Mixing With Murder (12 page)

‘The butterfly tree,’ said Paul, indicating it. ‘The blooms attract them. Lisa, take Fran to see Arthur. He’s at home today.’

Lisa said nothing. She left the chair and walked through the long grass to a corner where a sheet of corrugated iron sheeting had been left on the ground. I followed. Lisa stooped and lifted the sheet.

‘There he is,’ she said.

I’m afraid I reacted badly. I hadn’t known what to expect and when I saw it, I squeaked and jumped back.

‘It’s a
snake
!’

‘It’s only a grass snake,’ Lisa told me in a flat cold voice. ‘They’re harmless. You don’t have to be scared of it.’

‘Lisa’s right,’ said her father. ‘Arthur there is
Natrix Natrix
, the grass snake. They like to be around water and several of my neighbours have garden ponds which mean a good supply of frogs. Arthur is partial to a frog lunch.’ Paul smiled. ‘As yet, none of my neighbours has reported missing any fish from their ponds. But Arthur would be quite capable of taking one of those. The Latin name,
Natrix
, means swimmer. Grass snakes are quite at home in water.’

‘I haven’t seen one before,’ I said. ‘That’s why I jumped out of my skin. We’ve got a garden behind the house where I live in London. I’ll be a lot more careful now when I walk around out there.’

‘You really don’t have to worry. A grass snake would bite you only if it thought you were attacking it. The bite would be unpleasant but not dangerous. Adders are more aggressive and can certainly give you a nasty bite but again, only if you appeared to threaten them or surprised them. No snake likes to be cornered. Give it an escape route and it will slide away at once. Adders prefer heathland. If you find anything in your London garden it’s more likely to be either a grass snake or a slow worm or blind worm as they’re sometimes called. Slow worms are often wrongly believed to be snakes by the general public. In fact they are a legless lizard and aren’t blind. Their eyes are very small but they are sighted. They are also able to blink, which a true snake, like Arthur there, cannot do. Also, like lizards, slow worms can shed their tails if trapped. You are unlikely to find a smooth snake, the other British snake. They are very rare.’

Arthur lay unmoving in the grass while Paul told me rather more about snakes than I wanted to know. He seemed unbothered by the removal of his shelter. He was tangled up like a pretzel so judging his length was difficult. Certainly he wasn’t on the scale of the python the exotic dancer had brought to her audition at the club. Arthur, I guessed, would straighten out to be between eighty and ninety centimetres long. He was greenish-grey and shiny with faint barred markings and a yellowish patch at the back of his head. He wasn’t my idea of a pet. I realised I was expected to make some comment but for the life of me I couldn’t think of any way one could express admiration for this knotted length of living hosepipe. Nor am I into Natural History. Despite Paul’s assurances, my experience has been that if there are things out there hiding in the long grass, they bite, sting or bring you out in a rash. I managed a lame question. ‘Does he only eat frogs and fish?’

‘Oh, no, any invertebrate, beetles and the like. They will tackle a mouse. I’m very pleased to have Arthur reside with us and like to show him off to visitors.’

‘How do you know he’s male?’ Arthur still wasn’t moving but despite that and being assured he was harmless, I was keeping my distance. His round black shiny unblinking eye seemed to be fixed on me in a sardonic gaze. Lisa was also watching me with a sarcastic little smirk on her face. She and the snake made a good pair.

‘Partly by his length which hasn’t increased in the time he’s been here. Mature females can grow longer, up to five feet. What’s that? A hundred and fifty centimetres in modern parlance?’ Paul gave another of his faint smiles which I was beginning to realise did not signify mirth but rather an acceptance that there was a world outside his front door which had long passed him by and he could not hope to rejoin.

I was glad Arthur wasn’t a female. He was already quite long enough.

