Shades of Murder

  This book made available by the Internet Archive.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  There are many people I have to thank for their advice, help and encouragement during the writing of this book. So a big Thank-You to Professor Bernard Knight CBE, distinguished pathologist and fellow crimewriter. for his advice on the procedure regarding exhumations. To the Museum of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society for information on laudanum. To fellow crimewriter Dr Stella Shepherd and her husband John Martin, for their knowledge on matters medical generously-made available to me on this and other occasions. To the Oxford Coroner's Office. To the staff of the Centre for Oxfordshire Studies at the Westgate Library, Oxford. To David Dancer of Oxford County Hall who showed me round Oxford's 'old' court and its atmospheric subterranean tunnel. To my agent Carole Blake, my editor Marion Donaldson, my long-suffering family and friends and above all, my husband, John Hulme.

  A.G.

  The First Shade, Bamford 1889-90

  William Oakley, of Fourways House

  Cora, his wife

  Mrs Martha Button, housekeeper

  Watchett, gardener

  Daisy Joss, nursemaid

  Inspector Jonathan Wood, Bamford Police

  Emily, his daughter

  Sergeant Patterson, Bamford Police

  Stanley Huxtable, reporter on the Bamford Gazette

  Mr Taylor, prosecuting counsel at the trial of Wm Oakley

  Mr Green, defending counsel at the trial

  The Second Shade, Bamford 1999

  Damans Oakley ) grand . daughters of Wm 0a kley

  Florence Oakley }

  Jan Oakley, great-grandson of Wm Oakley

  Ron Gladstone, gardener

  Superintendent Alan Markby, Regional Serious Crimes Squad

  Inspector Dave Pearce, as above

  Meredith Mitchell, Foreign Office employee

  Dr Geoffrey Painter, poisons expert

  Pamela, his wife

  Juliet, his sister

  Reverend James Holland, Vicar of Bamford

  Superintendent Doug Minchin, Metropolitan Police

  Inspector Mickey Hayes, as above

  Dolores Forbes, landlady of The Feathers

  Kenny Joss, taxi-driver

  Dr Fuller, pathologist

  Harrington Winsley, Chief Constable

  Dudley Newman, builder

  SHADES OF MURDER

  paused as if expecting she would say something. When she didn't, he went on briskly. 'Well, there's a jug of water, a glass and a teaspoon. Do you want to take it now?' He stretched out his hand to the bottle.

  Cora rolled her head from side to side on the pillow in negation. She just wished he'd go away. She knew how to dose herself. The laudanum had been a friend for a long time now, one she could turn to in the depths of the black depression which haunted her. She would sleep undisturbed by the raging inflamed gum around the empty socket where the tooth had been. Yet even the prospect of sleep filled her with a prickle of apprehension. Recently, her sleep had been beset with nightmares. In despair, she asked herself if, awake or asleep, she was never to have peace?

  'Very well, then,' William said. He stooped and planted a passionless kiss on her damp forehead. 'Goodnight.'

  As he walked to the door, she found her voice and called, 'William!'

  He turned, his hand on the doorknob, his dark eyebrows raised. Even in her present distress, she thought how handsome he was. She understood bitterly how a feather-headed seventeen-year-old such as she had been when they'd met, could have fallen in love with him. Fallen so completely for a man who was completely rotten, through and through.

  She said, as clearly as she could through the swelling and pain, T intend to dismiss Daisy in the morning.'

  'Doesn't she care for the boy properly?' His voice was cold.

  'I don't like her attitude.'

  'In what way?' Even though he stood in the shadows, she could see the contempt on his face, hear it in his voice.

  He must think I'm stupid, she thought. But she was in too much pain to argue. Instead, she said, 'You have made me an object of pity and ridicule in the eyes of everyone who knows us.'

  'You're talking nonsense,' he said briefly. He opened the door.

  'It's too much,' Cora said, her tongue moving with difficulty in her mouth. 'Not again, William. I won't stand for it again.'

  He didn't answer and as he moved through the open door she called, 'There must be an end to it, William!'

