Pieces of Justice

by Margaret Yorke

  Table of Contents

  Copyright & Information

  About the Author

  Dedication

  The Liberator

  It's Never Too Late

  Always Rather a Prig

  I Don't Believe in Santa Claus

  The Reckoning

  Such A Gentleman

  A Time for Indulgence

  Fair and Square

  The Fig Tree

  A Woman of Taste

  Mountain Fever

  The Wrath Of Zeus

  A Sort of Pride

  Gifts From The Bridegroom

  Anniversary

  The Mouse Will Play

  The Breasts of Aphrodite

  The Luck of the Draw

  Means to Murder

  A Small Excitement

  Widow's Might

  The Last Resort

  Greek Tragedy

  Endnote

  'Dr. Patrick Grant' Titles

  Other Margaret Yorke Novels

  Synopses of Titles

  Copyright & Information

  Pieces Of Justice

  First published in 1994

  © Margaret Yorke; House of Stratus 1994-2013

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  The right of Margaret Yorke to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.

  This edition published in 2013 by House of Stratus, an imprint of

  Stratus Books Ltd., Lisandra House, Fore Street, Looe,

  Cornwall, PL13 1AD, UK.

  Typeset by House of Stratus.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library and the Library of Congress.

  EAN ISBN Edition

  0755130553 9780755130559 Print

  0755134737 9780755134731 Kindle

  0755134842 9780755134847 Epub

  This is a fictional work and all characters are drawn from the author's imagination.

  Any resemblance or similarities to persons either living or dead are entirely coincidental.

  www.houseofstratus.com

  About the Author

  Born in Surrey, England, to John and Alison Larminie in 1924, Margaret Yorke (Margaret Beda Nicholson) grew up in Dublin before moving back to England in 1937, where the family settled in Hampshire, although she then lived in a small village in Buckinghamshire.

  During World War II she saw service in the Women's Royal Naval Service as a driver. In 1945, she married, but it was only to last some ten years, although there were two children; a son and daughter. Her childhood interest in literature was re-enforced by five years living close to Stratford-upon-Avon and she also worked variously as a bookseller and as a librarian in two Oxford Colleges, being the first woman ever to work in that of Christ Church.

  She was widely travelled and had a particular interest in both Greece and Russia.

  Margaret Yorke's first novel was published in 1957, but it was not until 1970 that she turned her hand to crime writing. There followed a series of five novels featuring Dr. Patrick Grant, an Oxford don and amateur sleuth, who shared her own love of Shakespeare. More crime and mystery was to follow, and she wrote some forty three books in all, but the Grant novels were limited to five as, in her own words, 'authors using a series detective are trapped by their series. It stops some of them from expanding as writers'.

  She was proud of the fact that many of her novels are essentially about ordinary people who find themselves in extraordinary situations which may threatening, or simply horrific. It is this facet of her writing that ensures a loyal following amongst readers who inevitably identify with some of the characters and recognise conflicts that may occur in everyday life. Indeed, she stated that characters are far more important to her than intricate plots and that when writing 'I don't manipulate the characters, they manipulate me'.

  Critics have noted that Margaret Yorke has a 'marvellous use of language' and she was frequently cited as an equal to P.D. James and Ruth Rendell. She was a past chairman of the Crime Writers' Association and in 1999 was awarded the Cartier Diamond Dagger, having already been honoured with the Martin Beck Award from the Swedish Academy of Detection.

  Margaret Yorke died in 2012.

  Dedication

  To Alexander, Shaun, Lucinda and Ben, with love.

  The Liberator

  My mercy mission began in Italy. I noticed him first on the plane: a coarse-featured, stout man with wide pores and purple thread veins on his face. He sat across the aisle from a still-pretty, faded middle-aged woman who seemed to be, as I was, travelling alone. When the stewardess with the drinks had passed, he leaned across with his glass in his hand and made some remark to the woman, who was reading. She looked surprised, but answered pleasantly. Thereafter, she was unable to return to her book for the rest of the journey, for he continued to talk, and when we boarded the bus at Genoa there he was, assiduous, by her side, helping with her hand luggage.

  The hotel, in a small resort about forty miles north of Genoa, was across the road from the sea, a modern concrete block with balconied rooms at the front, and behind, single cells with the railway below. I had forgotten that: the railway line that runs along the coast, sometimes in front of the towns, sometimes to the rear, but always with express trains thundering through during the night, blowing their whistles piercingly at level-crossings.

  With machine-like efficiency the hotel staff and the tour courier sorted the travellers, collected passports, and allocated rooms. The faded woman, the red-faced man and I all had rear-facing single cells. Off to the front, to their airy balconies, went the fortunate married, or anyway, the twosomes.

  Because of the trains I slept badly, and was angered at my own stupidity: I, usually so careful in my research, had slipped up over this booking which I had made in some haste after my sudden, premature retirement. I had felt the need for a change of scene and had quickly arranged a modestly priced package tour instead of the well-planned journey of some cultural interest I usually took later in the year. Now I had a bedroom which was no haven wherein to retreat in the heat of the day, nor a place of repose at night.

