Birthdays Can Be Murder (9 page)

When she looked back, the ballroom was empty. Jenny blinked and dragged in a breath. That was quick! The man must have moved like greased lightning. No doubt the gatecrasher, once caught, had thought better of it.

Jenny looked once more around the deserted ballroom, then stepped back and closed the doors. Then she glanced through the open dining-room door, watching the waiters and waitresses expertly ladling out the soup, Georges pouring from a great height with deft ease. She stayed only long enough to watch the first few diners take their first sip and make happy noises over its texture, taste and general excellence, and then turned back for the kitchen and sanctuary.

Martha looked up as she walked down the few steps and stopped in the middle of the now-deserted kitchen. The resident cook opened her mouth, no doubt to say something snide, but the look on Jenny’s face stopped her. Instead, she nodded to the oven. ‘Better check them lobster thingummies,’ she reminded, almost kindly, and Jenny nodded absently.

The cat, from the top shelf of the condiment cupboard, watched her take the lobster dishes from the oven and leave them to cool on the worktops. The cat licked his whiskers and waited.

‘Did anyone say anything?’ Martha asked, and Jenny absently shook her head. ‘Ah well. Perhaps it’s just as well.’

Jenny, even more absently, nodded. She saw again Justin’s cheeky wink over his shoulder. The strange look on Alicia’s face. She saw, in her mind’s eye, Tom Banks putting the paper knife in his pocket. And she recalled the stranger, asking if she’d ever been in the papers.

‘I just feel so damned unsettled,’ Jenny muttered out loud, more to explain her own behaviour to herself than anything else.

‘Don’t we all, love,’ Martha said with feeling. ‘This business with Jimmy Speight has left me feeling as if everything’s changed somehow. I dunno, it feels as if the whole house is different. I’m beginning to think it was a bad day when the Speights moved into Rousham Green. That I am.’

The cook frowned. ‘You mean they aren’t locals?’

Martha sniffed. ‘That they’re not. Moved down here from somewhere in the west about four years ago. Wouldn’t be surprised if they weren’t Welsh,’ she added gloomily.

Jenny frowned again. Four years ago. Now where had she heard that before? Somebody else had done something four years ago too. But she just couldn’t quite seem to remember – oh yes. Daphne had come to The Beeches four years ago too. Now that …

Her thoughts broke off as, out of the corner of one eye, she saw the cat bunch his muscles, ready to make his move on the lobster morsels. Just as he leapt, she deftly lifted the tray away and the stunned feline found himself landing on an empty worktop. There he stared at her with dumbfounded eyes.

‘You’ve got to be quicker than that, my good moggy,’ Jenny informed him gently, and actually gave him a chuck under the chin. But even as she stroked the astonished feline, Jenny had the uncanny feeling that someone out there in the house, somewhere, somehow, had been very much quicker off the mark than even Jenny Starling, supercook. And that before long, everyone was going to know about it.

J
ENNY WAS FEELING
pretty stupid. It was not a feeling she was accustomed to, and it was the only thing that had the tendency to make her gush. Mercifully aware of this foible, however, she now firmly clamped her lips together as Georges and his army departed with the final course.

It was nearly eight o’clock, and all was well. Nobody had complained about the meat being undercooked. Nobody had choked to death on her soup. Everyone had roundly admired her seafood dishes. Disaster had never seemed so far away.

So, she’d made a fool of herself for nothing. She’d just have to think of it as one of life’s painful little lessons and chalk it up to experience. Unless, of course, somebody keeled over during the dessert, while gasping out curses on the cook’s head.

But nobody did. Fifteen minutes later, Georges came back with empty plates and a beaming face. ‘Ees a triumph, Mademoiselle Starling. Never ’ave I heard the guests rave so about the food.’

