Fiona came to his window and stooped. ‘I want to talk to you,’ she said in her direct way.
Markby’s only reply was to stretch his arm over the back of his seat and disengage the rear door latch. Fiona slid elegantly inside and pulled the door shut. Both Alan and Meredith had twisted in their front seats to be able to face her. There was a silence.
Fiona used it to stare at them with that casual arrogance of youth. She was leaning back in the corner of the car, her head resting against the inner lining. Her windswept long hair lay in tangled skeins across her shoulders. Her cheeks were flushed pink, either from the wind or because she was in the grip of some emotion. It wasn’t, thought Meredith, because Fiona was in any way embarrassed at having flagged them down.
Fiona asked suddenly, ‘Do you think you’ll find him?’
The question was addressed to Markby and he answered it. ‘I should think so. It may take a little time but we usually get these jokers.’
Her smooth forehead puckered briefly and she began to twist one strand of long blond hair round her index finger. ‘Do you think he wants money?’ The twisting finger was stilled.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘He probably does.Your father is a wealthy man.’
A look compounded of scorn and something very like quiet satisfaction crossed her face. ‘Then he’s got it wrong. Daddy won’t pay. He’s not that sort. My father is boardroom man, writ large. If you want anything from Daddy you have to put it in writing, three copies, and justify the expenditure. He’s furious.’
‘So are you, I fancy.’
She sniffed. ‘I couldn’t give a toss. But, you know, it’s making life bloody difficult at home. Alison’s twitchy. Daddy’s brooding darkly. Toby keeps on saying it will be all right. How does he know?’
‘Look, it’s an upsetting business—’ Markby began.
She interrupted, shaking her head. ‘You don’t understand. You don’t know my father. What upsets him is that he can’t control this “in-house”, as he’d describe it. He’s had to turn to the police, outsiders. When Toby said he knew you personally, Daddy jumped at the idea you should come today.You’re a policeman but not the usual sort. You’ve got Toby to vouch for you, do you see? It’s like you’re part of the company. One of us, as Daddy would put it. Daddy liked everything to run smoothly in any company he was in charge of. I bet working for him was hell. He likes everything to run smoothly in family life, too. No problems and no bloody backchat. Just get on and do it. That’s Daddy’s attitude.’
There was bitterness in her voice. There had been rows in the past, Meredith thought. What about? Perhaps about the school she’d been sent to? That was a common cause of dissent. Or the friends she’d associated with? A career she’d chosen but which wasn’t to his taste?
Markby said quietly, ‘I’m not part of the company. I’m a police officer, just like Inspector Winter at Bamford. Senior in rank to him, perhaps, but just the same. Your father and Toby Smythe will both have to accept that.’
Seeking to defuse some of the tension which now crackled inside the car’s confines, Meredith said, ‘Your father is very worried and that makes him touchy, perhaps. People do get a bit brusque when they’re upset.’
Fiona dismissed this with another sniff. ‘You mean he’s worried about Alison, I suppose? Alison will cope with it. Daddy likes to think Alison is a frail little woman who needs protecting but, believe me, Alison is as tough as old boots!’
She had opened the door almost before she’d finished speaking and jumped out. The door slammed. She gave them a farewell wave and set off back towards the house.
‘Well,’ Markby observed, as he let in the clutch and they rolled forwards again. ‘What do you make of that?’
‘She doesn’t like Alison,’ Meredith said promptly. ‘She didn’t come out and say so but it was pretty clear. She knows better than to let her father see it, orToby. But it seems to me this business of the poison pen letters is going to shake a few more family secrets out of the closet.’
‘And what do you make of the girl herself?’
Meredith considered her answer carefully. ‘She’s very attractive but stroppy. Perhaps she’s just a chip off the old block. She wouldn’t like anyone to say she’s like her father but I fancy she is. This poison pen business has upset things in the family circle.’ Meredith frowned. ‘I hope Toby hasn’t really fallen for her.’
‘Why?’ There was a touch of asperity in Markby’s voice. ‘He’s well able to handle his own love life.’ Steering the BMW between potholes, he added peevishly, ‘I don’t know if this lane is a private stretch of road. If so, I wish Jenner would use some of his money to have it resurfaced.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Meredith, ‘he wants to discourage casual visitors or people just driving by.’
