Narrow is the Way

by Faith Martin

  Hillary smiled and nodded calmly. ‘And who was this, exactly? How long ago?’

  ‘Oh, ages ago. We were still at school. She’d just had her sixteenth birthday party. His name was Jake Burdage. He’s in London now, I think. A stockbroker or something.’

  Hillary saw Tommy note down the name and nodded mentally. Although she thought this antagonized ex had been dumped too long ago to still harbour a murderous grudge, it would have to be checked.

  Still, it sounded as if Julia Reynolds had no fears about rubbing people up the wrong way. She’d met her kind before – they were usually unimaginative people, secure in their own identities, who saw no need to cushion reality. They were almost always incapable of seeing a point of view from the other side, and this often led to an unseeing, unthinking and uncompromising outlook which invariably gained them enemies. Other, lesser mortals, thought this mentality was either brave or foolhardy, whilst others, more au fait with the world, considered it to be downright dangerous. Hillary was inclined to believe that it was a combination of all three.

  Had Julia Reynolds’ bold and unthinking personality blinded her to the dangers that night in the cowshed? Had she told somebody just what she’d thought in that dark, deserted place, and never even considered that perhaps discretion really was the better part of valour?

  ‘So, she was obviously the kind of girl who could stick up for herself,’ Hillary mused. ‘And she was running her own business, even though she was still very young. Was it successful, her business?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Well, she always had money to spend,’ Mandy amended scrupulously. ‘I mean, she was always dragging me to Debenhams to buy lipstick and stuff, and was always getting new outfits and CDs, but whether or not it all came from her business, I don’t know. I think her boyfriends gave her money, too, sometimes. She was bored with her job, I know, because she often put down her old ladies when she talked about them, but at the same time, she always seemed to be out and about with a job on. I think she used to butter them up. She used to laugh about it, and say things like “You know that silly old dingbat what’s-her-name. She showed me this picture of Jennifer Anniston the other day, and asked if I could give her a haircut like that. I mean really! The old girl’s sixty if she’s a day. Can you imagine it? I talked her into a page-boy instead.” And the funny thing is,’ Mandy went on, ‘I would see the woman she was talking about afterwards in a shop or somewhere, and all her friends would be telling her how well the cut suited her, and you could tell she would be really chuffed. Because the cut was just right for her. That’s why she was always in demand. Julia was like that. She got away with things, because she was good at everything she did. You know what I mean?’

  Hillary did. ‘Did she say anything else about her customers? About one of their husbands, perhaps? Or one of their sons, bothering her, pestering her, making a fool of themselves over her, that kind of thing?’

  Mandy frowned. ‘No, I don’t think so. She didn’t really ever meet the menfolk much. She’d go to people’s houses in the day you see, when most of the men were at work. Oh, she did say something about … oh, what was her name? Mrs Finch. No, Finchley – that’s it. According to Mandy, Mrs Finchley was always sozzled. She said she had to keep an eye on her when she sat her under the dryer, ’cause she was always dozing off. Anyway, she told Julia once, when she was drunker than usual, something really naff about her husband. Something about how he was doing something dodgy, only she didn’t know what. You know, something criminal.’

  Beside her, Hillary could feel Tommy perk up, and gave a mental smile, wishing she, too, could summon up a similar enthusiasm. But she doubted that this would come to much. Many drunk housewives had odd ideas about their spouses. It usually came from the bottom of a gin bottle. Still, this too would have to be checked out.

  ‘Any idea would sort of crime she was talking about?’ she prompted diligently.

  ‘Nah,’ Mandy said dismissively. ‘I don’t think Julia was really interested. She said she knew the hubby vaguely – he had a bit of WHT, but he was basically harmless. Probably fiddling his income tax or something, Julia thought.’

  She saw Tommy’s fingers move, and looked across to see him tapping the initials WHT and looking at her with an eyebrow raised in question.

  ‘Wandering hand trouble,’ Hillary murmured with a smile. And wondered if Julia might have been more intrigued than she’d let on to her friend. Had she checked up on Mrs Finchley’s better half and found something juicy? Had she tried a spot of blackmail? It was always possible. She doubted Julia Reynolds would have felt much compunction about it, and travelling hairdressers didn’t exactly earn a mint, did they? The temptation to earn some extra dosh could have been intriguing.

