by Faith Martin
As she moved across to the open landing gate, she saw the engineer himself walk past, a block and tackle draped casually over one shoulder. He paused and gave her a brief but all-encompassing look. It was the kind of look that missed nothing, and left you feeling somehow unnerved — and not in a nicely feminine and appreciative way either.
Brian O’Keefe, Jenny saw at once, was tall, dark and extremely handsome, which was three strikes against him right from the start. He was, she guessed, of Irish ancestry, and had the dark, brooding good looks of that race, and their clear, dark blue eyes. He had the bad manners to look at her as if he found her wanting.
Jenny sniffed. Hard.
Just then, Gabriel and Jasmine Olney appeared at the landing stage, with Lucas Finch and two young people of almost remarkable appearance. Remarkable in that they seemed to go together like two halves of the same coin.
These, Jenny surmised, must be David and Dorothy Leigh. Dorothy was a small, elfin, fairy figure of a woman, and no sign of her condition yet showed. She rather nervously tucked a long lock of pale hair so blonde it was almost silver behind her ear, and looked up at her husband. On her face was a look of such adoration that Jenny very nearly winced.
David Leigh was a perfect foil for his wife. He was taller, but not so tall that he made Dorothy look dwarfish. He was lean, but had a look of strength about him that was in perfect contrast to her rather ethereal figure. His hair was a rich shade of brown, very earthy, to offset Dorothy’s own silver hue. What he made of her look of adoration, though, the cook couldn’t tell.
He hadn’t seemed to notice it.
‘Ah, just coming to round us up, hey, love?’ Lucas’s voice seemed to suddenly galvanize the tableau into action.
Jenny smiled and nodded. ‘Breakfast is ready,’ she agreed. ‘I’ve written out the menu and left it at the table.’
‘How marvellous,’ Gabriel Olney said, patting his ridiculously lean stomach. ‘I’m starving.’
Jenny was distressed to see just how lean the old soldier was. Although she didn’t suspect him of being ill, she did suspect him of not eating enough. Stripped off, she could probably count every single rib the man had. She made a firm note to pile Gabriel Olney’s plate with extra sausages.
Jasmine Olney made no comment on her husband’s starvation, real or otherwise. Her eyes had gone straight to Brian O’Keefe, and had stayed there.
It was not surprising. With his shirt undone all the way to his waist in an effort to beat the heat, he was really something to look at. Especially since, with the block and tackle slung casually over his shoulder like a bag of swag, he reminded the cook of a pirate from one of those 1940s films, the kind that Errol Flynn had done so well.
O’Keefe himself was not unaware of his new audience, she noticed, with a wry twist of her lips, for he turned on Jasmine Olney the same kind of quick but comprehensive glance that he’d given the cook just a few moments earlier.
His own lips, Jenny noticed, turned up into a twisted smile that was almost insolent. Jasmine Olney flushed. She looked annoyed. And pleased. The sexual tension between them was so palpable that Jenny wished she had a knife about her person, just to see if she could actually cut it.
Lucas Finch was too busy ogling Dorothy Leigh to notice, but Dorothy had seen the speaking look that had passed between the dirty, sweating engineer and the impeccably groomed Jasmine Olney, and she quickly looked away in embarrassment.
Her eyes skidded to a halt as they met Jenny’s probably equally embarrassed expression, and the two women promptly pretended not to notice that there was anything at all amiss.
‘I’ve cooked some porridge as well as some tomato and herb omelettes, for those who might not prefer a full English breakfast,’ Jenny said, clearing her throat. In her opinion, food was an excellent choice of conversation whenever a social gaffe had been committed. It was so comfortingly safe.
‘Hmm, lovely,’ Dorothy quickly said. Jasmine Olney merely smiled.
Brian O’Keefe nodded and strode off, rudely not saying a single word to anybody.
Gabriel Olney’s lips tightened a mere fraction. ‘A surly fellow, that,’ he muttered, to nobody in particular.
Lucas tore his eyes from Dorothy and met those of his guest. ‘Hmm? Oh, yes, I dare say he is. But he’s a damn good engineer.’
