by Cathy Ace
‘Do you think she didn’t tell you about her plans because she knew you’d try to stop her?’ asked Carol gently.
‘Aye, I’ve no doubt that crossed her mind,’ replied Mavis now feeling more in control of her emotions. ‘And she’d have been quite correct in that assumption. She’s been hatching this plan for a while, it seems.’
‘I’m sure she’ll be fine, Mavis, and she’s gathering some useful insights, really she is.’
‘So how’s she doing that then?’
‘She’s using a smart phone I gave her for the purpose.’
‘So you’re in this up to your neck too?’
‘Honestly, I thought this was an agreed plan, on behalf of the agency. That’s what she said.’
‘You didnae think to consult with me about it?’
‘Well, with respect, Mavis, you don’t run the agency – we’re all partners, and I … well, I took Althea at her word.’ Carol paused. ‘You’re right, I should have spoken to you about it. I spoke to Annie about it and she thought it was a great idea.’
‘So I’m the only one who didnae know?’
‘No, I haven’t discussed it with Christine. There wasn’t any point.’
Mavis sighed. ‘Aye, well, I’m going to run over to the place and fetch her back right now.’
‘But why? She’s already managed to get conversations going that have pointed me in the direction of which doctor to check out in the area – the one they use there – and she’s also had a very interesting chat with an extremely elderly lady named Bronwyn who’s going through the process of deciding whether to leave all she owns to a cat sanctuary in Chester, or to the Cruickshanks. It’s all good stuff.’
Mavis felt the wind go out of her sails. ‘And this is all legal? All this recording?’
‘Yes, don’t panic. She discussed her use of recording equipment with the owners when she got there, and it turns out they positively encourage it. They often have people visiting and wanting to film the place, it seems, and all the residents have signed the appropriate waivers. Althea’s only recording when she’s in public places. The residents’ rooms are off limits, she knows that, but those areas where she, a paying guest, is allowed to be, we’re good there.’
Mavis gave the matter some thought. ‘Ach, well if the owners said it was all well and good to film, I cannae think they have anything to hide. And Althea tells everyone she’s recording what they say?’
‘She does. She’s an elderly lady trying to decide if she wants to spend the rest of her good years there. She’s explained she has some memory issues, and that’s why she’s recording everything. It’s all above-board. Don’t panic. We have the owners’ permission, she gets the residents’ permissions.’
‘Aye … well …’
‘If you’re worried about her, and you insist upon seeing her to put your mind to rest, at least don’t blow her cover.’
Mavis walked into the sitting room and sat on the sofa. ‘Aye, mebbe you’re right.’
‘I know I am. You could always pretend to be checking the place over on behalf of a relative. If you’re going to go there at least let me know so I can prepare her to see your face, and play along.’
‘I’ll think about it. Would you at least catch up with her feed and let me know she’s alright now?’
‘Of course.’
‘Bye then.’
‘Bye, Mavis.’
Mavis pushed her telephone into her pocket and stared out of the window. She didn’t see the flowers in the border nodding in the breeze, she didn’t notice Cook picking herbs, she didn’t even spot the birds in the clear blue sky. All she saw was the reflection of a woman in her sixties with a worried face.
TWENTY-SIX
Carol ended her conversation with Mavis just as David brought Albert downstairs after his nap.
‘What’s up? You don’t look too happy,’ he said.
‘What a very perceptive husband I have,’ said Carol, taking her baby son into her arms. ‘How’s my boy? Oh, look, he’s still all pink with sleep.’
‘Edible cheeks,’ said David then looked concerned, ‘does that sound weird? I mean, maybe it’s a bit over the top, but you know what I mean.’
‘I know exactly what you mean,’ said the new mother, kissing her infant son’s chubby cheek with great tenderness. ‘Now, can you take him while I give my attention to this bit of work?’
‘Yep. Got nothing on until Monday – well, our Sunday, because the client is in Japan. I’m going to have to work through the night, so I’ll be around for him if he needs anyone and you can sleep.’
