by Sarah Ward
I’m not sure I did, thought Mina. ‘Hilary. Her name’s Hilary Kemp.’
Emily stared at Mina. ‘I don’t remember a Valerie living in Cold Eaton.’
Mina let it go. ‘I’ve got my tools in the back of the van. I’ll come back in when I’ve done, say, three hours.’
‘I’ll see you at lunchtime.’ She looked at the fire and back at Mina, puzzled. As she hurried away, Mina was sure she heard the whisper of the word ‘Valerie’ being repeated under Emily’s breath.
11
Connie and Dahl were asked to leave their shoes in the hall while Nell Colley’s neighbour disappeared into the kitchen. Connie noticed that Dahl had a hole in his left sock that he tried to hide by folding the seam beneath his toes. He caught her eye and smirked.
‘I’ll bin them when I get home.’
They padded through to the living room and Dahl crossed to the window. ‘She has a good view of next door’s drive. There’s not much she won’t notice.’
Janet Goodhew came back into the room carrying a tray laden with tea things and a plate of cake. She was flustered, ill at ease at having detectives in her house.
‘You knew Ms Colley well?’
‘Ms? She wouldn’t have liked you calling her that. She preferred “Miss” to the end of her days. Women’s lib passed her by. Mind you, I lived next to her for thirty years and called her Nell from day one.’
‘You were friendly?’
‘She helped me bring up the children. My husband, Frank, was away a lot. He worked for IBM in the early days of computing. He was often in America and he’d bring great presents back for the kids. Stuff you couldn’t get then. Now, of course, everyone travels and, anyway, you can buy whatever you need in the shops.’
Dahl pulled a notebook from his jacket pocket. ‘She never married?’
‘Oh no. She was a spinster, if you see what I mean. I don’t think she ever had a boyfriend. I tried to ask her about it once but she changed the subject.’
‘She worked?’
‘As a secretary in a solicitor’s. She loved her job. She carried on until this year when her health started to play up and, anyway, she wanted to write her book.’
‘A book?’ Dahl looked up from the notes he was making. ‘A novel, you mean?’
‘Well, a memoir. She’d been meaning to do it for years. It wasn’t something she talked about much, in fact she was quite reticent when I asked her for more details, but used to say to me that one day she’d write this book of hers.’
‘Has it been published?’
Janet poured the tea, her hand wobbling slightly. ‘Oh no. She’d only just started it. A bit of research and I think she’d also put something down on paper because she mentioned that writing was much harder than she thought. Trying to arrange all your memories in the right order.’
Connie looked down at her patterned socks and wondered what propelled people to examine their past in such forensic detail. She’d happily left her old life in Matlock far behind. Her father had remarried and was living in Scotland and there only remained the pinch of the memory of her mother’s struggle with alcohol addiction that she rarely allowed herself to dwell on. Was the memoir important?
‘Perhaps the fact that she had a life-threatening illness made the writing more pressing,’ said Dahl.
‘It’s funny that, despite talking about writing a book for so long, she’d only just got around to it. That was unusual for Nell. Normally, when she decided to do something, it got done.’
‘Life got in the way,’ said Connie.
‘I suppose so.’ Janet looked at them both. ‘It doesn’t really matter now, does it?’
‘A memoir,’ Dahl said, his voice encouraging. ‘A memoir on her work at the solicitor’s?’
‘Oh no, I don’t think it was that. She never said what it was about but I didn’t get the impression it was to do with work.’
‘I’ve checked downstairs in Miss Colley’s house. I didn’t see any evidence of a laptop.’
‘I think she was going to write it out by hand. She wasn’t on the internet or anything like that. It was a personal project for her.’
‘A personal project,’ repeated Connie. Dahl turned towards her slightly and the room fell silent. Connie considered how to articulate the uneasiness that references to the book evoked. Memoirs were important to people who write them, so why was there no evidence of it in the house? ‘You’ve no idea what it was about?’
Janet shook her head. ‘She wouldn’t tell me anything at all.’
