The coat was not there now. At the time Stella had supposed it belonged to Mr Ramsay; his wife seemed unable to accept he was dead and like she did the rest of her family behaved as if he had just left the room.
‘Did the old lady seem anxious or unwell?’
‘She was always anxious; no worse than usual.’ Stella reacted to the term ‘old lady’; it did not describe Mrs Ramsay.
‘OK.’ He pulled out a notebook that was bagging his jacket and drew a pen from his breast pocket. ‘Why was she anxious?’
Decades after she had left Terry, Suzanne Darnell still complained about how he never dressed for an occasion and the careless way he treated his clothes, although her own were neglected, with several blouses on one hanger and trousers, or slacks as she called them, bundled up with no regard for the crease.
‘Oh, no reason.’ Stella did not need the police asking awkward questions. ‘Older people get anxious, and depressed, it goes with the territory.’ She tossed generalizations at him like birdseed. ‘She had to know when I was coming so she could be ready, her routine kept her going. Nothing odd about that.’ Except Mrs Ramsay was not like the other pensioners Stella worked for. Stella pictured the last list dashed down in the bold and rounded script, her handwriting was not shaky or tiny; Mrs Ramsay had never seemed old.
She sniffed tobacco smoke, someone had smoked a cigarette; she wanted to order them all to leave.
Despite being an ex-smoker, Terry too hated the smell of cigarettes.
She returned to the open doorway and looked out at a splaying tree in the Square. The trunk was so thick that two people could not hold hands around its circumference. Wind in the night had stripped the last of the leaves, leaving branches stark and uncompromising against the sky. She could not remember what time of year the lawns would be dotted with conkers, shining as if soaked in oil; unless kids had got in before the park opened and taken them all.
‘Put your jeans on over your pyjamas. Here, wear my jumper, that’s it. Do up your shoelaces good and tight. We won’t talk until we’re clear of the house, keep close by me.’ She cocked her head so he could whisper into her ear. It felt soft against his lips.
If she was afraid she did not let on, clutching his hand she scurried beside him to the Square. It was bitter; he was glad he had made her wrap up. He climbed the gate first then made her fit her boot on to the foothold between the bars. He had forgotten her mittens and worried about the icy metal. He nearly shouted with joy when she hauled herself up like a boy, rolling over the top and scrabbling with her boots for the horizontal bar. She peered into the pitch black beyond the torchlight. She was so excited. He knew then that his plan would work.
Until now it had not occurred to Stella that Isabel Ramsay’s disconnected remarks, her fanciful stories, were more than eccentricity. What she had told the detective about her being anxious was true: she had been on edge. When Stella left, the bolts were shot home and she would hear the security chain while she was still on the path. When the water pipes had banged and hooted Mrs Ramsay had said it was the little boy again. Stella remembered that it was the youngest child, Eleanor, whose antics had annoyed her mother, but did not correct her. By the time she was in her van and ready to drive off, Mrs Ramsay would be peeping through a gap in the dining room curtains and Stella would wave. Mrs Ramsay did not move, her face, like a ghost’s in the reflection, indistinguishable from the sky. Stella could not say any of this to the detective.
‘Did the old lady get on with her family?’ D.I. Cashman gave a business-like sniff, his pen poised. ‘I’ve got here: husband was a doctor, dead over ten years, three kids…’
‘I never met her children. We try not to come when there are visitors. Clients prefer their guests to see the effects of our work, not trip over a brush or slip on a wet floor. You’re better off asking them.’
It was not lost on Stella that having access to the house and the trust of the frail owner, she was technically a suspect. She would not be charmed or intimidated: never would she compromise client confidentiality, especially for the police. Cashman had so far treated her as ‘one of our own’ and was putting up with her unhelpful responses because she was his ex-boss’s daughter.
She had not made the connection that Mrs Ramsay had not seen her family for nearly as long as Professor Ramsay had been dead. She did not say that each time she came, she tidied up two water glasses by the bed both emptied: CID were not interested in ghosts.
