Mr Wilmott Gets Old School

by Katherine Hayton

  “You’ve got your phone, don’t you?” Emily turned to Gregory. “Can you give the police station a call?”

  “Do I use the emergency number?” Gregory looked worried as he fiddled the device out of his jeans’ pocket.

  “I wouldn’t.” Emily’s eyes glanced back toward the entrance and she gave a shudder. “The bones look to have been buried for quite a while. Use the local number, that’ll be best. Sergeant Winchester should be in the office.”

  While he followed her instructions, Emily walked closer to the demolished patio. She caught a flash of white and light brown in the corner of the hole, then turned to the man still holding a piece of concrete in his hand. “Did you find the burst pipe yet?”

  The man shook his head, his eyes returning to the dark pit in the ground while his free hand tugged at the collar of his hi-vis jacket. “I know where the leak is, but I’ll need more time to get to it.” He waved a hand at the excavation. “It’s under that.”

  “Then I guess your work is done here for the day,” Emily said, touching him lightly on the arm when the man’s eyes wandered away. “I can’t imagine the police will allow you to continue.”

  He nodded, glancing over at Allain with a frown, then swallowing hard while his eyes crept back to the grave. “I’ll pack up the tools, then, and get them out of everybody’s way.”

  “The sergeant’s on his way,” Gregory said, slipping his phone back into the front pocket. “He said not to touch anything in the meantime.”

  With one hand on the jackhammer, the worker stopped and sighed. “I guess that means me, too,” he said in a resigned tone.

  “It means all of us,” Emily said, her voice firm. “I think it’s time we headed back inside.”

  While the police examined the scene, Emily hovered indoors, anxiously checking on their progress through the window. Although there was a relatively large group gathered in the reception area, they were all quiet. Even the dogs picked up on the tone, staying by their mistress’s sides with their mouths shut.

  “Okay,” Sergeant Winchester said as he walked through the entrance doors. “Which one of you is in charge of this place?”

  Allain stepped forward, his formerly haughty expression now coated with a thin layer of fear. “That’ll be me, officer. Can you tell me what’s happening out there?”

  “What’s happening is that there’s a dead body and we need to find out the identity. Do you have any patients missing?”

  “Residents,” Allain said with a frown. “This is a retirement community, not a hospital.”

  “You do have hospital facilities in here, don’t you?”

  The director nodded. “For some of our residents it’s a necessity but for most of our elderly guests, this is their home.”

  The sergeant nodded, his gaze flicking back over his shoulder as a young constable appeared. “Did you secure the area?”

  Emily recognised the younger man as one who’d laughed at her in a prior encounter. She’d tried to report a murder a few months before and he’d thought it a great joke. PC Perry, if she wasn’t mistaken. The memory of the event still rankled.

  The officer nodded. “It’s all taped off and we’re just waiting for the pathologist to finish up examining the bones.”

  “And?” The sergeant raised his eyebrows.

  PC Perry stared back at him, his lips twisting. “Sorry?”

  “And why did you come in to tell me this? Don’t you think your time would be better spent out there, searching for evidence?”

  The young man stared at the floor, a crimson stain rising above the collar of his light-blue shirt. “The pathologist asked me to collect the original bone.”

  “Go, fetch,” Emily said under her breath, earning a chuckle from Gregory.

  “It’s behind the reception desk,” Allain said, moving over to the counter. “We thought it best to move it out of the way. We don’t want any more of our residents to know about this than already do.”

  The sergeant nodded at Perry, who scuttled around behind the desk.

  “You’ll have a hard time keeping a lid on this,” Winchester said to the director. “It’s not something we’ll be able to clear up in an afternoon.”

  “Sure, sure,” Allain said, most of his attention fixed on PC Perry as he lifted the bone between two fingers.

  “Gloves!” the sergeant barked, and the younger man dropped the bone, the stain now moving from his collar up to his cheeks.

  “I’ll need to have a word with the worker digging up the concrete,” the sergeant said, his gaze immediately going to the hi-vis vested worker. “If you’re free now, we can do this here. Otherwise, I’ll take your name and address and we can meet you down at the station.”

  “Here, please,” the worker hurried to answer. “The sooner the better. I’ve got jobs piling up while we’re just standing here.”

  “Fine.” Sergeant Winchester returned his stern gaze to Allain. “Do you have a suitable room I can commandeer for the remainder of the afternoon?”

  As soon as Emily, Gregory, and Agnes had given their names to the police, they decamped from the reception area back to Agnes’s small room. “We should probably get back to work,” Emily said, then sat down on the edge of the bed.

  “You can see everything from here,” Gregory said with an approving note in his voice. He walked to the window and drew the drapes back even further as he cast his gaze around the garden. “Oh!”

  “See a bit much, did you?” Agnes asked as the young man took a sudden step back.

  “There was a skull.” Gregory crossed his arms over his chest. “Perhaps I don’t need to watch as much as I thought I did.”

  The two women laughed and nodded. “Although,” Agnes added, “I daresay it’ll be the most entertaining thing to happen around here.”

  “There’s the bingo every Friday, remember?” Emily said with a grin. “And I’m not sure this counts as entertainment.”

