Murder Among Us Read online

  "How can you talk like that? How can you joke about

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  The cry came not from Laura but from behind her. Emma Danby burst into the kitchen with all the passionate fury of eleven years old. She was wearing muddy jodhpurs and a sweatshirt with a horse's head depicted on it. Her freckled face was red with emotion and the faint odour of horses which had entered with her suggested she had just come from her stint at the Alice Batt Rest Home. Both her parents stared at her in consternation.

  "We're not laughing about it, darling," said Laura hurriedly. "Dad and I know how you feel ../"

  "No, you don't! All you talk about is food!" Emma invested the word with a power of scorn which made her father wince. "That horrid man is closing down the rest home!" Tears began to flow copiously down Emma's cheeks. "All the animals will have to be put down because no one wants them! They're too old and ugly and can't work! You just wait till you're old and ugly and no one wants you and you can't work! I hate Eric Schuhmacher and the an person, all of them! I hope something dreadful happens on Saturday to spoil their whole rotten opening night! I hope someone drops dead and they blame it on the cooking!"

  Two

  "Can I have a word sir?"

  "Is it urgent?" Chief Inspector Alan Markby kept going towards the staircase to his office.

  Wpc Jones was tenacious. "Yes, sir, I think it is!"

  He halted. She was an officer for whose judgement he had a healthy respect. "Go on, then. Only make it snappy."

  "He's back," said Jones calmly. "That creep who was hanging round the schools last year, trying to pick up the children."

  "Oh, is he?" Markby said grimly. "Yes, quite right, Jones. It is important!"

  Perverts of all kinds appeared on charge sheets or were the subject of enquiry more or less every day of the week in most police stations. They ranged from the fantasisers, flashers and whisperers on the telephone— pathetic, inadequate or plain mentally ill—to hard-core vice circles of sickening depravity.

  Particularly dangerous were those who preyed on children. They were often present in an area for some time before anyone reported their activities. These were the ones who lurked around school gates and playing fields, watching for the child alone. Or who prowled the streets in cars, offering children lifts or even attempting to drag them into the vehicles, and they were every policeman's nightmare. Only too often, such things ended with a battered little corpse and a family devastated.

  The previous year worried parents had reported a man seen waiting near school entrances and watching children at play in parks. No sophisticate in a car, this one.

  He was on foot and had been described as scruffy, in his late forties with thinning hair, wearing a navy nylon bomber jacket with red and white stripes on the sleeve and jeans. Twice witnesses said he had an old haversack with him of the type bought in army surplus stores and the inference was that he was sleeping rough.

  Despite a diligent search following up all reported sightings, they had failed to find him. But they had, it seemed, frightened him off because he hadn't been seen for some time. They'd passed on his description to neighbouring police forces and assumed they'd seen the last of him. Apparently, not so.

  "The headmaster of King Charles the Martyr school phoned about it." Jones waved a notepad. "It's the same man, he thinks. He's still wearing that navy jacket with the stripes, although it's even dirtier. He's also got a flat cap now. He did speak to some children—the old tale about going to see some puppies, but a parent hove into view and he ran off. The parent, a Mrs. Mayhew, told a teacher at the school about it. Also ..."

  Jones turned over a sheet of her notebook. "One of the local farmers called in this morning and said he's found a rough shelter, a sort of hide, built on his land. Someone had been living there recently. He wouldn't have thought much of it—there are a lot of people wandering about the country sleeping rough. But a man came begging at the door and the farmer's wife, who saw him, didn't like the look of him at all. She fancied he was actually looking to see what he could pinch and when she appeared, he quickly pretended to be a beggar. The thing is, she described him as middle-aged and scruffy, unshaven, wearing a very dirty and greasy dark blue jacket with stripes on the sleeves. Sounds like the same man, sir."