He glanced at her. ‘That’s a very shrewd observation.’
‘Thank you, but, like Alison, I am still in possession of most of my marbles!’ she retorted. ‘And as regards Toby, he can fall in love with anyone he likes, but Fiona will chew him up and spit him out. Besides, she’s a cousin of sorts.’
‘Only distantly.’
‘She’s very young. Toby’s in his late thirties.’
‘Sounds young to me! You’re in your late thirties and you don’t think you’re old, surely? I’m in my mid forties and determined to cling to what little of my youth I have left!’ Markby chuckled. ‘But we all believe ourselves to be young,’ he added. ‘The outside changes but the inside doesn’t, isn’t that it?’
‘This is metaphysical meander I don’t want to follow. What I meant about the difference in age between Toby and Fiona is that it might not be obvious now, but it will become obvious later.’
‘I don’t think it matters a jot. Look at Jeremy and Alison. He’s got to be at least twenty years older than his wife. Lots of couples cope with a wide age-difference and the marriages work just fine.’
‘All right. If you want to know, my real worry about Toby falling for Fiona is that Fiona might turn out to be the writer with the poison pen!’
‘Aha! Despite all that back there?’ Markby jerked his head backwards to indicate the scene they’d left behind them.
‘Partly because of all that back there. I think she stopped us for a private quiz session not so much because she’s fed up with the family being upset, but because she’s worried, now you’ve turned up. She didn’t bank on you. Toby sprang quite a surprise when he said he had a contact in the police force, a senior copper who was local and engaged to marry an old friend of his, me. Her father leapt at it, she says. You can bet she didn’t.’
He hunched his shoulders. ‘It’s a possibility. But if she has been writing the letters, would she let us see that Alison isn’t her favourite person? Wouldn’t that be rather stupid?’
‘Or she’s smart enough to be upfront and honest about it because that would put you off the scent.’
‘You have a suspicious mind,’ he said with a chuckle. ‘You should have been a copper.’
They were passing the cottage they had noticed on their way to Overvale House. Meredith took a closer look at it. It was surrounded by a well-tended garden. Beds were dug over ready for spring planting. There was a row of what looked like gooseberry or blackcurrant bushes in new leaf. A woman was pegging clothes to a line. She stopped what she was doing to stare inquisitively at the car and its occupants. Just then, a familiar figure rounded the rear corner of the building. Meredith had fleeting sight of Stebbings, the gardener, before Markby had swept them past and beyond the cottage.
‘That was Stebbings,’ she said. ‘That must be where he lives. Do you think Jeremy owns that cottage, too?’
‘Very likely. There are probably estate workers’ cottages like that scattered all over the place. If so, I expect it’ll be tied to Stebbings’ job.’
‘Difficult,’ Meredith mused. ‘To have your home linked with your job like that. Anything could happen. Stebbings could lose his job or retire or just die. Where would that leave Mrs
Stebbings? Homeless? It’s not very satisfactory.’
‘On the other hand,’ Markby pointed out, ‘I doubt he pays any rent. Incidentally, he struck me as an odd fish. He looks like the Ancient Mariner.’
‘Long grey beard, glittering eye and all, I agree.’ Meredith laughed.
Markby picked up the previous thread of conversation. ‘What are your grounds for suspecting Fiona? Other than dislike?’
‘I didn’t say I disliked her!’ Meredith protested. ‘I didn’t warm to her, I admit. To be brutally honest, I thought she had all the hallmarks of a spoilt brat. But perhaps that isn’t all her fault. It’s fairly clear there have been some tremendous family rows in the past. I’d like to know about her mother. Is she still alive? Married to someone else? Did she leave Jenner or did he dump her? Did they part by mutual agreement? How old was Fiona at the time and how did she feel about the divorce? Is that why she doesn’t like Alison?’
‘And then there is the money,’ said Markby thoughtfully.
