Shades of Murder (15 page)

‘Meredith? You still there? You’ve gone quiet,’ demanded Juliet’s voice.

‘Yes, I’m still here. I’ve just remembered Alan’s going to a football match on Saturday afternoon with Paul, his brother-in-law. All right, it’s madness, but I’ll write Jan a note and ask him to drop by if he’s free. But I’ve got really deep misgivings about this, Juliet.’

‘I haven’t,’ said her friend. ‘I’m counting on you.’ She hung up before Meredith could change her mind.

Diseases desperate grown,
By desperate appliances are reliev’d . . .

Hamlet
, Act III, Scene 9

Ron Gladstone had broken the habit he’d observed since starting to work in the gardens and turned up on a Saturday. He didn’t like the idea that the Oakley sisters would be left all weekend with Jan and no outsider on hand to keep an eye on things. A lot could happen in twenty-four hours, he told himself.

The morning passed fairly uneventfully with nothing more than another fruitless discussion about a water feature. In the early afternoon he prepared to tidy the yew hedge he’d cut into battlements. He was proud of this work of topiary art. It lined the right-hand side of the drive leading from the main entrance to the circular gravelled area before the front door, dominated by Ron’s bugbear, the lichen-encrusted cherub. To guide his eye today he’d driven in a cane at either end of the hedge and stretched a length of garden twine between the two.

Ron thought the hedge made quite an impression on anyone turning in the gateway. He’d been more than a little upset that Damaris Oakley hadn’t received his skilful shaping of the yew with more admiration and delight. But it was like her refusal to consider a water feature, preferring, for reasons unfathomable, that fat stone baby sitting in a bowl. It hadn’t worked in donkey’s years and acted as a receptacle for every bit of garden debris to float that way. Ron had early realised, with regret, that both the Oakley sisters were extremely conservative where gardening was concerned. Ron itched to be creative in twig and flower. His original dream, when he’d started to work here, had been to recreate the gardens as they might once have been in their Victorian heyday. Like those gardens down in Cornwall, thought Ron, that everyone makes such a fuss about.

Sadly, he hadn’t received the support he’d hoped for and now, even more sadly, he wasn’t to have the time or opportunity. Fourways was to be sold. If he’d been the sort of gardener who was paid wages, he might have hoped the next owner would keep him on. But as a volunteer, a man pursuing his own hobby on someone else’s land, well, that was something else. And who knew what would happen to Fourways? The
whole place could be demolished, given over to developers. That’s what usually happened these days.

However, come what may, Ron would stay at his post. He would garden on to the end. It was additional reason to give up his Saturday. ‘Make hay while the sun shines!’ said Ron to himself. He grasped the shears and was about to start when a taxi turned in the gateway. The gates themselves had fallen down years ago and rusted somewhere in the undergrowth. The tyres crunched the gravel chips as the taxi drew up, engine throbbing, and its driver got out to exchange a brief word.

‘What you doing here, then, Ron?’ he greeted him. ‘Don’t usually see you here of a Saturday.’

‘Hullo, Kenny,’ Ron returned. ‘Come to take the ladies shopping?’

This was a regular weekly fixture. Ron guessed, but would never have said it, that the sisters liked to visit the local supermarket on a Saturday afternoon because often fresh goods were reduced in price. Bamford’s stores didn’t go in for Sunday trading. They knew that any citizens determined to spend money on the Lord’s day of rest would be heading for distant superstores and retail outlets. However, by asking a question of his own, Ron had neatly avoided answering Kenny’s.

‘Yeah.’ Kenny Joss propped himself against his taxi, arms folded. His forearms were heavily tattooed. ‘Here, is it right, what I heard, that the old girls have got a visitor? Some long-lost relative or other?’

Ron snorted in disapproval, partly because he thought the Oakleys should be referred to more respectfully and partly at the mention of Jan.

‘You heard right enough,’ he conceded. ‘He reckons he’s some sort of relative, but he’s a foreigner, so I don’t see how he can be, myself.’

‘I’ve got family in Australia,’ argued Kenny. ‘Lots of people have got family living all over the place.’

‘Australia is all right,’ retorted Ron. ‘They speak English.’

‘What, don’t this fellow speak any English?’

