Shades of Murder (20 page)

Markby peered closely at the portrait. William’s left hand lay on a book. He hoped it wasn’t the Bible, which would have been a detail of high hypocrisy. It wasn’t a Bible. Whatever it was, the title was painted in brief strokes on the spine. Markby squinted and distinguished, through the varnish, BR-D—W.

‘Bradshaw!’ he exclaimed. ‘Did you realise that?’ he asked Damaris. ‘Your grandfather’s hand is resting on a compendium of railway timetables.’

‘Is it, indeed?’ returned Damaris. ‘I hope William took it with him when he left here. He’ll have needed it.’

Markby stepped outside the house and breathed in deeply. He felt chilled and was grateful for the midday sun playing on his face. The interior of Fourways was as oppressive as it had ever been, or perhaps it had been the turret room which had affected him like this. He didn’t believe in ghosts but there had been a definite feeling of unhappiness in that room. He looked around him.

As Juliet had told them, the garden was in a better state of upkeep than the interior of the house. The lawns were mown, hedges clipped. Flowerbeds near the house were in good order. Markby’s gardener’s soul appreciated all of this. One day, he thought wistfully, he’d have a garden like this. At the moment he was restricted to a patio and a greenhouse and had little enough time to attend to those. He set off on a voyage of exploration. Turning the corner of a yew hedge clipped into castellations – a labour of love if ever there was one – he found himself face to face with a neat oldish man wearing a cardigan, well-pressed trousers and, incongruously, gumboots.

For a moment they stared at one another. Then the man announced, ‘Gladstone!’

‘Victorian Prime Minister,’ said Markby promptly.

‘No,
I’m
Gladstone!’ snapped the other. ‘Ron Gladstone. I take care of the garden.’

‘Ah yes, of course. I congratulate you. It looks splendid.’

Gladstone looked mollified but still asked sharply, ‘Who are you?’

‘Superintendent Markby,’ Alan obligingly fished out his warrant card and passed it over.

The gardener took it and inspected it closely before returning it. ‘I have to ask who strangers are,’ he said. ‘We get all sorts wandering in and out here, you know.’

‘Do you, indeed?’ said Markby, showing interest. ‘What do they want?’

‘Half of them are just curious. The other half are up to no good, I dare say. I’ve caught that fellow Newman prowling round here a few times.’

‘Dudley Newman?’ Markby asked in surprise. The man was a well-known local builder.

‘I could guess his game,’ said Ron sourly.

So could Markby. He looked round him and felt a spurt of anger. Was it necessary to build over everything? No doubt Newman had got wind of the impending sale and scented profit. If he could buy the land cheap, he could cover it with little brick boxes.

‘There are no gates, you see,’ Ron was saying. ‘Some people seem to think this is a public park. I’ve had people in here walking their dogs!’ The gardener’s face grew red at the memory. ‘I caught a woman here only the other day with a poodle. It was fouling the grass. I had a few words with her, you can believe! I told her to be off and take the dog’s mess with her. I gave her a paper bag and my trowel and made her scrape it up. Sometimes, you know,’ Ron went on confidentially, ‘they’re abusive, are dog owners. But I don’t stand no nonsense.’

‘Quite right, too. I’d like to see the garden, if you don’t mind.’

Ron was only too pleased to show him around and they set off across the lower lawn.

‘There’s a lot I could do here, but well, the ladies won’t have it. They’re very conservative in gardening matters. You’ll have noticed that eyesore in front of the house? That stone basin with a statue in it?’

‘The fountain? Yes.’

‘It’s not a fountain if it doesn’t work,’ argued Ron. ‘And it doesn’t work. I said to them, “I’ll make you a nice new water feature. A nice little pond with an electric pump sending up a jet.” If they wanted a fat baby in the middle of it, they could have one. You can get them in plaster or even better, in fibreglass. You can clean up that easier. But they won’t hear of it.’ He shook his head sadly.

Markby murmured sympathetically and they walked on for a moment or two in silence. Eventually Ron cleared his throat.

‘I can’t say I’m surprised to see you. The police, I mean.’

‘Oh? Why is that?’

‘It’ll be to do with that fellow who called himself Jan Oakley, won’t it? Something funny about his death, I dare say. It wouldn’t surprise me. He was up to no good, I saw that the minute I set eyes on him. Strange sort of chap. Bit dotty, if you ask me.’

Markby did ask him.

