The Company She Kept

by Marjorie Eccles

  She tried to dismiss thoughts of last night but the letter from the house agent, crackling in her pocket, wouldn’t let her. He was pestering her for a decision on a small house just outside Brome, and wrote now that there were other people interested. A self-interested lie, she was certain, but she was going to have to make up her mind, anyway, for several other reasons. At the moment, she was living with her parents, though it wasn’t a state of affairs considered permanent or desirable by any of them. Indeed, her mother’s quickly-concealed dismay at the thought of such had been comic, when her daughter had come home after university and her initial police training. Abigail had been born relatively late in their lives and the two of them, her mother and father, had grown used to being a pair again, to the gentle routine of their lives in retirement – her mother’s bridge and meals-on-wheels, her father’s Spanish classes. That was one reason. And to Abigail, having her own space was one of the most important things in life, which was another reason – and the cause of the argument last night.

  She desperately wanted the house, but she was determined it was going to be hers alone.

  She’d fallen for it immediately, but its semi-derelict condition and her own lack of time, plus a reluctance to saddle herself with a mortgage, was making her hold back. What attracted her as much as anything was its garden. You could do a lot with a garden. You could have fun taking out your frustrations on a stint of deep digging, or heaving stones around to make a rockery. You could lie back and drink lemonade on the patio. Grow roses. And your own veg, fresh as the morning dew. Also, let it not be forgotten, mow the lawn, trim the hedges, chase bugs with a spray, weed the vegetable patch ... it needed thinking about, if you were a CID officer and your free time didn’t come on a regular, or even dependable, basis. And if you had ambition. She sighed and forced her thoughts back to her job, to what, in the end, mattered most to her.

  ‘Not what we expected from the PM, was it, sir?’ she ventured as an opening gambit after a moment or two.

  ‘That’s what PMs are allegedly for – so we shan’t be tempted to take anything for granted – in theory, at least.’

  The pathologist had made his expected pronouncements: that death was due to manual strangulation; that the scratches on the dead woman’s neck were defensive wounds, the minute fragments of skin underneath the nails were her own, made by herself when she had clawed at her assailant in an attempt to save herself, thereby breaking off two of her long red fingernails. Horrible, thought Abigail, hideous thoughts of that moment of death coming unbidden. As Timpson-Ludgate had previously stated, postmortem lividity of the body showed that it had been placed in a seated position for some time after death, probably, as he had suggested, in the seat of a car.

  And then, the unexpected ...

  Despite her disordered clothing when she was found, it was quite clear that Angie Robinson had been neither raped nor sexually assaulted. Not only that, she had never at any time had sexual intercourse. She had, indisputably, been a virgin.

  ‘One of Lavenstock’s silent minority.’

  That had been one of Timpson-Ludgate’s tasteless jokes. Mayo didn’t respond and Abigail, recalling with a shiver that icy white apartment, the array of clothes and the seductive underwear, had not found it amusing, either. She had looked with pity at the blemished face under the pathologist’s scalpel, for which all the lotions, creams and unguents in the world had ultimately been of no help at all. She felt angry at the undeservedness of it, but fiercely glad the woman hadn’t had to go through that final humiliation. Death, at least, must have been quick.

  ‘He was disturbed and didn’t succeed in raping her, so he strangled her to keep her quiet,’ she said. There was an edge to her voice.

  ‘Or that was what we were meant to think,’ Mayo said. ‘That it was a sex killing that went wrong, so that we shouldn’t look for the real reason she was killed.’ Abigail looked thoughtful. ‘And that means,’ he went on, ‘that we’re looking for someone, anyone, young or old ... but someone cool and calculated enough to try an immediate cover-up. Don’t forget – all the evidence indicates she was simply dumped there after being killed elsewhere. And after finding that letter, I don’t see this as a casual sex killing, I think we must look closer to home.’

  ‘Jenny Platt’s checked out McKinley,’ Abigail said. ‘If he was in the motorway café at nine o’clock talking to other truckers, as he says he was, he’s off the hook.’

  ‘I think in any case we’re looking for someone closer to home than McKinley.’

  ‘The man who came to the flat?’

  ‘He’ll do to start with.’

