Shades of Murder (16 page)

‘This is really kind of you, to invite me like this.’ He was smiling at her.

Meredith reminded herself the plan was to persuade Jan to do as they all wished, and this involved being nice to him. ‘I know what it’s like to be a stranger,’ she told him as she urged him towards the sitting room. ‘Do go and make yourself comfortable. I’ll make the tea.’

In the kitchen, she quickly rehearsed her lines. Provided she could keep the conversation going as she intended it to, there shouldn’t be a problem getting Jan to listen. Whether she’d get him to agree to abandon his plans was another thing. She feared Juliet had overestimated her powers of persuasion.

Jan was relaxed on the sofa, one arm stretched along the back, when she brought the teatray in. He was slightly flushed and she suspected he’d been investigating the room and had hurriedly sat down when he heard her approach. She handed him some tea and, although he’d looked a little startled at the sight of it, a slice of the cake.

‘Very nice,’ he said politely but with some difficulty as the mixture seemed to be sticking to his teeth.

Meredith thought it a good moment, while he was occupied, to begin her prepared speech.

‘Look, Jan, I want to be frank with you,’ she said. ‘I did think you might be at a loose end today and would like to share a cup of tea, but I do have another reason for asking you to come along this afternoon.’

If she’d thought he’d be surprised at this, she was wrong. He was nodding, as if she’d spoken as he’d expected, smiling at her almost as if they shared some secret. He’d managed to swallow the cake and now set down his cup. ‘Sure, I understand. I’ve been thinking about it, too.’

‘About your cousins? About the sale of the house?’ She was taken aback, not thinking he’d be the first to broach the subject.

But he was shaking his head. ‘My cousins? Why do you want to talk about them? I came here to see you. You wanted to see me. That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? Clever of you to get rid of the policeman. We certainly don’t need him!’

‘Now look here,’ Meredith said quickly, ‘let’s get this straight. I asked you here to talk about your cousins. Alan’s my partner. He and I are thinking of selling this house. Selling a house is a major project. It’s a very stressful time for anyone.’

Jan was nodding as she spoke. He eyed the cake, but thought better of requesting another piece. ‘OK, you don’t have to tell me that. I know. So what? I’m here to help them.’ He said this with that familiar complacency which again stopped Meredith briefly in her tracks. Did he really believe this? Clearly subtlety would be lost on him. She wasted no time on it.

‘I’m sure you want to help them, but so far, you only seem to have alarmed them. I understand you’ve made some claim on the property.’

Jan dusted off his fingers and shook his head. ‘You’ve been speaking to Miss Painter. She’s a very fierce lady!’ He chuckled. ‘Unfortunately, she’s quite misunderstood my interest. I could, of course, make a claim on the property under the terms of my great-grandfather’s will. But I’ve no intention of doing so. My cousins need to sell the house. I understand that perfectly. It’s in a very bad state of repair and all the rooms – ’ he grimaced ‘ – are very cold. There’s no proper heating, only a gasfire in each room, quite inadequate. To be honest with you, Meredith, it’s made me very sad to see the dear old house in such a sorry state. However . . .’ he shrugged. ‘It can’t he helped. What can’t be cured must be endured – isn’t that an English saying?’

‘Yes,’ said Meredith faintly.

‘I’m all for them selling it,’ he said. ‘May I have another cup of tea?’ He held out his cup.

Meredith poured his tea rather absently, splashing it into the saucer. ‘When you say you’re not intending to make a claim on the property, does that mean you don’t expect to get some share of the money from the sale?’

He smiled, the gold tooth flashing. ‘Well, it would be very nice if my cousins felt they could be generous. I don’t say I don’t need the money – but I don’t expect it. I understand their situation. They’re in sadly reduced circumstances.’

‘You don’t?’ This was contrary to everything Juliet had claimed.

‘No. And now, we don’t have to talk about this any more, do we?’ he leaned forward. ‘After all, it’s not the real reason you’ve asked me here, is it? I’ve also been trying to think of a way in which we might meet again.’

‘I’m sorry, but you’ve got this all wrong!’ Meredith began in alarm.

Jan ignored her protest. ‘Pretty clever of you to send your policeman to a football match.’ He patted the sofa. ‘Come and sit here by me.’

