Birthdays Can Be Murder Read online

  ‘The wine waiters are all agreed that they began filling the guests’ glasses for the toast just before the cake was brought in.’ He went over it again out loud, just to make sure he hadn’t missed anything. He was confident that if he did, Jenny Starling would soon pounce on it. ‘They took the champagne from the table, where the head wine waiter had uncorked it, a chap of unblemished record who didn’t know the Greers from Adam. Under all those watchful eyes, they’d circulated with the glasses until every guest had one, and then Alicia Greer gave the signal for the birthday cake. The lights went out, everybody oohed and ahhed over the cake, then the lights came on again. Alicia went to her brother and signalled for their glasses to be filled. Another waiter – no, a waitress this time – was handed two glasses from the head wine waiter, who swears he poured the glasses from a bottle he picked at random, and again with over a hundred eyes watching the waitress took the glasses to the brother and sister. Justin and Alicia drink and … hey presto.’

  ‘What about when the lights went out?’ Jenny said.

  ‘No good.’ Mollineaux shook his head. ‘I’ve checked with everyone at the party. They all said it went dark – practically pitch-black. Nobody could have seen to pour poison into a champagne glass. Besides which, we already have a hypodermic filled with paraquat. No. It just doesn’t make sense. Somebody pre-injected the champagne – or why the needle? – and somehow, somehow, arranged that only Justin and Alicia drank from it.’

  ‘Which brings us back to the waitress,’ Mollern said, and looked at Miss Starling thoughtfully.

  Jenny looked away. ‘Yes,’ she agreed miserably.

  ‘Yes,’ Mollineaux echoed her prim word sardonically. ‘Did you, by any wild chance, happen to know who that waitress is, Miss Starling?’ Mollineaux asked, so silkily she knew that the game was up.

  ‘Hmm? Oh, yes, I believe she was, no, still is – for the moment anyway – Mr Harding’s wife. Estranged wife, I suppose I should say. I take it that you’ve questioned her?’ she added casually.

  ‘Oh yes,’ Mollineaux said grimly. ‘We’ve had one of our top interrogators questioning her for hours now.’

  Jenny felt a wave of sympathy for Margie Harding wash over her, and winced. ‘And you’ve run into the same problems as before,’ she mused. ‘Margie Harding, to my knowledge, never set foot in the pantry. So she couldn’t possibly have injected the paraquat beforehand.’

  ‘No,’ Mollineaux said heavily. ‘She also had nothing to do with the opening of the champagne, or the distribution of it. The head waiter, or one of his more trusted minions, always opened the bottles. They then poured and gave trays of the stuff to the waiters and waitresses to circulate with. Including our Mrs Harding.’

  ‘Still,’ Mollern said, ‘she did hand over the fatal glasses to Justin and his sister.’

  ‘But she wasn’t stood at the champagne table before the toast,’ Jenny pointed out quickly, and both men nodded gloomily. ‘Also, it was the head waiter who actually poured out the glasses. From a random bottle. And somebody would have seen her if she’d tried to poison just one glass, surely?’

  Jenny simply didn’t want it to be Margie Harding. Of all the suspects, she was the only one Jenny actively wanted to be innocent. Any of the others – Arbie, Trevor Watkins, Babs, even Keith – any of those she could cope with as a murderer.

  ‘Pity, though,’ Mollern said. ‘She had the motive, and so very nearly the opportunity. And I don’t think much of her reasons for being at the party. I don’t believe a woman would go to so much trouble just to be near her husband.’

  ‘Then you don’t know much about women, Sergeant,’ Jenny said crisply, and rose to her feet. ‘Cup of tea?’ she asked pleasantly. Both men quickly agreed, and the cook took out a large, rounded fruitcake. ‘Baked this morning,’ she said. ‘When Martha wasn’t looking,’ she added, eyes twinkling. For a while, silence reigned as tea was sipped and cake appreciatively munched.

  ‘So, what next?’ Jenny asked, and Mollineaux, after giving her a quick, exasperated look, finally gave in to the inevitable.

  ‘We question Arbie and Keith about the crates,’ he confirmed, his voice as discouraged as he must have felt. ‘But they’ll only deny everything. I don’t suppose anyone else could have come down during that morning and afternoon. Babs Walker, perhaps?’