‘Won’t they mind you breaking off work to see to your son?’
‘The CEO has a nine-month-old, and she’ll be fine with me taking responsibility for Albert.’
‘A female Japanese CEO?’ Carol was genuinely surprised.
‘No, she’s American. Her company is working in partnership with a Japanese outfit. Though your tone suggests you’d understand they aren’t finding the relationship an easy one. Very complex view of the role of women in society the Japanese have.’
Carol sighed. ‘Every country and culture has a complex view of how women should, and do, fit into society. And it’s never the same across all strata of society. Trust me, I know what I’m talking about.’
David took Albert, kissed his wife, and Carol turned her attention to the feed coming from Althea’s camera. Unlike the output she’d watched from the bookshop where the camera had been static and the data had rolled in on a continuous basis, Althea was turning her camera on and off, and it was sometimes lying on its side on a table while in use. Carol knew she’d shown the dowager how to set the camera upright, but it looked as though she’d forgotten that part of her equipment training. At least she was turning it on and off correctly, which was encouraging.
The other big difference was that this camera was recording sound as well as vision, and the content of the conversations was what mattered, so Carol had to listen as well as watch. She was pleased she could plug in her earphones and listen intently, rather than being concerned about every little noise Albert was making – his grunts, squeals and bubble-blowing were a complex pattern of communication cues she was learning, but they needed more attention than she could give them while listening to a constantly changing parade of elderly ladies all chatting merrily to a woman they thought was Gladys Pugh from Tenby, who was looking for somewhere to spend her final active years.
As conversations repeated themselves – Where are you from? Do you know so-and-so? Have you ever been to wherever? What did your husband do? Any children? – Carol tried her best to not glaze over. It became increasingly clear Mountain Ash House was filled with widows whose children were either non-existent (rare), living too far away to visit often (more likely), or happy to ignore them (too frequent). There was one man living there among eleven women, which meant he was kept busy when it came to being courteous and doing ‘manly’ things like being a dance partner.
After an hour Carol had to pause the recording, because she felt an overwhelming wave of sadness, and panic, creep up on her. Statistics told her men died younger than women, and she and David were the same age. What would she do with maybe ten, or fifteen years at the end of her life without him? Would Albert grow up to be a son who emigrated to Australia, or would he live at home with his poor, widowed old mam until she popped her clogs?
She needed tea, and felt better after she’d pootled about in the kitchen brewing a pot, seeing her son and husband young, vibrant and noisily happy. Returning to the land of virtual octogenarians, she felt happier knowing she had more than forty years to get used to the idea of spending her days the way these elderly people seemed to be doing – reading, talking, watching TV and taking gentle, walkers-assisted strolls in the summer sunshine.
As the procession of elderly women passed before her eyes she thought how odd it was they all seemed to have become almost de-gendered; open-collared shirts, short or close-cropped gray hair, the odd whisker or
two and not a scrap of make-up to be seen. She was interested to see Maisie, Megs and Mable – about whom Christine had spoken. She also met a Betty, a June and a Shirley. Coincidentally, the male resident’s name was Bert, and she tried hard to imagine her bouncing Albert in eighty years’ time, but couldn’t manage it.
Bert was a jolly chap, who was happy to talk to Althea/Gladys about the way the place was run. Carol got the impression he felt he could have done a much better job of maintaining the Victorian property, and he spoke at length about the value of properly rubbing down paintwork on wooden sash-windows before repainting them. One thing she did glean from his insights was that the fabric of the house was in need of attention; the roof was losing slates, the damp was making inroads at the rear of the property and he felt the Cruickshanks were about to find themselves needing to make some serious upgrades in terms of the heating system, which apparently hadn’t performed well during the past winter.
‘So, they need some cash, and quite a bit of it,’ said Carol – aloud, as it turned out.
David stuck his head through the door. ‘Need me?’
Carol smiled and pulled out her earplugs. ‘No, just talking to myself. But now you’re here – any idea what it would cost to put a new slate roof on this place?’
