Shades of Murder (40 page)

The vicar felt a chill hand touch his spine. ‘I think you’re a little confused, dear. I expect it’s the painkillers.’

‘There’s no point in your coming,’ she said, showing some animation for the first time, ‘if you won’t listen.’

‘I’m listening, Florence. Sorry,’ he said contritely.

‘He was a very good father when we were young.’ Florence turned her head to fix him with a stern look. ‘You must believe that. But he changed when Arthur died. Then Mother died and he got worse. Finally, arthritis put him in a wheelchair and he
hated
that. He was all eaten up with hate. He even hated us, Damaris and me, because we lived and Arthur had died. Oh yes,’ she raised her thin hand again to stop any interruption on her listener’s part. ‘He didn’t consider two daughters worth one son.’

‘You were caring for him! Where would be have been without you?’ James couldn’t prevent himself saying, deeply shocked.

‘Oh, well, that’s what daughters did in those days. Unmarried ones like Damaris and me, anyway.’ Florence dismissed this as a quibble. ‘I thought Damaris and I would never get away, not while we were still
young enough to make something of our lives. He wasn’t a happy man. We were all unhappy, all three of us, in that house. So I saved up his pills and gave him aspirin instead. He grumbled and said he couldn’t understand why he was sleeping so badly. He meant to ask the doctor for stronger pills. That evening, he grumbled so much, I suggested he had a good stiff whisky, to make him sleep. He wasn’t much of a drinker but he agreed. I poured him out a jolly good glassful!’ Florence sounded satisfied.

‘And the sleeping pills?’ Father Holland barely dared ask.

‘Oh, those. I’d already made sure he’d taken those. I mixed them in his shepherd’s pie. He was very fond of shepherd’s pie. I never liked it so I didn’t have any and Damaris didn’t have any, either, because she always reacted badly to anything made with mince.’

‘Right,’ said the vicar faintly.

‘He just went off to sleep,’ Florence said. ‘And that was that. Or I thought it would be, but then, I don’t think things through very well. I told Meredith and Juliet that. Our doctor insisted on a postmortem because Father wasn’t ill enough to die. As if that mattered at his age. Still, it turned out all right because he’d grumbled so much to the doctor about how unfair life was, that the coroner decided it must be suicide.’ Florence pursed her thin lips. ‘He was right about life being unfair. I hadn’t thought it through. If I had, I’d have realised that it was already too late for Damaris and me. We’d never leave Fourways. We were stuck there for the rest of our lives. Killing Father was a waste of time, really. It didn’t make any difference in the long run.’

Father Holland struggled to rally and sound practical. ‘Florence, when you did this, you were under great stress. Obviously your father had become unbearably difficult. It’s a pity your doctor hadn’t suggested a nursing home for him.’

‘He wouldn’t have gone into a nursing home!’ Florence said in surprise. ‘Not while he had a house of his own and us. Anyway, we Oakleys, we don’t farm out our problems. We take care of them ourselves. Even,’ she added regretfully, ‘if we do always seem to make a mess of it.’

She turned her head away from him and gestured towards a stack of magazines which lay on a bedside cabinet on the further side of the bed. ‘They’ve left those for me to read. I was looking at one last night. There is an article about some things called genes. I hadn’t know anything about genes before. We all have them. Genes can carry all sorts of things, apparently. Predisposition to some diseases and some people think some
kinds of behaviour. Tell me, Vicar . . .’ Florence turned her head back and met his appalled gaze with her serene expression. ‘Do you think there might be a gene for murder? We Oakleys do seem rather inclined towards it.’

The bay window in the sitting room of the one-bedroom flat looked out over the promenade and the beach and sea beyond. It was late summer now and the promenade was thronged with holidaymakers. In winter, the number of strollers would thin dramatically but there would always be someone walking out there in the fresh ocean air.

‘Which is really nice,’ said Juliet to Damaris, ‘because you’ll be able to sit here by your window and watch the world go by. There will always be something to look at, something happening. It’s got to be better than living in some place so secluded you don’t see anyone but the milkman. From the security point of view it’s a good thing, too. Anyone coming to the street door of the building is in full view. The double-glazing is really efficient. No matter how much it blows out there, you’ll always be snug in here. I’m sure you’ll like it, Damaris.’

‘Yes, I dare say I shall,’ Damaris said placidly. ‘It will be nice to see a bit of life and a few young faces. You chose well for me, Juliet, and I’m very grateful for all your help.’

