Shades of Murder (12 page)

Little defence counsel rocketed to his feet. ‘Oh, objection, m’lud! This is a conclusion drawn by the witness and surely inadmissible!’

The witness didn’t wait for the judge’s ruling on the point. Combatively she snapped, ‘Well, all I know is, it was all there when Mr Oakley came in and it wasn’t when he left, and
I
didn’t take it!’

Now, on his way home, Wood recalled his second visit to Fourways House with Sergeant Patterson, when they’d gone there to arrest Oakley.
The expression on the man’s face when he’d realised what was happening to him, was etched into Wood’s memory. Disbelief, anger and then – scorn. Yes, scorn. Perhaps it was the memory of those scornful dark eyes which worried Wood most of all.

It had grown dark because it was still early in the year. The gaslighter was making his rounds, leaving a trail of bright lights in his wake. The air was heavy with the sulphurous tang of smoke, the warm odour of horse manure and the clammy touch of evening mist. Yet there were still plenty of people in the streets. Grocers and butchers had kept their shops open, hoping to lure in the last-minute shoppers, the returning office-worker, the improvident housewife.

Newsboys ran about with the evening editions. The
Bamford Gazette
had brought out a special. Wood bought one, scanned the trial report briefly, and stuck it in his pocket to read at leisure later. It had been written by that chap Huxtable. The reporter was by way of being a regular obstacle in Wood’s path, hopping out in front of him to ask for comments on every subject under the sun. Tomorrow the nationals would carry the story and he’d have to worry about more than Huxtable.

He put the key in the door of his modest end-of-terrace home in Station Road and tried, as always, to turn it quietly. But Emily heard him. Before he had the door fully open, she’d darted from the kitchen where she was busy preparing his supper, ready to help him off with his coat and exclaim over damp rainspots on the nap of his bowler hat.

‘I knew you would be late,’ she said, cutting short his apology.

‘Has the supper spoiled?’ asked Wood, sniffing the enticing scents from the kitchen.

‘No, I made a steak pie because I could keep it warm.’ She was divesting him of his ulster as she spoke and bore it away to hang it up in the hall where warm air wafting from the kitchen would dry it.

‘Steak pie,’ said Wood, unwinding his muffler. ‘My favourite.’

They both smiled. Whatever she cooked for him, he always claimed it was his favourite dish. It was a private joke between them. She was twenty-three and had cared for him for six years now, since the death of his wife. She should by rights be in her own home, looking after husband and children, not here with him. But it wasn’t just filial loyalty which kept her here and the smile reminded him.

One half of her face lit up, the pretty half. The scarred half grimaced. She’d been the prettiest of children until the dreadful day when her full skirts had swung into the flames of the open fire. There were other scars on her body but no one could see those.

The facial scars couldn’t be hidden. So Emily hid. She hid here in this house and had her whole life here. In vain he assured her there would be someone out there, beyond the front door, who would see behind the scars to the loving and capable person whose heart was unscarred. But Emily hadn’t the courage to risk rejection. She stayed here, sallying forth once a week to do the shopping, and once on a Sunday morning to attend the local Wesleyan chapel, on both occasions veiled like a widow.

As a result, she’d become an object of curiosity and mystery in the neighbourhood, and accounts of her disfigurement were exaggerated.

They always ate in the kitchen at Wood’s insistence. He saw no reason for untidying the tiny dining room and giving her the work of tidying it up again. He was allowed to do nothing. He would happily have lent a hand around the house, unlike most men, but she was adamant. This house was her domain, her life. Outside it, he was in his world. Inside it, he was in hers.

When they were seated at the kitchen table, she asked, as she doled out his portion of pie, ‘How did it go today, Father?’

She knew about the Oakley case because he was accustomed to discuss things with his daughter. Usually he toned down the violence and unpleasant detail. This time that had been difficult.

‘As well as could be expected,’ he answered. ‘The woman Button gave her evidence confidently enough and it is no longer my concern, my dear!’ He immediately destroyed this fine statement with, ‘I watched Oakley. He sits there with a superior look on his face. He’s going to make a fool of the lot of us. I feel it in my bones.’

‘This isn’t like you,’ she chided.

