Shades of Murder (35 page)

Father Holland heaved a sigh. ‘Inwardly? They’re devastated.
Outwardly, they’re coping well. They’ve had years of training in adversity of one sort and another. They’re the sort who, a hundred years ago, made cracking good missionaries. You know, getting themselves paddled up the Limpopo in a canoe, parasol in one hand and Bible in the other, scorning wild animals, disease, heat and hostile locals. All the same, it hardly seems fair that they should have been landed with this.’

‘They’ve had training in dealing with disaster, all right,’ said Markby. ‘I’m not just talking about the legacy of Cora Oakley’s death. There was the loss of their brother. There were the years of dealing with an irascible old invalid of a father. Edward Oakley was an unhappy man. His son, Arthur, had been his pride and joy. His daughters were no substitute. Then he became wheelchair-bound and suffered a lot of pain from arthritis. He died of an overdose, you know.’

James Holland was so startled, he dropped a spanner which hit part of his cherished bike with a clunk. He was distracted momentarily to check that no damage had been done before replying.

‘I didn’t know,’ he said. ‘How did it happen?’

‘Secrets,’ said Markby. He took a seat on a nearby garden bench and stretched out his legs. The sun was warm on his face and in this time-locked wilderness it would be easy to forget the world outside and its troubles. ‘That whole generation,’ he observed, ‘knows how to keep its secrets. Not like our modern age with its chat-shows full of people telling the world about their most intimate problems.’

A blackbird flew out of the foliage overhead and landed a short distance away, uttering short clucks of unease.

‘The fledglings are hidden somewhere,’ said the vicar. ‘A second brood. They flew the nest about a week ago but the parent bird isn’t yet ready to bring them out into the open. Natures keeps its secrets, too.’

Markby nodded but pursued his theme, undeflected. ‘Mrs Harmer hides her age and her wine-making. Other old folk hide the truth about runaway wives or husbands, illegitimacy, disreputable occupations – anything, really, that they deem not to be respectable. The Oakley women never speak of Cora and William. Or never did until now, when they’ve been forced to. In the same way they never speak of their father’s fatal overdose. It was suicide, of course. He was on all kinds of medication including sleeping pills. His daughters kept the medicines and doled out his ration of pills every day and in the case of the sleeping pills, every night. They were a conscientious pair of nurses but he outwitted them. He pretended to take the sleeping pills but hoarded them away until he had enough. That evening, before he went to bed, he had a couple of
glasses of whisky which was unusual. He wasn’t a drinker. He probably wanted to help the pills along. He went to sleep and never awoke.

‘The doctor was at first inclined to write out a death certificate as due to natural causes. The old gentleman was, after all, in his mid-eighties. But at the last minute, he changed his mind because he was interested to know the actual cause of the old man’s demise. He’d always considered the old chap’s heart and lungs to be sound. His appetite was good. The arthritis in itself wouldn’t have killed him. Postmortem turned up the presence of the overdose. The doctor then recalled that on various occasions, Mr Oakley had expressed the wish to die since life no longer held anything for him. The whole thing was dealt with, with as little fuss as possible. The poor old fellow had chosen the time of his own exit from the stage. Nevertheless, his daughters took it badly. Suicide is something they’d consider a sin. Perhaps they thought it implied that everything they’d done for him had been as nothing, their love and devotion were rejected and scorned. Possibly, even worse, to them it represented throwing in the towel. Giving up. Trying to explain to them about depression would have been a complete waste of time.’

‘Hm,’ said James Holland. ‘We can only hope that this present business is cleared up soon. Damaris and Florence have certainly suffered more than enough.’ After a moment, he asked, ‘Have you told Minchin about the old man’s suicide?’

‘No,’ Markby said. ‘It must have been twenty-five years ago or more. As you say, they’ve suffered enough without raking that up.’ He saw James Holland’s gaze fixed on him.

‘Why,’ the vicar asked quietly, ‘have you chosen to tell me?’

Markby got to his feet and dusted off his trousers. ‘You visit the sisters. I thought you might be interested. When you go next, please give them my very best regards and explain, would you, why I can’t come in person just yet? I’ll see you again soon, no doubt.’

He nodded his farewell and walked quickly out of the garden. The vicar, thoughtful, watched him go.

