Birthdays Can Be Murder Read online

  ‘No problem,’ Jenny said. ‘We can go through all his likes and dislikes and create a menu to suit not only him, but also your guests.’

  ‘Oh, that can wait until tonight,’ Alicia broke in quickly, already bored. Jenny took the hint and nodded, and rose with surprising grace to her feet, mentally plotting her menu. As always, she was going to earn her astronomical fee.

  She took her leave and returned to the hall, where she found Chase waiting. He’d retrieved her very small suitcase from the van, and now led her upstairs.

  She nearly always had it written into her contract that she be given bed and board for the duration of her services, and her room at The Beeches turned out to be very pleasant indeed, with generous windows and a lofty ceiling. And most importantly of all, for a woman of her stature, there was a spacious and sturdily built king-sized bed.

  Chase deposited her case on the floor and left silently.

  ‘Well, that’s another fine mess you’ve got me into, Stanley,’ Jenny told her rueful reflection in the dressing-table mirror. Then she gave a mental shrug, and set about unpacking her case.

  With her few yet elegantly tailored clothes neatly put away, she wandered to the window and looked out over the well-tended gardens. Extravagant herbaceous borders lined lush green lawns, and there looked to be a large walled vegetable garden in the far corner. The vegetable garden made her eyes glitter. Once she’d unpacked her utensils from the van, her very next task would be to check it out and see what goodies were ripe and available.

  A stream cut through the main part of the ornamental garden, meandering very picturesquely with twee little wooden bridges crossing it at strategic points. The stream itself terminated in a big pond, and as she looked, a body was just being pulled out of it.

  With her heart thumping sickeningly, she opened the big sash windows and half-leaned out. The painted windowsill, warmed by the sun, was hot to her palms, but she ignored the discomfort.

  The garden around the pond was host to a small, select gaggle of people and she had no trouble in picking out the head of the group. Tall and with a distinguished crop of short silver hair, he was talking to a dark-haired, squat individual.

  She looked away quickly from the sight of the body, but not before she’d caught a fleeting glimpse of wet fair hair. She had the impression of a pale, young, handsome face before the body was zipped unceremoniously into a black bag.

  Jenny sighed deeply. She didn’t like being in the sort of house where they pulled bodies from ponds right under your bedroom window. She realized her mind was already drifting towards thoughts of murder, and wondered why she was immediately assuming that foul play was involved. After all, accidents did happen, and all the time.

  Disgruntled, she walked out onto the landing, where the house seemed eerily silent. She quickly made her way downstairs and sought out the kitchen, which was situated down three steep steps. There, one quick glance told her all she needed to know, and she could relax. As well as a big electric oven, there was an Aga and a microwave. There was also a deep double sink, and best of all, plenty of workspace. It would most definitely do.

  The room was not empty though. A dumpy middle-aged woman was sitting at the table drinking a mug of tea, and over by the sink and peeling potatoes was a small, wiry, brown-eyed woman, who could have been any age between thirty and sixty.

  ‘You must be this posh cook they’ve hired then?’ the seated woman said, with barely concealed hostility. ‘I’m Martha. That over there is Vera.’

  Jenny guessed that both women had probably lived locally for all their lives, and didn’t think much of travelling cooks. She smiled warmly. ‘Yes. Hello. You must be the Greers’ proper cook?’ she said brightly, bustling into the kitchen and thrusting out her hand.

  Martha reluctantly shook hands, her eyes making a quick inventory of the interloper. Late twenties, she guessed, so not the total young know-it-all she’d expected. And at least she looked like a cook. Martha had never trusted skinny cooks. Still, the woman had no business being in her kitchen.

  Jenny, accurately reading all the signs, gave a mental shrug. Well, she was only here for the weekend, after all, and then she’d be gone.

  Just then a sudden movement out of the corner of her eye made her turn sharply. And there, sitting on the floor next to a pile of shoes, was the biggest tabby cat Jenny had ever seen.

  It promptly spat at her.

  ‘That’s my cat,’ Martha said with evident satisfaction, as the feline shot like a bullet into the space underneath the nearest set of cupboards, and commenced to growl awesomely from under cover.

