Anne was aware of a polished woodblock floor, a staircase with flower patterned Axminster and the smell of coffee. Barbara seemed eager and anxious at once. She was speaking quickly and Anne, shaking the water from her hair, couldn’t quite make out the words. Now that she was here it didn’t seem such a good idea. It had started as a bit of fun; now she wondered if she could decently make an excuse and leave. But Barbara had already led her into a large living room and was speaking, repeating perhaps what she had said in the hall.
“I’m so glad you could come. Something’s been troubling me. It seemed such a lucky coincidence when you rang. You are probably the best person to talk to.” She paused then, realizing that this wasn’t the stuff of normal social interchange. “I’m sorry. This is rude. Do sit down. Would you like a drink? Sherry or coffee perhaps? I think I’d like a coffee.”
Anne, who felt very much like a drink, said she would have coffee too.
When Barbara left the room, Anne tried to compose herself. She thought she might have the nerve to see it through without too much harm. She was sitting in a comfortable room which would have been more in keeping with an older house. Nothing was shabby, but the furniture was solid, heavy, rather dark. There was a wood-burning stove. Against one wall was an upright piano. On the stand, open, a book of child’s music. On another wall a pencil drawing of the Beloved Felicity was hanging. Anne wondered if Barbara had done it herself, but it was rather good and she thought not. The girl was frowning as if concentrating on a problem she had no hope of solving.
Barbara brought coffee in a Pyrex filter jug. She saw Anne looking at the drawing.
“Do you have children, Mrs. Preece?”
“Anne, please. No, no children.” Without thinking she continued with the flip explanation she always gave in these circumstances. “I never felt the need of them.”
Barbara looked horrified as if, Anne thought, a guest had farted at the dinner table, but she said immediately, “It was so good of you to come.”
Anne poured herself a cup of coffee but she didn’t reply. She thought the only subject Barbara could want to discuss with her was her relationship with Godfrey, but she sensed no hostility. Rather the reverse was true. Barbara seemed embarrassingly grateful to have her there, despite her not liking children.
“This is rather delicate.” She sat, hand poised on the coffee jug.
“It’s the new quarry. I’m not sure it’s a good idea.”
Anne was caught off guard. “I’m sorry?”
“I suppose you think I’m disloyal discussing it with you when my husband’s away but I’d say the same if he were here. I have said exactly the same to him. I think it’s a mistake. It’ll alienate too many of our customers. It’s bad for our image. I was involved with this business long before Goff was. It matters to me.”
“Why do you think he’s so keen?”
It wasn’t a question she’d ever asked Godfrey she wouldn’t ever be able to think of him as Goff but now she found it interesting. If she were in his place she’d want the quarry for the excitement of the development, the drama, even the confrontation. But Godfrey wasn’t like her. He wasn’t greedy and he never took pleasure in being the centre of attention. Perhaps it was a fear that his business might otherwise stagnate which drew him on.
Barbara, however, had other ideas. “I don’t think he is keen. Not personally. Neville Furness has persuaded him that it’s the only way the business will survive.”
“Neville Furness?” Anne needed time to think.
“He works for Goff. You must have seen him at some of the public meetings, very dark.” “Yes,” Anne said. “I know.”
“Since Neville started working for us Goff’s been restless, preoccupied. And I hardly ever see him.”
I can solve that mystery for you, Anne thought. She said, carefully, “Do you think an employee would exert that sort of influence?”
“Not usually perhaps but… ” She broke off and her mood suddenly changed again. “Let’s go through to lunch. You don’t mind eating in the kitchen? It’s only something out of the freezer. And only paper napkins I’m afraid. Would you like a glass of wine? I put some Muscadet in the fridge.”
Anne followed her. They sat at a round pine table set in the corner of the sort of kitchen featured in magazines which end up in dentists’ waiting rooms. Anne took in the gleaming surfaces, the spotless Italian tiles on the floor and supposed that Barbara had a cleaning lady. She wasn’t jealous though. The Priory was classier. Such cleanliness smacked of the suburbs.
She was, however, impressed by the food. The rich onion flan might have come out of the freezer but Barbara had cooked it before it went in. It was topped with tomatoes and parmesan and latticed with anchovies and olives. They ate it with a salad and warm close-textured bread which must also have been homemade. Considerable effort had gone into the preparation of this meal. Anne, who often set out to impress, if not through food, wondered what Barbara was after.
“You were talking about your husband and the company.”
Barbara drank half a glass of wine very quickly. Her face was flushed.
For a moment Anne thought she would change the subject again but she took a deep breath. “I think Neville Furness has a vested interest in the quarry being sited on Black Law. His family own the adjoining land.”
“Yes,” Anne said, “I know.”
“And now I understand his stepmother is dead.”
“She committed suicide.”
“Did you know Bella Furness?” Barbara demanded.
“Not well. I’d met her.”
“She ran that farm. It’ll pass to Neville.”
“You knew her then?” Anne wasn’t surprised. In these scattered communities the Waughs and the Furnesses were almost neighbours.
“I knew of her.”
“What do you think? That Neville would sell out to Slateburn if planning permission was granted? That’s why he’s so keen for the quarry to go ahead? There’s not much demand for hill farms otherwise.”
“I don’t think he’d sell. He’s too canny for that. The most convenient access is through the farmyard and he’d charge for that. Any other route in is going to mean building a new road. In effect he could almost hold Goff to ransom, charge well over the odds for allowing machinery down the track!”
“Godfrey must be aware of that danger.”
“You’d think so, yes.”
“But?” Anne wiped buttery onion juice from her plate with a piece of bread. Barbara seemed distracted by this. Felicity must already have acquired immaculate table manners.
“But where Neville Furness is concerned he seems to have lost all his business sense. I’d like to know why Goff s so willing to accept Neville’s advice. It’s not like my husband. He’s usually a cautious man. He comes to his own decisions in his own time.”
“What exactly are you afraid of?” Reluctantly Anne pushed the empty plate aside and sat with her elbows on the table. “Blackmail?”
Again Barbara seemed disconcerted, though whether it was by the elbows on the table or the notion of her husband being blackmailed, it was hard to say.
“No,” she said uncertainly. “Of course not.” That at least, Anne thought, was a relief.
“All I wanted to say,” Barbara went on, ‘ that if you, or one of your team, were to find something which would have an impact on the planning inquiry, if you could recommend that after all the development shouldn’t go ahead… ” She paused. “Well, it would certainly be in all our interests, wouldn’t it?”
This was said in such a gentle, unassuming way that it wasn’t until Anne was at the front door, poised to run out into the rain, that she realized that what had been going on here, if not blackmail or bribery, had certainly been some form of corruption.