by Rebecca Tope
And who was the person on the brink of death? Despite many encounters with the dying, he found this a very unusual situation. He would go to hospices and private homes to talk to people about their own funerals, on a regular basis. He had been approached countless times with vague enquiries as to how his business actually worked in practice. But this was both more and less definite than usual. Ariadne knew someone who was dying and who presumably wanted a natural burial. But who and where was this person? The situation in the big stone house seemed too full-on to allow very much outside activity, and certainly not the kind of full-time care that a dying person required. Even if in hospital or a care home, there would be a demanding schedule of visiting. Nobody left a loved one to die unattended and unvisited if they could possibly help it.
He worried away at it for days, wishing he had asked more questions. He had met either Helen or Gabriella at the front door – nobody had told him which it was. One of them might well have a parent at the end of life, although Helen, at least, had to be rather young for that, if she had a small child. He did his customary automatic calculations. Perhaps if Helen was in her early forties, having left motherhood late, and her own parents had done the same, then it would all fit. As for Ariadne herself, he realised he knew nothing whatever about her background, except that she had been friendly with the Hollis man for much of her life.
And yet, it had not sounded like a dying parent. There would have been no need for secrecy, surely, if that had been the situation. Perhaps a detested stepfather needed to be kept at bay, or a cousin laying claim to the family jewels? He recalled a funeral at the undertaker where he had first worked, at which half the family had to be excluded. It involved barefaced lies and left a very nasty taste afterwards. His boss, Daphne Plant, had herself been uneasy about it, ‘But they’re paying us to do what they ask,’ she’d shrugged.
On the evening before Thea’s birthday, events began to unfold. The phone rang and Drew heard Ariadne’s voice, with its low notes and West Country vowels. She could probably have been a remarkable contralto singer, he thought, with the right training.
‘It’s happened,’ she said. ‘Even sooner than we thought it would.’
‘All right. Give me the name. Where’s the body now? Has the death been registered?’
‘Hang on. I told you, didn’t I, that it wasn’t going to be straightforward. We need a day or two to get all that done.’ Her voice had dropped to a whisper.
Apprehension, suspicion, resistance all swirled together inside Drew. Alarm bells were ringing loudly. After dealing with hundreds of deaths, he was highly sensitive to the range of emotions that would come his way. Ariadne was completely outside that range. The hushed voice might be explained by listening children. Difficulties with paperwork were not unusual. But there remained several aspects that did not fit with anything he had encountered before.
‘So where’s the body?’ he asked again. ‘Do you want us to come and remove it now?’
‘Oh, no. Tomorrow will do. She’s here, quite safe and sound.’
An earlier thought gripped him again. Was it one of the children? Had there been some awful abuse that resulted in a child’s death? Had they somehow covered it up? Was Ariadne capable of something so appalling? He took a long, slow breath and told himself not to be such a fool.
‘She?’
‘That’s right. Her name is Jennifer Alice Millingham.’
‘A doctor has seen her, right?’ He had written down the name, noting the initials with a faint smile.
‘Yes, yes. Drew, this is all quite legal and normal. You sound very peculiar about it. What’s the matter?’
‘Nothing, I hope. But getting the basic facts from you is like pulling teeth. You’ve got a dead woman there, with a house full of children. Is she someone’s mother, or what? Has she been laid out? Orifices and all that? Do you know what happens otherwise? Is she in a bed?’
‘Oh, Gabriella’s seen to that side of it. The children aren’t bothered. She’s nobody they know. At least … well, they don’t care about her, anyway.’
‘All right. Well, we’ll come tomorrow morning, then. Is ten o’clock convenient for you?’
‘Fine. Who’ll be with you?’
‘My assistant. He’s called Andrew. We’ve got a van specially modified for the purpose.’
‘I’m sure you have,’ she said lightly. ‘See you tomorrow, then.’