Nor did she mention Mrs Ramsay’s obsession with finding her children’s dolls’ house and how she had led Stella through the rooms, warning her to a avoid a creaky stair, getting over-excited as she described an ‘incy-wincy’ bedspread she had embroidered for the main bedroom in the dolls’ house. Although she gave the impression that it was Eleanor who was keen to have the house found, Stella guessed from the way she chattered on about the dolls and the ‘exquisite little furniture’ that the house had belonged to Mrs Ramsay herself. Stella’s parents could not have talked so intricately about her toys.
They had searched the children’s bedrooms. Mrs Ramsay had shaken a fist at Eleanor’s gloss-black ceiling and blood-red skirtings, like the rooms of some teenage offspring of Stella’s clients. Stella ignored her fretful hints to extend Clean Slate’s services to painting and decorating; their core business was to clean.
The rooms in the Ramsay’s basement were a holding bay for discarded objects. A cylinder and an upright vacuum, its bag stiff and cracking with age, telephone directories and newspapers from the sixties were heaped on a single-sized bed. There was no dolls’ house.
Like her own bedroom in Barons Court, no room had any toys; perhaps like Stella’s mother, Mrs Ramsay had given them to charity without asking her children’s permission.
Mrs Ramsay had stipulated that Stella must not touch any of this or her daughter would never learn. It did not need a detective to work out that the bedrooms had been abandoned long ago.
Mrs Ramsay’s behaviour had worsened in the last month, she had lost all sense of time. Stella kept this to herself while D.I. Cashman scribbled a concluding point in his notebook with a stab of his pen and went into the dining room.
They were hit by a cloying odour: dead flowers, their stalks limp, were scattered over the tablecloth, a stain spread into the midnight blue material was not unlike diluted blood.
The detective’s mobile phone rang and raising his hand he stepped out to the hall to answer it.
Oxi-clean was the only agent that removed lily stains from fabrics; supermarket stain-devils never worked as well. Isabel Ramsay frequently got stamen stains on her clothes and when Stella told her she had a means of eradicating them she had been rewarded with one of Mrs Ramsay’s rare smiles.
She had put the granules out on her desk in the office to bring with her on her next visit. Jackie had accused Stella of liking to please Mrs Ramsay and she denied it, saying she was merely doing her job.
Mrs Ramsay’s one pleasure was the arrival each Friday of a bouquet of lilies. Stella felt vaguely guilty that she did not buy her own mum flowers; her mother griped that Terry had never given her flowers.
At the 10 a.m. knock, Mrs Ramsay hastened to the door, patting her hair, smoothing her stomach, and would affect surprise and coquettish delight at the sight of the courier, a leather-clad man. He never lingered over her exclamations and kept on his helmet. When he had gone, Mrs Ramsay, her face a hectic flush, spent the next hour arranging the white flowers which for Stella spelled funerals. She would shuffle through to the dining-room table, the vase precarious in her bony hands, stamens staining her blouse, murmuring: ‘Such a sweet thing, so kind, he always was a poppet. My guests adore flowers – men especially, despite what they say.’
Ignoring Stella’s offer of help she would lower the vase, top-heavy with blooms, into the grate. This was the stage in the procedure when she got another cloud of pollen on her clothes and became distracted, her mood dampened. Stella would spend rest of the morning trying to cheer her up b
ecause she did not like to leave Mrs Ramsay feeling low.
The detective was still on the phone. Stella went over to one of the windows, and inspected the fingerprint dust on the pelmets. One morning, while cleaning these, she had overheard Mrs Ramsay on the kitchen phone complaining about the lilies. This had struck her as an unreasonable response to a present, even for Mrs Ramsay who, although exacting, had scrupulous manners. Stella had dropped the cloth when she got it.
Mrs Ramsay had sent the bouquet to herself.
On her final visit, Mrs Ramsay had told Stella that until her forties she had preferred white roses.
‘I grow them in my private garden. No one knows about them. Ah, how those intoxicating blousy blooms become one’s friends!’
‘What made you prefer lilies?’
‘Nothing lasts forever.’ Mrs Ramsay had looked at Stella as if she were a stranger with no business asking her anything and, fluttering her hands, pointed out a smudge of grease under the cooker hood.
