Shades of Murder (21 page)

‘I’m glad you went out, my dear,’ he said. ‘You should have the exercise.’

They’d reached the pudding, a splendid creation, light as a feather and stuffed with currants. Emily placed it on the table with pride. Wood beamed at it and reached for the treacle.

‘I hoped it would make you feel better,’ said Emily. ‘You’ve been working too hard.’

‘And so it does. It’d make a dying man sit up and think twice about shuffling off the mortal coil. There is nothing,’ said Wood, tipping treacle generously over the double helping of pudding she’d served him, ‘like a steamed pudding for putting the world to rights.’

Emily said calmly, ‘I thought I might go to the courthouse on Monday.’

Wood was dumbfounded. He sat back, resting the handle of his spoon on the tablecloth. ‘Travel to Oxford, my dear?’ It was unheard of. ‘How? Alone?’

‘I’ve spoken to Mrs Holdsworth. She would like to go as well and would accompany me. You wouldn’t object? I think I might like the train journey. We could sit in the public area, could we not?’

‘Yes, yes, of course you could, my dear.’ Mrs Holdsworth was their next-door neighbour, a bustling practical widow who took a motherly interest in Emily and an interest of quite another type in Wood himself. He had become adept at fending off Mrs Holdsworth.

‘But . . .’ Wood floundered. He had longed to hear her say she would enlarge her world, go out somewhere away from these few streets around the house. But to the Oakley trial?

He fell back on saying pettishly, ‘I didn’t know Mrs Holdsworth had an interest in notorious cases.’

Looking down at her plate, Emily said quietly, ‘Whatever her reason, on my part it isn’t vulgar curiosity. It’s something else which I can’t explain. I want to see him. I want to see William Oakley.’

The pudding had lost its savour. Was Oakley’s fascination so great that even at a distance, at second-hand, Emily felt its lure?

‘You may find some of the testimony distressing. It’s all very unpleasant, you know.’ Wood was silently damning Mrs Holdsworth.
He was sure this idea had originated with her.

‘Shall I hear something you haven’t already told me?’

He was caught.

‘Very well,’ Wood said heavily. ‘Then go, by all means.’

Most people have mixed feelings about Monday mornings. Usually Meredith didn’t mind the weekly return to work, but that had changed since Monday meant sharing the working day with Adrian. It didn’t help that he was looking especially pleased with himself this particular Monday. She couldn’t help but be reminded of Jan’s misplaced confidence in his own charm. Adrian was even, in a patronising sort of way, polite. He may have hoped Meredith would enquire what had put him in such a good mood but she wasn’t going to oblige him with her curiosity. She did her best to ignore him but it was difficult. His indigo-shirted presence at the far end of the room was like an ever-present duenna: she couldn’t do a thing but he knew about it. She could feel her stress levels rising. Just after twelve, as she was debating whether to take her lunch break early, her phone rang.

‘Meredith? Alan here.’

‘Oh, Alan!’ She greeted him with relief, but then it struck her that his voice was as tense as she felt. Her heart sank. She cut short her greeting to ask, ‘Is something wrong?’

Adrian began an elaborate pantomime of paper-shifting which was meant to convey to her that he wasn’t listening. Marcel Marceau would have looked more natural.

Quietly, in her ear, Alan’s voice said, ‘This is just a quick call to give you some news you won’t be expecting. I’m afraid it’s not good.’ A moment’s pause. ‘Jan Oakley’s dead.’

‘Dead?’ Meredith exclaimed. Adrian’s head shot up. ‘But – but he can’t be!’ She stared at the receiver in her hand in disbelief. An image of Jan appeared before her mental gaze, as she’d last seen him. His curved lips twisted in a sneer and his dark eyes glowing with spite as rejected, he’d taken his leave of her. What could possibly have happened to the man? It had to be a mistake.

‘Unfortunately he can be and is. I’ll tell you more about it this evening. In the meantime, should Juliet Painter get in touch with you, fend her
off. She may want to meet you and talk about it – if she’s heard, and I dare say she has, as Geoff’s involved with the postmortem tests. I don’t think it would be a good idea for you to be talking it over with her today, not until we know a bit more.’

‘How is Geoff involved?’ Meredith managed to ask in a reasonably normal voice. She’d turned her back on Adrian but was unhappily aware of him hanging on to her every word.

‘It looks like poison.’

