Birthdays Can Be Murder

by Joyce Cato

  But that was life for you.

  ‘I can’t say as I know that school,’ Molineaux said thoughtfully, and Jenny smiled sweetly and mentally wished him luck in trying to find it in the telephone book.

  ‘Could you tell me how you travelled this morning, Miss Starling?’ He changed the subject so casually, and asked the question so reasonably, that once again she had to fight the urge to applaud.

  Patiently she filled in the details of her van and route and was duly allowed to leave. As she did so, however, she glanced back once more and found those blue eyes fixed firmly on her.

  ‘Thank you for your co-operation, Miss Starling,’ Inspector Mollineaux said quietly. ‘And don’t worry. I’ll remember where I’ve seen you before.’

  I bet you will too, Jenny thought glumly, and gave him a cheerful smile.

  Jenny hurried into the kitchen like a supplicant seeking sanctuary in a cathedral. Vera ducked her head over the vegetables she was scraping, and Martha began to pound the steak she was preparing with more force than a stevedore. From somewhere out of sight, the cat hissed at her, threatening reprisals.

  It was bliss.

  ‘Mr Greer wants a walnut and coffee cake for his birthday, Martha. Do you have the right ingredients?’

  ‘Of course,’ Martha shot back, immediately on the defensive, but quickly changed to attack. ‘And you can’t have a cake like that! Everybody’ll be expecting a proper cake. With currants and raisins and hard icing.’

  ‘Then it will be a nice surprise, won’t it?’ Jenny said pleasantly. ‘And coffee does lend itself so nicely to soft icing.’

  She reached into the pantry for flour and sugar, and hunted through the drawers for knives, spatulas and whisks. ‘Perhaps you could tell me where the walnuts are, Vera?’ she asked the daily gently, having come to suspect that Vera was a very timid soul indeed.

  She opened an eye-level cupboard and spotted the coffee, which was, thank goodness, of a good quality, and reached for it. The next instant she very smartly withdrew her hand before the cat, hidden behind a biscuit tin, could lacerate her with a swipe of his claws. Calmly extracting a wooden spoon from the table, she held the fearsome moggy at bay and quickly snitched the coffee box from under his yowling nose. Then she neatly shut the door behind her.

  As she began to cream butter and sugar together, she noticed Martha staring at her, and raised an eyebrow. The cook quickly turned away, but not before Jenny had noticed that her own hands were marred with red scratches.

  Obviously the cat’s owner wasn’t quite as quick on the draw as Jenny Starling.

  ‘I’ll be glad when this job is over,’ Jenny muttered, more to herself than to anyone else. She could no longer deny that she felt nervous, like some animals felt just before a particularly violent thunderstorm. It was almost as if the death of poor Jimmy Speight was just the opening act, and that worse was to come.

  Firmly, she told herself not to be such a boob.

  But, as if echoing her misgivings, the cat began to yowl once more from behind the biscuit tin, and the mournful ululating sound made the goosebumps rise on her forearms.

  Four

  JENNY TAPPED ON the door and was bid ‘come in’ by a hale and hearty voice that did her spirits the world of good. Doing as she was told, she entered a room full of charm and character, and immediately thought, ‘this is the real Beeches.’

  The walls had once been bright red, she suspected, but the flock velvet wallpaper had now faded over the many years to a handsome dusky pink. Deep but nicely worn carpet cushioned the feet underneath, and large, comfortable-looking chairs welcomed you with open arms. But it was not the room so much as the people in it that gave the impression that this was indeed the heart of the house. Mr Greer Senior, he of the hearty voice, was already rising, his open and friendly face creased into a smile that sent laughter lines crinkling at the corners of his pale grey eyes. He had darkish wrinkly hair and a well-padded frame, and held out a large hand that Jenny nipped smartly across the room to take.

  ‘You must be the fancy cook our reckless daughter has hired?’ he greeted her, his eyes taking in her size with apparent approval, his eyes twinkling. ‘I’m Mark, and this is my wife, Sherri.’