  They had by now arrived at the entrance to the small group of buildings which constituted the Women’s Hospital. The two hospitals, the County and the Women’s, were separated only by the distance across the park. It would have been less than a five-minute drive from the County Hospital mortuary, had it not been for the allegedly quicker one-way system which took you all round the houses and left you twenty minutes later within a few yards of where you’d started. But although in terms of time they’d saved something, otherwise it didn’t seem as though they’d gained much: others of the press were here also, having already ferreted out, God knows how, for there hadn’t yet been a release, that the murdered woman was Angie Robinson and that she had worked here. Taking advantage of the media presence to gain publicity, a picket had been posted at the gate, a group of young nurses with protest placards which read Women for Women and sundry other slogans of a similar nature.

  With a sigh, Mayo passed them and began to force his way through the pack, ‘No comment’ on his lips. He sometimes felt that he must, unknown to himself, exude some substance like aniseed, that enabled the media hounds to sniff him out wherever he went.

  The name tag on the lapel of her white overall said ‘Eileen Dalton’. She was a plump woman in her forties with fading, gingerish hair and tired eyes, but her face lit up when she smiled. She was one of two receptionists on duty at the Outpatients’ desk at the Women’s Hospital.

  ‘I can give you ten minutes,’ she said. ‘I’m due for my lunch-break now, anyway, while it’s quiet. Sorry I can’t take you anywhere private, but we can get a cup of tea round the corner while we talk. There won’t be many there now.’

  ‘Round the corner’ proved to be a refreshment bar at the end of a corridor manned by the WVS and at the moment free of customers. Mayo and Mrs Dalton took a table by the window where presently Abigail joined them, bearing three polystyrene beakers of tea and a packet of coconut creams. Rich aromas of stew, boiled cabbage and fish wafted along the corridor.

  Abigail broke open the biscuits and offered the packet to Mrs Dalton, who shook her head. ‘Thanks, but I wouldn’t want to spoil my lunch.’

  ‘Meals good here?’ Mayo asked.

  ‘So-so. As good as you can expect, given the equipment they have to work with.’

  ‘They tell me the kitchens are very up-to-date at the County, and the cuisine’s up to four-star class,’ he offered casually, risking a surmise and hoping it was somewhere within the bounds of probability. ‘Or is that a sore subject?’

  ‘Not at all!’ She shook her head, smiling. ‘Never let it be said, in these hallowed premises at least, but I’m all for the change. Better facilities than here – and not so strapped for room. We’re quiet at the moment but you should see it when the clinics start! Absolute Bedlam, sometimes. This afternoon we have two, Miss Clancy’s fertility clinic and Dr Freeman’s family planning, both having to share the same waiting area.’ Her smile, lopsided, included Abigail. ‘Funny old world sometimes, isn’t it?’

  ‘Gets funnier by the day,’ Abigail agreed drily. ‘Especially if you’re female. How long have you and Angie Robinson worked together?’

  ‘Since I started here, a couple of years ago. She’d been here for ages, though – she was practically an institution.’

  ‘Get to know her well, did you?’

  ‘I don’t think anybody knew her ver
y well, except perhaps for her friend, Dr Freeman. Her only friend, I shouldn’t wonder!’

  ‘A pretty unusual sort of friendship, wasn’t it?’ Mayo asked. ‘Attraction of opposites?’

  ‘I don’t know. She was one of the doctor’s lame ducks, I think. And give Angie her due, she would’ve done anything for Dr Freeman. Lately, since they got this protest going ... I can’t imagine what the doctor’s going to do about that, now. I know she’s the motivating force behind it, but Angie was doing the organizing, everybody had to consult her before anything was done, which was of course meat and drink to her ...’ Mrs Dalton gave them both a quick glance, looked a little shamefaced and said, ‘You’ll gather from all this that she wasn’t my favourite person. To tell you the truth, she got on my nerves, always moaning about something or other, though what she had to moan about I don’t know. I got fed up with listening to her. I’m what they call a one-parent family, I’ve got three teenagers and a full-time job and I needed her problems like I need a hole in the head.’

