Shades of Murder (14 page)

‘It’s my kind friend from the train!’ He leapt to his feet, jolting the table and causing the beer in the glass on it to slop dangerously. ‘The very first person who made me feel welcome in England and here you are again! Well, this is great, just great!’ He held out a hand towards her in greeting.

‘Please don’t get up,’ said Meredith, gripping the back of a free chair with both hands to brace herself against this overwhelming enthusiasm, and also so that she wouldn’t be trapped in that kiss-hands routine again. ‘I just came over to say hello and ask how you’re liking England.’

‘You’ve got to believe me, it’s all just wonderful,’ Jan assured her, gesturing urgently towards the chair she held. ‘Please, please sit down. You know, I really wanted to meet you again. I’ve told my cousins, Miss Painter, everyone, how kind you were to me.’

‘My companion’s just getting us some drinks,’ Meredith interrupted this fulsome speech but pulled out the chair. She sat down. ‘Did you enjoy the meal here? We’re thinking of eating here tonight.’

Jan contemplated his emptied plate, shrugged and said, ‘It was hot and not unpleasant, a meat pie of some kind.’

A shadow fell across them. They looked up to see Markby, holding a glass in each hand.

‘Oh, Alan,’ said Meredith duplicitously, ‘let me introduce you. This is Jan Oakley. I did mention to you we’d met on the train.’

Oakley thrust out his small, strong sunburned hand eagerly. Meredith
felt a pang of conscience. Markby, drawn into the company at the table, sat down.

Now that he had someone to talk to, Jan’s whole manner brightened. Once again, Meredith found herself filled with unwished sympathy for him. Eating alone in the corner of a dingy pub every evening wasn’t something she’d want to do herself. She wished he hadn’t cast her in the role of his ‘kind friend’. She was neither kindly disposed towards him nor prepared to be his friend. She sat at this table under false colours. But then, she’d known that would be the situation when she set out to introduce Alan to him.

‘How are the Oakley sisters?’ she asked, when Jan had told them how he’d visited Bamford and found it enchanting and walked in the countryside and found it beautiful, just like pictures he’d seen.

‘My cousins are very well,’ said Jan promptly. ‘And, as you can imagine, they are delighted to see me.’

This was said in such a complacent tone that Meredith was startled. Did he really have no idea how much distress he was causing by his presence and his extraordinary claims?

She ventured. ‘It must have been a bit of a shock to them, finding they had a relative of whom they knew nothing.’

Jan conceded that it had been a surprise. ‘It was a surprise for me, too, when I discovered they existed,’ he pointed out.

‘How did you find out?’ Markby asked mildly. Jan blinked and stared at him, his features frozen. ‘How did you find out the sisters existed?’ Markby asked again.

As if a switch had been pressed, Jan became animated again. ‘A Polish friend was travelling to England, on holiday. I told him about the house, all I knew from family stories. I asked him, if he was in the area, to check it out. I didn’t know if it was still there but I thought there was a chance. Well, he did and came back and told me not only was it still there, but members of the family still lived in it. So then I wrote a letter to them . . . and it went from there. Now we’re all getting along like a house on fire.’ Jan appeared pleased at being able to produce this expression. He drained his beer. ‘I can buy you both a drink?’

‘Oh, no, thank you all the same,’ Markby declined. ‘We’re going to take a look at the menu in a minute. Will you be staying much longer?’

‘At The Feathers?’ Jan looked puzzled.

‘No, at Fourways,’ said Alan in a gentle way which caused Jan to flush.

‘Well, I’ve only just got here, you know.’ He managed, thought
Meredith irritably, to sound quite coy. Juliet was right. The man was an actor. Meredith’s sympathy for him faded.

‘I’ve known the Oakley sisters all my life,’ Markby was saying. ‘When I was a small boy, my mother used to take me over to Fourways sometimes, visiting. Old Mr Edward Oakley, their father, was still alive then. He was in a wheelchair. I found it rather a forbidding place but the women made such a fuss of me, it more than compensated for it.’

Jan’s expression had become cautious. Now he was eyeing Alan in the speculative manner Meredith remembered he’d had when quizzing her in the train about Bamford.

‘I’m sure they did,’ he said. ‘They’re very hospitable.’

‘Still,’ said Markby, ‘I expect you have to get back to your job in Poland. I understand you’re a vet?’

‘Yes, yes. A veterinary surgeon.’ Jan had grown restless, his strong brown hands moving back and forth along the table rim. ‘And you, Alan? You work in London as does Meredith?’

