The minicab driver was enjoying this. He asked Ellie, ‘Want me to wait?’
‘Thank you, but no.’ With evident reluctance he drove away.
Mr Strawson joined one of his workmen in the cab of his lorry and unscrewed the top of a thermos to pour out a cup of coffee. Ellie immediately craved a cup of coffee herself. She saw the policeman avert his eyes and thought he could probably do with one, too. The wind was brisk, if not chill. There was a large camellia in full flower in the garden of the house across the road. A splendid sight. And beyond it a japonica spread its red blossom against a wall. Now why hadn’t Aunt Drusilla put some flowering shrubs into her garden? They would have made all the difference. But there, she’d been brought up on laurel and privet, hadn’t she?
A lumpy, youngish woman detached herself from the onlookers and approached Ellie. She had pale eyes, pale-brown hair drawn back into an unbecoming ponytail and looked as if she could do with a good wash and brush up.
‘Hi! Remember me? I used to work for Miss Quicke, was thinking of making it permanent. Bad luck about the accident. Thing is, I could do with the job now. Any chance of a word with Miss Quicke?’
Ellie recognized the girl as one of the procession of cleaners who had passed through Miss Quicke’s hands. ‘I’m afraid she’s not able to get back into her own house yet. I’m sure when she does, she’ll need help and will contact the agency.’
The woman nodded, but Ellie could see she was not satisfied.
‘Where’s she gone, then?’
‘Oh, moving around,’ said Ellie, which was an honest answer but didn’t satisfy the woman, who looked as if she’d like to press the matter. An unmarked car drove up with a WPC in it, and the cleaner walked away with a rolling gait.
Mr Strawson leaped down from his cab, cup of coffee in hand. ‘Now we’re getting somewhere.’ He launched into his plea with gusto.
The WPC hadn’t thought to equip herself with a windproof winter coat, and was shivering. ‘That’s all right,’ she said. ‘Take down the scaffolding if you wish, but you’re not to set foot in the house. Understood?’
Mr Strawson threw a triumphant look at the policeman on duty, chucked the dregs of his coffee into the bushes and yelled at his workmen to ‘Get in there, then!’
The policeman shrugged, wound up the incident tape and let the lorry in.
‘And what precisely is it you want?’ demanded the WPC of Ellie.
Ellie showed her Aunt Drusilla’s list. ‘Clothing we could perhaps buy for her, but she needs her medication and the orthopaedic inserts in her shoes can’t be replaced overnight. She usually wears them all the time but yesterday she went out in such a hurry that she forgot and it’s almost crippled her.’
DS Willis nodded. Perhaps she was convinced as much by the force of the chill wind as by Ellie’s argument. ‘That’s all right, if you’re quick. I’ve got to get back.’
The WPC shadowed Ellie into the house. It seemed eerily quiet, now. And somehow, Ellie thought, sad. Abandoned.
She pushed aside such fanciful notions and led the way up the stairs to the main bedroom. Ellie couldn’t help looking towards the window where she’d been told that the cleaner had died, but there was nothing now to see. The television set and aerial had been removed. There was a dusty powder everywhere. Ellie shuddered. For fingerprints?
She thought that the young woman outside had had the right idea. There was going to be a lot of cleaning needed before Miss Quicke could move back in.
Ellie showed the list to the WPC, who stood over her while she collected her medication, sorted out clothing, and retrieved Aunt Drusilla’s best brown shoes – complete with orthopaedic inserts and shoe trees – from the bottom of the enormous mahogany wardrobe. Aunt Drusilla’s jewellery box was also at the bottom of the wardrobe. It had a heavy lock on it, and the lock seemed undisturbed. All the time there were crashings and clonkings going on outside the window as the builders dismantled the scaffolding.
Ellie thought the WPC looked almost human so said, ‘My aunt only has what she wore yesterday, so you won’t mind if I take a couple of changes of clothes, and her nightwear, will you? And her toiletries? All I need now is a suitcase to put everything in. I think she kept her luggage in the boxroom at the end of the corridor.’
‘My instructions are only to let you into this room and then see you out.’