Later that sunny spring afternoon, as promised, Superintendent Minchin appeared at the Painters’ home. He was ushered inside briskly by Pam and directed to an armchair. Opposite him, Pam Painter and Juliet took up positions on the sofa so that they presented a united front. If this deterred Minchin, he certainly didn’t show it.

‘This has been a disgraceful business from start to finish,’ Pam began in her forthright way. ‘And I’m glad to have the chance to tell you so.’

‘Murder usually is,’ said Minchin.

The wind temporarily taken from her sails, Pam glared at him. Juliet, however, took up the attack.

‘Why are you wasting your time talking to us? You should be out there,’ she flung a pointing hand at the window, ‘finding out who
killed
him, for goodness sake.
We
didn’t!’

‘Mrs Painter.’ Minchin ignored Juliet to her manifest annoyance, and concentrated his attention on Pam. ‘I understand you went to Fourways to speak to Jan Oakley.’

‘Yes, I did, but I didn’t find him,’ Pam retorted. ‘And before you ask, I’m very sorry I didn’t find him because I’d have sent him on his way with a flea in his ear! Attempting to bamboozle and manipulate those two old women, it was disgraceful. That’s what I meant just now.’

‘I see,’ said Minchin. ‘You don’t think
his
murder is disgraceful?’

‘Of course it is!’ Pam could barely contain herself. ‘I’m not going to argue for anyone breaking the law. I’m on the police committee. I organised a Neighbourhood Watch scheme when we moved in here. But because someone’s murdered it doesn’t mean he’s an innocent victim. Jan Oakley wasn’t innocent, Superintendent. He was a crook.’

‘And don’t say there wasn’t any evidence of that,’ added Juliet, ‘because his entire behaviour while he was here – even his coming here in the first place – pointed to it.’

‘He had no police record in Poland,’ Minchin said.

Juliet leaned forward. ‘Because he hadn’t got the opportunity in Poland he’d got here! As soon as he saw Fourways, he must have thought his boat had come in! Meredith took him there on his arrival and she said his eyes shone, really shone.’

‘All right, then,’ said Minchin equably, ‘so he was a nasty little twister intent on conning money out of a pair of old women. But someone killed him.’

‘Damaris and Florence didn’t,’ Juliet said promptly. ‘I didn’t, nor did Pam as we’ve just said. You can’t suspect poor Ron Gladstone – he’s in a terrible state over it. If you ask me, it has got something to do with Poland. You’ll probably find he was into drug smuggling or even something to do with those horses.’

‘Which horses?’ asked Minchin, startled.

‘He worked on a stud farm, didn’t he? Poland exports horses, top quality stock. There’s a lot of money in the bloodstock trade. He could have been part of some syndicate working some kind of fiddle.’

‘Evidence,’ said Minchin bleakly.

Juliet struck her knees with her clenched fists. ‘I haven’t got any evidence, of course I haven’t! That’s
your
job – finding evidence. All I want you to do is show some kind of lateral thinking. Instead, you seem to be completely tunnel-visioned. You just see the Oakleys and those of us who are their friends. It seems quite clear to me you should be looking elsewhere.’

‘It’s quite clear to me you’d like me to look elsewhere,’ said Minchin.

Pam drew in a sharp breath. ‘I don’t like the implication of that, Superintendent. We’re trying to help you.’

Minchin rolled his eyes. ‘When you went to Fourways to find Oakley, did you look round the place for him, once you’d established he wasn’t in the house?’

‘If you mean, did I look round the garden, yes, I did. I didn’t go to the house. I wanted to get him on his own, you see. But I didn’t get him at all. I eventually found Ron Gladstone.’

‘And while looking around the garden, did you check out the stone potting shed?’

‘Oh, I see,’ said Pam. She was silent for a second or two. ‘I didn’t check it out thoroughly. I looked through the door but no one was there.’

‘Hey!’ exclaimed Juliet. ‘Are you accusing Pam of taking the arsenic?’

Minchin held up a broad hand as if he was stopping traffic. Juliet bit her lip, fuming. ‘Did the interior of the potting shed look tidy?’ he asked Pam.

She looked puzzled. ‘I can’t remember. I wasn’t worrying about how tidy it was, only whether Jan was in there, and he wasn’t. There was a lot of stuff lying around, some of it antique.’

‘And how long did it look as if it had been lying there? For years, undisturbed?’

Pam frowned and then brightened. ‘As a matter of fact, it looked as if someone had moved some stuff in one corner quite recently. There were fresh-looking scrape marks on the earth floor – and there was a box pulled out as if someone had wanted to stand on it to reach a shelf—’ She broke off in dismay and put her hand to her mouth.