  "Damn!" said Markby forcefully. "All right. All officers on the beat are to look out for him and to report anything which might seem relevant. You're in charge of co-ordinating all that, Jones. Tell Sergeant Harris I want an officer at the gates of all primary schools at

  going home time. And we'd better run that school exercise again, send someone round to talk to the children, warning them about strangers. Someone had better go out to that farm and take a look at this shelter or hide or whatever it is. Phone round the other farms and ask them to keep an eye open. And get on to divisional headquarters and ask them to check known sex offenders to see if anyone of that description has been active elsewhere in the area."

  "Hope we pick up the pervert this time!" muttered Jones. "Pity we couldn't have found him last time!"

  "So long as we get to him before there's trouble. On the other hand, we don't want him frightened off out of the district before we can nab him, like last time. This time I want him!"

  He sprinted up the stairs and burst into his office where he discovered Sergeant Pearce studying the football pages of the local paper.

  "Time on your hands?" Markby asked politely.

  Pearce jumped to his feet, hastily folding up the tabloid sheets. "No, sir... well, just at the minute it is a bit quiet."

  "Let's hope it remains so. I've just seen Jones downstairs and she tells me our child molester is back in the area! Too much to hope for a quiet weekend, I suppose!" Markby went to the window and peered out at the sky.

  "Doing a spot of gardening, sir?"

  "No, I'm going along to the opening of the Spring-wood Hall Hotel. Best bib and tucker job."

  "Wish I was," said Pearce wistfully.

  "Actually, that kind of thing isn't really my scene. However, I ran into Schuhmacher in town a week or two back. I had met him briefly years ago, but I assumed he would have forgotten me and I doubt I'd have bothered to remind him. But he greeted me like a long lost brother and pressed two invitations to his gala opening into my hand."

  "Two..." muttered Pearce.

  "One for me and one for the lady of my choice, Pearce. By no stretch of imagination does that qualify you."

  "No sir." Pearce grinned. "Is the Foreign Office lady, Miss. Mitchell, coming down from London for this shindig, then?"

  "Yes, she is."

  Truth to tell he was feeling a little guilty. He had not been entirely frank with Meredith over the phone. Inviting her down for the Springwood Hall gala opening had been easy. It was the other problem he had on his plate which wasn't easy to discuss on the phone, and he wanted to talk it over with her when she arrived. Not on Saturday, though. That would be eat, drink and be merry day at Eric's expense. No, on the Sunday, when things were quiet again, police business permitting, as always!

  Pearce, still continuing their conversation, now said, "I hear the old Hall's been changed beyond belief!"

  "Eric's had advice from that fellow Merle, the art historian. He had a TV series, Channel 4, if you saw it."

  "Don't watch Channel 4 much," Pearce confessed. "I remember how the Hall used to look. Like something out of the Hammer House of Horrors it always seemed to me. All those turrets and stone heads." He frowned. "There was something in the local rag about it, the alterations I mean. A local society kicking up a fuss ..."

  "The Society for the Preservation of Historic Bam-ford," Markby supplied.

  "Never thought of Bamford as being historic," Pearce observed.

  Well, it wasn't, Markby thought. Not in an obvious way. It wasn't on the tourist maps at least and for that he was thankful. But it had its old buildings and its High Street might qualify as quaint if one ignored modern shop fronts and fixed one's eyes on the upper storeys of its Queen Anne
buildings. He liked Bamford. That was why he'd steadfastly resisted all attempts to prise him away from it although by virtue of seniority he ought to

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  be stationed somewhere bigger and busier.

  Aye, there's the rub ... That's what he wanted to talk over with Meredith, anxious to hear what she had to say.

  Though what many people would call a career woman, Meredith still appreciated the important if little things which made up personal satisfaction in a job. She combined the rare double of being both sensible and sensitive, and she knew how he felt about Bamford. He wished she also felt that way about this quiet country town and would move back to live here. But he supposed there was no way of dislodging her from that flat in London. It was, after all, so much more convenient for her, going daily to Whitehall as she did.

  The pressure was on to move him from his familiar patch at Bamford and pitchfork him, suitably promoted, into some larger and busier theatre of operations and possibly, eventually, to glory at divisional headquarters. He had done too well: he was too senior. Upward and onward, was the cry: from others, not from him. He was resisting fiercely.

