Birthdays Can Be Murder

by Joyce Cato

  And with that parting shot, she turned back to her sink.

  ‘Would you like to inspect the dining room, Miss Starling?’ Daphne Williams asked about an hour later, once more firmly hidden behind her ‘perfect housekeeper-cum-private secretary’ persona. ‘It seems the party co-ordinator knows what she’s doing, after all.’ She smiled gently. She also watched with interest as the Junoesque cook mixed some stuffing that would later be encased by rashers of bacon and cooked with the chops.

  ‘I’d love to,’ Jenny agreed, pushing aside her qualms about the organizer’s taste in dining rooms. She had to keep reminding herself that she was there to do a job and nothing more. And if the Greers had warring Vikings for offspring, a suffering ghost for their housekeeper and dead gardening boys in their pond, it was nothing to do with her.

  ‘I’ve just got to finish this stuffing first or it’ll harden too much,’ she carried on. ‘Vera, can you bring me some more sage and tarragon from the herb garden, please?’

  With the stuffing finally mixed to her satisfaction, she checked on all the stocks, tasting and adding a little more freshly ground black pepper where needed, and then watched Vera for a moment, just to be sure she was coring the horseradishes properly.

  As she stepped out of the kitchen, Jenny took several deep breaths then checked her hugely expensive watch. She noticed Daphne start then stare at it, her blue eyes widening appreciatively. It was nearly noon. A long way to go yet, but so far, everything was coming along nicely.

  ‘Hello, Miss Starling, have you seen’ – Alicia came upon them, then hesitated for a moment as she too caught sight of the gold and diamond watch – ‘er, Mummy?’ she finished.

  At her lilting voice, Jenny jumped around guiltily. Whenever she was caught out of the kitchen on zero day, she always felt absurdly traitorous. ‘I’m afraid not, Alicia.’ She used the woman’s first name deliberately.

  Daphne Williams discreetly excused herself.

  ‘But now that I’ve run across you, could you come to the kitchen and check the birthday cakes for me?’ Jenny pounced. ‘I need to know the exact wording of what you want on yours, and what style you’d like. Italics are always nice, but I can best show you by demonstrating on a cold marble board.’

  Alicia laughed. ‘Oh, Miss Starling – I mean Jenny – that won’t be necessary.’ She took a backward step, as if afraid the cook would force her inside. ‘I trust you completely. Just put the usual kind of thing. I’m sure it will look just perfect.’

  Jenny watched her go, feeling vaguely annoyed, then shrugged and made her way to the dining room. There she paused, looking around with pleasure. Long, dark green velvet curtains hung at French windows, and a deep peach carpet lent the huge dark mahogany table a complementary splendour. Paler peach walls, with apple-green alcoves, gave the impression of walking into a blossom-laden arbour. When Daphne had placed the flower arrangements at strategic points in the gaps evident on the table, it would look magnificent.

  She walked to the table itself and checked the settings. It was, as she’d half-suspected, immaculate. A dainty, circular lace tablemat was set at every place, along with a crisply folded snowy-white napkin. The lines of knives, forks and spoons were laid out correctly, and crystal wine goblets, dusted and buffed, stood in perfect formation. The tablecloth was of a deep bottle green, which was not only a perfect foil for the room’s colouring but would also make a perfect backdrop for good food, red wine, and flowers.

  She toured the table from one end to the other, checking the line with her eye, and was coming up to the far end when she noticed something white on the floor. As she bent down to retrieve it, she saw that it was a napkin. A good job she’d checked after all, though whether any guest would have noticed it was debatable.

  She had just taken it between her fingers when she heard the door open, and voices, in mid-conversation, echoed across the empty room. ‘… and I really do think you should see our point of view,’ Sherri Greer said, her voice chiding. ‘Oh, doesn’t it look lovely.’

  Jenny was just starting to straighten up when a spasm of cramp crossed her back, making her wince.

  ‘What? Why?’ Alicia said airily. ‘I really don’t see why I should see your point of view at all, Mummy dearest. I told you, Keith and I are going to get married. And since we’ve been sleeping together for ages anyway, I don’t see why finally making it legal should worry you all so much.’

  Jenny dropped back to her haunches and almost groaned aloud. The cramp was killing her! Unfortunately, she was prone to attacks of it now and then.