  She had dared to use the word he couldn't abide. He swung back. 'Must?'

  Driven by her pain and despair, she retorted, T shall seek a separation.'

  She saw the corner of his mouth twitch, as if he was going to smile. But all he said was, 'Perhaps in the morning you'll make more sense.' And then he was gone.

  ANN GRANGER

  'Goodnight, then. Mr Watchett." said Martha Button.

  She closed the kitchen door on the gardener and locked it. For good measure she then shot the bolts top and bottom and having done this, checked the window. Having satisfied herself that none but the most determined intruder could get into the kitchen, she cast a look of satisfaction around the room.

  The kitchen range needed a good going over with blacklead but Lucy could do that in the morning. Keep the girl occupied. Mrs Button's eagle eye fell on the two glasses on the table and the sherry bottle. She put the bottle away in the cupboard and rinsed the sherry glasses, dried them and put them away. too. After a moment's hesitation, she gathered up the small plate on the table and rinsed that. All these things could also have been left for Lucy to do but there were some things, unlike the tiresome and messy job of blackleading the range, to which it was better not to draw a housemaid's attention. Not that Mrs Button and Mr Watchett weren't entitled to a glass of sherry and a gossip of an evening, but it was always important to keep the respect of one's underlings and not give them any cause to laugh at you behind your back.

  It was getting late. Watchett had stayed longer than usual. Mrs Button went out into the main hall. A single gasmantle still glimmered there, hissing softly, though the other downstairs rooms were in darkness. The atmosphere was heavy with unseen presences as a house is at night. The grandfather clock marked the time as almost eleven. She went to check that the bolts on the front door were in place. Of course. Mr Oakley checked the door last thing, but tonight her employer had seemed absent in his manner. He'd retired early, before ten. She'd heard him go upstairs. Well, as she'd said to Watchett, it wasn't surprising he'd got things on his mind.

  T could see it coming, Mr Watchett. As soon as that girl Daisy Joss set foot in this house. Far too pretty for her own good.'

  'Ah,' said Watchett. 'Never no good came from hiring any Joss.'

  'And poor Mrs Oakley in the state she's in from her tooth. Having it pulled out, I mean. I really don't know why she didn't go up to London to a dentist used to dealing with gentlefolk. As it is, she's been in a terrible state ever since that local fellow yanked it out.'

  'Doorknob and a piece of string,' said Watchett. 'Best way to get a tooth out.'

  'It couldn't have done more harm!' sniffed Mrs Button.

  The front door was bolted. She nodded and went to turn off the gasjet.

  SHADES OF MURDER

  In doing so, she caught sight of herself in the mirror and paused to pat her hair which was a curious mahogany colour. Then she made her way back to the kitchen and stepped through into the adjacent lobby from which the backstairs ran up to the upper floors. All alone as she was down here, she could've gone up the main staircase, but habit died hard. Backstairs were for servants, and though she was definitely an upper servant of the very best kind, she took herself to her bed by this route, through the darkened house, candlestick in hand.
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  Around her the house creaked and groaned in the falling temperature. On the first floor, the backstairs came out at the end of the corridor, right by the door to the turret room where Mrs Oakley slept. As Mrs Button turned to go up the next flight to the rooms under the eaves where she had both her own sleeping quarters and a little room designated her sitting room, she heard a sudden crash.

  It was followed immediately by a cry. A cry so strange, so unearthly, she couldn't believe it was human. If it came from anything in this world at all, it seemed a tortured squeal issued by some animal in agony. Her heart leapt painfully and with her free hand she sketched the sign of the cross. She was a cradle Catholic, though her observance of any religion had been noticeable by its absence for many years. Now, sensing she was to be tested in some way in which she couldn't cope without divine help, she sought the comforting token of her childhood faith.

  There was no doubt both sounds had come from behind Mrs Oakley's door. Fearfully, the housekeeper approached and after a moment's hesitation, tapped. 'Mrs Oakley, ma'am?'

  There was no reply and yet, her ear pressed to the door panel, she thought she heard movement, a rushing sound, a strange rasping breath. Then, quite clearly, a strangled gurgle and another squeal, cut off midway as if the air supply to it had been interrupted.

