John Eider - Not a Very Nice Woman

‘Hello, you must be the man in charge. I’m Derek Waldron, I’m on the first floor. So is it true, what’s being said, that Stella was killed?’

‘Hello. Inspector Rase.’ They shook. ‘It’s all far too early to say for certain. Now I must go and speak to my Sergeant.’

‘Oh, she’s in the dayroom where they’re taking the statements.’

‘You’ve given yours?’

‘Yes.’

‘First floor, you say? Was it you who saw the girl on the stairs?’

‘Yes, it was me. She was one of Stella’s students, though here far too late.’

‘How clearly did you see her?’

‘As clearly as I see you now — I was standing at my door, which is the one nearest the stairs on that floor.’

‘And you’ve put this in your statement?’

‘Yes… but there’s so much more that needs saying, isn’t there.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Who Stella was, what she was like. I don’t want that to be forgotten, for her to be just another listed crime.’

‘I can assure you that that won’t happen; and that Ms Dunbar’s background is precisely what I do need to know, and what I need to find your Duty Manager to ask her about.’

But again the man was ahead of him, ‘I really don’t know if now is the best time to be troubling her, Inspector.’ The man smiled in a way that didn’t seem inappropriate, ‘I don’t know what they saw up there this morning, she and Charlie, but I’ve never seen her so rattled. You know she and Stella were very close. She came back down just now after showing you up there and knocked a cup over, then ran to the kitchen with the pieces — I knew she was crying, and that’s quite unlike her.’

‘She seemed very together to me — I wouldn’t have let her take us back up there otherwise.’

‘And you don’t buy that, do you, in your job, every time someone tells you they’re fine?’

‘No, I don’t.’

‘It’s not your fault. Rachel’s a very competent woman doing a difficult job. We say goodbye to a friend a year here. The rest of us can step back, be sad in our own way; but she has to manage things, deal with the families.’

‘I understand.’

‘All I’m suggesting is that you let me tell you anything you need to know this minute, and spare poor Rachel the ordeal. I’ve been here as long as Stella had, and am an original member of the Trust; the only one surviving I’ve just realised.’

But the man’s sad reflection didn’t daunt him for long, ‘Believe me, Inspector, there really isn’t a thing about this place I couldn’t tell you as well as anyone. We can talk in here,’ he said, pointing to an open ground floor door.

Calling to a passing colleague that this was where he’d be if anyone needed him, Grey followed the man inside.

‘Come on in. Rachel won’t mind us using her office, I’m sure,’ said Derek Waldron leading the Inspector through into what the latter wondered wouldn’t be better described as her flat, the desk and filing cabinets taking up half of the equivalent space of Stella’s dining table. Grey could even see a basket of the poor woman’s washing,

‘This is one of the flats?’ asked Grey. ‘Rachel Sowton lives here?’

‘An on-site warden is a condition of the agreement formed by the Trust. The place really wouldn’t run without her.’

They sat down at the desk, which had spare chairs beside it. No sooner had they settled than Waldron lamented,

‘It’s really is the worst thing you know, that pair being the ones to find her; especially Charlie, he’s so sensitive. Is it harsh of me to say that it would have been better for Rachel to have walked in there alone? Of course I’d put myself in either’s place any day. The way poor Charlie’s been carrying on, it was all we could do to calm him. Rachel had it worst, having to get him out of that apartment and downstairs before she could call the ambulance. Was the scene really very awful?’

‘They’re always bad enough.’

‘Do you get used to it?’

‘Not the worst of it, no.’

‘What would Charlie have seen?’

Grey tried to balance his description between what he could say, what would be upsetting in itself, and what was prosaic enough to at least clear up the most lurid of Waldron’s imaginings of what the discoverers were faced with:

‘They would have seen her lying there on the rug as they came in. No blood though, no mess; and it doesn’t seem as though they’d spotted the bruising on her neck then either. They would only have known the fact of her being dead, the scene itself held no other horror.’

‘“The fact of her being dead”, as if that wasn’t enough.’

The two men sat in silence a moment, but Grey had to press on,

‘I really will need to speak to Mr Prove also.’

‘Your Constables are already doing that, as well as talking to the other people who live here. Please let me spare him a second interview with yourself as I am for Rachel; before you speak to both of them in much better circumstances anon.’

Grey nodded, ‘He’s seeing a doctor?’

‘Yes, he came this morning.’

Grey would speak to him too.

‘You don’t think that the girls could be involved?’ Waldron asked suddenly.

‘Girls plural?’

‘The one who was here last night and her friend. Stella teaches them both. They loved her, you could see that. They would never do anything to hurt her.’

‘Do you have their names?’

‘No, I only see them, not speak to them.’

‘Do they have regular appointments? Do you see them on certain days?’

‘It’s hard to remember specific days, and they often arrive together or meet here afterward.’

‘You see them then?’

‘I see everyone walking along the drive from my window, hear them if the window’s open.’

‘Anyone last night after around eight?’

‘Oh, I’m afraid I had my curtains closed by then.’

‘But you did see someone inside the building. So why were you out of your room at ten o’clock?

‘A carton of milk — I like to make a cup of tea first thing, but noticed I’d none in my own kitchen, so…’

‘…you borrowed one from downstairs?’

‘There’s no need to look at me like that, we all pay to be here, and not a small amount either — the kitchens are communal.’

‘And you saw no one else?’

‘On the stairs, or anywhere?’

‘Anywhere.’

‘No, I don’t think I did.’

Holmesian logic time: ‘So, would you see everyone who went up or down the stairs?’

‘No — I only happened to be at my door at that moment.’

‘So it wasn’t that the girl was the only one on the staircase that evening, she just happened to be the only one you saw.’

‘Yes.’

‘What about footsteps — would you hear anyone going up or down?’

‘In the background maybe, but not that I’d notice.’

‘Even at ten, or later? Would the residents have gone to bed by then?’

‘Most of them around then possibly; but there could be Rachel or one of the nurses checking up on one of them at any hour.’

‘When you saw the girl, did she see you?’

‘Yes, I surprised her by being there. I came out the door just as she appeared on the landing.’

‘Description?’

‘Long dark hair, very pale.’

‘How did she seem?’

‘Startled, and a little sad maybe. I thought it might have just been me surprising her, but before I could apologise she was carrying on her way down. I thought I’d check with Stella at breakfast that everything was okay. Perhaps I should have gone straight up? I might have helped…’

‘So were you part of this breakfast meeting with Charlie Prove?’

‘There might not have been a meeting as such, we would often just see each other if we were down for breakfast.’