Shades of Murder (33 page)

‘Look here,’ she said more forcefully, ‘it’s no use letting it blight your life!’ (And mine!) ‘You can’t do anything about it and you’re just going to have to put up with it. It isn’t the end of the world, for goodness sake.’

He leaned towards her, chin jutting, eyes a-gleam with outrage. ‘It’s an insult to my officers. The last thing we need is advice from the Met.
You’ve seen Minchin and Hayes. Talk about fish out of water. But I’ve got Dave Pearce in there keeping an eye on things and reporting back to me. If Minchin thinks he’s going to conduct a Met-style operation in Bamford, he’s got another think coming. We don’t conduct investigations here by hanging round seedy pubs talking to dubious grasses.’ Markby ignored the fact that Minchin’s visit to The Feathers had yielded more than Pearce’s earlier one had done. He concluded his highly unfair description of Metropolitan Police methods with, ‘And tomorrow morning he wants to call round and talk to you.’

‘What, here?’ Meredith was taken aback.

‘I warned you he’d want to talk to you.’ Was she imagining it or did he sound distinctly smug? ‘It’s either here or you can come in and have a heart-to-heart with him in the interview room.’

‘So you suggested he came here?’

‘No, as a matter of fact, he suggested he came here. You’d prefer it, wouldn’t you?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Meredith. ‘I talked to Jan here and look what happened.’

‘Just don’t serve Minchin any of your chocolate cakes. All right!’ Markby held up placatory hands. ‘It was a joke.’

‘Glad to see you’ve still got your sense of humour!’ she retorted.

The doorbell rang the following morning at ten-thirty sharp. Meredith opened it. On the doorstep stood a hulking figure in a pale-grey suit teamed today with a lime-green shirt and yellow tie with squiggles on it. ‘Doug Minchin, you remember me?’ His tone was affable but his small sharp eyes as cold as ever.

‘Of course I remember you,’ said Meredith. ‘How could I forget? Come in.’ She peered past him. ‘No Inspector Hayes?’

Minchin manoeuvred his bulk into the hall. ‘He’s checking out a few things for me.’ As he spoke, he was looking around him in frank appraisal.

Jan had done the same thing but somehow, Meredith minded more this time. Alan was not much concerned about the appearance of his home. For him it had always been a place where he kept his belongings and slept. Since she’d moved in she’d made minor improvements but the whole place still looked as if it had been furnished by the Salvation Army. Jan’s opinion hadn’t mattered, but Minchin’s did. It was bad enough that Alan felt displaced by Minchin, without Minchin going away and telling everyone in London that she and Alan lived in a rundown house with rundown furnishings and an I-don’t-care look to it.

‘Are you comfortable in my cottage?’ she asked with some asperity.

‘Very nice,’ said Minchin. He sat down uninvited in the stronger-looking of the two mismatched easy chairs.

‘We’re planning to sell both houses, mine and this one, and buy a bigger place.’ Meredith found herself speaking defensively.

‘How are property prices?’ asked Minchin unexpectedly.

‘Around here? Quite high. That is, for anywhere decent.’

‘A place like Fourways, then, where the murder took place, that would fetch a good price?’

Meredith eyed Minchin with greater respect. This wasn’t a man who wasted time on idle conversation. ‘Fourways is in a dreadful state and it probably wouldn’t attract anyone.’ She hesitated. ‘A local builder, Dudley Newman, is interested in the land. He wants to build several houses on it.’

Minchin leaned back, pursed his thin lips and said, ‘Yeah, I’ve heard about him.’ He glanced round the room. ‘This where you and Jan Oakley had your tea-party?’

‘Yes,’ said Meredith, ‘though I’d hardly call it that. It wasn’t my idea. I invited him just to help out.’

‘Whose idea was it?’ Minchin turned his hard gaze on her.

Uncomfortably, she said, ‘Juliet Painter’s. She thought I might be able to influence him. She only thought that,’ Meredith added hastily, ‘because I’m a Foreign Office official.’

‘Are you, indeed?’ said Minchin deflatingly. ‘And was he influenced by you?’

‘Not a bit,’ she said, trying to ignore the sarcasm in his voice. ‘I suggested to him that his cousins were poor and that to try and get money from them was unfair. He said he’d no intention of doing any such thing. I’m not quoting exactly but that was the gist of it.’

‘I’ve read the file,’ said Minchin. ‘I sat up till one this morning studying it, in fact. It seems he was very keen to get his hands on a share of any money from the sale of the house. He was talking legal action. Some story about a will.’

‘None of us has seen this will,’ Meredith said. ‘Or at least, not the copy of the original made at the time it was drawn up and which Jan reckons he found among the family papers. Some people have seen what he claimed was a certified translation. I didn’t even see that.’