Dahl glanced at Connie and changed tack. ‘So Ms, I mean, Nell, she was ill, wasn’t she?’
‘She had this ongoing thing. Her heart would start fluttering and then beating irregularly. She’d have to sit down. While she was working it had been infrequent, but over the summer it got worse and worse and she was suffering from a heart condition.’
‘Her GP signed off the death certificate, I believe. He’d seen her within the last week.’
‘Oh, Nell was always at the surgery after she retired. Me, I only go when I’m at death’s door, otherwise they get sick of you, don’t they? I’m worried that if I go too often they won’t take me seriously when there is something properly wrong with me.’
‘But there was something seriously wrong with Nell?’ Connie watched as the woman flushed slightly under Dahl’s scrutiny.
‘Well, as I said, she had a heart condition. What did the GP put down as her cause of death?’
‘Heart arrhythmia.’
‘That’s it. I can never pronounce the name properly. A dicky heart. She was always a bit worried she’d go quickly. The hospital consultant warned her that sudden death was a possibility.’
Connie looked down at the sheet of paper she’d retrieved from her bag. ‘According to the paramedic, you said you’d spoken to Nell that morning.’
‘That’s right. I gave her a call on the phone. I asked how she was and she said she was all right. Then, I nipped around at ten to four with a piece of carrot cake I’d baked, and when she didn’t answer the door, I let myself in.’
‘You had the key on you?’
Janet flushed again. ‘She had no downstairs toilet. If she was upstairs it’d take her an age to get down the stairs so I’d let myself in. She never minded. We’d talked about it.’
‘You didn’t think of looking through the living room window?’ asked Dahl.
‘No. As I said, I thought she was upstairs but anyway …’
‘What?’
‘Well, I’d have been able to see her from the front door as she always sat in the armchair by the window. She liked to watch people coming and going.’
Connie frowned. ‘She was discovered on the sofa.’
‘I know that. I found her, didn’t I? All I’m saying is that she usually sat in the armchair, which is why I didn’t look through the window.’
Dahl leant forward. ‘How did she look when you found her?’
‘She was dressed. She had her nice silk blouse on and her blue cardigan and a skirt. She was sitting upright on the sofa. I thought …’
‘Yes?’ asked Connie.
‘Well, I thought she’d had a funny turn and she’d sat down and then, well, left us.’
Dahl looked up at Connie. ‘When you spoke to her on the phone, she didn’t say that she was expecting a visitor?’
‘She never said a thing, although someone did call.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I heard her front door go at around half eleven. I didn’t look out because there were plenty of people who were in and out of the house. Friends, health visitors.’
‘You didn’t see who it was?’ Connie leant towards Janet. ‘You didn’t even catch a glimpse of the visitor?’
‘I told you. I didn’t look. It’s not important, is it?’
‘It would be interesting to hear who was actually the last person to see her alive. If they didn’t raise the alarm, Nell was presumably alive at half past eleven.’
‘The
GP came after the ambulance and signed the death certificate. I saw him do it. Dr Parsons at the medical centre. He thought she’d died around lunchtime.’
‘Did she talk to you about the death of her friend, Ingrid Neale?’ asked Dahl. Connie sat back in the sofa, watching him take over the questioning.
‘Who?’
‘One of her friends died in June. She kept the newspaper with the funeral notice on the coffee table.’
‘She never mentioned anything to me. Funny that, she’d normally tell me about that sort of thing.’
‘So you don’t know why she kept the paper?’
‘No. I saw it on the coffee table when I was cleaning after they took the body away but I didn’t want to throw anything out, just tidy up.’
‘Did she go to a funeral this year? Of a friend, perhaps?’
‘I don’t think so. She never mentioned it.’
‘That’s fine.’ Dahl put his notebook away. ‘I don’t think we need to bother you any more.’
‘Would you like more cake?’
Connie looked at the piece of carrot cake, probably from the same slab that Janet had baked for Nell Colley. She swallowed. ‘I think we’ll leave you in peace.’