  Obviously exasperated by the look on her mother’s face, Alicia laughed grimly. ‘Don’t tell me that you and Dad didn’t do it before you got married,’ she challenged scornfully.

  ‘We were far more careful then,’ Sherri admonished. ‘Besides, Keith’s a married man, Alicia! With children too. And if, well, anything should happen, he wouldn’t be free to marry you.’

  Jenny’s left leg started to twinge warningly and, wincing and gritting her teeth, she very carefully, and very slowly, began to stretch out flat on the floor. It was agony.

  ‘You mean if I get pregnant?’ Alicia said bluntly, then laughed. ‘Oh, Mum, don’t be daft! There’s the morning-after pill nowadays, as well as every contraceptive under the sun. They’ve even invented flavoured condoms!’

  Under the table, Jenny felt her muscles slowly beginning to relax. It was utter bliss.

  ‘Alicia!’ Sherri said again, as if repeating her daughter’s name in a pained whisper was all that she could manage.

  ‘Well, it’s true,’ Alicia said defiantly. ‘And what’s more, where Keith and I go, to this nice little hotel in West London, there’s this huge new chemists that has huge stocks of everything you could imagine. So you see, you needn’t worry about being made an accidental grandmother.’

  Sherri groaned out loud and Jenny felt like doing the same. The only good thing about pain that Jenny had ever discovered was when it stopped. Finally, with the pain receding, Jenny began to relax, and then concentrate on the important things once more. She needed to clarify some butter, and if she didn’t get out of here soon, she might forget.

  ‘Oh, don’t worry, Mum, I know how to take care of myself. I always go into the shop myself and get what I need. I’m not so naive as to leave it up to Keith. Men are so lax about that kind of thing, aren’t they?’

  ‘I’m not listening to this anymore,’ Sherri said grimly, and from her somewhat unconventional position lying flat under the table, Jenny saw one set of high heels turn smartly and leave the room. Alicia quickly ran after her, and after waiting a cautious moment or two, Jenny was able to climb stiffly from off the floor, the offending napkin still clutched tightly in her hand.

  Once mobile again, Jenny made her way briskly to the kitchen. There, as she’d suspected, the butter hadn’t yet been taken from the fridge and would need to soften a little first. ‘Vera, can you open the windows, love?’ she called, her round face flushed from the heat of the stove. ‘It’s already so damned hot in here.’

  Vera quickly agreed and Martha smiled happily. ‘Want some help with that?’ she asked sweetly.

  ‘No, thanks,’ Jenny said stiffly. ‘You can chop me some mint, though, if you’re not doing anything.’

  Martha gaped at her, then marched out of the kitchen in high dudgeon. Vera giggled.

  A dark shape jumped up onto the windowsill outside, and the cat stared in, his tail flickering angrily.

  Vera moved hastily away.

  Out on the front lawn a huge marquee was being erected, with the party co-ordinator in close attendance, and Jenny glanced up, distracted, as a couple of busy young men flitted past the window.

  ‘Doesn’t the tent look pretty?’ Vera said. ‘I love those stripey ones, don’t you? It always reminds me of a fair.’

  Jenny glanced towards the marquee. The party staff were certainly hard at it all right, and she only hoped they’d still look fresh come the evening. It was a hot day and al
l that running about couldn’t be doing them any good. The uniforms were smart though. Dark blue trousers for the men, and pencil-line skirts for the women, with white shirts or blouses, with rounded blue collars. They looked cool and elegant, and Jenny only hoped they’d stay that way.

  If there was anything guaranteed to put a guest off his food, it was having it served by a waiter with a sweaty armpit.

  ‘Yes, very nice, Vera,’ Jenny muttered absently, and was about to carry on stuffing some tomatoes when she just caught a glimpse of a frizzy blonde head, and turned back sharply to look once more.

  That particular waitress had her back towards the cook, though, and quickly disappeared behind the half-erected marquee, her tight blonde curls bouncing in the sunlight. And yet Jenny knew that she had seen that frizzy blonde head somewhere before, and quite recently. But where had it been? Then she shrugged, and promptly put it out of her mind.

  She needed all her concentration for the prawns she was using to make Prawns Magenta. She took them out of the fridge and gave them a careful, suspicious sniff.