‘Of course I’m not going to sit by you! Are you deaf? Listen, I’m not interested in you! I asked you here to talk—’

‘Don’t give me that.’ There was an odd flicker in the depth of his dark eyes. It gave her a split-second warning of what was coming.

As he dived towards her, Meredith snatched up the teapot and threw it in his face.

It was only half-f, not as hot as it had been, and most of it went down his shirt, but he let out a wild yell and swore, or she presumed it was swearing, in Polish. He gasped, ‘You English bitch! You can’t do that to me. I’ll show you—’

Meredith snatched up the cake-knife. It was an old-fashioned one she’d found lying about in a kitchen drawer. The edge was serrated but the tip came to a sharp point.

Jan froze, staring at the knife. For a brief moment his reaction hung in the balance. She held her breath, but didn’t flinch. She mustn’t look afraid, she knew that. But she
was
afraid, not just of what he might do, but of what she might have to do to stop him.

Then, with one of those sudden changes of mood of which he was capable, Jan shrugged. ‘Frigid Englishwomen,’ he sneered at her. ‘Everything they say is true.’

‘Out!’ she ordered crisply.

‘All right, all right. It wasn’t going to be anything worth staying for, anyway, was it?’

He walked to the door in his jaunty way. She heard the front door
slam and from the window, saw Jan striding off down the street. Only then did she begin to shake uncontrollably.

Snatching up the knife had been a purely reflex action. She’d been threatened and she’d grabbed a weapon. Suppose he’d called her bluff? Would she have used it? This, she thought, is how murder is done, that easily. What would she have pleaded? Self-defence? One thing was certain: Alan must never know. She didn’t think Jan would tell anyone he’d been routed by a cake-knife. Not that he really had been. Rather, he’d seen she was really angry and it formed no part of his plans to find himself locked in a local cell. Meredith took the remaining cake back to the kitchen and put it in a tin. There it would probably sit until she remembered it and threw it out. Then she drew a deep breath and rang Juliet.

‘He’s been and before you say anything,’ she began immediately, ‘it didn’t work.’

‘Why not?’ came Juliet’s truculent response.

‘Why? For Pete’s sake, what am I? A miracle-worker? It didn’t work because he’s too smart. He doesn’t deny that it would be nice, in his words, if his cousins gave him some money, but he can see their circumstances and so he doesn’t expect it. Not a penny.’

‘
What?’
came in a howl down the phone line.

‘Of course,’ Meredith tried to be fair, ‘it could be he’s realised we’re all ganged up against him and he’s backing down.’

A snort. ‘Don’t you believe it! He’s got another trick up his sleeve.’ Juliet’s voice was incredulous.

‘I don’t know what to believe. All I know is, after that, he tried his luck with me and I threw him out. Juliet, you are not to tell a soul about that. Alan would flip if he knew.’

‘So would Damaris and Florence. Meredith, when you say he tried his luck, how, um, insistent was he?’

‘Not as much as he might have been. His brain clicked in in time. Jan’s not one to spoil any plans he’s got by needless rough stuff. He’s a thinker, our boy. Still, the sooner he’s on the plane back to Poland the better.’

‘Now what?’ asked a glum Juliet.

‘Perhaps we should talk to Laura again? Get her to tackle him. All I know is, I’ve done absolutely all I can do. Someone else is going to have to settle Jan’s hash.’

Damaris and Florence had spent a long afternoon in Bamford. Apart
from the supermarket, Florence had visited the hairdresser to have a biannual trim and Damaris had set out to purchase underwear. There was, fortunately, still a small shop in Bamford which sold proper vests and knickers.

While waiting to be served Damaris studied with fascinated bewilderment a mannequin decked in the briefest scrap of material to preserve decency below the waist and a sort of wired effort to support the bust. The plaster figure wore sheer black stockings which stayed up without suspenders.

‘Here you are, Miss Oakley,’ said the elderly shop assistant, displaying a pair of capacious lock-knit bloomers on the glass counter top. They were in a style called, inexplicably, after a period of French history,
directoire
.

‘What?’ said Damaris. ‘Oh, I’m sorry. Yes, those will do very well.’

The assistant’s gaze flickered scornfully at the mannequin in its diaphanous scanties.

‘Silly thing, that,’ she said, ‘but we’ve got to keep all the modern stuff in stock. The girls don’t wear anything else these days.’

