G Malliet - Death of a Cozy Writer

“You wouldn’t know where Agnes ended up, would you?”

“Good heavens, Chief Inspector. I mean really. Agnes was the cook .”

“Let me get this clear. You were there at the time of the Winthrop murder. You weren’t a suspect?”

“We were all suspects. But I had an alibi.”

“Which was?”

“I was busy bringing Ruthven into the world.”

This time at least, when he left her, she was smiling.

THE TRIP TO ST. Ives took nearly all day, Great Western Trains not having yet come around to a view of Cornwall as a place people might want to reach in a hurry. St. Just’s dog-legged journey deposited him at the far edge of England just around teatime, and he had still to find the Methodist Ladies’ Retirement Centre where Sergeant Fear had assured him he would find Agnes Baker, née Agnes Burns.

Locating her had not, Fear had assured him, repeatedly, been an easy task.

“She’s nearly ninety, Sir, and there was no guarantee she’d be alive. But what turned out to be the real problem was the fact she’s been married five times and changed her last name each time.”

“Five? And lived to tell the tale?”

“Apparently. All five of them died, her husbands-natural causes, although by all accounts living with Agnes might have been what you’d call a contributing factor. Anyway, she’s now Mrs. Peter Baker, widow, retired at long last to one of those ‘extended-living’ facilities or whatever they call them now. A home for wrinklies.”

“‘Assisted living’ is, I believe, the accepted euphemism, Sergeant. Well, have you been able to reach her by telephone?”

Fear shook his head.

“‘Deaf as a post’ is the matron’s diagnosis.”

“I think she’s important in terms of sorting out how Violet fits into all of this. Someone needs to go and see her. At least I know the way to St. Ives by heart, and who knows? The sea air might blow the cobwebs out. We seem no closer to nailing this one shut than we were at the beginning. There’s something we’re missing, and it’s right under our noses, too.”

So on the Thursday he set out, clutching his ancient Gladstone bag, lightly packed for overnight, and armed for the journey with one of Sir Adrian’s best sellers. He found he enjoyed it, far more than he would have expected. The whole, despite the litter of bodies at the end, recalled a gentler England-one which no doubt had never been, but which one wanted to believe had existed.

The train carried him across desolate gray moors, austere as a monastery in winter. The traveler’s rewards for patience, however, were the panoramic coastal vistas of the shore at journey’s end and the quaint old harbor town itself with its maze of narrow cobbled streets. The cliffs created a natural balcony overlooking the huddle of brightly painted fishing boats in the harbor.

St. Just wanted to linger, but instead, finding a taxi at the station, he was carried up and up one of the cobbled streets to the top of one of the promontories overlooking the town. On the way, they passed the old parish church with its tall tower; the well-worn nativity scene near the entrance looked nearly as old as the church itself. Only Joseph and one of the sheep looked newer than the rest; it was likely they were replacement parts taken from another ensemble. In keeping with tradition, the crèche was empty-the plaster infant Jesus wouldn’t make his appearance until Christmas Day.

The driver dropped him off near the top of the hill, pointing out one of the narrow, curving lanes that led even farther up from the harbor.

“As far as I can go, mate,” he told St. Just. “You’ll have to walk the last few yards. They won’t let us drive up the service road at back, it’s for the ambulances. And the hearses, here and there.”

St. Just approached the building with no small trepidation. He had had a particular abhorrence for such places ever since he had spent every weekend for four months trying to find a suitable accommodation for his mother several years before, determined to meet her expressed wish “to die by the sea.” She had in fact succumbed in a small, quiet, and fastidiously run establishment operated by Anglican nuns, not far from St. Ives. Still, he never could set foot in the door of any of these “assisted living” places without breathing a fervent prayer that he would die quickly, in his home, in his sleep.

He had taken enormous satisfaction, however, in getting one of these operations shut down by the local authorities; he periodically checked to make sure its former owner was still in his cage and likely to remain there.

This place was better than most, he could see right away. Quite pricey, too, from the look of things, although the decoration leaned heavily toward sentimental scenes from the Bible featuring a patient Christ dividing loaves, roughing up the money changers, or delivering the Sermon on the Mount. The place was spotless, with fresh flowers dotted about the hallway tables. Agnes must have done well for herself out of at least one of her husbands.

The woman who bustled up to him wore not the starched nurse uniform and cap of old, but a brightly colored smock over white nylon trousers, the smock covered with what looked to be bright yellow ducks roving happily in a field of red tulips at sunset. It would have been suitable garb for a preschool setting.

Catching his look, the nurse, who had introduced herself as Mrs. Mott, laughed.

“We try to do away with any reminders that they are effectively in a hospital and not, frankly, likely ever to leave under their own steam. Something cheerful to look at, that’s the ticket. I don’t much mind looking a bloody fool, although I do get some stares when I have to stop in the Sainsbury’s on my way home. Right! Now, you’re here to see Agnes. I’ve told her to expect a visitor, but I didn’t go into the details. Thought I might leave all that to you. You’ll find her on the tennis courts.”

At his look of surprise, she laughed.

“I should say, near the tennis courts. This used to be a school, you see. We still allow people from the village to use the courts. She likes to watch the players. Colin, I believe his name is, is her favorite. You’ll see. She’s quite deaf, you know, and will only wear her hearing aid when men aren’t around-terribly vain, but sweet, she is. So I warn you, you’ll need to shout.”

He found her in a wheelchair, knitting, her gnarled hands trembling slightly as she painstakingly worked the needles. Age spots had nearly turned the pale skin of her hands a uniform brown. She appeared to be working on one of those pointless decorative items people used, presumably, to keep their boxes of facial tissue warm. Her eyes never dropped to her knitting, which no doubt explained the gaping holes in the colorful green and red object emerging from the needles. She greeted him with a brief smile, revealing that she had kept many of her teeth, before again fastening her gaze on the two handsome tennis players visible over the hedge that divided the nursing home from the courts.

“Isn’t the blonde one a sight fer tired eyes, though?” she asked.

St. Just smiled, nodded. The blonde one looked like the model for a Viking invader-tall, slim, broad-shouldered.

“It keeps me yoong, being around yoong folk,” she said. “There’s nothing but old folk livin’ here.”

They watched the game in companionable silence awhile, the only sound the distant swoosh of the waves and the thunk of the ball as the boys batted it back and forth. Suddenly, she turned to him and said:

“The saicret to a long life is to die a vairgin, and so the Chairch would have us believe. Me last oozeband was a layer and a farnicator, God rest his soul. It shairtened me life, living with that man.”