Lance and Maureen Gardner stayed where they were.

‘Thank you very much.’ She had almost forgotten the letters. She snatched them up and took them with her as she left the room.

There was a long silence. It was as if the Gardners were waiting to be sure that they were on their own.

‘What are we going to do?’ Maureen asked. She looked nervous.

‘We don’t have anything to worry about. You heard what she said.’ Lance took a packet of cigarettes out of the desk drawer and lit one. ‘We’re doing a great job.’

‘These accountants of hers may not agree.’

‘These accountants may never appear. She hasn’t sent the letter yet and maybe she never will.’

‘What do you mean?’ Maureen looked at her husband with horror in her eyes. ‘What are you going to do?’

‘I’ll talk to her. I’ll persuade her that hiring a bunch of city slickers is just throwing good money after bad. I’ll recommend someone local. Someone cheaper. I’m sure I can make her see sense.’

‘And what if she doesn’t listen to you?’

Lance Gardner blew out smoke. It hung in the air around him. ‘Then I’ll think of something else … ’

*

While Melissa had been driving towards the Moonflower, another car had been heading down the Braunton Road that skirted around Barnstaple, but going considerably faster. The car was French, a cream-coloured Peugeot, not a model that one would see very often on British roads, but it had been chosen carefully by its owner. It was more than a means of transport. It was a calling card.

The man behind the wheel was relaxed, smoking a cigarette, even as the needle of his speedometer crept towards fifty. There were trees on either side of the road and they swept past, forming a green tunnel that he found strangely hypnotic. It was still raining and the windscreen wipers added to the sense of hypnotism, swinging left and right, left and right, like a pocket watch.

He hadn’t realised how late it was. A long lunch at the golf club had turned into a marathon drinking session, the alcohol sneaked in through the back door of the private members’ room. He would have to stop and buy some peppermints before he got back to the house. His sister wouldn’t approve if she smelled whisky on his breath. And even though he was only staying there until the weekend, her husband, the jumped-up little doctor, was only waiting for an opportunity to ask him to leave.

Algernon Marsh sighed. Things had been going so well until they had started going badly and then everything had turned upside down at once. He was in trouble and he knew it.

But was any of it really his own fault?

His parents had died in the first week of the Blitz. He had been just sixteen years old and although he had been nowhere near London at the time, he often felt that he had been a victim of the same bomb. After all, it had wiped out his home, the room where he slept, all his possessions, all his childhood memories. He and Samantha had moved in with their spinster aunt Joyce, and although she and Samantha had got on – well, it really had been like a house on fire, hadn’t it? – she and Algernon had never seen eye to eye.

And so it had continued into adult life. Samantha had gone on to marry the doctor and had built a new life for herself with the house in Tawleigh, two children, nice neighbours, a seat on the local council. But after an undistinguished war, Algernon had been lost in a great vacuum, on his own, with nothing to define him. Briefly he had flirted with some of the south London gangs – the Elephant Boys, the Brixton mob – but if he suspected he wasn’t cut out for serious crime, a three-month sentence for affray following a fight at the well-known Nut House in Piccadilly had confirmed it. After his release, he had become a shop assistant, a bookmaker, a door-to-door salesman and finally an estate agent, and it was in this last occupation that he had found his calling.

For all his faults, Algernon was well spoken. He had been educated at a small private school in West Kensington and he could be charming and witty when he wanted to be. With his fair hair cut short and his matinée-idol good looks, he was naturally attractive, particularly to older women who took him at face value and didn’t make too many enquiries about his past. He still remembered buying his first suit on Savile Row. It had cost him much more than he could afford, but, like the car, it made a statement. When he walked into a room, people noticed him. When he talked, they listened.

He had moved into property development. More than a hundred thousand buildings in London had been destroyed during the war and that translated into a major opportunity for construction and reconstruction. The trouble was, it was a crowded market and Algernon was only a small player.

He had managed to buy himself a flat in Mayfair. He had one or two nice projects on the go. And then he had discovered the South of France and a place he had never heard of called St-Tropez. That was where the serious money was going. The whole coast was being turned into a pleasure ground for the rich, with five-star hotels, new apartment blocks, restaurants, marinas and casinos, and it would be perfect for the idea he had in mind; near enough for his clients to feel comfortable, but not too near for them to know what was actually going on. It had taken Algernon less than a minute to come up with the name of his new company: Sun Trap Holdings. He had travelled to France and come back with a smattering of French and a car that, fortunately, had the steering wheel on the right side. He was ready to begin.

It had gone better than he had ever expected. So far, thirty clients had invested in Sun Trap Holdings, some of them more than once. He had promised them that the profits would be as much as five or even ten times the original investment. All they had to do was wait. And although he’d had to pay out dividends to a few of them, the rest were always satisfied with extra shares in the company, which would add up to even greater rewards further down the line.

Algernon had started coming down to Devon to visit his sister not because the two of them were particularly close but because she had a large house that provided him with the occasional refuge from London when he needed it. There were business partners he had fallen out with, old associates that he preferred to avoid, and when it became necessary he would jump in his car and head south-west. He didn’t much like Tawleigh-on-the-Water. He thought it was dull. He would never have expected to find his biggest investor in such a backwater, but that was exactly what had happened.

He had been introduced to Melissa James just after she bought the Moonflower. At first, he had been overawed meeting such a famous actress, but he had quickly reminded himself that she was just another wealthy woman almost begging to be separated from her money and he had achieved this more quickly than he could have believed. The two of them had become business associates, then friends, then something rather more than friends. It had been easy to persuade her that Sun Trap Holdings would eventually pay her far more than the films she had decided to give up.

She was the reason for this trip. The telephone call had come just a few days ago, when Algernon had been at his Mayfair flat.

‘Is that you, darling?’

‘Melissa, darling. What a lovely surprise! How are you?’

‘I want to see you. Can you come down?’

‘Of course. You know you don’t have to ask me twice.’ Algernon paused. ‘Is there something wrong?’

‘I want to talk to you about my investment—’

‘It’s doing fantastically well.’

‘I know. You’ve been brilliant. And that’s exactly why I’ve decided that now would be the best time to sell my shares.’

Algernon sat bolt upright in bed. ‘You’re not serious!’

‘Yes, I am.’

‘But another six months and the value will have doubled. We have the new hotel opening. And as soon as the villas in Cap Ferrat are completed—’

‘I know, I know. But I’m happy with the money I’ve made. So come down and bring the paperwork. It’ll be lovely to see you anyway.’

‘Of course, darling. Whatever you say.’

Whatever you say! Unless he could persuade her otherwise, Algernon would have to find a sum close to a hundred thousand pounds to pay Melissa back for profits that existed only in her imagination. He pressed his foot down on the accelerator and saw a great sloosh of water spray to one side as he drove through a puddle. He was meeting Melissa tomorrow. Hopefully, it would be just the two of them. It would all be a lot easier with her husband out of the way.

What time was it? Algernon glanced down at the clock on the dashboard and scowled. Twenty past five. Had he really spent the whole afternoon drinking at the Saunton Golf Club?