Shades of Murder (36 page)

Juliet gave him a suspicious look. ‘Are you getting at me, by any chance?’

‘Well, you seem to assume you know how I look at this case. You seem to think I’m not capable of seeing anything unless it’s under my nose like this dead bird – and even then probably have to have it pointed out to me.’

There was a silence in which twigs cracked in the depths of the coppice and some large bird crashed noisily out of the overhead branches.

‘Pigeon,’ said Minchin without looking up. ‘My grandad used to take me out shooting them. He was a countryman. Kent. Nice county, Kent.’

‘Oh, all right,’ Juliet conceded. ‘I’m sorry if I sounded rude. But you’re not awfully polite yourself, are you? You know for a fact I’m not an estate agent.’

A smile spread over Doug Minchin’s face. ‘Course I do,’ he said. ‘But watching your reaction whenever I suggest it makes it worth it, every time.’

She gasped and gaped at him. Then she rallied and began, ‘Well, of all the damn cheek!’

‘See?’ grinned Minchin. ‘You’ve got beautiful eyes, you know. Why do you wear those damn-awful granny specs?’

Meredith spent much of the journey to work the following morning concocting a version of events which would stave off Adrian’s enquiries. He should be able to understand that she couldn’t discuss the personalities in the case with him. She would simply say there had been a death. She had been slightly acquainted with the deceased and the investigating officer had wanted to talk to her. He had done so. The matter was closed.

She didn’t think this would really satisfy Adrian and knew he would add her unwillingness to confide in him to the list of things he held against her. She didn’t know quite why he appeared to dislike her so much. She put it down as one of life’s mysteries. He wasn’t a person, in any case, whose favour she sought. It didn’t matter. Except, of course, that she shared an office with him. Meredith sighed.

But life is full of surprises. When Meredith marched briskly into the office, ready to reel off her prepared account, she was stopped in her tracks by an unfamiliar sight.

At Adrian’s desk sat a young woman with long black hair and a frown on her face as she sorted through the contents of what appeared to be Adrian’s in-tray.

Meredith cleared her throat. The other woman looked up.

‘Hello,’ she said. ‘I’m Polly Patel. I’ve replaced Adrian.’

‘When?’ Meredith heard herself say.

‘As from yesterday, but you weren’t in then, so you wouldn’t know.’

Meredith set down her briefcase and extended a hand. Polly shook it. ‘Er, what happened to Adrian?’

Polly grinned. ‘Nobody really knows. There’s a rumour, of course. They say he was discovered snorting a line in the gents’ loo. He’s been relegated to something routine and harmless until they decide what to do about him.’ She raised her eyebrows. ‘Sorry if he was a friend of yours.’

‘He wasn’t,’ said Meredith with feeling. ‘Quite the reverse. I’m very glad to see you, Polly.’ She went to the window and stared out for a moment at the pavement below. ‘You know,’ she said, ‘I was wondering how I could get rid of him and in the end, I hadn’t to do anything. He did it himself.’

‘There you are, then,’ said Polly cheerfully. ‘Why worry? That’s what I always say. Half the time problems sort themselves out. If Adrian was anything like what people have been telling me he was like, he was heading for a fall.’

Meredith turned slowly to face her, hands stuck in her jacket pockets. ‘Yes . . . yes, he was.’ She contemplated Polly for a moment, then, with sudden movement, grabbed her briefcase.

‘Polly, sorry to do this to you, but can you hold the fort alone for another day? I have to go back to Bamford.’

‘No problem.’ Polly didn’t ask why. She’d started work on something and spoke absently.

Meredith hastened out of the office. It was so obvious. It was so damn obvious! Anyone could work it out. She could work it out – well, not all of it. But one bit of it, for sure.

‘What,’ asked Alan Markby, ‘are we doing here?’

He asked this question not in the context of man’s place in the universe but of his own presence with Meredith in a lay-by. He had parked his car behind hers and joined her, taking the front passenger seat. Now he peered through the windscreen at a battered transit van parked ahead of them both. ‘Not,’ he went on, ‘that it isn’t very nice to see you again so soon, but as I remember, you went off to London this morning on the train and you were not due back until this evening. What’s happened?’

‘I have to talk to you, Alan, and trying to do it on the phone would’ve been impossible. You see, I’ve—’

‘There must be other places to talk. What do you suppose he’s got in that van?’