  “I just hope it’s not one of the previous residents.” Agnes pulled a face. “Could you imagine if it turns out to be somebody from here?”

  “I don’t know who else it would be.” Gregory’s brow furrowed. “It doesn’t seem a likely place for someone to choose as a burial site if the body isn’t from this place.”

  “Not if it’s recent,” Emily agreed. “For body disposal, being in full view of an entire rest home doesn’t strike me as a good choice. The bones might be older than this place though.”

  “They’d have to be really old in that case,” Agnes said. “I think this building has been here for a long time, at least dating back to the forties. Before it was a retirement village, it was a school or an orphanage—something like that—and dad said they used it for recuperating soldiers after the war.”

  Emily leaned her head to one side as she thought. “If it was a hospital after the war, then it might have a burial ground on site for those soldiers who didn’t make it. I think a lot of older places had that sort of arrangement. Especially if they didn’t have family nearby.”

  Gregory frowned and his gaze flickered to the window again before he forced his eyes to the floor. “I don’t know much about bones and skeletons, but it didn’t strike me as old as all that.”

  Unfortunately, Emily knew what he meant. It mightn’t have been a full arm or leg that Conker had dragged up to the door but, for a skeleton, it had been chunky.

  As the thought entered her head, her stomach protested. “How about we talk about something pleasant instead? Do you think the director will change his mind about Maude?”

  “I think he’s forgotten all about her,” Agnes said with a twinkle in her eye. “If you could fetch me the box of her supplies that I put into the boot, I might move her in here while his attention is distracted elsewhere.”

  “It’s certainly worth a shot,” Emily agreed, giving Gregory a nod to go and retrieve Maude’s belongings. She felt a sense of satisfaction that she didn’t have to explain a new arrival to Peanut. Her ghost cat might not hav
e a lot of physical presence, but he still acted as though her entire house belonged to him.

  “Sergeant Winchester asked for you to go see him,” Gregory said on his return. Maude jumped up on his leg, sniffing with excited determination at the base of the box.

  “Me?” Emily stood up from the bed, her heart beginning to thump harder. “What for?”

  “He asked me a couple of questions about when the dogs were running about. I imagine it’s more of the same.”

  “Don’t worry,” Agnes said with a cheeky smile. “If you give us the signal, we’ll rescue you from the po-po.”

  Gregory burst out laughing, his eyes widening in surprise. “You’re down with the lingo, huh? What else do you old folks talk about on the street?”

  Emily straightened her blouse as she walked to the reception area. The day’s events jumbled in her mind and her tongue felt swollen. Her encounters with police had been few and far between. She was more familiar with the officers in her favourite TV shows than the few she’d met in real life.

  Margaret raised her eyebrows, leaning her body on the counter as Emily approached.

  “I was told the sergeant wanted to see me?”

  “He’s in Allain’s office,” Margaret said, pointing to a door off the main room. “Don’t worry about the door being shut, there’s no one else in there.”

  “Have you talked to him?”

  “Yeah.” She pursed her lips and scanned Emily. “Don’t worry about it. He’ll just ask some easy questions.”

  Emily nodded and walked over, rapping a knuckle on the door and waiting for a response before she entered.

  “Close the door behind you,” Sergeant Winchester said with a grim expression. “We don’t need everyone around here listening in.”

  “I don’t really know very much about—”

  Emily broke off as the sergeant raised his hand. “How about you let me ask the questions I need answers to before you say anything else?”

  “Fair enough.” Emily sat in the chair opposite him and crossed her hands in her lap. The image of PCs Perry and Mitchell laughing leapt into her mind and she blinked them away.

  “What time did you arrive at Stoneybrook?”

  “I’m not sure.” Emily glanced at her watch, an old habit but useless now because she couldn’t read the digital numbers. “I’ve got a talking watch, but I set it to silent because we were helping Ms Myrtle to pack and move today.”

  “Just an approximation is fine.”

  Emily shrugged, as upset by her own nervousness as she was anxious about giving the right answer to the question. “Maybe two? It was after lunch, that’s all I’m sure about.”

  “And why are you here?”

  “As I said, we’re here to help Agnes with her move.”

  The sergeant nodded and flicked back a few pages in his notebook. “When I spoke to Suzanne, she said you were the one handling the bulldog.”

  “Who?”

  “Suzanne Wilberforce. The owner of the dog that found the bones.”

  Emily swallowed hard and nodded. “I bumped into her in the corridor. We brought Maude—the English bulldog—along with us because the family meant to be adopting her pulled out at the last minute. She was fine at first, then ran out of the room. I presume because she heard or smelled the other dog.”

  “They were outside together?”

  “They both ran outside, but Maude didn’t go near the—” Emily broke off, frowning.

  “The crime scene?” Sergeant Winchester prompted.

  “Yeah, there. She stopped just outside the entrance, by the large oak near the driveway. The German Shepherd kept running and when I went outside, he was barking at the jackhammer guy.”

  “So, you didn’t get close to the remains?”

  Emily nodded, then shrugged. “I did go outside again when Mrs Wilberforce explained her dog’s old job. We didn’t stand near the grave though. Not really. We just talked to the machine operator, then, when Gregory said you’d told everyone to leave stuff where it was, we came back inside.”