‘Because, you see,’ said Minchin patiently, ‘I’m trying to find out when the arsenic was taken. If someone had been in that shed, hunting among things on the shelf, before you looked in there, then it could have been taken very early on. You went out there to find Oakley as soon as you heard about his arrival, right? So someone began to make his or her plans almost at once.’

He had succeeded in silencing his companions for the moment. He
watched them as they digested the idea. Suddenly he struck the arms of his chair with the flat of his hands. ‘Right, ladies. I don’t think there’s anything more to be gained by my sitting here.’ In a bewildering change of subject, he added, ‘These houses of yours are new. Built on farmland, were they?’

Cautiously, Pam said, ‘Yes, they were as it happens.’

‘Local estate agents must have been pleased.’ He glanced at Juliet.

‘I wouldn’t know,’ she said through gritted teeth. ‘I’m not an estate agent.’

‘I see there’s still a bit of woodland beyond the estate.’ Minchin nodded vaguely in the direction.

‘Oh that,’ Pam said. ‘That’s Bailey’s Coppice. It’s privately owned but there is access for walkers. We get quite a few bird-watchers and nature-lovers down there.’

‘Then perhaps I shouldn’t miss the chance to take a look at it,’ said Minchin. He turned his gaze on Juliet. ‘Would you come with me and show me where this access is, Miss Painter?’

Startled, Juliet and Pam exchanged glances. ‘Well,’ Juliet said after a moment, ‘I suppose so. I’ll fetch my wellies. It might be a bit damp underfoot.’

Bailey’s Coppice was cool, dark and mysterious. There was no sign of either bird-watchers or nature enthusiasts when Minchin and Juliet reached the wooden stile set in the drystone walls surrounding the woodland. Beyond it a narrow beaten path twisted its way between tangled undergrowth and spindly native woodland jostling for space.

‘It looks,’ said Minchin, ‘as though some people can’t be bothered with the stile here.’ He pointed to where an area of surrounding wall had collapsed.

‘You mean the damage done to the wall? That’s more likely people after the stone than ramblers or twitchers. Our local stone is expensive to buy now and quarrying is restricted. So if people, generally townies, want a bit of Cotswold stone to make a rockery or a nice little garden wall, they think nothing of coming out and pinching it. The sad thing is, they’re probably respectable people who don’t think of it as stealing. Because the stone is local and this is the countryside they seem to assume it’s in the public domain. If they see a little bit of wall that’s in poor repair, they think, Oh, it’s abandoned, no one wants it. So they help themselves to a few stones. Or they take one or two from the top and think it doesn’t matter. But of course it matters. Because then more of the wall crumbles and when the owner gets round to repairing it, the
stones aren’t there and instead of a small gap he’s faced with a gaping great hole.’

Juliet had clambered over the stile as she spoke and dropped down on to the muddy path. ‘Mind out for brambles!’ she warned Minchin, following behind her.

‘Any of these stone pilferers ever been caught?’ Minchin called from behind her.

‘Oh yes. Geoff, my brother, was coming along here one day and he came across a couple loading stone into the boot of their car. They were middle-aged and nicely dressed and terribly offended when he asked what the hell they thought they were doing. He told them he had made a note of the car registration and would phone the police as soon as he got home, which would be in five minutes’ time. So then they got abusive. The wife was worse than the husband, Geoff said, and she was such a nice sensible-looking woman. Anyway, he made them unload it and watched them drive off. But he suspected that as soon as he was out of sight they nipped back for it. He asked them, when they were arguing, if they would go to the house of the wall’s owner and steal things from that. They went ballistic. He thought the bloke was going to dot him on the nose. So then he asked, suppose someone went to this chap’s house, wherever it was, and pinched bits of
his
garden wall?’

‘They’d assumed it was there for the taking,’ Minchin said. ‘People make assumptions, don’t they? Because they don’t understand or because outward appearances suggest something which isn’t true.’

‘They’re daft if they think they can break down walls,’ snapped Juliet. ‘Oh, there’s a dead bird here. It looks like a spotted woodpecker but something’s bitten off the head.’

Minchin moved up to stand beside her and pushed the sad little carcass with his toe. ‘There again,’ he said, ‘it’s easy to make assumptions about people, especially if they come from a different background.’