‘I have no idea,’ said Meredith crossly. ‘Alan, I’ve come haring back from London because I need to talk to Minchin, but first I wanted to talk to you. That’s why I asked you to come from Regional HQ and meet me here, half a mile away. Then we can go together to Minchin.’

‘You talked to Minchin yesterday,’ he said, scarcely paying attention, still squinting at the van ahead. ‘If you’ve remembered something, why not just call him up and ask to see him again? Why bring me into it?’

‘Because I want to work out with you first what I’m going to say. I’m
pretty sure I’m right, you see, but I haven’t got the whole thing, in a nutshell. I wish I had. I’ve got half of it. I thought you might come up with the other half.’

‘All right, let’s hear your half.’

‘It’s about the arsenic,’ she said. ‘I know who took it from the shed.’

‘Do you?’ He sounded discouraging.

‘Yes. It’s blindingly obvious. Jan did.’

‘And committed suicide with it? I don’t think Minchin will buy that. It would get everyone else off the hook, but I think you’re going to have to do better than that.’

‘If you’d listen? Honestly, Alan, sometimes you’re really exasperating.’

‘I am?’ He looked offended. ‘Am I the one who’s left her office and brought me from mine to sit here listening to an ingenious explanation for Jan obligingly swallowing arsenic?’

Ahead of them, the van drew away and rejoined the flow of traffic.

‘Now I’ll never know what he’d got in that van,’ Markby said.

‘You’ll never know what I’ve worked out if you don’t listen. Jan didn’t intend to swallow the arsenic. He wasn’t out to commit suicide. He was out to commit murder.’

He turned his head to look at her. ‘Go on.’

‘Right.’ She pushed back a troublesome lock of brown hair and got down to the business of explaining her theory. ‘This has always been about a will – or wills. Jan came to this country in the first place because he’d come across his great-grandfather’s will and he thought he could use it to make himself some money. But when he got here he discovered there was no money, only a rambling great house sitting on a big piece of ground. That wasn’t cash in hand but it would become cash in hand if and when it was sold. Right, so far?’

‘No one’s arguing with that.’

‘Somehow he’d found out that Dudley Newman was interested.’

‘Newman told him himself,’ said Markby. ‘He thought Jan might be an obstacle.’

‘Did he? Well, Jan had started out by making an obstacle of himself, but he changed his mind when he heard there was a definite buyer in the offing. He wanted the house sold. But he’d realised that Damaris and Florence weren’t just going to hand over half of the proceeds to him. They didn’t like him. You and I, Pam Painter, Juliet, Laura, anyone who knew the Oakleys, we’d ganged up to prevent him talking the sisters round or pressuring them. But then he did a very simple bit of reasoning.
The only Oakleys left in the world were the sisters and himself. If they were to die . . .’

‘Ah,’ said Markby. ‘The wills in the desk.’

‘Exactly. If both sisters died, he’d be in a good position to claim the estate, provided they hadn’t left it to anyone else. So he took the opportunity to search the desk and he found what he was looking for, the wills. What’s more, when he read them, they were just what he’d been hoping for. Each sister left everything to the other. They’d drawn up the wills some years ago when both had been younger. Jan decided quite cold-bloodedly to kill them – and he had the means.’

Meredith paused for comment but Markby said nothing. He was watching her with a thoughtful look on his face.

‘The question of who took the arsenic from the potting shed wasn’t really so hard to solve. Ron knew it was there but it had slipped his mind. Why had it done that? Because just as he found it, who should turn up but Jan himself, newly arrived. Ron was distracted. He didn’t know who this person was and when he found out, the information filled his mind to the exclusion of all else. The shed was left unlocked. Neither Damaris nor Florence would have any reason to go in there. They didn’t even know Ron had unscrewed the hasp. It was Jan, prying and poking around everywhere, who went in there and found it. He realised what it was and thought that he might have a need for it if his original plan didn’t work out.’

Meredith’s enthusiasm wavered. ‘I can’t prove it, I know. But I’m sure I’m right. Jan meant to poison the Oakleys and he chose to do it by spiking that savoury spread they like so much.’

‘Everything in the kitchen cupboard was tested, including that spread.’

‘Oh, that jar was all right,’ said Meredith. ‘It’s the other one, the one Jan tampered with we’ve got to find. He swopped jars, you see. All he had to do was wait until later and then swop them back again.’

