Birthdays Can Be Murder Read online

  She seemed to run out of bile at last, and Meg chose that moment to come out with more tea. If she was surprised to see her two customers sitting together she didn’t show it. She simply set down another pot of tea on the table, glanced at Margie’s pale and shaking frame, and muttered something about soda bread doing the trick, and headed back to the kitchen.

  ‘You shouldn’t let hate sap you of all your energy, you know,’ Jenny cautioned her at last. ‘You never know when you may need it. Energy, that is, not hate.’

  Margie, who’d obviously not taken on board a word of the good advice, absently stirred the spoon around her cup. At last, she looked up, her face pale and tight and oddly defiant. She met the cook’s level-eyed gaze without flinching. ‘I was sorry when her brother died, you know,’ Margie said quietly. ‘Not because I liked him – I didn’t. But because he died and not her.’

  Jenny nodded, not at all shocked by the other woman’s statement. ‘Yes,’ she said enigmatically. ‘I know.’

  Seventeen

  MOLLINEAUX HAD JUST stepped into the hall with Tom Banks’s words still rumbling around in his brain. They already knew that rumours had been circulating about Justin Greer’s fast business practices, but there was a big difference between aggressive business tactics and illegal business tactics. Had Justin been knee-deep in bribery and corruption? And if so, could it be that there was a motive for his murder that they hadn’t even thought of yet? A purely business-related motive? The thought worried him.

  Who was most mixed up in the company business? Who would want Justin’s illegal activities stopped at all costs? Who had the most to lose if Greer Textiles became embroiled in a legal scandal? Tom Banks was retired and in any case had only been an employee. That left the boy’s father.

  ‘Inspector? Sir?’ The urgent voice of one of the young constables who manned the incident room interrupted his rather unsavoury line of thought. He looked up, a half-annoyed frown on his face. ‘Telephone, sir. The lab boys,’ the constable said quickly, sensing his superior’s displeasure.

  Mollineaux hurried forward, Mollern not far behind. The inspector headed straight for the desk, sitting down as he reached for the telephone. A few seconds later he was glad that he had, for the lab boy’s news came as a distinct, if not to say nasty, shock. Mollern saw his face go slack in surprise.

  ‘What?’ Mollineaux croaked, then quickly cleared his throat. In a more normal tone of voice, he asked, ‘Are you sure?’ Mollern waited as the silence stretched out, and could feel his nerves doing the same. ‘Are you sure you have all the corks?’ Mollineaux asked next, and waited, tapping a finger absently against the base of the telephone as he listened. ‘I see. Yes, I’m sure you are. All right. Thanks,’ he added, not particularly sincerely, and hung up. He looked at his sergeant morosely. ‘Well, that blows it. Damned if it doesn’t.’

  ‘Sir?’

  Mollineaux leaned back in his chair and sighed heavily. ‘This case is going to drive me insane,’ he said wearily. ‘Or to an early retirement, at any rate,’ he added more moderately. ‘That was the lab. They’ve checked all the corks under their microscopes, and guess what? Not one of them has a puncture hole of any sort.’

  Mollern’s jaw dropped. ‘What? Not one of them? Then they must have missed one. A cork, I mean. There was a hell of a mess here that night. Empty bottles and party rubbish everywhere.’

  Mollineaux shook his head. ‘No, they checked. The number of the empties and full bottles tallied exactly with what was ordered for the party, and they definitely have all the corks accounted for. Besides which, the chief techno just gave me a lecture on cork markings. Apparently each cork was marked with a star or another symbol, denoting excellence. The best champers, of course, was kept for the toast. And not one of them had a puncture mark.’

  Mollern sighed. ‘And we thought we were lucky that the waiters all had those popper things that get the corks out without the need for a corkscrew.’

  Mollineaux sighed. ‘That was Mark Greer’s idea. He was worried that using a corkscrew might lead to bits of cork falling into the wine.’ Mollineaux heaved a massive sigh. ‘So what does it actually mean? Did our killer bring a spare cork to the party and pocket the punctured one?’

  Mollern perked up instantly. ‘Well, he must have done, sir, mustn’t he? Otherwise why the needle? Our man really is a crafty one. You have to give him that. He thinks of everything.’

