Not a Very Nice Woman Read online

‘So you came in to her room…’

  ‘And there she was before us, on the Chinese mat, just as you saw her.’

  Taking the air in fact involved a walk to the shops, the Duty Manager having identified an item missing from the kitchen’s stores,

  ‘Some of the oldest residents are of a generation where fresh oranges are still a treat – can you believe that? If I’m honest I’m just glad to get away from that place for a while. Will we need to hurry back?’

  Grey wasn’t sure they did, provided she kept answering his questions.

  ‘And then?’

  ‘And then I called you, or rather the emergency services.’

  ‘And nothing else? No reaction?’

  ‘From me?’

  ‘Why not.’

  She smiled a weary smile, ‘I expect I’ve found half of those who’ve died there since taking on this job.’

  ‘And what of Ms Dunbar’s friend, this Mr Prove?’

  ‘Charlie is a very sensitive man, Inspector. I left him in the dayroom with the others, being comforted by friends.’

  ‘So, he did respond?’

  ‘Really quite dramatically, yes.’

  ‘But not yourself?’

  ‘I’ve told you, this is part of my role.’

  ‘What, finding bodies? Even we’re not used to that.’

  ‘You grow necessarily hard to it. People come to the Cedars for comfort and safety when they may be old and frail and nearing their end. You see a person every day full of life and light, but know that they could go at any time, and that it may be you to find them.’

  ‘And finding Ms Dunbar was no different?’

  The Duty Manager paused on the pavement, ‘Stella Dunbar was as fine a woman, as fine a person as I have known. I doubt if there’s another left in the world I trust as much as I did her. Now if you have any more-practical questions..?’

  Practical was good, practical was exactly what he needed. As they got going again, he asked,

  ‘So have you already contacted next of kin? You know we’ll need to talk to them.’

  ‘I would have done that as soon as I’d called you, but in this case it hasn’t been so easy.’

  ‘Go on.’

  Fears of a stonewalling similar to Derek Waldron’s on the issue were unfounded, as she offered copious information albeit none of it what he needed,

  ‘Of course we keep a register of next of kin, updated twice a year, given the situation with some residents’ frailty as I’ve described; but Stella always left her space blank.’

  ‘So she had no family?’

  ‘It wasn’t even just that… it was as if in leaving the space empty she was denying even the question of family, not even admitting if she did or didn’t have any. She was telling us we had no right to ask.’

  ‘Do many others choose to do this?’

  ‘Asking them to fill in the register isn’t an act of choice more than one of compulsion, an unwritten rule of their agreement.’

  ‘So what of Mrs Cuthbert? You had trouble contacting her relatives.’

  ‘Ah, now she did had a relative in the register, only one who couldn’t be bothered to ever reply to the letters we sent them.’

  ‘They might have moved away?’

  ‘The might have, or might not have.’

  ‘You don’t seem shocked.’

  ‘The Trust have paid for funerals before.’

  ‘So Ms Dunbar was unique in this not answering?’

  ‘Yes and no: obviously some don’t have family, have no name to put down if they wanted to, but then that is an act of sadness which I note and then don’t ask of again.’

  ‘But when Ms Dunbar didn’t fill the register in, it wasn’t this same sadness you felt?’

  ‘No, more a seriousness, a considered refusal to answer; which if it was simply that she had no relations, then why not say?’

  ‘So, residents without relations, what happens to their flats after..?’

  ‘We have the residents make wills with Mrs Rossiter, or at least inform her where theirs are lodged if they have their own solicitor.’

  ‘So you have somewhere to send the proceeds of the Cuthbert flat?’

  ‘Yes. I wonder if her relatives will respond more positively to a cheque?’

  Grey smiled at this, while again impressed at how tightly the Trust had these matters tied up; but he hadn’t time to linger on the thought as, unlike with Derek Waldron, Rachel Sowton’s answers were coming thick and fast,

  ‘Stella always said to me at register time, “Rachel, if you love me do this for me and let me leave it blank – If I fall ill I’ll settle my own medical bills, if I die then sell my flat and put the money to the extensions.”’

  ‘Extensions?’

  ‘We had plans to expand, to build four new flats where those old garages are – no one uses them hardly now – and then there’s the age-old issue of fitting a lift, though it’s so difficult in an old building like this… Anyway, I think these promises for the future were Stella’s way of making up for, well, of course you wouldn’t know…’

  ‘For not letting new residents into Mrs Cuthbert’s rooms next door to her?’

