A Taste of Deceit Read online

  A Taste of Deceit

  Valerie Keogh

  Copyright © 2022 Valerie Keogh

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  The right of Valerie Keogh to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  First published in 2022 by Bloodhound Books.

  Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publisher or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

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  www.bloodhoundbooks.com

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  Print ISBN 978-1-914614-72-9

  Contents

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  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Acknowledgements

  A note from the publisher

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  Also by Valerie Keogh

  Books published by Bloodhound Books

  The Dublin Murder Mysteries

  No Simple Death

  No Obvious Cause

  No Past Forgiven

  No Memory Lost

  No Crime Forgotten

  No Easy Answer

  Psychological thrillers

  The Three Women

  The Perfect Life

  The Deadly Truth

  The Little Lies

  The Lies He Told

  The Couple in the Photograph

  For my niece, Eilis Hudson, with love.

  Chapter One

  Perhaps sex shouldn’t be on my mind, I was certain it wasn’t on Kasper’s. Our earlier row had left me tingling with sexual frustration, deprived of our usual great make-up sex not only by the hundreds of miles I had put between us, but because of all that had happened before.

  Buying the ridiculously expensive cottage in the Cotswolds had been my idea so it was only right I should use it as an escape. I fled there and left my husband, Kasper, in London.

  I had lusted after a place in the country since friends had bought one in the Cotswolds town of Broadway. They had invited us for a weekend to indulge ourselves in far-reaching views, babbling brooks, tall leafy trees, peace and quiet. I had opened one of the mullioned windows, leaned out, and taken a deep breath of air filled with the scent of a nearby magnolia tree in full bloom. It was all so perfectly idyllic I’d immediately wanted a similar retreat.

  It took a month before I was able to persuade Kasper it would be a good idea, painting a picture of weekends away from London noise and pollution, of afternoon tea parties on the lawn, the women in floaty floral dresses, the men wearing straw boaters. Kasper, raising an eyebrow at the idea of wearing a hat, had finally agreed it would be a pleasant diversion. He gave the go-ahead to spend almost three hundred grand of what he always referred to as his hard-earned dosh on a house only half a mile from the centre of Broadway.

  The traditional nineteenth century terraced cottage – rather smaller than I’d wanted, with its cosy living room and separate compact dining room – was as much as the paltry sum of money Kasper would commit to would buy. The extended kitchen was the best part of the cottage. It opened onto a patio overlooking an impressively long garden planted with a profusion of fruit trees. Upstairs, there was a main bedroom with an en suite, one smaller bedroom and a tiny bathroom.

  Kasper, who didn’t see it until after we’d signed the contracts, was horrified at the size of the property. ‘It’s miniscule! I thought my buck would have a lot more bang than this outside the capital.’

  ‘This is the Cotswolds, darling. Premium properties come with premium prices.’ I had been too busy with a measuring tape to worry about his reservations. Too engrossed in my dreams and plans to admit he was right. A month later, the cottage was furnished to my taste. ‘Luxury country,’ I’d explained to friends. ‘We’ll have you all down for a visit.’

  But that was before Covid and its restrictions changed our lives.

  ‘Soon,’ I’d said to our friends.

  When the first lockdown eased, I drove to Broadway for the day to check the cottage was okay, walked around the small, beautifully furnished rooms, then shut the door and motored back to London.

  It was another month before Kasper and I headed to the Cotswolds for a weekend, desperate for a change of scenery even if that meant swapping our spacious apartment for the smaller confines of the cottage. Unfortunately, our timing was off. It had been raining for days, the windscreen wipers swishing to and fro as they battled the driving rain on the slow Friday afternoon exit from London. It wasn’t a good start and it was destined to get worse.

  Kasper’s fingers tapped impatiently on the steering wheel as the car crawled along. ‘Did you talk to Hazel about meeting up while we’re there?’

  Unfortunately, Hazel, and her husband Lewis, these friends whose house purchase in the town had spurred me to follow suit, had packed themselves off to their villa in Portugal at the first hint of the virus and had been holed up there ever since. ‘They’re in Portugal.’

  ‘Portugal!’ He flicked me a look. ‘Lucky them.’

