by Ann Granger
‘Do you know where we’re going?’
‘More or less. Mind the barbed wire!’ Markby warned, pointing at the fencing to either side of the stile.
Meredith, stranded inelegantly with a foot on the wooden step and the other leg half over the topmost bar, said crossly, ‘I can see it.’
‘Not unless you’ve got eyes in your – in the back of your head.’
She negotiated the rest of her descent with dignity and without the unpleasant sensation of wire tearing a hole in the seat of her pants.
‘You don’t mind cattle, do you?’
‘I don’t like ’em very much.’
‘I mean, you’re not scared of them? There are some cows in this field.’
Meredith peered into the distance. ‘That’s all right, they’re far enough away. It seems strange to me to see cattle out in a field in mid-winter. In central or Eastern Europe they’re all under cover.’
‘Winter’s been mild.’
They trudged over long, wet grass, Meredith glad she was wearing Wellington boots. The hedgerows were dank and dark, here and there still white-rimed with the morning frost. Her breath and his rose into the air in clouds and there was that peaty smell which she had last smelt at the florist’s. She wished that it didn’t now make her think of graveyards.
‘The post-mortem report is in on Harriet,’ Markby said without warning and without looking at her. ‘I’m not meaning to talk shop but I thought you might be interested.’
‘I am!’ He didn’t answer at once so she prompted impatiently, ‘Well?’
‘Her manner was due to a mixture of drink and tranquilliser pills. She’d had a cocktail of them at some point that morning.’
‘What!’ Meredith stopped short and stared at him in disbelief. ‘I don’t believe it!’
‘Why not? Think we haven’t got competent doctors at police disposal?’
‘Yes, I know – I mean, I’m shocked. It’s not what I would have expected.’
‘One would have thought she’d have more sense certainly. The Master and next of kin have expressed similar surprise so you’re not alone.’
‘I’m surprised she took such pills at all. Harriet? She seemed so – cheerful and positive, although I suppose . . .’ Meredith cast her mind back over her last conversation with Harriet, ‘One can’t know what’s in a person’s mind.’ Another thought occurred to her. ‘I wonder how Tom Fearon will take this?’
‘Tom?’ Markby glanced at her.
‘I – had a word with him the other day. He was adamant she wasn’t ill or drunk and keen to defend her reputation as having a cast-iron head where whisky was concerned.’
‘Tom knew her as well as most, I dare say,’ he returned ambiguously.
‘Do you know if a date is set for Harriet’s funeral? Will it be local?’
‘I don’t know.’ Markby swished at a trailing bramble with a piece of stick. ‘I would like to know more about those tranquillisers. What if she had had a threatening letter which worried her enough to make her turn to pills?’
‘She didn’t strike me as worried.’ Meredith paused. ‘If you could find out who the man was, the one who was there on Christmas Day evening . . . he might have a few answers.’
‘Not that easy, unless he comes forward. And why should he? You will keep an eye out, won’t you, Meredith? I mean on the cottage. I want to know when Miss Needham-Burrell arrives.’
‘Oh yes, cousin Fran. I want to see her too. She can tell me if the funeral is local or private. I would like to attend.’
‘Why do you call her “cousin Fran”?’ he asked curiously.
‘What?’ Meredith gave a guilty start. ‘Oh, Harriet mentioned her. She called her Fran.’ She felt impelled to add, ‘I don’t think she’s that old.’
‘Oh well, hope for the best. I mean – some of these old ladies can be sticky about protocol. I’d like to snoop in Harriet’s personal papers – to see if she received any hate mail, like Tom.’ He turned a speculative gaze on Meredith. ‘If you should see Miss Needham-Burrell . . .’
‘Yes?’
‘You could nip across and introduce yourself – chat her up a bit and try and mention the possibility of anonymous letters. It might come better from you – not official. And of course, if you could actually get into that cottage—’
She looked at him coolly, unsure if she wanted to be used in this way. ‘Isn’t this all very irregular?’