‘Probably the so-called original doesn’t exist.’ Minchin’s voice was off-hand. ‘The thing is, he came here and he told you he’d changed his mind. Did you believe him?’

‘No,’ she said frankly. ‘But once he’d said it, it left me nothing more to say to him. I told you, he wasn’t influenced by me. He outmanoeuvred me.’

Minchin rubbed his chin with his thumbnail. ‘Did you like him?’

‘No,’ said Meredith forcefully. ‘No one did. He was a creep.’

Minchin stared at her. ‘Let his hand wander to your knee, by any chance?’

Aware that her face gave her away, Meredith was forced to admit, ‘He got the wrong idea and I told him to go. He went.’

If Minchin dared to make one even faintly facetious remark . . . but he didn’t.

‘This Jan didn’t make himself any friends. Bet you a pound to a penny he was as much a loner at home in Poland as he was here. You never know with loners.’ Minchin’s tone had become reminiscent. ‘They tend to have hobbies and I don’t just mean stamp-collecting. They often see themselves as rejected by the world, so the world is wrong. Sometimes they get the idea to put it right in a big way, all by themselves. All of them, or nearly all, believe they’re entitled to something better. Sometimes they get the notion that this “something better” is out there, almost within reach, but they’re stopped from getting their hands on it by a conspiracy of other people. See what I’m getting at?’

‘Yes, I do,’ said Meredith.

‘We had a fax from the Polish Embassy this morning. He’s got no police record. Seems he spent a blameless life grooming horses down on some stud farm.’

‘Grooming? He told me he was a vet.’

‘Well, he would, wouldn’t he?’ returned Minchin.

Meredith reflected. ‘Alan said much the same. He thought Jan was lying about his job, but had done it to impress me, the idiot!’ She tucked a loose swathe of brown hair behind one ear. ‘But it ties in with what you were saying. You’re suggesting Jan felt under-valued. He thought he ought to be more important, ought to be doing something more distinguished than clean up after horses. When he found out about the English branch of the family, he thought his chance had come.’

‘Perhaps it had,’ said Minchin. ‘Perhaps it had come. Opportunity knocks only once. It had knocked for our boy Jan.’

Meredith didn’t quite know how to respond. She was getting the impression that Minchin had formed some theory and wondered if he was about to divulge it. But was Minchin really taking her into his confidence? Or simply, by a show of doing so, inviting confidences from
her? She decided on the latter. He was a skilled interviewer and had been neatly leading her along the road he wanted to travel. Not so easily, Superintendent Minchin!

‘We don’t know what Jan thought and we’ll never know,’ she said firmly.

She suspected Minchin knew she’d guessed his purpose and had headed him off. He said nothing for a moment, then leaned back and laced his thick fingers. ‘You don’t like me and Mickey Hayes being here.’

He’d caught her off-guard. She felt her face burn. ‘Alan could have run this show perfectly well.’

‘Of course he could. But no officer, no matter how senior or how reliable, should ever be put in a position where personal involvement can cause a conflict of interests – not if it can be avoided. There was a time, you know, when the police force used to move coppers out of their home areas, just to avoid that sort of thing.’

There was a prolonged ring on the doorbell. Meredith leapt up. ‘Excuse me a minute!’ She hurried out of the room, grateful for the diversion.

She wasn’t prepared, however, to find Juliet Painter on the doorstep.

‘Meredith!’ declared Juliet, hurtling past her uninvited. ‘I telephoned Fourways early to see how Damaris and Florence were this morning and do you know? That dreadful Minchin and the unspeakable Hayes have already been out there sneaking round the grounds and prying in the outbuildings—’

‘Mr Minchin,’ said Meredith loudly, ‘is here at the moment.’ She pointed in the direction of the sitting room.

They stared at one another. ‘Damn!’ said Juliet. Both knew there was no way Minchin hadn’t overheard. Juliet grasped the nettle. She walked into the sitting room spine ramrod straight, long braid of hair swinging, eyes sparkling behind her spectacle lenses.

‘Good morning, Miss Painter,’ said Minchin, stony-faced. ‘I was hoping to call on you today sometime. Your sister-in-law, too.’

‘Why were you creeping around Fourways’ garden without telling the owners you were there?’ demanded Juliet, standing over him, arms akimbo. ‘You should have called at the house first. You frightened Damaris. Ron had gone home and she didn’t know who was in the stables.’

It seemed to Meredith she caught the merest flash of amusement in Minchin’s eyes. She hoped Juliet hadn’t seen it. Then, looking at the man again, she decided she must have been mistaken. Minchin took
himself seriously. He was probably one of the last of the old-style male chauvinists still lurking in the police force. He wouldn’t find it entertaining to be harangued by Juliet.

