John Eider - Not a Very Nice Woman

‘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 ague 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 entertainments 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?’