Birthdays Can Be Murder Read online

  ‘I have a warrant for your arrest,’ he said, his voice loud and portentous, his eyes fixed on their target.

  Keith Harding took a step back, as if he’d been physically punched. He opened his mouth. ‘What…?’ But he had no opportunity to say anything more, for Mollineaux was upon them. He reached out and something silver flashed in his hands, and everybody stared. It was a pair of handcuffs.

  ‘Alicia Justine Greer, I arrest you for the murder of your brother, Justin Mark Greer, on the night of May the—’

  ‘NO!’ The strangled, howling scream came not from the lady herself, but from Keith, who launched himself at Mollineaux, knocking the man away. Mollern was there like a flash, his bullish strength easily manhandling the thrashing and hysterical younger man away. ‘Take it easy, son,’ he said soothingly, but nobody believed Keith actually heard him.

  He was staring at Mollineaux who, now free, quickly slipped the cuffs onto Alicia’s white, shaking hands. Alicia, Jenny noticed, wasn’t even looking at the policeman arresting her. Instead she watched Keith struggling helplessly against Mollern’s steely grip, her eyes dazed and disbelieving. Mutely, she shook her head.

  Keith, at last, grew still. He stared into her large, tear-filled blue eyes, and Jenny saw the knowledge finally hit him. He seemed to crumple. The hall was deathly silent.

  Finally, Mark Greer’s voice croaked out of him. He said only one word.

  ‘Alicia?’

  But Alicia didn’t answer. There was nothing, really, that Alicia could say.

  Nineteen

  JENNY WALKED SLOWLY down the stairs, her suitcase in hand. The hall was quiet and empty, with no echo of the dramatic scene that had been played out only a few hours before. Now it dozed in the early evening mellowness. The grandfather clock ticked ponderously, the only sound to be heard.

  Alicia had been taken away, and Keith had gone with her, as had her parents. Jenny could imagine Chase and Martha in the kitchen, sitting in numb silence, sipping tea and trying not to meet each other’s eyes. Jenny had no idea where Daphne was, and made her way to the door feeling a little bit like a thief stealing away in the middle of night.

  She opened the large doors and stood for a few moments, looking around. Then she sighed, straightened her back, and closed the door firmly behind her. Most definitely time to leave.

  But as she took her first step away from The Beeches and towards her van, a car pulled up the drive and swept around the curve, pulling to a halt in front of her. Jenny watched as Mollineaux and Mollern wearily climbed out.

  ‘Inspector,’ Jenny said, stowing away her case into the van. ‘I hope you have no objection to my leaving now?’

  Mollineaux shook his silvered head and smiled. ‘None at all, Miss Starling.’

  ‘How are Mark and Sherri?’ she asked quietly.

  ‘They’re bearing up as best they can. They don’t believe she did it, of course. And they’re bringing in some fancy lawyers.’

  Jenny nodded. ‘Of course.’

  ‘She won’t get away with it though.’ Mollineaux sounded confident. ‘That’s why the chief is doing all the processing now. He wants his face in the papers. He wouldn’t be so keen to be involved unless he knew we had a good enough case for a conviction. No, she’ll be indicted for killing her brother all right. But we aren’t so sure about our chances of convicting her for Jimmy Speight’s murder,’ he admitted grimly. ‘That’s why we made no mention of it when we arrested her. It’ll be a matter for the CPS to decide whether or not the prosecutor goes for a double-murder trial.’

  ‘She did kill him though,’ Jenny said quietly. ‘I’m sure of it. Poor Jimmy couldn’t have resisted spying on her when he saw her come down to the greenhouse so early in the morning. It was well known that Alicia wasn’t an early riser.’

  ‘And with his “journalistic” instincts aroused, he’d have crept along to see what she was up to,’ Mollineaux agreed, almost picturing in his mind how it must have happened. ‘And wondered why she’d injected a hypodermic with paraquat.’

  ‘And Alicia saw him spying. Which meant she’d have had no other choice but to kill him,’ Jenny agreed. ‘Because when her brother died of paraquat poisoning a day later, well, little Jimmy Speight would have been able to point the finger right at her.’