‘Good Lord, no. Thank goodness. Not for me that journey up to Town and back every day. I work locally, or fairly locally. Over at Police Regional HQ.’

Jan’s hands were stilled. ‘Indeed? In what capacity?’ His question also seemed to hang motionless in the air.

‘I’m a Police Superintendent, CID,’ said Markby cheerfully. ‘A detective.’

Jan blinked slowly, reminding Meredith as he’d done on the train journey, of a large cat. For a moment he sat motionless then he gathered himself together and stood up.

‘Well, it’s been a real pleasure to see you again, Meredith, and to meet you, Superintendent. But you want to have your dinner and I have to get back to Fourways. My cousins will wonder where I am!’ He edged out from behind the table and gave them his gold-toothed smile. ‘I recommend the steak pie and chips.’ He made a rapid exit.

‘Well,’ said Markby ruefully, ‘that’s what happens when people find out I’m a copper.’

‘It’s fired a warning shot,’ said Meredith with satisfaction, ‘and put the wind up him. He had guilt written all over him when he bolted just then. Still, now he is aware that you know the Oakleys and that you’re interested. What did you think of him?’

Alan considered his reply. ‘I found him a little pathetic, actually.’

‘You shouldn’t feel sympathy for him,’ urged Meredith, overlooking her own momentary pity for Jan earlier that evening and her unease at
the role she’d played here tonight. ‘It’s a sort of trick he’s got. I fell for it for a while. Juliet didn’t.’

‘I didn’t say I felt sorry for him.’ Alan shook his head, his fair hair flopping forward over his forehead in the way it did. ‘I’m a copper, remember? My feelings of sympathy are strictly limited to those I know for a fact are deserving of it, and I seem to meet fewer and fewer of them. You want my honest opinion? I agree with you and Juliet. He’s certainly a con artist of sorts. But is he criminally so?’ Without waiting for an answer, he added, ‘He’s no veterinary surgeon, I’d put my last penny on that. I’d say he works outdoors and with animals. A stableman, perhaps, on that stud farm he told you about? But definitely not a professional man.’

‘So you think he’s a liar?’ Meredith pounced on this.

‘I think he lied about his occupation. I suspect he’s right in his claim to be an Oakley.’

‘So why lie about his job?’ she demanded.

Alan gave her a tolerant look. ‘Oh, come on. Young men lie for all kinds of reasons. In this case, to build up his image, impress a young woman he met on a train. All right, it’s a silly thing to do, but it’s understandable. Look at it from his point of view. He’s turned up from nowhere. He wants to make a good impression on an attractive woman. He may be a scrounger, but he doesn’t want to look like one. It’s human.’

‘Do you feel this way about all the crooks you deal with?’ Meredith’s hazel eyes blazed indignantly at him.

‘Of course not. But I do meet a lot of crooks, some absolute villains, some pathetic little misfits. If Jan’s a crook – and it’s not established he is – he’s in the latter class.’

‘He is a crook,’ Meredith insisted. ‘He’s trying to get money from the sisters.’

‘Ye-es,’ Alan looked thoughtful. ‘Possibly he just hasn’t understood the situation. He’s arrived from Poland where I dare say he lives in a small flat. They live in a big house in extensive grounds, just the two of them. To his mind, that means they’re rich. What’s more, they’re family. Why shouldn’t they help out a poor relation? See it through his eyes.’

‘The house is falling down,’ Meredith argued. ‘If he can’t see that, he’s blind. They wear old clothes and live on sandwiches.’

‘So, they’re rich but eccentric. It must be difficult for him to understand their exact circumstances. Genteel poverty is outside his experience. As for this business of his great-grandfather’s will, he may well have persuaded himself he’s entitled to a share in imagined Oakley wealth.
He may have been indulging in some Walter Mitty daydream of being an English gentleman with a country house – you know the sort of thing.’

‘Well, he’d better be disabused, pretty quick. I’ll speak to Juliet again.’

A voice above their heads interrupted them. ‘He’s a smarmy little blighter, that one,’ it said fiercely.

Startled, they looked up.

A large woman with white-blonde hair, wearing an orange sweater spangled with gold stars, had appeared. Juno-esque, she stood over them, hands on hips. Seeing she’d attracted their attention, she went on, ‘I’m the landlady here, Dolores Forbes. And you,’ she addressed Markby, ‘are Superintendent Markby. I know you.’

