by Ann Granger
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kinds of behaviour. Tell me, Vicar . . .' Florence turned her head back and met his appalled gaze with her serene expression. 'Do you think there might be a gene for murder? We Oakleys do seem rather inclined towards it.'
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myself alone. I could've wished she'd died at home and not in the hospital, though they were very kind to her and she was comfortable there. More comfortable than she'd have been in Fourways if it had stayed standing. I think,' said Damaris in her practical way, 'the bathroom geyser was to blame. It always had a mind of its own.'
Juliet hesitated, unwilling to appear to pry, but eventually curiosity got the better of her. 'The private room at the hospital must have been expensive.'
'Oh, but Dudley Newman paid for that,' Damaris said. Seeing how startled her visitor looked, she explained, 'I went to him at once, the moment Florence was taken to hospital. I said now the house had collapsed that must suit his purpose. He never wanted the house, only the land. I'd sell him the land and the ruins and he could do what he liked with it. Only, I needed some money straight away - up front, I believe the expression is. I wanted my sister to have the comfort and privacy of a private room and treatment. If he'd meet the costs now, he could deduct whatever it was from whatever he intended to pay me for the land. So that's what he did. He did pay a fair price, didn't he, Juliet? You said so, at the time.'
'Yes, he did, and you're right, the house being in ruins did suit his purpose. I still believe he'd have met opposition if he'd tried to demolish it.'
Damaris looked round the room. 'I did wonder, when I first moved in here, whether, had we not decided to sell up, Jan would have started plotting as he did. Perhaps he'd just have hung around for a bit making a nuisance of himself and then gone back to Poland.'
'No,' said Juliet. 'He'd still have been snooping round looking for your wills and trying to persuade you to change them. He'd still have found the arsenic in the shed. He might still have decided to use it. He was a nasty bit of work, Damaris.'
'I always knew that. Anyway,' added Damaris a little inconsequentially, 'as Fourways fell down, we'd have had to move in any case. If he'd still been alive, it might have fallen on Jan and got rid of him. Instead of that, it fell on Florence. I'm sorry it took my sister with it, but I'm still glad the house has gone, because really it had taken both of us long ago. Swallowed us up.'
A little hesitantly, Juliet asked, 'Did you know the estate Newman plans to build there will be called Fourways Estate? I think he'd like to call the main roadway running through it Oakley Drive, if you don't object and the council don't. Well, they won't if you don't - Pam'll see
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to that. It would be a nice memorial to Florence, I thought.'
'Arthur,' said Damaris firmly. 'It ought to be called Arthur Oakley Drive after my brother. Florence has a grave but Arthur has no proper resting place. Try and get them to call it after him.'
'I'll do my best. Anyway, it'll be Oakley for a long time to come.'
Damaris gave one of her surprisingly impish grins. 'Goodness, on the map!'
It seemed a good moment to depart on this upbeat note. Juliet tried not to look too obviously at her wristwatch. 'I'll come and see you again, Damaris, so will Meredith and Alan. James, too, when he can get away.'
Damaris gave a sad smile. 'Thank you. You'll come for a few months, but then you'll be too busy. That's as it should be. Your life is really only at its beginning. I shall be content to sit mine out here. I've discovered there is a very good public library.' She got to her feet to show her visitor out. On their way to the door, they passed by the Victorian rolltop desk.
'Grandfather William's,' said Damaris briefly. She tapped the painted initials, now scratched almost illegible. 'Should have left it behind, really. We were never able to shake off his shadow. Here I am, in a new abode, in a new town, in a new part of the country and look, I've lumbered myself with this memento of that dreadful rogue. I must be a glutton for punishment.'
'Funny,' Juliet mused, 'we'll never know if that will really existed or whether that certified translation Jan showed us was just a fake.'
