A Death in the Family

by Neil Richards

  “I don’t understand,” said Maria. “Are you police?”

  “No,” said Jack with a big grin. “Not at all. I’m just here to make sure that all the, um, procedures have been dealt with. It’s a lot of money we’re talking about, as I’m sure you appreciate. And a lot of forms have to be filled in.”

  Jack waited.

  Best give them time to absorb things, especially with Maria’s language issues.

  Though Grieco didn’t seem the brightest bulb in the box either.

  “There’s nothing to worry about, I promise you. This is just paperwork, red tape, you know?”

  He smiled again at them both, turned a page in his notebook, clicked his ballpoint pen, and started.

  “So, let’s go right back,” he said. “Maria, when did you first meet Mr. and Mrs. Platt?”

  *

  Twenty minutes later, and Jack had filled up nearly half a dozen pages with scribbled notes.

  Nothing contentious, nothing difficult.

  Nothing suspicious.

  He’d established Maria’s times, the work she did, the hours she put in, the number of visits, the agency she worked for, the car she drove.

  All above board.

  And he’d found out that Robert had been doing odd jobs for the Platts (and a lot of Maria’s other clients) for which they paid him cash.

  Robert and Maria had been together for around six months, Robert drank too much with his pals and — Maria let slip — he was in debt to the betting shop Jack had seen on the corner.

  All of which was useful, though Maria might pay later for sharing that, Jack thought … after I’m gone.

  But nowhere near as much use as the fact that the two of them were now so relaxed they’d made Jack a coffee and were even beginning to make jokes.

  Which Jack laughed at, a lot.

  “Nearly done,” he said. “You’ve been very helpful.”

  “Well, sure. Anything, er, to help Mr. Standish,” said Robert. “He’s been very good to us.”

  “I bet,” said Jack, smiling and putting down his coffee. “So last few questions …”

  “Fire away!” said Robert with a grin.

  “As you know, this is a very large sum of money,” said Jack, watching them both carefully. “Why do you think Harry left it to you?”

  Maria looked at Robert quickly then back at Jack.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe to say ‘thank you’.”

  “Thank you for caring for him, yes? But that was your job. You were paid to do that, right?”

  “Yes, of course. But sometimes — it happens, yes? — old people, they want to say … special ‘thank you’. To their carer. If it is a good relationship.”

  “I see,” said Jack. “So did you have a good relationship with Mr. Platt?”

  Again Jack saw her look over at Robert, who gave a tiny nod.

  “Yes,” she said. “It was … very good.”

  “And you liked him?”

  Again she paused, and then: “Yes.”

  Something here, thought Jack. But what?

  “Um, did he ever talk about the money he was going to leave?”

  “No,” she said quickly.

  Too quickly.

  “Oh. Must have been a big surprise then,” said Jack.

  Maria nodded nervously.

  “Don’t you worry about these questions,” he said, smiling at the carer. “Just routine; have to ask them.”

  “Long as they’re nearly done, yeah? Only I just remembered — we have to go out, very soon,” said Robert suddenly. “Maria — you see the time?”

  “Last couple of questions, promise,” said Jack. “Now, I want you to think back to last week. The night that Harry Platt died.”

  “Such a terrible thing,” said Maria.

  “Yes, indeed it was,” said Jack. “Now was there anything unusual about that night?”

  “No, not at all,” said Maria.

  Then it seemed something occurred to her. “Only …”

  “Go on …”

  “That night, it was a very quick visit. Much quicker than usual.”

  “Really?” said Jack.

  “Usually I cook the supper,” said Maria. “But Mrs. Platt, she had a nice fish; she said she wanted to cook it. So I just … left early.”

  “That was all? Nothing else?”

  “No.”

  “And apart from that everything was normal, yes?”

  “Yes. Exactly same as it always was.”

  “In, out, job done,” said Robert, turning to Maria and giving her a squeeze. “We got home early for a change, didn’t we, love?”

  Jack saw Maria nod nervously at Robert.

  “So do you always go out with Maria when she’s working?” said Jack.

  “I do not have driving licence,” said Maria. “And Robert, he is my …”

  “Taxi driver. That’s the word, isn’t it?” said Robert with a big grin and another squeeze of Maria’s shoulders.

  Interesting, thought Jack.

  Puts Robert there at the Platt house every day …

  Jack looked at them both, then nodded, shut his notebook and put his pen in his jacket pocket.

  The thing about Maria’s ‘visit’ being brief that night might be relevant. But for now, he couldn’t quite see how.

  “Questions over,” he said, standing. “Thank you. You’ve been very patient.”

  He could feel the relief in the air, as if they had both been holding their breaths.

  “Great stuff!” said Robert, already bouncing up from his chair to show Jack to the hall.

  “So, Mr. Standish … he’ll send us the money, no problems?” said Maria.

  “I’m sure he will be in touch very soon,” said Jack as he opened the apartment door.

  He went out onto the public landing, and then turned to Maria and Robert who stood next to each other in the apartment doorway.

  “One question I forgot …”

  He saw them hold their breaths again.

  Always gets them … that last question out of nowhere.