Martha harrumphed loudly, and her cat yowled. Georges quickly stacked the dishes, noting with stunned surprise that the previous dirty plates were washed and dried and ready to be packed away. He glanced at Martha, who glowered at him, and slightly shook his head. No, definitely not that one. Then he turned to Jenny, and nodded. He’d been right the first time. A real professional. That momentary madness earlier must have been just nerves. And Georges could allow that. All great creative artistes were allowed nerves.

‘The coffee ees ready?’

‘Of course,’ Jenny said, and whipped out a plate of crackers, biscuits and wafers, freshly cooked and as crumbly as good soil after an experienced gardener had been around it. Georges let himself have a crafty sniff as he held a tray aloft. Bliss.

‘Well, that’s that then,’ Martha said gloomily. She’d been hoping the fancy cook would fall flat on her face all day.

‘’Fraid so,’ Jenny acknowledged, almost sympathizing with her.

‘Mr Greer would like the staff to put in a brief appearance at the table,’ Chase announced from the top of the three steps that led down into the kitchen, stiff-backed and so dignified he almost crackled. Martha got to her feet quickly. ‘I’m all for that, Mr Chase,’ she said, determined that no one must forget that the resident cook had played her part (even if she hadn’t) and that she hadn’t taken offence at being so rudely usurped by a stranger in her kitchen (even if she had).

Jenny followed them out.

The dining room was replete with satisfied diners. At the head of the table, Mark Greer rose formally and tapped his spoon against his glass. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I’d like to thank you all for coming’ – there were muted sounds and rumbles of acknowledgement – ‘and trust that you’ve all had a good time. I’d like to thank our caterer, Miss Jenny Starling, for producing such a truly wonderful and memorable meal.’ He paused and raised his glass to her, and Jenny beamed as everyone looked her way and applauded. ‘I’d also like to thank our own resident cook, Martha, and all the catering staff, who served us so well. The staff.’

Mark and the guests raised their glasses in a toast, then Chase led them all out again, probably miffed at not having been given a mention. Jenny caught Tom Banks staring at her, and she met his eyes briefly. He looked away first. Out in the hall once more, she could hear the band revving up in the garden, and the sound of a hundred voices raised in conversation. Large Chinese lanterns were now being lit out in the gardens, and would look lovely once true darkness had fallen.

Again, she felt stupid. Everything was going swimmingly. There was not a hitch in sight.

Vera was sitting in the corner chair, dozing. The last of the dishes were stacked away, and a waiter came in to collect more champagne and the special vintage for the toast to the birthday boy and girl. It was nearly midnight.

Jenny watched Martha tuck into a piece of lemon tart that Chase had brought down from the buffet tables, and smiled.

She glanced once more at the clock ticking away on the wall, and thought of tomorrow, when she would be off. There was a hotel in Taunton that she knew would always welcome her with open arms. There was, if it came to it, a hotel in practically every county in England that would take her on, on the spot, should she show up on their doorstep. Or she could go north – Edinburgh was nice, this time of the year.

The kitchen door burst open so quickly that it slammed against the wall and ricocheted back. Vera leapt out of her chair, and Martha’s last few bites of tart shot out of her spoon. The door, being pushed open for the second time, revealed only Chase.

But a vastly different Chase from the one Jenny knew. His eyes were huge, like those of an owl, and all colour had fled from his face. His lips moved, but no sound came out, and he staggered down the steps as if he were drunk.

‘Whatever is it?’ Martha cried. If Chase were in such a state then the world must be coming to an end, at the very least, she was clearly thinking. Jenny’s heart also pounded. Once again that feeling of disaster pounced on her, chilling her blood and mocking her previous relaxation.

‘They’re dead,’ Chase finally managed to croak.

‘What?’ Martha gasped. Her trembling lips made her next words almost inaudible. She looked ashen. ‘Who’s dead?’

‘The twins! Justin and Alicia,’ Chase said wretchedly. ‘They’re dead.’