  ‘I doubt it,’ Jenny said miserably. ‘If they had, I’m sure Martha or Vera would have seen and mentioned it, even if they’d chanced to come down on one of the rare occasions when I wasn’t in the kitchen myself.’

  ‘Besides, Babs Walker has no motive,’ Mollern said, sighing. ‘She lost all her chances of a wealthy marriage when Justin died.’

  ‘Oh but …’ Jenny said, and then stopped.

  Mollineaux, reaching for a second piece of cake, stopped in mid-action and looked up, gimlet eyes glinting. ‘Oh but what?’

  ‘Well, Justin had already broken it off with Babs,’ Jenny admitted reluctantly. She hated being a stool pigeon. ‘He told me so just before they went into dinner. He said he was keeping an eye on her in case she caused a scene. Well, in case she took reprisals was more accurately what he hinted at.’

  ‘I wish you’d told us that before,’ Mollineaux said, too weary to be really angry, and Mollern suddenly began pushing back his notebook pages with an energy that had both Mollineaux and Jenny staring at him expectantly. Eventually, and with a small grunt of triumph, he stopped and tapped a page with his pencil. ‘I thought so. One of the guests said they saw Babs Walker leave the party for a brief spell, somewhere about 11.30 p.m. She went out into the garden for some fresh air apparently. The last he saw of her, according to his statement, she was heading towards the greenhouse.’

  Where there was paraquat.

  ‘Really?’ Mollineaux’s eyes began to gleam.

  Jenny’s lip’s twisted wryly, instantly seeing the flaw. ‘And she just happened to have a handy hypodermic needle in her handbag, I suppose?’ Both men wilted slightly. ‘Unless the needle is a blind,’ Jenny mused, only half-serious.

  ‘The classic red herring you mean? To put us off the track?’ Mollern rolled the thought around – with some scepticism, it has to be said – while Mollineaux sighed heavily.

  ‘I wouldn’t put it past our killer,’ he agreed morosely. ‘The more we get into this case, the more intricate it becomes. But that needle narrows it down a little. Don’t you agree, Miss Starling?’

  Jenny did. She could quite see that if she was right about the business with the hypodermic, then it narrowed it down very considerably indeed.

  To just one, in fact.

  But it still didn’t make sense.

  Mollern pushed back his chair and stood up. ‘I suppose we’d better see Miss Walker about that turn in the garden.’

  ‘Hmm? Oh yes,’ Jenny murmured, and then gave a clearly visible start as memory gave her a jab in the ribs. ‘Oh, there was just one other thing.’

  ‘Yes, Miss Starling?’ Mollineaux asked, his voice so calm it made her give him a double-take.

  ‘You know that little talk we had. About my not interfering,’ she began carefully, not trusting Mollineaux’s calmly inquiring look one little bit.

  ‘Yes, Miss Starling,’ he said smoothly, ‘I remember it well.’

  Jenny swallowed. ‘Well, I took it to heart, I assure you,’ she said quickly. ‘But I assumed that you didn’t mean for me not to make a suggestion or two, if a thought occurred to me.’

  Mollern glanced at his superior and very nearly smiled at the look on his face.

  ‘Yes, Miss Starling?’ Mollineaux said, by a great effort of will actually managing to avoid grinding his teeth. ‘And I take it that a thought has actually occurred?’

  Jenny took a small step sideways, just out of his arm reach. Well, you never knew. ‘Yes. I think you might find that Daphne Williams is Jimmy Speight’s real mother.’ She got it all out in an undignified rush.

  Mollern, who thought he’d been prepared for anything and was waiting with hi
s notebook at the ready, very nearly dropped his pencil.

  ‘You did know he was adopted, didn’t you?’ Jenny added quickly, just to break the rather deep quiet that had suddenly fallen over the kitchen. Mollineaux stared at her for a moment, then seemed to pull himself together.

  ‘Yes, Miss Starling. We had managed to gather that much information all by ourselves,’ he acknowledged, the sarcasm so finely dealt out that she almost missed it.

  She blushed. ‘Good. Well, that was all.’ She made a vain move in the general direction of the door.

  ‘Just a moment,’ Mollineaux said, his voice rising loudly before he brought it back firmly under control. ‘Just what makes you think that the housekeeper is Speight’s real mother?’

  So Jenny told him. When she had finished, and Mollern’s ever-busy pencil had finally scratched to a halt, Mollineaux had calmed down in fact as well as in appearance. He was silent for a few moments, and then said quietly, ‘It’s very slim evidence on which to base a theory, Miss Starling.’