  As an example of the welcome she’d come to expect at The Beeches, Jenny thought with grim amusement, the cat’s reaction said it all.

  Two

  A FEW HOURS LATER, Jenny walked along a grass path, her eyes noting the maturity of the various spring vegetables growing in well-ordered ranks. Along with everything else, the Greers’ kitchen garden appeared to be immaculate – and she’d bet her last pay cheque that this was all down to the as yet unseen Mrs Greer. She simply couldn’t see the walking fashion statement known as Alicia lifting so much as a well-varnished fingernail – not even to give a set of instructions to an employee.

  One of the few good things about global warming, Jenny mused sardonically, was how the mild winters and early warm springs chivvied the veggies along. Not that she’d ever dare suggest that there was anything good about global warming to her mother.

  She valued her hide too much.

  The new potatoes were especially enjoying themselves, Jenny noted, more than happy to cast thoughts of her mother aside. No doubt at some point she’d be getting a call from some police station or other with a message to come and bail her mother, Starstream Starling, out of jail, yet again.

  Jenny had no objections at all to her mother’s change of name by deed poll. After all, Muriel Agnes didn’t have the same cosmic ring to it as Starstream; even a pleb such as herself could see that. But having to bail her out every time she and her fellow protestors succeeded in getting arrested for chaining themselves to some tree or other was getting to be somewhat tedious.

  She heaved a sigh as she ran her eye over the south-facing brick wall, where young pear trees had been carefully pruned and trained horizontally against it. Come autumn, she thought wistfully, they’d produce a good crop. She thought longingly of her pear and Camembert tarts, one of her specialities, and shook the thought away.

  Although she had given the activity still centred on the pond a very wide berth indeed, she nevertheless managed to nearly bump into a young constable, who was lurking in the shrubbery. He seemed to be guarding a gate in the hedge that led out onto a back lane.

  ‘Oh. Hello,’ Jenny mumbled, and began to do a very quick U-turn. She was not, however, quick enough.

  ‘Excuse me, miss, er, madam? Are you supposed to be here?’ the young bobby yelped keenly.

  No doubt, Jenny thought, he’d been told to keep an eye out for nosy neighbours and reporters. Not, she fervently hoped, that she looked like either one of those!

  ‘I certainly am, Constable. I’m the cook,’ she informed him with a helpful smile. She was only a ‘chef’ or a ‘caterer’ to butlers and obstreperous employers.

  The constable visibly stiffened. ‘Mrs Vaughan is the household cook, madam,’ he stated, his young eyes glittering in triumph at having caught her out in a lie.

  Jenny smiled. ‘I’m only temporary, Constable,’ she explained patiently. ‘I’ve been hired to cater the Greers’ upcoming birthday party.’

  ‘Oh,’ he said flatly, looking crestfallen. But he wasn’t quite done yet. ‘And what time did you arrive, madam? I’m not sure that Inspector Mollineaux has your name on his list.’

  Jenny Starling hoped very much indeed that Inspector Mollineaux didn’t have her name on his list. ‘I only arrived a few hours ago, Constable. Around half past nine, in fact.’

  ‘Oh,’ he said unhappily. For a moment there, he’d thought h
e’d found something worthwhile with which to relieve his boredom. Jenny silently commiserated. A young constable on what must be his first big case, and assigned to guard a lowly gate in a hedge, could be forgiven for wanting to cast his net onto wider waters.

  ‘You arrived by car, madam?’

  ‘Sort of,’ she hedged. ‘I’ve got a van. I need it to transport all my’ – she was about to say specialist knives, and quickly changed it mid-sentence – ‘er, pots and pans, and the kitchen gadgets I simply can’t do without.’

  ‘And its registration number, please?’ he asked, taking out his notebook.

  Jenny heaved a mighty sigh, which, naturally, set her very impressive breasts rising and falling. The young constable stared at them, gulped once and then determinedly dropped his eyes to his notebook.

  ‘EAT ME1’, Jenny said morosely. The personalized number plate had been yet another gift from her father, whose sense of humour, it had to be said, left something to be desired. It wasn’t hard for Jenny to understand why her parents had been divorced for years.

