main entrance, first triggering the alarm by opening the door and then by stepping on the pressure pad. On both occasions, the alarm jangled piercingly. He repeated the process at every other entry point and at the French doors. The protection operated every time.
‘Good,’ he said.
‘I told you it worked.’
‘So you did.’
‘Can I put the system back to automatic now?’ There was a note of weariness in her voice.
‘What about upstairs?’
‘What about it?’
‘Aren’t there alarms?’
‘You know there are.’
‘Then they’ll have to be tested, won’t they?’
She marched off, with Charlie close behind, enjoying the bum movement beneath the skirt. Whoever followed Jane Williams up the stairs in different circumstances was a lucky sod, he decided. She turned abruptly and Charlie tried to clear his face of expression.
‘Something the matter?’ she said.
‘No,’ said Charlie. ‘Nothing.’
They went first to the guest bedrooms. Sash bolts stopped the windows from opening more than six inches: the air conditioning made sense, Charlie realized. It seemed a great deal of trouble to go to, just for the pleasure of wearing shiny stones.
‘Now the master bedrooms,’ said Charlie.
‘It seems an intrusion.’
‘That’s what burglars do,’ said Charlie. ‘Intrude.’
For a moment her control slipped, her face clouding. Quickly she recovered and said, ‘Which one?’
‘Your choice,’ said Charlie, careless of the annoyance he was causing her. It was clear that in the staff social structure Jane Williams put him somewhere around the rank of boot black.
There were two doors at the head of the staircase and she went to the one at the right. ‘Sir Hector’s,’ she said.
Charlie stopped just beyond the threshold. The furniture was heavy and masculine, appearing oddly out of place in a villa in the sun, wardrobes as well as the bureau and bed fashioned from solid, black teak. Near the dressing table there was a bust of a man whom Charlie presumed to be the ambassador, mounted on a slender marble plinth and to the side was a spotlight, angled to illuminate it. Above the bureau and continuing around the walls were framed diplomas of Billington’s progress in life and there were a lot of photographs, from school group pictures, up through childhood to adolescence. There were several of a youth in shorts and cap, with a racing boat behind. Directly above the bureau a rack held the sawn-off blades of oars. Charlie moved closer. There were several groups with the sculls in the foreground and the crews with their arms around each other with the tactile need of sportsmen.