Her husband looked bemused. ‘What – because I’m a bloke I know that sort of thing? No idea, but I could do a bit of online research, if you like. Why, do we need one?’
‘You’re right – silly of me to think you’d know. And don’t bother, I can look it up too – besides, we don’t need one, but I think the old folks’ home we’re investigating might. I’m just trying to get an idea of how much it would cost to keep a place like that up to snuff. With what the residents are telling Althea, it’s not cheap to live there, and their expectations of standards and comfort levels are understandably high.’
‘OK.’ David left, calling, ‘Enjoy that, then.’
A conversation with a woman who’d been pals with the woman named Daisy who’d lived there was next up. Althea and she had lunched together, so Carol took a moment to text Mavis to assure her the dowager was in perfect health and spirits just a couple of hours earlier. This example of octogenarian enthusiasm was named Iris, and it seemed she and Daisy had initially gravitated toward each other because of the floral motif in their names. It seemed Iris had known Daisy quite well, so Carol listened intently. She smiled as she realized Althea had also cottoned on that this might be her most important conversation to date and attempted to ask questions that might elicit revelations about possible coercion.
Not being able to see Althea, Carol had to mentally refer to the image she had of the dowager in her disguise; she’d shown off her reflection in a mirror in the hallway of the old folks’ home and it had surprised Carol – Althea looked older, shorter and more wizened, wearing a blonde wig, beige clothing and vivid fuschia pink lipstick. Althea was also affecting a thick Welsh accent as Gladys, which Carol admired; truth be told, Althea sounded very much like Carol’s own mother.
‘So what was Daisy like when you knew her?’ asked Althea/Gladys of Iris. ‘If it’s the same one, I lost touch with her back in the 1970s. Did she age well?’
‘Lot of aches and pains, like all of us, but nothing out of the ordinary,’ replied Iris, who Carol guessed – by her accent – came from somewhere in north Wales, rather than from the south; the nasal way she pronounced her words gave it away. ‘Pretty fit for a woman who’d broken her neck.’
‘She’d broken her neck?’ Althea sounded genuinely surprised. ‘I never knew about that. Came off a horse, I suppose?’ Carol saw Iris nod. ‘Lucky she could walk at all then.’ Iris shrugged. ‘No horses round this way. She’d have missed her horses. Did she leave everything to some horse sanctuary when she died?’
‘Left it to this lot. “Us,” as they like to say.’ Carol inferred a non-verbal cue from Althea which encouraged Iris to say more. ‘See, when we goes – us lot, the ones with no one … and it would be the same for you, I suppose, you being on your own now like you said earlier – well they give us a chance to talk it all through with a solicitor. Nice chap, he is. William Williams. Young chap – well, they all are nowadays, aren’t they? Anyway, he’s got these lovely printed booklets that go through all your options. It’s worth doing. If you don’t leave a proper will, with everything done right, it all goes to the state, see?’
‘So I understand,’ said Althea. Carol picked up a whiff of the annoyance she’d seen Althea display at the dinner at the hall, but could tell the dowager was playing her part to the hilt. ‘Of course I’ve thought about it, and there are some people – you know, the ones who’ve meant something over the years – that I’d like to leave a little bit to, but, other than that, it’s so difficult to know what to do. See, I’d have thought of horses for Daisy, because she was never as happy as when she was riding. But maybe that faded over the years. I’ve always had dogs, myself. I was thinking of the RSPCA.’
Iris nodded. ‘A lot of them do leave money to places like that. If we leave it to this place it’s nice to think of people coming after us here. It’s a lovely spot, and there’s always one person here who’s paid for by the trust fund. Someone who’d be in a horrible council place otherwise.’
Carol was delighted that Althea pounced on that lead. ‘Who’s here like that now then?’
Iris leaned in. ‘Well, no one will admit to it, of course, but I think it’s Maisie. Husband died about twenty years ago and he used to work down the pits. Can’t have had a lot back then, and even less nowadays, I’d have thought. Talks about her son in Australia all the time. He’s also only a miner of sorts, though.’