  The rain didn’t let up the entire journey. We parked on the road outside the cottage and dashed through a deluge to the front door where water was dripping from the gutter overhead. Large dollops landed with a plop on the step beside me as I slid the key into the lock and pushed. As an interior designer, I had appreciated the beautiful original oak door when I first saw the cottage. Its age, its fabulous patina. But as a wet irate owner wrestling with rain-swollen wood, I yearned for uPVC. While I struggled, Ka
sper stood behind me muttering.

  It wasn’t a good start to the weekend.

  Thanks to Covid, there were no restaurants open in the town and I hadn’t thought to bring food with us. A five-minute internet search later, I discovered some of the restaurants were doing takeaways. Unfortunately, the first ones I tried were too busy to accept another order. Kasper was perched on the edge of a sofa that was too small for his six-foot-two height. He glowered at me as I hung up and peered at my iPad for the number of the next restaurant. Luckily, this one, my last hope, resulted in success.

  ‘Collect only, I’m afraid,’ I was informed when I asked for our order to be delivered.

  The restaurant was almost a mile away. Rain was hammering on the front window, a wind whistling down the chimney. It wasn’t a night for going outside for any reason apart from hunger, but I wasn’t planning on needing to. ‘They want us to collect it.’ I lifted my dainty sandal-shod foot. ‘I suppose I could go…’

  Kasper stood with a grunt of exasperation. ‘Right, what’s the name of this damn place then?’

  I gave him a grateful kiss on the cheek. ‘I’ll have a glass of red waiting for you when you get back.’ I’d brought down several bottles on my previous visit. There was no need to tell Kasper I’d also brought heavier walking shoes which were tucked away in the bottom of the wardrobe. I listened to him muttering as he pulled on the coat he’d left hanging in the porch and I smiled.

  It was only seven, but ominous clouds and heavy rain made it feel later. It was chilly, too, and I regretted not bringing coal or wood. It would have been nice to light the fire. Hindsight, it was a useless tool.

  Heavier rain pelted the window. Kasper would be soaked. And understandably grumpy. It was time to do some damage limitation. Hurrying upstairs, I grabbed a couple of fluffy bath towels and a heavy cotton bathrobe. Back in the living room, I laid them over the arm of the sofa, then switched on the lamps to lend a warm atmosphere to the chilly room. There were candles in a kitchen drawer, I fetched a handful and set them into the empty fireplace.

  With them lit, and more positioned around the room where their flames reflected in the windows and made the raindrops glisten, it looked so much better. Perhaps the weekend wouldn’t be a complete disaster.

  Chapter Two

  It was almost an hour before I heard Kasper’s hand slap wetly against the front door and I hurried to open it. The sight of him, hair plastered to his head, a drip wobbling on the end of his nose, his pale-grey jacket, now steel-grey wet, almost dragged a laugh from me but it seemed unnecessarily cruel so I swallowed it down.

  Kasper’s large cold-reddened hands were clutching a brown paper bag to his chest. Not designed to cope with the rain, it was already disintegrating, the sides of it turned to brown mush.

  ‘There was no parking outside the blasted restaurant.’ He wiped rain from his face. Water dripped from his jacket onto the tiled floor of the porch.

  ‘Give me the food.’ I took it through to the kitchen and dropped it on the table then hurried back to make sure Kasper removed his shoes before stepping onto the cream carpet.

  He’d hung up his coat and kicked his shoes off, but in the living room he flicked a hand through his wet hair, droplets of water peppering the Farrow and Ball school-house-white walls. I wanted to yell at him to be careful, to be more considerate. Biting my tongue, I handed him the towel I’d left ready. ‘Poor darling, dry yourself off, and here–’ I handed him the robe. ‘–why don’t you change into this, you’ll be nice and cosy then.’

  Too cold to argue, he did what I suggested and took the towel. A minute later he was rubbing it over his naked body, his wet clothes in a pile on the floor behind him.

  Even wet, cold and looking more than a little grumpy, I still thought he was the most handsome man I’d ever seen… and I’d seen my share. Tall and muscular, tight dark curling hair covered his chest, the same dark hair slicked back from a high forehead. Blue eyes and ridiculously long eyelashes completed what I, and any woman with a beating heart, would classify as drop-dead gorgeous. I’d always been considered tall but against his six-two, my five-ten felt petite. We looked good together, his darkness a striking contrast to my blonde hair and pale skin.

