Shades of Murder (17 page)

‘There used to be Markbys,’ mused Florence, ‘but now there’s only young Alan and dear Laura who went off and studied law. I believe Alan’s a policeman. I remember when their mother brought them here as children.’

‘He’ll be forty or so, Alan,’ said Damaris. ‘Time flies. Yes, he is a policeman.’ She picked up some remaining groceries and began to put them in the cupboards. Then she broke off and turned her head. Footsteps clattered on the kitchen flags and Jan appeared unexpectedly from the kitchen lobby. He must have come down the backstairs which they never used.

‘So, you’re home again, safe and sound!’ he declared, rubbing his hands together.

Both Oakleys stared at him in silence, neither able to think of a suitable response.

‘How was your afternoon?’ he went on.

Damaris managed to say, ‘It was fine, thank you.’

Jan was smiling at her. ‘Well, it’s been a lovely afternoon, hasn’t it? Mr Gladstone’s gone home. I don’t think he approves of me, I don’t know why.’

This observation didn’t prevent him looking pleased with himself and Damaris wondered what lay behind it. He’d seated himself at the kitchen table as if settling in for a chat.

‘I’ve spent a very nice afternoon.’ He leaned forward in a confiding manner and both women drew back. ‘I’ve been to tea with a charming
young woman.’ He shook a finger at them. ‘I think you know her.’

When they didn’t respond but continued to gaze at him blankly, he added with a note of triumph, ‘Meredith. Meredith Mitchell.’

The Oakleys exchanged glances. Florence looked bewildered and Damaris said quickly to her, ‘It’s all right, dear.’

To Jan, she said, ‘Really? That must have been very nice for you. Perhaps you’d like to go and watch the television?’

He beamed at them and jumped up, putting her in mind of a jack-in-the-box she’d possessed as a child. She recalled it as an unpleasant toy, leaping out at one with a shrill squeak, decorated in garish colours and bobbing its foolish grinning face from side to side. She had let her distaste show. Jan’s smile faded.

‘Yes, I’d like to catch the early evening news,’ he said stiffly.

Damaris watched him hurry out of the kitchen, pushed the jack-in-the-box image away and turned to her sister.

‘Right! What shall we have? I thought cheese on toast – oh, you’ve already got out the Marmite.’ She indicated the jar in her sister’s hand.

‘I think I’d prefer it, if it’s all the same to you,’ said Florence. ‘We could have it on toast.’

They set about preparing this simple snack in silence. Florence broke it by asking anxiously, ‘Oh, Damaris, what’s going on? What was he doing, having tea with Meredith? Or rather, what was
she
doing? She’s always seemed such a nice, sensible person to me.’

‘I’m sure there’s a perfectly good explanation,’ Damaris answered robustly.

Florence, still speaking in a whisper and glancing nervously at the door, went on, ‘He is a good-looking young man. He isn’t going to – to make trouble, is he? Laura told me Meredith is Alan’s friend.’

‘No,’ Damaris said slowly. ‘He isn’t going to make any more trouble. I won’t allow it.’

They sat in the kitchen until Jan went off to have his evening meal at The Feathers. When he returned, still in an insufferably good mood, they made an excuse and vacated the sitting room to go to bed early, leaving Jan before the TV watching a game show. He seemed to take great pleasure in this, applauding whenever the contestant won another prize.

Damaris fell into a fitful sleep. She woke with a start. The room was in darkness but the phosphorescent numbers on the dial of her old-fashioned alarm clock showed it was only just after ten. She felt strange,
tense, her senses heightened. She swung her feet over the side of the bed, her toes searching for her slippers. Pulling on her threadbare dressing gown she went to the door and opened it. Damaris put her head into the corridor and listened.

There it was, a cry, a fearful sound, not loud but hoarse, despairing, filled with pain and terror. Possibly she’d heard a previous one in her sleep and it had wakened her. It was followed by the crash of a heavy object falling and a drumming noise.

Damaris reached for the light switch and cautiously made her way downstairs. The sitting-room door was open and she could see the television screen still flickering inanely. The hallway was further illuminated by light streaming through the open kitchen door at the far end. Just inside the hall, by the kitchen door, lay a broken glass tumbler and a spreading water stain. As for the crash she’d heard, that had been caused by the fall of a telephone table which lay on its side. The telephone itself lay on the floor, the receiver at the end of its twisted cord upturned and silent. By it was Jan’s twitching body.

