Shades of Murder (26 page)

Landowski, after the first outburst of energy, had relaxed slightly. Ginny Holding appeared with coffee. She was an attractive girl. Landowski, sidetracked, gave her a seductive grin and thanked her in noticeably more mellow tones.

Wasting your time, chum! thought Markby with satisfaction. She’s got a boyfriend and he’s a copper.

Landowski set down his coffee on Markby’s desk and leaned forward confidentially. ‘I’m a fan, you know, of the British whodunnit. It will be very interesting to see your police force at work in a murder enquiry. Real life, eh?’

‘Enquiries,’ said Markby, ‘will be conducted by a Superintendent Minchin. He arrives tomorrow from London.’

‘Scotland Yard!’ cried Landowski in glee. ‘It is like the good old John Dickson Carr, the much admired Ngaio Marsh!’ He rubbed his hands together briskly.

‘I think,’ said Markby mildly, unwilling to dispel this innocent assumption, ‘that you’ll find we’ve moved on a bit since those days.’

Landowski contemplated him and then, with a sudden return to his businesslike manner, said, ‘I understand he had English relatives, this Oakley.’

‘Yes, two elderly women, sisters.’

‘They will meet the funeral costs?’

Taken aback, Markby confessed he hadn’t thought about Oakley’s funeral.

‘We must think about it,’ said Landowski reproachfully. ‘I should prefer it did not fall as a cost on the Polish state.’

‘Perhaps,’ ventured Markby, ‘there is someone back home who’d like his body returned – when the time comes.’

Landowski was shaking his head. ‘That will be unlikely. To return a body is a very expensive business and covered by many regulations. There must be a certain type of coffin. It must be conveyed in a refrigerated hold. It all adds to the cost.’

‘The women in question,’ Markby told him, ‘are in their eighties and not very well off financially. The deceased was a thorough nuisance to them during his entire visit. They only discovered his existence recently. To pressurise them to find money they can ill-afford to pay for his funeral . . . Let’s say, technically you might be able to do it. Decency, however . . .’

Landowski looked glum. ‘I sympathise. But I am obliged to do my job, as you say. However, perhaps there is some closer relative in Poland? Although, frankly, they’d probably have no money, either.’ He considered this and added hopefully, ‘Or there is your social security?’

‘He’d only been in the country a couple of weeks,’ said Markby crossly. ‘And to put it bluntly, he’s one of yours.’

Landowski recognised an impasse. ‘Well, when the body is released, we shall see what can be done. May I know the cause of death?’

‘Certainly. He was poisoned with arsenic.’

Landowski’s face lit up. ‘Arsenic!’ he breathed. ‘Just like the good old days.’

Well, that was one way of putting it.

Rotund little Mr Green, for the defence, had slowly gained the serene look of a card-player who knows he holds a winning hand. And now he played his trump. He called to the stand Mr Joseph Baxter, pharmacist, of Bamford.

Baxter, in contrast to defence counsel, looked nervous. At his first attempt at speech, his voice stuck in his throat and he had to start again. He then agreed that on the fatal day, he had dispensed laudanum for Mrs Oakley and the drug had been collected and paid for by Mr Oakley.

‘It was all according to prescription,’ added Mr Baxter jumpily. ‘Since the 1868 Pharmacy Act we’ve not been allowed to dispense large amounts of opium-based preparations unless a doctor has prescribed it. And Dr Perkins had prescribed it. The lady had toothache. It’s still a very popular thing for toothache.’

‘Quite,’ said Mr Green gently. ‘Had you dispensed laudanum to Mrs Oakley before?’

‘Ye-es,’ said Baxter, eyeing his questioner. ‘She relied on it to kill any pain. Dr Perkins had prescribed it for her before.’

‘And she had also come in and bought it herself, over the counter, without prescription?’

‘Only pennyworth’s!’ burst out the pharmacist. ‘We do still dispense tiny amounts to people without prescription. It’s something people know about and trust. Not everyone in Bamford can afford to visit a doctor. They dose themselves.’

‘No one is suggesting you have done anything improper, Mr Baxter. Did Mrs Oakley, on these occasions when she bought small amounts over the counter, say why she wanted it?’

‘Sometimes she said it was for some pain she was suffering and sometimes for one of the servants. Before she had that tooth pulled, she put up with the ache for over a month. She did come in on several occasions during that time. In the end, I said to her that she should get it seen to. “You are quite right, Mr Baxter,” she said. Shortly after
that, she did get a dentist to pull the tooth.’