  ‘Yes,’ Mollineaux agreed heavily. ‘And he’s also lucky. He was damned lucky about that paraquat being so potent, or had he carefully planned it that way?’

  ‘Sir?’ Mollern asked, lost.

  Mollineaux glanced at him, then made a vague gesture with his hand. ‘Sorry, you weren’t there when I got the facts from the science boys. Apparently paraquat burns the mouth when drunk, which was why it was put into cold champagne. But even more clever than that, it would normally take weeks for paraquat to kill somebody, according to the lab boys. But it seems that the poison used was extracted right from the bottom of an old bottle, where the sediment was most concentrated. Oh, the boffin came out with long, chemical phraseology for it, but with the upshot being that the paraquat that killed Justin was mutated stuff that killed almost immediately. And I was just wondering. Was it important for the killer that Justin died quickly or was it just that the killer happened to pick an old bottle, and using the needle meant that the dregs of the bottle were siphoned up by pure chance? See what I mean?’

  Mollern did, but like his superior, had no answer to give. This new development also meant that the paraquat had now definitely come from the Greer greenhouse, and not from Arbie Goulder’s nurseries.

  Mollineaux rubbed his eyes and sighed. ‘I don’t like all this,’ he finally said plaintively. ‘Syringes and mysterious corks. We’ve got suspects coming out of our ears, not to mention Watkins. It’s all just too much. I get the feeling that we’ve been manoeuvred, somehow, Mollern. Toyed with almost. And I don’t like it. And I especially don’t like Watkins.’

  Both policemen fell silent as they savoured the possible delights of incarcerating, at last, the notorious Trevor Watkins.

  ‘That’s if he actually did it,’ Mollineaux added gloomily. ‘As it stands, I still haven’t the foggiest idea what went on that night.’ That thought seemed to trigger another, for he glanced quickly at his watch. ‘Have you seen Miss Starling around?’ he asked, hoping his voice sounded neutral.

  Mollern shook his head. ‘Not since this morning. She was off to the village, I think.’ And he looked at his superior with sympathy.

  Jenny was at that very moment walking the last few steps up the tree-lined avenue and pausing for breath under the last shady lime tree. She looked at the house with disfavour. And The Beeches seemed such a nice pleasant place that first morning she had come here.

  Automatically, she turned and headed for her sanctuary, the herb garden. Although Martha had banned her from the kitchen, stating fiercely that they would all be poisoned by one of her shepherd’s pies, she could still, at least, walk among the basil and thyme and go over old recipes in her head. Which was always a soothing pastime. But she never, of course, actually made it. She was just passing the roses when a shadow moved and the rustle of parted bushes caused her to spin. Hackles rose up all the way along her spine.

  She turned to face not the expected Trevor Watkins but Keith Harding instead. For a moment she simply looked at him, waiting. She was ready to scream, if absolutely necessary, and even use her impressive build to good effect as a last resort. She’d taken a self-defence course a few years ago, the instructor taking one white-faced look at her before putting on extra padding. And it had definitely come in handy from time to time.

  But Keith Harding didn’t look hysterical. In fact, he looked a little nervous. ‘Hello, Miss Starling. I was hoping to catch up with you.’

  Jenny relaxed slightly, and smiled politely. ‘Oh?’

  ‘Yes. I wanted to say sorry for what I said earlier. I mean, when I brought Alici
a home I was, well, I didn’t want her to come back here at all, to be perfectly honest, and I was feeling upset. I wanted her to stay at the hospital, where she’d be safe.’

  Jenny nodded. ‘I’m sure you did,’ she said blandly, but something in her voice made his chin rise, and all appeasement seemed to leave him. For a long while they continued to look at each other like a pair of wary cats. Eventually, Keith let himself relax a little.

  ‘Inspector Mollineaux put us straight. About that last time, I mean – you being mixed up in murder and all that. I know now that you had nothing at all to do with your employer getting killed, and, well, I want to say sorry for …’ He trailed off and shrugged helplessly.

  ‘Threatening me?’ Jenny suggested mildly.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Apology accepted.’