  Jenny watched the young copper blink, battle with a smirk, then finally write it down. ‘And you came from…?’ he pressed relentlessly. Now that he had someone to question, he was not about to let her go without a struggle, that much was clear.

  ‘I came from Broadway.’ She named the Cotswold beauty spot that had been her last place of employment. ‘From the Acorn Guest House, to be precise.’ However, an unfortunate clash of wills with the owner over the proper recipe for Dundee cake had abruptly ended her stay there. Jenny sighed. It was a pity. It would have been a nice billet for the summer.

  But Jenny was fussy about her Dundee cake. And anyone who didn’t appreciate a proper cake was a Philistine anyway.

  ‘I see,’ the deflated constable said pathetically. Apparently, Broadway wasn’t known to be a particular hotbed of crime, Jenny surmised with a smile.

  ‘Is it very bad?’ Jenny asked, more because she felt sorry for him than out of any real desire to know. ‘The accident, I mean,’ she added, when he looked at her blankly.

  As she’d guessed, the lad’s chest visibly swelled as self-importance set in. ‘Well, madam, it is. A young man has died. He was here to help out the regular gardener, see. I knew him too, worse luck. We went to the same local comp together. It looks as if he hit his head on one of them low-lying branches across the bridge and fell in,’ he trustingly repeated the knowledge he’d no doubt gleaned from listening to his superiors.

  Jenny felt her conscience prick her. If this Mollineaux character heard him giving away such information to a member of the public, he’d probably be severely reprimanded. She could only hope the young constable had enough sense not to let on that he’d been doing it. But before she could warn him, he swept on blithely.

  ‘Either he couldn’t swim, or he wasn’t awake when he hit the water. Poor sod,’ he added, with much more feeling now.

  So he must have drowned then, Jenny thought automatically. The ME would probably have been able to pick up on the signs, even this early on. Jenny, like a lot of people, was an avid murder-mystery reader, and favoured the same genre on television. Besides, she knew all about murder investigations from first-hand experience. An experience she was not anxious to repeat.

  ‘I’m surprised his partner didn’t kick up more of a fuss. When he didn’t come home, I mean,’ Jenny added as he gave her a blank look. ‘Or did he live alone?’

  ‘Oh, it didn’t happen last night,’ he gushed, his enthusiasm at being in the know again outweighing any sense of discretion. ‘No, he arrived at the crack of dawn apparently. He was on the Rousham Green First Team, you see. Football,’ he added, as this time he was the one being given the blank look. ‘Whenever there was an afternoon match on, the old man who does the gardening used to let him work odd hours so he could get off in time to play. They were playing Marsh Gratings today. They’ll have to find another centre forward now, I reckon,’ he added sadly.

  Jenny reckoned they probably would too. ‘Well, I’d better get on with it.’ She indicated the kitchen garden. ‘I was just seeing what vegetables there are that I can use for the party.’

  The constable, not in the least concerned with vegetables, nodded and gave her a final, suspicious look.

  Ten minutes later, and satisfied that she had mentally marked down all that was available by way of salad items and early summer fruit, Jenny turned her attention to the greenhouse.

  It was a large, long building, and the moment she stepped into it, her heart lifted. Rows of fresh tomatoes were just beginning to ripen. Cucumbers and marrows grew in the curling profusion of their own large orange flowers. Better yet, hanging in strings from the wooden benches, were last year’s onions, still good enough for her purposes. Overhead hung clusters of grapes but, alas, as yet much too small and hard to be of much use to her.

  Her eyes ran professionally over the shelves, seeking out any hint of trouble. Although she was sure from the evidence she’d seen thus far that the gardener must know what he was doing, Jenny didn’t know for a fact that he was totally organic in his approach. And chemical enhancement in her food was something she tried to avoid if at all possible. Fortunately, her nose could detect only good, strong farmhouse manure, mixed with a liberal spreading from the compost heap.