  We’d been married a year. A second marriage for us both, my first ending in an acrimonious divorce three years before, his when his wife was killed in a hit and run. Neither of our marriages had resulted in children, theirs despite trying, mine because children didn’t appeal.

  Kasper and I had a good relationship, made better by periods of time apart. His role as legal consultant to an international property company frequently took him away on business. I’d gone with him a few times but the novelty of days on my own in a strange city soon wore thin. Now I rarely went with him unless I wanted to shop in New York or Milan.

  My role as partner in an interior design business ended with my divorce when my ex bought me out. I used the money to visit far-flung friends while I considered my options and returned to London after almost a year away with a half-hearted idea of setting up on my own. But then I’d met Kasper, and everything changed.

  I’d travelled the world, met all sorts and knew a good ’un when I saw him.

  He was still grieving for his wife when we met, but I knew he was destined to be my happy ever after.

  I knew it the first time I saw him.

  That weekend was the only one Kasper and I had spent together in the cottage in Broadway. It wasn’t a colossal success; in fact it was what my friend Tracy Robinson called an “unmitigated disaster” when I told her it had rained solidly for the two days we were there.

  ‘Rain like you’ve never seen, Tracy. Heavy, relentless. And the cloud was so low and dark that we needed the lights on the whole time. Then, as if things weren’t bad enough, the newsagent’s in the town had to shut when one of its staff tested positive for Covid. Poor Kasper had to drive for miles to get a Saturday paper. I think he drank a bottle of wine when he got back.’

  ‘Not your best idea then.’

  My friend was the mistress of the understatement. ‘No. And now we’re stuck in London for the foreseeable.’

  Locked in. Together. I hadn’t realised how much I relished my solitude, my freedom, until Covid kept Kasper in London. He had a home office, of course, and stayed in it most of the time, but apart from the occasional business meeting in the city, he was there, hampering my freedom. Plus, for Zoom calls to the US and Japan he was working crazy hours, staying up late or getting up early. Disturbing me.

  I could have been nice, made allowances for the strange times we lived in, compromised more. But nice had been slapped out of my vocabulary years before. Literally. To this day, when I heard the word, I winced. My mother was a proponent of her own particular theory that lessons instilled with the accompaniment of pain were more likely to be remembered. ‘Nice girls get left behind,’ she’d say, raising her hand to lay the flat of it against my face with a force that almost knocked me off my feet. The sting of it would last as her words wormed their way into my brain. Nice doesn’t get you happy ever after. Whack. Nice is for fools. Whack.

  Only once in all those years of her lessons did I try to duck out of the reach of her swinging hand. Once, but never again… she caught me by my hair and pulled me closer so that we were nose to nose. Then she pushed me away… held me there by my hair while she slapped and slapped and slapped…

  So it probably isn’t surprising that I wasn’t keen on being nice.

  Many people’s relationships flourished under lockdown conditions. Ours struggled. We’d have got back on track eventually. I knew where my future lay… with Kasper in our fabulous penthouse apartment… and I’d have worked hard on it once we returned to some semblance of normality, and by that I meant his spending days abroad again.

  It wasn’t the struggle to keep going that sent me fleeing to Broadway.

  It was that final row.

  Chapter Three

  Broadway with Kasper’s company was
one thing but being there on my own was something else altogether. Dull, boring, lonely. On the fourth day, when I found myself watching a mindless quiz show on TV, I knew I had to find something to entertain me. Something to keep my mind from drifting back to the last few hours with Kasper.

  The sun was shining as I walked the length of the high street. Broadway was an exceptionally pretty town with some strikingly attractive Cotswold stone buildings. I slowed as I passed the stunning house I’d admired on previous wanderings, its honey-coloured stone enhanced by the bright sunshine. According to a worn wooden sign attached to the front gate pillar, it was called Broadway Manor. A dull name for such a fine house.

  I stared in fascination at the tall leaded windows, the oak door set back in an arched stone entrance, the chimneys that soared from multiple points on the high gabled roof. A small garden to the front was planted with box hedge, a standard bay tree stood in a pot to each side of the entrance. All well-maintained if a little predictable. I imagined there would be an impressive garden to the rear. The house was set only a few feet back from the road but, try as I could, my curious eyes were prevented even a glimpse thanks to those leaded windows.