  Keith blinked, surprised at her easy acceptance, then rubbed his sweating hands on his trousers. He was dressed in simple black slacks and a white, V-necked pullover. Alicia’s choice, she was sure. He was beginning to look as if he belonged in his environment, and she could almost see his past, working-class life slipping away from him. Soon he would wear tennis whites and learn to play. Probably well, too, for he was athletically built. It all seemed so pathetic somehow.

  ‘I saw Margie this morning,’ she said bluntly, giving him no warning. ‘In the tea shop actually,’ she continued casually, and saw him wince.

  ‘How is she?’

  ‘Fine.’ She positioned herself so that the sun was behind her and she could see his eyes clearly, before she next spoke. ‘The police gave her a hard time.’

  He tensed, then nodded. ‘I daresay. She was the one who served the champagne toast.’

  ‘Not exactly,’ Jenny corrected him. ‘She carried the tray. The wine waiter poured the actual drinks.’

  ‘Oh. Yes, of course.’

  He really is handsome, Jenny thought, utterly unbiased. She could quite see why Alicia would fall so hard for him. For, unlike many others around here, Jenny didn’t for one instant doubt Alicia’s sincere passion for her garage mechanic.

  ‘You didn’t …’ Keith hesitated, then took a deep breath. ‘You didn’t happen to see the kids too, did you? Were they with her? Did they look all right?’

  Jenny thought back to the two old biddies in the village shop, no doubt busily knitting their cardigans for the village ‘unfortunates’ and forcing Margie to accept their charity. She felt her heart harden. ‘No,’ she said abruptly. ‘She was quite alone.’

  Keith looked her straight in the eye. ‘You think I’m a right bastard, don’t you, Miss Starling?’ he said bleakly. ‘But I love my children. I still, in a way, love my wife. I never wanted any of them to get hurt.’

  Probably all very true, Jenny silently agreed. ‘But they have been,’ she said simply, and had the satisfaction of forcing him to drop his eyes. He hung his head to stare at his shoes. New shoes, Jenny noticed. Alicia wouldn’t want his old dirty pair muddying the carpets in The Beeches.

  His dark hair fell forward across his face, putting his eyes into shadow. ‘I know,’ he mumbled at last, ‘but there’s nothing I can do about it.’

  Keith lifted his head at last and his face once again was absolutely resolute and Jenny sighed. People, and poets in particular, tended to think of love as noble, self-sacrificing and all-important. They often forgot how destructive it could also be.

  ‘Anyway, I just wanted to say sorry,’ he reiterated, no doubt anxious now to be away from her disapproving and uncomfortable presence. Like many before him, Keith was beginning to suspect that this strange, large-but-sexy and deeply enigmatic woman saw a whole lot more than you wanted her to. ‘But I meant what I said, about protecting Alicia,’ he warned her, and Jenny shrugged.

  ‘I’m sure you do. And I rather suspect Inspector Mollineaux hopes you’ll keep a special eye on our unwanted guest, Trevor Watkins.’

  Keith’s lips twisted. ‘That creep I keep seeing around? Who is he, anyway? Mr Greer won’t talk about him.’

  ‘I’m not surprised. He owns nightclubs, casinos and, er, does various other things. Definitely crooked, is our Mr Watkins. Poor Sergeant Mollern practically drools whenever he’s near. He can’t wait to slip on the cuffs.’

  Keith’s handsome dark brows drew themselves together into a frown. ‘But why does Mollineaux want him here? What was he doing at the party anyway?’

  ‘Oh, I’m pretty sure Justin invited him. To play a prank on his sister.’

  Keith’s eyes darkened. ‘What kind of prank?’

  Jenny shrugged a masterfully nonchalant shrug. ‘Oh, I daresay he just thought it was funny. With Alicia owing him so much money in gambling debts. I suppose …’

  ‘Gambling debts?’ Keith said, his voice and face totally stunned. ‘Don’t talk daft! Alicia doesn’t gamble!’ He began to look both exasperated and angry. ‘Why do people always think the worst of her? Alicia has brains, you know, as well as beauty. She’s too damned sensible to do anything so stupid as gamble. Oh, what’s the use in talking to you,’ Keith finally snapped. ‘Everybody wants to the think the worst of her. They’re just damned jealous, that’s all it is.’