  On the dusty shelves just inside the door, however, there was a little collection of pest-control paraphernalia. She reached for what looked like a jar of homemade spray and lifted the lid before sniffing cautiously. Rhubarb leaves, if she wasn’t mistaken. There was also a spray of popular branded weedkiller and, much more unusually, a single and very old bottle half full of paraquat. This lethal brew, Jenny knew, had gone out of manufacture at about the same time that Noah had begun to build his ark. Obviously the gardener here was one of those people who never threw anything out.

  At the bottom of the shelves, there was a large bucket of ashes set to one side, which was no doubt used to keep the slugs at bay. On the whole, she’d seen far worse inventories than this.

  She made copious notes of what fruits and vegetables were ripe, plus a few shorthand reminders for various recipes they could be used for, before walking to the door at the far end of the greenhouse. There she found herself facing a half-hidden little nook of the gardens that she hadn’t noticed before.

  High box hedges that must have been centuries old surrounded a tiny garden that almost made her melt in ecstasy. A herb garden! She sent up a brief prayer of blessings on the gardener, and set to mentally naming them all. Basil, thyme, rosemary, mint (of course), parsley….

  ‘Oh, damn it, Keith, you’ve got to come. I won’t have you chickening out. Besides, since whatsisname fell into the pond, I need you to be with me more than ever. You know how people talk. They’ll be saying next it’s Daddy’s fault for not having the branches cut down.’

  The voice, wailing and insistent and coming from the other side of the high box, was unmistakably that of Alicia Greer. And from the obvious petulance of the tone, Jenny didn’t need to be a fortune teller to surmise that she was not in a good mood.

  ‘You know I won’t be welcome, Al. Why don’t you just face up to it? Your dad will avoid me, as always, and your mum will be so damned excruciatingly polite. And as for Justin!’ The voice was deep and definitely pleasant.

  Jenny had always thought you could tell a lot about a man from his voice alone.

  She glanced at the small arched entrance in the box where she had come in and wondered if she could safely slip out again without being seen. The trouble was, she was not sure of the layout of the garden, and the last thing she wanted to do was blunder into a lovers’ quarrel.

  ‘But I want you there,’ Alicia insisted, and now there was no mistaking the pleading quality in her voice. ‘It’ll be so dismal and boring without you.’

  ‘And I thought this was going to be the party of the century,’ the unknown male voice countered drolly.

  ‘It will be, you rat! I’ve even ordered birthday c
rackers from Asprey’s, with gold cufflinks for the men and earrings for the ladies, all with a lovely enamelled Greer coat-of-arms on them. You know Daddy had that researcher trace the family tree? We’ve managed to get a band that’s big in Soho, and good old Arbie is providing the flowers.’

  ‘Well, then, you won’t miss me amongst all that splendour.’

  ‘Don’t be so damned working class and superior! You know full well that I can’t live without you. Not even for a day. An hour. A minute.’

  Much to Jenny’s horror, the ardent young couple suddenly appeared in the archway in the box, and she took an instinctive step backwards, out of the parsley and into a shadowy corner. She could see now that Alicia’s boyfriend matched his voice. Tall, with dark wavy hair, he had a strong, handsome profile. Bizarrely, he was dressed in dirty overalls, liberally smeared in black grease.

  Jenny winced for Alicia’s white dress as she pressed herself close to him and sensuously raised her long white arms to encircle his neck.

  Love’s young dream was all very well and sweet, of course, Jenny mused, but did they have to indulge in it in the herb garden! Couldn’t they find a deserted haystack or something?

  The handsome young couple began to kiss passionately, and Jenny sighed wearily. Perhaps she could just barge her way through and create her own exit in the thick hedge. She had the build for it, after all.

  ‘Besides …’ Alicia finally unglued her mouth from his. ‘You’re going to be part of this family soon. Mummy and Daddy will just have to get used to you. And so will Justin.’

  ‘They never will, and you know it.’ He pulled her arms from around his neck but held on to her hands, as if unable to completely let her go, and Jenny found herself taking a harsh breath. There was an undeniable pathos to be had in the age-old story of star-crossed lovers, even in this modern day and cynical age.

  Abruptly, she began to wish herself very far away, knowing instinctively that she shouldn’t be seeing this.