  It was all a deadly secret. As far as he could tell no hint of this possible cataclysmic change in his life had leaked out. There had been no knowing glances in Bamford station when he hove into view. Wpc Jones, indefatigable passer of the hat, was not, as far as he could tell, furtively organising any whipround for a goodbye presentation. Pearce, surreptitiously perusing his sports pages again, was looking deceptively innocent and slightly thick... which was a pity because Pearce was an exceptionally bright young man. The vacant expression which often glazed over the sergeant's face had its uses, however, and had in the past lulled unsuspecting villains into a fatal confidence. Pearce wanted promotion. Pearce no doubt one day soon would be given it. But he, Markby, just liked being what he was, Detective Chief Inspector and in charge of his own little subdivision in this old but unromantic country town. He didn't want a change. Not in that area of his life, anyway.

  The only change he really wanted to see concerned

  his relationship with Meredith and that, perversely, was not on the cards. Sod's law at work again.

  "I always thought," said Pearce, "that the old house looked downright creepy. The sort of place where if you opened a cupboard, a body might fall out."

  Markby turned from the window and fixed him with a steely eye. "Thank you, that's the last thing I want to happen, especially if I'm standing by dressed like a penguin with a glass in my hand."

  "Should be a bloomin' good bash!" said Pearce— who wasn't a reader of the society columns but recognised the signs of a good party about to start.

  "Yes, it should be an evening to remember."

  "Denis, darling?"

  The man hunched scowling at the word processor which had been absorbing his entire concentration looked up, blinked and seemed to locate and identify his wife after a perceptible delay. "Sorry, Leah, didn't hear you come in."

  "How are you getting on with the new toy?" Leah Fulton stooped to plant a light kiss on her husband's forehead.

  He put out a hand and patted her backside absent-mindedly. "Bloody thing keeps going down. I don't know what I'm doing wrong. I've read the handbook any number of times but it seems to have been written by one of these machines in the first place. You need the services of a MI5 cipher clerk to make head or tail of it. I read a paragraph of instruction and it sounds all right. Then I read it again and it seems to be complete mumbo-jumbo, utterly meaningless. I don't know why I bought this damn contraption. I was all right with the old sit-up-and-beg typewriter."

  "Your accountant advised it, sweetie. Wish I could help but I don't know a thing about it. You'll get used to it."

  "I doubt it!" Denis stood up, pushing back his chair. "I know every five-year-old child in the country can use

  a computer nowadays but I'm obviously too far over the hill to learn. I could use a drink. So could you, I dare say? Good lunch with Elizabeth?"

  He shot a sideways glance at his wife. She was looking relaxed and happy and fiddling about with the papers on his desk, setting them all straight. His habitual untidiness was anathema to her. Leah was an organised soul and not bad at organising other people. Why was she looking so damn pleased with life? Why not? Why was that little smile playing round her mouth? Was it a smile? Was he imagining it? But for God's sake, the poor woman could smile, couldn't she? What kind of a monster of a husband was he?

  He waited for her reply, forcing down the unworthy suspicions, trying to look unconcerned, hoping he'd sounded normal. Getting himself into his usual stewed-up mess, in other words.

  "The lunch was fine. Lizzie was—Lizzie. I'm devoted to her, naturally, but even when she was a little thing she wasn't the sort of daughter anyone could make a fuss of. Now I look at her and listen to her and think, is it possible she's only nineteen? She looks like a woman of thirty, talks like one of forty and frankly, frightens me. However, duty is done. We parted affectionately and with mutual relief. I don't have to get in touch with Lizzie nor she with me for at least another month."

  As she spoke she led the way out of his study and set off towards the drawing room. Denis, following, took a surreptitious glance in a mirror and straightened his tie. Leah, with every hair in place, was, as usual, immaculately groomed from tip to toe. Presumably the late Marcus Keller had liked it that way. From wherever Keller was now his shade probably watched balefully over his once wife and her new husband, waiting for the signs of disintegration in her well-being which must surely come about now he wasn't around to take care of her and it was left to a prize idiot like Denis.