  ‘Derek’s told you about that then? Yes, it was as though she was saying, My caprices may cost you money now, but you’ll make a killing out of me once I’m dead. Oh my, what have I just said.’

  ‘Don’t worry, it’s the questions I’m asking, don’t feel bad.’

  He didn’t tell her she had just given him his first motive for the murder. But as they were on the subject,

  ‘I’m sorry to ask, but someone needs to answer this: can you think of anyone who’d want to harm Stella, even argue with her; anyone she’d fallen out with, perhaps another resident?’

  The questions felt absurd even as he asked it and she had no clear answer. By now they had reached the shops in the High Street, and he waited for her outside the grocers. When she returned he tried safer ground,

  ‘Got everything you wanted?’

  ‘Could you hold these?’

  He took the small bag of fruit to leave her hands free to light another cigarette from a fresh pack.

  ‘Thanks. I can’t even smoke in my room now, you know. It drives me potty.’

  Although the kind of woman Grey guessed it would be hard to do anything chivalrous for, she didn’t think to ask for the grocery bag back and nor did he offer it, glad to do even the smallest thing for her at such a trying time,

  ‘If you don’t mind a couple more questions…’

  ‘Fire away.’

  ‘These might seem odd in the circumstances, but you knew her routine and so might be the one to answer them: what time would she close the curtains, put her pyjamas on?’

  ‘No, Inspector, those are excellent questions, the very best kind. I’ve been thinking exactly the same thing myself; only the answers don’t add up. I don’t want to go back yet – sit with me?’

  Just before they reached the Cedars was a bench that looked across to the trees that gave the building its name. Placed there with the oranges between them, she continued,

  ‘Tell me, Inspector: I wish I’d thought to look at the time, but was her bed disturbed? Had she been in it yet that evening?’

  ‘Undisturbed,’ he recalled Cori saying.

  ‘Then we’re looking at a very narrow window, but at the wrong time.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Stella was one of those for whom late nights weren’t a pleasure but a chore – after a certain time she would only start worrying about how tired she’d be the next morning, and she loved her mornings.’

  ‘So…’

  ‘So, there was no downstairs entertainment on that evening as there would be at weekends – we bring in singers and such, the residents love it – nor did she come down to watch any television with the others, despite there being a documentary on that I’d thought would be right up her street. Indeed, I believe my sighting of her coming back from her walk at eight is still the last time anyone saw
her that night.’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘So, I know from times I’ve called on her by evening, that if she knew she was staying in and wasn’t expecting any visitors then you could find her relaxing in her nightclothes at any time after her walk.’

  ‘So she could have been dressed like that from eight?’

  ‘Yes; and with it being a dull night, most likely closed the curtains at the same time. But…’ and an air or expectation hung over the pause, ‘…on such a lazy evening she wouldn’t be in bed any later than half-nine.’

  ‘She’d go to sleep so early?’

  ‘Maybe not to sleep, but by that time she’d be reading in bed or listening to the radio there.’

  ‘So to be caught dressed like that, but with her bed still undisturbed…’

  ‘What time to you think… it occurred?’

  ‘The doctor can’t say for certain yet.’

  ‘But you’re thinking later rather than earlier?’

  Grey nodded, wondered momentarily who was running this investigation; as she continued:

  ‘In which case, why had Stella gone up to spend the evening in her room, put on her pyjamas to relax, but then not gone to bed? What was keeping her up till, well, who knows how late? And that’s not all.’

  Grey hoped this wasn’t going to get complicated.

  ‘Now the documentary almost everyone was watching downstairs finished at ten, and so for the next while the place would have been alive with people going up to bed, and with the orderlies checking on people after that. That would push us toward eleven o’clock before anyone could have hoped to have gotten up and down those stairs without being seen.’

  There was another option, which Grey resisted offering but knew he had to,

  ‘Forgive me, but you’re assuming the person on the stairs was someone a person wouldn’t expect to see there…’

  ‘One of us? Do such a thing? Unthinkable.’ Rachel bridled on the bench, Grey fearing she was about to get up and end their talk.

  ‘Is it so unthinkable?’ He trod gently, ‘She appears to have let them in… you saw for yourself that her door and windows had not been damaged the night before…’

  She answered calmly, ‘Inspector, you want me to countenance the possibility that one of our residents or staff, one of my friends, performed this act? Accept that community spirit has broken down to that degree even in such a building as ours? And you think that that’s a world I can bear to imagine living in?’