  The sergeant nodded and closed his notebook, folding his hands together on top. “Did you see anything else?”

  Emily stared hard at the edge of the desk. “Just the broken-up concrete and a hole. Nothing really.”

  “No. I didn’t mean that, I meant”—the sergeant cleared his throat—“did you notice something in particular.”

  When she just stared at him, not understanding the distinction, he sighed and ran a hand through his hair.

  “Did you see any ghosts?”

  Emily clamped her lips into a thin line. After the reception she’d received from the police the last time she mentioned spirits, this wasn’t a question she’d expected to hear. She eyed the sergeant through narrowed lids, trying to spot the signs he was laughing at her expense.

  Apart from shifting in his seat, the sergeant appeared normal.

  “I didn’t see anything, ghost or otherwise,” Emily repeated. “If there’s nothing more, I’d quite like to leave now. I still have things to pack up from Ms Myrtle’s house to take back to work.”

  “Of course.” Winchester nodded with such enthusiasm his fringe fell forward over his eyes. “You can go. Please let Ms Myrtle know that I’d like to see her next.”

  Emily exhaled slowly as she walked out of the office, closing the door firmly behind her. She gave a nod to Margaret, then shuffled down the corridor. After giving chase to Maude earlier, her hips and knees had stiffened.

  “No handcuffs,” she announced with a forced smile, walking back into Agnes’s room. “But they want to see you next. We’ll hang out with Maude until you get back, then the sergeant said we’re free to go.”

  Agnes’s interview took even less time than Emily’s, and soon she and Gregory were outside, getting into the car.

  Emily couldn’t resist one more peek at the gravesite, but between the police officers, and the flapping yellow warning tape, she could see even less than before.

  The one thing she certainly didn’t see was a ghost.

  Chapter Four

  When Emily finished doing her leg stretches that night, she settled down onto the sofa with a large, grilled cheese sandwich and pulled her laptop close. Peanut crawled back and forth over her a few times, then curled up in her lap.

  The stretching exercises were meant to keep her limbs limber, though, with each passing month, she lost flexibility. The neuropathy caused by her car accident meant her nerves didn’t pass messages effectively to her muscles. On top of the illiteracy caused by damage to her language processing centre, the news had come as a nasty blow.

  After visiting the facility she would most likely end up living within soon, Emily hadn’t come away with a great impression. Still, it wouldn’t be every day a corpse was dug up on their land. Once she deducted the anxiety that discovery had caused, the retirement home didn’t seem quite as bad.

  In between bites of her sandwich—with a full diced tomato added in to ease some of her guilt at the treat—Emily spoke a command for the computer to search the history of the Stoneybrook Acres property.

  The first few pages were full of ads for the facility, or infomercial dumps meant to resemble first-hand accounts. Once she scrolled past those items, dismissing them as soon as the computer read out the headlines, Emily uncovered some meatier stuff.

  As Agnes had suggested, the original building dated back to the thirties. A guest house set to accommodate visitors to Pinetar Beach, its initial construction held a lot more in common with a military barracks than an upscale resort.

  When the war came, and the tourists departed, the building had converted into a training facility, requisitioned by the ministry of defence. The conversion into a respite hospital for wounded soldiers came later when the facilities in nearby Christchurch overflowed.

  Emily smiled at one of the pictures from the era. A room—maybe even the same one housing Agnes—held two cots, side by side. Grinning soldiers in striped pyjamas waved to the camer
a. One had their leg in a sling while the other was missing most of one arm.

  The injuries didn’t phase them, not when it got them away from the front line.

  Later photographs showed the minimal changes made to turn the complex into a reform school. Children, some as young as ten, were lined up in a photograph taken before the main entrance. They were boarded at the facility—males at the front of the building and females at the back. Too naughty to stay with their parents but not criminal enough to qualify for a true borstal.

  The sight of children so young being forced into a school away from their parents and siblings filled Emily with sorrow. Some ‘crimes’ listed in the archives were so petty she couldn’t imagine why it had upset folks enough to go to such extremes.

  One child, aged twelve, had been boarded at the school for four years after stealing a bag of lolly mix from a local dairy. Another had thrown stones at cars passing on the main road in front of his house.

  Naughty deeds, sure, but understandable. To receive something akin to a prison sentence for the mischief was the true crime in Emily’s eyes.

  Still, generations passed and what was considered acceptable changed along with the times. Perhaps, if she’d been raised in the same era, Emily would be horrified now that children could get away with so much.

  In the seventies, the complex had changed hands again. This time, it altered into a retirement home with hospital facilities. Over the years since, as the general population aged while also living longer, Stoneybrook had expanded out in all directions.

  Emily listened to the details of the current business. It held eighteen land parcels around the town of Pinetar, in addition to the main facility. They were separated by existing housing or businesses, her home one of the sites.

  She supposed that as the existing properties came up for sale, the retirement facility would bid for the land until they could join the dots and expand. Until then, it was a safe purchase. House and land prices in New Zealand continued to be an investment almost guaranteed a good return.