The Dead Hand of History (20 page)

‘I'm afraid I can't comment on that,' she said.

DC Blake was known among his friends for both his off-beat sense of humour and his self-confidence. He was rather proud of the fact that he had been the one to introduce the term ‘dirty weekend' in Inspector Beresford's briefing session, though a little embarrassed that,
before
being so worldly-wise, he'd raised his hand for permission to speak. Still, that could be glossed over later, and he knew from experience that by the time he'd re-told the tale for the third or fourth time, the hand-raising would have been transformed into a gesture designed to take the piss out of authority.

The Old Oak Tree Inn in Knorsbury had impressed him from the moment he had driven up to it. It had a heavy stone roof and mullioned windows. Ivy grew up the thick stone walls, and bees flitted between flowers in the immaculate gardens. It was, he decided, the kind of place you never really thought existed outside the world of chocolate-box tops – and if it was also the kind of place you used for dirty weekends, then dirty weekends were starting to look like a jolly good idea.

The receptionist at the Old Oak Tree was a serious-looking middle-aged woman with her hair drawn into a tight bun. No doubt that severe expression of hers melted when she was greeting the inn's guests, Blake thought, but it certainly showed no signs of melting for a mere detective constable, and the way she looked at
him
made him feel about seven years old.

‘I'd like you to take a careful look at this photograph, if you wouldn't mind, madam,' Blake said, laying the picture of the Brunskill's works outing down on the counter.

‘I am not a “madam”,' the woman said haughtily. ‘I am
Miss
Dobbs – and I would be grateful if that was how you addressed me.'

‘Right,' Blake agreed. ‘Sorry about that. So
could
you look at the photograph, Miss Dobbs?'

The receptionist took one pair of horn-rimmed spectacles off her nose and replaced them with another, almost identical, pair.

‘This is a photograph of a charabanc outing – a day trip to the seaside,' Miss Dobbs said, in a tone which managed to convey her evident disdain for such working-class frivolities.

‘Yes, it is,' Blake agreed.

‘I would have thought that the least you could have done would have been to produce individual photographs of the person or persons who you were interested in,' Miss Dobbs said.

‘Well, of course, we
could have
done that, but this is so much better,' Blake replied.

‘Is it?'

‘Oh, yes. It's called the Group Format Identification Procedure, and when they tried it out in America, it was very successful,' Blake explained, making it up as he went along, and feeling much better for having done so.

‘I see,' Miss Dobbs said dubiously. Then she glanced down at the photograph, and added, ‘Yes.'

‘What?'

‘You asked me if I could identify any of these people in the photograph, didn't you?'

‘Yes.'

‘And I can.'

She
recognized
someone. She bloody
recognized
someone, Blake thought. It was almost too good to be true.

The detective constable felt a powerful urge to ‘help' the receptionist – just to make sure she got it right.

But then he remembered what Inspector Beresford had said, and – almost holding his breath – he asked, ‘Which ones?'

‘This man,' said Miss Dobbs, pointing to Tom Whittington, ‘and this woman standing next to him,' she continued, indicating Linda Szymborska.

‘How do you know them?'

‘How do you
imagine
I would know them, Constable? They were guests at the inn.'

Blake was tempted to say, ‘That's
Detective
Constable, Miss Dobbs,' but his nerve failed him at the last moment, and he contented himself with a simple, ‘Ah, they were guests!'

‘Are they married to one another?' Miss Dobbs asked, her lip already curled in anticipatory contempt. ‘Or do they, as this photograph would seem to suggest, merely work together?'

Blake firmly intended to say that – this being a police matter – he could not give her that information, but even as the thought was passing through his brain, he felt Miss Dodd's eyes burning into him and heard himself saying, ‘They just worked together.'

‘I thought so,' Miss Dobbs said triumphantly. ‘You can always tell, you know.'

‘Can you?'

‘Indeed. Couples like them are always so much more affectionate to each other than couples who are actually married.'

‘But when they arrived, they signed in as a married couple, did they?' Blake asked.

‘Of course,' Miss Dobbs said severely. ‘We do have our
standards
, you know.'

‘And when was it they stayed here?'

Miss Dobbs opened the register, and quickly flicked through it.

‘Two weeks ago,' she said. ‘They only stayed for one night. They signed in as Mr and Mrs Lord.'

Dick Whittington, Blake thought.
Lord
Mayor of London.

Well, it was nice to know that even adulterers could sometimes have a sense of humour.

‘Is there anything more that you can tell me about them, Miss Dobbs?' he asked.

‘Very little indeed. After they checked in, we hardly saw them again.' Miss Dobbs paused for a second. ‘We offer pony trekking here, you know.'

‘No, I didn't know that,' Blake said, because that was clearly what was expected of him.

‘Guests can also hire bicycles or go on bird-watching expeditions, and in the evenings, if there is sufficient demand, I myself can sometimes be persuaded to give a short piano recital in the main lounge. But
Mr and Mrs
Lord did not take advantage of any of the wonderful facilities the inn has to offer.' She sniffed, disapprovingly, ‘I expect they thought they had much
better
things to do with their time.'

If I'd been here for a dirty weekend when you were on the desk, I wouldn't have
dared
not to sample the wonderful facilities, Blake thought.

‘You didn't happen to notice what kind of car he was driving, did you?' he asked hopefully.

‘
She
was driving,' Miss Dobbs corrected him.

‘I beg your pardon?'

‘It was
Mrs
Lord who did the driving. Probably – if I know anything about women like her – to make him feel small.'

‘And do you know what kind of car it was?'

‘Certainly. It was a dark blue E-type Jaguar. A very flashy vehicle, I've always thought, but then people like them just
love
flashiness, don't they?'