‘Did you see that positively torturous thing he was holding?’ Jasmine purred. ‘It looked like he was taking off to a dungeon with it. I do hope you don’t have a prisoner’s brig on this boat, Lucas,’ she laughed, and gave her husband a highly amused glance.
She was, Jenny thought with some surprise, deliberately baiting him. In her experience, wives with a roving eye usually tried to hide it from their spouses, not rub their noses in it.
For the first time since arriving at Buscot, Jenny began to feel distinctly uneasy.
‘It was only a block and tackle,’ Dorothy Leigh said, dampeningly.
‘And how would a pretty little thing like you know that, my dear?’ Gabriel said, allowing his words to drop to a caressing whisper. His eyes smoked over Dorothy with such undisguised approval that both David Leigh and — more comically — Lucas Finch stiffened in anger.
Jasmine looked more amused than angry at this attempt to upstage her. No doubt, Jenny surmised, she thought her husband was merely trying to make her jealous in his turn. Getting his own back, so to speak. Jenny thought it all rather childish, and wished they’d knock it on the head.
She had good food waiting!
And then she noticed how David Leigh was looking at Gabriel Olney and caught her breath. Her unease intensified into something solid and ugly. She was beginning to think that this river cruise might not be as pleasant as she’d hoped. For there was more than mere pique in the look that David was giving the old soldier. Now, any man with a wife as pretty as Dorothy was bound to have to put up with a fair bit, Jenny supposed — men did so like to ogle, after all. But whereas David Leigh had been faintly amused by Lucas Finch’s obvious infatuation with her, he was looking at Gabriel Olney as if . . .
Well, as if he’d like to kill him.
‘My father worked on building sites for most of his life.’ Dorothy answered Gabriel’s question as if he’d been serious. She seemed unaware of the undercurrents passing around them, and her voice was still rather matter-of-fact. ‘He owned his own construction company. I often used to meet him at work in the summer holidays,’ she recalled, her face softening in remembrance of those happy days. ‘He used to let me help to mix the cement and put some bricks in place. He even let me use the crane once. I sat on his knee, of course, and he guided my hands. It was great fun,’ she finished, with a seemingly genuine, carefree laugh.
Gabriel smiled. ‘You could sit on my knee any time, my dear,’ he purred, so archly à la Terry Thomas that Jenny almost expected him to caress his moustache villainously as well.
Dorothy gave him a rather furious look, rivalled only by David’s.
‘Well, let’s get at this breakfast,’ Lucas Finch said, a touch icily, giving Olney a rather speaking glance as he moved past him. Then, just as everyone, with varying shades of relief, turned to follow, he suddenly stopped and gave a loud piercing whistle.
Jenny was not the only one who jumped.
From the direction of the house came a long scarlet-and-blue streak, and a moment later the parrot headed unerringly for Lucas Finch’s shoulder. Jenny felt the slight breeze on her face as its wings whirled past her.
‘Oh, Lucas, do you have to bring that filthy thing along with you?’ Jasmine asked petulantly. ‘I’m sure I read somewhere that they carry some horrible, unpronounceable disease or something.’
The parrot, firmly settled on its master’s shoulder, turned and eyed Jasmine keenly. It cocked its head to one side.
‘Don’t get your knickers in a twist, love,’ it advised. Everybody laughed. Including Jasmine.
*
Jenny added a sprig of basil as a finishing touch to the plate of omelettes
and then turned around, only to find Francis standing right behind her in the doorway. Once again, she hadn’t heard him enter. She managed not to jump.
He was dressed in white trousers (impeccably creased), a white jacket (impeccably ironed) and white tennis shoes (impeccably clean).
‘This is for Mrs Leigh,’ she said shortly, thrusting the tray into his waiting hands.
Francis didn’t bother to even nod, but turned silently and left. Jenny angrily dismissed the man from her thoughts. He was simply too pesky to be bothered with.