  I went down early to breakfast and saw the faded woman at a corner table with her prima colazione of rolls and coffee. She glanced up and murmured ‘good morning’ as I passed, and her sigh of relief as I went on to sit some distance away was almost audible. She sought company no more than I did.

  The pairs in their better rooms were sleeping late or having breakfast upstairs; few people were in the restaurant so early, but George was: I learned his name later. He came breezing in, sparse grey hair on end and colour high. He had been for a walk and already he glistened with sweat. He wore a bright yellow towelling shirt, crumpled cotton slacks, orange socks and leather sandals.

  ‘Good morning,’ he cried, walking up to the faded woman and pulling out a chair at her table. ‘I’ll join you,’ he announced. ‘Who wants to be alone?’

  Plenty of people, I thought grimly, if the only company available is uncongenial. I felt sorry for the woman, whom I judged to be recently widowed, observing her ring and her faint air of defeat. Most divorcees, I have noticed, soon develop a certain toughness; the widows who do acquire it take longer, softened as they are by sympathy.

  He talked at her all through breakfast, and when various couples who had been with us on the plane came into the room he greeted them all jovially. Most responded with reserved cordiality. He was all set to be
the life and soul of the fortnight and to wreck it for other people, particularly the faded widow who would find escape difficult. I had seen this sort of thing happen before but had done nothing about it beyond protecting myself.

  On the beach, later, I saw them among the rows of deck-chairs. He had accompanied her to book them; thus they were given neighbouring chairs and would remain together for the fortnight. I saw dawning realisation of this on her face as they trudged over the sand to their shared umbrella, and for a moment our eyes met.

  She tried to get away. She was a good swimmer, and struck out boldly while he floundered in the shallows. I first spoke to her out there, in the water, clinging to a raft, and in the same way she made friends with a retired colonel and his wife and two more couples. These people, all aware of her predicament, would sometimes invite her to join them in the bar or to go out in the evening for coffee. I, keeping my own company rigidly, a book held before me, would see her with her other friends drinking Strega with her cappuccino, briefly happy. Sooner or later, however, along would come George.

  ‘Mind if I join you?’ he’d blithely say, and would do it.

  The couples were civil. They talked to him for a while but finished their drinks and then left, abandoning meek Emily, as I christened her, to her fate.

  Meal-times were the worst. Because he had adopted her at breakfast, the head waiter had assumed them to be together and had allotted them a shared table for all meals. I had had to assert myself to be left alone. It was easier for the staff to seat people in groups and it took strength of will to stand against the system: as it always does. George spoke a bastard Italian, very loudly, expecting to be understood and becoming heated when he was not. The waiters, whose English vocabulary was limited to phrases connected with food, drink and cutlery, were at a loss to respond courteously to these aggressive attempts at dialogue. Emily would intervene when George paused for breath, speaking in a soft voice; her limited Italian was precise. George, however, soon shouted her down, like a dominant husband, so that her little attempts to improve understanding withered and died. He ate grossly, too, demanding extra portions and shovelling the food into his mouth, even belching. Afterwards, he complained of indigestion.

  Emily tanned, under the sun; she even bloomed a little as a result of the food, which was very good; but she grew edgy, was restless, twitched her hands. And she was not sleeping. I could see her light on, late at night, when I leaned out of my own window to watch one of the trains rush past in the darkness.

  She had paid a lot of money for this holiday and it was being ruined by an obtrusive boor.

  I often walked round the town in the evening buying fruit and mineral water to consume in my room, and I enjoyed these expeditions. Once I met Emily, scurrying along, head down, arms full of packages. George was not in sight. I did not detain her by speaking, for he might be in pursuit – and he was: I saw him approaching, large belly bulging over his stained slacks, searching about for her.

  ‘Have you seen Mary Jolly?’ he asked. ‘I’ve lost her.’

  So that was, in fact, Emily’s unlikely name.

  ‘She’s gone that way,’ I said, pointing to a narrow alley between chrome-painted houses, where children played and cats skulked. ‘You’ll catch her if you hurry,’ and I had the satisfaction of seeing him depart in the opposite direction from that taken by his quarry.

  I caught her up myself. She was buying postcards, in a shifty, worried manner, peering over her shoulder as she made her choice in case he was on her trail.

  ‘It’s all right,’ I told her. ‘He’s gone in the other direction. You can take your time.’

  She looked startled for a moment; then she smiled, and I saw how pretty she must once have been.

  ‘He means well,’ she said.

  Fatal words. I wondered how many other people’s holidays George had wrecked over the years, and indeed, how his good intentions affected those he met in daily life at home.

  ‘I never manage to miss him at breakfast, no matter what time I come down,’ Mary-Emily confessed as we walked on together. ‘Early or late, he’s always there. And my room is too dark and dismal to stay in for breakfast. The trains in the night are so awful, too. Don’t they wake you?’