  ‘I would imagine your friend was popular with men, wasn’t she, Mandy?’ she asked quietly, knowing she had to be careful, now, how she phrased things. She didn’t want Mandy getting defensive, just when she was finally loosening up. ‘We know she went to the party, for instance, with Roger Greenwood. Was she serious about him?’

  ‘I’ll say!’ Mandy snorted. ‘She thought Roger Greenwood was a really good proposition. Especially if his dad brought off this property deal that he’s been wittering on about for the last few months. She said he could even end up being a multimillionaire. Roger’s dad, that is. And that Roger was almost certain to end up vice-chairman of his dad’s company one day.’

  ‘They’d been going out long?’

  ‘Nearly a year. Longer than she’d ever been out with anyone before. She kept hinting about a diamond engagement ring, but I never saw it.’

  Now it was Hillary’s turn to shift restlessly on her chair. Now things were looking far more interesting. ‘So she thought Roger was going to, or already had proposed?’

  Mandy frowned, and began to back track. ‘Oh, I don’t think he’d actually proposed. Not right out and asked her to marry him or nothing. If he had, Julia would have been bragging about it no end.’

  Hillary nodded. Yes, that sounded about par for the course. Julia Reynolds didn’t sound the type to keep her light under a bushel.

  ‘But I know she was hoping he would,’ Mandy ploughed on. ‘He was smitten right enough, I know that. Mind you, his dad was dead set against it. She said he’d once told Roger that he’d marry Julia over his dead body. Tres Victorian, as Julia put it. She used to tease Roger about his dad’s old-fashioned ways a lot.’

  ‘Do you think she chose to wear a wedding dress to the fancy dress party as a hint to Roger?’ Hillary asked. ‘Or do you suppose she wanted to cock a snook at his father?’

  Mandy laughed. ‘Probably both, knowing Julia. You know, now I come to think of it, I was with her when she tried on the outfit at the fancy dress shop, and she did say that wearing it would put old pig-features in a tizzy. I ’spect she meant Mr Greenwood.’

  ‘Do you know what Mr Greenwood had against Julia as a prospective daughter-in-law?’ Hillary asked, genuinely curious now.

  ‘Oh, I ’spect he thought she wasn’t good enough for his precious Roger, or something. He wanted him to marry some big land-owning farmer’s daughter or some Sloane type. Not that Mr Greenwood is so upper crust himself, mind. Julia said he was no better than her or her family. His ancestors were some sort of feed-and-grain merchants. Nothing to be so snotty about, Julia said.’

  ‘So Roger was the ‘real thing’ then? But she’d had plenty of boyfriends before him?’ Hillary probed carefully.

  ‘Why not?’ Mandy shot back belligerently, instantly on the defensive. ‘What’s wrong with that nowadays? Julia was always careful about … you know … stuff. Getting AIDS and all that. Men have been sowing their wild oats for centuries. Now a woman can do the same.’

  Although it was the slightly awkward and shy Mandy Tucker who was speaking, Hillary could clearly hear the voice of Julia Reynolds. She wondered if Mandy had actually agreed with her friend’s liberated, bold stance, or whether, at heart, the placid, shy Mandy had felt uncomfortable having such a vo
racious man-eater as a friend. If she had, she’d never admit to it now.

  ‘So, she wasn’t seeing anyone else? There’d be no reason for Roger Greenwood to feel jealous?’

  Mandy ducked her head and began to fiddle with the cigarette packet again.

  ‘Mandy? Remember what we talked about before we started?’ Hillary chided gently. ‘Your friend was strangled, which almost certainly means by some man who felt enraged by her, or betrayed. You can see why this is important.’

  Mandy chewed her bottom lip unattractively, then sighed. ‘Well, there was someone else. I don’t know who he was. Julia just called him her bit of rough on the side. But she wasn’t serious about him. It was Roger she was after.’