Jenny groped her way to the kitchen chair and sat down heavily. In front of her was a half-empty bottle of champagne that Martha had opened and guzzled, glaring at the upstart cook as she’d done so, and daring her to object. Jenny, of course, hadn’t. Now she reached for an empty glass and poured herself a good dollop. If ever she’d needed a drink, now was it.

Jenny took a hefty gulp.

‘They’re saying it was the champagne,’ Chase carried on, totally stripped of all his authority and suddenly appearing heartrenderingly human. ‘They say it was poisoned. At least, that’s what young Dr Bannister thinks.’

Jenny promptly sprayed the contents of her mouth towards the sink. Some of it actually reached. The cat, getting some of the fallout, flattened himself against the tiles and growled.

All three heads turned her way, their eyes straying to the champagne she was holding. Jenny hastily put the glass down and pushed the chair away from the table, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand and staring at the bottle of finest Moët and Chandon as if it was a spitting cobra, getting ready to strike. For a second or two nobody spoke. Then Martha began to sob. The sight of the usually stalwart cook, so overwrought, was too much for Vera, who began to shake and tremble like a leaf in a hurricane.

Chase merely stood there, looking blankly at the wall.

Jenny slowly rose, and found somebody had transplanted her kneecaps with jelly. She nevertheless managed to walk to the steps, and emerged into a hall that was eerily silent. The doors to the ballroom stood open, and from the study she could hear somebody calling for an ambulance. As she crossed the floor, the phone was put down and picked up again, and the same voice, young, harried but admirably firm, called for the police.

Jenny pushed open the doors, which were already ajar, and looked around her. It was an eerie, almost unbelievable scene. A hundred people stood about in total silence. Some were clinging to the walls, some of the women were weeping. Men looked at each other, and around, then down at their feet. The atmosphere was leaden. In bizarre contrast, gaily coloured balloons swayed from the ceiling, and party streamers, all the bright colours of the rainbow, festooned the walls, draped over the tables and lay on the floor.

The only signs of movement came from one corner where a small semicircle of stout-hearted or ghoulish souls had gathered.

Jenny found herself walking towards them, compelled by some force she couldn’t have named if offered a million pounds. People parted easily to let her pass. Being so tall, Jenny could clearly see between the shoulders of two male guests the sight that had changed the ballroom from one of gaiety to tragedy.

Mark and Sherri Greer stood to one side, their hands clinging tightly together as they stared, white-faced and too shocked to weep, at the sight of their children, lying stricken on the floor.

Justin lay on his back, his eyes wide open and staring at nothing. His hands were clenched into fists, but whether it was pain, rage or fear that had clenched them in those final moments of life, Jenny would never know. His legs were bent, his head thrown right back. His mouth was open, and just a trace of saliva gleamed on his chin. He’d obviously had some kind of convulsion before dying.

It seemed to Jenny, still reeling under the influence of shock, that it was a very inappropriate way for someone of Justin’s elegance and beauty to die, and she felt a sudden and overwhelmingly fierce rush of rage wash over her.

She remembered him alive, winking cheekily at her over his shoulder as he led his just-jilted ladyfriend away, and she too wanted to weep. Instead she took a deep breath and straightened her back, then lifted her eyes from the dead man and searched out Babs Walker in the crowd.

She was standing not far away, clinging to a broad shoulder and staring at her dead lover with apparently genuine horror. Not grief. But then, Jenny wouldn’t have expected that. Her eyes moved to the man she was leaning against. It was, of course, Arbie, who had wasted no time in becoming a pillar of support.

But just how quickly, Jenny wondered, had he seized the advantage? Had he given even a single thought to anyone but himself, or Babs Walker? He was not even looking at Justin, Jenny noticed with bitter eyes, but was instead staring down at the blonde head leaning against his upper arm.

He looked very, very happy.

A small sound had Jenny’s head swivelling around. Alicia Greer was lying on the floor not a foot away from her twin, but she was being cradled in Keith Harding’s arms. He held on to her fiercely, only moving at all when another young man, kneeling in front of them, checked Alicia’s small white neck.