He sprawled on his back, his protruding eyes fixed on her in a horrid stare. He had vomited and a blood-stained scum dribbled from his parted lips, drawn back like a wild animal’s. His expression was one of pain and of deep disbelieving shock. His hands clutched at the worn carpet, his knees were drawn up and she realised that the drumming sound she’d heard had been that of his heels on the wooden floorboards. He seemed to recognise her as she bent over him in horror. He tried to form some words but his tongue would not oblige.

‘Damaris?’

It was her sister’s voice from above. Damaris hurried back down the hall and up the stairs. Florence must not see this.

‘Go back to bed dear. You’ll catch a chill. Jan isn’t very well. I’m going to call an ambulance.’

‘What’s the matter?’ Florence’s grey hair was braided into a thin plait which lay over her shoulder. She clutched at the bodice of her nightgown.

‘I don’t know, but the ambulance men will take care of it. Do go back to bed, promise me!’

Damaris pushed Florence gently ahead of her as she spoke, back into her bedroom. She closed the door on her still protesting sister. She thought Florence would stay there. She had always been a biddable person.

Damaris made her way back to Jan and picked up the two halves of the telephone. It occurred to her that the receiver ought to be issuing a buzzing noise. She replaced it on the base and lifted it again but there
was still no dialling tone. Damaris looked at it perplexed. Then her gaze travelled down the cord and she saw that it was unplugged. Jan, in his fall, had disconnected the instrument. She pushed the jack back into place and to her relief, got a dialling tone at last. She dialled 999 and asked for an ambulance. She was promised one would be with her within a quarter of an hour. In the meantime, she was advised to put the patient in the recovery position.

Damaris replaced the receiver and, as the table still lay on the floor on its side, she pushed the telephone through a gap in the banisters and rested it on a stair tread. Fighting back revulsion, she forced herself to pull and push Jan’s prostrate form until she managed to get him on his side. The unaided effort left her panting and exhausted but she wouldn’t call Florence. She propped him in position with the two telephone directories and hauled herself to her feet by gripping the banister above her. For an instant she felt quite pleased with herself at having managed it but then, with dismay, saw the movement had caused more disgusting liquid to drain from his open mouth. His face had a strange lividity, bluish in tinge and mottled with brown stains. Damaris gave an exclamation of disgust and backed, stumbling, away.

The ambulance arrived soon after. The paramedics, though startled at the sight which met them, were quick, efficient and – as far as they could be – reassuring. Jan was driven away into the night.

Damaris reclimbed the stairs wearily and went to Florence’s room to tell her it was all right; Jan had been taken to hospital. More likely the hospital morgue, she thought. She didn’t doubt for a moment she’d witnessed death throes.

She told Florence she would make some tea. She didn’t really want any but felt she had to do something. On her way to the kitchen, she collected the shards of broken tumbler. She imagined Jan had gone to the kitchen to fetch water but before he could drink it, his illness had overcome him; he’d let the glass slip and stumbled towards the telephone in a vain attempt to seek help. It wouldn’t do to leave broken glass about.

The kitchen looked large, chilly and unfriendly. Damaris pulled her dressing gown more tightly about her and found a paper bag in a drawer. She wrapped the broken glass in it and put it carefully in the waste bin. Then she padded to the sink to fill the kettle.

‘How did that get there?’ she murmured to herself.

Lying in the bottom of the sink was an ordinary knife smeared with some brown sticky substance. Marmite! thought Damaris and was puzzled
that this knife could have been overlooked when she and Florence had washed up their few supper dishes.

While the kettle boiled, she fetched pan and brush and swept up any tiny remaining fragments of glass on the hall runner.

This done, she took the tea up to Florence and did her best to allay her concerns for Jan. She couldn’t dismiss the man so easily from her own mind. Leaving her sister’s room, she paused and turned her steps in the direction of the turret bedroom which had been his during his stay and to which he would almost certainly never return.

On the threshold Damaris hesitated, then walked in and looked around her. William Oakley’s painted sardonic gaze met hers. He seemed to be sneering at her in a triumphant way. Damaris felt a flush of anger. She went to the dressing table, pushed aside Jan’s hairbrush and men’s toiletries – of which he seemed to have a great many – and yanked off the embroidered cotton runner.

