John Eider - Not a Very Nice Woman

‘So you didn’t get a chance to talk to him?’

‘No; and going through these papers it doesn’t look like anyone else has either.’

‘So, he’s the last person in the place to give a statement. Interesting timings too, not crying till he saw you there, and saw were looking right at him.’

‘Yes, I wondered if he feared being interviewed.’

Grey wasn’t sure this was entirely what he was getting at, but then remembered the man’s history and felt bad,

‘Yes, you’re probably right. There are things I’ve learned about Charlie Prove today that I need to tell you now before I have a chance to write them up; most importantly, that he reportedly had a daughter who was killed, possibly on the Hills estates.’

‘Oh my. That might have been the last time he spoke to the police.’

‘It might have been the last time he found a body. A couple of other nuggets too: such as did you know that it was Stella who brought him to the Cedars, that she had known him in some capacity before he arrived here, and according to Derek Waldron, might even have been helping with his bills?’

‘And here I was doubting him,’ lamented Cori.

‘Oh, I think we have our doubts on all of them.’

‘I suppose it’s our job to doubt people.’

‘Quite right; and make no mistake, there’ll be one person we meet in the course of this for whom all doubts will prove right.’

‘You don’t thing the murder was in-house though?’

‘What do you think?’

After previous postings where she’d been little more than tea-maker and note-taker, it had taken some getting used to to have her senior officer ask, in all sincerity, what she thought about a case. She had made the decision before now that were she to achieve that rank herself (as she kept being told she would do) that she too would encourage her Constables and Sergeants in this manner. Yet on this occasion, she hadn’t much to offer,

‘Well, I think it’s too early to plum for one theory or the other, sir; but chancing my arm, we know that the schoolgirl didn’t kill her, so that leaves the killing earlier or later than ten; later if we go with the pathologist’s preliminary estimate.’

‘Well let’s hope so, as the other scenario leaves the girl running away after finding the body.’

‘Derek Waldron said she might have been upset when he saw her,’ remembered Cori from her own interview.

Grey considered, ‘But not hysterical, not screaming. She’d have gone and told someone. So if not ten, then what time?’ he asked rhetorically.

‘I’d say at least a half an hour later,’ said Cori leafing through the statements, ‘as ten was when half of these people went up…’

‘… and so no one could have gotten up and down those stairs at bed time without falling over residents and orderlies. No, no outsider could reasonably have done it at that time.’

‘So,’ she surmised, ‘the attack was either later, or committed by someone they’d have expected to see on the stairs at that busy time, popping in and out of rooms, only disappearing for a moment.’

‘I’d say that’s the nub of it. You know,’ he reflected, ‘Rachel Sowton has a theory of her own: that Stella’s routine should have seen her in bed by this time, and so if she was killed later then something had already happened to keep her up.’

‘To do with the schoolgirl? After all, she wasn’t meant to be there so late.’

‘Maybe, maybe. What do I know? We know nothing about the victim yet, and less about her friends. Where is that Holmesian logic when you need it?’

Cori started the engine.

‘And I’ll tell you another person we’ve seen today,’ continued Grey, ‘with the strength to hold a person still and throttle them.’

‘Not Ellie, the orderly?’

‘You said yourself, Cori, it’s our job to doubt people.’

‘But I spoke to her, sir; and had you had a chance to have done properly then you’d know she loves those people like a mother, she couldn’t do a thing to harm them.’

‘Fair enough. As you say, too early to plum for just one theory.’

Cori moved the car off along the empty afternoon roads.

‘These trees are wonderful, aren’t they?’ suggested Grey for not the first time that afternoon, as they moved along Cedars Avenue.

‘I don’t know why you don’t move in, sir. I’m sure they’d have you; and Stella was only in her forties when she came here.’

‘Well you can mock — you’ll have your kids to look after you. Who’ve I got? I’m sure I wouldn’t mind a woman like Rachel Sowton having my wellbeing in mind.’

‘You’re barking up the wrong tree there, sir,’ answered Cori; but Grey was too distracted to question her meaning, and she didn’t elaborate.

Arriving at their station squeezed around the rim of a gardened square between the library and the town’s civic buildings, they pulled in beside the squad cars and vans in the yard behind. Grey looked up at the window he knew his Superintendent could often be found peering out from, though he was not there that afternoon, gone home early to whatever it was he had asked Grey to interrupt him in with news that evening. With his Sergeant the Inspector went straight through to the main office, where their administrative support was already working through the materials sent through earlier.

‘Hello, sir,’ chirped Sarah Cobb. ‘We were expecting you back earlier, your drinks have gone cold.’

‘Lovely, thanks,’ said Cori through gulping lukewarm tea.

‘That poor old lady,’ continued Sarah.

‘Did you know her?’ asked her boss, suddenly concerned.

‘Oh no, but one of my Nan’s friends was there, it’s a lovely place.’

‘It is that,’ agreed Grey to a smile from Cori.

‘Have you found anything yet, sir?’

‘Not much, just a lot of character stuff. We’re relying on you.’

‘Okay, well I haven’t got the whole way back yet but I’ve found out a few little pieces: Stella Dunbar is on the electoral role and the tax system going back to the mid-Seventies, everything consistent with her being seventy-one years old and having paid her way for several decades. She’s not showing as ever being on our police records, even the digitised archives.’

‘Sounds a blameless life.’

‘Tracing forward from her Certificate In Education, I called the teaching unions, one of whom had her listed as a member working at the Tudor Oak Independent School from Seventy-four to Ninety-five.

‘That’s where Brough wants for Connor,’ started Cori. ‘Brooke too if her brother likes it.’

‘Best in the area, I hear,’ said Grey diplomatically.

‘I believe it’s quite expensive,’ was all Sarah added, knowing her boss shared her social outlook; but Grey was thinking,

‘The kind of place, do you reckon, that might award an employee an engraved silver watch?’

‘” For All The Help You’ve Given Us ”,’ recalled Cori.

‘Twenty-one years service might deserve it.’

‘Anyway,’ continued Sarah, ‘this also fits with the Tax Office, who record a change of status around that time to self-employed.’

‘When she became a private tutor,’ noted Cori.

‘And I found something else out there — I called the Property Registry…’

‘You’ve done so much!’

‘Not really, sir, I’ve had most of the day and it’s all very easy these nowadays. Anyway, she’s had two flats within the building.’

‘Yes, Derek Waldron told me she’d moved to the top floor for more privacy.’

‘Well, the Registry told me that she didn’t buy the first flat, but that it was willed to her.’

‘Who by?’

‘Another Dunbar, though they had no more than a name. However, the will was handled by a firm of solicitors in town: Rossiter’s — you pass the office in the High Street.’