  “Robert — those odd jobs you did at the house …”

  “Yes?”

  “You ever do some work on the stairs?”

  Robert’s eyes rolled backwards as if searching his cranium.

  “Um … I don’t think so.”

  “No? Not the banister — you sure?”

  He looked nervous.

  “Hmm. Wait, now that you mention it … yeah.”

  “Recently?”

  “A while ago. Not sure,” said Robert nervously. “Um, Mrs. Platt … said it had gone loose. Yes, I remember now, and a stair was very noisy.”

  “Is there a problem?” said Maria, looking intently at Jack.

  “No, no,” said Jack. “I think Tony just wanted to make sure everyone who did work for the house had been paid properly.”

  “Ah, yes,” said Robert. “Yes, Mrs. Platt she paid me. All good there.”

  Crisis averted …

  “Yes. All good, Robert,” said Jack, cheerily. “See you later — and thanks for the coffee.”

  “You’re welcome,” said Maria.

  Jack waited for a few seconds, not moving, while they shut the door.

  They were hiding something — something important.

  But what the hell was it?

  He turned and headed back to the stairs, thinking that if he was quick, he might still fit in a quick trip to the cathedral.

  No better place to sit in the shadows and think about a case than in a big church.

  Especially, maybe … if someone was up there practising on what had to be a giant pipe organ.

  Back in New York he used to drop by St. Paddy’s and do just that.

  He’d made a breakthrough in more than one case like that.

  Would it happen in this one?

  Time would tell …

  8. A Trip to Chipping Norton

  Sarah parked in the supermarket car park then walked through to
Chipping Norton High Street.

  She checked her watch.

  If she finished with Geoffrey Platt in time she could maybe just fit in a groceries shop and load up the car.

  She’d hardly been able to scrape a meal together last night — thanks to the kids’ raids — and the freezer was nearly bare.

  With Daniel suddenly in and out of the house at all hours, with any number of ravenous friends, she now knew she was going to have to stock the cupboards with super quick meals.

  Trying to get him to sit with her at the usual time to share a proper cooked dinner — well, these days that was just impossible.

  He just flew in and flew out again — new friends, new freedom.

  She felt that all the family routines of the last five or so years that she worked hard to keep in place, to keep them a family, were being blown apart too quickly.

  And it made her uneasy. She couldn’t help it.

  Anyway, doing a shop now would certainly save her going out again after work to the supermarket in Cherringham — as long as she was careful not to be late back to the office.

  Even though there wasn’t much going on at work this month, she really didn’t want Grace to start feeling she was flying solo.

  She knew her assistant put in long hours if ever they were up against it. And she felt keenly that the boss should still be around when things were quiet — not whizzing round the Cotswolds during office hours solving crimes.

  She checked the map on her phone, and looked up and down the High Street before heading south — Geoffrey had a computer shop down here somewhere, but she didn’t recall ever having seen it.

  She nearly got to the end of the street when she found it, the tiny shop barely ten feet wide, sandwiched between a bakers and a charity shop. ‘Mobile Magic’ it said on the window — then in brackets … ‘pc/laptop repairs, phone unlocking’.

  She went in, the doorbell pinging.

  Ahead of her, behind a counter she saw a balding, round shaped man sitting at a cluttered desk, peering at the inside of a phone through large glasses. Another pair of glasses sat perched on his head.

  He didn’t react to her entrance at all.

  “Mr. Platt?” said Sarah, not quite recognising him from the funeral.

  “Hang on. Be with you in a minute,” he said without looking up.

  Sarah waited while he poked around inside the phone with a screwdriver. She looked around the shop.

  Phone covers and cables covered one wall. On the other side, she saw laptop and computer parts, a digital junkyard surrounded by hard drives, gadgets, printer inks.

  Shelves to one side contained cameras and network accessories on one level, home alarms, and security systems just below.

  Must be hard to compete against the big stores, she thought.

  Pretty hand to mouth.

  She turned back to Geoffrey, hunched over his desk. At last he clicked the case back on the phone, swapped his glasses round, and peered up at her.

  “Yes?”

  “Hi. Geoffrey Platt, right? I’m Sarah Edwards. I’m helping Tony Standish out with the estate of your late father.”

  “Helping out? What precisely does that mean?”

  “Talking to the various beneficiaries, you know.”

  She watched Geoffrey frown.

  “Hmm. Well, I’m not sure I do … know.”

  Then he lifted the counter, came through into the tiny shop area, walked to the door, flipped the ‘Open’ sign to ‘Closed’ and turned to her.

  “There’s not a problem, is there?” he said. “With the will?”

  “No, not at all.”

  “So?”

  “Is there somewhere a little more comfortable we could sit Mr. Platt?”

  “No, there isn’t really,” he said, not moving. “Anyway, this won’t take long — will it? I really am very busy.”

  Not exactly a rush of customers, Sarah thought.

  But she could see he wasn’t going to help.

  “I’m sure you’ll appreciate with a death like this, and the will … there needs to be certainty that the deceased has been of … sound mind.”