  Not knowing what she would see, and filled now with sheer panic, Mrs Button seized the knob and threw the door open.

  'Oh, my God, my God!' The housekeeper clasped her throat with her free hand.

  An infernal scene met her eyes, a medieval hell in which a figure lying on the carpet twisted and turned surrounded by flames and a dancing red and yellow light. The air was foul with a pungent stench, making Mrs Button retch and cough. It was compounded of burning wool, lamp oil, scorched flesh and an overpowering odour which struck her as familiar though for the moment, she didn't identify it. The bedside lamp lay in broken fragments on the blackened and smouldering carpet.

  ANN GRANGER

  Amongst the shards was something which struck her as odd but all this was noticed in the split second before her whole attention focused on it.

  The creature, that burning thing, jerked and twitched on the floor uttering sobbing breaths as if it would scream but could not. The housekeeper tremblingly set down her candlestick and took a step forward and then, seized with terror and revulsion, stepped back again. To her horrified gaze, the creature raised itself by some superhuman effort amid the bonfire and reached out one blackened, peeling talon in mute supplication. As it did so, its long hair caught the flame and burst into a dreadful halo. The creature squealed on a high, thin inhuman note which died away as if the lungs had been squeezed empty of air and then fell back.

  Mrs Button gasped, 'Mrs Oakley! Oh, Mrs Oakley!'

  SHADES OF MURDER

  recalled him with a shudder. He'd worn an earring and had a spider's web tattooed on his shaven skull. He'd addressed both her and her sister as 'darling'. Being his darling hadn't prevented him from disappearing from their garden and their lives without warning, but with what remained of the family silver, including matching frames containing the only photographs they'd had of their brother Arthur in his RAF uniform. One of the photographs had been taken on his last visit home, just before the fatal sortie on which his plane had plunged into the Kent countryside.

  Damaris had tried to explain what this had meant to the pretty young policewoman who'd come to take the details. 'We shouldn't have minded so much if he'd just taken the frames and left us the contents. After all, Arthur's picture couldn't possibly be of any interest to him, could it?'

  She'd then fallen silent, embarrassed at finding herself speaking in this way to a stranger.

  'Really rotten luck,' the policewoman had sympathised.

  Yes, thought Damaris. Really rotten luck. Just what the Oakleys had always had. Her parents had never recovered from the loss of Arthur. She, in the old-fashioned way, had stayed at home to care for them as they aged and grew infirm until they'd died, by which time she was no longer of any interest to anyone else.

  There had been a young man who'd wanted to marry Florence, but their parents had thought him unsuitable and in the end, Florence had bowed to their joint disapproval. The rejected young man had taken himself off to South Africa where he'd set up a winery in the Cape and done, they'd heard, rather well. Why didn't Florence fight for him? wondered Damaris. Why didn't she fight for herself? Easy to say now. So difficult to do then. Too late now, anyway.

  'All dead and gone,' murmured Damaris to herself.

  'What's that, Miss Oakley?' asked Ron, twitching his moustache.

  'I'm sorry, Mr Gladstone. I was drifting.'

  It was the vicar, James Holland, who'd suggested the present arrangement. At first, after their experience with the shaven-headed thief, it had appeared to be ideal. Ron had retired. He was living in a small neat flat with no garden. It left him nothing to do but walk down to the library every morning to read the newspapers and gardening magazines, and complain to the librarian about the noise made by visiting schoolchildren. The librarian then complained about him to Father Holland, who'd dropped in for a chat. That's when the vicar had his good idea and how Ron had finished up here, at Fourways, five days a week. On Saturdays he did his weekly shop and on Sundays he didn't

  ANN GRANGER

  work in the garden because it said in the Bible that you shouldn't, as he'd explained to Father Holland.

  'But you'd know about that. Vicar!'

