Be Careful What You Wish For (The Clifton Chronicles) Read online

Virginia rose from her place and walked slowly toward the door. “I’m so sorry to have to say, Priscilla, I won’t be visiting you again.”

  “Then at least something good has come out of this,” said Robert.

  “No one has ever spoken to me like that before,” Virginia said, turning back to face her adversary.

  “Then I suggest you reread Elizabeth Barrington’s will, because she certainly had the measure of you. Now get out, before I throw you out.”

  The butler only just managed to open the front door in time to allow Lady Virginia to continue on her way.

  * * *

  Clive abandoned his car outside the station and ran across the bridge to platform 3. He could hear a guard’s whistle, and by the time he reached the bottom step, the train was already pulling out. He sprinted after it as if he was in a hundred yard final, and was beginning to make up ground, but the train gathered speed just as Clive ran out of platform. He bent down, placed his hands on his knees and tried to catch his breath. As the last carriage disappeared, he turned and began to walk back along the platform. By the time he reached his car, he’d made a decision.

  He climbed in, switched on the ignition and drove to the end of the road. If he turned right, it would take him back to Mablethorpe Hall. He turned left, accelerated and followed the signs to the A1. He knew that the milk train stopped at almost every station between Louth and London, so with a bit of luck, he would be back at the flat before she arrived.

  * * *

  Slipping the front door lock didn’t present a problem for the intruder, and although it was a fashionable block of flats, it wasn’t grand enough to employ a night porter. He climbed the stairs cautiously, making the occasional creak, but nothing that would wake anyone at 2:30 in the morning.

  When he reached the second-floor landing, he quickly located flat number 4. He checked up and down the corridor; nothing. This time it took a little longer to slip the two locks. Once he was inside, he quietly closed the door behind him and switched on the light, as he had no fear of being disturbed. After all, he knew where she was spending the weekend.

  He walked around the small flat, taking his time to identify all the paintings he was looking for: seven in the front room, three in the bedroom, one in the kitchen and a bonus, a large oil propped up against the wall by the door with a sticker on it marked Smog Two, To be delivered to the RA by Thursday. Once he’d moved them all into the living room, he lined them up in a row. They weren’t bad. He hesitated for a moment before taking a flick knife out of his pocket and carrying out his father’s instructions.

  * * *

  The train pulled into St. Pancras just after 2:40 a.m., by which time Jessica had decided exactly what she was going to do. She would take a taxi back to Clive’s flat, pack her belongings and phone Seb to ask if she could stay with him for a couple of days while she looked for somewhere to live.

  “Are you all right, luv?” asked the driver as she sank into the back of the cab.

  “I’m fine. Number twelve Glebe Place, Chelsea,” was all she could manage. There were no more tears left to shed.

  When the taxi drew up outside the block of flats, Jessica handed the cabbie a ten-bob note, which was all she had, and said, “Would you be kind enough to wait? I’ll be as quick as I can.”

  “Sure thing, luv.”

  * * *

  He’d almost completed the job, which he was enjoying, when he thought he heard a car pulling up in the street outside.

  He placed the knife on a side table, went across to the window and pulled the curtain back a few inches. He watched as she climbed out of the back of the taxi and had a word with the cabbie. He moved swiftly back across the room, switched off the light and opened the door; another quick check up and down the corridor, again nothing.

  He jogged down the stairs and, as he opened the front door, he saw Jessica coming up the path toward him. She was taking a key out of her handbag when he brushed past her. She glanced around, but didn’t recognize him, which surprised her, because she thought she knew everyone who lived in the building.

  She let herself in and began to climb the stairs. She felt quite exhausted by the time she reached the second floor and opened the door to flat number 4. The first thing she must do was phone Seb and let him know what had happened. She switched on the light and headed toward the phone on the far side of the room. That was when she first saw her paintings.

  * * *

  Clive turned into Glebe Place twenty minutes later, still hoping he might have got back before her. He looked up, and saw that the bedroom light was on. She must be there, he thought, with overwhelming relief.

  He parked his car behind a cab that still had its engine running. Was it waiting for her? He hoped not. He opened the front door and ran up the stairs to find the entrance to the flat wide open and all the lights on. He walked in, and the moment he saw them he fell to his knees and was violently sick. He stared at the wreckage strewn around him. All of Jessica’s drawings, watercolors and oils looked as if they’d been stabbed again and again, with the exception of Smog Two, which a large, jagged hole had been cut from the center of the canvas. What could have driven her to do something so irrational?

  “Jess!” he screamed, but there was no reply. He pushed himself up and walked slowly into the bedroom, but there was no sign of her. That was when he heard the sound of a running tap, and swung around to see a trickle of water seeping under the bathroom door. He rushed across, pulled the door open and stared in disbelief at his beloved Jess. Her head was floating above the water, but her wrist, with two deep incisions no longer shedding blood, hung limply over the side of the bath. And then he saw the flick knife on the floor beside her.

  He lifted her lifeless body gently out of the water, and collapsed on to the floor, holding her in his arms. He wept uncontrollably. One thought kept running through his mind. If only he hadn’t gone back upstairs to get dressed, but had driven straight to the station, Jessica would still be alive.

  The last thing he remembered doing was taking the engagement ring out of his pocket and placing it back on her finger.

  25

  THE BISHOP OF Bristol looked down from the pulpit at the packed congregation of St. Mary Redcliffe, and was reminded of the impact Jessica Clifton had made on so many different people in her short life. After all, a drawing of him as the Dean of Truro hung proudly in the corridor of the Bishop’s Palace. He glanced at his notes.

  “When a loved one dies in their seventies or eighties,” he began, “we gather to mourn them. We recall their long lives with affection, respect and gratitude, exchanging anecdotes and happy memories. We shed a tear, of course we do, but at the same time we accept that it’s the natural order of things. When a beautiful young woman, who has displayed such a rare talent that her elders accept without question that they are not her betters, dies, we are bound to shed many more tears because we can only wonder what might have been.”

  Emma had shed so many tears since she’d heard the news that she was mentally and physically exhausted. She could only wonder if there was anything she could have done to prevent her beloved daughter suffering such a cruel and unnecessary death. Of course there was. She should have told her the truth. Emma felt she was just as much to blame as anyone.

  Harry, who sat beside her in the front pew, had aged a decade in a week, and wasn’t in any doubt who was to blame. Jessica’s death would continually remind him that he should have told her years ago why they had adopted her. If he had, surely she would be alive today.

  Giles sat between his sisters, holding their hands for the first time in years. Or were they holding his? Grace, who disapproved of any public show of emotion, wept throughout the entire service.

  Sebastian, who sat on the other side of his father, was not listening to the bishop’s oration. He no longer believed in an all-caring, all-understanding compassionate deity, who could give with one hand, then took away with the other. He’d lost his best friend, whom he’d adored, and no