He had to tell Thea. He could keep back the existence of her birthday jumper, with luck. Even if he had to deliver it a few hours early, that wouldn’t be a disaster. He went to find her in the kitchen, where she and Timmy were doing a big jigsaw. It took up half the table, and had been there since just after Christmas.
‘That was your friend Ariadne,’ he said. ‘She’s got a funeral for us.’
Thea looked up, her expression blank. ‘Has she? Who died?’
‘Somebody called Jennifer Alice Millingham.’
‘Is it her mother? I can’t remember her ever mentioning a mother.’
‘I think not. It sounds very odd, but she insists it’s all perfectly normal. Andrew and I are doing the removal tomorrow morning.’
‘Oh. Well, that’s good, isn’t it?’
‘I hope so.’
To his frustration, nothing more was said. He went into his office at the back of the house, and consulted his file covering the legal requirements for a death. He knew that it was the usual practice for a doctor to view a patient who had died, and that almost everybody assumed it was an essential part of the process. The strict, but minimal, requirements were that all a doctor had to do was give the cause of death, on a form that was then taken to the registrar. It was this person who really held the line against murder, fraud or other criminal behaviour. If this Jennifer Millingham had been ill, visited by a GP and cared for by a competent, trusted relative or friend, then it was possible that the GP would issue a certificate simply giving the cause of death when this caring person told him – or her – that the patient had died. Drew had a hunch that this might well turn out to have been what happened in this instance.
If so, it would be a first for him. Every doctor he had ever met would regard it as a clear, ethical duty to see the body of a patient. But the law did not insist. He realised that he was rushing ahead; that Ariadne had not overtly stated that the dead woman had been uninspected by a doctor. It was just an implication that grew stronger the more he thought about it. He found an unambiguous line in his file: Thus, there is no requirement in English law for a general practitioner or any other registered medical practitioner to see or examine the body of a person who is said to be dead.
It was followed by pious recommendations that any responsible doctor should turn out not only to examine the body but to do anything possible to console and advise the relatives.
Which left a certain degree of responsibility on the shoulders of the undertaker, he thought ruefully. A responsibility at the very least not to bury someone who was actually not quite dead, despite the paperwork all being in perfect order.
The jumper was received with something less than rapture. ‘Pink?’ said Thea. ‘I never wear pink.’
‘She said it would suit you. Hold it up. It does suit you. It looks great.’
Thea looked down at herself doubtfully. ‘Does it? It feels nice, I must say. Where did you get it? Is it handmade? It must have cost a fortune, if so.’
He swallowed back the explanation he’d been about to give her. Would she approve of the transaction whereby her birthday present had been accepted in part payment for a funeral? ‘Don’t ask,’ he said. ‘But I can tell you it’s one of Ariadne’s. I went there last week and chose it. She’s got a big house in Guiting Power, with two other women. I’ve been dying to tell you all about it.’
She was pulling the garment over her head, and standing in front of the mirror over the fireplace. ‘It is nice,’ she said. ‘Just not what I would ever have bought for myself. It’ll take some getting used to. I never see myself as
a pink person.’
‘Good,’ he said.
‘What were you telling me just now? You went to Ariadne’s house? Is that the same house you’ve got to go to in a minute to collect a dead woman?’
‘Yes. Remove, not collect,’ he added, for the fiftieth time.
‘Sorry. I can never see why that matters.’
‘I suppose it doesn’t, really.’
‘She’s an odd person. I can’t imagine her living with other people – she was very solitary when I met her. Eccentric.’
‘She’s that, all right. So are the others, I imagine. They’ve got a whole lot of foster children. Little ones. And dogs. And no stair gate. We had a stair gate until Timmy was at least three,’ he remembered. ‘A real nuisance it was, too.’
‘I don’t think there’s any law about it,’ she said mildly.
‘Yet.’
‘Foster children? Now that really is odd. I thought they were only given to people within their own area. Something about consistent community experience – some jargon like that. So they can keep the same friends and go to the same schools. Of course, it can’t possibly work.’ She made a slightly sneery face; one that Drew had seen before and didn’t like.