‘Oh, he speaks it.’ Ron grew more irritated. ‘He’s always coming and bothering me with his questions. I’m keeping an eye on him, I am!’

‘So that’s what you’re doing here on a Saturday afternoon,’ said Kenny, preparing to get back in his taxi. ‘Snooping.’

Ron’s moustache fairly crackled with ire. ‘Keeping observation, Kenny.’

‘Good luck to you. I’d better go and get the old dears. I’ll leave you to it, the observation. You made a neat job of that hedge, Ron.’

‘Thank you.’ Ron cheered up.

‘Bit thin over there?’ Kenny pointed to the patch of hedge in question.

‘Give it time,’ said Ron and realised, even as the words left his mouth, that time was what neither the hedge nor he nor anyone had.

About ten minutes later the taxi rolled past again, this time with Florence and Damaris seated together in the back. Damaris wore a flat-topped felt hat which suggested ‘good works’ and held a large basket perched on her lap. Florence wore a jersey-knit helmet with side flaps which tied beneath the chin. Two padded jersey circles encircled her brow in the manner of a medieval chaplet or an Arab
keffiyeh
. Ron waved at them as they made their stately progress by him and they waved back, like royalty, with a single raised motion of the hand and a gracious inclination of their heads.

Ron worked at the hedge for some minutes but the shears were stiff and needed a drop of oil. He set off with them in the direction of the dilapidated stableblock. It was to one side of the house, shielded from sight by trees. Ron stored his tools and other necessities in what had once been a tackroom. As he passed by the house, veiled in shadows thrown by the trees, he glimpsed a movement inside through one of the windows. Ron immediately stopped, retreated a few steps and by a circuitous route crept up on the window and peeped in.

He recognised the room as being the one the Oakleys always referred to as the study. It was full of heavy furniture, leather armchairs and a chesterfield. Bookshelves groaned with dusty tomes no one had opened for years. Through the uncleaned panes Ron was able to make out the figure of Jan. He was stooped over a large Victorian roll-top desk and appeared to be fiddling, as far as Ron could make out, with the lock. Suddenly Jan straightened, then gripped the edge of the roll-top and pushed it up. His movements were those of a man pleased with himself.

‘Picked the bloody lock, I bet!’ muttered Ron from his post at the window. ‘Miss Oakley keeps the key on her key-ring, I know that.’

Now that the desk was open, the interior pigeonholes could be seen to be filled with all kinds of papers. Jan looked round, causing Ron to dodge back, fearing he’d betrayed his presence. But when he ventured to look again, it was to see that Jan had found himself a chair which he’d pulled up to the desk and now sat, carefully going through the documents, odd letters and bills with which the desk was stuffed.

Ron moved away from the window and stood unhappily with the shears forgotten in his hand. What to do? Tap on the window and give the fellow the fright of his life? Wait until the Oakleys returned from the shopping expedition and drop a word in their ears? Keep watch and see what else Jan might do? Then, when all the evidence was assembled,
present the Oakleys with it at some later date?

He returned to the window. Jan appeared to have found what he was looking for and was eagerly scanning a large stiff sheet of paper. Another such lay by his hand. As Ron watched, Jan nodded, folded up both papers and returned them to envelopes which he put back in the pigeonhole from which he’d taken them. He pulled down the roll-top and satisfied himself the lock had clicked into place. He then walked out of the study.

Ron remembered he was on his way to the old tackroom. He set off there, deep in thought and very dissatisfied.

The tackroom had been swept out and rearranged by Ron, but signs of its original use remained in poignant reminder of a lost heyday. Wooden pegs protruded from the walls where once harness had been stored. There was, even now, a very faint smell of saddlesoap, tobacco, hoof oil and the acrid odour of horses. Ron sat on a bench to attend to his shears. His whole figure and attitude were no different, had he been aware of it, from that of the stablemen who’d once sat here to buff up leather and polish brass.

Ron worked automatically, his mind busy. The visitor had been poking about in things which were none of his business, he had no doubt about that. Ron was beginning to regret that, through his hesitation, he’d missed the chance to tap at the window and let Jan know he’d been seen. On the other hand, if he’d accused Jan, the man need only reply that he was acting with his cousins’ permission. He could tell Miss Oakley when she returned, but the point was,
should
he? Jan would deny it, if taxed. There would be a nasty family row and it wasn’t after all, Ron’s family. He decided to think about it. He couldn’t let it go. Jan had to be dealt with and stopped from snooping like that but in a way which would cause the ladies minimum distress. Ron bent his mind to the problem.