Damaris didn't reply. She was an honest woman and wouldn't have wished to lie to Juliet, of all people. But she'd spent that Sunday, after news of Jan's death had been conveyed to them, searching the turret room. If there was a will, Jan would've kept it by him, she was sure. And she'd found it. He'd slipped it under the cracked linoleum in the corner of the room. It had been in German. She'd learned some German as a girl, so she had been able to read it with a little difficulty and the help of a dictionary. It had been just as Jan had claimed. Whether or not it would have been valid was another matter. Probably not, but to be on the safe side, she had burnt it.
'Drive carefully, dear,' she said to Juliet.
'I'm taking all this over to James,' Meredith said, carefully knotting string round the box containing Geoff Painter's research into the death of Cora Oakley. 'James wanted to look through it before I return it to Geoff.'
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'Was it worth looking through?' Alan asked from behind the latest copy of The Garden magazine.
'It was fascinating, and making up my mind was difficult. I feel in my bones that William was guilty if only because, had he been innocent, I think he would have had the nerve to brazen out local disapproval. He wouldn't have run away like that. I think Geoff's right and William was lucky. If there had been another witness to back up the housekeeper it would've gone differently. Martha Button gave her evidence so confidently at the outset, but once defence counsel began on her, she went to pieces. She never retracted her claim but defence succeeded in making her look less reliable. If the factory had just reported some arsenic missing . . . But I suppose it was such a tiny amount no one noticed. William was a bad lot, there's no denying that. The evidence of the girl, Daisy Joss, has to be taken with a giant pinch of salt!'
Alan put down his magazine. 'A man may be a bad lot, a gambler, womaniser, a thoroughly rotten husband. It doesn't follow he's murdered. Nor does the fact that Cora apparently believed he'd seduced the nursemaid mean that he really had, no matter what Cora told the housekeeper. Don't forget, there was some evidence that she might have been a dope-addict, given to wild imaginings.'
'No real evidence. The pharmacist was keen to stress he didn't know that was the case, only that it might be so if she carried on taking the laudanum. And isn't that what pompous male authority used to say to any woman who kicked up a fuss? You 're imagining it, my dear! I can just see Wicked William letting it be known, oh very cleverly through his counsel, that his wife was an addict. Who was there to contradict him? Poor Cora was dead. You can say what you like about the dead.'
'That's why evidence has to be tested. That's where "beyond reasonable doubt" comes in. That's why it's often so damn difficult to nail your man. Mrs Button should have come forward much earlier. Had the original inquest heard her evidence, it might not have reached a verdict of accident. Once they had reached that verdict then it was a question of overturning it. A jury has to be awfully convinced before it overturns the verdict of a previous one.'
'But do you think he did it?' Meredith challenged. 'Never mind the evidence, what do you think?'
'Of William? Did he mess around with arsenic and a do-it-yourself chemistry set? Yes, probably. But I wouldn't hope to get a conviction on the evidence of that housekeeper. So we're back to what a police officer thinks, as against what he can prove. If you really want to know what
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bothers me, bearing in mind I have no proof . . .
'Go on, anyway,' Meredith urged. She settled back in her chair, her hands loosely holding the box of papers.
'Well, I'd like to know the real reason Mrs Button was dismissed. Two possible reasons were put forward at the trial. That William's guilty conscience was shaken by the sight of her. That William's grieving heart was troubled by the sight of her. But perhaps Mrs Button
had an agenda of her own? Possibly she knew more about arsenic as a substance than she let on. She'd have used the stuff to kill vermin all her life. Perhaps she knew at once what the garlic smell meant. At the very least she was quick-witted enough to realise something had been set up in that room, some kind of apparatus. Perhaps she intended to use the knowledge to blackmail her employer. That's why she said nothing at the inquest. After a couple of weeks she went to William and told him she had evidence which could overturn the verdict. William knew that if he paid her once, he'd be in her power for ever. He had to get rid of her. But he couldn't afford to have another suspicious death in the house! What he could do was discredit her in advance. He knew that by dismissing her from her place, anything she later said would look like the words of a vengeful servant. It was a bit of a gamble of course, but we know William was a gambling man.'