‘Oh. Well I suppose I could find some plastic bags to put everything in. I expect there’s some downstairs in the kitchen. Everyone keeps onceused plastic bags, don’t they?’
The WPC hesitated, but agreed that it was all right to collect some plastic bags from the kitchen. She even volunteered the opinion that plastic bags bred like mice. So down they went to the kitchen, which seemed very dark and cheerless today. Perhaps it was going to rain again?
Together the WPC and Ellie found two large plastic bags and stowed everything inside them.
‘Thank you,’ said Ellie. ‘I don’t know what I’d have done without you.’
‘Yoo-hoo!’ Mr Strawson was tapping on the kitchen window.‘Mrs Quicke. Can I have a word before you go?’
The WPC said she had orders not to leave Ellie alone on the premises, so Ellie said that was fine by her. She’d go out the back way to talk to the builder. The WPC said the back door was locked, and she’d have to see Ellie out by the front, so this is what she did. Ellie then carted all her bits and pieces round the side of the house into the yard by the garage.
Mr Strawson was there, rubbing his hands, shifting from foot to foot. His lorry had drawn up nearby and his men were piling the scaffolding onto it.
‘Want to show you something,’ he said, and ushered her into the cavernous depths of the old garage, which contained no cars, but an assortment of junk furniture. Miss Quicke never threw anything away, because ‘it might come in useful’. A set of wooden stairs in poor repair led up to rooms which had once been lived in by a full-time gardenercum-chauffeur.
‘It’s like this, see,’ he said to Ellie. ‘The old dear’s stuck way back in the old days when she had servants living in and everything was delivered to the door. It’s good she’s doing something about the house now, tiles, gutters, drainpipes. But she wants to think bigger. This house must cost a mint to keep going, and she tells me she doesn’t know where the money’s coming from to pay the bills, so why not make it work for her? She could live easy, if she’d just let me handle it.’
Before Ellie had a chance to disabuse the man of his notion that Miss Quicke was a pauper, he beckoned her up the stairs. ‘See these rooms above the garage, there’s running water up here already, and a loo. This cubbyhole here’s the kitchen, and then there’s this big room overlooking the garden at the back, and a bedroom up front. It would make a proper little flat with its own entrance, wouldn’t it?’
Ellie looked and saw that, under the grime and cobwebs, Mr Strawson was right, and the rooms above the garage would indeed make a nice little flat. So this was the cause of the row which Rose had reported Mr Strawson having with Aunt Drusilla?
‘The stairs aren’t too safe, are they?’
‘New stairs, of course. Outside. You’d have to put some money into it, strip back to the plaster, new ceilings maybe, new plumbing, new kitchen and shower room. Then below you could make that big garage space into another flat to rent out – or sell.’
‘Yes, I do see,’ said Ellie. He didn’t of course know that the house belonged not to Miss Quicke but to Ellie, and she wasn’t sure whether to tell him or not. Perhaps it would take the heat out of the situation if he knew he’d have to deal with a younger woman?
But there, her aunt wouldn’t like the idea of people living in her garage at all. Miss Quicke liked the idea of being detached from the neighbourhood and she didn’t need the money which she might get from tenants, whatever she might have told Mr Strawson. Ellie shook her head. She was not about to force change upon her aunt.
‘I heard something about your plans from Mrs McNally, but I’m afraid it�
�s a non-starter,’ she told Mr Strawson. ‘My aunt would never agree and I would never force her to do so.’
‘You can at least see the possibilities?’ said Mr Strawson. ‘Good. Now perhaps we’re getting somewhere. Apart from the garage, there’s the back part of the house where the servants used to live, which could be turned into a separate living unit. The present back door leads out into the yard and that would become their front door, so Miss Quicke needn’t even see people coming and going. That part of the house has got a nice sitting room downstairs and two bedrooms upstairs. It’s got its own staircase and bathroom already, and all you’d need to do would be to put in another kitchen in one of the sculleries.Then you’d block up the doorway to the main part of the house, making it a completely separate unit. Understood?’
