Birthdays Can Be Murder Page 9

  It became deathly quiet in the kitchen as the last of the staff left. Vera had been asked to stay on, just to help with any little emergencies – spilt drinks, dropped plates, and such – but she and Martha had disappeared about an hour ago, no doubt to sulk somewhere out of the hurly-burly and sip some of the Greers’ finest port. Now, only the sound of simmering saucepans and spitting meat disturbed the silence. From the shadows at the top of the stairs, Margie finally spoke. ‘Hello, Keith.’

  ‘Margie.’ His answering voice was quiet and unbelievably tired. ‘What are you doing here? Have you gone completely round the bend?’

  ‘I had to come. You wouldn’t talk to me. You wouldn’t come to the phone at work. Every time I saw you on the street you ran away from me. You moved from your mum’s house, and she wouldn’t tell me where you’d gone. The only place I knew where to find you is here. Tonight.’

  Jenny saw him run a hand wearily through his hair. ‘I moved out. I left you. Don’t you understand?’

  ‘Other men leave their wives, but they don’t avoid them. It’s just childish, that’s what it is.’ Margie’s voice was getting tearful now, and Jenny shifted uneasily. She wished they’d go. She’d had enough of fraught human relationships to last her at least a month. What was it about The Beeches that seemed to ferment unrest?

  ‘I tried that. Remember? Coming to see you and the kids. And what happened?’

  ‘Well, what did you expect to happen?’ Margie asked, anger and tears now in equal proportion. ‘I wanted you back. I still want you back. Did you expect me to just give up? To not even try to get you to come back home where you belong?’

  ‘I tried to warn you it was no good. I tried to tell you if you didn’t stop that I wouldn’t come again. But you wouldn’t listen.’ His voice rose to a kind of hopeless wail.

  ‘And what about the kids?’ Margie asked, all trace of tears now gone. ‘You stop coming to see me, you stop coming to see them. Or are you so wrapped up in your new life that you didn’t notice?’

  ‘Of course I noticed,’ Keith snapped, his own voice bitter now. ‘I hate not seeing them. But you didn’t think of that when you drove me away, did you?’

  In the silence, Jenny clearly heard the other woman gasp. ‘You think it’s all my fault?’ Her voice was incredulous. And the tears were back. ‘I love you. Oh, Keith, I’ve always loved you. Ever since we were kids at school, there was never anyone else. There won’t ever be anyone else. You know that. Why are you being so bloody stupid?’

  ‘Oh, Margie, don’t.’ Keith sighed deeply. ‘Why can’t you just accept it? I have to have her, Margie. It’s like it is for your old dad and his whisky. I can’t stop. I can’t give her up. Don’t you understand? I just can’t.’

  Margie began to cry. Soft, heartbroken sobs that had her husband reaching for her and holding on, but not giving in. ‘It’s no good, Margie,’ Keith said softly. ‘It’s no good. We’re through.’

  ‘Don’t say that!’ Margie howled, pulling away. ‘You’ll never become one of them, no matter how much she tries to make you one. You’ll always be poor, and they’ll always have money. Just because of that, they’ll never accept you. Everyone else knows it except you! You’re the laughing-stock of the village.’

  The harsh words rang around the quiet room.

  ‘I know,’ Keith said, his voice flat and bitter. ‘You think I don’t know all that? But it doesn’t matter. That’s what you don’t get, Margie. What nobody gets. Alicia and I can’t live apart. We can’t be anything if we’re not together.’ His voice was passionate now. Desperate, almost possessed.

  Jenny winced. She stared at the oven, then at the fridge, then out of the window. The marquee was up, she noticed vaguely. The tables would be set up, and she really should set about transferring the buffet. She wished these two young people would go. Just take their pain and their tragedy, and get out of her kitchen.

  ‘She’s a witch, that’s what she is,’ Margie said bitterly. ‘If we’d lived 300 years ago I could have had her burned alive for putting a spell on you. And I would do it too. Just give me the chance!’ There was such hate in her voice that her husband stared at her, as if at a stranger. Finally, he shook his head.

  ‘Go home, Margie. Go home to the kids and just forget about us. OK? I’ll see you and the kids don’t suffer. You’ve been getting the money all right?’

