Mixing With Murder Page 8

  ‘Someone might turn up at the door while I’m out,’ I said. ‘He’s about twenty-two or -three, a sportsman of some sort, perhaps—’ Inspiration struck me. ‘Perhaps he rows; you know boats, oars and things. He’s got good muscles on the upper arms, fairish hair, and a short straight nose. He may ask questions. I don’t want him to know what I’m doing. He may even mention Mickey Allerton but you needn’t worry Mickey about him, he’s not a serious problem. I ought to tell you, just in case he shows up.’

  She was nodding. ‘I’ll keep an eye open. But don’t worry. I’m just the landlady. If he comes asking questions, I don’t know a thing.’

  I passed the open breakfast-room door on my way out. Mr Filigrew had finished his scrambled eggs and was buttering his last piece of toast with fastidious white fingers. He glanced up, aware of my presence in the hall, and looked down again without any sign of recognition.

  I set out briskly towards the centre of the city and, when I reached the spot on Magdalen Bridge where I’d paused the previous evening, I stopped again and inspected the punts from above while I decided what to do. The water lapped against the moored craft and they made dull clunking noises as the current caused them to drift together and bump. A couple of ducks swam past. It looked very peaceful down there. Beyond the mooring, the river banks were lined with trees and beyond them appeared to be a really big stretch of open ground, which was odd for such a central position in a city. Perhaps it was a park or land belonging to one of the colleges, I didn’t know, and this wasn’t the time to puzzle over it.

  I had a straight choice. I could go to the Stallard home, ring the bell and ask for Lisa. Or I could call her on Ganesh’s mobile first and ask her to meet me in town. By now, if she’d returned home last night, the chap who’d followed me would have contacted her and warned her I was here. I didn’t want to run into him again if it could be avoided and I didn’t want to involve Paul and Jennifer Stallard unnecessarily. All of this would make for complications. I decided to phone.

  A woman answered the telephone and I asked for Lisa. There was a pause and I held my breath. Had my unwished companion of yesterday evening warned the entire family? But the woman, whom I assumed to be Jennifer Stallard, was calling Lisa’s name.

  ‘Lisa! There’s someone on the phone for you.’

  The receiver clattered as it was put down on a shelf or other hard surface. More silence then the sound of someone running down a staircase. Voices murmured in the background. I couldn’t make out much but I heard Jennifer’s voice say, ‘No, it’s a woman.’ The receiver rattled again and a younger, suspicious female voice demanded, ‘Yes, who is this?’

  ‘Lisa?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, it’s me. Who are you?’ The voice rose with a nervous shake in it.

  I tried to sound reassuring. I hadn’t come here to put the frighteners on anyone. ‘My name is Fran Varady and I’d like to meet you to discuss—’

  Clunk! The receiver was slammed down so hard it was a wonder it hadn’t broken. My eardrum gave a sharp pain of protest. This was the reaction Mickey had anticipated if he’d tried to call her. I rang again, establishing that the phone at the other end was still in working order. The handset was lifted at once for a split second and then hung up. She’d guessed I’d try once more and I visualised her standing by the phone, hand outstretched, waiting to cut me off. Communication by phone was out. I would have to go back to the house and hope this time to find her at home.

  Well, I reflected as the bus rolled towards Summertown taking me with it, plan one had only been a gamble. Plan two, direct confrontation, was always going to have been the more likely one to pay off. It’s too easy to put the phone down, more difficult to slam a door in someone’s face. Not impossible, but more awkward. Someone passing by might see you do it. They remember and wonder about it. They discuss it with other neighbours. I was pretty certain Lisa wouldn’t want that.

  A snag was that now, thanks to my phone call, she would guess I was on my way and be waiting for me. Or not. She might have decided to go out for the day and avoid me. But that would leave me free to chat to her parents and I’d already decided she wouldn’t want me doing that. No, Lisa would be at home now, pacing up and down, getting up a good head of steam and ready to blast me away when I showed my nose.