They walked in silence to the car. Dahl turned back towards the house. ‘Worth following up, do you think? Finding out who the visitor was.’
Connie started the engine. ‘I think we need to do at least that. There is something odd about the fact we’ve not found any evidence of the book she was writing.’ There it was again, the tug of disquiet. ‘I wonder why she was writing a memoir.’
‘The dark secrets of Bampton perhaps. You think it’s important?’
‘I’m not sure. Perhaps it’s connected to the funeral notice. Do you know what? I’m glad Matthews put the file back on my chair this morning.’
12
‘Are you Mina?’
Mina wished she’d had a chance to get back to the boat and give herself a wash. Two hours of backbreaking weeding before lunch, interrupted by Emily who had brought her a sandwich perhaps to make up for the meagre wages. Emily hadn’t been inclined to talk but had again given Mina a puzzled look before retreating behind the bar. Mina lost track of the time in the afternoon and had been forced to rush, throwing her tools in the back of the van and taking the cash Emily handed to her in an envelope.
St Bertram’s had been built in the eighties to replace the old cottage hospital that had been deemed no longer fit for purpose. Victorian buildings were out of fashion, modern constructions of glass and concrete were in. The architects, however, had made an attempt to integrate the hospital into the Peak landscape. The building was clad in grey stone and they’d named the place after a local saint who had built his hermitage in nearby Ilam. Or that’s what people said. Oral tradition was alive and strong in Derbyshire and the name, at least, had found favour. The hospital itself, however, was unpopular with the old residents of the town who’d been fond of the intimacy of the former cottage hospital and were uninterested in the statistics that proclaimed it a high performing health hub.
Mina stopped in surprise and looked down at a teenage girl dressed in the unmistakable uniform of Bampton Grammar School. A thin V-neck jumper and pleated skirt emphasised her small frame. From her neck hung a nametag with the blank side showing.
‘Is everything okay?’
The girl checked to see if anyone was listening. An officious-looking woman with a sash across her body was directing an elderly couple towards the lifts. ‘I’m one of the volunteers, a visitor, although St Bertram’s calls us patient support.’
‘You visit the sick, you mean?’
‘Yes. I’m in year nine and we have to do some community work for our Personal and Social Education course.’
Mina’s eyes dropped to the lanyard around the girl’s neck. The schoolgirl blushed and turned the plastic wallet around. The label identified her as Catherine Hallows. Mina took in the thin frame and mousy hair and felt a pang of remorse. You forget what it’s like to be fourteen. Or rather you try to forget. The girl stared at a spot to the left of Mina, unable to make eye contact.
‘I visited your mum a couple of days ago. I remember her from the library when I was small. She used to help me choose my books. Mum didn’t know what was good. She introduced me to Philip Pullman and Harry Potter.’
Mina felt the urge to cry. ‘How did you know who I was?’
‘She said you were a gardener.’ Catherine glanced down at Mina’s earth-spattered dungarees.
‘Right. Are you visiting Mum then?’
‘We get assigned a ward to visit. I was given the ophthalmology department, which is okay but a lot of patients are bandaged up so they can’t see you properly and it makes them shy. So I’ve got time on my hands. I saw your mum being pushed down a corridor in a wheelchair and I followed her back to the ward.’
‘When was this?’
‘Last week. I’ve been going every day but they won’t let me see her today. They say she’s poorly.’
The girl looked distraught and Mina relented. ‘Mum’s taken a turn for the worse. Didn’t they tell you that?’
‘They said she wasn’t up to any visitors apart from family.’ The girl’s thin face was pale, unused to the ravages of the sick room. ‘She talks about you a lot. She showed me the plant with the white flowers.’
‘Cyclamen. It’s a cyclamen.’
‘Is she okay? She’s not—’ Catherine’s age made her tongue-tied. She looked to Mina for help.
‘She’s very poorly.’ Mina turned to move away.
‘I really wanted to see her again. When I visited her, she was very agitated.’