‘It’s a good aim, though, don’t you think? I suppose the children in Guiting Power might have people in Oxford or Stratford – somewhere within reach, at least. Poor little things,’ he sighed.
‘I suppose so. It all sounds a bit mad. Is the dead person in the same house as a lot of little kids, then?’
‘Yes. That’s what I’m trying to say. The authorities would go crazy if they knew.’
‘They would. Well, you’d better go and sort it all out, then. The sooner the better.’
‘I’ve got a few minutes. You like the jumper, then?’
‘I love it. Thanks ever so much for it. It’s gorgeous. Tell Ariadne she’s got magic in her hands. I wonder if she used a natural dye for the wool. I think she spins it all herself, as well as knitting it.’
‘I’ll ask, if I remember. Ah – there’s Andrew now. See you later.’
In the van, he explained some of the story to his employee. Andrew Emerson had been a farmer until very recently, the funeral business a late change of career. Repeated bouts of tuberculosis in his cattle had finally driven him out of business. He still got up with the sun, spent every possible moment outdoors, and made anxious predictions about the weather. His face was rugged and grooved, but some of the worry lines were smoothing out as he relaxed into his new life. He had turned out to be extremely good with the families during the funerals, treating them all as equals, offering a light but sincere understanding of their grief. He conveyed a sense of everyone being in this together, life proceeding somehow or other without the lost relative or friend. Drew was delighted with him, while worrying at times that there would not be enough income to sustain his salary.
‘What’s your real problem with this, then?’ Andrew asked Drew now. ‘How’s it different from usual?’
‘Where do I start? All I’ve got is a name. I don’t know how she’s related to anyone in the house – or even if she is. I keep coming up with unlikely explanations, and none of them is very reassuring. She could be an obstructive social worker, threatening to take the kids away. Or a rich old aunt. I know I’ve seen too many murder victims for my own good, and this can’t possibly be another one – but suddenly it looks all too easy to cover up foul play, if you’ve got a lazy doctor on side.’
‘Lazy doctor?’
‘I checked the law again last night. It’s not a legal requirement for a doctor to examine a patient after they’ve died. If he’d seen her within the past week or so, and knew there was a life-threatening illness, he could issue a certificate of the cause of death without seeing her again.’
Andrew thought this over. ‘That seems okay to me. The important bit is the life-threatening illness, isn’t it? If a person was murdered, they wouldn’t have been ill beforehand, would they? So ill that the doctor wasn’t surprised when they died.’
‘Ill people can be murdered,’ said Drew. ‘If there was a proper plan in place, there could be ways of convincing the doctor that it was worse than it was really.’
‘Come on, Drew. That’s really over-egging it. You’ve got far too much imagination.’
‘I expect I have.’ He drove on, past Stow-on-the-Wold and turning right onto the B4068 that meandered westwards towards Naunton, before the turning up to Guiting Power. He was still very unsure of the way all the many Cotswolds villages linked together, remembering brief visits to Thea in a number of them when she’d been house-sitting. Some had been hard to find, leaving images of deep, dark lanes and large, shady trees, to be abruptly followed by wide, sweeping plains, without hedges or woodland for a hundred acres. It was more like this latter landscape on the final stretch. Beside him, Andrew was commenting on their progress. He knew people across the whole region, and was related to several of them. ‘That’s where my cousin Raymond lives. Letting his fences go, look. Sold off all the stock a couple of years back, so not much need to keep the fences sturdy. Seems a shame.’ He sighed. ‘He’ll be growing rape or linseed, most likely.’
They were in good time, arriving ten minutes early. ‘Shouldn’t think they’ll mind,’ said Andrew.
They were ushered into the house by Ariadne and a woman she introduced as Gabriella. Small children were much in evidence, apparently in good health and clean clothes. Drew corrected his notion of them as waifs and strays, dressed in Dickensian rags. The house was warm and music was playing in a back room. ‘She’s up here,’ said Ariadne.