This was a nightmare. Meredith swallowed but her throat was dry and the veneer of normality had left her voice. She could hear herself croaking. ‘You know he came to tea on Saturday. I made some cake.’

‘Doubt it was your cooking,’ Alan consoled her. ‘We’ll talk it over tonight.’

Meredith put down the phone and turned back to find Adrian had left his desk and was hovering over hers.

‘Bad news?’ he enquired, a gleam in his eyes.

‘Bit of a surprise, but nothing to worry about,’ she said briskly.

‘Family?’ Adrian’s pink face expressed only decent commiseration but the air around him shimmered with excitement.

‘No, nothing like that. It’s all right, Adrian. Nothing for you to bother yourself about.’ Meredith picked up her bag. I’m going to lunch.’ She left him staring discontentedly after her.

The canteen was by no means full. Meredith looked around and spotted a familiar face from the consular department. She carried her tray to that table and asked, ‘May I join you?’

‘Sure,’ said the solitary diner already there. He pointed at the facing empty chair with his knife. ‘Park yourself down.’

Meredith settled herself and cut into her poached eggs on toast. ‘Mike, you’re on the East European desk, aren’t you? You deal with Poland. I wonder if you’d check something out for me?’

‘No problem. What is it?’ Mike continued munching as he spoke.

‘I would like to know what, if anything, our embassy in Warsaw has on Jan Oakley, spelled O-A-K-L-E-Y. He’s a Polish citizen of British descent.’

‘I’ll check it out after lunch. What’s your interest?’

‘I – I met him in Bamford. I’m curious about him.’

Mike held her gaze. ‘Just curious? Or do you think he’s dodgy?’

‘Whatever he was, it’s in the past. He’s dead.’

‘Blimey, not another of your murders?’ Mike managed to combine amazement with a good deal of curiosity of his own.

‘You don’t have to make me sound like a serial killer. I just happen to get involved in these things because – Look, I don’t know whether he was murdered or not, and that’s the truth. He’s only just died. What I do want is to be forearmed or forewarned, I’m not sure which. I don’t like nasty surprises and I’ve just had one.’

Mike grunted. ‘Talking of which, how’re you getting along with that chap in your office?’ When she admitted, not very well, he went on, ‘I was talking to someone who knew him a couple of years ago in the Middle East. He didn’t endear himself to his colleagues. You want to watch yourself. Word has it, he’s not a man to confide in.’

‘Believe me, Mike, I’m not likely to!’ was her heartfelt reply.

‘He’s been asking around about you, you know.’

‘What?
I didn’t know.’

‘He’s heard about your Sherlockian escapades. If you’re about to get involved in anything else, for God’s sake, don’t let him know.’

Juliet rang, as Alan had suggested she might, early in the afternoon. She suggested they meet after work for a drink and to talk over the news.

‘I really have to get off home,’ Meredith told her. ‘Can’t we make it another day?’

‘Jan’s dead now, today!’ snapped Juliet. ‘We’ve got to get it sorted out fast. Can you imagine what this is doing to Damaris and Florence?’

‘It’s a police matter.’ Meredith took refuge in procedure. ‘They’ll want to interview us all and I don’t think we ought to be discussing it ahead of that.’

‘Rubbish. This is exactly the moment we ought to be discussing it. Look, I’m only asking you to find half an hour. Has someone told you not to talk about it? Was it Alan? He can give orders to his underlings but he can’t give them to civilians. You’re perfectly free to talk to me.’

The suggestion that she might be thought to be taking orders nettled Meredith. Half an hour couldn’t hurt; she’d watch her words. ‘There’s a pub near the station – The Duke of Wellington. I’ll see you there.’

‘What’s going on, then?’ Adrian’s voice came from the other desk as she put down the phone. ‘Got mixed up in something nasty?’

She froze him out with a look but it was going to take more than that to keep his nose out of her business.

Unfortunately, just as she was packing up to leave later that afternoon, Mike appeared in the doorway. Even more unfortunately, Adrian was at a filing cabinet behind the opened door so Mike couldn’t see him.

This chap Oakley you were asking about . . .’ Mike began.

Damn! though Meredith. I should’ve warned Mike to let me know privately. She jumped up to push him back out into the corridor but wasn’t quick enough.

‘About eighteen months ago he made enquiries about getting himself a British passport, but it turned out he wasn’t eligible. Then he came in with some story about a will and a fortune which would be his if he went to England and claimed it. He was told to go and get himself a lawyer. The impression he gave was that he had a few screws loose. That the sort of thing you wanted to know?’

