An Invisible Murder (11 page)

But was she really happy here? Jenny wondered. Or was it all a sham, to help reassure her father that he was not a failure?

‘Yes, but I still don’t quite understand why Miss Bingham should think you might have a reason to come under suspicion,’ Jenny said, putting it as delicately as she could.

Opposite her, Gayle’s lips twisted. ‘Oh, but she was right,’ she said, her voice hardening. ‘You see, about three years after we’d sold the painting to Mr Simmons, we were passing his shop and saw our painting in the window. It had a sold sticker on it, and the price was still on the frame. It was, well, let’s just say it was for a whole lot more than he paid us for it. A whole lot more.’

Jenny could well imagine. She was beginning to build up a good, solid picture of Basil Simmons from various sources, and it was not pretty.

‘When I tackled him about it,’ Meecham said heavily, anger at last creeping into his voice, ‘he said that he’d
deliberately
held it back until people had started wanting Victoriana again. He said it went in waves. That art was like clothes – things came into fashion and went out. He said that now people wanted pretty paintings. And that the painting had turned out to be by quite a well-known artist after all.’

Meecham swallowed, his face becoming pinched with resentment. ‘I threatened to call in the police, but he just laughed. He said that I had agreed to sell it, and that was that. Said it was a case of seller beware.’

Meecham’s hands clenched into fists, turning his knuckles white. Wordlessly, Gayle reached across and the two held hands tightly. ‘I became really angry. I told him he couldn’t get away with cheating people. I said that I had a good case for fraud. But he just laughed, and asked me if I could afford a lawyer, and to be tied up in the court system for months. Then he said that everyone would think me a fool for being taken in and would laugh behind my back. And what would my employer think about that? And he was right, of course, on all counts. I couldn’t afford a court case, but he was doing well by then. His shop was making a lot of money. And no employer wants a butler who’s in the public eye. By our very nature, we have to be discreet. We have to be unobtrusive.’

Jenny nodded. And Meecham liked being unobtrusive, this she understood instinctively. Life had dealt him some very hard knocks, and he didn’t possess the kind of character to withstand them easily.

No wonder he clung on possessively to his life here in the castle. His lordship was a good and kind employer. His life was ordered, and he was well taken care of. He no longer had to worry about providing for his family, or that life was going to knock him down again. And then Ava Simmons had come to the castle, reminding him of the small fortune he had lost. Reminding him that, but for her father all but robbing him blind, he might still have owned his own farm – that his wife might have still been alive.

Jenny sighed heavily and glanced at Gayle. ‘Did Ava know? About her father and the painting, I mean?’

Gayle shook her head. ‘We don’t think so. I don’t think she could have spoken to us, acted like nothing was amiss, if she’d had any idea.’

Jenny nodded thoughtfully. ‘I can see why Miss Bingham knew you had no love for the Simmonses. I suppose she kept
track of Basil. That’s how she knew about it.’

Gayle nodded. ‘Not much gets past the old lady, or Elsie for that matter.’

No, Jenny thought. I don’t suppose it does. ‘But that only gives you a motive for killing Basil Simmons,’ she said bluntly. ‘Not for killing his daughter, surely?’

Meecham suddenly withdrew his hand from his
daughter
’s strong grip and stood up. ‘Of course not,’ he said stiffly. ‘Why, we had nothing against the girl. Did we, Gayle?’ he asked, and looked at his daughter for help.

Didn’t he always, Jenny thought, with a sudden mixture of anger and pity.

‘No,’ Gayle said staunchly. ‘Of course we had nothing against her.’

She’s lying, Jenny thought instantly. For Gayle’s eyes had dropped, unable to meet the cook’s own. And Meecham’s sudden show of bravado was as false as his words. They were hiding something. They had resented Ava Simmons. Bitterly. Even if she hadn’t been aware of it, she had grown up and flourished partly on the proceeds of the Meecham family painting. She had lived a good, easy life in her father’s house. A house paid for by Basil Simmond’s treachery. They must have resented her. They wouldn’t be human if they hadn’t.

But did they kill her?

Jenny sighed again and shook her head. ‘And to think, only yesterday I was mourning the fact that nobody had any motive for killing Ava.’ She spoke her thoughts out loud. ‘Now, everyone does. Roberta and Malcolm could have resented her meddling, although that’s a motive so weak I think we can discount it altogether. Elsie could have been jealous. And now you, too, have a good reason to want revenge.’ She shook her head. It was all too much. ‘Well, at least Janice is out of it all,’ she consoled herself, and saw
Meecham suddenly jerk, as if someone had just pulled an invisible string.

She glanced up quickly. ‘Isn’t she?’ she demanded sharply.

