Read Online Ring of Guilt by Judith Cutler - Free Book Online Page B

to my workroom. Pure pleasure. First I rolled the epoxy resin putty into a long thin sausage, which I formed as closely as I could to the template. Then I stood the vase in a sand box, to make it absolutely stable, then put a lump of plastic modelling clay in place. This would support the new handle, which I attached to the broken edges of the vase with some epoxy resin adhesive, with a little filling powder added. There. I stepped back to look at it. Things were going well.
    Griff came back at four, with a couple of cardboard boxes for us to open and exclaim over together. He called Mrs Walker over from the shop – it was pretty well closing time – so she could share the treat.
    He regaled us with the gossip – who’d been outbid, who’d paid through the nose for rubbish. ‘And of course Titus Oates sends his love, my sweet one,’ he added.
    â€˜I’m sure you sent mine,’ I replied, equally straight-faced.
    â€˜Of course. Tell me, do you know anything of Dilly Pargetter’s background? She sells often deeply regrettable tat she glamorizes with the description
costume jewellery
,’ he explained to Mrs Walker.
    I scratched my head. ‘Nothing at all. Should I?’
    â€˜I don’t think so. I only registered her because she sold you that dress ring – the one with pretty beads,’ he added. Clearly there were some things he preferred Mrs Walker not to know.
    I nodded.
    â€˜She was there today, scooping up Woolworths rubbish as if she’d bid for the Crown Jewels. It wasn’t her dreadful taste I noticed, but her black eye. And I fancy she was short of a tooth.’
    â€˜An accident?’ I asked sharply, with a particularly nasty vibe I couldn’t begin to explain.
    â€˜Who knows? She’d done her best with concealer, but there was no disguising the swellings. The funny thing was she kept on looking at me, as if there was something she wanted to say. I gave her one or two of my encouraging smiles, but I must have lost my touch. She obviously took them for bared fangs, and took off pretty sharply at the end of the sale.’
    â€˜Titus would have known what was up,’ I declared.
    â€˜Of course he would,’ Griff agreed. ‘But he didn’t choose to entrust me with whatever secrets he knew. Here – I bought these for the village hall: I know they’re running short.’ He produced a load of thick Duraflex tumblers. ‘I don’t know that it’s even worth unpacking them,’ he added, as Mrs Walker reached out tumbler after tumbler.
    â€˜I’ll give them a good wash before you take them over,’ she said. Then she took what looked like another, rather taller drinking glass from the same box. She rubbed it with a scrap of newspaper, and six panels appeared. Her eyes and mouth rounded and she put it down rather too sharply on the table. ‘Is that . . . no, it can’t be . . . Is it—? No, surely not.’
    â€˜My goodness,’ Griff said, beaming with pleasure. ‘Lalique, if I’m any judge. Well done, dear lady. Is it signed?’
    She picked it up and looked at the base. ‘R. Lalique.’ She grabbed some kitchen towel and rubbed some of the dirt off. ‘Look at these pretty blue figures. Heavens!’
    â€˜Who says you’re not a divvy, Griff?’ I chipped in.
    â€˜I actually was after the glasses, you know. May I look?’ He turned the pretty goblet in his hands. ‘It’s a mite out of our period, of course.’
    Mrs Walker responded with a grin of her own. ‘One of our regulars collects glass. Do you think I should phone her?’
    â€˜Let me do my homework first, dear lady. I’d hate to overcharge her. Or worse still,’ he added, apparently joking but, knowing him, dead serious, ‘undercharge her . . .’
    Griff tried to shoo me back upstairs to continue work on Sanditon’s vase, but I refused to be shooed. The news