  ‘I suspect, sweetheart, that Miss Starling deserves a far better title than that,’ Sherri Greer admonished, smiling up at them from her seat on the settee. She was an elegant and more substantial version of her daughter, Jenny noticed at once. Her soft blonde hair was greying slightly, and swept around her skull in an artful design, no doubt courtesy of a local hairdresser’s skill with heated rollers. Her blue eyes, however, were warmer than those of her daughter, and life had stamped on her face far more in the way of character.

  ‘Please call me Jenny, but fancy cook will suffice,’ Jenny acknowledged cheerfully, ‘although I’m not sure Martha would agree.’

  ‘Oh dear. Yes, I rather thought Martha might be a little put out,’ Sherri sighed. ‘I do hope this rotten business about poor Jimmy hasn’t upset you too much? It’s such a shock, you know.’

  Jenny murmured that indeed it was shocking.

  ‘Apart from that, I hope you’ve settled in all right?’ Mark Greer asked solicitously.

  ‘Oh, perfectly. I’ve been around the garden and noted all that I could use from the vegetable patch, and I’ve also put in orders with the various grocers, butchers and fishmongers that I use. I insist on the best quality food, and such things aren’t cheap.’ She thought she should warn them now. ‘But I really do need to get the menu confirmed now and, well, to be blunt, I’ve been having trouble pinning your daughter down. Perhaps the party co-ordinator would help?’

  ‘Goodness, you have been quick,’ Sherri said, impressed. ‘And you’re not the only one having trouble holding onto our daughter these days,’ she laughed, but the look she gave her husband was distinctly troubled.

  Jenny looked politely blank, even as she marvelled at the trouble a handsome face could cause.

  ‘You’ll have no trouble tonight,’ Mark said comfortingly. ‘I’ve ordered the little minx to join us for dinner. She should be down any minute, Miss Starling – sorry, Jenny – so perhaps we could all collaborate on the menu together then?’

  Just then the door opened and a well-preserved middle-aged woman came in. ‘Excuse me, Mrs Greer, are you still going to entertain the Women’s Institute tomorrow?’

  ‘Oh, Daphne, I totally forgot all about that – how clever of you to remember. But I don’t think, really, I can cope with them just now, with poor Jimmy and everything that’s happened.’ Sherri Greer glanced at her husband for help.

  ‘I think you’d better cancel the meeting, Mrs Williams,’ he said crisply, a man evidently used to taking charge. ‘The good ladies of the village won’t mind going without their sherry and scones for one week. Oh, have you met the lady who’ll be catering the twins’ birthday party?’

  Jenny smiled and walked towards the other woman, trying to place her in the hierarchy. Secretary? Housekeeper? Combination of both, perhaps. She put out her hand and smiled. ‘I’m Jenny Starling,’ she introduced herself quietly, and showed not a flicker of emotion as a pair of very cold hands briefly touched hers.

  ‘How do you do,’ Daphne Williams said.

  ‘Daphne will help us all to see that the party runs smoothly, Miss Starling,’ Sherri said confidently. ‘She keeps the old house and daily routine ticking along through all kinds of crises.’

  Jenny secretly wondered. The lovely blue eyes of Daphne Williams looked dead. Not clouded, or worried, or even just tired, but dead.

  ‘I don’t know how we managed without her before she came to us,’ Mark agreed cheerfully. ‘How long have you been with us now, Daphne?’

  ‘Four years, Mr Greer,’ Daphne replied, her voice as dead as her eyes. Her usual manner must always have been so markedly reserved, Jenny surmised, for neither of the Greers seemed to sense that something was terribly amiss with their paragon.

  Jenny watched, feeling utterly h
elpless, as the elegantly silent and suffering Daphne Williams murmured an almost whispered goodbye and left the room. Then, just a few seconds later, the door suddenly flew open again and a vision in sea green appeared in the doorway. In marked contrast to the woman who’d just left, she seemed to vibrate almost obscenely with health, youth and life.

  ‘Oh, here you all are. I was wondering why the house looked as deserted as a morgue.’

  Despite Alicia’s renewed good mood, Jenny found herself going cold at her choice of words. Nevertheless, she hastily whipped out her trusty notebook and gave Mark Greer, whom she’d already picked out as her greatest ally, a telling look. Catching on at once, he didn’t let her down.

  ‘Right, before dinner, let’s get Saturday’s banquet sorted out,’ he said, and in spite of Alicia’s moue of displeasure and protestations of being ravenous, they all sat down while Jenny determinedly held court.