‘People do,’ said Markby with resignation.

‘Seen your picture in the paper,’ Dolores informed him. ‘And on the telly, local news. I’ve got a good memory for faces. You need that, in the pub business. I never forget a trouble-maker.’

Before Markby could enquire what kind of trouble he might innocently have caused Dolores Forbes, that lady had pointed to a notice pinned above the bar. ‘See that? Barred from one, barred from all. All the publicans round here operate that system. I never have any trouble in my bar. As soon as I see one of those young hooligans come in, I send him packing with a flea in his ear and then I’m on the phone to all the other pubs in the area. They don’t stand a chance.’

‘I bet they don’t,’ said Markby with respect. ‘I’m glad to hear it.’

Dolores leaned over the table, an alarming manoeuvre in which her large bosom shifted its centre of gravity and appeared about to topple her full length between them.

‘Miss Oakley,’ she said in what she probably fondly imagined was a whisper, ‘came and asked me to feed him, that fellow. He’s some sort of relative. Turned up like a bad penny. To my mind, he can get going back again to wherever he came from. Like I say, I’ve got a sixth sense for trouble-makers and he’s one.’

Having delivered herself of this statement, she straightened up, much to her listeners’ relief, and asked mildly, ‘Do you want to see the menu?’

She grabbed Jan’s dirty plate and swept it off. Moments later the menu was plonked down in front of them.

Meredith looked round the bar which was marginally fuller but just as subdued. It struck her that the clientèle looked cowed. Dolores did not stand any nonsense, and it seemed wasn’t one for boisterous fun and jollity, either.

‘Do you really want to eat here? Can’t we go somewhere else?’ she
asked with a furtive eye on the splendid figure of the landlady behind the bar, informing some other hapless customer of her strongly held opinions about something.

‘No, but how do we get out? She’ll see us.’ Markby grimaced. We’ll be marked down as backsliders.’

‘We can creep out now – look, she’s gone.’

‘Quick, before she comes back!’

They scuttled out like a pair of children who know they’ve done something for which, later, there will be retribution.

‘Right!’ Juliet’s voice came wrathfully down the phone line. ‘I’m sorry Alan’s taking that attitude and I’m surprised. I’d have expected him to tell Jan to scram.’

‘Alan’s done all he can – shown an interest in the Oakleys and let it be known they’re old friends. Jan knows he’s a policeman. It should have some effect.’ Meredith defended Alan’s position.

A snort came from the other end of the connection. ‘Well, if Alan won’t do anything, it’s up to you and me.’

‘Why me?’ asked Meredith promptly. ‘I’ve done my bit.’

She wasn’t allowed to get away with that. ‘Now you can do a bit more. Listen, Jan thinks you’re the bee’s knees. He talks about you all the time. He calls you the kind person who first befriended him in England. Believe me, you made an impression! He won’t listen to anything I say because I’m involved with the Oakleys in a business way: I have an interest in the sale of the house. He’s more than hinted to me that he thinks I’m trying to cut myself in on any deal he makes. Dirty little trickster that he is, he’s judging me by his standards! But you don’t have any interest in Fourways. I want you to get him on his own, when Alan’s not around. You’re the one person who can get him to listen.’

‘Oh, no!’ returned Meredith vigorously. ‘I want nothing to do with him. Alan can think up something. Give him time.’

‘We haven’t got time to wait for Alan to do something. You’ve got to help, Meredith. We have to meet guile with guile. Don’t refuse, please. You can’t. Ask him over, chat to him nicely and persuade him to drop this claim.’

‘You overestimate my powers of persuasion.’

‘Nonsense. He respects you. You’re probably the only person he does respect. He wants you to think well of him. Anyway, you’re a professional diplomat. It ought to be child’s play for you.’

‘I am – or was – a professional consular officer. I dealt with lost
passports and British citizens who got themselves into various forms of trouble. I’ve had to talk myself into a few foreign gaols before now to see banged-up Brits, but that’s it.’

‘It sounds a very good basis to me,’ said Juliet. ‘Come on, Meredith, don’t let the side down.’

Meredith reflected that it was difficult to refuse this kind of appeal, something which made her resent it all the more.

‘When am I going to do this? I work in London all week.’

‘So ask him over on Saturday.’

‘It’s not so easy now I share a roof with Alan.’ Meredith paused to reflect that a lot of things weren’t going to be so easy, now she was sharing a roof with Alan. She’d have to account for herself in a way she’d never done before.