‘Why?’ Ron snorted. ‘Because he kept saying he owned the house or part of the house. How could he?’

‘And what makes you so certain he was up to no good?’

Ron hesitated. ‘Because he snooped. As a matter of fact, I’d like to tell you about it. It’s been on my mind. I don’t like to mention it to the ladies, you see. Upset them.’

‘Tell me,’ Markby invited.

They had stopped near a ramshackle stone building, apparently some kind of potting shed or garden store. Ron cleared his throat and took a moment to sort out his words. ‘It was the day he was took sick and carted off to hospital. It was Saturday and normally I don’t come at the weekend but since he turned up I’ve been uneasy in my mind about those two women here on their own with him. In the early afternoon, the ladies went shopping. Kenny Joss came and fetched them in his taxi. He comes once a week regularly and takes them into town. Off they went and I was here in the garden. As it happens, I was tidying up the yew hedge by the gate where I met you just now. I needed to oil my shears . . .’ Ron told Markby how he had spied Jan, through the study window, tinkering with the roll-top desk and searching through its contents.

‘I didn’t want to upset the ladies so I thought I’d have a strong word with the fellow myself when I got the chance. You might say I had the chance almost at once because he came down the drive not long after. He’d smartened himself up, not before time. He said he was going out to tea with some woman. He was probably making that up. Anyhow, I hadn’t worked out what I wanted to say to him so I let him go on by. Never saw him alive again, of course, so I was saved the trouble.’

‘So you weren’t here when he returned?’

Ron blinked and shook his head vigorously. ‘What did he die of?’ he asked. ‘Drink and drugs, was it?’

‘We haven’t released the details yet. Why do you think drink and drugs?’

‘That’s what it always seems to be these days, in my newspaper, anyway.’

Markby knew he’d have to go back to the house and tell the sisters straight away of Jan’s interest in the study. He was sorry for it because he knew Ron was right in saying it would upset them. But it couldn’t be helped. He had to know what Jan was after – supposing that he was looking for something in particular and not just being nosy. Perhaps he’d been searching for something which might support his extraordinary claim to a share in the house? At least the sisters’ opinion of Jan wouldn’t suffer. He was already as low in their estimation as he could sink.

‘However he died, he’s no loss!’ said Ron Gladstone briskly, summing up the general view.

Markby thanked him for his information and the tour of the garden and set off back towards the house.

He thought, as he approached, that the best way to come upon it was from the garden. Seen like this, it had a quaint, theatrical air to it with its Gothic windows and carved waterspouts. The Oakleys were surprised to see him again so soon and took his explanation with some dismay but otherwise stoically. Damaris took him to the study without delay.

Markby, as Damaris searched through her keyring, inspected the dusty shelves. Leather-bound copies of the classics jostled county histories, once-popular novels by writers long forgotten, tales of travel throughout the world and adventures in the British Empire, bound copies of the
Strand
magazine and
Punch
together with other, defunct magazines. No one had arranged or, presumably, catalogued the books. Amongst them might lurk a few treasures. Diffidently, he mentioned this to Damaris.

As he’d expected, she showed little interest. ‘I doubt it, Alan. Most of it is old stuff belonging to my father. He was a great reader, especially after he became wheelchair-bound.’

She’d found the key she needed and pushed it into the lock of the rolltop desk. ‘This was my grandfather’s desk, William – the cause of all our troubles! His initials are on it here, see? In gilt, a bit knocked about, but you can just make out WPO –
William Price Oakley
. It doesn’t surprise me to learn that Jan was prying into things in here. It is the sort of behaviour I’d have expected of him. I doubt he could have found anything of interest, though, unless he wanted to read old letters or check old household bills.’

The top rolled back with a protesting squeak. ‘It’s typical of Ron Gladstone to keep it to himself in case we were upset,’ Damaris went on. ‘He’s a kind man even if he does have wild ideas about the garden. We have to keep him in check or I don’t know what he’d create out there. Has he told you about the water feature he wants to install?’

Markby admitted this.

‘He tells everyone!’ said Damaris. ‘Well, there you are.’

Markby gazed at the higgledy-piggledy contents revealed. ‘Is this as it was when you last saw it?’

‘More or less,’ Damaris said. ‘Half of this stuff could be thrown out but you know how it is, one just goes on stuffing things in.’ She reached out and picked up a package of tattered envelopes tied together with red ribbon. ‘These are my brother Arthur’s last letters. My parents kept them and so we kept them. But no one will be interested after we’re gone. Perhaps I should burn them.’