SEVENTEEN

J
enny Brunskill was sitting behind her desk in her office. Her face was puffy, her eyes were red and she seemed to have become a much smaller woman than on the previous day.

‘Are you sure it was wise of you to come into work today?' Paniatowski asked sympathetically.

Jenny shrugged, though it seemed to take her considerable effort. ‘The business doesn't run itself,' she said.

‘I know, but . . .'

‘Some brutal madman has robbed us of both our managing director and our head baker. That only leaves the two of us – my brother-in-law and me – to keep the bakery running. And you can't expect Stan to do anything, when he's just lost his wife.'

‘Linda wasn't
just
his wife,' Paniatowski reminded her gently. ‘She was also your
sister
. And I think you should seriously consider the possibility that her death has been almost as much of a shock to
your
system as it has been to your brother-in-law Stan's.'

‘Oh, it has certainly been a shock,' Jenny conceded, ‘but by being here, I'm doing what Linda would have
wanted
me to do. The bakery was her life, you see. It's been
both
our lives, for as long as we can remember. Our father taught us well, and we never forgot the lessons we learned. Besides,' she gave another weak shrug, ‘in a situation like this, it's best to keep your mind occupied with ordinary, run-of-the-mill things, don't you think?'

‘How does Stan feel about the bakery?' Paniatowski asked.

‘Stan?' Jenny repeated, as if she didn't quite know what the chief inspector was getting at.

‘Does he have the same sort of commitment to the place that you and your sister have – that you
have
, and your sister
had
?'

‘I'm afraid I still don't know what you mean.'

‘Your brother-in-law used to run a very successful goods delivery business, didn't he?' Paniatowski asked.

‘That's right, he did.'

‘Yet he sold that successful business, and invested all his money in a bakery which was in real trouble.'

‘Who told you that?' Jenny demanded, suddenly angry. ‘Who said the bakery was in trouble when Stan bought into it?'

‘Well, I should have thought that the very fact you needed to take in a new partner . . .'

‘Sales had gone down, but that was nothing more than a temporary fluctuation which all businesses of this nature are prone to from time to time,' Jenny said. ‘But we knew it wouldn't be long before folk realized that you can't beat good honest bread, and came back to us.'

The contrast between the first and second sentences couldn't have been more striking, Paniatowski thought. The first one, measured and smooth, belonged to Jenny, the bakery business manager. The second, rougher and almost belligerent, came straight from the dead mouth of Seth Brunskill.

‘Linda and I weren't the
least bit
worried by the downturn in business,' Jenny said, as if it had suddenly become important to convince her visitor that this was the truth.

Paniatowski wasn't buying it.

‘That does surprise me,' she said.

‘It wouldn't have surprised you
at all
if you'd known our father,' Jenny countered. ‘Both Linda and I knew he'd
never
allow the bakery to fail. He had built it up from nothing, you see – and he loved it as much as we did.'

‘Even so, when Stan became a partner . . .'

‘He knew a good thing when he saw it. He understood that by buying his way in when we were suffering temporary difficulties, he was ensuring himself a meal ticket for life.'

‘
By the middle of the sixties they were in big trouble
,' Sergeant Sid Roberts had told Paniatowski. ‘
By the time Seth died, the bakery was totterin' on the edge of bankruptcy.
'

Some meal ticket for life!

‘Don't get me wrong, I don't blame Stan for doing it,' Jenny continued. ‘Any man in his situation would have grasped such an opportunity when he saw it.
Most
men in his situation would have demanded
much more
control over the business than
he
was willing to settle for.'

Jenny was performing a remarkable feat of mental gymnastics, Paniatowski told herself.

On the one hand, she was claiming the bakery hadn't been in trouble at all, while on the other she was more or less indicating it was in so
much
trouble that Stan Szymborska could have virtually taken over the whole thing, if he'd chosen to.

‘I wonder if Stan's decision was based on anything more than mere business considerations,' Paniatowski said.

‘What do you mean?' Jenny asked.

‘Well, he did marry Linda, didn't he?'

‘Yes?'

‘So I was wondering if he perhaps bought into the business
because
he was in love with her.'

‘There was nothing at all going on between Stan and Linda before Father died,' Jenny said emphatically.

‘No?'

‘No! It was only after Father passed on that my sister started to feel the need for a man.'

Or perhaps to feel the need for
another
man, Paniatowski thought.

‘Possibly there
was
nothing actually
going on
 . . .' she said aloud.

‘There wasn't. I can assure you of that.'

‘. . . but it doesn't necessarily mean that Stan couldn't have had
feelings
for Linda, does it?'

Jenny gave her a smile which, while weak and tired, was still undoubtedly superior.

‘Stanislaw is Polish – as, I imagine, you are yourself,' she said. ‘When did you leave Poland?'

‘As a child,' Paniatowski said.

‘As a
refugee
,' she added mentally. ‘Fleeing with my mother, to keep ahead of invading Germans who, she was sure, would punish us for being the wife and daughter of a dead Polish army officer.'

‘As a child,' Jenny echoed. ‘Ah, that explains it.'

‘Explains what?'

‘Why you know so little about life in Poland. The Poles, you see, place great value on the family, and everyone's place in it – a value which, sadly, we no longer seem to share in this country.'

‘I'm afraid I'm not quite following your argument.'

‘It's really very simple. My father was the
head
of this family, and Stan would never have gone against his wishes by
allowing himself
to fall in love with Linda.'

Was Jenny for real, Paniatowski wondered. Did she actually
believe
all this rubbish she was spouting?

Yes, she decided – Jenny probably did.

‘As managing director, did Linda sometimes have to go on business trips?' Paniatowski asked.

‘Occasionally.'