Mixing With Murder (15 page)

It shut him up all right, for all of two minutes. During it he sat looking at me with his mouth open. I finished my salad while I had the chance.

‘You told Paul and Jennifer you were an actress!’ he burst out accusingly when he’d rallied.

‘We say “actor” these days. I am, but, like Lisa, I’ve found it hard to get work. There are a lot of dancers, a lot of singers and a lot of actors. So I fill in doing whatever I can. Lisa took a job pole dancing. I don’t know how to dance with or without a pole and I don’t have her looks. So I undertake personal work for people.’

‘How can you
do
that?’ he asked, aghast. ‘How can you snoop on people for
money
?’

‘Oh, grow up!’ I snapped. ‘Perhaps if I knew how to make false teeth, I would. I don’t, so I earn a living doing what I can do. It’s legal. And I don’t snoop. I’m not that sort of private eye.’

‘You didn’t tell Lisa that, or her parents,’ he accused. ‘You didn’t tell them you were a private detective.’

‘Would you want me to tell them? Wouldn’t they wonder why a private detective had come to the house looking for Lisa?’

He jabbed the fork at me again. More tomato sauce splattered on the table. He was a messy eater. ‘I don’t want you going to the house again, understand?’

Who did he think he was, handing out orders? I wasn’t standing for that.

‘I bet Lisa doesn’t know you’re here, talking to me,’ I said. It was time to make it clear to him he wasn’t getting things all his own way.

He blinked, hesitated, tried for nonchalant, but it didn’t work. ‘Lisa trusts me.’

‘Not to handle her private affairs, she doesn’t. That’s why I’m not wasting another minute on you. I think we’ve said all we’ve got to say to one another.’ I stood up.

‘I was right!’ he burst out furiously. ‘You are just like your boss, Allerton, a seedy, slimy—’

I leaned across the table and tipped what was left of his pasta into his lap. He let out a howl. Heads turned.

‘How dare you?’ I declared loudly. ‘You perv!’ One or two people near us sniggered. Ned, purple with rage and embarrassment, floundered, mopping himself with his napkin and trying to smile placatingly at the approaching waitress at the same time.

In a lower tone I said to him, ‘You can pay the bill. Call it the fee for my professional time.’

‘Just you wait!’ he hissed. The waitress was almost upon us now. ‘I’ll settle this my own way. I can play rough too. Allerton isn’t going to pester Lisa, either through you or anyone else!’

He was mad but I was pretty cross, too, and marched off at a cracking pace heading back towards the boarding house. I hadn’t gone far before I came across an incongruous sight. Mr Filigrew, still in his business suit, was progressing in a stately manner along the pavement with Spencer the poodle on a lead. Filigrew walked very upright, his head held high and his feet turned out like a dancer at the barre. He kept the lead away from him as if in some way dog and lead might contaminate him. Perhaps he worried about dog hairs on his suit.

‘Good evening!’ I greeted him. Spencer recognised me and began to jump about in excitement.

Filigrew turned his rimless spectacles on me. ‘Good evening,’ he said in a disapproving way.

‘Walking the dog for Beryl?’ I patted the ecstatic Spencer.

‘Mm,’ he mumbled, adding, ‘taking a breath of air.’

I beamed at him and left him to take his constitutional. But my smile was strictly for his consumption. I wondered if and where anyone was walking Bonnie in the evening air.

Lisa and I had fixed to meet at ten the next morning. I had decided to set out early partly because I needed to find the place and partly because, when I did so, I wanted to take a good look round first.

Although I was early in the breakfast room, the Americans were there ahead of me, wrangling in their usual manner over what to do that day. There was no avoiding them so I went in and exchanged brief greetings. There was no sign of Mr Filigrew and even after I was all finished, he still hadn’t showed up. As I left the house to make my way to the rendezvous, I checked the breakfast room again, but Filigrew’s table was deserted and showed no sign that anyone had eaten at it. I wondered if he’d left already and was on his way to sell stationery in other towns or whether he was still there and breakfasting in private with Beryl. Possibly there was someone like Beryl in every town on his regular route. I fantasised briefly that he was a bigamist, married to some of these ladies. He was an unlikely looking sex symbol but those are the ones you need to watch. A certain type of woman falls for a man of mature years in a business suit and that flashy tie hinted at hidden depths.

It was a beautiful morning. The sun glowed against the honey-coloured stone of Magdalen College on the other side of the road to the Botanic Gardens. The square baroque building inside the gardens looked gracious if a little knocked about. There was a timelessness about the whole place. In any other circumstances I would have enjoyed being here. Perhaps, if I was lucky and Lisa agreed to speak to Mickey Allerton on the phone, I could wrap up my business here today and linger a little longer before going back to London. Not going round any more old buildings, I’d had my fill of that. But just sitting out somewhere nice and quiet and watching the world go by.

I felt a stab of guilt when I found myself thinking this. What of Bonnie? I had to rescue her at the first opportunity, not loaf round Oxford taking in the dreaming spires. But if all Ganesh had led me to believe was true, Bonnie was doing fine.

The opposite scenario to all this was that Lisa would refuse to speak to Allerton and I’d have to go back to London to admit failure. Things might not then turn out so well. Despite Mickey’s assurance that the only retribution he’d deal out was to refuse me any further payment, I couldn’t be sure he might not think up something nastier. I was sure he didn’t like people letting him down. I still feared Bonnie might pay the price of my failure.