  Margie began to cry in earnest now. It was obviously more than her husband could take, for he suddenly roared, ‘Go home!’, making both women jump. Jenny, having thoroughly had enough, picked up a tray of Bengal eggs and very loudly slammed it down on the table.

  The voices above her promptly lowered to become a whisper, but such were the acoustics that Jenny could still clearly hear them. ‘I won’t let you go,’ Margie warned. ‘You may think I will, but I won’t.’ And there was something maniacally stubborn in her tone.

  Jenny heard a door open somewhere in the hall, and looked over her shoulder. Then they all heard a blithe voice calling Keith’s name. Then, ‘Oh, Daphne, have you seen Mr Harding?’

  ‘I believe he’s in the kitchen, Alicia.’

  ‘The kitchen?’ Alicia’s voice came sharply. ‘What on earth’s he doing in there?’

  ‘Helping your father with the champagne crates, I understand.’

  ‘Oh, hell!’

  As Jenny began to move rapidly across the room, to do what, she wasn’t quite sure, Margie backed away, her face white and pinched. At the same time Keith opened the door and left quickly. Nobody, it seemed, wanted a confrontation. When she was sure the coast was clear, Margie left as well, looking stiff and drained. She never gave the cook so much as a backward glance.

  For a long time Jenny stared at the closed door, her heart thudding painfully. When the door suddenly flew open again she nearly screamed, but only Martha, Georges and two of the waiters appeared in the doorway. ‘Time to load up the marquee, yes?’ Georges said, eyes twinkling and moustache twitching. ‘The dining guests are already arriving. The party crowd will not be far behind, and they must have their nibbles, yes?’

  ‘Yes,’ Jenny agreed automatically, and watched them unload the food from fridges, ovens, cupboards and table tops, never once remonstrating at the proper way to transfer stuffed tomatoes from baking tray to platter.

  ‘Getting worried, eh?’ Martha Vaughan said smugly. ‘Don’t worry. They won’t dare complain. Not about such an accomplished cook as yourself.’

  Jenny glanced at Martha and smiled. ‘Thank you,’ she said sweetly. ‘Perhaps you’d care to give me a hand with the giblet gravy?’

  Martha paled but gave in gracelessly. ‘I wouldn’t have thought the likes of you would have known what good old-fashioned giblet gravy was,’ she sniffed. ‘I thought you fancy cooks always dined on them foreign sauces?’

  ‘You can’t beat giblet gravy,’ Jenny said sincerely.

  ‘No,’ Martha said, stunned into agreeing with her. ‘Oh. Well. That’s all right then.’ Then, realizing that an olive branch had been offered, and feeling strangely obliged to take it, the resident cook said as pleasantly as she could manage, ‘That cake of Alicia’s looks a treat.’

  The noise level was beginning to filter through to the kitchen now – a low, rumbling sound of conversation. Jenny glanced at her watch. It was 6.15 and everything was ready. The first course was simmering, ready to be served, and the meats were going to be ready at the optimum moment. Chase had reported that all the dining guests had arrived. Georges was primed, the wine had breathed, and the Greers had descended, resplendent in tuxedos, gowns and jewels. The band had been told to stop their noisy and tuneless ‘warming up’ in the ballroom, and were despatched to the marquee. The marquee itself was installed with food and wine and the party lights were twinkling away in the garden.

  Everything was ready.

  And Jenny, like a horse at the starting gate, was waiting for the flag to be raised. She should be happy. The food was perfect. The tables were beautiful. There had been no major mis
haps. She should have been feeling a serene sense of satisfaction. Instead she was afraid. She simply couldn’t help feeling that there was something very wrong. She’d tried to shrug it off, reminding herself to simply take care of the food. That was what she was being paid for, after all – to cook.

  ‘I’m going to check on the guests,’ she said abruptly, and Georges, who had become convinced of her culinary sainthood, nearly fainted. Martha gaped at her, then hissed, ‘Are you mad? You’re not supposed to go out there until Mr Mark makes his speech and thanks the staff.’

  Jenny knew that. She was flying in the face of etiquette, and nobody would like it. She didn’t like it herself. ‘I’m going to check the guests,’ she said again, and marched briskly out of the kitchen. She knew she was going to regret it, even as she did it.