  Out in the garden, Inspector Mollineaux, with Sergeant Mollern at his side, stood on a pretty little rustic bridge and stared down into the pond.

  The body of Jimmy Speight had been autopsied and was due to be released to the local undertakers soon. A light rain during the night and now the bright sunshine had all but obliterated the traces left by the heavy boots of the policemen who had crowded around the pond yesterday. All was peace again. A boy might never have died there.

  ‘Looks like an accident, sir,’ Mollern said, with no inflection at all in his voice.

  ‘Yes,’ Mollineaux agreed. ‘The blood we found on the branch floating beside him matches his and is perfectly consistent with him hitting his head on it.’

  ‘And he could very easily have grabbed at the branch, half-dazed, like, in an attempt to stop himself falling in and broke it off,’ Mollern continued, still in that emotionless way so many people found disconcerting.

  ‘Oh yes. It’s all very feasible. Very neat and tidy,’ Mollineaux agreed. ‘Except the boy was a nosy little sod. Everyone agrees on that. And when nosy people end up dead in ponds …’ He shrugged graphically but didn’t voice out loud the conclusion of his train of thought.

  Mollern sighed. After a while he said thoughtfully, ‘Justin Greer had that big barney with him.’

  Mollineaux stirred. ‘You know, I’ve been hearing some interesting things about Justin since he’s taken over the running of the company,’ he replied thoughtfully. ‘He’s getting awfully rich, awfully quickly. He’s into computers and selling on the internet and all that. Well up too on foreign trade, the European market, and taking advantage of the subsidies system and so on. I just wonder if it’s all strictly on the up and up.’

  Mollern nodded. ‘A clever man on a computer can hide all sorts of things nowadays, if he knows what he’s at,’ he agreed. ‘Justin might only be just twenty-one, but the money market is traditionally a young man’s game, isn’t it? Look at all those young rogue traders who lost banks millions. And I understand Jimmy Speight was a bit of a computer whizz himself. If he managed to get access to Greer’s computer, who knows what a clever hacker might have found out?’

  For a long while, the two policemen stood on the pretty bridge, looking into the pretty pond, and saying nothing.

  Six

  AT THREE O’CLOCK the band arrived, and Jenny watched a scarecrow lookalike carry a red and black electric guitar across the lawn and enter the ballroom through the open French windows. A skinhead followed, carrying and dropping a drum kit, then a very beautiful young man indeed who carried nothing at all. Must be the lead singer, Jenny surmised. On his heels came a small troop of roadies, electricians and other technicians.

  Sherri Greer, who was attempting to stay out of the party co-ordinator’s way, while at the same time seeing that nothing went amiss, was looking more and more frazzled by the minute. Eventually, she flopped down on the garden bench next to the roses in front of the kitchen window, and blew out her cheeks in a gesture of defeat.

  As Jenny began to slice potatoes wafer thin, which were to be placed on top of a vegetable-layer stack, she watched Alicia emerge from the herb garden at the far end of the greenhouse and smooth down her badly wrinkled dress. No prizes for guessing what she’d just been up to, or with whom.

  Jenny hastily bent her head and began to brush melted butter on top of the vegetable layer. Now all it needed was a few hours in the fridge before cooking, to harden it slightly.

  ‘Oh, Mum, there you are. I was hoping I’d get you at a good moment. Have you seen my outfit for tonight? Justin lent me the money for it, since I’m short. I really don’t know why you and Dad don’t just let me have a credit card.’

  ‘No, I haven’t seen it,’ Sherri hastily cut across her daughter’s whining recital. ‘Perhaps Mrs Williams is pressing it for you.’

  ‘No, Mum, I don’t mean that it’s gone missing. I meant have you seen it? It’s a gorgeous electric-blue silk, with a silver-thread motif. It’s absolutely fabulous. I got it from this wonderful boutique I know in Chelsea.’

  ‘I don’t wish to know about your haunts in London, dear,’ Sherri said sharply. But Alicia pretended not to understand the chilly reference to her favourite trysting spot, and when Jenny happened to glance up, it was to see her nestle beside her mother, twirling a carnation absently between her fingers.

  ‘I was just thinking how well your sapphire and diamond set would go with it. Being dark blue, I mean,’ she said casually.