  Knowing that I would probably have to call at the house I’d made an effort to dress respectably. I’d unpacked the blazer and hung it up in the bathroom that morning while I had my bath to encourage the creases to steam out. The day would probably turn out too warm for it but as yet it was still fairly early in the morning and the woollen cloth bearable although I had to push up the sleeves to three-quarter length.

  I wondered, as I walked down the road towards the house, whether I’d run into the Stallards’ self-appointed guardian again. But there was no sign of him. I took a good look at the upstairs window next door but no curtain moved. I heaved a sigh of relief. He could, of course, be inside the house with Lisa. She might have called up reinforcements in the shape of last night’s tail. It remained to be seen. If he was there, I’d have to get rid of him. There was no way I could talk to Lisa with constant interruption from him and I didn’t see why I should include him, anyway. I’d come on Mickey’s business and Mickey’s business didn’t include Lisa’s white knight. I rang the bell.

  The door flew open almost at once and she stood there, breathing fury. I knew it was Lisa because it would hardly have been anyone else glaring at me like that. She must have been keeping a watch and seen me approach. She hadn’t called up any help. She didn’t need any. She could handle me all by herself, she reckoned.

  Even though I’d been expecting to see her, it still came as a shock. She was nothing like her photograph. She had been a name until now, and a problem, but not a flesh-and-blood person. Without the rhinestones, the mauve eyeshadow, the cute little cowboy hat and curly hair, this appeared a different girl. She wore jeans and a loosely knitted white sweater with purple flowers embroidered on it. The sleeves of the sweater were too long and covered her hands to her knuckles, which made her look like a child who’d borrowed something of her mother’s to dress up in. She was quite tall, taller than me. I’m on the short side, as I think I mentioned. Her fair hair was long and only a little wavy. Mine’s reddish brown and very short. Her skin was good; late nights and stage make-up hadn’t yet ruined it. She had regular features, a rounded chin and widely spaced grey eyes. All of this I had to take in within a few seconds of her opening the door and only that short space of time was available to adjust my thinking and approach. She looked the perfect English Rose, a Nice Girl. A nice girl who was about to bop me on the nose.

  ‘Hi,’ I began a little nervously, ‘I’m—’

  ‘I know who you bloody are!’ she snapped. ‘You rang earlier.’

  ‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘And I’d really appreciate it if you’d let me explain before you slam the door or yell for someone else to come and chuck me out. I’m not here because I want to be, right? That doesn’t mean I can be sent packing. If you don’t speak to me now, I’ll try again. So help us both out and just listen, will you?’

  ‘Mickey sent you!’ She jutted her chin at me. ‘How did he know I was here? You can tell him from me to—’

  ‘You don’t have to spell it out. I feel the same way about him.’ It was my turn to interrupt.

  She hesitated. ‘So why are you here? I know you’ve been hanging about.’

  ‘Your friend told you, I suppose,’ I said. ‘The well-built fair-haired bloke who tracked me last night?’

  She shrugged. ‘You mean Ned. He told me about his conversation with you. I already knew about you because I was with Ned, in his flat next door, the upstairs flat, yesterday evening when you came here. You hung around on the other side of the road pretending to speak into a mobile.’

  ‘Oh, right,’ I said, feeling foolish. My little charade hadn’t fooled her. ‘I should have thought about that when he came after me. It didn’t occur to me you might
have been together.’

  ‘We were only talking!’ she snapped as if I’d suggested anything else. ‘Ned’s a very old friend and I told him all about—’

  She broke off and glanced furtively over her shoulder. ‘I told him how I came to leave London and that I didn’t want to go back.’ She had lowered her voice now. ‘It’s been difficult. I haven’t had anyone to talk to. I needed just to be able to tell someone.’

  I thought of Ganesh and the number of times I’d poured my problems into his sympathetic ear. ‘It’s all right, I understand,’ I assured her.