‘You’re picking up on that remark of Jeremy’s about youngsters always wanting something and it being natural to lend them money. Despite that crack she made about having to put in any request in triplicate, I imagine the money’s been given outright to Fiona pretty well when she’s wanted it. All that trendy gear costs a packet. I wonder if she works at all? Any kind of job, even a voluntary one, something charitable.’
‘I can’t imagine Fiona in a soup kitchen or handing out clean clothing to down and outs,’ he told her. ‘Like you, I’m thinking not so much about the present time as the future. I wonder how the two women, Alison and Fiona, stand to benefit from Jeremy Jenner’s will.’
‘Hold on, let’s see what we’ve got.’ Meredith ticked the points off on her fingers. ‘Let’s suppose Jeremy has been giving Fiona money. Perhaps he’s starting to ask where it all goes? Perhaps she needs money for something she can’t admit to. She might have a drug habit.’
‘She might but we’ve no reason to suppose she does.’ There was enough of the stuff out there on the streets, Markby knew. He also knew the dealers targeted the children of the wealthy. Doing a line of coke before going to a party was routine these days for many youngsters and many not so young. But a serious habit? ‘She hasn’t the look,’ he objected. ‘There are no signs of it.’
‘OK.’ Meredith accepted his argument in that way which meant she was only putting her own to one side temporarily. ‘How about this? Jeremy absolutely dotes on his wife. He’s almost certainly left her very well provided for under his will. He has a heart condition.This poison pen business is putting a strain on that. He could pop off and then the blackmailer could put the squeeze on Alison directly.’ She paused. ‘Or it needn’t be primarily about money. The writer hasn’t mentioned money yet. Perhaps he just wants to discredit Alison, wants to make her suffer. It’s a revenge thing.’
‘Revenge for what?’
‘For marrying Jeremy?’
‘You’re back to Fiona again.’
‘All right, I am. I have her down as prime suspect. She could be motivated by both revenge and blackmail. In her case they’d fit neatly together.’ Meredith’s tone challenged him to find fault in that line of reasoning.
‘How did she come to know the facts of the murder trial? According to the Jenners they didn’t tell either the girl or Toby until this poison pen business blew up.’
Markby was playing devil’s advocate. Once Meredith got her teeth into a theory, he knew, she could build it quickly into an ingenious case. That was where the amateur always had the advantage over the professional who was tied to mundane things like facts and evidence. But she was clear-headed and shrewd and even if her theories lacked facts, they seldom lacked cohesion.
‘It’s a matter of record, you said so yourself,’ she retorted impatiently. ‘You keep knocking down my ideas. Let’s hear yours!’
‘Do I suspect her? It’s too early to say. I’m not ready to point at anyone nor can I rule anyone out. That, by the way, includes your chum, Toby.’
‘What!’ Aghast, she stared at him. ‘But that’s ridiculous! What possible motive could he have? He asked me to ask you to investigate!’
‘Sure he did. It wouldn’t be the first instance of double bluff. Just as you said only minutes ago you thought Fiona stopped us by the gates in a similar game. As for motive, let’s say he’s in love with Fiona, as you obviously fear he is. Men have done strange things for love.’
There was an ominous silence in the car and then Meredith said stiffly, ‘It’s still ridiculous. I know Toby. Why on earth would he do a thing like that? Besides, he’s been out of the country. Alison would’ve remembered if the letters had been postmarked Beijing!’
‘I didn’t say he wrote them. He still might be involved. He and Fiona together may have cooked up some plan.’
‘He’s fond of Alison and Jeremy! Honestly, Alan, it’s a crazy idea!’
They had reached the outskirts of Bamford and Markby, perhaps sensing it was time to change the subject, pointed through the windscreen. ‘There’s the Watersmeet trading estate.’
Meredith looked past him to a collection of low brick buildings. ‘A romantic name for a pretty prosaic development.’
‘It used to be a farm, Watersmeet Farm,’ he explained. ‘Then the land was sold for development. I think it was one of Dudley Newman’s projects.’ Newman was a local builder and entrepreneur.
‘Just up his street,’ said Meredith morosely. ‘Dudley’s never as happy as when covering open countryside with bricks.’