She checked her sausages, put the bread in to fry, and squeezed some more oranges. She added ice to the jug, and put it to one side. It wouldn’t be long before Francis discovered it and bore it away to table. In fact, she was rather glad that she wouldn’t have to serve at table. Jenny felt far happier in her kitchen. So even Francis had his uses, she reminded herself philosophically, and warned herself not to start making mountains out of molehills. There was no reason why they shouldn’t all have a perfectly pleasant river cruise.
The men chose to have both porridge and the full English breakfast, and after dishing these out, Jenny heaped a plate up for the captain, adding to his tray a mug of tea and some cutlery.
Since the galley was just to the left of the bridge (which was situated right at the front of the boat, on the lower deck), Jenny had the perfect excuse to take a look at it. It was the only part of the boat she hadn’t yet seen.
A tiny door in one corner led to the all-important room, and she knocked and opened it rather timidly.
Tobias Lester looked up, his face breaking into a smile at the sight of the steaming food. He was sitting in the room’s sole chair, which was at that moment tucked behind a tiny desk in one corner.
Jenny handed over the tray, then stood back and looked around. The room was much smaller than she’d thought, but it had a large wraparound window, giving the captain a splendid 180-degree view of his surroundings. Which could only be a good thing, she guessed. She supposed a lot of the smaller river craft and narrowboats that also used the river would find the Swan somewhat intimidating — especially if the owners thought the man steering the big paddle steamer couldn’t even see them! As far as she could tell there were no side mirrors like in a car to give him a view of what was behind him, and she wondered if that ever worried him.
It would certainly worry her!
In the centre of the small wooden room was a ship’s wheel. It was entirely made of wood, and was beautifully carved, with the typical large wooden handles that could spin it all the way around. And into her mind flashed all the seafaring pictures she had ever seen, where gallant ships’ captains spun the wheel helplessly as their ship battled the storm. She had to resist the infantile urge to mutter ‘hard to starboard, mate’ or ‘splice the mizzen mast.’
Not that she had the faintest idea what a mizzen mast was, or how to splice it.
‘Hmm, lovely,’ Tobias said appreciatively, dunking a sausage into the yolk of an egg. He had the tray balanced on his lap with all the ease of someone used to eating this way. ‘They all aboard then?’ he asked, looking amiably to the back of the boat, and the cook nodded.
‘Yes. All present and correct.’
Tobias smiled at the phrase, and then sighed. ‘Mind you, I don’t expect it will be all that jolly a jaunt,’ he muttered, more or less to himself, although he didn’t sound particularly concerned.
Jenny looked at him quickly. ‘Oh? No. I must say I thought they seemed a rather unlikely group.’
Tobias smiled but rather annoyingly merely shook his head, refusing to be drawn further.
But Jenny was not about to be put off so easily. ‘Mrs Olney in particular seemed rather out of place,’ she probed as delicately as she could, and Tobias gave her a quick, assessing look.
‘You don’t miss much, do you, Miss Starling?’ he said, but it was more of a statement than an accusation. ‘I noticed it about you yesterday. I said to Brian this morning, I did, that this new cook knows her onions in more ways than one.’
Jenny obligingly smiled at the weak joke, but said nothing. Tobias picked up a piece of fried bread, bit into it, caught the cook’s patiently waiting eye, and sighed.
‘Thing is, Mrs Olney’s a bit of a . . . well . . . a bit of . . . Anyway. The word is that she keeps a chap down in London,’ he finally coughed up.
Jenny delicately raised an eyebrow. ‘I imagine she goes there to shop,’ she said, determined to be fair. First impressions could be so misleading sometimes.
Tobias smiled, and resigned himself happily to a good gossip. ‘When I say that she keeps a chap down in London, I mean she actually keeps a man down there. Pays the rent on a little flat, apparently. It seems that one of her bitchy friends from up Oxford way actually heard from another friend who was looking for a flat of her own that Jasmine had, on the sly, rented out a bedsit in the West End. And, of course, she simply had to call in to look it over, and ask Jasmine for advice on getting her own flat set up.’
‘Of course she did,’ Jenny acknowledged drolly.
‘And who should answer the bell but this big dark Adonis — the friend’s choice of word, that, not mine. Well, of course, the word got round.’