Juliet looked round the room. Since the gas explosion had taken care of the furniture at Fourways, all but one of the items in here were new. Not that there were many of them: a three-piece suite in chintz, a drop-leaf table and two chairs. The sole survivor from Fourways was a Victorian rolltop desk, very much knocked about.

‘They built to last in those days,’ said Juliet of this item. ‘Just think, all that rubble fell on it and still, when they cleared it away, there the old desk stood. Pity about the crack down one side. Still, it doesn’t look too bad.’

Damaris said nothing. Juliet, conscience-stricken, said, ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have talked about the explosion. You must miss Florence dreadfully.’

Damaris stirred. ‘Yes. She was the younger and by rights should have outlived me, but I always knew her health was fragile. Even without the accident, I think she would have predeceased me. I should have found
myself alone. I could’ve wished she’d died at home and not in the hospital, though they were very kind to her and she was comfortable there. More comfortable than she’d have been in Fourways if it had stayed standing. I think,’ said Damaris in her practical way, ‘the bathroom geyser was to blame. It always had a mind of its own.’

Juliet hesitated, unwilling to appear to pry, but eventually curiosity got the better of her. ‘The private room at the hospital must have been expensive.’

‘Oh, but Dudley Newman paid for that,’ Damaris said. Seeing how startled her visitor looked, she explained, ‘I went to him at once, the moment Florence was taken to hospital. I said now the house had collapsed that must suit his purpose. He never wanted the house, only the land. I’d sell him the land and the ruins and he could do what he liked with it. Only, I needed some money straight away – up front, I believe the expression is. I wanted my sister to have the comfort and privacy of a private room and treatment. If he’d meet the costs now, he could deduct whatever it was from whatever he intended to pay me for the land. So that’s what he did. He did pay a fair price, didn’t he, Juliet? You said so, at the time.’

‘Yes, he did, and you’re right, the house being in ruins did suit his purpose. I still believe he’d have met opposition if he’d tried to demolish it.’

Damaris looked round the room. ‘I did wonder, when I first moved in here, whether, had we not decided to sell up, Jan would have started plotting as he did. Perhaps he’d just have hung around for a bit making a nuisance of himself and then gone back to Poland.’

‘No,’ said Juliet. ‘He’d still have been snooping round looking for your wills and trying to persuade you to change them. He’d still have found the arsenic in the shed. He might still have decided to use it. He was a nasty bit of work, Damaris.’

‘I always knew that. Anyway,’ added Damaris a little inconsequentially, ‘as Fourways fell down, we’d have had to move in any case. If he’d still been alive, it might have fallen on Jan and got rid of him. Instead of that, it fell on Florence. I’m sorry it took my sister with it, but I’m still glad the house has gone, because really it had taken both of us long ago. Swallowed us up.’

A little hesitantly, Juliet asked, ‘Did you know the estate Newman plans to build there will be called Fourways Estate? I think he’d like to call the main roadway running through it Oakley Drive, if you don’t object and the council don’t. Well, they won’t if you don’t – Pam’ll see
to that. It would be a nice memorial to Florence, I thought.’

‘Arthur,’ said Damaris firmly. ‘It ought to be called Arthur Oakley Drive after my brother. Florence has a grave but Arthur has no proper resting place. Try and get them to call it after him.’

‘I’ll do my best. Anyway, it’ll be Oakley for a long time to come.’

Damaris gave one of her surprisingly impish grins. ‘Goodness, on the map!’

It seemed a good moment to depart on this upbeat note. Juliet tried not to look too obviously at her wristwatch. ‘I’ll come and see you again, Damaris, so will Meredith and Alan. James, too, when he can get away.’

Damaris gave a sad smile. ‘Thank you. You’ll come for a few months, but then you’ll be too busy. That’s as it should be. Your life is really only at its beginning. I shall be content to sit mine out here. I’ve discovered there is a very good public library.’ She got to her feet to show her visitor out. On their way to the door, they passed by the Victorian rolltop desk.

‘Grandfather William’s,’ said Damaris briefly. She tapped the painted initials, now scratched almost illegible. ‘Should have left it behind, really. We were never able to shake off his shadow. Here I am, in a new abode, in a new town, in a new part of the country and look, I’ve lumbered myself with this memento of that dreadful rogue. I must be a glutton for punishment.’