‘Besides,’ Paul went on more briskly, ‘I’ve never seen any young ones. Grass snakes like to lay their eggs in compost heaps because they’re warm places. There are compost heaps a-plenty in surrounding gardens but I’ve only ever seen a solitary specimen, Arthur. That makes me think he is living a celibate life, all alone and occasionally receiving visitors. Perhaps that’s why he and I have an understanding.’

Bitterness entered his voice. He hadn’t intended it, but it slipped in there all on its own.

Lisa glanced at her father, concern showing briefly in her face, and then turned her gaze back to the grass snake. ‘Dad’s interested in wild life,’ she said. ‘That’s why the garden is left like this.’

‘Ah yes, the garden,’ said Paul with that humourless smile. He indicated our untidy surroundings with a wave of his thin pale hand. ‘The state of it distresses my neighbours. They complain that weeds invade their gardens from this one. I tell them that a weed is a plant like any other.’

At our feet, Arthur moved. Although I now knew he was harmless, the suddenness and dexterity with which he untangled himself was disconcerting. I stepped back automatically as the creature slid over the bumpy ground, heading for nearby tussocks.

‘Take it easy!’ Lisa said. ‘He’s aware of us and is getting nervous. They like to hide.’ She lowered the corrugated sheet to the ground. Arthur had completely relocated himself and there was no sign of him. Never again would I tramp happily through the long grass in my London garden.

We all went back indoors. The rest of the visit passed in a haze of small talk and I took my leave as soon as I decently could. Jennifer pressed me to stay for lunch and panic entered Lisa’s eyes before I regretfully refused, saying I’d promised my aunt I’d be back to have lunch with her. Lisa saw me to the front door. ‘Thanks,’ she said quietly when we stood outside on the paved forecourt. ‘You see how it is. My dad’s got multiple sclerosis. My mum and dad never go anywhere. They’ve always been brilliant parents. They insisted I go out into the world and make my own way, do my own thing. They’ve never wanted to keep me tied to them. Mum could use my help. But she said, no, you mustn’t feel you have to stay here. Dad was tickled pink about my wanting to work in the theatre. I was full of it too when I went to London. I had no idea how many other young dancers there were just like me. The first audition I went to, I found the queue stretched down the street. That woke me up with a shock from my dream world. Later, when I was broke and desperate, someone told me about Mickey hiring dancers. He paid well, they said, which turned out to be true. But the men who come to watch are just yucky. I got fed up and one day I flipped and walked out. How can I tell my parents the truth? They mustn’t know about the Silver Circle. They had dreams for me and I’ve tried to make them come true. If the only way I could do it was by lying, well, that’s what I’ve done. I’ve explained to Ned because he’s the only person I can trust not to tell them.’

‘You don’t have to explain, really, not to me,’ I urged. ‘But you were foolish to let Mickey know where to find you.’

‘How did he know?’ She looked puzzled. ‘Oxford’s a big city and I never gave him my home address.’

‘You told one of the other girls.’

She shook her head. ‘No, I didn’t. Which girl?’

‘A foreign one who doesn’t dance very well. She has long black hair and a liking for wearing pink. She told Mickey you had gone home to Oxford.’

‘Oh, Jasna!’ Her expression cleared. ‘I didn’t tell her a thing but I know how it must have happened. She took a parcel to the post for me once. It was addressed here. It was my mother’s birthday present. I think I remember mentioning to her that’s what it was. I’m surprised she made a note of the address but I’m not surprised she guessed that’s where I’d gone and told Mickey. Mickey’s always threatening to sack her. She’s working here illegally. She’s Croatian. She’s scared of being deported. She’d do anything to get into Mickey’s good books.’

‘There’s another Croatian, I think, working there,’ I said. ‘One of the doormen, Ivo, he’s called.’

Lisa blinked. ‘Oh, yes. Mickey hires all sorts. Jasna probably got him the job. I don’t know. I know I was stupid to give Jasna the parcel to post for me. Working with people like that, it’s best not to let them into your life.’

She sounded bitter. She realised she’d led Mickey to her present whereabouts by a simple thoughtless act of her own.