  And with that, he turned and ploughed back through the rose bushes, oblivious to the thorns snagging his lovely white V-necked jumper.

  Jenny watched him go with troubled eyes. Because, thinking about it now, she really rather believed him. Alicia was too smart to gamble. Gambling was a mug’s game, and Alicia liked her high life too much to risk just chucking it away on a toss of the dice. In which case, Justin had got it all wrong about his sister.

  So where did that leave her? And, more importantly, where did it leave Trevor Watkins?

  ‘There she is sir,’ Mollern said, nodding in the direction of a garden seat that was nestled in a large hedge of box. Mollineaux nodded and set off across the lawn, wondering vaguely how old the box hedge must be. Centuries, he was sure. Didn’t box grow really slowly?

  Jenny, who had headed for the seat, shade and solitude in order to cogitate on Keith Harding’s angry but probably accurate assessment of his love life, glanced up as the policemen drew level with her. Without waiting to be asked, she shifted herself along a bit, allowing them to sit, one either side of her.

  ‘Good’ – Mollineaux checked his watch, saw that it was five past twelve, and finished – ‘afternoon, Miss Starling. Did you enjoy your walk?’

  ‘Yes, thank you. I went to the village and saw Margie Harding.’

  Mollineaux nodded. Yet another promising suspect with a strong motive. He sighed. ‘Did she have any fresh light to shed on the murder?’ he asked, without much hope. He was beginning to think that the Greer case was going to be left on the ‘unsolved’ pile. Which was never good for a copper’s chance of promotion.

  Jenny said nothing. She was barely listening. She was sure, in fact she was absolutely convinced, that someone, at some time in the past, had said something vitally important, and she just couldn’t for the life of her think what it was. No doubt it had been mentioned in passing by someone, and had seemed unimportant at the time. But she had the tantalizing feeling that it held the clue that would bring the whole intriguing puzzle into one sharply focused picture at last. But what was it? Who had said it? When?

  Mollineaux, still waiting for an answer to his question, looked at her and instantly recognized someone who was deep in thought. He looked across to his sergeant, who waited placidly. ‘We’ve had some rather interesting news from the labs. About the corks,’ he said, burning the last of his bridges. If his chief ever found out he’d confided vital information to a suspect, he’d be finished.

  Jenny knew it was no use trying to force a memory. She would simply have to wait until her subconscious chose to spit it out – whatever it was. She sighed deeply and leaned back against the slated wooden planks.

  ‘The corks?’ she echoed, trying to force her mind onto a different track, and eventually nodded. ‘Oh yes. The corks. I daresay they told you that none of them had a pu
ncture mark,’ she guessed offhandedly.

  Mollern nearly fell off the end of the seat. Mollineaux simply stared at her. ‘You knew that none of the corks would have been tampered with?’ he asked at last, his voice a disbelieving squeak.

  Jenny, still half lost in another world of thought, nodded vaguely. ‘That’s right. When I found out the syringe had been discovered in the bin under the wine table, I suspected that your theory was wrong – about somebody sneaking into the kitchen and injecting the paraquat into the champagne when it was still in the pantry, I mean.’

  Suddenly, as if aware that the atmosphere had turned decidedly chilly, Jenny half-turned on the seat, and laid a consoling hand on Mollineaux’s sleeve. ‘Not that it wasn’t a wonderful theory, of course,’ she said, and could have added that the killer also expected the police to latch onto it. However (call her psychic), she didn’t think Mollineaux was in the mood to know he’d been second-guessed by the murderer.

  ‘Thank you,’ Mollineaux said, through gritted teeth. ‘So it was a good theory, but false. You, I’m sure, know how it actually was done?’ he added, having little choice but to believe it. ‘You wouldn’t happen to know who the killer is as well, would you?’ he added sarcastically, and Jenny, who was once again trying to capture that elusive memory, stirred.

  ‘Hmm? What? Oh yes,’ she said, matter-of-factly. ‘I’ve known who killed Justin for some time now. And how it was done. No, what really worries me,’ she carried on, oblivious to the fact that two sets of jaws had practically hit the lawn either side of her, ‘is why it was done. It has me absolutely baffled.’ And she shook her head in frustration.