  She summarised, ‘Now, something had kept Stella in her room last night, had kept her up later than usual; someone – even if someone she knew ­– got into her room and out again without being seen at the busiest time of the night, as I cannot believe she wouldn’t have at least been in bed by the time the building would have quietened down. Something earlier that evening – possibly involving her student who Derek saw on the stairs a little before – must have already disturbed her enough to keep her up at least a good hour later than she would have expected. And that’s what we need you to find out, Inspector; and I can’t help you.’

  ‘Why?’ he asked; to her bewilderment,

  ‘Because I wasn’t there.’

  Once again it was brought home to Grey how out of the loop he was with this case, when he hadn’t even seen people’s statements of where they were the previous night.

  ‘You’ve told all this to one of the officers in the dayroom?’

  ‘Some of it.’

  ‘So tell me too.’

  ‘I get three evenings off a week – the orderlies are there, and I keep my mobile on.’

  The spare nature of that answer left Grey awash with new questions for her; but he also knew he had much to get back to the Cedars to sort out,

  ‘Ms Sowton, I need to ask one last big question: you say she wouldn’t have changed into her nightclothes had she been expecting visitors…’

  ‘Ah, but you’re wondering if there aren’t certain visitors for whom it’s a positive advantage to have changed into your nightclothes for?’

  Her candour relieved the tension from the question.

  ‘It’s good of you to grant our residents the possibility of a sex life, Inspector. So few do, especially the families. The old are as entitled to romance as anyone else in the world – in my time we’ve had four marriages and who knows how many affairs.’

  ‘And Ms Dunbar?’

  ‘Stella was not one of them.’

  ‘Never?’

  She paused before answering, ‘I’m not going to claim to be the one who knew her best, though I’ve as good a claim as any for the years I’ve worked here; but we’re in and out of their rooms every day, and so there’s no way that if something was going on that we wouldn’t know about it.’

  ‘So, to the best of your knowledge…’

  ‘To the best of my knowledge. Now, before they start to miss me…’

  The pair rose for the short walk back, Grey looking to the trees,

  ‘I can see why she’d want to be up early, waking to a view like that.’

  ‘She was early to bed and early to rise, always down for breakfast by eight.’

  ‘Hence Mr Prove’s concern at her tardiness?’

  ‘Yes. She hadn’t had a job to get up for for years, but had never got into the habit of lying in. Some people can’t, even when they’ve earned the right. She always called morning the best part of the day, when the light was brightest and her mind the clearest and she could get the most done. She did like a nap in the afternoons though, before her students came.’

  ‘So what did she spend her mornings doing?’

  ‘I’m not sure; she would be in her room though mostly – reading, writing perhaps? Preparing for lessons, maybe just thinking. Some of our residents can spend a happy half-day in their heads, you know, Inspector: they think about their children when they were young, the jobs they had, family holidays; like in that poem.’

  ‘The Old Fools.’

  ‘Yes, although I wouldn’t go with the title. They have their breakfast, lodge themselves in a wicker chair in the dayroom, and then they’re off to Weston forty years ago.’

  ‘Was Stella… I mean Ms Dunbar…’

  ‘It’s okay,’ she smiled, ‘I heard Charlie ask you to call her by her first name. I agree, you need to be her friend, you need to earn her trust.’

  ‘I’ll try and remember,’ he smiled. ‘So, you were saying?’

  ‘Of course. Well, Stella wasn’t a dreamer in the absent-minded sense, she was still too keen-witted for that; but I bet she had a lot of history to dip into when she wanted to… if she wanted to.’

  They had reached the front of the Cedars, Rachel Sowton looking up to the top floor and saying,

  ‘That was her window. In the summer she’ll… she’d keep her curtains open all evening watching it go dark.’

  ‘You get to know a lot about your residents?’

  ‘More than some of my lovers. But then who ever really knows anyone when they love them?’

  ‘And what did you know of Stella?’

  She looked back down to the Inspector, ‘Even those who knew her didn’t know her. There are decades unaccounted for. Come on.’

  She led him along the service road to the doors at the back at the building.

  ‘You know, I don’t know who’ll run this place now,’ she smiled, already able to remember her dead friend.

  ‘She sounds a natural leader.’

  ‘Perhaps, though not in a heavy-handed way, more as a guiding light. She’d let you know when things displeased her. God, I’ll miss her.’

  ‘She leaves an impression.’

  ‘She leaves a mystery, Inspector. Now you’re her last best friend, you find it out.’

  ‘You’ve been very honest.’

  ‘So have you.’

  And with that she entered her rooms, not to be followed.

  Chapter 5 – Charlie Prove