  Mollineaux nodded. ‘I imagine it was a simple matter for her to lure him onto the bridge. For a woman of her looks and abilities, she could easily have come up with some excuse.’

  ‘And, of course, although poor Jimmy must have been curious, he wouldn’t have had any reason, then, to be in mortal fear of his life. Besides, men never do think they have to fear women, do they?’ Jenny swept on sadly. ‘But Alicia could have “accidentally” broken off the branch, laughed about her clumsiness, and then whacked him over the head with it before he even knew what was happening.’

  ‘I agree that’s how it almost certainly happened,’ Mollineaux agreed. ‘But whether it’ll come out at the trial or not …’ He shrugged helplessly.

  Jenny nodded, not wanting to dwell on it. ‘Well, I’d better be off, I suppose.’ She opened the door to her van and Mollineaux looked at her with a mixture of amusement and frustration.

  ‘Damn it, Miss Starling. Just how did you know Alicia was our killer? I mean, what made you think of it all? Work it all out, I mean?’

  Jenny shrugged helplessly. ‘Well, it was more or less obvious right from the start that it had to be Alicia,’ she said, then hesitated as she heard Mollern give a rather disbelieving snort.

  Knowing this could take some time, Jenny tried to marshal her thoughts into some sort of reasonable order. ‘Right from the beginning, I had to ask myself, who was the most likely person to have orchestrated the poisoning? Who had the most chances to arrange it all? And the only person who came to mind was either Alicia, or the party co-ordinator. But why would a party co-ordinator want to poison her customers?’

  She glanced at the two men. ‘Think about it,’ she urged them quickly. ‘Who hired me in the first place? Alicia. And why, specifically, would she want me to cater the party?’ Jenny shrugged. ‘I think it could only have been because she’d read about me in the papers all those months ago, and knew I’d been mixed up in murder.’

  ‘So you thought she wanted you there for a sort of warped moral support?’ Mollineaux asked, puzzled, and Jenny snorted.

  ‘Hardly! She wanted me there to be a prime suspect. A cook with a reputation for murdering people! What better distraction could there be for her? Whilst people were looking askance at me, who would think of looking at her? But of course, I wasn’t the only one she had set up. She invited Arbie Goulder for exactly the same reason. He had a glaring motive for wanting Justin dead. And that was another thing that made me suspect her,’ she continued. ‘It just didn’t add up with Alicia’s almost manic desire to make the party perfect for her brother.’

  Mollern grunted. ‘That’s what gives me the creeps. Her pretending to throw the best birthday party ever, just so she could kill him.’

  Jenny frowned. ‘I rather think, you know,’ she said quietly, ‘that Alicia really did want the party to be the best ever. I think she went to so much trouble to make it the happiest day of his life, just because she was going to kill him. In her own twisted way, Sergeant, I think she actually loved her brother. And she wanted his last day to be perfect.’

  This time, Mollineaux shivered at the thought. ‘You think she’s mad, then?’

  But Jenny quickly shook her head. ‘Oh no, Inspector, not mad. Just utterly selfish. She loved her brother, but with him dead, she knew the company would have to come to her one day. Of course she’d have sold it right away, with a big portion going to Trevor Watkins to keep him silent. But that was as far as her magnanimity went. Justin was doomed, I think, from the moment she met Keith Harding.’

  For a while they were all silent, until Mollern shifted restlessly. ‘I still don’t see why you were so sure.’

  ‘Oh, there were lots of other little thing
s as well,’ Jenny said quickly.

  ‘Such as?’ Mollineaux asked, anxious to know. He’d just watched this woman solve a most baffling case, and he badly wanted to know how she’d done it.

  ‘Well, for a start, there was the way she avoided going into the kitchen on the morning of the party,’ the big cook said, and seeing their blank gazes, went on to explain. ‘When the champagne was delivered, she knew that eventually, if all went according to her plan, anyone who had entered that kitchen would be a suspect. That’s why she deliberately sent Arbie down, to give him the supposed opportunity to poison the champagne. At the same time, she had to make absolutely certain that everybody knew that she had not gone down, thereby putting her in the clear.’ Jenny paused for breath and thought back. ‘Yes, that was very clever. I asked her twice, you see, to come into the kitchen – to look at the cake and so on – and both times she practically ran in the opposite direction. That’s why she was so angry when she learned that Keith had volunteered to help with the wine, because it would later point the finger of suspicion at him, who also had a motive for wanting Justin out of the way. Something she had never intended to happen.’