The body was of a woman who had evidently lived a long time. White hair, sunken mouth above an unusually long chin, and thin mottled skin. ‘Who is she?’ asked Drew, his fascination only increased by the reality before his eyes.
‘Jennifer Alice Millingham. I told you,’ said Ariadne. ‘Everyone called her Jammie, for obvious reasons.’
‘Have you got all you need for the registrar? They ask about fifty questions, you know. Birth certificate, marriages, divorces, National Insurance. The whole works.’
‘Not all that, no. But enough, probably. Not your problem, really. Just so long as I get the death certificate, you’re covered, aren’t you?’
‘Yes, but …’ He bent over the body. At least she was definitely dead, he concluded. Had been for a while.
‘Listen, Drew Slocombe. She was a homeless vagrant. We met her a year ago and she used to come here to get warm and have some food. She was nice with the kids, and when her dog died, we let her bury it in the garden. There really isn’t any mystery to it. We haven’t got much paperwork for her, admittedly. But the doctor knows about her. She had a very damaged heart, and some kidney disease. He was surprised she lived as long as she did. We promised her she would have a decent funeral. She’d a bit of money stashed away to pay for it. I can’t imagine we’ll have much trouble with the registrar when we tell the whole story, can you?’
She left the room without waiting for a reply. Drew and his colleague set about wrapping the body, preparatory to carrying it downstairs. ‘Not a murder, then,’ muttered Andrew.
‘Seems not.’ The simple explanation was slow in dispelling Drew’s suspicions. ‘Although …’
‘What?’
‘Well – has she been up here dying for the past week or more? This looks like one of the main bedrooms. The house isn’t big enough for them to spare a whole room like this. There are five children living here.’
‘Can’t see the problem. Kids can double up. There must be sofas downstairs.’
‘True.’
‘Come on, mate. It all makes sense to me. People are kinder than you think, when it comes to something like this. She’s clean enough, look. They’ve done a good job on her.’
‘All right. Let’s get her down the stairs, then. We can’t refuse to take her now.’
Andrew stared at him. ‘And why would we? I don’t get it. What are you so bothered about?’
‘I don’t know. There’s something, I know. It just isn’t right. I feel it in my gut.’
‘Double Indemnity,’ said Andrew, confusingly.
‘What?’
‘The boss man at the insurance company. Edward G. Robinson. He can feel a scam in his gut. Something like that. Turned out he was right, of course. But real life is different. Guts are not reliable.’
‘I expect that’s true. Come on, then.’
They kept the body in the cool room until Ariadne turned up two days later with the death certificate all signed and sealed and legal. ‘It wasn’t quite as easy as I hoped,’ she admitted. ‘But we got there in the end. The registrar phoned the doctor, who convinced her it was all okay.’
The burial was arranged with more expedition than people in Britain had come to expect. Drew deplored the lengthy delays that had become the norm, and made it one of his key selling points that he could easily perform a funeral within three days of a person’s death. ‘There really isn’t as much to be done as they tell you at big undertakers,’ he would tell his customers. ‘And because we never do embalming, it’s in everyone’s interest to get on with it.’
Ariadne was more than happy to endorse this approach, and a small gathering assembled in the field on a blustery afternoon, to bid farewell to Jennifer Alice Millingham. A very young copper beech tree was standing by to be planted at the head of the grave. ‘I got it for two pounds at the Moreton Garden Centre,’ said Ariadne. ‘It was in the bargain corner. I’m sure it’ll grow perfectly well.’
‘It will,’ Drew promised. ‘I’ll put it in when you’ve all gone.’
A month later, Thea and Drew were going through the small pile of accumulated newspapers that somehow built up on the corner of the dining table of its own accord. Local news was a minor passion with Drew, who maintained that it helped him with the business. He needed to understand connections, changes, who the important people might be. Thea liked to spot familiar village names, as well as very occasional references to people she had met.