‘You recommended her to get the tooth pulled out,’ Mr Green leaned forward. ‘Why?’

‘Why, sir, because she was in pain and a toothache like that, it doesn’t go away!’ Baxter exclaimed.

‘And for no other reason?’

Baxter swallowed, his Adam’s apple rising and falling in his throat. ‘I didn’t like her taking so much laudanum, and that’s a fact. I’ve known people get dependent on it. Not so much now as in the old days, before the Act. Why, in my father’s day – he was a pharmacist in Bamford before me – people did get addicted to it. Opium’s like that and laudanum is, after all, a tincture of opium.’

‘You feared the lady was becoming dependent?’

‘To tell the truth, sir,’ admitted the pharmacist, ‘I did. Had it been anyone else, I’d have had a word with her husband, but I don’t like to interfere in matters concerning gentlefolk. I – well, I depend on their good will. Any tradesman does. Suppose I was wrong? How would Mr and Mrs Oakley take that?’

‘So you dispensed regular small amounts of laudanum to this lady and you said nothing. Tell me, suppose a person became addicted in the way you have described, how would this manifest itself?’

‘Difficult to tell, sir. But opium, it plays tricks on the mind. Sometimes people see things which aren’t there. Or things which
are
there, look different to them. Sometimes the imagination is exciting. I’ve heard of poets and such who’ve written wonderful lines under its influence. But sometimes, it’s more in the nature of a nightmare. After a while, the person becomes listless, loses interest, can’t organise himself.’

‘And would such an addicted person be likely to misinterpret what he or she saw around him?’

‘Very likely,’ said Baxter, adding, ‘but I don’t know it was so in Mrs Oakley’s case, sir.’

‘No, you don’t, but I’m asking you for your opinion in a general way. Would such a person be inclined to clumsiness?’

‘They might be, sir. Of course, after they’d taken a dose, they’d be drowsy and not able to organise their movements, as you might say.’

‘So, if a person who had taken laudanum on retiring, were then to attempt to get out of bed, what would happen?’

‘They’d fall over,’ said Mr Baxter simply.

‘Thank you, Mr Baxter,’ said Mr Green.

He looked rather as though he expected a round of applause and Stanley
Huxtable was half surprised he didn’t get it.

When he summed up his defence for the jury, Mr Green radiated even more confidence.

‘Gentlemen of the jury, we are here in a British court of law. It is a basic rule of British justice that an accused person is judged not upon gossip or innuendo, but upon evidence, tested and found reliable.

‘Let us consider the evidence in this case. It seems largely to consist of the testimony of a dismissed servant, Martha Button. Mrs Button has claimed that her employer was improperly involved with the nursemaid, Daisy Joss. But Daisy is walking out with a respectable young man and hoping to be married. She is saving for her bottom drawer. Is it likely she would jeopardise her future happiness? The prosecution has drawn attention to the fact that since Mrs Oakley’s death, Daisy has remained employed at Fourways with an increase of wages. But surely it is right of Mr Oakley to minimise, as far as is possible, the upset to the daily routine of his son, a child who is now motherless? As for the gift of earrings, they were in the nature of a small memento and coral is hardly the most expensive substance used in jewellery. In fact, the earrings may more properly be described as a trinket.

‘Moreover, the dead woman, Cora Oakley, had been taking laudanum on one pretext or another for some time, to the extent that it was beginning to worry the dispensing pharmacist, Mr Baxter. You have heard him describe how a person who had become so dependent, might become muddled and liable to imagine things. Might not Cora Oakley have taken morbid fancies into her head? Might she not have imagined that a kindly word from her husband to the nursemaid, a little joke perhaps, indicated some blameworthy activity? In such circumstances, I do not think we can read too much into anything she told Mrs Button, the housekeeper, about dismissing the nursemaid.

‘Now we come to the manner in which the prosecution has claimed William Oakley sought to bring about his wife’s death. He is said to have taken a small quantity of arsenic ore from a factory to which he was making a routine visit. Did anyone see him take it? Was it found in his possession? Did the factory report any substance to be missing? The reply to all three of these questions is a resounding NO! The existence of this sample of ore is entirely hypothetical – one might say fanciful. So, what of the items we have been told formed part of the apparatus set up by Mr Oakley? Items which, we’re also told, so mysteriously disappeared? Who saw them? Only Mrs Button. Did Dr Perkins see
them when he arrived that night? No, he did not. Who smelled the garlic odour in the room? Only Mrs Button. Did Dr Perkins smell it? No, he did not. Did Mrs Button mention either of these things at the original inquest? No, she did not. When did she mention them? After she had been dismissed from her place.