He picked up his magazine again. 'On the other hand, perhaps Cora was a laudanum addict who, under the influence of her favoured drug, stumbled out of bed, brought down the lamp and burned herself to death. After all, in the end, that's what a jury decided had happened. William was acquitted. You may think he should have hanged. It might have saved a lot of trouble in the long term if he had! But you wouldn't want to send an innocent man to the gallows, would you, just to save a lot of trouble?'
'No, I suppose not.'
'Only suppose not?' he asked with a grin.
'You know what I mean.' She tapped the lid of the box. 'If nothing else, all this is worth reading because of the reporter's notebooks. He was a chap called Stanley Huxtable.' She smiled. 'They contain a mystery of their own.' At his raised eyebrows, she explained, 'On one page he's sketched a woman in full mourning and beneath it he's written If you live in Bamford I'll find you. How do you explain that? It doesn't appear to have anything to do with the trial.'
'Perhaps he fell in love?' Markby suggested from behind his magazine. 'People have fallen in love in stranger places than in a courtroom.
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Emotions run high during trials. Perhaps Huxtable got carried away.'
She was silent for a while and then said, 'Alan
He lowered the magazine and looked at her cautiously. She was sitting with the box of papers on her knees, cradling it. She looked uncharacteristically nervous.
She said, 'I've been thinking and I've decided it will be best if I move back into my place in Station Road for a while.'
'Oh,' he said. 'I see.' His voice was bleak.
'No,' she told him quickly. 'I'm not crying off the whole idea of us sharing a home. It's just that it can't be this one, which is your home, nor can it be Station Road, which is mine. I feel like a visitor here. You'd feel the same in my place. We've said we'll look for a house together and we will. When we find it, we'll move in and it'll be ours - not yours or mine. We'll start off with a clean slate. I'll leave Station Road on the market in case I get a buyer. If I do, I may have to rethink - if we've not found a house in the meantime, that is.'
Markby said, 'I thought you didn't fancy returning to Station Road since it was vandalised.'
'I didn't. But now Minchin and Hayes have stayed in the place, I feel differently. They've formed a kind of buffer between me and what happened. I won't ask if you mind because I can see you do. But I just don't - I'm not at ease here.'
'Not at ease here or not at ease here with me?' She could hear anger now in his voice.
T don't want to quarrel. We'll just have to speed up the house-hunting.'
'I'm getting bloody fed up with this!' he said suddenly. 'Why can't we just get married?'
'All right, when we find a house together, we'll get married.' The words were out before she realised it.
Alan leaned forward. 'What was that? Say it again.'
Meredith cleared her throat. 'When we find a house for us both to live in, I'll marry you.'
'Right!' he said. Til hold you to that!'
Chapter Twenty-Seven
From the Bamford Gazette, 1890
There were scenes of near riot at the courthouse following the acquittal of William Price Oakley on a charge of murdering his wife. Oakley himself and the members of the jury which had declared his innocence had to be smuggled out by a side entrance to avoid the mob. The crowd had begun to gather early in anticipation of a Guilty verdict. On hearing they were not to get what they wanted, the mood turned ugly. When a cab with blinds drawn was observed departing the precincts of the courthouse, the cry went up that it contained William Oakley. Several rough fellows in the crowd began to pelt it with cobblestones snatched up from the road. Only when it proved to contain the chief witness for the prosecution, Mrs Martha Button, was it allowed to proceed on its way. A large force of constables then set about restoring order and some arrests took place. At last the mob was persuaded that William Oakley had been spirited away by court officials and it could not lay hands on him. It then dispersed. It is understood that charges of causing an affray are to follow in the case of certain persons.
The court had reached its verdict at mid-morning. By early afternoon Stanley Huxtabie was back in Bamford and had submitted his final piece of copy on the Oakley trial. He was now on his way home with the rare prospect of a free afternoon ahead of him.
