Shades of Murder by Ann Granger

The young man turned to her, eyes shining. ‘I recognise him. I have an old photograph. It’s—’
    ‘William Oakley,’ said Damaris. She looked across the room at it. The sun had set almost completely and just a last ray of light touched the gilt frame with a pink finger. The frock-coated sitter stared out at them, handsome, unreliable, his dark gaze mocking, his red lips upturned in a half-smile without warmth. One hand was tucked inside his breast lapel in Napoleonic style, the other rested on a book.
    ‘My grandfather, but your great-grandfather. I remembered that portrait was stored somewhere about the house. I looked it out and dusted it off and put it in your room. I thought,’ Damaris added, ‘it seemed apt.’
    She left him to unpack and made her way downstairs to the kitchen. Florence was there, cutting thin slices of bread in preparation for their supper that evening which was to be Marmite sandwiches.
    ‘Everything all right?’ Florence asked, setting down the breadknife which was so old and much-used that its blade had worn to something resembling a rapier.
    ‘All right’ wasn’t the phrase, thought Damaris. Everything was all wrong. The Oakley bad luck working its baneful effects to the last.
    ‘I’ve told him he’s got to go to The Feathers if he wants any dinner.’ Damaris picked up the butterknife and prepared to set to work on the bread slices.
    ‘Perhaps he’ll get fed up and leave soon,’ said Florence optimistically. ‘He’ll be very bored. The food at The Feathers can’t be good for the digestion, it all seems to be fried. As for the turret room, it’s very cold even in the middle of summer.’
    ‘Let’s hope so,’ said Damaris grimly. ‘Or something will have to be done.’

Chapter Seven
    The case against William Price Oakley, accused of the murder of his wife, Cora, last year, opened today amid scenes of great excitement. The public benches were crowded, those hopeful of attending queuing outside since daybreak. The press box was also well filled, some of the gentlemen of that calling having travelled from London. One even represented the international news agency founded by Baron von Reuter and sat ready with pen and paper to set down the details and send them around the world. Such is the morbid interest aroused by murder trials in all parts of the globe
.
    Stanley Huxtable, a red-haired, stocky young man and the
Bamford Gazette’s
regular court reporter, was rather pleased with this piece of copy. Stanley sat through trials of all sorts on behalf of his employer. Usually it was smalltime stuff and the miscreant was up before the magistrates. Bamford wasn’t a hotbed of crime, not unless you counted petty theft and the usual drunk and disorderly on a pay-day. It wasn’t often he got anything as good as a murder and the chance to attend the assizes in Oxford in his professional capacity. A journalist could let himself go on a murder. To the citizens of Bamford, Oakley was a local boy. They wanted to know every detail and it was up to Stanley to supply it, hurrying back at the end of the day with material for the special late editions being put out to cover the trial.
    The nation shared their curiosity. You only had to look at this, admittedly rather small, press box, filled to overflowing with sweating hacks. Seated next to Stanley, the Reuter’s man was mopping his brow and the nape of his neck with a spotted handkerchief.
    Stanley settled his bowler hat on his knees and licked the tip of his pencil. When he’d been a cub reporter he’d been taught to write everything down. ‘You think you’ll remember, my boy, but believe me, you won’t!’ his mentor had intoned. So Stanley had already written,
Court very warm
.
    It was likely to get warmer. The room was not large. The press box was a narrow single bench shielded by a low wooden wall, fixed to the side of the room at right angles to the rest of the benches which ran across the room side to side. It faced the