'Just shots of them together that might show they're more than just colleagues,' her uncle said soothingly. 'My client has suspected his wife of being unfaithful for a while but he doesn’t want to confront her until he's sure that he's right. He's not looking for divorce evidence; in fact he hopes he can save his marriage by confronting her with the truth. His wife is pretty high up in local management for Hawk Hotels, so trips to the flagship resort at Ile de Faucons for seminars and meetings are not unusual. But my client accidentally discovered that, contrary to what she told him, there isn’t any seminar this time—that the ten days she's spending up there is being salaried as "holiday pay" and that Hawkwood is going with her. She hadn’t mentioned that little titbit either...'
'What about Hawkwood's wife? Where is she?'
'In France. She lives on her family's estate there most of the year, along with their three school-age children, while Hawkwood spends most of his time living out of Hawk Hotels all over the world. Actually the corporation is registered in New Caledonia—Nouméa is his official residence as far as tax records are concerned—but he only spends sufficient time there to qualify for citizenship. It's all in the file.'
Elizabeth looked at the buff-coloured envelope her uncle slid across the table towards her. 'What are you giving it to me for?'
Her uncle smiled hopefully.
'No, oh, no!' She realised his intention and pushed the envelope back towards him, shaking her head vigorously. 'No, you can’t ask me to do this, Uncle Simon—'
He pushed it back. 'Why not? You've done little tasks for me before...'
'Yes, easy ones—research jobs, gathering information from files—organisational things that I know I'm good at—'
'But wouldn’t you like to try your hand at some real detection? You love spy novels and TV detective shows. Now's your chance to try it for yourself. Who knows? You might find yourself with a new career!'
'I'm well aware of the difference between fantasy and reality, Uncle Simon,' Elizabeth said firmly. 'I may enjoy reading about murder and mayhem but that doesn’t mean I want to strap on a gun and risk life and limb to battle real-life baddies. I like my thrills to be strictly vicarious!'
At twenty-five, Elizabeth thought of herself as more mature than most women her age, less physically adventurous and more... settled. While she had indeed sometimes envied Marge the unpredictability of her job, the minor upheavals of excitement and intrigue that spiced her life, on the whole Elizabeth was quite satisfied with her own comparatively mundane lot.
She had been brought up in a very old-fashioned and yet also very unusual fashion by two middle-aged uncles whose consuming interests in life were intellectual. Seymour and Miles Lamb loved books with a passion, and had instinctively passed that love on to the child unexpectedly placed in their charge after her parents' death when she was four. Thus from a young age Elizabeth had been taught to revere learning. She had found that for every question there was an answer to be found in the pages of the books which were crammed, floor to ceiling, in her uncles' second-hand bookshop— rare first editions cheek by jowl with dog-eared paperbacks and musty tomes by some long-forgotten author whose only claim to interest lay in the lavish leather bindings of his turgid prose. She hadn’t felt the restless need to travel as had many of her generation in their late teens, because she had already travelled the world in her mind without leaving the comfort and security of the cluttered shop or the roomy old book-crammed apartment upstairs where the three of them lived.
Besides, Seymour and Miles had needed her. They were capable, intelligent men, but they were slaves to their passion. In good times it had been enough for them to run Lamb's Tales more as a hobby than as a proper business, but when the recession had hit it had taken Elizabeth's practical common sense to sort out that their problems were largely caused by the two men acquiring rare books that they were then loath to part with, jealously guarding them against potential customers. Elizabeth had even known Seymour to patrol the shelves and snatch a book out of browser's hand if he considered that the person wasn’t truly appreciative of what he held. Only certain hand-picked customers were worthy of being offered the best, and profits had suffered accordingly.
As her uncles grew older and even more eccentric in their habits, Elizabeth had gradually taken on more and more of the workload, sandwiching it between her flexible hours at the university, until she was virtually managing the store and doing all the bothersome paperwork that her uncles had too frequently neglected and leaving them free to go on the buying expeditions that they so richly enjoyed. Elizabeth was enormously proud of the reputation that Lamb's Tales was building in the rare and second-hand book trade. When she finally inherited the bookstore she intended to make it her full-time career.
'Oh, come on, girl, it's not as if I'm asking you to do anything dangerous or illegal; the only thing you'll be armed with is a perfectly harmless camera,' Uncle Simon coaxed, producing a fearsomely professional-looking camera-case and placing it on top of the envelope between them.
'It's not complicated—all you have to do is point it and click; the camera does the rest. Truly, Beth, you'd be doing me a tremendous favour, and Marge of course-she feels awfully guilty about letting me down...
'I've met Hawkwood personally otherwise I'd have done the job in the first place, but I can’t risk him recognising me and there's no one else I can send on such short notice even if I could switch the bookings. Naturally I'll reimburse you for your fare and expenses. All I want is a few casual shots of the two of them on holiday!'
'Compromising shots,' Elizabeth clarified tartly, sorely tempted by the thought that she might be able to afford a totally stress-and-obligation-free holiday later in the year if she accepted his offer. At the rate this trip was deteriorating she might need one as soon as she returned!
'Not necessarily. I'm paid to find out the truth, not manufacture evidence. I can’t believe that you'd think—
I would ask you to do that,' her uncle replied with an air of offended dignity that didn’t fool her for a moment. If Uncle Simon thought he could shame her into helping him he would play the injured innocent to the hilt.
On the other hand she had already agreed to help Uncle Miles out of a far more unpleasant situation. How could she justify turning her back on Uncle Simon in his hour of need? He hadn’t had as much of a hand in her raising as his brothers but on his travels he had sent her letters and postcards and exotic presents from every far-flung corner of the globe.
She sighed. 'I'm not trained to be sneaky like you and Marge—'
'I know; all I'm asking you to do is keep an eye on their activities. If they're intimate it's bound to affect the way they behave in public. They probably won’t feel the need to be too careful on Hawkwood's home territory—his father was English but his mother is French New Caledonian and it's her family who put up the money for Hawk Hotels—that's why the first and reputedly still the best resort was built there... they even changed the name of the island to celebrate its original opening.' Uncle Simon's voice lowered as he attacked her rapidly weakening resistance head-on.
'Jean-Jules Hawkwood is rich and powerful and can and does probably have anything—and any woman—he wants, whereas my client's wife is his whole world. From what I can discover from a couple of Hawkwood's other ex-lovers he'll never divorce his wife—their families have too much jointly invested in Hawk Hotels to brook a rift... not to mention the fact that she's a staunchly conservative Catholic. If anyone is going to suffer from this liaison it certainly isn’t going to be the Hawkwoods...' Simon paused hopefully. Anyone who knew Elizabeth knew that her compassionate heart could always be relied on to support the underdog, even if it sometimes went against her better judgement.
'Oh, Simon...' The exasperated dropping of the respectful 'Uncle' signalled he
r annoyance as well as her capitulation.
Elizabeth's uncle wisely hid his grin of relief as he tucked the envelope into her reluctant hand and wound the camera strap through the loop of her shoulder-bag.
'Thanks, honey, I knew you wouldn’t let me down. Now, hadn’t you better check in before the plane takes off?'
He hustled her off towards the desk at a speed that suggested he was afraid she might change her mind, but before they got there he stiffened and stopped in his tracks, dragging her around in front of him.
'What's the matter?'