  Mollineaux nodded. So simple – now that it was pointed out to him. ‘Anything else?’ he asked, and Jenny nodded.

  ‘The way she ran the party,’ the cook continued. ‘She went way over what was to be expected of a conscientious hostess and hardly necessary, since her father was paying the party coordinator an exorbitant amount, just to make sure that everything ran smoothly. The wine waiter, Georges, and all the rest of the staff told us that very first night when you interviewed us all together, that it was Alicia herself who’d timed the arrival of the birthday cake. Later, we found out it was Alicia who insisted that the wines be uncorked five minutes before pouring. And, of course, it was Alicia who insisted that the wine and champagne be put in the kitchen in the first place. Why, I wondered, did she object to them going into the wine cellar? Good catering staff could tell wine that had been racked for years from crates that were newly arrived.’

  Jenny shook her head. ‘No. All along, it was Alicia who had the best opportunity to organize the crime. And then there were the less obvious clues, such as her personality.’

  Neither policeman felt comfortable when it came to dealing with the psychological aspects of cases. But they listened attentively, nonetheless.

  ‘Right from the start, it was obvious how much Alicia loved money and the easy life,’ Jenny pointed out, prosaically enough. ‘It was also obvious that, for some reason or other, she never seemed to have much money herself. She had to scrounge off her own brother to buy herself a new dress for the party, for instance. She cadged her jewels off her mother, and even tried to persuade Sherri to hand over to her the gems on a permanent basis. She’d got her father to buy a house for herself and Keith Harding once they were married, and since she could so obviously wind her father around her little finger, it was obvious that Mark gave her a very generous allowance as well. So I had to ask myself – where did all her money go? She’d even sold her fancy car and brought a very modest little runaround, and that must have gone very much against the grain for someone like her.’

  Jenny smiled a little grimly. ‘At first, I believed Justin when he said that she’d lost it all gambling. But Keith Harding himself pointed out that Alicia was much too clever for that.’

  Jenny cleared her throat, wishing she’d thought to have a long, cool drink before leaving. All this talking was making her throat dry.

  ‘Alicia was certainly clever all right,’ she soldiered on gamely. ‘But she was also inherently lazy. So why, I had to ask myself, did this idle, selfish, rich little girl want her brother’s party to be so perfect that she felt compelled to do so much work herself? It just didn’t fit in with Alicia’s selfish personality. And that was another arrow that pointed straight at her.’

  For a while she remained silent, letting the policemen assimilate her thinking. At last, Mollineaux nodded, silently admitting that she had a point. Policemen tended to go for the certainties – motive, opportunity and evidence. Now he could admit that he should also have taken personality into consideration. Once again, now that it was pointed out to him, it all seemed so obvious.

  ‘So you had a good general idea it was Alicia,’ Mollineaux said. ‘But suspicion is one thing. How did you get from there to producing the evidence for us? That hypodermic, for instance. We found the love-nest hotel Alicia and Keith shared by showing their photos around and using a little discretion. And from there we found the big new chemist shop. Oh yes, I know.’ Mollineaux raised a hand as Jenny was about to speak. ‘I know that you overheard Alicia and her mother talking about this big chemist shop she went to. And I can see – just – how you came to believe that she must have bought the hypodermic needle there.’

  Mollineaux, too, was forced to pause for breath, and he shook his head helplessly. ‘But I still don’t understand how you worked out the actual mechanics of how the murder was done.’

  ‘Ahh, that,’ Jenny said thoughtfully. ‘Oh, that was because of the needle, Inspector.’

  ‘But you knew it hadn’t been injected into the corks,’ Mollineaux said, sounding just a little exasperated now.