  That Leah had married him when she could have had

  anyone remained one of life's insoluble mysteries not only to him, Denis, but to their entire joint acquaintance.

  Sometimes, about a dozen times a day in fact, Denis wondered why Leah had married him. It wasn't for money because she had plenty of that. Or rather she had a good part of Marcus Keller's. She certainly had more than he had, or ever would have. Being a food expert didn't pay the kind of money some people imagined and the late Mr. Keller still paid their household bills from the afterlife, as it were.

  It wasn't because Denis was young (he was fifty-two) or handsome (he was losing his hair and his chest seemed inexplicably to be located where his waist used to be) or indeed because he was particularly anything. He was of course modestly successful in his own way, which was writing about food and wine, and the TV series had made him a household name. But that wasn't the sort of professional line he would have expected to attract the widow of a multi-millionaire who had dominated the financial world in his lifetime and whose portrait graced the boardrooms of half the financial institutions in the city, as far as Denis could make out.

  They had reached the drawing room. It was Leah's house and all the beautiful furnishings had been chosen by her and paid for with Keller money. Everything was done in Leah's taste. She had a liking for pearl greys, misty blues and salmon pinks. Denis who liked stark contrasts, black and white, splashes of scarlet and tropical greens, found these dawn hues muffling and soporific. He couldn't tune in to them and frequently felt like a sort of lodger in superior digs. Even worse, among the mauve-pinks and gilded rococo furniture of their marital bedchamber he sometimes felt he'd strayed into some upmarket brothel he couldn't afford.

  Leah had sunk down in a chair and crossed her beautiful legs. She tossed back long shining chestnut hair and said mellifluously, "G and T for me, sweetie."

  Denis, the booze expert after all, always poured the drinks. He busied himself at the cabinet now and wished

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  he felt more like a man relaxing in his own home and less like a barman. It wasn't Leah's fault. It was a stupid neurosis of his own. Putting it bluntly, he couldn't manage to come to terms with his amazing good fortune in capturing Leah—and all the Keller millions with her. He kept thinking he'd wake up, and Leah, ever
ything, would be gone. Or that something would happen to destroy it all. And something might, yet... Or already had. God, he felt so guilty.

  "Denis? You've gone off into a brown study again!" Laughter gurgled attractively in his wife's voice.

  "Urn, sorry ... one drink coming up!"

  He crossed the room to hand it to her and went back to pour himself a scotch. When he was seated opposite her, nursing his tumbler and wishing he had a cigarette (he'd given up six months before on marrying Leah), she said:

  "Are you worried about anything, Denis? I mean, apart from the wretched word processor?"

  "No—do I look it?"

  "Frankly, yes. And you've taken to mumbling in your sleep."

  "Sorry..."

  "And you keep apologising to me, which makes me nervous!"

  "Sor—I mean, I hadn't realised I was doing it."

  "Is it the party on Saturday at Eric Schuhmacher's new place?"

  The scotch splashed out of Denis's tumbler and he dragged out his handkerchief and scrubbed at his knee where a damp patch stained it. "Lord, no, why should it be? I mean, it's straightforward. Eric wants me to give him a decent write-up and unless something really horrendous goes wrong, I shall." He fell silent, chewing his lip. Something really horrendous . . . For whom? For Eric?

  "Denis ..." Now Leah was beginning to sound less concerned than cross. *'Honestly, you're going to have to see a doctor."

  "Whaffor?" he demanded defiantly.

  "Because you're a nervous wreck!" Leah paused. "It isn't anything to do with me, is it?"

  "No!" he almost shouted.

  "I keep forgetting it's a first-time-round marriage for you. I'm sort of used to being married, first to Bernie, then Marcus and now to you. But to you, well, being married must be like having a permanent intruder in your life."

  "I'm very happy!" Denis leaned forward, clasping the tumbler tightly. "I swear, Leah. I was never so happy in my life."