‘I’ve got so little to go on.’ He struck out again with the stick, knocking back a bunch of frost-blackened nettles. ‘It’s just that I have a particular dislike of anonymous letters. They really are nasty things. They upset people terribly. A lot of victims who’ve received them have told me what an eerie feeling it is. As though someone out there is watching and waiting. They really felt threatened. The one Tom received was a pretty foul-worded composition. I shouldn’t like to think many of them were floating around. And it’s surprising how reluctant people are to go to the police. They feel guilty – quite wrongly. As if the police, or anyone else, will think there must be something wrong with them for them to have got such letters in the first place.’
‘No smoke without fire,’ she said thoughtfully.
‘That’s it. We don’t think any such thing, of course. Such letters are the product of twisted minds. The most innocent people can receive them.’
‘All right then, I’ll watch out for Frances Needham-Burrell. I’ll drop hints if I can. It’s a bit tricky, though, Alan. I can’t go clod-hopping through a bereavement.’
‘You’ll do it tactfully. You’re a consul, aren’t you? You’ve had delicate situations to deal with.’
‘Such confidence. I’ll do my best. Those beasts are coming this way!’
Markby stopped and stared across the field. The cows were approaching in a long, strung-out line, plodding purposefully along beneath clouds of steam rising from their muddy flanks. ‘They probably think we’ve come to call them in for milking.’
‘I don’t fancy them up close, if you don’t mind. Can we walk a bit faster. The gate is over there.’
They quickened their pace. The following cows obligingly quickened theirs. ‘You know what,’ Markby said mildly. ‘They think we want them to hurry so they’re pacing themselves to keep up with us. Slow down and they will.’
‘Nice theory.’
‘I’ve got an even better one – told me by a cowman years ago – when charged by a bull, stand your ground and when it gets close enough, grab it by the nose. Cattle have very sensitive muzzles. Grab it by its nostrils and you can lead even the most awkward blighter around, meek as anything.’
‘If you think I’m standing waiting for a charging animal the size of a tank to reach me . . . how on earth do you grab its nose before it tramples you into the turf? That cowman was having you on. The brute has got to be right up to you before you can reach its nose.’
They had reached the further side of the field during this animated discussion and Meredith hopped nimbly over the gate with twice the speed and dexterity with which she had negotiated the stile. Markby joined her on the further side and they both stopped to watch as their bovine companions lumbered up and stood in a row staring at them expectantly, tossing muddy heads.
‘You see? They’re waiting for us to open the gate.’
‘Let ’em wait.’
‘Marning!’ piped a voice.
They both jumped round. A small grubby child in a woolly pullover dotted with holes, faded jeans and gumboots had emerged from nowhere.
‘Good morning to you,’ said Markby. ‘What are you out looking for?’
‘I come to let them cows out – take ’em back fer milking.’ The infant threw back the rope securing the gate and wrenched it open competently. ‘Come on, you daft buggers!’ he encouraged the cows which had begun to plod forward.
Meredith and Markby stood by the hedge as the parade ambled past, the child at the rear, a minute figure compared to his charges, whistling, shouting insults and slap
ping the laggards on their muddy behinds.
‘I feel embarrassed,’ said Meredith as the group disappeared down the lane. ‘If it gives you any satisfaction to know that.’
‘You see? You should have believed me. I’m delighted you’re embarrassed. You deserve to be.’
‘Do you or do you not, want my help in dealing with Miss Needham-Burrell?’
‘Point taken. Pub’s open – a quarter of a mile down this lane. I’ll buy you a pint.’
Meredith followed him down the lane. Whatever happened to champagne in your slipper or even cocktails for two? Gumboots, muck, I’ll buy you a pint . . . that was clearly her level. She squelched along in the muddy ruts left by the cattle, avoiding other more unpleasant tokens of their passage. He had it right, anyway. It was about her mark. She was no Harriet – Meredith wouldn’t have minded betting a few men bought her champagne. Poor Harriet, laid out in a drawer in the morgue or being worked on even now by the undertaker to repair the more obvious signs of post-mortem investigation before friends and relatives viewed the body. Meredith speculated whether or not her dinner guest would go to her funeral. What was he thinking now, she wondered?