  Hillary could see the other girl was getting ready to dig her heels in stubbornly, and decided to change tack. There’d always be others willing to talk about Julia’s peccadilloes. And if she knew human nature (and she did), plenty of others. A girl like Julia was bound to have made enemies in the female community – girls who’d had boyfriends snaffled in the past, as well as girls, or even mature women, who envied Julia her beauty and independence.

  ‘OK, so tell me what else you can about Julia. What did she like doing? Did she have any hobbies?’

  Mandy, clearly relieved at the change in subject, shrugged. ‘Well not really. I mean, the thing is, Julia would get really enthusiastic about things, but they never lasted.’

  ‘For example?’

  Mandy thought about it, then nodded. ‘OK. There was this time at school, f’r’instance. We had this guest speaker in assembly once, one of these Greenies. He was all set to stand for the Green Party or Greenpeace or whatever. Anyway, he went on and on about how the countryside was being poisoned, and how each year there were less and less swallows making it back to the British Isles because the Spaniards kept eating them when they flew over the mountains. They catch them in these big nets apparently. Isn’t that gross? And I mean, silly? How much meat could there be on a swallow? Anyway, Julia got really mad about it, and when this bloke said they were going to be doing a tree-planting out by Charlton-on-Otmoor, and called for volunteers, Julia signed up, and dragged me along. Of course, it was really hard work planting these little sapling things, and we only planted five or six, before Julia got fed up and we skivved off. That was sort of typical of her. But she really, genuinely, believed in the cause though, and later she bought some save the seal stickers and stuff, and demonstrated outside an animal lab once in Oxford, but only when she felt like it. You see what I mean?’

  Hillary nodded.

  ‘And it was the same with the shampoo,’ Mandy went on. ‘The stuff that wasn’t tested on animals, and had no stuff in it that would harm the environment was too dear, Julia said. It would cut into her profits too much to use it. So she wrote a letter to the manufacturers, telling them it was no use producing stuff unless it could compete in the market-place. They wrote her a rather snotty letter back, and Julia used normal shampoo after that.’

  Hillary was careful not to smile. But just how much of the spoilt child had been ingrained in the adult? ‘She didn’t like being challenged you mean?’ she mused.

  ‘Oh no. But don’t get the wrong impression. Her heart was always in the right place,’ Mandy insisted. ‘Like when we went to give blood. That wasn’t her fault either.’

  ‘You’ve lost me,’ Hillary said gently.

  ‘Well, we’d just left school, and there was this mobile blood donor van parked up on the village green. You know, they travel about from town to town so people can volunteer to give blood? Well Julia thought it was a great idea, and we went in and signed up to be blood donors, and organ donors – you know, you fill in a card and put it in your purse?’

  Hillary nodded, remembering that there’d been a donor card in Julia Reynolds’s purse the night of her death.

  ‘Well, I gave blood first, and I could see straight away that there was something wrong. Julia went sort of … well, pale and greenish. And when the time came for her to be tested, just to have the little finger prick, to check for anaemia she just couldn’t go through with it. Turned out, she had this phobia about needles. I remembered then how she’d cried and made a fuss when we were little and had to have our jabs. They were very nice about it on the blood van, even though you could tell they were a bit exasperated. Well, the nurse was. She was this old biddy who rolled her eyes a bit. It made Julia cross. But it really wasn’t her fault, see, ’cause when she had to have her appendix out later, it was really awful for her. She hated the hospital, and couldn’t stand it. She said it did her head in. She’d always hated anything to do with illness and stuff. She even discharged herself early, it was so bad. The doctors warned her, but she went straight to bed once she got home, and was careful not to do too much, and it turned out all right in the end. But I mean, it had to be real, didn’t it? To discharge yourself like that? I couldn’t have done it, I can tell you, I would have been scared stiff. And she was really in pain, just after surgery, but she said she just couldn’t breathe in there. In the hospital. So it wasn’t her fault. People were always blaming Julia, thinking she was pulling a fast one, when she really wasn’t.’

  Mandy paused to take a much needed gulp of air and Hillary once again placed a calming hand gently over Mandy’s clenched fist. ‘OK, Mandy, it’s all right.’ The other girl had worked herself up into a such a state of agitation in defending her dead friend, that she looked ready to burst into tears.