‘I think Miss Oakley coped pretty well,’ he said. ‘I’ll be calling on her again, too, and her sister.’

Juliet sat down in Meredith’s vacated chair. ‘Look,’ she said to Minchin, ignoring Meredith’s telegraphed warnings, ‘they’re very frail. I don’t want them badgered. Even before this happened it was a stressful time for them. I mean, selling up their family home and having to move into a flat. I wish I could get you to understand that!’ she concluded in exasperation.

‘Now then,’ said Minchin, jabbing a finger in her direction. ‘As it happens, Miss Painter, I do understand that. I had the selfsame problem with my old mother.’

‘Oh?’ Juliet was momentarily taken aback. ‘Well, then, you should know that they need to be treated with every consideration.’

‘You leave that to me,’ said Minchin disagreeably. ‘You stick to being their estate agent.’

‘I am
not
an estate agent!’ Juliet’s combative manner returned. ‘I’ve told you, I’m a property consultant.’

‘Fancy name for it, I suppose,’ said Minchin. ‘They’ll be having university degrees in it next.’

‘As it happens,’ snapped Juliet, ‘I do have a degree and it’s in Law.’

‘Well, well,’ returned Minchin with heavy humour. ‘I shall have to watch my ps and qs!’ He lumbered to his feet. ‘I’ll leave you girls for the time being. Thank you for giving me your time, Miss Mitchell.’

‘It’s all right if I go back to work tomorrow? You won’t want to see me again?’ she asked.

‘Oh, I know where to find you,’ said Minchin. He turned to Juliet. ‘I’ll pop over and see you and Mrs Pamela Painter this afternoon, if that’s all right, Miss Painter? I understand you’re staying at your brother’s home? I’d like a chance to talk to him, as well, seeing as he’s the poisons expert. But I can catch him at his place of work.’ Minchin glanced at his wristwatch. ‘Might nip over there now.’

‘He is an infuriating man,’ declared Juliet, when Minchin had left. She sighed and added more soberly, ‘I didn’t handle that very well, did I?’

‘Shouldn’t let it worry you,’ advised Meredith.

‘Poor Alan, fancy having that man foisted on him. Was he unpleasant when you were here with him alone?’

‘Unpleasant? No, but it was a bit nerve-wracking. You’ll need your wits about you when he comes to talk to you and Pam.’

‘It must be bad enough to have to sit and look at that shirt,’ said Juliet unkindly. ‘It was awful. He must be colour-blind. Do you think he’s got a wife? Look, if you’re free now, can you come with me to see Damaris and Florence? They need support.’

‘You just missed Inspector Hayes,’ said Damaris to Meredith and Juliet. ‘What a pity. Still, I can’t say Florence and I weren’t heartily glad to see him leave.’

‘Hayes was here?’ Meredith exclaimed. ‘Minchin didn’t say anything about that when he was at my place.’ She frowned. ‘I wonder why Minchin took me and sent Hayes to tackle you.’

‘I imagine,’ said Damaris, ‘because he thought Inspector Hayes would unsettle us.’

Juliet asked indignantly, ‘Did he try and bully you? If he did, I’m taking this to the police complaints’ committee.’

‘Oh, no, my dear. To be fair to the man, he was polite enough in an off-hand sort of way,’ Damaris told her. ‘When I said unsettle us, I mean that Mr Minchin rightly divined that we’d never dealt with anyone like Inspector Hayes. I suppose it was quite shrewd of him to send him, really.’ Damaris reflected. ‘I think he must be a heavy smoker, his fingers are badly stained, but he didn’t ask if he might smoke in here.’

‘He lit a cigarette as soon as he got outside,’ said Florence. ‘I saw him through the window. Ron Gladstone said he left cigarette ends all over the floor of the old tackroom. Ron was very annoyed.’

It was chilly in this room. Meredith glanced at the unlit gasfire. Damaris noticed and asked, ‘Would you like it on?’

Meredith shook her head and assured her it wasn’t necessary on her account.

Juliet, slumped back in her chair, arms folded and a frown on her face, was unaware of physical circumstances. She was lost in her thoughts. She roused herself enough to ask, ‘Sorry? Missed that.’

‘I asked, Juliet dear, whether you were cold. Meredith says she’s all right but I can light the fire. Florence and I don’t notice it. We’re used to it. I mean, we’re accustomed to a low level of heating. The house has always been cold. When we were children, the water used to freeze in the basin in the nursery. We had to crack the ice on the surface before we could wash.’