It was half past one before they got back to Rose Cottage and there was no denying a brisk long country walk built up the appetite. The pub at which they had finally arrived and had their pints had been serving up bar meals. The smell of the plates of food as they were borne past had been tantalising and caused pangs of hunger to strike Meredith’s stomach as though she hadn’t eaten anything for a week.
‘Sure you wouldn’t rather we ate here?’ Alan Markby asked her. ‘Or have you left something cooking?’
‘No – but it won’t take long to prepare. If you don’t mind waiting till we get back.’
‘No, fine by me.’
So, thought Meredith grimly when she had arrived back in the kitchen of Rose Cottage, do we rush on madly to our doom.
The first discovery she had made on return was that she had forgotten to take the cheesecake out of the freezer. She put it on the kitchen table now but suspected it would still be lumps of ice when they came to eat it. According to the packet, the chicken Kievs only took about twenty minutes in a hot oven. She turned it up as hot as it would go and put them in on a tray.
They looked rather nice. She tipped the rice into a pan and put it on the top on a low number and retreated to the living room where Alan was sprawled on the sofa reading the copy of a Sunday newspaper they had collected from a garage shop next to the pub.
‘Won’t be long!’ she said brightly. ‘Would you like to open the wine?’
‘Sure, where is it?’ The paper rustled.
‘Don’t move.’ Fat chance. ‘I’ll bring it in here.’
She gave him the wine and corkscrew and returned to the kitchen to make the salad. A pungent smell of garlic filled the air. Kievs were doing all right. She went back to the living room to share a pre-prandial glass of wine with her guest.
‘Cheers,’ he said. ‘This is a nice little cottage. I really hadn’t taken much notice of it before, in detail, I mean.’
‘It’s a super cottage. I can understand why the Russells didn’t want to sell when they went to Dubai.’
‘They were lucky to have you to let it to. I’ve heard some pretty grim tales from people who’ve let property complete with furnishings to strangers. Holes knocked in the walls, furniture ruined. Place has been a wreck when they’ve got it back.’
‘Mrs Brissett will make sure I don’t do anything like that. I’m very fortunate. I have all mod cons and Mrs B. All I have to do is relax. Well, till Monday after New Year and then I start my daily London trek.’
‘Bamford railway station at seven in the morning is no place for weaklings, let me warn you.’
‘Thanks for the encouragement.’
‘I don’t,’ Markby said tentatively, ‘like to interfere with the chef’s methods, but ought there to be that burning smell?’
Meredith raced out into the kitchen. It was filled with smoke. She flung open the window, grabbed a tea-towel and hooked the red-hot rice pan off the burner. The Kievs were shrivelled up like lumps of coke, burst open, and all the garlic, herby butter filling had run out on the tray and burned. The savoury rice was bone dry, half cooked and stuck to the pan. The only thing all right was the salad.
Meredith howled in despair and rage. ‘Oh no!’ she moaned, staring at the burnt offerings before her. ‘Oh, what the hell am I going to do?’
Hands gripped her shoulders and moved her gently to one side. ‘Hullo?’ said Alan’s amused voice in her ear. ‘Or as policemen are supposed to say, Hullo, hullo, hullo . . .’
‘Shut up!’ she said fiercely. ‘I can’t cook. I cannot cook. Other people can, most people can, I can’t. Harriet was a cordon bleu cook.’
‘No reason why you should be because she was.’
Her shoulders sagged and her voice deflated. She supposed he was right. It didn’t make her feel any better. ‘Sorry, that was your lunch. We should have eaten at the pub. My fault. I can make you a sandwich.’
‘Come on,’ he turned her neatly and propelled her back into the living room. ‘I suggest you have another glass of wine and sit there and I’ll sort it out. Not for nothing have I a brother-in-law who cooks professionally. The main thing I’ve learned from him was how to deal with disaster. Professionals have disasters, too. Just wait. No! No arguments.’
Meredith closed her mouth and accepted the new glass of wine. She watched him go back to the kitchen and when he had shut the living room door firmly, she sank down on the rug in front of the gas fire with her back propped against the armchair and sipped gloomily at the wine.