‘None of it can keep them very warm,’ observed Damaris, thinking, But you don’t feel the cold when you’re young. Your blood is warm. Your skin tingles. You are alive.

‘They’ll pay for it later in rheumatism,’ said the assistant comfortably.

Outside the shop two young girls stood gossiping on the pavement. She supposed them sixteen or seventeen. One wore jeans and what appeared to be a man’s tweed jacket, rather old and probably bought at a jumble sale. She had long dark hair twisted in many narrow ringlets, rather like a Restoration beau. The other girl, in contrast, had short flamered hair sticking up in spikes and wore a flowing black skirt patterned with scarlet poppies, over heavy boots. The pair of them giggled hilariously over something.

Damaris thought with shock, I don’t believe I was ever young. Oh, young in years, but never in behaviour. We Oakley girls were well brought up. We Oakleys must never give cause for scandal or gossip. We Oakleys must never show lack of moral fibre.

It was only as she grew older, really quite a bit older, well into middle-age, that Damaris had understood her parents’ obsessive need for respectability, for decorum, for dependability. It was a necessary veil to obscure the truth, that over Fourways and the Oakley family stretched the skeletal hand of a cruel, foul crime. They lived in the shadow of a murder. They must pay the price, all of them and for ever, for William Oakley’s sin.

So they were taught that frivolity showed weakness of moral will. It was dinned into them that as long as they behaved properly and did their duty, they need never be ashamed of anything.

It was rubbish! She felt as if scales had fallen from her eyes and, now far too late, she’d seen the reality of this doctrine. She and her sister had been the victims of an underhand deception, designed to control them.

It certainly worked on me! thought Damaris in helpless fury. I never did anything rash. Never took any risks. Never flouted the rules of good behaviour. I always did my duty and cared for others and now what? It’s my turn and who’s going to care for me or do their duty by me? No one. It’s
my
turn, but I’ve got to look out for myself and for Florence.

Once again she and her sister were picked out to be victims, to be manipulated and controlled. This time by a young man of whom they knew virtually nothing and whose grip over them came entirely from a distant blood-tie and his unscrupulous determination. Laura Danby, their solicitor, had told them a court would almost certainly find against Jan and they were not to worry. She would do, wouldn’t she? thought Damaris grimly. Secure with a loving husband, four healthy children and a flourishing career, Laura could urge them to take a serene and carefree attitude. But this wasn’t about the law. This was about the power games played by people trapped under one roof and Damaris knew all about them!

Aloud, she murmured, ‘This time I won’t be cheated, I absolutely will not! I’ll do whatever’s necessary to protect myself and Florence.’

It was five o’clock by the time Kenny deposited them at their front door. Ron Gladstone had left. Kenny carried their shopping through into the kitchen for them while they took off their hats and coats and made themselves tidy, peering into the spotted hall mirror, tucking stray hairs into place and putting each other’s collars straight.

They had just finished this when Kenny came back. ‘All ready to go on parade, then?’ he asked cheerily.

They laughed politely at this joke and offered to make him tea, which he declined.

‘Put most of your stuff on the table in the kitchen, except for the eggs and cheese. I put them in your fridge. You ought to get yourselves a proper freezer. Save money.’

‘What should we put in it?’ asked Florence.

Kenny considered this and said, ‘Fair enough.’

Damaris carried her purchases upstairs. She could hear Kenny chatting to Florence in the hall below but not what he said. She heard him leave, whistling.

When she came downstairs again, Florence was in the kitchen holding a jar of savoury spread. ‘Kenny’s very obliging,’ she said, as Damaris entered. ‘Despite those awful tattoos.’ Florence’s cheeks were pink. She’d been a pretty girl and men had always liked her.

‘His mother was a Joss,’ said Damaris crisply. ‘Britannia Joss. The Josses were always rough diamonds.’

The Joss family were a numerous and close-knit tribe, regarded with suspicion by the whole town. Various members appeared regularly before the local magistrates and any petty crime was generally attributed to them. However, their lack of social standing didn’t appear to bother them in the least.

‘Oh, I remember Britannia,’ said Florence significantly. She paused. ‘There are still Josses living down in that terrace of cottages before the garage, aren’t there?’

‘Yes.’ Damaris added wrily, ‘The Josses and the Oakleys must be among the oldest of Bamford’s families.’