About half an hour after this, as Ron was back clipping the yew with his newly-oiled shears, he was surprised and disconcerted to see Jan himself emerge from the house. He walked towards Ron with his springy athletic stride. He wasn’t wearing jeans today but fawn slacks and a patterned sweater. Going to a party? thought Ron grimly.

Jan had drawn level and stopped. ‘You’re hard at work, Mr Gladstone.’

He looked so thoroughly pleased with himself that Ron had to bite back a snappy response. He had made up his mind to speak to Jan himself about the incident in the study and say nothing to the sisters. They’d only be upset. But Ron hadn’t yet worked out just what he was going to say to make it clear that whatever game the visitor was up to, Ron had rumbled it. It would take careful wording and Jan had caught him on the
hop. Ron had to content himself with a nod and a muffled, ‘Yes!’

Jan didn’t take the hint. ‘I’m going to walk into Bamford. It’s a pity there’s no bus service out here. I could have gone with my cousins in their taxi but it would have been a squash.’

And you wanted the house to yourself, thought Ron, so you could pry into things undisturbed. ‘Off you go, then!’ he said to Jan, wishing that Jan’s departure could be made permanent. ‘I’ve got work to do. Can’t stand here chatting to you.’

But the fellow still stood there and had a funny smug look on his face. He was obviously keen to impart some piece of information.

‘I’m going to see a girl,’ Jan said. ‘She’s invited me to tea.’

With that he marched away, leaving the astounded Ron staring after him.

‘Well!’ exclaimed the gardener. ‘I don’t know who that might be, but whoever she is, she wants her head seen to.’

Meredith would have agreed with him. She should never have let Juliet talk her into this. So ashamed of her weakness was she that she hadn’t told Alan anything of Jan’s proposed visit. She watched him drive away with Paul, waving them off with a nonchalance she didn’t feel.

Back in the kitchen she prepared to entertain Jan. Meredith picked up a packet of chocolate sponge mix and read through the instructions with deepening gloom. She could, of course, nip out and buy a cake but she felt that if you invited someone, you ought at least to give them some homemade food. The trouble was, cooking wasn’t her strong point. But the instructions seemed simple enough. Add an egg. Add so much water. Beat it all up and put it in the oven.

Meredith did all this but the mixture didn’t look right. She poured it into a tin (ought it to be that runny?) and shoved it into the oven. As she washed up the mixing bowl she composed a speech which would persuade Jan to abandon his harassment of the Oakleys. She lined up the points in her argument. The sisters were old. Despite what Jan may have thought when he arrived, he must be able to see for himself they were poor. William Oakley, the mutual ancestor, was viewed by them with abhorrence. This bit was going to be difficult. Jan didn’t like any reference to William being a murderer. Meredith would have to say the sisters had been told a quite different version of the story Jan had been told. As a result, his relationship to them was something which they found embarrassing. He must realise that to use it to try and extract money was
dishonourable. What’s more, it was useless. They didn’t have any.

The timer on the oven buzzed. Meredith took out the cake. It didn’t exactly look like the picture on the packet, but much smaller and oddly shaped, rising to a point. The appearance wasn’t improved when she iced it. The icing kept running off. She scooped it up and put it back until most of it adhered, then put the cake in the fridge to set the icing quickly before it all ran off again.

She had just completed this manoeuvre when the doorbell rang.

Jan was on the step. To her horror, he was holding out a large bouquet of brightly coloured blooms.

‘Thank you,’ she said weakly, taking it. ‘Do come in.’

But he’d already walked past her into the house and was appraising his surroundings. He looked unimpressed.

‘It’s my partner’s house,’ said Meredith hastily. ‘We’re going to sell it and buy another.’

‘Ah, the policeman. He isn’t here?’ Jan looked around him enquiringly and, Meredith fancied, with just a touch of apprehension.

‘He’s gone to a football match. He’ll be along later.’ Quite a bit later. He’d probably go for a pint with Paul after the match or go back to visit his sister and her children. She didn’t expect Alan to turn up before some time this evening, but it was better that Jan thought he might walk through the door at any minute.