I found Rose Lane, went down it, through the metal gate and found myself on the edge of a huge open area of grass and trees and a fenced playing field, traversed by gravelled walkways. In the hazy morning sunshine I could see the roofs of the surrounding buildings as a distant fringe. That such a place could exist in the middle of a busy city shut away from the hustle and bustle and untouched by any development seemed amazing. But then I always think the same thing of London’s parks.

The tourists had yet to arrive in any numbers and there were comparatively few people around apart from early-morning joggers. Two of these padded past me heading in the opposite direction. They moved as a unit, keeping step and panting in unison, holding their elbows out at identical angles. That and the Oxford connection made me think of Tweedledum and Tweedledee. A woman in faded jeans, a striped top and colour coordinated waistcoat - the sort of outfit which looks thrown together and actually costs a three-figure sum - walked a spaniel dog. Two more men of academic appearance strolled by deep in discussion. I followed the tree-lined path to the river and set out along it. It was amazingly calm here and very beautiful. Sunspots played on the rippling surface, dotted with leaves fallen from overhead branches. Waterfowl bobbed along as buoyant as corks, darting in and out of the reeds and vegetation at the water’s edge. The trees rustled gently overhead and cast a shade which was welcome even at this relatively early hour. Already clouds of midges swarmed about my face. The only sound was that of my footsteps crunching faintly on the gravelled track.

I looked at my wristwatch. It was only nine forty, twenty minutes to go yet before my meeting with Lisa, if she showed up. She might have decided to cut and run as she’d done from London and be halfway across the country by now. I hoped she showed. I didn’t want to tell Mickey I’d made a complete mess of things. Besides, if she didn’t appear, I’d have to call at her parents’ house again. I’d much prefer not to do that, not because I worried about Ned, but because every meeting with Paul and Jennifer would require an increasing degree of mental agility to obscure the truth. So far I’d told them nothing that wasn’t more or less true. Any more conversation with them and I’d have to start telling outright lies. From then on you have to remember what you’ve said. It can turn out tricky.

Ahead of me the river took a fork away to the left. Alerted, I kept my eyes peeled and soon came upon the stone steps. They looked solid enough but slippery and the lower ones were underwater. The boat which must once have been moored here had gone, but instead something else nestled against the bottom steps. The river caressed this object gently and the undulating current brought it momentarily up to break the surface hump-backed before descending again to be almost completely submerged, a hazy outline beneath the river’s green veil.

I stopped, took my hands from my pockets and stared down in numb disbelief. The object rose again, breaking the surface, and there was no doubt about it. A human being floated face down in the river. The water streamed away from the white glistening shoulders. The legs still trailed down in the depths. I couldn’t see the face.

I felt the blood draining from my cheeks. I couldn’t move, frozen by an ancient innate terror at the sight of death. I was in a silent world in which no birds sang and the river ran without noise. I almost seemed to be someone else, an onlooker observing both myself and the object of my paralysis.

Then the blood rushed back into my face so that it glowed with heat. The birdsong returned, unnaturally loud. The gentle river sounds seemed those of a roaring torrent. Following numbness my brain went into a frenzy of activity, sending conflicting messages until my whole thinking process was completely clogged. I struggled to disentangle them. It had to be some kind of optical illusion, a mistake. This was impossible. Surely some prankster had tossed a dummy in there as a sick practical joke. Then, after shock and incredulity, my brain told me that at least it wasn’t Lisa. She hadn’t struck me as being the suicidal type but one never knew. This, whatever it was, real or not, but increasingly I feared it was real, was both too big to be a dummy figure or to be Lisa. For that at least I felt a spurt of relief. This in turn helped to steady me and enable me to take another look.

It - he - was almost certainly a man, a big bloke at that. His legs, clad in what looked like red silk running shorts, trailed in the water, his upper body wore a sodden running vest clinging to the skin. His arms were spread out to either side of him. His face was well down in the river, only the back of his head showing, covered with wet short-cropped blond hair.

I tried to persuade myself, although instinct told me it was untrue, that he wasn’t dead. He was a swimmer. Why he should be swimming in the river in such an awkward pose, how he could breathe without snorkel apparatus, these things I thrust briefly to the back of my mind. Then reality hit and with it panic. I stumbled back and tripped over a fallen branch; my feet became entangled in it and I lost all balance, landing painfully on my backside.

The pain brought me to my senses. Pull yourself together, Fran! I ordered myself. I needed to call the police. I had Ganesh’s mobile phone on me. Dial 999, that’s all I had to do, and wait until help got here.

Then I remembered Lisa again. At any moment now she’d be walking down that riverside path towards me - and the thing in the river. She mustn’t see it. She mustn’t get involved, be a witness and have to make a statement to the police when they got here as I would have to do. Mickey would be furious and he’d blame me. Think, Fran, think! Call the cops. Then go back the way I’d come and head her off before she got near enough to see anything. I pulled out the phone and hesitated. Ought I to try and drag him to the edge, raise his head from the water? If he’d just gone in, he might yet be saved.

I descended the steps cautiously, crouched and stretched out my hand. Water lapped about my feet and suddenly, on the step’s coating of green slime, I lost my footing. I had no time to save myself and, with a resounding splash, tumbled head first into the murky green river to join the drowned man.