Brian Freemantle - A Mind to Kill

‘Didn’t you tell anyone at the time?’

‘Harry Elroyd. He said I couldn’t really know, which I suppose was right. I mean she never did it in front of me. Always in the bathroom attached to the bedroom. But she always said something when she went to do it. She had to do it twice a day, you see. Morning and night.’

‘Said something like what?’

‘“Pin-cushion time.” That’s what she called it.’

‘None of this was in your statement. I’ve read it.’

‘I wasn’t asked.’

And if you don’t ask you don’t get, thought Hall. ‘What about something else Mr Lomax said at the inquest, about Mrs Lomax’s drinking?’

‘I didn’t understand that, either,’ the elderly woman chirped at once.

‘Tell me why,’ encouraged Hall.

‘I’d never seen her drink, hardly at all. There used to be church council meetings at the house… did you know she was on the church council…?’

‘No.’

‘She was. And used to let there be meetings at the house midweek, on the nights Mr Lomax was in London…’ There was a pause. ‘… I thought sometimes she was lonely, in that big house all by herself.’

‘Tell me about the meetings.’

‘I was on the church council myself then. Mrs Lomax was very generous: they both were. She used to serve drinks, before the meeting started. All sorts of drinks, anything you wanted. She always had sherry, as if she was joining in, but usually I’d see she never finished it.’

‘Never finish one glass?’

The woman nodded. ‘I asked her about it. She said it wasn’t good for her to drink.’

‘You used to stay behind on church council nights?’

‘Always. George wasn’t so bad then.’

‘But on the other days what time would you come back here?’

‘Five usually. Certainly in the week when Mrs Lomax was by herself although I used to stay later when the mister was home and they had people in. I thought that was only fair for the way they let me go early other times, because of George.’

Hall patiently let her finish. ‘I don’t want to talk about the nights when people were in: not even when the church council met. After a night when Mrs Lomax had been by herself and you arrived the following morning, did you ever find empty wine bottles like the one Harry Elroyd discovered, after Mrs Lomax was found in a coma?’

She shook her head. ‘Not that I can recall.’ Her small, sharp-featured face creased into a frown. ‘Is there something wrong? About what happened, I mean?’

‘No,’ said Hall, quickly. ‘It’s just that everything is so unusual. It’s got to be gone into more thoroughly than usual. You understand that, of course?’

‘Of course,’ agreed the woman, invited into a confidence.

Hall looked around the polished-for-approval room in obvious admiration. ‘You’ve got a very nice house, Mrs Simpson. Perfectly kept.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

‘You kept Mrs Lomax’s house like this?’

‘Of course!’

‘What about Mrs Lomax?’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘As far as you were concerned she wasn’t careless about her medication. Did she rely upon you to keep her house like this…’ Hall swept his hand admiringly around the room. ‘Or was she messy?’

‘Never!’

‘How often did you arrive in the morning to find the remains of a dinner like the one described at the inquest?’

‘Never. Not even when there’d been a party. They always brought in caterers, so nothing was ever left. Sometimes things were put away wrongly in the kitchen. Mrs Lomax would tell me about it the following day. How she’d had to put it in the right place.’

‘In the right place,’ echoed Hall, letting his thoughts coalesce. ‘Did you come into the house on the Saturday, the day after the tragedy?’

‘Not the day after. The same day. Mr Lomax came to the house the night it happened. Asked me to come in to clear up. Actually drove me there in his car.’

Momentarily Hall closed his eyes in despair. Thar would have been what time.’

‘Just before seven. George and I were settling down to listen to The Archers on the radio. It hadn’t started.’

‘Four hours after he’d found Mrs Lomax unconscious and she’d been taken to hospital?’

‘I can’t tell you how shocked I was. It was terrible.’

‘The bed was soiled?’

‘Poor love.’

‘You changed it?’

‘Of course I did,’ said Elspeth, with a trace of indignation. ‘Mr Lomax didn’t intend to sleep there, of course. He slept in another room.’

‘What else had to be done, to Mrs Lomax’s bedroom, to tidy it up?’

‘There were things all over the cabinet. A syringe and ampoules. I knew what they were, of course.’

‘But you’d never seen them before, not scattered about like that?’

‘No.’

Another idea came abruptly to Hall. ‘Tell me about the bed itself. Was it a double, in which they slept together? Or two singles?’

The woman pursed her lips, as if she was reluctant to disclose an intimacy, which he was sure she’d never been. ‘Double.’

‘Which you made, every day?’

‘Yes.’

‘On what side did Mrs Lomax sleep, left or right?’

She frowned. ‘Left.’

‘So it would have been with her left hand that she reached out for anything on the bedside cabinet?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘What about the clothes Mrs Lomax had worn… it would have been the Thursday, the day you were there, wouldn’t it?’

‘A grey dress with a very faint yellow pattern,’ remembered the housekeeper. ‘Doesn’t sound like it but it was beautiful. It was hung up in the closet.’

‘She always hung her clothes up?’

‘I told you, she liked things neat and tidy almost as much as I do.’

‘What about underclothes?’

‘Where they always were, in the laundry basket in the bathroom.’

‘Put away?’

She frowned. ‘That’s what you do with dirty underclothes: put it away to be washed.’

‘Did you see much of Mr Lomax, when you were back at the house that night?’

‘He was lost. Devastated. He just wandered about, from room to room, not knowing what to do.’

‘How did you see a lot of him if he wandered about from room to room and you were working in two specific places: the bedroom and the kitchen?’

The question surprised the woman. ‘Because he was always where I was, I suppose. I hadn’t thought about it.’

‘How long were you back at the house?’

‘Not very long. There really wasn’t much to do but obviously he didn’t want to do it himself. No more than an hour, I suppose.’

‘Mr Lomax had taken you there. Did he drive you home?’

She shook her head. ‘He was too upset. He got a taxi for me. Fred Knowland. Works out of Alton. He was the man Mr Lomax always called: took people to the station at Winchester or Alton, things like that. All the way to London sometimes.’

Briefly, believing he could indulge himself, Hall tried to imagine what the carnation button-holed Superintendent John Bentley, the hitherto successful investigator of every murder, would have done now.

Elspeth, the gossip to whom any verbal silence was torture, said, ‘It was funny, about Fred.’

‘What was?’ said Hall.

‘He collects cars. Knows about them. He’s got an old open-topped bus he restored and hires out for weddings. It’s ever so popular. He saw the mister’s car, when he picked me up – it was one of those big American ones then – and said it was unusual for him to be home so much during the week and that he’d seen him arriving the previous night.’

Hall looked steadily at the woman. The previous night? You mean the Thursday?’

‘That’s what he said. He was working a contract, picking up someone from Winchester station, and he’d seen the mister’s car turning off the M3.’