  She’d already planned the menu, of course, but she did so like to give her employers the fantasy of having had a hand in it. ‘I take it your twenty guests are of a mixed age?’ she began.

  ‘Indeed they are,’ Alicia said regretfully. She would obviously have preferred a younger group altogether, but Jenny suspected her mother of having put her foot down.

  ‘In that case, may I suggest a mixture of the traditional and novel?’ she began. ‘That way everybody must, if only by the laws of mathematics, come across at least one course that they thoroughly enjoy.’

  Alicia sighed somewhat rudely, as the two older Greers looked at Jenny with relieved approval.

  ‘Perhaps we could start with soup.’

  ‘Soup!’ Alicia groaned. ‘Oh, that’s so boring.’

  ‘Cream of asparagus, perhaps, with Parmesan fingers as a garnish?’ Jenny ploughed on, reminding Mark of a battleship he’d once known. ‘Then, of course, a seafood savoury. I’d like to suggest crab, mixed with melted butter, some finely chopped gherkins, breadcrumbs and some cream. Served (very hot, of course) on either hot biscuits or toast.’ If she didn’t push forward with her campaign for real food, who would?

  Jenny trusted modern chefs about as far as she could throw them. And her father was top of the list. Ever since he’d published an extremely popular book of low-fat menus that took roughly three minutes to prepare and were full of macrobiotic politically correct ingredients, the relationship between father and daughter had been very rocky indeed.

  Hence the hideously expensive gift of the jewelled Swiss watch currently residing on her wrist, which he’d given her for her last birthday. Jenny had contemplated sending the bribe back, but she wasn’t that stupid. Besides, it was battery-free and kept perfect time.

  ‘Sounds delicious,’ Mark said heartily, who was very fond of gherkins.

  For the next half an hour they batted forth a range of possible courses, finally agreeing on Jenny’s selection, naturally. This consisted of steak with lemon and cucumber, followed by small but tasty helpings of mutton chops à la jardiniere. And for puddings, a raspberry fruit cream to clear the palate and make way for a chestnut and pineapple trifle, the whole to be rounded off with cheese and biscuits and fine coffee.

  ‘Well, I think I shall have to stop eating right now if I’m to get through all of that,’ Sherri Greer laughed. ‘I must say, though, it all sounds wonderful.’

  ‘What does?’

  They all turned as Justin strode into the room, hands thrust nonchalantly – but so effectively – into his trouser pockets, and Jenny wondered with a reluctantly fond amusement how many actors could have staged an entrance so perfectly.

  ‘Our birthday banquet, as if you didn’t know,’ Alicia laughed. ‘I’ll bet you had your ear plastered to the door all the time we were talking.’

  ‘Rubbish. I’d trust Miss Jenny Starling with my life,’ Justin said, then glanced at the granite-faced cook. ‘Well, with my stomach, anyway.’ Jenny, having been paid the ultimate compliment, very nearly beamed. ‘That is, if all these flat-footed policemen swarming all over the place don’t put her off her baking,’ Justin added, with a wry grimace. ‘They’ve had me in yet again, wanting to know this and that. Honestly, it’s getting beyond a joke.’

  ‘Somebody probably blabbed about that ticking-off you gave poor Jimmy,’ Alicia said sweetly and just a shade spitefully. ‘They’ve been talking to anyone and everyone they can nab all morning.’

  Justin flushed angrily. ‘Well, he deserved to be ticked off, the little sneak. It was about time somebody put him right.’

  ‘What on earth do you mean?’ Sherri asked in some alarm, looking from one of her twins to the other, her pretty face genuinely bewildered.

  ‘Oh, Mother!’ It was Alicia who replied first, her voice both amused and exasperated. ‘You seem to go about in a world of your own! Everybody knows Jimmy Speight was nothing more than a little snooper. He was always poking and prying around. That mother of his said he wanted to go into the newspaper business, and he was only practising! I ask you! A reporter? He didn’t have a brain in his head. Just a big fat nose.’

  ‘Which he regularly poked into places it didn’t belong,’ Justin added moodily. Seeing the quiet censure on his mother’s face, he added defiantly, ‘I caught him rifling through your handbag once.’

