‘Okay, so which idiot did they speak to?’
He handed her the page so that she could see for herself. ‘An idiot by the name of Natasha Gordon.’
‘No!’
‘According to the advertising manager, you assured them that it was the latest trend, harking back fifty years to an estate agent famous for the outrageous honesty of his advertisements.’ His tone, all calm reason, raised the small hairs on the back of her neck. Irritable, she could handle. This was just plain scary. ‘Clearly, you were angry with the executors for not taking your advice.’
‘If they didn’t have the cash, they didn’t have the cash, although I imagine their fees are safely in the bank. Believe me, if I’d been aping the legendary Roy Brooks, I’d have made a far better job of it than this,’ she said, working hard to sound calm even while her pulse was going through the roof. ‘There was plenty to work with. No one from the Chronicle talked to me.’ Calm, cool, professional...
‘So what are you saying? That the advertising manager of the Chronicle is lying? Or that someone pretended to be you? Come on, Tash, who would do that?’ he asked. ‘What would anyone have to gain?’
She swallowed. Put like that, it did sound crazy.
‘You are right about one thing, though,’ he continued. ‘The phone has been ringing off the hook—’ her sigh of relief came seconds too soon ‘—but not with people desperate to view Hadley Chase. They are all gossip columnists and the editors of property pages wanting a comment.’
She frowned. ‘Already? The magazine has been on the shelves for less than two hours.’
‘You know what they say about bad news.’ He took the ad from her and tossed it onto his desk. ‘In this instance I imagine it was given a head start by someone working at the Chronicle tipping them off.’
‘I suppose. How did Darius Hadley hear about it?’
‘I imagine the estate executors received the same phone calls.’
She shook her head, letting the problem of how this had happened go for the moment and concentrating instead on how to fix it. ‘The one thing I do know is that there’s no such thing as bad publicity. I meant what I said to Mr Hadley. Handled right...’
‘For heaven’s sake, Tash, you’ve made both the firm and Mr Hadley into a laughing stock. There is no way to handle this “right”! He’s withdrawn the house from the market and, on top of the considerable expenses we’ve already incurred, we’re not only facing a hefty claim for damages from Hadley but irreparable damage to the Morgan and Black name.’
‘All of which will go away if we find a buyer quickly,’ she insisted, ‘and it’s going to be all over the weekend property pages.’
‘I’m glad you realise the extent of the problem.’
‘No...’ She’d run a Google search when Hadley Chase had been placed in their hands for sale. There was nothing like a little gossip, a bit of scandal to garner a few column inches in one of the weekend property supplements. Unfortunately, despite her speculation on the source of their wealth, the Hadleys had either been incredibly discreet or dull beyond imagining. She’d assumed the latter; if James Hadley had been an entertaining companion, his money would have earned him a lot more than a smallish estate in the country. He’d have been given a title and a place at Charles II’s court.
Darius Hadley had blown that theory right out of the water.