  She just didn’t know, then, how much.

  Eight

  DESPITE HER DETERMINATION, Jenny stood in the hall for several moments, glancing nervously at the ballroom doors. The sounds of gaiety clearly emanating from within made her fears seem suddenly ridiculous. And yet there was the dead gardener’s boy. But what, really, did an accidental death have to do with a birthday party? Jenny shook her head.

  Then a dull thud from across the hall made her turn and frown. A door stood slightly ajar. Giving the ballroom a final anxious glance, she sighed and crossed the hall, pushing the door open and glancing in. For a moment she thought the room was empty. Perhaps it was only the cat, exploring and knocking something over. Then a shadow moved, and Jenny felt the back of her neck prickle.

  The room was Mark’s study. A large desk was covered in papers, and a comfortable-looking swivel leather armchair was positioned behind it. The room was gloomy, for the heavy velvet curtains had been drawn across the windows. Now who would do that? Not Chase, she was sure. It was his last job of the evening to close windows and draw curtains, and generally lock up, and she could see no reason why a member of the household would want the curtains closed on such a lovely and still-light May evening.

  Then she realized that the window overlooked the large lawn with the marquee. And so anyone looking in from there would be able to see clearly what was going on inside the study.

  The shadow moved again, and this time the sound of rustling papers carried clearly across the room. Jenny realized that whoever was inside must have drawn the curtains in an effort to conceal what he was doing. But what exactly was that? From the sound of it, he was rifling through the papers on the desk. Not a burglar then. Even if the timing had not been so wrong, the visitor was ignoring the other valuable objects in the room; even from the doorway, Jenny could see the gleam of silver candlesticks on the fireplace mantel, for instance.

  Then the stranger did something that almost made Jenny change her mind. He picked up something that glinted even in the dimmed light of the room. Something jewel-like. She was just about to demand to be told what was going on, when the stranger lifted his hand and she saw the object clearly. It was a decorative paper knife, one of the dagger-like, jewelled objects people brought back from their holidays in places like Spain and India. The shadowy figure slipped the object, handle first, into his inside pocket.

  Jenny opened her mouth to speak just as a blast of noise hit her from behind. The ballroom doors had been pushed open, and a stream of chatting guests began to file into the dining room opposite. Jenny automatically shot a glance at her watch.

  Six-thirty. For the first time in her career, she was not present when the first course left the kitchen. She turned back to the stranger, who had stopped halfway across the room, and was staring at her in slack-jawed dismay. She could see now that he was an older man, much older than she had previously thought. He was sturdily built, with a bluff and, she was sure, normally friendly face. Now he looked only surprised and disconcerted. He walked to meet her with reluctance in every step.

  ‘Tom! There you are!’ From behind her, Mark Greer’s voice sounded wonderfully normal and unconcerned.

  ‘Hello, Mark. I was just taking a breather.’

  ‘I know what you mean!’ Mark said, with a surprising gentleness. ‘Don’t much care for parties myself. Hello, Jenny, is something wrong? Don’t tell me the soup has burned and we’re all going to have to start off with corned beef sandwiches!’

  Jenny managed a tight smile. ‘Oh, I always check everything is ready just before the off,’ she lied with all the assured panache of a politician. ‘Make sure all the guests are seated, that the pathways are clear, that sort of thing,’ she elaborated, and glanced tellingly at the stranger. ‘Like this gentleman here,’ she said softly. ‘He didn’t seem to know his way to the dining room.’

  ‘What! Tom not know the way to food?’ Mark took his friend by the shoulders. ‘We can’t have you missing the best meal of your life, eh, Jenny? Especially since it’s partly a celebration of your own retirement as well.’

  Jenny glanced sharply at the man she now knew must be Tom Banks, the recently sacked executive, and wondered exactly what he wanted with a sharply bladed paper knife. She began to open her mouth to warn Mark, and then closed it again as the two men entered the dining room. After all, what could she say? ‘Oh, excuse me, Mr Greer, but did you know your friend is a thief?’ Or, even better, ‘Excuse me, Mark, but I think your old friend is about to stick someone with your paper knife?’