‘Thanks, Mike. Just my personal curiosity, you know.’ She rolled her eyes towards the unseen Adrian. Mike looked contrite and mimed, ‘Sorry!’

‘Who’s Oakley?’ Adrian emerged from concealment the moment Mike had left.

‘Nobody important. Adrian, do you think you could possibly mind your own business?’

He gave her a look which was surprisingly vicious. ‘Not pulling chestnuts out of the fire for that copper boyfriend of yours, I hope?’

The malice in his voice rang a dozen warning bells, but Meredith managed to fake reasonable surprise. ‘Good Lord, no!’

His mouth twisted unpleasantly and just for a moment, he really did look extraordinarily like the late Jan Oakley.

Juliet was at the pub ahead of her, sipping gin and tonic in a corner. A city type leaning on the bar was watching her, clearly planning his move. When he saw Meredith coming in to join Juliet, however, he changed his mind and turned his attention to the barmaid. Meredith dumped her briefcase on the mock leather-covered banquette and at the same time managed to set down a glass of white wine without spilling it. The minor achievement pleased her. She took a seat.

‘I’m here, as requested. But you probably know more about all this than I do, Juliet. All I know is he’s dead, suspected poisoning.’

The pub was filling up with people stopping off for a quick half pint before setting off home. At least, with so many talking all at once, no one could eavesdrop on their conversation here.

‘Have the police found that will of William Oakley’s?’ Juliet demanded.

‘How should I know?’ Alan had been right. This meeting wasn’t a good idea. People always imagined Meredith had as much information as the police had. What’s more, they were always sure they could persuade
her to divulge it. No one ever wanted to believe she didn’t know and wouldn’t tell if she did.

Juliet was tapping her magenta nails impatiently on the table top. ‘Perhaps it doesn’t exist. Perhaps it never did. Perhaps the whole thing was an elaborate scam.’ She sounded hopeful. ‘Anyone could see he was a crook. You do agree with that, don’t you?’

Meredith bit her lip. If Mike was right in his information, Jan had claimed the existence of William Oakley’s Polish last will and testament long before he arrived in England. That might, of course, have been part of his plans.

Nevertheless, she eyed Juliet with some curiosity. ‘You’ve not seen it?’

Juliet shook her head. ‘Not the original. He showed us something he claimed was a certified translation. Laura took a copy of it but said without the original to check it against, we couldn’t be sure of it. I asked Jan to produce the original of course, but he said it was in Poland with his lawyers. If you ask me, he was either frightened to let it out of his hands or he didn’t want anyone here looking too closely at it. Always supposing there is an original. He insisted he would produce it when the time came – his words.’ She stopped the irritating rat-tat of nail on wood and said abruptly, ‘He was murdered. No one’s said so, no one’s used that word yet – but he was, you’ll see.’

Meredith said cautiously, ‘If he was murdered because of that will, then it really doesn’t matter whether it exists or not. It’s enough that someone believed it to exist.’

‘You mean Damaris, Florence and me, don’t you? We’re the ones involved with the sale of Fourways. Well, I didn’t poison the little rat and I’m as sure as I can be of anything in this world that neither of the Oakley sisters did!’

‘It needn’t involve the will at all,’ Meredith pointed out. ‘We don’t know what else Jan was involved in.’

‘I’m prepared to believe he was up to his neck in skulduggery,’ was Juliet’s reply. ‘But how do we find out? For all we know, he’s been rubbed out by the Mafia.’

‘I imagine they shoot people. More direct than poison and you get an instant result. I wonder what he was poisoned with?’ Meredith mused.

‘And how someone slipped it to him. Geoff’s working on it at his lab.’

It was ridiculous to feel so guilty about the cake. She’d eaten some. She hadn’t even felt sick. Meredith picked up her briefcase. ‘I really do
have to go or I won’t get a seat on the train.’ She stared into middle distance, for a moment reminiscent. ‘That’s where I met Jan, on the train. I can’t help but feel a bit sorry for him now when I think about him. He was so – so happy to be here and to see the house.’

‘How can you be sorry for someone who not only caused trouble when he was alive, but who’s causing even more now he’s dead? You will tell me if Alan comes up with anything?’

‘If you want to know what progress the police are making, read the newspapers or ask Alan yourself,’ Meredith told her.