She took it to the portrait and with an effort, managed to throw it up and over the top edge of the frame so that it hung down, concealing the picture.

‘There,’ said Damaris with satisfaction. ‘That’s taken care of
you!
’

Stanley Huxtable met up with the Reuter’s man again on the platform at Bamford Station the next morning. Together, they pushed their way on to the crowded early Oxford train.

The short journey to the city passed without conversation. Stanley had passed a restless night and was regretting the pork pie he’d had for his supper. He was sure it had been off. Neither did the Reuter’s man seem disposed to be chatty. From time to time he belched discreetly into his spotted handkerchief.

Back in their places in the press box, however, both put aside their digestive problems and concentrated on the matter in hand. Mr Green, the plump little defence counsel, was preparing to cross-examine Mrs Martha Button.

Mrs Button took the stand with aplomb, an old hand now. Stanley wondered whether it was his imagination or if the auburn wig was tipped a little further over her forehead this morning. She certainly presented a more beetle-browed appearance than the day before. Little things like that, in Stanley’s experience, could make a lot of difference to how a jury received things.

He glanced at the defendant, William Oakley. His air was as it had been since the beginning of the trial, that of the supercilious observer of a vulgar spectacle. The blighter is confident, thought Stanley.

‘Now then, Mrs Button,’ began Mr Green cheerily, ‘are you still employed in Mr Oakley’s household?’

Mrs Button managed to look both annoyed and wronged. ‘No, sir. Mr Oakley turned me away just two weeks after the poor lady died.’

‘Oh,’ said Mr Green significantly, ‘you were dismissed. Did Mr Oakley say why?’

Mrs Button’s huffy air increased. ‘No, he didn’t. He just said I should have a month’s wages and to pack my bags. He was very nasty about it. I was surprised. I believed I’d always given satisfaction. No one had ever said so if I hadn’t!’ Mrs Button leaned over the edge of the witness
box and said hoarsely, ‘It’s my belief it was his guilty conscience. Every time he set eyes on me he was reminded of his poor dying wife.’

‘I dare say he was,’ said Mr Green. ‘But surely that signifies a natural grief, not a guilty conscience?’

‘He never grieved for her, or I never saw any sign of it!’ snapped Mrs Button. The auburn wig was now definitely working its way down her forehead. Pretty soon, Stanley decided, she’d look like a guardsman wearing a busby.

Mr Green pressed his plump paws together. ‘You know that Dr Perkins has said that when he attended the sad scene, he saw nothing which he could not explain?’

Mrs Button looked uneasy. ‘Dr Perkins hadn’t seen what I’d seen, had he? He hadn’t seen that pot and the other bits. He hadn’t smelled that nasty smell.’

She had walked nicely into Mr Green’s lair. ‘Ah, yes,’ he purred. ‘The pot, metal rods and garlic odour. You didn’t mention those things at the time of the inquest, Mrs Button.’

Mrs Button looked confused and for once had no ready reply.

The judge ordered, ‘The witness must answer.’

Mrs Button rallied. ‘I was in a state of shock myself. I’d seen a horrible sight, hadn’t I? My wits was all over the place. It wasn’t till later I got to thinking and remembering.’

Mr Green pounced. ‘Yes, very much later. Not until you had been dismissed from Mr Oakley’s employment! Only then did you go to Mrs Oakley’s parents and make these allegations concerning a garlic odour noticed by no one but you and some debris which you alone saw.’

The witness began to look tearful. ‘I did see it, sir.’

‘But you said nothing about it,’ insisted Mr Green. ‘I put it to you, Mrs Button, that you were resentful at being dismissed and went to Mrs Oakley’s parents to vent your spite against your former employer by making entirely false allegations.’

The tears vanished before Mrs Button’s anger. ‘That’s not true! I’m an honest woman, as anyone will tell you. I’ve stood here and sworn to tell the truth!’

‘Indeed you are upon oath, Mrs Button,’ riposted Mr Green. ‘I put it to you again, you waited an inexplicable two weeks before making these unsubstantiated claims.’

‘I don’t know what that word means,’ said the witness sullenly.

‘Unsubstantiated? It means no other person than yourself has claimed to have witnessed these things or been able to show that they existed.’

‘How can there be another witness if I was the only one there?’ burst out the goaded Mrs Button, her wig now slipping to one side. At least one juror, a younger one, had noticed and was hiding a grin.