  ‘Oh yes, I know. That’s why I wondered if you could possibly check it out more thoroughly before we … you … talk to Daphne.’

  ‘I’ll get onto it,’ Mollern offered. ‘It might be tricky getting names from the adoption agency. They can be very strict about things like that. But a murder investigation cuts a lot of red tape.’ And with that gem of wisdom, he took a step backwards, and complete pandemonium broke out.

  A sound that would have made a fire-engine siren seem piffling by comparison rocketed around the room and made Mollern jump even further back, going into an instinctive half-crouch. Mollineaux as well shot back and flinched as a grey streak leapt, hissing and spitting, onto the table. The cat, whose tail Mollern had just trodden on, ran maniacally across the table, jumped into the sink, shot out again, paused on the marble-topped workspace for an emergency lick, then shot up to the top of the dresser, landed on the table again, and would have set off on the circuit all over again if Jenny hadn’t quickly grabbed it.

  ‘Be careful!’ she said crossly to the sergeant, cradling the panting cat close to her impressively padded breast and tucking his twitching and stinging tail firmly under its own furry body to keep it warm. She began stroking the ears back from its head with long, gentle strokes.

  Mollern flushed red. ‘Sorry,’ he said instantly. ‘I didn’t know it was there,’ he added defensively. He looked at the cat guiltily. Mollineaux, on the verge of unrestrained laughter, nodded his head to the doorway and Mollern, still feeling like a first-class bully, slunk off.

  Together the policemen left to question Arbie and Babs Walker and then get on to the adoption angle.

  Jenny continued to absent-mindedly stroke and comfort the cat, her mind on other things. That needle bothered her. And the conclusions she’d tentatively drawn from it bothered her even more. And she did so hope Margie Harding hadn’t had too hard a time of it.

  Her thoughts came to an abrupt halt when someone started a lawnmower going in the kitchen. Jenny looked around quickly, but she was most definitely alone. Then, realizing where the sound was coming from, looked down. The cat, eyes closed, was purring contentedly, not to mention awesomely noisily, its fluffy grey cheek pressed against her sternum.

  Jenny was so flabbergasted that she stopped stroking.

  The cat opened his wide orange eyes and stared at her. He, too, looked surprised. All at once his ears began to flatten, and Jenny put the animal down even more quickly than she’d picked it up. All available claws protracted, but by then Jenny was already making her way to the steps.

  Fifteen

  ARBIE LOOKED UP from his gin and tonic and grimaced as the door opened. He’d been about to ask Babs to marry him, and this time he was sure she’d say yes. He’d give her no other option. So he was furious at the interruption.

  It was a little early to be drinking, but he hardly cared what the police thought, and so he met Inspector Mollineaux’s ironic eyes with a jaunty smile.

  ‘Ahh, here you are, Miss Walker. I was wondering where you’d got to,’ Mollineaux said jovially. Babs flushed. She took a large sip of her own gin and tonic and stared at the unlit fireplace. ‘I have a few questions, Miss Walker. I’m sure you won’t mind?’

  ‘Perhaps she minds very much,’ Arbie shot back, his voice lowering dangerously.

  ‘I don’t see why,’ Mollineaux said mildly. ‘You do want to help us find Justin’s killer, don’t you, Miss Walker?’

  ‘Of course I do,’ Babs said quickly, and cast Arbie a ‘shut up’ look.

  Arbie rapidly changed tactics. He shrugged amiably but at the same time hitched his chair just a little closer to Babs. Mollineaux chose to sit opposite her, on a little two-seater sofa. He gave Mollern a blank look, which his sergeant instantly read, and joined him on the sofa. Babs now faced two implacable officers of the law, and she crossed her legs nervously, showing off long, silk-clad limbs to perfection. Neither man so much as glanced at the feminine attractions on show, but Arbie looked at her with hungry eyes before forcing himself to look away again. It was impossible to tell whether he was amused or annoyed.

  ‘Now, Miss Walker. You and Justin Greer were engaged to be married, is that correct?’ Mollineaux started off gently.

  ‘That’s right.’ Her voice came out as a nervous squeak, and she coughed and said again, more forcefully, ‘Yes. We were.’

  ‘But didn’t Justin break off your engagement just before the party?’ Mollineaux asked, looking genuinely puzzled and sounding only mildly curious.