  She heaved a deep breath. ‘It scared me, seeing you out there, I don’t mind telling you. I just felt in my bones you must be from Mickey and I said as much to Ned. I really didn’t know Mickey knew where to find me. I remembered that perhaps I’d let slip once to him that I came from Oxford. But actually to have someone there, first across the road and then at the door, that’s something else. It gave me the creeps, like Mickey’s been watching me, ever since I left London. Ned told me to calm down, although he was pretty wild himself. He followed you when you left to see if you met anyone. We were afraid one of Mickey’s heavyweights might be hanging about at the end of the road. I didn’t know Ned meant to track you right across town, even getting on the bus with you. That was silly of him. You were bound to notice. But Ned wouldn’t think about that,’ she concluded fretfully.

  ‘Ned’s a complication I think neither of us need,’ I said bluntly. ‘Can we leave Ned out of things in future? I’m here alone. I haven’t brought any muscle from the club with me.’

  She bit her lower lip and stared at me. ‘I don’t think you and I need to have any future dealings. I don’t want to talk to you again. You denied knowing Mickey when Ned mentioned him to you, but Ned wasn’t fooled and neither was I. You had to be lying. You had to have come from him. You couldn’t have come from anyone else. Ned advised me to leave at once. But I couldn’t do that. I knew you’d try again. I shouldn’t have hung up on you when you phoned. I should have made an arrangement to meet you somewhere private. But I panicked when I heard your voice. I thought, stupidly, that if I refused to talk to you, you might go away. Of course you didn’t. I realised that when I calmed down. You would be on your way here. If I wasn’t here, you’d talk to my parents. I had to be here and head you off. Just go back and tell Mickey I’m through with the club and I don’t want to hear from him again, right?’

  She had run out of words at last and now stood, arms akimbo, flushed but with some of the panic she’d mentioned now visible along with the anger in her eyes.

  I tried again to sound non-threatening yet businesslike, despite my earlier lack of success. After all, this was just a scared kid. I knew she was my age but there’s a scared child hidden in all of us and it takes over when we least need it to. Lisa wanted to sound and be tough. Somehow it wasn’t quite working.

  ‘Believe me,’ I said, ‘I’d like nothing better but it’s not so simple.’

  ‘Ned said I should go to the police if you turned up again.’ She took one hand from her hip and began to twist her fingers in a lock of long fair hair.

  ‘And tell them what?’ I asked.

  Again she hesitated. ‘You were harassing me.’

  ‘I didn’t know you were with Ned when he saw me from the window next door. So I hadn’t even set eyes on you when I talked to him. I didn’t send you any message via him. I hadn’t then phoned. Where’s the harassment? Unless you count Ned tagging along with me all the way across town to the Iffley Road and insisting on finding out where I was staying!’

  ‘He was trying to help. Mickey’s harassing me.’ Obstinacy was now displacing any fear.

  ‘I’m not Mickey.’

  ‘You’re Mickey’s stooge!’ The anger was back, redoubled.

  The accusation hurt. ‘I am not Allerton’s stooge!’ I snapped back. ‘I don’t work for him, right? But he asked me to get you to agree to contact him and until I do, he’s keeping something of mine and I don’t get it back. I want it back. Understand?’

  ‘Sounds like Mickey,’ she said gloomily. Some of the aggression had faded. ‘He’d twist your arm and make out he was doing you a favour.’

  For a split second I thought I might be about to make a breakthrough and get her to talk to me, but as bad luck would have it a door at the far end of the hall opened and a woman appeared.

  ‘Lisa? Who is it?’

  ‘I’m a friend of Lisa’s from London, Mrs Stallard!’ I called out before Lisa could speak.

  Jennifer came towards us, smiling in welcome. ‘Then why hasn’t Lisa asked you in?’

  ‘It’s early . . .’ Lisa said lamely, glowering at me. ‘Anyway, Fran has to—’

  ‘No, I don’t,’ I interrupted brightly. ‘Not for ages.’