  ‘Oh, it wasn’t what it was used for, Inspector,’ Jenny explained gently, ‘but where it was found that made it all so clear.’ Then, seeing only two sets of blank eyes looking back at her, she sighed. ‘Don’t you see? The moment I heard that a hypodermic needle that had contained paraquat had been found in a bin in the ballroom, I immediately asked myself a very simple question. Why?’

  ‘Why?’ It was Mollern who echoed her, his large moon-shaped face totally baffled.

  ‘Exactly,’ Jenny said. ‘Why? Say the killer had injected the champagne through the cork, as we were meant to think. As Alicia intended us all to think. Why would the killer then take the needle into the ballroom and throw it into the bin? If the poisoning had been done in the afternoon before the party had started, the killer would have had ample time to get rid of it, wouldn’t he? He could have buried it in the garden, or thrown it in the lake – it would never have been found then. Or simply have taken it home with him and put it in the bin. But no. The killer had all these opportunities to get rid of the evidence, and what does he do? He puts it in the bin in the ballroom under the champagne table, where the police were bound to find it.’

  ‘I get it,’ Mollern said, realization dawning. ‘Alicia wanted it found.’

  Jenny smiled gently. ‘Well, not exactly, Sergeant. I think she left it in the bin mainly because she had no other choice. She actually injected the poison into the champagne at the party, not through the cork earlier, as you thought. And, of course, once she’d done that, she had no other choice but to get rid of the needle, the vital evidence, as soon as possible. Which meant then and there, in the ballroom. Because, you see, of all the people there, only Alicia Greer never had the opportunity to get rid of it anywhere else! People surrounded her all the time. And then she was taken to hospital afterwards, where the police or a nurse would have been bound to find the needle had she slipped it into her handbag.’ Jenny looked from one to the other of them. ‘Don’t you see? Of all the people in that ballroom, she alone was the only one who would have had no opportunity to get rid of the needle after the deed was done. Thus it was found in the bin. As soon as I knew that, I was sure it was Alicia.’

  Mollern sighed gently. ‘That’s really breathtaking, Miss Starling. Almost as breathtaking as when you told us how she did it. The actual poisoning, I mean.’

  ‘Oh, that.’ Jenny dismissed that piece of deduction with a wave of her hand. ‘But you see, only Alicia could have done it that way. You see, the wine waiters told us that Alicia gave the signal for all the guests’ glasses to be filled for the toast. And it was Alicia who had the cake brought in when only she herself and Justin were the last to be served. And she was stood right by the wine table, ready and in position when the lights went out, to poison the cha
mpagne. And, luckily for her, all the main suspects were also close by. Arbie, Trevor Watkins, even Margie Harding, although Alicia knew nothing about her at the time. The actual poisoning was simple. All the guests had their glasses full, so there was no danger of any of them getting a dose of the poisoned bottle by mistake. The cake came in on her signal, and the lights went out. Everyone remarked how dark it was, and nobody’s eyesight had time to adjust from the bright glare to the sudden loss of light. That included Alicia’s own eyesight of course, hence the needle. She’d had the wine waiters open the champagne bottle for herself and Justin a few minutes in advance, so it was already open and waiting. In the darkness she couldn’t possibly have poured in the paraquat from a little vial, for she was as blind as the others, and it would have been too messy and hit-and-miss. But with a hypodermic it was easy. All she had to do was feel for the opening of the bottle with her fingers, carefully insert the needle tip inside the neck of the bottle, push the plunger, toss the hypodermic into the bin – a bin, incidentally, which she’d had placed there – and Bob’s your uncle. The lights come back on, and there’s the poisoned bottle of champagne, all innocent and waiting. And no chance of getting a full set of fingerprints either, from off just the rim of the bottle.’

  Jenny took a deep breath. ‘The wine waiter said he chose the bottle at random, and no doubt he thought he had. But picture the scene – the host and hostess need their glasses filled. Standing on the table, no doubt a little bit in front of all the others, was this newly opened and very expensive bottle of champagne. Of course he picked that one.’

  The two men, enthralled by her narrative, allowed themselves to relax. ‘So poor Margie Harding, being in the wrong place at the wrong time, received the poisoned drinks from the wine waiter and gave them to Justin and Alicia in all innocence,’ Mollineaux finished.