  At first the arrangement had appeared ideal. The long grass was cut. the misshapen hedges trimmed. But gradually. Ron Gladstone began to get more grandiose ideas. The fact was, he'd begun to look upon the garden as 'his'. It was causing problems. They hadn't minded when he'd restored some of the overgrown flowerbeds near the house. The bright array of bedding plants had been cheerful. Doubt had set in when he'd cut the yew hedge along the drive to resemble castle battlements. Since then he'd had a host of other ideas, most of which the Oakleys found incomprehensible.

  T suspect, Mr Gladstone,' said Damaris, 'that you've been watching those gardening programmes on television again.'

  'Never miss!' said Ron proudly. 'Get a lot of good ideas from them.'

  T dare say, but that doesn't mean my sister and I want an alpine garden, or a bog garden, or a patio with bar - bar-bee - oh, whatever it is. And we don r want a water feature!'

  T was thinking,' Ron told her, just, she thought crossly, as if she hadn't said a word, 'I was thinking of a small pond. Of course, if you'd agree to a pipe running from the house, I could make a little fountain.' He looked hopeful.

  'We've got a fountain already,' she said promptly.

  'You mean that chipped old stone basin stuck in the middle of the front drive? It don't work,' said Mr Gladstone.

  'Does that natter?' asked Damaris. It hadn't worked, as far as she could remember, since she'd been a small child. The fat winged baby standing in the middle of the basin - no one knew whether he was a cherub or a Cupid who'd lost his bow - had long been covered in yellow and grey lichen which made him look as if he was suffering from some unpleasant skin disease.

  'How can it be a fountain without any water? I'll fix you up one which does work.'

  'We don't want a fountain, Mr Gladstone!' Damaris knew she sounded exasperated.

  Some of her exasperation percolated through to Ron. 'Just a small pond, then, without a fountain - not but what it seems a pity to me, to only do half the job.'

  Damaris was struck by a bright idea. 'We couldn't have a pond, Mr Gladstone. They encourage frogs.'

  SHADES OF MURDER

  'What's wrong with frogs?' He looked surprised. 'They eat insects. They clean up your garden.'

  'They croak,' said Damaris. 'They get under your feet and car wheels and get squashed. No pond, Mr Gladstone! Can we leave the subject for the moment? I wanted to have a word with you. You do know, don't you, that we're contemplating selling the house?'

  Ron looked glum. T did hear it.
What do you want to do that for?'

  'We can't manage it, it's as simple as that. Mrs Daley comes in and puts a duster round three times a week but she's getting on and her legs are bad. She would have to give up at Christmas, she's told us. So that rather settled matters. Florence and I mean to look for a convenient flat with a modern kitchen.'

  An image of the antiquated kitchen fixtures at Fourways swam before Damaris's inner eye, particularly the cold stone floor.

  'Proper central heating,' she added wistfully.

  Ron's moustache bristled. T have a flat!' he announced, as Martin Luther King once declared he had a dream. 'And very convenient I dare say it is. But it's - not - like - this!' He accompanied the last words by stabbing around him in various directions with the trowel he held.

  'No,' said Damaris in a bleak voice. 'No. We shall naturally be sorry to leave. This was our childhood home. All our memories ... But Florence and I have decided we're entitled to a little comfort at the end of our lives. And we mean to have it!' she concluded briskly.

  'Then my advice to you,' said Ron earnestly, 'is to let me put in a small ornamental pond. Just over there, by the magnolia tree.'

  This seemed such a complete non-sequitur that she could only gaze at him.

  'You've got to make a place look a bit special if you want to sell,' he explained, seeing her bewilderment. 'A garden with a nice little water feature, that could tip the balance. People often buy a house because they've fallen for the garden.'

  It was with great relief that Damaris saw her sister approach from the direction of the house.

  She abandoned the fray with, 'You'll have to excuse me, Mr Gladstone!' and hastened away to meet Florence.

  As she got closer, her feeling of relief faded. Florence's slight form, dressed in much the same sort of clothes as Damaris wore, looked as if a breath of wind would blow it away. She is younger than I am, thought Damaris, but she'll go first, I suppose, and I shall be left quite alone. We must get away from here. We mustn't spend another winter without proper