  “Was my father ever of sound mind?” Geoffrey said with a roll of his eyes.

  “Anyway, Tony Standish asked me to check some details of that night with you.”

  Geoffrey wasn’t happy.

  But then:

  “Go on.”

  “The night your father died. It seems you hadn’t planned on being there. Is that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you often just drop in on your parents? It’s quite a drive.”

  “Twenty minutes, no more. And yes, I liked to. Make sure they were okay. I did care about them. And dad was no walk in the park for my mother …”

  “And they weren’t expecting you?”

  “No. But that didn’t matter. I had a key.”

  “It must have been very difficult when you found your father.”

  “What do you think? Of course it was.”

  “I’m sorry Mr. Platt, but I do have to ask these questions. Can you tell me exactly what happened?”

  “Look, I’ve already talked to the police Miss Edwards. Do I really have to go through this again?”

  “It will help. Please, if you can,” said Sarah. And then with the hint of a smile, “It’ll speed up all the legal paperwork, I’m sure.”

  She saw him nod, as if suddenly realising that the quicker he did this, the quicker the money would come through.

  She took out her notebook and pen and started to make notes.

  “Well, there’s not much to tell, really. I parked, went to the door, put my key in, tried to open it — but the door stuck.”

  “The front door — yes? By the foot of the stairs?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you see what the problem was?”

  “Well no! Obviously not straight away.”

  “Why?”

  “What? God. Because it was so damn dark, of course.”

  “Dark in the house?”

  “Yes. The lights were off.”

  “All of them?”

  “Not sure. I suppose so.”

  Sarah paused. Difficult enough to imagine Harry climbing the stairs even with the lights on.

  But in darkness?

  “And your mother …?”

  “Once I got in, and realised my father was … well, you know … I could see him. Lying there. Anyway, then I went to find her.”

  “And where was she?”

  “In her studio in the garden, painting.”

  “She had no idea what had happened?”

  “None at all.”

  “So then you both went back in together?”

  “Yes. And I telephoned the police.”

  “And there was nobody else in the house? The carer for instance?”

  “No.”

  “Did you check?”

  This seemed to stop him.

  Sarah watched him thinking about this.

  “Well, no. It just … felt empty. You know?”

  Then he seemed to see a pattern to her questions.

  “Good lord, hang on. Do you think the carer — what’s her name — the one who got a share of the will … Good god …”

  “No, no, not at all Mr. Platt,” said Sarah. “I’m just trying to find out what happened.”

  “But wait a second, you think there’s something suspicious about my father’s death?”

  “We do wonder why he was upstairs.”

  “Hmm, I hadn’t really thought about that,” said Geoffrey.

  “And also, now I’m thinking — how did he manage to even get upstairs if the house was in the dark?”

  “Good lord.”

  She watched him take his glasses off and wipe them on his jumper then put them back on again.

  “You’ve talked to that carer, have you?”

  “We will.”

  “Hmm. Well I’d have a word with that bloody neighbour too while you’re at it.
Kristy. Kirsty, whatever her name is.”

  “Kirsty Lane,” said Sarah. “The other beneficiary.”

  “Yeah, that’s her,” said Geoffrey. “I don’t know how she did it, but she managed to wheedle her way into the will somehow. I don’t like that. Don’t like it one bit.”

  “We’ll certainly talk to her,” said Sarah. “We might talk to your sister too.”

  “Really? Ha! Good luck with that. She doesn’t talk to us.”

  “I believe she came to the funeral though?”

  “She did. But she buggered off afterwards.”

  “Some family history there, Mr. Platt?”

  “God knows. She and Dad weren’t on the best of terms. That — I understand. As for me, I have nothing to do with her.”

  Sarah waited. But Geoffrey Platt wasn’t going to tell her any more, she felt.

  And if she left now — she’d just get to the supermarket and back to the office by 2.

  Was there anything else here?

  Geoffrey Platt wasn’t the most helpful witness she’d ever interviewed. But he seemed innocent enough. And he certainly didn’t look capable of committing murder.

  His guilty appearance? Perhaps simply the guilt of a son who couldn’t wait to get his hands on the cash.

  She closed her notebook and put it away in her handbag.

  “I think that’s all I’ll need, Mr. Platt. Thank you for being so helpful.”

  “Right. Whatever …” he said. “Do give me a ring first though, if you come back, won’t you. It’s not always easy, in a little shop like this. You know, if I’m with a customer. Rather small, in case you haven’t noticed.”

  He handed her a card and then suddenly smiled.

  “Any time you need repairs, well, here we are. Course, might be easier to meet in the pub, after work, you know?”

  Was he really asking her to meet him for a drink?

  She took the card and left.

  The door pinged behind her.

  Not a murderer, she thought, as she headed back up the High Street.

  But certainly creepy.

  *

  When Sarah got back to the office, she saw Grace still eating lunch.

  “How was Chippy?” said Grace.

  “Busy,” said Sarah, taking out a wrap that she’d bought at the supermarket, and digging into it. “Why do I buy these things? They look so nice, but they just taste like cardboard.”

  “Have some salad.”

  “Thanks.”