He came back after a while with a tray bearing two plates. ‘That’s yours, that’s mine.’ He handed her a plate, a napkin, a knife and a fork. Then he settled down on the rug opposite her with his.
Meredith poked mistrustfully at the colourful heap on her plate with the fork. ‘What did you do?’
‘I stripped off the breadcrumb coats from the chicken things and threw that away. I chopped up the chicken itself and I put it and what I could rescue of the rice and a bit more rice which was in the cupboard into a frying pan with a stock cube and some water and I sort of poached it all together.’
He paused as she tasted it gingerly.
‘And I took your tomatoes out of the salad and put them in as well.’
She swallowed appreciatively. ‘It’s not bad. Different.’
‘You see?’ He waved a fork at her. ‘All was not lost.’
‘It was for me. I’m hopeless in the kitchen. Never was any good.’
He studied her thoughtfully. ‘Look here, you hold down a difficult and sensitive job. You deal with difficult foreign authorities, desperate stranded tourists, all manner of accident and disaster, reams of paper work, issue passports, invade foreign gaols with help and succour for Brits behind bars, all in a day’s work. Why on earth should you be able to cook as well?’
‘Most women can. Harriet could.’
‘She didn’t do a great deal else, did she? Except ride round on a horse and pen a few articles when the mood took her. I think,’ he went on quietly, ‘you are upset about her. You liked her, didn’t you? Got along well with her? Seeing her die like that, it’s hit you badly. Delayed shock.’
‘I did like her. We didn’t have time to get to know one another well. But we did get along all right. I think we would have been friends. Funny—’ Meredith paused. ‘She knew a lot of people, probably had quite a few lovers, but I think she was short on real friends. People you can relax with, talk to about anything or nothing, even argue with and it doesn’t matter. Friends, you know.’ She paused. ‘Like you and me.’
‘Oh, yes . . .’ he said in a flat voice, turning his attention to his plate, ‘like you and me. As you say, friends.’
Six
Meredith awoke to the sounds of a Golden Oldie from the clockradio assuring her with tuneful if gloomy repetition that it was
Monday. She sat up. A few minutes before seven-thirty. Nearly time for the news bulletin. Then she would get up, not because she had to but because lying in bed once she had awoken in the morning always seemed wrong, making her feel uneasy. Surely she had some reason to leap out of bed and dash around getting ready? And if she hadn’t, why not? What had she forgotten?
She could never get used to not having to go into the office, that was the trouble. A glance at the clock on a weekday morning, if it discovered the hour to be past seven, always inspired panic, believing she was late. In a way, she would not be sorry for New Year to be over and for a return to some regular routine, even the extra-early rising necessary to get herself up to London. Everyone likes a holiday but she missed her work, her pattern. That’s what comes, she thought, of living on your own. Alan would be getting up – had probably got up by now. He might be having his breakfast, or shaving, or showering, or checking the house plants before leaving . . . He was another who lived on his own and made out pretty well doing so. As she did.
But she wasn’t alone. From below came a rattle of crockery, then a creak on the stair and a knock at the bedroom door. But before she had time to get alarmed, a familiar voice sounded muffled through the door panels.
‘Miss Mitchell? You awake? I brought you a cup of tea.’
‘Come in, Mrs Brissett!’ Meredith called out startled. She pushed herself upright on the pillows and when the cleaner, her solid form wrapped in a flowered overall, pushed open the door bearing a tray, added, ‘This is a surprise! It’s not your day —’
And then she remembered that Monday was – or had been – Harriet’s day – and silently cursed her clumsiness.
‘I hope you don’t mind me coming in, Miss Mitchell,’ said Mrs Brissett, setting down the tray. ‘The fact of the matter is, I went to Miss Needham’s on a Monday for years. And it got to be a habit. Only I can’t go there any more – well not until Miss Needham’s cousin comes and tells me what she wants doing. Mr Simpson he rung me – that’s Miss Needham’s solicitor, in Bamford. Very nice old gentleman he is, the old school, you know? He handled our Dawn’s divorce for her – Miss Needham saw to all that. She was very good to our family, Miss Needham.’