We all do stupid things. ‘Look,’ I said sympathetically, ‘I really haven’t come to make trouble. But I do need to speak to you. Can we meet somewhere private, like you were saying earlier?’

‘You say you’re staying somewhere near Magdalen Bridge?’ she asked. ‘Do you know where the Botanic Gardens are, just before you get to the bridge on this side?’

I nodded. ‘There?’

‘No, there’s a better place. If you’re coming from the Iffley Road, go over the bridge, past the Gardens, and you’ll see a turning. It’s called Rose Lane. Go down there and you come to some gates. They let you on to Christ Church Meadow. Joggers use it and tourists go there; no one will pay attention to us and there’s so much space we won’t be overheard. Go towards the river. There’s a path along the bank. If you follow it you’ll come to some stone steps going down to the water near a fork in the river. There used to be a landing stage there. I’ll meet you there at ten tomorrow morning. I can’t come before. All right?’ She looked at me anxiously.

‘You’ll come alone?’ I asked. ‘I don’t want Ned around. Where is he now, anyway?’

‘At work.’ She looked surprised at the question.

I ought to have expected her answer. Most people did work regular hours, after all. ‘What does he do?’ I asked.

‘He’s a dental technician.’

I blinked. ‘He makes false teeth?’

‘That’s not all he does!’ she retorted, nettled.

‘Right, I just thought . . . He seemed more likely to be, well, I don’t know, a teacher, perhaps?’

‘What does it matter?’ she snapped, getting stroppy again. ‘I won’t bring him along. You needn’t worry. I won’t even tell him.’

I believed her. Ned was to her as Ganesh was to me. I could imagine Ganesh barging in if he thought I was threatened, telling me what I ought to do. She wouldn’t tell Ned about our meeting because he’d insist on being there and running things.

‘I’m not going back to London,’ she said suddenly. ‘Whatever you say, you won’t persuade me to do that.’

‘Mickey might settle for less than that,’ I told her. ‘Like a phone call and a talk.’

‘Mickey never settles for less,’ she said with a return of that cold flat tone. She shut the door on me.

Chapter Five

I can’t say Lisa’s last words hadn’t made me nervous. I was only too aware that what Allerton really wanted was for Lisa to return to London. If she was right that he wasn’t a man to settle for less than he wanted, I was in trouble. On the other hand, as he had indicated in my talk with him, he had anticipated I would have difficulties, not all of which I could reasonably overcome. I could only do so much. He didn’t expect me to tie Lisa hand and foot, throw her in the back of a Transit van and drive her back to the Silver Circle. It did occur to me that if Lisa remained obstinate, Allerton wasn’t beyond doing exactly that. But I wouldn’t be the one required to do it. He paid Harry and Ivo for that sort of thing and probably several others.

In the meantime, as far as I was concerned, he would accept a phone call from her. It didn’t seem to me an unreasonable thing to ask her to do. Lisa now understood that I wasn’t prepared to leave Oxford and return to London and Mickey with nothing to show for my visit. But I wasn’t the only one under pressure. I’d met her family and seen for myself that she was in no position to argue with every suggestion I might make. She trusted Ned not to tell Jennifer and Paul the truth but she couldn’t trust a stranger like me. I was reasonably confident I could persuade her to phone Allerton. What was said in such a conversation would be nothing to do with me. I’d have completed my task. I could go back to London and rescue Bonnie. I left the Stallard house in a fairly optimistic frame of mind.

There was Ned, of course, Lisa’s friend but not mine. I hadn’t seen the last of him. I was sure of that. But while he scored high points as nuisance value, as serious opposition I felt his score was much lower. Right now he was blamelessly employed in the dentures business and I told myself I could forget him for a while.

I went back to the guest house, let myself in with the key Beryl had given me, went up to my room. A little cart laden with cleaning materials stood on the upstairs landing. The door to the Americans’ room was open and someone was moving about in there but probably not them. I was glad. I didn’t want to run into them again.