  ‘And what are you doing here, pray tell?’ a voice asked from just an inch behind her left ear and Jenny spun around. The kitchen cat would have recognized the hiss she gave. But Justin merely grinned at her mockingly. His blond hair and blue eyes set off the black and white of his evening dress in a manner that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a Hollywood movie.

  ‘I thought you were supposed to be panicking in the kitchen, making sure every morsel is perfect. What happens if a waiter leaves the kitchen with a splash of soup on the soup-bowl rim? Won’t the world come crashing to an end?’

  ‘I never panic,’ Jenny corrected him sharply, ‘and if Georges lets a waiter out of that kitchen with the soup anything more than the regulation two inches below the tureen rim, I’ll boil and eat Martha’s cat.’

  ‘Now that I’d like to see.’ Justin guffawed with laughter. ‘I can’t see that animal standing for being plucked and seasoned.’

  ‘Why aren’t you in the dining room?’ Jenny counter-attacked sharply, exasperated and angry with him. He was making her like him again, and that was just too much.

  ‘Family has to take care of guests, you know. Mother went in with the early birds. Father took care of his cronies. Alicia and I have to round up the stragglers and get them seated before the soup.’

  ‘As if you’d care,’ Jenny growled.

  Justin grinned. ‘How well you know me, darling Starling.’

  Jenny stared back stonily, and Justin laughed. ‘All right, if you must know, I’m waiting for my date. I want to make sure she behaves herself.’

  ‘And why wouldn’t she?’ Jenny asked archly. ‘I’m sure Miss Walker wants only to impress.’

  Justin laughed. ‘How well you know us all, darling Starling. Actually, Babs would have wanted to impress the daylights out of everyone, reassuring them all that she knew which fork to use, and demonstrating that she would never, ever put her peas on her knife. But that was when she actually thought she might become one of the family,’ he added, his voice now both grim and vicious.

  Jenny stiffened. ‘You’ve broken off your engagement?’ she asked quietly. ‘Now?’ And again that sense of impending doom washed over her.

  ‘Engagement? Hah, we were never engaged, except in Babs’s own mind. And I told her so, in no uncertain terms, not an hour ago. Now I’m not so sure that she hasn’t planned a little revenge of her own. She can be a trifle wild, can Babs,’ Justin acknowledged, with such cheerful disregard that Jenny felt like throttling him.

  ‘You should be more damned careful!’ she said instead, and with such a note of genuine fear that Justin gaped at her, all amusement draining from his face. ‘I m
ean, women don’t like to be used,’ Jenny felt compelled to justify herself. ‘And Alicia’s gone to so much trouble to make this party a success for you both. It would be a shame to have it ruined because of your awful timing. Not to mention lack of basic human compassion,’ she added drolly.

  ‘Darling Starling, are you telling me off?’ he half-laughed. But his eyes were narrowed, and he was clearly unhappy with her lecture.

  ‘Yes. I am.’ Jenny looked at him levelly.

  Justin laughed then. Whether or not it was genuine, Jenny couldn’t tell. ‘Darling Starling! Oh-oh, here she comes. Doesn’t she remind you of a tigress?’

  Babs Walker, a vision in flaming red silk, slunk across the hall, very much reminding Jenny of a tigress. Her dark eyes were blazing with black fire.

  ‘Does Arbie know about this?’ Jenny suddenly asked, surprising herself almost as much as Justin.

  He stared at her, the amusement definitely genuine now. ‘I doubt it. Although I daresay Babs will get around to telling him eventually. Oh, not the truthful version, of course. She’ll tell him she dropped me, and he, like a fool, will believe her. Or pretend to. Not that she’ll stay with him long, of course. Arbie makes a good safety net, but she’ll be on the lookout for another meal ticket soon. Won’t you, darling?’ he added in a slightly raised voice as Babs finally reached them.

  She glanced sharply at the cook, although Jenny knew she hadn’t overheard their conversation. Then she smiled at Justin, showing her lovely white fangs, and looped her hand under his elbow. Her nails, long and red, curled around the black satin of his sleeve. Her smile was indeed animalistic, and Jenny wondered just how well Babs had taken her dismissal by Justin Greer – how she had reacted to having the dream of the good life taken away, and of being made to look a fool in front of her ex-lover.