‘Let us consider, on the other hand, what is positively known and agreed as fact. Had Mrs Oakley been taking laudanum for a painful condition of the mouth for over a month before the tooth was pulled? Yes, she had. Had she taken it that evening, after the extraction of the tooth? Yes, it had been prescribed by Dr Perkins. Mr Oakley himself purchased it and took it to her bedside, anxious to help his wife in her distress. Did Mrs Oakley later fall and bring down the lamp, setting alight her clothing? Yes, she did. Did Mrs Button herself see her unfortunate mistress in flames? Yes, she has given us a graphic account. Did Dr Perkins give his opinion at the time that death was due to burns and shock? Yes, he did. Gentlemen of the jury, we have heard much ingenious conjecture in this court, but nothing established beyond reasonable doubt to show other than that Mrs Oakley died as a result of falling while in a laudanum-induced stupor and setting herself aflame.
That is what happened
. . .’

‘Right,’ said the Reuter’s man, when the judge had concluded his directions to the jury. ‘Jury’s out. Time for a pint.’ He gathered up his belongings and then stopped to ask his companion, ‘Looking for someone?’

Stanley, whose gaze had been searching the public benches, said, ‘No, no one in particular. Just looking to see who’s turned up.’

‘The verdict will pack ’em in!’ prophesied the Reuter’s man. ‘Come on, they’ll be three deep at the bar.’

That evening, in his cheerless lodgings, Stanley read through his notebook and on a clean page, sketched a slim figure in black. He sat staring at it for some time before writing beneath it,
If you live in Bamford, I’ll find you
.

Meredith opened the door at ten the following morning to find Juliet Painter on the doorstep, round spectacles agleam.

‘I thought I’d find you at home,’ she said. ‘I didn’t think you’d be going up to London with all this going on down here.’

Meredith led her into the kitchen and switched on the kettle for coffee. ‘Alan thought it best. That’s to say, it
is
best. There’s someone coming down from London to take over the case and he’ll want to talk to me. Besides, I’ve got a spy in my office.’

‘Literally?’ asked Juliet, brightening. ‘James Bond?’

‘His name is Adrian and his spying activities are confined to snooping on his colleagues. He is definitely no James Bond. More like Pussy Galore.’

‘I’m glad you’re here,’ Juliet accepted her coffee, ‘because I’d like you to come with me to visit the Oakleys.’

‘Juliet,’ Meredith said as firmly as she could, ‘I’ve already been drawn into this much further than I like or need. Why should the Oakleys want to see me?’

‘Because they need friendly, supportive faces around them. Come on, Meredith. Besides, you’re good at this sort of thing.’

‘What sort of thing? Visiting the distressed elderly?’

‘No, detecting.’

‘Oh no!’ Meredith flung up a warning hand. ‘Alan would hit the roof.’

‘Alan this, Alan that. Do you know, he’s starting to run your life?’

‘He is not!’ The suggestion genuinely offended Meredith. It wasn’t true nor was it about to become true. Besides, this morning Alan had shown little interest in what she was doing. He’d left for HQ grim-faced to welcome Minchin and Hayes who were driving down from London and due to arrive, traffic permitting, at around eleven. They had again discussed it and decided that Minchin and Hayes would be offered Meredith’s cottage as a base. If they didn’t want it, The Crown Hotel would have to be a substitute.

‘Perhaps,’ Markby had said, ‘I ought to show them The Crown first. They’ll jump at the cottage after that.’

Juliet wasn’t accepting Meredith’s denial. ‘It certainly sounds like it. Anyway, you’ve just said he’s not investigating this any more, so he can’t object, can he?’ Wheedling, she asked, ‘You’re home aren’t you? What are you going to do all day?’

Meredith surrendered, less because of Juliet’s argument than because of her own curiosity. ‘All right, I’ll come along. Though I can’t think what we’re going to find out.’

In fact, they found at once that they were not the first visitors to Fourways that morning. Parked before the front door was a shiny dark blue Jaguar. Juliet parked her Mini behind it and they both stared at the numberplate through the windscreen. It was personalised, just initials and a single digit.