‘If her husband died of pneumoconiosis she might have got a lump-sum payout,’ said Gladys. ‘Terrible thing, black lung, and it gets so many men who’ve spent their lives underground.’
‘It does,’ said Iris sadly. ‘I’m from the north originally, Rhyl, but I lived in Merthyr for decades – moved there when I was young, we did – and I knew too many men gone long before their time that way. A lot of my school friends grew up without dads because of it, then married men who worked down the same pits that killed their fathers. But there, it wasn’t as though they had much choice. Different for you though, being from Tenby.’
‘We were very lucky. Mam and Dad had a shop. Nice clean living.’
Carol waited while a silence passed. ‘So they use the money the residents leave them to help others, do they?’ asked Gladys; Carol was impressed by her ability to not lose focus.
‘That’s what the solicitor said, and he’s got to tell the truth, hasn’t he? Funnily enough, he’s coming this afternoon to have a meeting with old Bronwyn – her who’s talking about giving it all to the cats. You might want to get one of his brochures. That would tell you all about it. Oh look, there’s our afters coming around now. Spotted Dick today, it is. Fancy a bit?’
At that point Althea had stopped recording and Carol could tell that was all there was to watch. She wondered if she would get a feed coming in from the meeting with the very helpful, if young, William Williams, and decided to do some enquiring into the man’s background while she waited.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Annie was pleased to hear from Mavis, and agreed she’d get herself ready to be able to accompany her colleague on a visit to the antiques market in Brecon to try to establish if the Cruickshanks were selling off items of value they’d been left by their late-residents. She felt she was, at last, getting involved in the case the rest of her colleagues were working on. She was also relieved she wouldn’t have to pretend to be someone else for a while; she enjoyed undercover work, but didn’t mind the idea of being herself for a while. She rang Tudor’s mobile phone to see if he’d be able to look after Gertie for the rest of the day.
A couple of minutes later, Tudor knocked at her tiny front door. ‘I thought I’d pick Gertie up here,’ said the more-florid-than-usual publican. ‘I’ll walk her over to my place, grab Rosie and we can go once
around the green for ablutive purposes. Got time to join us?’
Annie checked her watch. ‘Yeah. Mave’s not due for half an hour. You got here quick.’ She bent down and dragged Gertie out. Once the puppy smelled Tudor, she became highly excited; Annie was well aware that, in Gertie’s little dog brain, Tudor’s smell meant she’d be seeing her litter-mate Rosie shortly thereafter. She was also pretty sure it told Gertie she was about to get more treats than usual, too – though Tudor always vehemently denied spoiling the pups.
They arrived at the pub, collected Rosie, allowed the yellow Lab to greet the black one, and all four of them continued on their way, both dogs’ noses following trails of who-knew-what smells in all directions as they crossed the green. Gertie and Rosie’s leads were both fully extended on their little spools, and Annie and Tudor allowed them to play as they wanted, within reason. ‘No throwing balls, no time,’ Tudor had said, and Annie had agreed.
‘I’m off to Brecon with Mavis to an antiques market. On the lookout for anything for the pub, are you?’
‘No, I’ve got enough decorative items for now, thanks. Have you found out anything else – about anything else? I’m a bit at a loss as to what you’re working on at the moment. Not still these books, is it? Looking at Gertie there with her nose down, that’s how I think of you and your detecting, you know – always sniffing out a lead. You love it, don’t you?’
‘I do,’ said Annie glowing, and took the chance to bring him up to speed. ‘So if we can make that final connection between this Daisy woman, and the people who run the old folks’ home, we should be done and dusted, and the Jenkins family will be quids-in.’
‘Alright for some,’ said Tudor sounding less than happy. ‘A bit like winning the lottery for them, if those books turn out to really be theirs.’
‘Wish it was you?’
‘You kidding? Of course I do.’
‘What would you do if you won it? The lottery.’
Tudor smiled. ‘Buy a bigger pub and have more staff to run it. I like having a pub, but I could do with working in it a bit less. You?’