Meecham stared back at her, then jumped again, as Gayle said, equally sharply, ‘Father?’

Meecham collapsed back into his chair, unable to
withstand
the onslaught of two feminine demands. ‘I wasn’t going to say anything….’ he began, then sighed. ‘It may not mean….’ he trailed off, obviously battling with his conscience.

‘I think you’d better tell us,’ Jenny said gently, whilst wondering despairingly, now what?

Meecham nodded. ‘I suppose it’s for the best. That
afternoon
, when his lordship asked me to search the house, after we saw the dagger, I went to Ava’s room, like I said. But I didn’t just knock, I opened the door. And I saw…’

He paused, getting the memory straight in his mind. ‘There’s a mirror, facing the door, as you go in. And in it, I saw the reflection of myself holding the door open, and also someone hiding behind it. Hiding behind the door, I mean.’

‘Janice?’ Jenny asked glumly.

Meecham nodded. ‘Janice,’ he confirmed quietly.

J
enny reached for a jar of the old cook’s preserved pears and opened the lid. She sniffed, suspiciously. She supposed they would be all right. But she was now habitually wary of anybody else’s preserves ever since that very tragic incident involving a sultan and his pampered pedigree Persian cat.

She drained the large, juicy pears, silently congratulating the gardener on his skill, and washed and diced them. Next, she laid them out in a huge baking dish with some
greengages
and a good sprinkling of sultanas. Adding sugar and a dash of brandy, she put it to one side and set about making the short-crust pastry to go on top.

Although she worked methodically and, ultimately
deliciously
, she did so automatically. For her thoughts were very much elsewhere. On Meecham, to be exact, and what he had just told her.

Gayle had left to see to Lady Vee and Meecham, no doubt wanting to be alone with his thoughts, had skulked off
somewhere
, leaving her free to digest this latest revelation.

Would losing the family fortune, so to speak, drive him to kill a relatively innocent party? There was no reason to suspect that Ava Simmons even knew of her father’s perfidy, let alone condoned it. And she would have been a child herself at the time of the sale of the Meecham family painting.

No, it just didn’t ring true. Now if
Basil
Simmons had turned up stabbed to death by a dagger, then yes. But Ava?

Jenny rolled out the pastry with a marble rolling pin – she never used one of the wooden ones, pastry needed the cold strength of marble behind it – and sighed. And what was all this about Janice? She could think of no good reason why the parlour maid should have been lurking about in the governess’s room, unless on some errand of skull-duggery. Could Meecham have been lying? Trying to throw the
spotlight
onto somebody else? But Jenny really didn’t think so. He wasn’t that spiteful. She pulled the dish of fruit towards her without really seeing it and laid the pastry on top. Her fingers began to crimp the edges automatically.

She remembered now the way that Meecham had
stiffened
whenever Janice had said that she had not returned to the castle the afternoon of the murder. So she probably
had
gone to the governess’s room. But why? And had Ava Simmons been in her room at the time? Perhaps she had been killed in her room and then moved?

Jenny shook her head angrily. Now she really
was
giving in to flights of fancy. Had there been any sign of foul play in Ava Simmons’s room, Inspector Bishop would have been on to it like a bloodhound.

She looked down at her pie, admiring the dome-shape and crammed-full dimensions. She liked her fruit pies to be
fruit
pies. Not all air and pastry pies. But, as she stared down at the pleasing domed top of the pie and the anaemic-looking, uncooked pastry, a small frown furrowed her brow. For a second she couldn’t think what was wrong. But her brain was sending out urgent signals that
something
definitely was. Then it hit her. The pie was only supposed to rise like that
after
it had been cooked.

She spotted the pear-and plum filled bowl still sitting in
the centre of the table, and staring down in consternation at the pastry-covered dome, she sighed.

Carefully un-crimping the pastry from around the sides she lifted it off Henry who stared up at her, his small, bulging eyes twinkling. He’d managed to grab a piece of the pastry before it had all been lifted fully off him, and now proceeded to chew it with an expression of complete distaste on his reptilian face.

With a long-suffering sigh, the cook hoisted the
pastry-munching
tortoise off the table and onto the floor and watched it slowly head for a sunny corner. But she didn’t have any high hopes of it staying there. One day, she was sure, his lordship and Lady Vee were going to tuck into a dish and find a nicely baked Henry underneath.

And protesting her innocence wouldn’t…. Just then Janice returned, cleaning cloths in her hand, her face flushed with sweat and hard work. ‘That’s the hall floor done. Phew! It takes me and the dailies who come in hours to do it, but it looks so nice when it’s waxed and polished. Of course, the tourists will only dirty it again.’