  ‘I was going to wear those,’ Sherri said sharply, and Alicia shrugged an elegant shoulder.

  ‘Oh? What dress were you going to wear?’

  ‘My orange taffeta.’

  ‘And you were going to wear sapphires with it? Oh, Mum, come on! I always said you had no dress sense, and this proves it.’

  ‘Really?’ Sherri said mildly. ‘And what would you suggest I wear?’ Her silky words gave Jenny the satisfying sensation that Alicia could not quite fool her mother as well as she thought.

  ‘With an orange dress? Well, that amber and silver set you have, for instance. Or even emeralds, but you’d need other green accessories. Have you got a green bag and shoes?’

  ‘Somewhere.’

  ‘Well, there you are then. Then I can have the sapphires.’

  ‘You can borrow them, yes,’ Sherri corrected tellingly.

  ‘Thank you, Mumsie! Although, you know, I really ought to have some jewellery of my own.’

  ‘All my gems will come to you in the Will,’ Sherri said with a finality that was unmistakable, and then rose with a sigh. Jenny smiled over her carrot julienne. ‘Now I’d better go and see how that band you hired is getting on. I’m sure our small ballroom is not at all what they’re used to.’

  As the two women wandered to the French windows and disappeared, Jenny checked her watch for about the thousandth time and sighed in relief. Back on schedule.

  ‘What do you want done with this stock, Miss Starling?’ Vera piped up from the stove. ‘It’s been barely simmering for hours now.’

  ‘Good,’ Jenny said with a satisfied smile. At last, things were coming together. ‘Did you put in the fresh basil, like I said?’ In the ominous silence that followed, Jenny glanced over her shoulder, took one look at Vera gnawing industriously on her lower lip and shook her head. ‘I’ll go and get it,’ she said, wondering at the same time where Martha had disappeared to. No doubt the resident cook was endeavouring to teach her a lesson by making herself scarce just when things were beginning to get hectic. Jenny could have told her it would be a wasted effort. She was used to working alone under pressure, and much preferred it to having people under her feet.

  She was just returning from the herb garden, crossing the pleasantly cool hall with a sizeable bunch of basil grasped firmly in her hand, when Babs Walker appeared on the landing, swathed in black silk and emanating a cloud of expensive French perfume.

  She p
eered over the balcony in such a way that Jenny wondered if she secretly needed glasses. No doubt the young lady would rather go blind than cover up those huge pansy eyes of hers. Someone should sit her down and persuade her to buy contact lenses.

  ‘Oh, at last. You must be the cook.’ Babs let her eyes flicker briefly and disdainfully over her. ‘I’m absolutely ravenous. Bring up a sandwich, will you? Smoked salmon, I think.’

  Jenny, her mind reeling as it tried unsuccessfully to grapple with the concept of placing delicately smoked salmon between bread, let the girl slip away before she could properly vent her spleen. Slamming into the kitchen, she barked at Vera to slap a single layer of the smoked salmon from the fridge between some bread, and stormed to her soup pot. She was so incensed, she didn’t even stop Vera from putting margarine on the bread. Instead she smiled and took the plate from the baffled daily’s hand and marched back into the hall.

  There she stopped dead at the sight of the stranger in the hall, and blinked. The man was dressed in full evening dress, but of the white-suited variety, and was so enormously fat that the outfit served only to make him look like a giant meringue. His hair was of an unfortunate crinkled black, but his skin was quite pleasantly tanned. His appearance, however, might have been more quickly assimilated had it not been for the huge and odd bouquet of flowers he was carrying. In his hand was the biggest bunch of bird-of-paradise flowers and assorted greenery that Jenny had ever seen. They looked about as out of place in the genteel and ever-so-British hall of The Beeches as a pair of exotic parrots would have looked in a Liverpool dockyard.

  ‘Arbie!’

  Alicia Greer sailed into the tableau, and Jenny watched, fascinated by the combination they made. Alicia went straight to the stranger and kissed him on both cheeks. ‘Are these for me? Oh, Arbie, you shouldn’t have,’ Alicia said, then laughed at the disconcerted look that passed over his moon-like face. ‘Oh, Arbie, I’m only teasing. Don’t worry, I know just who they’re really for, and I must say I wish you loads of luck. You’re gonna need it.’