Jenny smiled wryly. ‘I bet it did! But surely, her husband . . . ?’ Tobias Lester suddenly became very reticent about ‘the husband.’ He shrugged, muttered something about a man’s married life being his own affair, and set about attacking his bacon.
Jenny promptly took the hint and left.
But afterwards, back in the galley, as she set about creating a mountain of toast and testing Mrs Jessop’s homemade marmalade (and adding just a touch of much-needed lime juice), she wondered why Tobias Lester would be willing to gossip about Jasmine Olney, but not about her husband.
And then she promptly reminded herself that it was none of her business, and began to industriously chop some spring onions.
This was, after all, her holiday too.
She had no idea then that in her other role as a reluctant but effective amateur detective, it was going to become something of a busman’s holiday before the weekend was over.
CHAPTER FOUR
Jenny heard the engines throb into life and quickly finished the washing up. She left the crockery to drain and wiped her soapy hands on a towel as she went. She left the galley, moving through the main salon, and then stepped out onto the starboard side deck. There she walked to the rails and watched in pleasurable satisfaction as the riverbank began to fall away.
There was nothing quite like that first moment when a boat left the dock, be it an ocean liner about to cross the mighty Atlantic, or a river boat about to cruise through the English countryside. There was always that little tingle of anticipation, that atavistic sense of more than mere physical movement. You were afloat, and who knew where the tides of fate might take you?
Slowly, virtually silently, and with a smoothness that rivalled silk, the Stillwater Swan took to the centre of the River Thames, her course heading due east, towards the dreaming spires of Oxford. And with the sun facing her bridge, both of the Swan’s side decks were darkened in a comfortable shade. As this fact had also been noted by others, Jenny could just faintly hear the guests on the port side, chattering in excitement.
The houses and cottages of Buscot were slowly left behind, and rows of weeping willows and ash began to crowd down to the banks. A pair of mute swans watched their namesake with unimpressed dark avian eyes and ruffled their feathers slightly.
Jenny pulled a wooden but comfortable and, more importantly, substantial deckchair nearer to the railings and sat down. A touch gingerly, she acknowledged it was true. In the past, she’d had some rather unfortunate dealings with deckchairs. It was a sad indictment of the new millennium, she’d always thought, that more than a decade into it, nobody had yet learned how to make proper garden furniture.
A pleasant, cooling breeze rippled across the water. At the side of the river, and well out of the main current, lime-green
river reeds swayed gently with the passing movement of the boat, whilst yellow-flowering native water irises grew in rich profusion in the margins at the banks. Water-crowfoot, rife with tiny white flowers, flowed past the boat just below the surface of the water, like the adorned hair of some fabulous water maiden. The turquoise and orange flash of a kingfisher darted into a bank, no doubt with an offering of food for hungry chicks.
Every now and then on the bank, tall amethyst plumes of a native wildflower Jenny couldn’t put a name to pointed proudly to the sky. And in the open meadows, cattle that had come down to drink shied nervously away from the large white boat with its turning wheels and strange, melodious whistle, watching it go past with brown velvet eyes.
In a world of traffic-jammed motorways, mobile phones, email, computers and stress, it was like taking a step back into the past. Jenny could have stayed there all morning. It was one of the very rare times when she could almost wish she didn’t have food to prepare.
Behind her, through the open French doors that led into the salon, she heard voices, however, and sighed deeply. She got reluctantly to her feet, giving the passing scenery a last wistful glance. They were, she knew, due to stop near the village of Kelmscott for lunch, which was not that many hours away.
Time to work.
Besides, Jenny had no wish to overhear anybody’s conversation. She still had vivid memories of a birthday party that she had been hired to cater, and the murder that had followed. The family concerned, as she recalled, had all had the unfortunate habit of talking about something confidential just when it was impossible not to overhear them!
So she coughed loudly as she stepped into the main salon to announce her presence, nodded pleasantly at David and Dorothy Leigh, who were the first to forsake the open air and were currently engaged in reading the morning papers, and returned to her galley.