Page 48 of Old Girls Behaving Badly

‘Is there any point in me telling you to go to bed?’ I said to Juliet.

‘I mean, you can try, but I’ll ignore you.’

I took some last few photos and we pulled the door closed carefully behind us.

‘Fine, come on then.’

Out on the landing, I took Juliet’s hand and pulled her quickly away from Leonard’s private domain. Once we were back in a safer part of the house and then down towards the servants’ staircase, I stopped, suddenly remembering that earlier Juliet had some information she wanted to share.

‘Who did you record?’ I asked her. ‘On your phone, you said you recorded something important.’

‘Oh yeah, that. It’s just a sound recording, though, unless you want to look at leaves,’ she said with an embarrassed smile.

I suddenly wanted to give this girl a hug, because actually she was pretty bloody brilliant. I didn’t, though; I just grinned at her instead.

She took out her phone and handed me one of her earbuds and we sank back into an alcove to listen.

The sound was quite faint and Juliet had to turn up the volume and play the clip again. Once she pressed play, the sound was of Rufus’s voice talking urgently in my ear.

‘It’s exactly as I told you, I found a compromising video of the two of them together.’

There was a moment of interference, sounding very much like Juliet rustling in the bush before Rufus’s voice again.

‘But don’t you see, we have him now. No more blackmailing unless we are the ones doing it.’

‘I don’t care who Leonard is shagging, no one else will either. It doesn’t change a bloody thing.’

This sounded like Sandra.

‘You haven’t seen it.’

‘I don’t want to see it. Is someone there?’ Sandra’s voice descended to a whisper that I had to strain to hear and then all that could be heard was the sound of Juliet’s rapid breathing for a moment before Rufus spoke again.

‘Mum, we can use this before it gets any worse.’

‘Worse! How the hell could it be any worse?’

I stared at Juliet long after she’d stopped the recording.

Within half an hour Juliet and I were drinking mugs of hot chocolate that Harry had made and were ready for him to enlighten us on the situation with Leonard. According to Peter, Harry was a criminal and I’d certainly been wary of him since arriving in this house, but for now I had decided to trust him. After all, things upstairs, just a short time ago, could easily have gone a very different way.

He had his back to us as he began to prep salmon en croûte for eighty people. I found I could only watch for so long and then I rolled up my sleeves, washed my hands and began rolling out the pastry. Harry smiled at me gratefully, while Juliet raided the biscuit tin.

‘So, what were you both doing in Mr Price’s private space?’ Harry asked.

I continued to roll and thought about a measured response.

‘We were looking for a painting that he stole from Granny,’ Juliet said before I could.

‘Juliet!’ I said.

‘Well, we were in his secret stash of stolen stuff, weren’t we. No point pretending!’

‘We don’t actually know he stole any of it. He could be using that room as a security measure,’ I said, and Juliet levelled me a look that told me exactly what she thought of that as an idea.

‘It’s okay,’ Harry said. ‘I know that Leonard works away from the rules of the law when he acquires some of his art.’

‘You know he took Dorothy’s painting?’ I asked.