‘No, it isn’t. I’m well aware that the matter is in the hands of the lawyers. But it happens to a policeman, my dear, that every so often he comes across a villain he particularly wants to nail. I want William Oakley. I’ve wrestled with my conscience over this sincerely enough even to satisfy that minister of yours. But the truth is, I believe him a devious, clever, calculating, cold-blooded killer. I want to hear that Guilty verdict, of course I do. I admit it. There!’

Afraid he sounded too ferocious, he stopped and smiled apologetically. ‘Listen to me, I sound a monster myself. Take no notice of me, Emily.’

She had stopped eating and was pushing a piece of piecrust round the plate with her fork. Her eyes fixed on it, she said, ‘It’s because of me, isn’t it? It’s because of this.’ She touched the scarred side of her face. ‘It’s because Mrs Oakley burned that you want him so much.’ She looked up as she finished speaking and her candid blue eyes stared into his.

For a moment he was silent with shock. Was she right? It seemed so obvious when she said it, and yet he wasn’t aware of that being his reason. Did she understand him so much better than he understood himself?

After a moment he managed to say, ‘No, Emmy, it’s not personal. Not in that way. I feel it here,’ he tapped his chest, ‘and here,’ he tapped his head. ‘But in court it’ll come down to whether the jury believes the testimony of that housekeeper. Either way, I can contribute no more to the matter.’

Stanley Huxtable lived in lodgings. His landlady was a woman of strong teetotal principles and an uncanny ability to detect even a single bottle of porter brought into the house. She allowed no card games, no music (other than communal hymn-singing), and no visitors. It was Stanley’s habit, therefore, to spend his evening in the public houses of the town. Not to get drunk, that would have put at risk not only his lodging but his place on the
Gazette
. Just, he told anyone interested, to see a jolly face or two and have a bit of cheery conversation.

Tonight he was settled in the corner of The George with a pint of porter, a pork pie and a pickled egg. No journalist he’d ever come across ate sensible meals. They never had the time or opportunity.

He was just tucking into the pork pie when he heard a voice.

‘Mind if I do?’

It was the Reuter’s man. Without waiting for Stanley’s reply, he seated himself at the table and set down his own pork pie and whisky and water.

They ate and drank in companionable silence for a while. Then the Reuter’s man observed, ‘That woman, Button, she did pretty well for the Crown. If she goes on like that, she’ll hang him.’

‘See what Defence makes of his cross-examination,’ said Stanley. ‘Bet you a pint here tomorrow night, she comes apart at the seams.’

‘You’re on,’ said the Reuter’s man.

Stanley wiped his lips with the back of his hand. ‘I’d have thought you’d have been putting up in Oxford.’

The Reuter’s man chuckled and shook his head. ‘Nobody knows the fellow in Oxford, do they, eh? That’s why they’re hearing the case there. Won’t pick up any titbits about his private life, see. This is his stamping ground here in Bamford. I expect you know a tale or two about him, eh?’

‘Not really,’ said Stanley. It wasn’t altogether true, but if the man from the international press agency wanted information, let him wear out his boot leather like everyone else.

‘Bit of a swell,’ opined the Reuter’s man.

Stanley was prepared to agree: William Oakley was a real toff. But even toffs had been known to murder the missus, he pointed out.

As men of the world, who’d seen it all, the two journalists nodded sagely.

‘Naturally I drove down there straight away the next morning, that’s to say, yesterday.’

Juliet Painter and Meredith Mitchell had wedged themselves uncomfortably at a corner table in a busy burger bar. It wouldn’t have been the choice of meeting place for either of them, but neither had much time to spare at lunchtime and this place was convenient. Meredith had coffee and a packet of fries, Juliet coffee and a doughnut.

Juliet leaned across the table to avoid having to raise her voice above the surrounding racket. ‘I had intended to go down anyway, after you phoned and told me about Jan so-called bloody Oakley the night he arrived. But I had to go up to Yorkshire the next day. It was all arranged. So I had to put off going to Fourways. It’s a real pity because it let that creepy yobbo put his plan of action into effect first. If I’d gone there at once, I’d have spotted what he was up to and turfed him out.’

‘You don’t like him.’ Meredith smiled at the ferocity in Juliet’s voice. Then she shook her head, frowning. ‘I couldn’t make up my mind. On the one hand I didn’t like him, either. On the other, there was something quite touching in his emotion at seeing the house for the first time.’

Juliet snorted. ‘Don’t you believe it. It’s an act.’