It seemed a bizarre thing to do, until Jenny’s dazed mind finally began to work at something like its proper level. The stranger was obviously the doctor that Chase had mentioned, and he was checking her pulse. Which meant that Alicia Greer, at least, was not dead. Not yet.

But as Jenny looked at her deathly pale face, she thought she had never seen anyone more close to it. She could only barely make out the very slightest rise and fall of Alicia’s slender breasts as she breathed, as shallowly as a robin. Her long, white, lovely limbs also had a bent, thrashed look, but her convulsions were now obviously over. Her delicate eyelids looked blue, and her painted lips hung obscenely open. She was a pathetic sight.

Jenny raised her eyes to Keith Harding, and took an involuntary step back. He looked ferocious. Stricken. And vastly terrified. In fact, she’d never seen a stronger, wider range of overpowering emotions on any one human face before. Tears streamed from his eyes unnoticed, for he did not heave with sobs, or gulp, or in any other way express his grief. Instead he stared down at Alicia’s head, his hands shaking as they held on to her.

Keith looked across at the doctor, his eyes pleading. ‘Don’t let her die.’ His voice was choked, but urgent, and several of the people around them looked away, unable to bear such raw emotion.

‘An ambulance is on the way,’ the doctor said reassuringly. ‘It will have a stomach pump. We have to hope …’ His voice trailed off, and Jenny understood. Alicia looked so beyond hope it was pitiful.

Keith bent over his love, and let his tears fall on her unknowing head. ‘Don’t leave me,’ he whispered, so quietly that only the doctor, Jenny and probably Sherri and Mark Greer were close enough to hear him.

Keith hadn’t, as far as Jenny knew, even looked in Justin’s direction either. Nobody, it seemed, was looking at Justin. With the exception of herself and his parents, did anybody even care that he was gone? Aware that such thoughts could only lead her to hysteria, she shook her head, clearing it and getting a strong grip on herself. She turned away, quite deliberately, and met only blank, disbelieving faces.

Except for the man stood by the mantelpiece.

Jenny recognized him immediately. The gatecrasher. So he hadn’t left after all. He was smoking, and his face was merely thoughtful. It came as such a shock to see that level of indifference amongst so much shock and bewilderment, that Jenny actually shivered. The gatecrasher met her gaze, hesitated, as if unwilling to acknowledge her, then smiled, as if recognizing the inevitable. His eyes narrowed on her, sensing trouble.

Jenny looked away. Later, she thought grimly. Later.

Unable to stop, and feeling like a magnet drawn by some macabre force, she found herself once more looking down at Justin Greer. The rage was still there, deep in her soul, but she was channelling it now. Nobody deserved to die like this. In convulsions, in pain and fear, at their own birthday party, and seeping out their life in front of hundreds of gaping people.

Whoever had done it would not get away with it.

A nagging feeling of something being missing had been teasing her subconscious ever since she’d entered the room, and suddenly she knew what it was. Jenny looked around but, as expected, she could not see the face she was seeking.

Where was Tom Banks?

Jenny’s lips thinned. She would be glad when the police arrived. This was all getting too much – way too much. Turning back for the final time, needing to get back to her kitchen, wanting with a longing that was almost physical to return to her normal, safe world, she glanced once more at Justin and Alicia Greer, and shook her head.

It was just as she started to turn away that she noticed that Keith Harding was staring now into the crowd, and the look on his face was so strange, so enigmatic, that it stopped her dead. Tracing the path of his eyes, feeling almost afraid to see, but knowing that she must, she realized that Keith Harding was staring at his wife.

Margie.

Jenny had almost forgotten about Margie. Now, as she too looked at the frizzy-haired blonde woman, she saw that Margie Harding was stood statue-still, her eyes wide and dark with a strangely triumphant expression. She looked neat and efficient in her forged waitress’s uniform. To complete the picture, she was still holding her tray, professionally steady and at the recommended waist level.