‘Funny,’ Juliet mused, ‘we’ll never know if that will really existed or whether that certified translation Jan showed us was just a fake.’

Damaris didn’t reply. She was an honest woman and wouldn’t have wished to lie to Juliet, of all people. But she’d spent that Sunday, after news of Jan’s death had been conveyed to them, searching the turret room. If there was a will, Jan would’ve kept it by him, she was sure. And she’d found it. He’d slipped it under the cracked linoleum in the corner of the room. It had been in German. She’d learned some German as a girl, so she had been able to read it with a little difficulty and the help of a dictionary. It had been just as Jan had claimed. Whether or not it would have been valid was another matter. Probably not, but to be on the safe side, she had burnt it.

‘Drive carefully, dear,’ she said to Juliet.

‘I’m taking all this over to James,’ Meredith said, carefully knotting string round the box containing Geoff Painter’s research into the death of Cora Oakley. ‘James wanted to look through it before I return it to Geoff.’

‘Was it worth looking through?’ Alan asked from behind the latest copy of
The Garden
magazine.

‘It was fascinating, and making up my mind was difficult. I feel in my bones that William was guilty if only because, had he been innocent, I think he would have had the nerve to brazen out local disapproval. He wouldn’t have run away like that. I think Geoff’s right and William was lucky. If there had been another witness to back up the housekeeper it would’ve gone differently. Martha Button gave her evidence so confidently at the outset, but once defence counsel began on her, she went to pieces. She never retracted her claim but defence succeeded in making her look less reliable. If the factory had just reported some arsenic missing . . . But I suppose it was such a tiny amount no one noticed. William was a bad lot, there’s no denying that. The evidence of the girl, Daisy Joss, has to be taken with a giant pinch of salt!’

Alan put down his magazine. ‘A man may be a bad lot, a gambler, womaniser, a thoroughly rotten husband. It doesn’t follow he’s murdered. Nor does the fact that Cora apparently believed he’d seduced the nursemaid mean that he really had, no matter what Cora told the housekeeper. Don’t forget, there was some evidence that she might have been a dope-addict, given to wild imaginings.’

‘No real evidence. The pharmacist was keen to stress he didn’t know that was the case, only that it might be so if she carried on taking the laudanum. And isn’t that what pompous male authority used to say to any woman who kicked up a fuss?
You’re imagining it, my dear!
I can just see Wicked William letting it be known, oh very cleverly through his counsel, that his wife was an addict. Who was there to contradict him? Poor Cora was dead. You can say what you like about the dead.’

‘That’s why evidence has to be tested. That’s where “beyond reasonable doubt” comes in. That’s why it’s often so damn difficult to nail your man. Mrs Button should have come forward much earlier. Had the original inquest heard her evidence, it might not have reached a verdict of accident. Once they had reached that verdict then it was a question of overturning it. A jury has to be awfully convinced before it overturns the verdict of a previous one.’

‘But do you think he did it?’ Meredith challenged. ‘Never mind the evidence, what do you think?’

‘Of William? Did he mess around with arsenic and a do-it-yourself chemistry set? Yes, probably. But I wouldn’t hope to get a conviction on the evidence of that housekeeper. So we’re back to what a police officer thinks, as against what he can prove. If you really want to know what
bothers me, bearing in mind I have no proof . . .

‘Go on, anyway,’ Meredith urged. She settled back in her chair, her hands loosely holding the box of papers.

‘Well, I’d like to know the real reason Mrs Button was dismissed. Two possible reasons were put forward at the trial. That William’s guilty conscience was shaken by the sight of her. That William’s grieving heart was troubled by the sight of her. But perhaps Mrs Button had an agenda of her own? Possibly she knew more about arsenic as a substance than she let on. She’d have used the stuff to kill vermin all her life. Perhaps she knew at once what the garlic smell meant. At the very least she was quick-witted enough to realise something had been set up in that room, some kind of apparatus. Perhaps she intended to use the knowledge to blackmail her employer. That’s why she said nothing at the inquest. After a couple of weeks she went to William and told him she had evidence which could overturn the verdict. William knew that if he paid her once, he’d be in her power for ever. He had to get rid of her. But he couldn’t afford to have another suspicious death in the house! What he could do was discredit her in advance. He knew that by dismissing her from her place, anything she later said would look like the words of a vengeful servant. It was a bit of a gamble of course, but we know William was a gambling man.’