Mina stopped. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Something had really upset her.’
Oh no, thought Mina. Don’t say she mentioned killing someone. ‘Did she say what it was?’
‘She was a bit upset and rambling a bit. She was trying to tell me something. About—’
‘About what?’
‘It was all so disjointed. She said something about she couldn’t believe it. And I said, “Believe what,” but she wouldn’t tell me what.’
‘Anything else?’
Catherine shook her head. ‘She talked a bit about a drowned village. I didn’t know what she meant. Then I had to run to get help because she kept saying “cutting” and I thought she was in pain. Maybe something was cutting into her.’
‘Cutting?’
‘That’s what she said. Then I remembered that you’re a gardener. Maybe she was talking about plants.’
Mina considered the word. Cutting? Why would Hilary be interested in a cutting? It must be part of her delirium. Mina took a step back. ‘Look, let me go to her. I’m sorry she’s too sick for you to visit her for the moment.’
Mina left Catherine in the lobby. As the din reverberated around her, she looked back at the girl, who was standing very still, following her progress. Mina carried on to the lift at the back of the hospital and waited for it to descend to the ground floor. The oncology department had initially been so difficult to find, tucked in a corner at the back of the hospital, but now Mina could have got there in her sleep. She buzzed the ward for admittance and a male nurse behind a computer let her in without looking up.
‘Is everything all right with my mum, Hilary Kemp? Any improvement?’
‘I’ve just popped in to see her and check her drip. She’s asleep.’
‘How’s her pain?’
‘We’re monitoring it. We have to be careful how much morphine we give her but she appears to be relatively pain free at the moment.’
Mina went into her mother’s room and checked the cyclamen. She poured a dash of water from her drinking bottle onto the dry earth and put her rucksack down by her mother’s bed. Hilary’s breathing was steady but shallow. There was a small heap on the bedside cabinet, pushed to one side and nearly crushed under the weight of a magazine. Mina leant forward to pick it up. It was a rough bouquet of flowers, mainly red campion,
picked from one of the hedgerows. It was a nice gesture, left perhaps by Catherine.
Her mother’s eyelids flickered and she opened her eyes in consternation.
‘It’s me.’
Her mother tried to smile. ‘Mina.’
‘How are you feeling?’
‘Tired.’
‘You look a bit better than yesterday. Do you want me to put the television on?’
Hilary shook her head. ‘There was a girl—’
‘That’ll have been a visitor called Catherine. That was the other day, though. She hasn’t seen you today.’
Hilary frowned in concentration, trying to remember.
‘She knows you from the library,’ prompted Mina.
Her mother smiled slightly. ‘Difficult to see her. The sun was in my eyes.’
Mina looked to the blinds, which were drawn. ‘I think she must have left these for you. They’re flowers.’
She placed the loose stems into her mother’s frail hand. Hilary looked at them for a moment. ‘Nice.’
‘Mum. Do you remember what you said?’
‘I don’t remember much. I remember feeling hot.’ This was a calmer Hilary, less agitated than Mina had seen her the day before.
‘You asked me about someone called Valerie.’
The panic returned to Hilary’s eyes. ‘Valerie? Valerie who?’
‘Mum! Don’t you remember? We had a conversation about a Valerie. You were at school together. You thought you saw her at the hospital.’
‘Valerie? But Valerie’s dead.’
Bloody hell, thought Mina. ‘You thought you saw her at the hospital,’ she repeated.
Hilary shook her head. Resolute. ‘Valerie’s dead.’
‘That’s okay, Mum. Your temperature was really high. Don’t worry.’ She thought of her stained dungarees and the hard morning’s toil. All for nothing. Cold Eaton an unnecessary job she needn’t have taken. ‘How did she die?’ The question was clearly unwelcome. This afternoon, however, Hilary wasn’t wracked with guilt, just tired and bad tempered.
‘I don’t know. I heard from your Grumps that she’d died. It was years ago. We’d lost touch by then. Never mind about that.’