  I agreed that they did.

  Mary-Emily had tried ear plugs, but could not sleep at all with them in her ears.

  A morning glory trailed over the railing above a culvert alongside the pedestrian tunnel under the railway line. It was a dark, eerie passage, where sounds echoed in the vaulted concrete cavern, but above it the blue flowers were brilliant.

  ‘It’s so pretty here,’ said Mary-Emily. ‘The town, I mean, with the oleanders and the palm trees. And all the buildings. Look at that lovely wrought-iron balcony.’

  I admired it, but I was thinking. An accident would be impossible to arrange, for George did not swim out far enough to drown, nor were there any cliffs, and there were people about most of the time. It would have to be done here, near the railway. Timed well, the sound of a train would mask any noise. No one would suspect an elderly spinster, a retired schoolmistress of modest demeanour. No one here would know that the elderly spinster had once worked with the French Resistance and was no stranger to violence. It was too late to save Mary-Emily’s holiday this year, but no one else would have to suffer George in future.

  I went on the organised coach trip to Monte Carlo, which I had not originally planned to do, but I bought the knife there: for my nephew, I said in my excellent French. The shopkeeper never suspected that I was English, just as no one had all those years ago, when after the German advance I was caught in Paris.

  George and Mary-Emily had booked to go on the outing too, but when the coach was due to leave she had not turned up. George made the driver wait and went to find her, returning to say she had a headache and was not coming. He almost decided to stay behind in case she needed anything, but I persuaded him to come; she should have this one day off, I resolved, silently commending her resource, and I invited him to sit with me in the coach. He talked without pause throughout the journey, and I learned he was a widower who lived alone in Leeds and sold insurance; he had one son whom he almost never saw. Since his wife died, he told me, he had learned about loneliness and that was why he befriended the solitary. The effrontery of it! He supposed, by accompanying me now, that he was benefiting me! No wonder his wife had been unable to survive such insensitivity, I thought. When we reached Monte Carlo I managed to elude him among the crowds, to make my purchase unobserved.

  At dinner that night Mary-Emily looked tranquil after her undisturbed day. After the meal she went into the town with the army couple, and when George followed them, I followed him.

  But there was no chance for action that night. I joined the group at a cafe and we talked late, sheer numbers wearing George down so that others might speak; because I was there to dilute the mixture the couple lingered. Mary-Emily was secretary-receptionist to a doctor in Putney, I learned. I described my years of teaching in a girls’ school but did not mention the war. We walked back to the hotel together, and Mary-Emily went up to bed ahead of everyone else.

  In the end, I did it in daylight. At least, it was light above ground. I found George, one afternoon, pacing up and down the hotel garden wondering where Mary-Emily was. It was a shame to waste a minute of such weather indoors, he said.

  She was sure to be skulking in her room; when he had given her up and gone down to the beach she would appear in a shady corner of the hotel garden with a book, and remain there, as I did, until she went down for a swim. This was her latest tactic.

  ‘She’s gone to have her hair done,’ I lied. ‘And I’m just going – I have an appointment after hers. Shall we go together? You could walk back with her.’

  ‘She hasn’t left her key,’ he grumbled.

  ‘I expect she didn’t bother – I don’t always leave mine – see, I have it now,’ I said, showing him the large, brass-tagged hotel key.

  He was so stup
id that he did not know the hairdresser, like all the shops, closed in the afternoons. If he did query it as we proceeded, I would say the hairdresser was an exception. If necessary, I would walk him round the town, always quiet at this hour, until I found a deserted spot where I could do it, but first we had to go through the tunnel. At that time of day the chance of its being deserted was good.

  My luck was in. Not a soul was in sight as we entered the subway, and a goods train even rumbled obligingly over our heads as I plunged the knife in so that he died silently, and at once. There was just an instant when he gave me a startled, incredulous stare before his life gurgled away.

  I withdrew the knife, slipped it into my pocket wrapped in a handkerchief, and walked unhurriedly back to the hotel. George would be found very soon. I must hope no one had seen us depart together, but it was a risk I had to take. If I had been noticed, I could say that I had felt unwell and had turned back, leaving him to continue his walk alone. Suspicion would never fall on me, an inoffensive, elderly woman.

  Back in my room, I washed the knife and wiped it carefully, then rinsed the handkerchief in which it had been wrapped. That afternoon, when I bathed, I would have the knife strapped to my body with sticking plaster, and I would sink it out there, deep in the Mediterranean. I had not felt such satisfaction in a job well done for years. In those long-ago days I had swum rivers with a knife in my belt. People forget that the elderly have all been young once, and some have done remarkable things.

  The murder was a nine days’ wonder: various drop-out youngsters were questioned and grilled by the police, and known local ne’er-do-wells, but the tourists were never suspected. I said that I had walked with George to the mouth of the tunnel and had left him there; it is always wise to tell the truth.