Page 27 of Old Girls Behaving Badly

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I read the words into my phone from the front of the booklet and just below them was a picture of the coastal scene: the prize! I took a photo and flicked through the pages, reading out a little of what I could see there. It was a list of the clues and pinpoints to locations, hints and tips of how to get the most out of the competition. The questions were actually more simple than I would have thought. They weren’t riddles; they were proper quiz questions relating to music and theatre, sport, art and literature. I didn’t know all the answers immediately but most people who were good at general knowledge would. Anyone on a pub quiz team would ace it. Once you had a collection of answers in each section it led you to a location where you could pick up extra clues. A lot of fun, I imagined, but not quite the high-brow competition I’d been led to believe by Dorothy. Perhaps poor Philip had made more of it to make his wife proud of his win. When I flicked through to the rules I could see that all the names of the contestants with correct answers to the last question in the last location would be put into a hat. That was how Philip had won.

I closed the book and replaced it on the shelf in its exact position and took a moment to wonder what I was doing. Was this what it was all about? A basic but fun treasure hunt and a prize that you could honestly buy for a couple of hundred quid or possibly less? I sighed and retraced my steps to the door, but really I knew this wasn’t it. For Dorothy it was all about Philip’s death and if Leonard was responsible for hiring someone to take the watercolour, then he was directly implicated. Finding the painting was the only way to prove his involvement. By finding this booklet, though, I wasn’t really any closer. My phone pinged with another message.

Harry is serving me tea so he’s out and about. Might be an idea to come down.

I tapped out a quick response.

On my way.

I made sure my voice recording app was switched off and took one last picture of the room, even though I felt there was nothing more to find there, but as I closed the door I suddenly wondered about other cameras, those hidden in the corners of the rooms, watching my every move.

I decided to forget the sitting room for now and go and find Dorothy, check what she knew about the security arrangements in the house. Leonard was a man who seemed to like old-fashioned and formal dinners, games that involved wooden mallets and balls, basic quiz questions in a hedged maze. However, that didn’t mean he didn’t have a level of security rigged up in his home that would cover any potential theft of his own property. I contemplated a hurried departure to the station. I suddenly felt very sick.

Dorothy was exactly where I had left her, in position in the bay window, now with a cup of tea in her hand. She glanced up when I entered the room and gave me a very direct look before moving her eyes across to the left where Harry was busy putting something into a cupboard built into the wall.

‘Ah, Gina, there you are. Did you get some rest?’ she asked me. ‘How’s your head now?’

Harry looked up at Dorothy’s words and I smiled at him.

‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ he asked me and I noted a hint of something close to uncertainty in his expression. I hesitated, because I wasn’t sure that Harry liked me for some reason and I remembered that he’d been in charge of drinks last night. It suddenly hit me quite clearly that I would never have been that drunk to have lost an evening’s memories from one, two or – if I were honest – even three drinks. Had Harry been topping me up without me noticing, or had he slipped some extra shots of alcohol in mine? As I thought it, though, it seemed silly and I felt as if I was being paranoid. Why on earth would he do that?

‘No, thank you,’ I said, to be on the safe side.

‘Do you need something for your headache?’ he asked me.

‘Oh, I’m fine now, thank you. I had some of that punch you made last night in the maze and it knocked me sideways. I shouldn’t have let Leonard talk me into it,’ I said, smiling at him again, but his expression was fixed. Then for a horrible moment I wondered if he was in charge of those security cameras that I’d convinced myself were hiding in the corners of every room in the house and that he’d just watched me poking around in his master’s bedroom. I tried to quell my thoughts and keep calm while my stomach did a nasty roiling motion.

I joined Dorothy by the window, my hand shaking a little as I poured myself a glass of water from a carafe that was on the table. We both waited until Harry had left the room and then Dorothy spoke, her voice soft, low and urgent.

‘Anything?’

‘I haven’t found the painting if that’s what you mean. I’m photographing everything and I’ve been in Leonard’s bedroom and study, but Dorothy, I’m worried about security cameras. It’s possible he has them and I’m scuppered if that’s the case. In fact, if he does then he’ll already have seen me poking about. I can’t believe I didn’t think about it.’

‘Honest people don’t usually think about these things and I’m sorry to say that the thought hadn’t crossed my mind either.’

Harry came back in then carrying a plate of biscuits, which he put down on the table between us.

‘Thought you might like these,’ he said.

‘Lovely,’ Dorothy said, taking a cookie and pausing before it got to her mouth. ‘Oh, Harry, this might seem like the musings of a silly old woman, but I was thinking with all the art and antiques that Leonard has, I’d hope he has tight security. I was very unlucky to have fallen foul of a nasty person who stole from me and I just wished we had installed security cameras. Leonard is probably smarter than me, though.’

‘Well, no actually, he doesn’t. I did ask when I first started work here, because, you know, I’d want to know if my every working hour was being watched, even though I’m only ever doing what Leonard asks me to do.’

As he said this, I noticed he seemed despondent, or maybe resigned. Harry, it appeared, didn’t like his job all that much.

‘The gardener told me that although Leonard has CCTV installed to monitor the outside of the property, he doesn’t have anything inside,’ he continued.

‘So, the poor gardener has his every working hour monitored,’ I said with a laugh that I hoped didn’t sound as full of relief as it actually was.

‘Yeah, I suppose you’re right. Well, I’ll leave you in peace,’ he said and then left.

‘That’s a relief, I suppose,’ Dorothy said.

I opened the camera roll and began scrolling through my photos. Back and forth I went, trying to make some connection between what I could see and what I hoped to discover. I kept coming back to the picture of the mirror in the hallway and turned my phone around to show Dorothy.

‘What do you make of that oddly placed mirror?’ I asked her. ‘I can’t understand why he would hang it so low. I want to take another look.’