‘You have vision, Mr Strawson,’ said Ellie. ‘But I’m afraid that neither my aunt nor I—’
‘Look, tell her she wouldn’t have to lift a finger, nor raise any money for the job. She could sit back and let the money roll in from selling off the parts she doesn’t need, and which she admits herself she never goes into.’
Ellie sighed. ‘Yes, but my aunt doesn’t think like that.’
‘Are you telling me!’ He was grim. ‘I’ve argued with her till I thought my blood pressure would go through the roof and I’m on beta blockers already. That great-niece of hers, Diana, the one that’s going to inherit the house, she understood what I was on about, told me she was after getting the old lady into a home. I thought it was all set. I’d have to give her a cut, of course. But …’
‘Ah,’ said Ellie. ‘Now this gets interesting. Can you explain how you intended to finance all this?’
He spread his hands wide. ‘Well, naturally, if I have to finance it, there’s got to be something in it to make it worth my while. Architects and planning permission, they don’t come cheap. But I’d raise the money, do all the work, see to the selling of the properties. Of course, I’d need to make a profit, but I’d be willing to make a nice little present to anyone who could see that the deal went through.’
‘I’m curious. You’d try to sell the two flats outright?’
‘And the little house we’d make out of the back part. Of course. Give the old lady a nice little sum of money to put in the bank, cover the council tax for years to come. Right?’
‘How much of a cut were you going to give Diana?’
‘Plenty, I can tell you. She promised me she could talk the old dear round, only she couldn’t, could she? Mind you, I think she tackled it at the wrong time. Last week, it was. The old dear had just had a barney with the plumbers …’ He laughed, remembering. ‘Can she tear a strip off when she gets going! Sent them off with a flea in their ear. That’s when her great-niece came along and wanted to know what the row was about. Bad timing. Seems to me that Diana of yours didn’t read the old girl right, started straight in talking about the conversions and, well, I thought the old girl would have a fit. She said she wouldn’t hear of it, and I wasn’t to bring it up again. Diana lost her temper, too, and they were shouting at one another fit to bring the neighbours round. So I made myself scarce.
‘After, Diana came round to see me, said she was sure it would all go through, that she had some scheme or other in mind.’
‘What scheme?’ asked Ellie, appalled by the thought that Diana might have been contemplating an electrical ‘fault’.
Mr Strawson shrugged. ‘I dunno. She just said she’d thought of something would do the trick. She said she’d get back to me, and I could start on the conversions after the next job I’m down to do, easy. Now everything’s gone pear-shaped and I don’t know what to do.Time’s getting on, and I’ve got my men to pay whether there’s work out there or not.’ ‘And you’ve already got someone waiting to buy the flat?’
‘What if I have? There’s nothing wrong with that, is there? The thing is, after everything that’s happened, the old dear won’t want to come back here to live, will she? Not after finding a dead body in her bedroom. She’ll be going into a home, just as the great-niece says. But I’ve been trying and trying to raise Diana on the phone to get it sorted and I can’t get her. So, seeing you here today, I thought you could have a word with her.’
‘She’s a little preoccupied at the moment. She’s just started seeing an estate agent, you see.’
It took a moment for that to sink in. Mr Strawson’s mouth fell open. He stared at Ellie. Then stared all around him. He was doing his sums. If Diana were to inherit the house but was seeing an estate agent, then said estate agent would be in charge of letting or selling the new units and Mr Strawson could whistle for his large profit. Ellie saw him work that out. Then saw him come to the conclusion that at least he could try for the building work that needed to be done.
He said, ‘Well, if she’d only told me! But there’s still all the work to be done, to do the units up, and I’ve got a buyer already lined up for the top flat, no problem, no need to advertise it.’
Ellie felt sorry for him. A little. But it was time to disabuse his mind of various misconceptions, and at the same time, take the heat off Miss Quicke. ‘Mr Strawson, I think this may be the first time you’ve worked for my aunt? Yes? Then I’d advise you to ask around about her among your colleagues. My aunt has plenty of money to pay for your bill, and for any number of conversions such as you describe. She has no intention of going into a home, and I am sure she will wish to return here as soon as she can. Oh yes, and despite what my daughter Diana may have been saying, my aunt doesn’t actually own this house. I do. And I wouldn’t dream of distressing her by making the alterations you describe – however sensible they may appear to you or me.’