  ‘You have my sympathies,’ Mayo said. ‘People like that can be hard to take. But cast your mind back, if you can, and try to recall if she ever said anything about some new accommodation she was interested in?’

  Mrs Dalton stared. ‘She’d just moved into a new flat, hadn’t she?’

  ‘It seems she regarded that as only temporary.’

  ‘Did she? Well, I suppose she would, seeing it was on Bulstrode Street. A bit of a come-down from Kilbracken Road.’

  ‘She may have had an appointment to view another place. Did she ever mention that? Or talk of anyone she was going to see about it – some man, maybe?’

  The receptionist absent-mindedly stirred another spoonful of sugar into her tea and frowned. ‘She may have done. But not that I recall.’

  ‘Did she ever, as far as you remember, talk about her past life? People she’d met?’

  ‘Gracious, no! When we did talk – which wasn’t often, not much time – the usual topic of conversation centred around her leaving here. Not that she was ever likely to.’ Ever sensitive to a possible lead, Mayo’s nose twitched. Mrs Dalton explained: ‘This job’s not exactly brain-taxing, which is why I like it, it keeps my mind free for other things, but Angie ... well, I didn’t like her, but I have to admit she was wasted here, though I think it was all talk on her part about leaving. She was a bit of a romancer, you know, you couldn’t always believe what she said – but she wasn’t as feather-brained as she let you think. Very sharp, really. I reckon she could easily have got herself something better, if she’d wanted.’

  ‘So why do you think she didn’t? Why stay here?’

  ‘She was in charge of Reception here – big deal, as my kids say. Case of a big fish in a little pond, I suppose.’ She broke off, biting her lip as she looked at her watch, pushing aside what was left of her tea and reaching for her bag on the floor beside her. ‘I’m sorry, I’m being bitchy, the woman is dead, after all.’

  ‘Give us a few more minutes, Mrs Dalton, and then we’ll let you get off to your lunch. Were you both working here yesterday?’

  ‘That’s right, until five o’clock.’

  ‘Did you leave together?’

  ‘Yes, she didn’t have her umbrella with her and we shared mine to the car park – you know what the weather was like yesterday. And you know, it’s funny, you say she was murdered last night? Well, I saw her drive off, but her car was there this morning in its usual space, next to mine, when I arrived.’

  It still was. A new white Ford Astra, and if it had been driven in the rain of the previous day, it had certainly been put through a car wash since. On the back seat was a red wool jacket, still slightly damp within the folds.

  CHAPTER 10

  Kitty Wilbraham, born Kitty Everett in 1901. In 1925, married Dr Alfred Wilbraham, who died in 1939. No children. Spalding’s presentation was rather like the man himself, workmanlike and competent, laconic, neatly put together, but with a lot of subtext underneath. He was routinely put on to this sort of inquiry because he could be guaranteed to do a thorough and reliable job, but in this instance it had been at Mayo’s specific direction. He couldn’t afford to take him off the investigation altogether but felt he would work better at one remove – any personal involvement, however remote, had to be taken into consideration, and there were undercurrents in Spalding’s domestic life, possible family complications that couldn’t be allowed to get in the way of the smooth working of the investigation. He read on. Worked until the outbreak of war with her husband on the excavations at Carthage, near Tunis. Employed in secret work at the War Office during the war, and afterwards published several books (listed below). Between 1946 and 1970 she lived in North Africa. In 1970, she returned again to England and settled at Flowerdew, her house near Morwen. Stayed there until 1979, when she was reported to have returned once more to live in the city of Tunis.

  So this was the woman Sophie Lawrence had worked for. (Sophie Amhurst she’d been then, now Lawrence, though divorced, with Sophie something else in between.) Mayo shuffled the papers together, finished his coffee and went to join Abigail Moon, who was waiting to drive him out to Pennybridge. Poking his head in at the incident room on his way out, he made known his intended whereabouts to Atkins over the cacophony of telephones, printers and other people’s raised voices, and before Cherry could catch him for another update on the case, escaped.

  After buckling on his seat-belt and settling down while Abigail negotiated the entrance into Milford Street, he quickly read through the notes for her benefit. ‘So, there’s plenty known about Mrs Wilbraham until 1979 – and you’ll note that was fourteen years ago,’ he remarked. ‘But since then – zilch.’