  ‘Nobody knew her better than you did,’ Hillary soothed. ‘You must have been a good friend to her. Tell me, can you think of anyone who might have got mad enough at her to want to kill her?’

  Mandy sniffed and finally pulled a cigarette from the carton and lit up. She puffed frantically and then shook her head, not noticing that Hillary had leant back in her chair, well out of the way of the billowing smoke. ‘No. I mean, Julia had a lot of boyfriends, but only Roger recently. And he’s too nice. You don’t think he killed her, do you?’ she added sharply.

  But Hillary wasn’t about to be drawn. ‘We don’t know yet, Mandy. What about Michael Wallis. The son of the farmer, where the party was held. Do you know him?’

  Mandy wrinkled her nose. ‘Vaguely. From around.’

  ‘Did Julia know him?’

  ‘I guess. But she’d never been out with him. She said he’d got a dog for a girlfriend now. Is that true?’

  Hillary smiled and shrugged, thinking of poor Jenny Porter. ‘Some people don’t put looks high on their list of priorities,’ she chided.

  Mandy sighed somewhat wistfully, and Hillary suddenly realized that this shy, unassuming girl, couldn’t have had it easy, always being in the shadow of her beautiful and ambitious best friend. She wondered what, if anything, Julia Reynolds had brought to their friendship.

  They talked for another half hour but Hillary learned nothing more useful. Julia got on well with her parents, but expected to be moving out to live with Roger Greenwood soon. She’d had no family arguments or rows. Her father seemed the sort to be proud of his daughter’s strong personality, rather than disapproving. She made a mental note to find out where Julia Reynolds’ father had been at the time of the killing, just to make sure. It wouldn’t be the first time a father had killed a daughter that he’d seen as bringing ‘shame’ on the family, although, luckily, that kind of thing was much rarer now than it had been. Still, in a murder investigation, you left no stone unturned.

  When Mandy had finally gone, Hillary’s stomach was rumbling, but lunchtime was long since past. She left Tommy to type up his notes, and made her way to the canteen intent on getting a drink and maybe a piece of fruit, but was waylaid on the stairs by a secretary.

  The new super was ‘having a chat’ with his senior officers, and it was her turn, apparently. Wearily, and a trifle apprehensively, she made her way to Superintendent Jerome Raleigh’s office.

  She’d worked under Marcus Donleavy for most of her senior years at Kidlington, and they’d always got on wel
l; they understood each other, and Hillary had always regarded change, although inevitable, with a great deal of suspicion.

  As she knocked on the door and waited for his call to enter, she wondered nervously what he’d been told about Ronnie, and the internal investigation into his corruption that had been conducted last year. Nothing good, that was for sure.

  She had only recently discovered – or at least, strongly suspected that she might know – where her misbegotten spouse had stashed the majority of his dirty loot, but as yet hadn’t done anything about it. But with a new super breathing down her neck, perhaps now would be a good time to get it sorted, once and for all?

  ‘Come in,’ Jerome Raleigh called, then looked up as the door opened and DI Hillary Greene walked in.

  She was dressed in a deep burnt-amber two piece, with a plain white blouse, sensible brown shoes, and a pretty, tiger’s-eye pendant. Her nut-brown hair gleamed in a slightly too-long bob. Her make up was discreet and casual. She had a surprisingly shapely figure, the kind film stars in the fifties had, and wary, clever, dark eyes. She was, he could see for himself, a very attractive widow.

  So far, he’d picked up very little about her love life on the gossip train, except that she lived alone on a canal narrowboat in the tiny village of Thrupp. Scuttlebutt insisted that she was currently still very much unattached, although from what Jerome had been able to read between the lines, some at the nick thought that DI Paul Danvers, (weirdly enough, one of the men who’d investigated her for corruption) might have been sniffing around.

  He could see why men would be interested. She looked to be in her thirties rather than her forties, and held herself well. She also walked well, which was something of a dying art. Jerome always noticed the way a woman walked.

  Hillary Greene also had a degree from a non-affiliated Oxford college in English Lit., so she had brains as well as an understated, pleasant beauty. She’d done well to rise to the rank she had, especially considering she’d been hampered with the husband from hell.