He turned purple in the face. He looked like a bull ready to charge. Ellie held her ground with an effort, because he really could be quite intimidating. For a moment she wondered if he himself might have thought of tampering with the wiring in order to scare Miss Quicke into leaving. But no. That was too far-fetched. He wouldn’t murder.
She said gently, ‘I’m sorry to disappoint you. Perhaps some day we’ll be able to do business together. Now I must go as my aunt will be waiting for her things.’
Also, she remembered, after that she had the washing machine at Stewart’s to empty, and another load to put in. She told herself she didn’t have to go back to the flat. Stewart could do the washing when he got home this evening. Or ignore it.
Ellie sighed again. The trouble with being brought up to help other people is that it’s hard to know when to stop.
‘Might I borrow your phone to call a cab?’ she asked.
She thought he was going to refuse, but after a moment’s struggle with himself, he held it out to her. Within his limits, he was a nice man.
Peace and quiet. Ellie stood in the middle of Stewart and Diana’s sitting room and considered what she should do next. The first load of washing was in the tumble-dryer, and the second now going through the machine. She had plenty of paperwork to do back home but it was bedlam there, with Aunt Drusilla issuing one order per second, and Rose fluttering around. Rose had even volunteered to cook the supper for them. She wondered how Jimbo had got on at the police station, and spared a moment of prayer for the poor woman who’d died, wondering who she’d been and how her family were coping.
She supposed that if both Stewart and Diana vacated this flat it might be a good-enough bolt hole for Aunt Drusilla until her own house was habitable once more. But not in its present state of disarray.
Ellie could call in contract cleaners, of course, to put the place right. Or, as she had nothing better to do, why not do it herself?
Then it occurred to her to wonder if the cleaners Stewart had originally used also covered domestic work. If so, might they not be the same ones Aunt Drusilla used to clean her own house? It might well be worth checking that out.
Diana, she thought.
No, it wasn’t Diana. Please let me stop thinking that it was her, though she had by far the best motive. If it was Diana, then she
had killed the cleaner by accident.
Ellie felt responsible. What could she do about it? Well, she supposed she could go to see the family, at least to say how sorry they all were … not that Aunt Drusilla seemed to be very sorry, but she ought to be, especially if it were Diana who … Cut that thought.
Now, could she remember the name of the contract cleaners Aunt Drusilla always used? Some time ago she’d asked Ellie to oversee the cleaning of a flat in the block by the river, so Ellie must have heard it at some point. It was some months ago, before Diana took over the management of the flats. All Clean? No. Spring Clean? No. Something with the word ‘clean’ in it? Perhaps if she were to look it up in the Yellow Pages, the name would jump out at her. Now where would the Yellow Pages be in all this mess?
She was on her knees working at a stain on the carpet when the police came.
Seven
Ellie was startled to hear a voice somewhere above her head, demanding entry to the flat. It took her a moment to realize someone was speaking on the entryphone. Before she could struggle to her feet, heavy steps came up the stairs, and two large young men entered the flat. She couldn’t have closed the door properly when she came in.
‘Hello there!’ said the first one in. Sandy hair, a twitchy nose. Plainclothes police? ‘You the cleaner? Police, dearie. We’re looking for your boss, Stewart. Seen him today?’
Ellie didn’t like being called ‘dearie’. And surely he should have shown her his badge and announced his name? She sat back on her heels, suddenly conscious of her bedraggled state. The front of her apron was sodden, she was wearing her oldest clothes and her hair was all over the place.
Behind the sandy-haired one came another man, with pale brown skin, flashing a badge at her. ‘DC Baptiste.’ He looked slightly more intelligent. She didn’t recognize either of them, and they certainly didn’t know her. Fancy mistaking her for a cleaner! Although to be fair, she supposed she was giving the wrong impression, dressed in old clothes and scrubbing at the carpet …
Murder By Accident Page 9