  Arbie Goulder instantly stiffened. He saw the danger at once, although Mollineaux didn’t believe the object of his desire had done so. Babs looked surprised that the police had found out, and certainly angry and a touch humiliated, if the colour in her cheeks was anything to go by. But she didn’t look scared. Not well up on the brains department, Mollineaux thought interestedly.

  ‘Why do you say that?’ Arbie challenged, before Babs could speak.

  ‘We have it on good authority,’ Mollineaux said, meeting the florist’s gaze with equanimity.

  ‘Oh?’ Arbie looked downright disbelieving. ‘Whose, may I ask?’

  ‘Certainly,’ Mollineaux granted. ‘Justin Greer himself.’

  Babs gasped and put a hand to her mouth. All three men looked at her. ‘What sort of cheap crack is that?’ Arbie asked angrily, his voice rising at last as the policemen finally succeeded in dragging a genuine reaction from him. ‘Greer’s dead.’

  ‘Oh, you noticed?’ Mollineaux said sardonically, then before Arbie could open his mouth, slipped in quietly, ‘Before he died he told someone that he had just, er, disengaged himself – as it were – from his fiancée. Is that true, by the way, Miss Walker?’ He suddenly turned to Babs, giving her no time to think.

  ‘Well, yes,’ she admitted, proving that, overall, it was far less taxing to tell the truth than to invent a lie. Arbie gave her an exasperated look, and Mollern smiled over his notepad.

  ‘How did you feel about this, Miss Walker?’ Mollineaux asked softly, and put up a hand as, out of the corner of his eye, he saw Arbie’s mouth open. ‘I can, of course, take Miss Walker to the station to be questioned without interruption,’ he pointed out warningly. And as Babs gave another gasp of dismay, Arbie furiously sank back in his chair defeated. Mollern was sure he could actually hear him fuming.

  Mollineaux turned again to the beautiful woman opposite him, who re-crossed her legs. He waited.

  ‘Well, naturally I was surprised.’ She gave an agonized glance to her one-time lover, obviously seeking reassurance. Arbie, unable to help her, gave Mollineaux a look that could kill.

  ‘Only surprised?’ Mollineaux asked, his voice rising in disbelief. ‘Weren’t you upset?’

  Babs flushed. ‘Of course I was. Very.’

  ‘Hmm. Upset enough to want to kill him, Miss Walker?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. How could I kill him?’ Babs shot back, getting to the very heart of the matter, perhaps more by luck than judgement.
And Mollineaux just stopped himself from sighing out loud. Yes, how indeed? Instead, he changed tack.

  ‘You left the party at about 11.30 for a turn around the garden,’ he stated, as a fact. ‘Where did you go?’

  Babs looked blank. ‘I did? Well, to get some fresh air, I suppose.’

  ‘Yes. But where did you go?’ Mollineaux persisted, and could see Arbie fairly squirm in his chair. Babs merely shrugged a very pretty shoulder. She opened her wide pansy-brown eyes even further.

  ‘I can’t remember. Just around the lawn, I think. Smelled the roses, you know, that kind of thing. Too much party can get you down, sometimes. Especially if you’re not in the mood for it.’

  Well, it had certainly got Justin Greer down, Mollern thought, but didn’t hesitate in his shorthand scribbling.

  ‘I see. You obviously like flowers.’ Mollineaux glanced sardonically in Arbie’s direction before continuing. ‘Did you go to the greenhouse? To see if there might be any orchids?’

  Babs shook her head. ‘No. I would have remembered if I’d done that.’

  Mollineaux continued to stare at her thoughtfully. ‘I see. Well, thank you Miss Walker. If you wouldn’t mind, I’d like to talk to Mr Goulder now. Alone.’

  Babs was very swiftly out of the chair and out of the room. If wild horses wouldn’t have dragged Arbie from her side in times of danger, the same wild horses couldn’t have kept Babs Walker by his side, when it was his turn to face the firing squad.

  ‘Now, Mr Goulder. Wasn’t it unusual for you to “do” the flowers for the Greers’ party, when not long ago, Justin pinched your girlfriend?’

  Arbie smiled, not at all put out. ‘Alicia asked me to “do” the flowers, as you so delicately put it.’

  ‘And you didn’t object?’ Mollineaux asked, letting his voice drip disbelief. ‘You didn’t mind providing the flowers for your hated rival’s birthday party?’