‘He’s even moved his own builder’s yard there now Why don’t we turn in here?’ Markby suggested. ‘We could find this place, Rusticity, and look at the garden furniture.’
Markby parked the car in an area marked Visitors Only. As they got out, he pointed across the lot to one of the warehouses. ‘There’s one of those office supply places. That’s where I bought my box of paper. Just imagine how many individuals and how many businesses that supplies with paper in Bamford alone.’
Rusticity lay at the far end of the trading estate and proved to be a low building bearing the name and, in smaller print beneath, the words: S. Poole and E. Pritchard, Props. A small yard alongside the building was filled with lengths of wood and completed items of furniture. Prospective customers had to pick their way between the contents with care. There were plenty of splinters ready to embed themselves in the flesh of the unwary. A battered white van was parked by the entrance, the name of the firm painted on its side.
Meredith and Alan inspected the random collection of tables and seats. The hallmark of the design appeared to be the use of ‘natural’ – looking wood, complete with bark, knotholes and minor damage.
‘It’s well made,’ said Markby, testing a rustic bench.
‘Nothing goes out of here that isn’t properly made,’ said a voice behind them. ‘We’re craftsmen. We’re proud of our work.’
The speaker moved into view. He was youngish man in his thirties with thinning hair and very fair eyebrows. A stub of pencil protruded above one ear.
‘You run the business?’ Markby asked.
‘I run it with a partner. I’m Steve Poole.’ He held out a work-callused hand and Markby shook it. ‘Do you want to see the workshop?’ Poole offered, nodding towards the building behind them.
‘Yes, we do. We’ve just seen some of your furniture in the gardens at Overvale House.’
The fair eyebrows twitched. ‘We made that set to order for Mr Jenner. We make anything you like to order.’ He turned and led them into the workshop.
Inside it was cool and the air was filled with the smell of timber and the sound of hammering. The floor was covered with a thin layer of sawdust, chippings, and, despite a notice requesting No Smoking, squashed cigarette butts. In a corner another man was busy making what appeared to be a bird table.
‘That’s Ted,’ said Poole. ‘He’s the other half of the business.’
Ted stopped his work and looked up. Like his bu
siness partner, he wore dusty work clothes and he was about the same age as Poole. But in appearance he provided a startling and even comic contrast. Poole was lanky and pale, of sober appearance. A regular Eeyore, Meredith had judged him. Ted, on the other hand, had a round impish face with a snub nose and curly fair hair. He had a countryman’s complexion of red cheeks and tanned skin. If Poole suggested gloomy spirits, Ted suggested the life and soul of the party. Such people could prove a mixed blessing.
‘Hello,’ he hailed them affably. ‘What can we do for you, eh?’ He grinned widely at them, revealing a gap in his front teeth. Somehow this increased his likeness to one of those corbel heads in medieval churches which, from high up in the roof, pull their stone faces into all manner of grimaces at the hapless worshippers below.
They asked if they could inspect his work and he stood back to allow them a good view of it, his hands on his hips.
‘Not so much a bird table,’ said Markby in admiration, ‘more a desirable residence!’
The feeding table itself was a flat surface. At each corner of it stood little pillars supporting a roof in Chinese style with tip-tilted ends and covered with flat wooden tiles. An ornamental frieze ran along the top.
‘It’s designed to be practical. You can hang things from the roof,’Ted pointed out to him. ‘Like bits of fat, nets of peanuts, the stuff the birds eat. But it’s not a house. They can’t go nesting there. That’s not what it’s for!’
‘Well, no,’ Markby sounded slightly abashed. ‘I realize that. I wasn’t being facetious. I meant only that it’s a splendid piece of work. I’ve a bird table in my backyard but it’s a primitive thing compared with this.’
Ted stretched out his hand and passed it over the nearest gable in a gesture which was almost like affection. ‘I do a good job. I take pride in it, see? I can make you a nesting box, if you want one. But you don’t want to put a nesting box over a feeding table, mate. You see that sometimes. It’s a waste of time. A nesting bird needs a bit of peace and quiet, not a lot of sparrows and starlings scrabbling for seed right under it as it sits on the eggs.’
Ann Granger Page 6