  ‘So it looks fairly conclusive that she was the old woman who was killed? At any rate, she’s certainly disappeared into thin air. And she did work on the ruins at Carthage, wrote books about it, too, which ties in with all those peculiar references to the cremation urns and so on. But –’

  ‘But what? Doubts, Abigail?’

  ‘Well, anyone who writes a letter like that must be more than a bit disturbed, wouldn’t you say? And Mrs Dalton did say she was a bit of a romancer.’

  ‘So we’d better take it all with a pinch of salt? I’d go along with that – up to a point. But what if Angie wasn’t just another nutcase? She was also smart, if a bit hysterical, so maybe she was simply telling the truth in her own garbled way. If we extract the nub of it from all the flimflam, what it says is that Kitty Wilbraham was killed by some man in a fit of temper, and that Angie was very likely a witness to it.’

  ‘And Dido? Dido-Elissa? Was that part of the flimflam as well?’

  ‘Not altogether, but I don’t think we should let it smokescreen the main facts. And with either a bit of luck or a lot of persuasion, Sophie Lawrence is going to be able to tell us what they were.’

  He has his own ideas, Abigail said to herself, he’s sussed that one out. And he’s not telling me, either because he feels I ought to be able to work it out for myself or else he’s going to bring it out later, like a rabbit from a hat, the great Sherlock. The latter attitude was a ploy she’d come across before but she didn’t yet know whether that sort of thing was Mayo’s form.

  ‘A more immediate question,’ the DCI went on, unaware of these interesting speculations on his character, ‘is how did Angie Robinson come to be involved with Kitty Wilbraham in the first place?’

  ‘Sophie should be able to tell us that, too. We’ve struck lucky, it seems, finding her at home – finding her in England at all, in fact.’

  At the moment Mayo felt he wouldn’t be averse to a bit of luck. Fast approaching was his own private three-day limit, the deadline that always seemed to divide the easily sewn-up case from the one likely to drag on for months, the sort that clung on to your back like an old man of the sea. Easy, easy, he told himself. Yet impatience seethed in him to get things going, not to allow them to stagnate to the point where disinterest on the part of all concerned mig
ht set in. As if to underline his frustration, he became aware of the car slowing down. ‘What’s all this?’ he demanded, their progress becoming further halted when the line of cars ahead slowed to a crawl and finally stopped altogether.

  ‘Seems to be an obstruction ahead,’ Abigail said, rolling down the window and craning her neck out.

  They came marching down the middle of the road in their crisp uniforms, starched caps and aprons, red capes, sensible black lace-ups doing nothing even for those with the best of legs. Latter-day Nightingales, though not too many of them, since half their number at least would be on duty at the Women’s Hospital. Followed by present-day feminists, banner-carrying supporters, committed free-thinkers, anti-government protesters. High school sixth-formers, rattling tins, handing out leaflets. Mothers with toddlers and babies in prams. Nearly a hundred women in all, stopping the traffic and chanting their theme like some Greek chorus, gaped at and occasionally cheered on by the shopping crowds.

  Heading the procession was Madeleine Freeman. Tall and with her head lifted, purposeful in her stride – so, Mayo thought, must Joan of Arc have looked, or Mrs Pankhurst. He watched with admiration, for a moment finding it in his heart to envy the man she was going to marry. The feeling was transitory. He very well knew that such single-mindedness in a partner would frighten the life out of him, a view already expressed about the doctor by more than one man working on the case. Hardly comfortable to live with – not exactly a warm armful on a winter’s night was the general opinion.

  ‘Good Lord,’ Mayo said, a moment later. ‘There’s Sheila Kite.’

  Sheila saw him peering out of the window and gave him a cheerful wave. He wondered if Kite knew where she was, or if his wife had taken advantage of his absence to play hookey from her job and join in the protest. On second thoughts he dismissed the latter possibility. Sheila Kite had a complete absence of guile and possessed in addition the enviable trait of being able to do and think independently, without stirring up marital discord, despite the fact that she and Kite didn’t always think alike. If all these women were like Sheila and Dr Freeman, he thought wryly, the authorities might just as well throw in the towel.