So everyone calms down through me. Quiet, sensible Joyce. There is no more shouting and the problem is fixed, more often than not in a way that benefits me—something no one ever seems to notice.
So I am very happy to be overlooked, and always have been. And I do think perhaps that will be helpful in this investigation. Everyone can look at Elizabeth, and I’ll just get on with being me.
The Meadowcroft, by the way, is from my late husband, Gerry, and I have always liked it. I had many reasons to marry Gerry, and his surname was another to add to a long list. A friend of mine from nursing married a Bumstead. Barbara Bumstead. I think I might have found an excuse and called it off.
What a day. I think I’ll watch an oldCagney & Lacey, and then bed.
Whatever Elizabeth needs me to do next, I’ll be ready.
21.
It is another beautiful morning.
Bogdan Jankowski is sitting on a swing chair on Ian Ventham’s patio, taking some time to think things through.
Tony Curran has been murdered. Someone broke into his home and killed him. There are plenty of suspects, and Bogdan is going over a few of them in his head, thinking about reasons they might have for wanting Tony Curran dead.
Everyone seems shocked by Tony’s death, but nothing surprises Bogdan. People die all the time, of all sorts of things. His father had fallen from a dam near Krakow when Bogdan was a child. Or jumped, or was pushed; it didn’t matter. It didn’t change the fact that he had died. Something will always get you in the end.
Ian’s garden is not to Bogdan’s taste. The lawn, which stretches down to a line of trees in the far distance, is orderly and English and striped. Down toward the trees, off to the left, there is a pond. Ian Ventham calls it a lake, but Bogdan knows lakes. It has a small wooden bridge crossing its far end as it narrows. Children would love it, but Bogdan has never seen children in this garden.
Ian had bought a family of ducks, but foxes killed the ducks, and then a guy Bogdan knew from the pub had killed the foxes. Ian didn’t buy any more ducks after that, because what was the point? There will always be foxes. Sometimes wild ducks still visited. Good luck to them, was Bogdan’s view.
The swimming pool is directly on Bogdan’s right. You could take a few steps down from the patio and dive straight in.
Bogdan had tiled the swimming pool. Bogdan had painted the little bridge duck-egg blue, and Bogdan had laid the patio he was sitting on.
Ian had come good on his offer, and had asked him to oversee the building of the Woodlands. So Bogdan was taking over from Tony, which some people might now see as bad luck, a jinx, perhaps. But to Bogdan it was just something that was happening, and he would do it as well as he was able. Good money. The money doesn’t really interest Bogdan, but the challenge does. And he likes being around the village; he likes the people.
Bogdan had seen all the plans now, studied everything. They were complicated at first, but, once you’d seen the patterns, simple enough. He enjoyed working smaller jobs for Ian Ventham; he liked the order of it. But he understands that things change, and that he needs to step up.
Bogdan’s mother had died when he was nineteen. She had come into some money when Bogdan’s father had died—from somewhere; it hadn’t been a time for details. The money paid for Bogdan to take up a place at the technical university in Krakow to study engineering. And that’s where he had been when his mother suffered a stroke and collapsed at home. If he had still been at home, then he would have saved her, but he wasn’t, and so he didn’t.
Bogdan came home, buried his mother, and left for England the next day. Nearly twenty years later he is looking at a stupid lawn.
He is thinking that he will maybe close his eyes for a moment when, from the other side of the house, comes the deep sound of the front door chimes. A rare visitor to this big, quiet house, and the reason Ian has asked Bogdan to be here today.
Ian slides back the patio door of his study. “Bogdan. Door.”
“Yes, of course.” Bogdan gets to his feet. He goes in via the conservatory he designed, through the music room he’d soundproofed, and into the hallway he had once sanded in his underpants on the hottest day of the year.
Whatever you needed him to do.
Father Matthew Mackieis regretting asking his cabbie to drop him at the bottom of the drive. It had been quite the walk from the front gates to the frontdoor. He fans himself a little with his file, then, quickly using the camera on his phone to check that his dog collar is straight, rings the bell.
He is relieved to hear noises from within the house, because you never know, even when you’ve made arrangements. He was happy to meet here; it makes things easier all round.
He hears footsteps on a wooden floor, and the door is opened by a broad man with a shaved head. He wears a tight white T-shirt, and he has a cross tattooed on one forearm, with three names on the other.
“Father,” says the man. Good news, a Catholic. And judging by the accent, Polish.
“Dzien dobry,” says Father Mackie.
The man smiles back, “Dzien dobry, dzien dobry.”
“I have an appointment to see Mr. Ventham. Matthew Mackie.”
The man takes his hand and shakes it. “Bogdan Jankowski. Come in please, Father.”