‘A load of china was broken and a clock, look at that casing, it’s got to be worth a few bob. I’m thinking she must have tried to defend herself.’ Cashman had finished his call and was bending by the fireplace where Stella saw broken pieces of both Mrs Ramsay’s vases in the grate amongst glass and the smashed carriage clock that used to be on the mantelpiece.
‘Did you leave those flowers on the table?’ Stupid question: the police would have moved nothing.
‘We don’t touch anything. The intruder must have dumped them there.’
Stella smoothed a wrinkle in the cloth without him seeing. The lilies smelled stronger as a through draught picked up the scent. She turned to see who had come in, but there was no one.
‘I think she did this herself.’ Stella saw it all. Mrs Ramsay would have had one of her tempers. She had not grown old gracefully; her increasing frailty frustrated her.
‘Wouldn’t she have it cleared up?’
‘She’d fallen a couple of times so wouldn’t have risked it. She knew I would do it.’
‘Bit of a duchess, was she!’ He sniffed.
‘It’s what she pays me for.’ She did not say that Mrs Ramsay would have left the mess for Lizzie, the live-in help, nor that Mrs Jackson – the next-door neighbour with the stolen cat – had told her that Lizzie dated from her mother-in-law’s era and had been dead for thirty years. It was Lizzie’s name at the top of the lists that Mrs Ramsay left for Stella.
‘The noise may have alerted her. Perhaps the intruder intended it as a weapon,’ Cashman suggested.
‘I’d go for that poker,’ Stella returned. ‘Where did he break in?’
‘Ah, well, that’s where it’s good you’re here. There’s no sign of forced entry. Mrs Ramsay either knew her visitor and was happy to open the door, or – more likely, given it was night – they let themselves in with a key.’
Stella saw where this was going.
‘I don’t employ murderers, Detective Inspector.’
‘Course you don’t, but we know things can get out of hand. Might she have upset one of your people? Who worked here before you took over?’ His face reddened as he ploughed on. ‘Did they have a grudge, or got greedy? There are valuable artefacts here.’
Stupid, then, to destroy them.
‘I got to know how Mrs Ramsay liked things done, sometimes it’s easier than training up staff.’ Stella resorted to sales patter. ‘We tailor our processes according to the customer. I pay my staff properly; they don’t look for ways to make up a shortfall. If I remember rightly the girl washed the floor in the wrong order of tasks then walked on it before it was dry. Easily done, some clients don’t mind, some do. It was ages ago.’
‘We’ll have to talk to her.’
‘By all means, bear in mind it’ll be an overseas call. She returned to Elblag three months ago.’
‘Is that a prison?’ He shot her a quick grin.
‘Small town in Poland, population about sixty thousand.’
‘Terry said you were good.’ Cashman whistled. ‘Look, Stella, you know from your dad we have to be thorough. Could I get you to print off the names of everyone who cleaned here, just to eliminate prints and establish motives?’
‘Doubt you’ll find many prints besides mine. I too am thorough.’ Stella knew it gained nothing to antagonize Martin Cashman; she should be co-operative. She used to tell herself to comply with Terry; if she chatted properly she could leave his house and wouldn’t have to see him until Christmas. Terry would be thinking the same thing.
‘Where did you find her?’ Stella became the policeman’s daughter. Cashman, like Terry, would work from a mix of preconceptions and prejudices.
‘On the bedroom floor, staring at the ceiling like she’d been scared out of her wits. Her phone was off the hook, indicating she went to use it and he got to her first.’
He was resting his foot on the low tubular radiator beneath the sill. Stella stopped herself demanding he remove it; she had cleaned the cast-iron columns last week.
‘See this?’
A hand print deteriorated to a smear as it travelled down the glass. Through the pane she saw the policewoman talking to someone but couldn’t see who it was.
‘She was trying to bang on the glass to attract attention, and her assailant dragged her off.’
Stella had seen such a mark many times.
‘It’s a test. For me.’
‘A what?’