‘He is a member of the family,’ Meredith pointed out. ‘Or if he isn’t he’s mugged up the family history and it’s difficult to see how he could have done that over there in Poland unless there was an oral tradition he’d inherited. He sounded as though he really believed in his great-grandfather’s innocence. If Fourways had become a sort of legend in his family, talked about and imagined . . . well, it must have been exciting to see it there before him in bricks and mortar. He spoke as if he’d made some sort of pilgrimage to the house.’

‘The Holy Grail was sought by the pure in heart,’ said Juliet. ‘There’s nothing pure about Jan Oakley. He’s a conceited blighter, too. When he was first introduced to me he rolled his eyes like a silent movie star and gave me a sickly leer I suppose was meant to be seductive. Twit. At
least, after you warned me, I made sure he didn’t get to kiss my hand. Yuk!’

Listening to her as she spoke, Meredith was suddenly visited by one of those irrelevant thoughts which pop into one’s head at all the wrong moments. She found herself wondering how long Juliet’s schoolgirl looks would last and how she’d age. She couldn’t keep that braided hairstyle for ever. She was blessed with a beautiful complexion and that always helped. Somehow, it was impossible to imagine Juliet old. Meredith dragged her mind back to the topic in hand.

‘It’s up to them, the sisters, to turf him out. Whatever he claims, it’s their house and he’s their guest.’

‘Don’t they just wish they could? They didn’t want him there in the first place. He invited himself. But they accept he’s family and they felt obliged to let him come and to give him a bed now he’s here . . .’Juliet hissed with annoyance and bit a lump out of her doughnut. ‘Besides,’ she added indistinctly, ‘how can two elderly women, one of whom – Florence – is very frail, force their will on someone who’s young, fit, determined and utterly without scruple. Because, believe me, he is unscrupulous.’

‘Yes, somehow I can believe that,’ Meredith nodded. After a moment, she asked, emphasising her question with a wave of a chip, ‘We can be sure he is a real, genuine, on-the-level Oakley? After all, that’s what it all rests on, isn’t it? He could have heard about William Oakley in some way we don’t know. There are lots of books about celebrated historical crime cases. Perhaps there’s an obscure book somewhere which includes the Oakley case and this man, whoever he is, has got hold of a copy? Can we be sure of his identity?’

“Fraid so,’ Juliet mumbled through a further mouthful of doughnut. She swallowed and added more clearly, ‘Wish I could say he wasn’t who he says. I asked to see his passport. There it was, Jan Oakley.’

‘There are such things as false passports, you know.’

‘Tempting thought. But even if he’d found an account of the trial somewhere, it’s hard to believe he’d go to the lengths of getting a fake passport. Anyway, he’s able to provide a lot more plausible detail and we can’t say it’s untrue because we have no record of what happened to William after he left the district following his acquittal. His own son had to go to the courts to get him declared dead, if you remember.’

‘And this Jan is able to tell us what happened to William?’

‘The whole thing,’ said Juliet glumly. ‘It seems Wicked William wandered around Europe for a while, travelling as fancy took him across the Austro-Hungarian empire. Eventually he fetched up in Krakow which
the Austrians controlled then. There he had a bit of luck. He found another wealthy woman to marry, this time a Polish merchant’s widow with several business interests. Jan’s even got a photograph, a sepia thing, showing William and his second wife. Where would he get that from if it wasn’t in the family? I mean, I know there are any number of old portrait photos around, but this ties in with everything else he says. I tell you one thing, she must have had money because William certainly didn’t marry her for her looks! In the photo, William himself looks much as he does in that portrait Damaris has got, and thoroughly pleased with himself as well. So, William ran the businesses, used his wife’s money to make more, managed to keep his hands off the maidservants, and prospered. Who says crime doesn’t pay?’

‘Not Alan. He says crime pays too many people too well. Not the yobs who end up in gaol. The big boys, who don’t.’

‘Jan’s a yob,’ said Juliet fiercely. ‘I’d love to see him in gaol. Tell Alan I’m working on it and actually, I’d like some help. That’s why I’m here, talking to you.’

Meredith sipped her coffee and winced. ‘I’ve already tried that on Alan. He says we don’t have anything against Jan. Just being who he is and being here when he isn’t wanted, isn’t a criminal offence.’