  ‘Oh, well, if you’ve got time, do come in. We were just about to have coffee.’ Jennifer smiled at me before she turned and trotted back down the hall.

  Lisa drew in a deep breath and stood aside for me to enter. The aggression was back, emanating from her in waves. As I walked past her into the house she muttered, ‘If you say one word to them about Mickey Allerton or the Silver Circle, one word, right? You’re dead! I mean D-E-A-D! Got that?’

  ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘I get it.’

  The small back room into which I was shown was on the dark side and stuffy. Sunlight bathed a garden and the conservatory which had been built on to the rear of the house. But neither the light nor fresh air permeated in here. In the conservatory a man in a wheelchair, Paul Stallard, was doing something with potted plants at a shelf constructed to be just the right height to enable him to carry out his indoor gardening. Jennifer was out there and telling him something, about my arrival I guessed. He stopped doing whatever it was, wiped his hands on a cloth, and turned his head to peer into the room. But because it was darker indoors than out there, he couldn’t make out much and he turned the wheelchair towards the open double door into the room. There was no threshold and he was able to propel himself inside unaided. Everything here had been arranged for his convenience.

  ‘Hello,’ he said. ‘You’re Lisa’s friend. How nice to meet you.’

  He held out his hand. I went to shake it. The skin felt papery and I could feel all the bones. I didn’t know how old he was; I guessed not very, not more than in his late forties, but his features bore the stamp of premature ageing, wrinkled skin and dark-circled eyes. His neck emerged scraggily from his pullover. He must once have been a tall man but now he’d shrunk into himself, a propped-up puppet, his useless legs skewed to an unnatural angle.

  ‘I’m Fran,’ I said.

  ‘I’ll go and get the coffee,’ Jennifer said brightly. ‘Make yourself at home, Fran.’

  I sat down in a sagging armchair. Lisa took a chair right opposite where she could see every move I made. She pressed her knees together and chewed at her right thumb, her eyes fixed on me.

  ‘Why don’t you go and help your mum, love?’ her father asked mildly. ‘Fran and I will be all right here for five minutes.’

  Reluctantly she got up and went out. As she passed me she met my gaze and in hers I saw not aggression now, but pleading. I smiled at her encouragingly.

  One of the reasons the room was so dark, apart from lacking direct outside light, was that it was lined with bookshelves packed tightly with every kind of book from paperback thrillers to solid-looking hardback books of natural history and theatrical biography. This is what Paul Stallard did when he wasn’t messing with the potted plants. He read, immersing himself in worlds he couldn’t visit.

  ‘It’s very nice for us to meet one of Lisa’s London friends,’ he said.

  ‘It’s nice to meet you both, too,’ I returned. I felt a heel. In this closed, claustrophobic world, the arrival of someone bringing news of an existence outside the house made this a red-letter day. The stuffy air held a papery smell like you get in libraries and in addition there was the odd background odour that you always get around illness.

>   ‘Did you come to Oxford especially to see Lisa?’ he was asking. ‘She didn’t mention it.’

  ‘She didn’t know I was coming. I’ve got an aunt here.’ I plunged into the story I’d made up during my cross-city bus journey, in case I was asked for an explanation of my presence in Oxford. ‘She runs a bed and breakfast place on the other side of Magdalen Bridge. I’m staying with her. I had an idea Lisa was home and I thought I’d just call on the off chance she’d be here.’

  ‘Are you a dancer, too?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m an actor. But right now I’m between parts. Resting, as the acting profession calls it.’

  He smiled. ‘Lisa’s resting, too. Not because she didn’t have work but because she was working so hard she got really tired and a doctor recommended her to take some time off. She’s always wanted to be a dancer, right from a tiny tot. Sadly she wasn’t good enough to make the Royal Ballet or any of the other ballet companies but she’s found good regular work in the chorus line, as you’ll know.’