‘If this was here at the end of a session, Mrs Ramsay complained.’ Stella flushed. There had not been a trap like this for weeks and she had presumed that Mrs Ramsay had concluded that with Stella she had met her match. She had begun bringing in glasses of fruit juice halfway through the shift and boiling a kettle for coffee before Stella had finished. Instead of the instant coffee reserved for ‘tradesmen’, Stella was given ground, strong without sugar, just how she liked it.
She should never have rested on her laurels. Page seven of the Clean Slate handbook warned: Do not at any point imagine the client is your friend; it will compromise your work.
Mrs Ramsay had never trusted her.
‘I thought we had it tough.’ Cashman sucked his pen and, at home in this house that was not his, flung wide the connecting doors to the kitchen.
Fixed to the wall beside the broom cupboard was a Bakelite telephone, its fabric cord draped across a 1968 calendar that Mrs Ramsay kept because it celebrated her best decade. It was always open on June, with a picture of a red telephone box in swinging London’s King’s Road. Stella could imagine the young Isabel Ramsay, toting a cigarette as she barked orders down the phone to the florist, the grocer, the Harrods’ van driver, amidst plumes of blue smoke. Even in her seventies, Mrs Ramsay reminded Stella of the pre-assassination Jackie Kennedy. Jackie ‘O’ featured on the calendar’s August page in a black and white chequered jacket and sunglasses.
Mrs Ramsay said this had been a happy family home; soon it would be dismantled and the mementoes of a lifetime scuttled into rubbish bags and supermarket boxes.
‘We’ve contacted the eldest daughter. She was hazy about when she last saw her mother,’ Cashman said.
Stella did not remember when she had last seen Terry.
‘I spoke to her yesterday.’ She regretted the words as soon she had uttered them. He did not need to know Gina Cross had asked her to clear the house.
‘Why was that?’
‘She told me about Mrs Ramsay’s death.’ This was not true; Stella kept her voice level. She had to hope that the officer on scene guard on Tuesday had not said Stella had been unaware of Mrs Ramsay’s death until she came to the house.
Cashman appeared to change tack.
‘Did Mrs Ramsay mention they were mixed up in the Alice Howland case back in the day?’ Mistaking Stella’s blank expression for ignorance rather than determination to make no more careless slips, he was encouraged to continue: ‘A girl went missing. One of those investigations that chews away at you, though most of the guys must be pushing up the proverbials.
’ He trailed off.
‘I keep a distance from my clients’ personal lives.’ Stella spoke into the silence and asked: ‘What makes you think Mrs Ramsay was killed?’ The evidence for murder was circumstantial and flimsy.
‘She had bruises on her leg, her shoulder and her right arm.’
He lounged against the sink that Stella had given a proper going over with ceramic cleaner. It was holding up well.
‘As I said, she had falls. She told me to keep them secret. I moved things to reduce hazards, but she put them back. She was hard to help. I tried to get her to see the doctor for her dizzy spells.’
‘Did she go?’
‘She never went out, don’t think she had house calls.’
‘One of the neighbours said she nicked their cat. A Mrs Jackson, know her?’
‘Yes and I wouldn’t go that far. Mrs Ramsay liked animals and made friends with them, that was all.’ As soon as she said this, Stella was convinced it was untrue; Mrs Ramsay did not like animals.
She had imprisoned Mrs Jackson’s cat in Eleanor’s old room, not, Stella was sure, because she cared about it, but to punish the creature. A punishment really intended for the youngest daughter who had left her room in a mess.
‘She was claustrophobic?’
‘Agoraphobic. Possibly.’
‘The autopsy will give us more on the bruising.’ He shut the book and crammed it in his jacket pocket.
Stella wanted the police gone from the house so tossed him a red herring: ‘She got headaches. Sometimes she spent all day in bed.’
Cashman wasn’t listening. Interview over.
‘Terry would’ve wrapped this up in a jiffy.’ He gave a tight smile. Stella bridled at the mention of Terry. She doubted he would have had a clue. Unlike any phone messages she left for him, he would have returned Martin Cashman’s call and played at detective; in fact he had called him last week.
The Detective's Daughter Page 13