‘Don’t be hasty,’ Markby urged her. ‘Sometimes old letters are of interest to a museum.’

He had said the wrong thing. Damaris stiffened. ‘I don’t think I’d care to have our family’s private correspondence read by all and sundry, thank you!’

He didn’t point out that Jan might have read them. Instead, Markby said, ‘Perhaps you could check through and see if anything is missing or shows signs of being tampered with.’

Damaris pulled out the chair and gazed baffled at the assortment of papers.

‘Take your time,’ he urged her. ‘I’ll just sit over here, if I may, and wait.’

He settled on the chesterfield as Damaris began to work methodically through the pigeonholes, pausing now and then to peer at something or occasionally just lose herself in thought as some old memory was prompted. Eventually she had finished. She had put aside two long envelopes and now turned to him with these in her hand.

‘I think he may have looked at these. The envelopes were unsealed, but now they’re sealed. He probably read the contents and then stuck the flaps down so that if he were tackled, he could deny it.’

‘May I ask what they contain?’ Markby got up and came to join her. ‘Just generally.’

‘I’ve no objection to your knowing and I dare say Florence won’t have, either. They contain our wills. Your sister drew them up for us a few years ago. They’re very simple, nothing to interest Jan. We each leave everything to the surviving one. If I go first, Florence has it all. If Florence precedes me, then her share becomes mine. We have no one else.’ She looked up, doubt in her face. ‘That would have been of very little interest to Jan, wouldn’t it? After all, he surely didn’t think we would change our wills to accommodate him?’

‘He may have been planning to try and persuade you . . . yes, I think it very likely. He would first need to find out exactly what the present provisions were – whether anyone else were a beneficiary and likely to protest if the wills were changed. I dare say he was satisfied to find out there was no one else in his way.’ Markby felt a pang of contrition. ‘I’m sorry to speak about your relative like this. It can’t make things any easier for you.’

‘Speak away,’ said Damaris. She returned the envelopes to their pigeonhole. ‘I don’t doubt for a minute he was self-seeking and treacherous. He wouldn’t have got us to change our wills, though!’ She smiled at him, a wide charming smile that suddenly revealed what an attractive young woman she must once have been. ‘Florence and I,’ she said, ‘can be very stubborn.’

Inspector Jonathan Wood of Bamford Police had managed to occupy himself with his normal work during the remainder of the week, blessing the fact that he was a simple guardian of the law and not a lawyer. Every evening he bought the
Gazette
and read the report of the trial penned by Stanley Huxtable. Matters had recently got bogged down on points of law, exacerbated by the difficulty of making Watchett, the Fourways gardener, understand the meaning of hearsay. Watchett, frustrated, had finally become abusive in the witness box and had to be removed. That would’ve done the prosecution case no good.

Policework seemed by comparison so simple. You got together enough evidence to arrest the villain and then you handed him over to justice. But then, ah, then, what a business was set in hand. A microscope was taken to the evidence, a fine-tooth comb passed through the technicalities. Then, as a policeman, you spent your nights asking yourself, Is there anything else I could have done? What did I miss?

Emily opened the door as he approached it. She must have been watching from the window. She took his coat as usual but instead of going to hang it up, stood with it bundled in her arms. She scrutinised his face and he responded with a happy mask.

‘Well,’ he asked cheerfully, ‘and what am I to have tonight?’

‘Pork chops,’ his daughter told him. ‘And a steamed pudding.’

‘Chops, my favourite. And a pudding, too? You spoil me, my dear.’

He wasn’t fooling her. He never could fool her. But she said nothing for the moment.

‘And have you been out today?’ asked Wood.

‘To the grocer’s,’ she told him. ‘For some tea.’

That meant only to the corner shop but it was better than nothing. It wasn’t right for her to be locked up like some kind of prisoner in the house. It was unhealthy; it could affect the mind. Wood was haunted by a report he’d once investigated. Neighbours claimed a woman was held prisoner. When they’d looked into it, it had been a quite different and
much sadder case. The poor creature had been a victim of a mental disorder which made her afraid to go out. It had reached a point where she would not leave her room in which she lived like an anchorite. The smell in that room had been dreadful. At the suggestion she walk out of it, escorted by Wood, she had set up such a screaming. Of course Emily wasn’t like that. She wasn’t mad. But these things started somewhere.