‘So how did he end up being poisoned himself?’

‘Because in the first place, Jan overestimated how much arsenic was required. Didn’t Geoff Painter tell you he’d died from a massive dose, far more than would’ve been necessary? Jan must’ve realised the arsenic preparation found in the shed was a very old bottle and he may have thought it had lost some of its potency over the years and decided to compensate by being generous with it. Secondly, somehow the exchange of jars got confused. The sisters ate the spread in the cupboard and were none the worse for it. Jan thought they’d eaten the adulterated one. He let them go off to bed, believing they’d be taken ill during the night with
what he hoped would appear to be acute gastro-enteritis. I don’t think he meant them to die straight away. He planned them to be ill over a period of days. While he waited for the first attack to strike his victims, he fancied a snack. Perhaps it was a sort of gallows humour which made him decide to have some of the spread from the safe jar he’d just replaced in the cupboard. Damaris found a knife smeared with spread in the kitchen sink after she’d called the ambulance. But he’d muddled them up. The sisters ate from the safe jar and Jan ate from the tampered one. We’ve been looking at everyone, asking who did it. But he did it himself, just like Adrian.’

‘Adrian?’

‘I’ll tell you about that later. What do you think, Alan?’

Markby shifted awkwardly in the cramped space. ‘I think the blood supply to my feet has been cut off. I think it’s an ingenious theory but only that. It can’t be proved. Most of all, I can’t see how a man who has hatched such a plan could then be so careless as to muddle up the jars. If he did, where is the adulterated jar of spread now? It ought, by your argument, to have been replaced by Jan in the kitchen cupboard. But the police took the jar from the cupboard and it was fine. If we go to Minchin with this, he’ll rightly laugh us out of—’

Markby stopped speaking but still stared at her.

‘Alan?’ she prompted.

‘Kenny Joss . . .’ he said slowly. ‘Kenny Joss was in that kitchen. Dave Pearce got the feeling he was holding something back. We will talk to Minchin. We’ll talk to him right now. Well, come on then, let’s go.’

‘Your car’s parked back there,’ she reminded him.

He scrambled out of her car with a muffled curse and ran back to his own. She let him pull out in front of her and lead the way. It seemed more tactful.

‘We can bring Joss in,’ said Minchin.

He was sitting in Markby’s office. Dust particles danced in a shaft of weak sunlight from the window. It fell on the speaker like a spotlight. Minchin hunched on his chair, his arms resting on his thighs and his broad hands loosely clasped. To look at Markby, he peered up beneath his bushy straw-coloured brows. Nevertheless, despite his present truculent appearance, Minchin had been in an usually good mood since he’d returned from his visit to the Painter household the previous afternoon. Perhaps the good humour had made him willing to listen without protest to Meredith’s theory. Markby, who’d half expected him to refuse, was both relieved and surprised.

Now Meredith, having argued her case, had left. Minchin had sat silently throughout as she spoke, giving no indication of his inner reaction. Markby thought she’d explained her theory well and persuasively. But as he didn’t know how much credibility Minchin was prepared to give it, he’d feared the worst. Now the two senior officers were left together to talk it over, Minchin had broken his silence with his laconic suggestion.

Markby, who’d still been expecting the other man to begin by expressing his doubts if not dismissing Meredith’s ideas completely, knew that his surprise must now be obvious.

‘You think it worth questioning Joss again?’ he asked, unable to believe Minchin had accepted Meredith’s reasoning so easily.

As it turned out, it wasn’t Meredith’s reasoning which had influenced Minchin.

‘You trust Dave Pearce’s judgement?’ Minchin’s small hard blue eyes fixed Markby’s face.

‘Absolutely.’ Dave could be difficult to detach from a pet idea and had brought wooden obstinacy to a fine art, but this wasn’t the moment to say so. To express his complete and utter conviction of his subordinate’s good sense was Markby’s only possible response.

‘And I trust Mickey Hayes’s.’ Minchin matched his display of confidence. ‘He talked to Joss after Dave had had a go and told me he also thought Joss was hiding something. I was counting on Mickey getting it out of him. I thought Joss’d be bound to crack, but I was wrong. He only repeated what he’d told Dave Pearce.’

Like Pearce before him, Markby tried not to look too pleased at the thought of Hayes becoming unstuck.