‘Yes, I imagine so,’ Jenny said neutrally, washing her hands and then setting about making some fresh pastry. ‘Tea?’

‘Oh please. Everybody else is going through his or her movements on the day…you know…with that policeman. He’s cornered poor Lady Roberta and Malcolm. Next he’s got Meecham and Gayle lined up. He wants them to do exactly as they did on that afternoon. I don’t know what he thinks it’ll all prove,’ Janice continued chattily. ‘That sergeant of his is hanging around with a stopwatch, and scribbling away in that notebook of his. It fair gives me the creeps. ‘Course, Lady Roberta loves it. A bit of a lark for her, I suppose. No, that isn’t altogether fair,’ Janice corrected herself studiously. ‘She’s
dead determined to help the police catch whoever it was.’

‘Yes, Lady Roberta has a very keen sense of justice,’ Jenny agreed, pouring out some tea for the maid and looking for an opening. ‘Youngsters usually do. It’s only when they get older that they get more cynical. Teenagers just
feel
things more, I suppose.’ Which, Jenny thought grimly, was both a good and a bad thing.

‘Ah well. I suppose the police have to do their job. I’m just glad I’m well out of it, I can tell you,’ Janice said, sitting down and pushing her corn-coloured locks off her forehead in an unconsciously sexy gesture that would have had any man watching drooling in pleasure.

‘Yes. Well, I’m not quite sure that that’s the case, are you, Janice?’ Jenny said, ever-so-mildly. ‘I mean, Meecham did see you in Ava’s room shortly after he discovered her body.’

‘What?’ Janice gulped, her voice rising and choking, so that it came out in a strangled gurgle. Her face flushed red then paled into a colour resembling the discarded pastry on the table.

Which reminded her – she’d have to get a move on with making that fresh pastry, Jenny thought absently. Drat that tortoise.

‘He saw you, I’m afraid,’ Jenny carried on gently, never losing her train of thought even as she mixed flour and butter and sugar together. All the time, Janice continued to stare at her wordlessly.

‘I don’t know what you mean. Honestly, I don’t,’ she said eventually, totally unconvincingly. Jenny added cold water to her pastry and mixed and waited.

Janice stared petulantly at the new cook, and decided to get angry. ‘What business is it of yours, anyway? You’re always poking your nose in. Just because—’

‘Janice, I think you’d better calm down,’ Jenny said firmly,
overriding the other girl’s growing indignation. ‘If Meecham tells the police what he told me, they could be here at any time, demanding that you tell them what’s going on. And they won’t stand for any of this waffle,’ she warned grimly.

Janice’s pretty little chin began to wobble and her lovely blue eyes began to brim. Jenny sighed deeply. ‘Janice, why don’t you tell
me
what happened? Then it’ll be easier to face the police when they ask.’

‘But you’ll believe me,’ Janice wailed, illogically, ‘and they won’t.’

‘Why on earth not?’

‘Because they’re
men
!’ Janice spat out, her eyes flashing with electricity now.

Jenny, pastry made, sat down and leaned back in her chair. ‘Ah,’ she said flatly. ‘Danny.’

Janice flushed. Her lower lip pouted then wobbled, then firmed. ‘Oh all right,’ she sighed petulantly. ‘Like I said, I was supposed to meet him. I said he didn’t show up and I went into town shopping. Or did I say I went to the pictures?’ Jenny didn’t bother commenting. ‘Well, the truth is, he
did
meet me. He was waiting at the bottom of the hill, but he said it was the last time. He said he wanted a real woman. That was how he put it. As if I weren’t good enough for him!’

She broke off, her sneer not quite managing to keep up with her pain. She looked down at her hands, surprised to find them gripping her mug so tightly.

Jenny added another spoonful of sugar to it and stirred. ‘Drink it all up, there’s a good girl,’ she said solicitously, then carried on smoothly, ‘And what did you say to this nice little speech of his?’

Janice laughed, but it was a forlorn sound. She obediently drank some tea. ‘Well, I didn’t know what to say at first. He sort of…floored me, you know?’

Jenny didn’t, but nodded anyway. She herself would never let a man get into a position to ‘floor’ her.

‘So I asked him, why? You know, the way you do,’ Janice said earnestly. ‘And he said that he wasn’t a lad any more. He had his future to think about. He was in a dead end job, he said, and he wanted something more out of life. Well, I knew right away what he was getting at, didn’t I? So I said to him, “You just want to live off a well-to-do woman, you do”, and he got all angry. Well, then I got angry as well. I started teasing him, like.’

Janice paused to sniff, but as the cook made no accusing or encouraging noises, sniffed again and carried on. ‘I said I knew all about his little crush on Lady Roberta’s governess. I laughed and said that everyone knew, and was laughing at him behind his back. I said Ava didn’t even know he existed, and if she did, she would have been downright offended if he’d asked her out.’