The disturbance outside the courthouse had been a close shave as far as he was concerned. A missile had taken off his bowler hat and when he stooped to retrieve it, he saw that it'd been struck by half a brick. If that had been targeted an inch lower, he'd be in the infirmary now.
Still, such are the hazards of a reporter's life. It might have laid him low, but it hadn't. Stanley whistled to himself as he made his way down
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the street, turning over in his mind what he should do with his unexpected free time. He'd just decided that whatever else, that evening he'd treat himself to a proper slap-up meal somewhere, when he stopped in mid-tune, pushed his hat to the back of his head and murmured, 'Hello!'
A female form had emerged from a butcher's shop ahead of him and was making her way at a brisk pace along the pavement. There was probably more than one woman in widow's weeds and veil in Bamford, but not many with a figure as neat as that or with that rapid step. Stanley quickened his own pace.
It's possible to sense when one is being followed. The girl in black went faster still. At a corner she paused and looked back. Stanley could only see the veil. Whether she saw him through it, he couldn't tell, but he was pretty sure she had. She almost ran round the corner and Stanley, now in hot pursuit, darted after her.
There she was, scurrying along, the unwieldy wicker basket on her arm hampering her progress. Her haste almost cost her dear. Without due precaution she stepped off the pavement to cross the street, just as a delivery vanman whistled to his horse and started forward.
'Hey!' yelled Stanley. The girl stopped, realised her peril, made to step back, stumbled against the kerb in her long skirts and was forced to drop her basket to save herself.
As Stanley ran up to her, she was picking herself up, her fingers scrabbling at her veil to pull it back into place. Various parcels lay around her.
'Allow me,' offered Stanley, gathering them up and returning them to the basket which lay on its side. By the time he'd done this the girl had succeeded in repositioning the veil and was shaking dust from her skirts. He had missed seeing her face by a fraction.
'Thank you,' she said icily and stretched out her hand to take the basket now held by Stanley.
Stanley hung on to it. T was afraid,' he said, 'you were going to be run down there.'
'It wouldn't have happened,' she retorted, 'if you hadn't been following me.'
'It wouldn't have happened,' said Stanley, 'if you hadn't got that veil over your face and could see where you were going properly.'
'You are very impertinent, Mr Huxtable!' Because he couldn't see her, he had to judge her mood from her voice and attitude. Both were combative.
'Remember me, then?' said Stanley cheerfully.
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'Of course I remember you! You followed me and my friend in Oxford. You seem to make a habit of following me. I don't know why.'
'I don't know why, really,' said Stanley honestly. 'Just curiosity, you know. I'm a reporter.'
'So you told us. May I have my basket back?'
'It's heavy,' said the solicitous Stanley, 'and you've had a nasty fright. Let me carry it.'
'We are not going the same way.'
'How do you know? Anyway,' added Stanley. 'I've got the whole afternoon off and I can go anywhere I want.'
She was silent for a while and then said soberly, 'The trial is over, then?'
'It is. I looked for you, but you didn't come again. Why did you come along that one time?'
'Like you, I was curious. A neighbour wanted to go and asked me if I'd accompany her. Was he convicted?'
'Oakley? No, he got off. I thought he would. I had a sort of bet on it.'
'Then you won,' she said in a voice of such concentrated fury that he stepped back and felt himself flush.
Embarrassment was a rare emotion for him. 'Don't get me wrong,' he pleaded. 'It wasn't that sort of bet. It was just with a fellow journalist over whether or not the housekeeper would hold up under cross-questioning. All I won was a pint of ale.'
T hope you enjoyed it.' She stretched out a gloved hand and gripped the handle of the basket. This time, Stanley relinquished it.
He thought she'd walk off straight away, but she remained standing where she was, apparently lost in thought. Then she said very quietly, to herself rather than to him, 'Father will be upset.'
'Your father being?'
'Inspector Wood,' she told him in an absent-minded way as if she no longer cared whether he stood there or not.
