A Question of Guilt(76)

Compton Auctions was nothing like that. Pieces of furniture were banked along the bare walls of the cavernous room – worn easy chairs and ring-marked tables, a sixties-style sideboard, long and low, next to a little dressing table with triptych mirrors and carved legs that must have been at least a hundred years old. The smaller items were arranged along trestle tables at the rear of the warehouse, all marked with stickers showing their lot numbers. Prospective buyers were examining the various items and making notes, not on programmes, but in notebooks or even on the backs of envelopes, and chatting in groups in the open space in the middle of the warehouse. There wasn’t a single chair – apart from those in the sale – in sight. My heart sank at the prospect of having to stand for the next couple of hours.

I looked around for Alice, but couldn’t see her. Sarah was there, though, leafing through a pile of paperwork at a table from which I imagined Lewis Crighton would be conducting the auction, and the man himself was moving between the groups of customers, stopping to speak to a heavily made-up woman in a tatty fur coat here, a weaselly looking man in an anorak there.

When he spotted Jeremy, however, he made a beeline for us, extending his hand.

‘Jeremy, my friend! We don’t often see you here!’

Jeremy shook the proffered hand, but he was smirking.

‘You don’t really have anything here that would interest me, Lewis. I’ve chauffeured this young lady, who wants to make sure the items she’s selling go to a good home. And that you’re not doing her out of what’s due to her, of course. Sally Proctor. I expect you know her father, Jack.’

Lewis nodded in my direction, but there was a certain frostiness in his manner – whether because he was annoyed at the suggestion that he might be cheating clients out of the true proceeds of the items they were selling, or because he recognized me as the girl who was asking too many questions about Dawn, I didn’t know. Certainly he gave no indication of having ever seen me before, though he’d spoken to me in the office on my first visit to Compton Properties, but that didn’t mean a thing. It was always possible he didn’t want me – or Jeremy – to know that he’d taken notice of me.

‘Right, old chap, must get on,’ he said to Jeremy. ‘I’ve got a busy night ahead, and I’m an assistant down. One of my young ladies has gone AWOL. Simply hasn’t turned up for work this week. Probably sunning herself in Ibiza. You just can’t get the staff these days, you know.’

‘Which is why I prefer to operate solo,’ Jeremy said easily.

But I was all ears. ‘One of my young ladies’ was undoubtedly Alice – she and Sarah were his only employees, as far as I was aware. She’d missed her appointment with me, and now Lewis was saying she hadn’t turned up for work this week . . .

Alarm prickled on my skin like tiny electric shocks. Alice had been afraid of something – or someone. But she’d plucked up the courage to speak to me and arrange a meeting anyway. Now, it would seem, she was missing. Was this yet another coincidence? Or had something happened to her?

I’d lost all interest in the auction now – I could think of nothing but Alice and what the implications of her disappearance might be. But at the same time I was registering everything about Lewis – his immaculate appearance, his smooth demeanour, the competent way he handled his duties as auctioneer – and the intimate little glances that passed between him and Sarah, which I might never have noticed had I not seen them leaving the office together after hours. Was it possible that this suave man was a murderer who cold-bloodedly disposed of anyone who threatened to expose him? It seemed utterly preposterous, and yet the evidence against him was stacking up. Once I’d talked to Dawn’s mother, I thought I would really have no alternative to going to the police with my suspicions. Otherwise, as Josh had predicted, I might well be the next to disappear, or be run down by a hit-and-run driver.

Preoccupied as I was, I almost missed the moment when the apostle spoons and the candle snuffer came under the hammer until Jeremy nudged me, beaming. Both items had been snapped up by the dealers – they hadn’t made a fortune, but they’d exceeded their reserves.

‘At least it will buy a decent bottle of champagne to welcome Jack home,’ Jeremy said with a smile. ‘I hope you’ll invite me over to share it with you.’

‘Dad would rather have a pint of bitter, if I know anything about it,’ I retorted.

At last the auction was over and people began to drift away. A beefy-looking youth with the bulging muscles of a weight lifter, tattooed arms and an earring was helping one dealer to carry out his acquisitions, which included the sixties-style sideboard, and he managed to back into me as he passed.