  ‘No!’ Sherri gasped, utterly shocked. ‘And he did such a good job on the begonias!’

  ‘He did such a good job on ladders too,’ Alicia added, her eyes sparkling in remembered outrage. ‘I caught him looking into my bedroom window on more than one occasion. And when I confronted him he had the cheek to say he was pruning the wisteria.’

  ‘Perhaps he was,’ Mark said heavily, who was obviously old-fashioned enough to disapprove of talking ill of the dead. The young lad had died in his garden, after all. The family owed some loyalty to the Speight memory.

  ‘Oh yes? And how could he prune and read my diary upside-down at the same time, I might ask?’ Alicia snapped.

  There was a cold silence for a moment. Then Alicia sighed deeply, and cast a mischievous glance at her brother. ‘Anyway, I can’t be the only one he snooped on. If he hoped to get some juicy bits of gossip from my diary and write them up and sell them to some gossip-mongering society rag or other, he must have really done something to get into your bad books, brother dear.’

  Justin gave his sister an I-could-strangle-you look, but managed a nonchalant shrug. ‘Not really. It was just the usual snooping. I got sick and tired of it and told him either to cut it out or he would find himself without a job at all. Then he could devote all his time to trying to persuade the local Clarion to take him on.’

  Alicia laughed. The local Clarion, Jenny assumed, was not exactly a racy or particularly adventurous type of newspaper. A big report on the church bazaar would probably have been the topic of its front pages for days.

  ‘I’m glad you think it’s funny,’ Justin said, miffed. ‘The police seem to think it all most significant. Although why, I can’t say. Perhaps they think I topped the little sod.’

  ‘Justin!’ Sherri Greer said, shocked.

  ‘Justin!’ her husband roared in echo, knowing that his son had gone too far this time. Mark probably didn’t roar all that often, since there was another long, and this time definitely sheepish, silence.

  ‘Well. The police get on your nerves,’ Justin said defiantly. ‘Implying this, insinuating that, and all with that sickeningly polite look on their faces. That Inspector Mollineaux, for instance, is a particularly officious sod. Still, at least he didn’t try and hint that we should postpone the party. But I was beginning to wonder if he might.’

  ‘Well, I should think not,’ Alicia said hotly, and with such injured outrage it made everyone smile, including Jenny.

  ‘That reminds me,’ Mark said, his voice suddenly serious enough to make everyone’s smile fade, ‘I meant to tell you, Jenny, that there will be twenty-two for the feast, not twenty. I’ve invited Tom Banks and his wife to join us.’

  Alicia shot her brother a half-curious, half-appalled look.
‘Daddy!’

  ‘Why the hell did you do that?’ Justin asked, just managing to keep his voice on an even keel. One look at him, however, showed his extreme anger. The smiling nonchalance was gone, and in its place was a white, pinched, furious expression that was all the more unnerving for being held so severely in check.

  ‘I thought it was the least we could do.’ Mark stared at his son levelly. ‘Tom’s worked for Greer Textiles for twenty years, eight of those as assistant manager. Since he’s now retired’ – he gave the word a strange emphasis that his son couldn’t fail to miss – ‘this is the perfect opportunity to see him go in style.’

  Justin’s lips twisted in a parody of a smile at his father’s words, and Jenny found her memory being jolted.

  When she’d been in the shop, thinking about whelks, hadn’t some of the other customers been talking about a somebody-or-other Mr Banks who’d been fired by Justin Greer? She hadn’t been paying much attention at the time, and had promptly forgotten all about it.

  ‘I still don’t think that our birthday party is either the right time or place,’ Justin’s voice interrupted her thoughts. ‘Tom has already left the company, remember?’

  ‘Left? That’s not the way I heard it.’ Mark, confirming all of Jenny’s misgivings, was openly challenging now.

  ‘Regretting your own retirement, Dad?’ Justin asked, almost on a sneer. ‘You have seen this year’s figures, I take it?’

  ‘I’m well aware that profits are up.’

  ‘I’ve made our competition look feeble,’ Justin openly boasted. ‘And our blanket-making division is more than holding its own.’

  ‘I’m well aware of that.’

  ‘And I did it all without Tom Banks.’

  ‘I’m also aware of that.’