Janice paused, and Jenny sighed. She had a strong
suspicion
that Janice’s narrative had been watered down a bit, no doubt in deference to her genteel ears. ‘I see,’ she said. And did. In short, they’d had a good old-fashioned barney.

If Danny really
had
thought he could make a play for Ava Simmons, what on
earth
had been going through his head? No doubt he had his greedy handsome little eyes on the Giselle Gallery. After all, Basil had only the one child to leave it to, and he must be getting on in years. No doubt Ava would have inherited it, had she lived. Which meant that Ava’s husband would have been set for life.

It wouldn’t occur to him that he knew nothing about art, let alone business. But then, he wouldn’t have needed to, Jenny corrected herself instantly. Ava had had enough brains for both of them. This, Danny had probably understood instinctively. But then, Jenny thought with a wry twist of her
lips, Ava would have had too much sense to ever fall for a man of Danny’s dubious charms.

She vividly recalled her first day at the castle, when Danny had offered Ava a ride on his motor bike. She’d been coolly amused and completely uninterested. And Danny, the foolish oaf, had chucked a perfectly nice girl like Janice in pursuit of a dream that would never, in a million years, have materialized.

‘Well, I suppose it was for the best that you saw him in his true colours before things went too far,’ Jenny said
prosaically
, and murmured consolingly when Janice burst into tears. The cook reached into her apron and produced a clean handkerchief, and let the wretched girl alone until she’d cried herself out. Then she made some fresh tea.

‘Now then. I think you should tell me why you were in Ava’s room, don’t you?’ she said firmly, squarely meeting the maid’s eye.

Janice nodded meekly. The tears had obviously wrung her out and she had no fight left in her. ‘I went to her room to hide my brooch in her things,’ she said flatly, not even
recognizing
the incongruity of her own words.

‘Your brooch?’ Jenny repeated, totally wrong-footed.

Janice nodded. ‘I wanted to get back at her, you see. For taking away my Danny.’

Jenny opened her mouth to tell the poor, silly girl that Ava had done no such thing, then promptly shut it again. ‘And you thought what, exactly?’ she prompted gently.

‘Well, I planned, the next day like, to say that I couldn’t find it. My brooch, that is. It’s the only good bit of jewellery I have.’

Jenny looked dubiously at the object in question. Janice was back to fingering it, which at least explained her
preoccupation
with it throughout the last few days. It was a simple,
silver ballerina, with sparkling rhinestones for the tutu. It was slightly garish but pretty enough. And, of course, Ava Simmons wouldn’t have been caught dead wearing it.

‘Er, yes,’ Jenny said. ‘Go on.’

‘Well, I meant to make a big fuss. Like Elsie did about that knitting needle of hers. Go on and on, like she does, whenever she loses something. Except, of course, my brooch wouldn’t turn up down the side of a cushion or anything, like Elsie’s knitting needle probably will. I was going to insist on searching everyone’s room for it. Not that I’d do it, of course. I’d start with Ava’s room, and there it would be. See?’

The cook did see. It was pathetic. Everyone would have seen through it in an instant.

‘And then they’d have given her the sack, right?’ Janice continued, her blue eyes watering again. ‘But I didn’t know she was dead, did I?’ she wailed, her voice rising to a forlorn shriek. ‘I didn’t know the poor g-girl was l-l-lying dead downst-st-stairs!’ she hiccupped, and set off on a fresh bout of weeping.

Jenny walked around to her and patted her shoulders awkwardly.

‘I’ve been feeling so guilty ever since,’ Janice sniffled, feverishly twiddling her brooch. ‘It was so aw-awful of me. Do you think Ava would forgive me? I mean, if there’s a heaven, or whatever?’

Jenny looked down at the wretched blue eyes and felt touched by their simple pleading. ‘Yes,’ she said firmly, and with infinite kindness. ‘I’m sure Ava has already forgiven you, Janice.’

And Janice, hearing the surety in the cook’s voice, believed her. Jenny Starling was the sort of woman you always believed meant what she said. But Janice carried on crying for a long, long time nevertheless.

Jenny slept badly. Her dreams were haunted by Janice’s guilt and the Meechams’ misery. She was chased through the night by the spectre of Ava Simmons, the beautiful Munjib dagger lodged in her heart, calling out for help. For justice. For revenge.

She awoke late, sweating and unhappy. She looked at her clock, saw it was past eight, and leapt up, washing and hastily dressing. She ran to the kitchen, expecting reproaches and angry sighs, but found instead Bishop, all on his own, cooking sausages. She looked around questioningly. ‘The others?’