Corpse in Waiting

by Margaret Duffy

  Bennett had insisted that he had never seen the truncheon and knife before. I could believe it with the former as such an item is distinctive, but not the latter. What ordinary British man can tell one kitchen knife from another?

  It was reasonably safe to assume that Hilda Bennett had had the truncheon in her possession when she was living reasonably self-sufficiently in the warden-assisted accommodation several years before moving to the care home that had the green people-carrier with gold lettering on it. Had she given it to her nephew and he was lying? It seemed likely. And if Imelda had worked at that same home had she built up any kind of friendship, if that was possible, with the woman?

  I delved into the Internet. Bath had around a dozen care and nursing homes but there were no details on the individual websites as to the nature, let alone the liveries, of any vehicles used to transport their clients or take them on outings. But having established where Miss Bennett had actually stayed it seemed pointless to ask questions as who would have known about her possessions? I began to realize why Carrick felt he was going around in circles. Perhaps if I rang the district nurse . . .

  This no-nonsense Irish lady had proved to be a godsend just after Mark was brought home from hospital and had been difficult and colicky. She seemed to know everyone and everything about the neighbourhood and I wondered if her wisdom stretched as far as Bath.

  ‘That’ll be Amelia Davies House,’ she said without hesitation. ‘Very upmarket, very smart, big posh people-carrier that they use to ferry people about. They only take people who are fairly mobile and with it. Start wandering around the city centre in your nightie or beating up the other residents with your Zimmer and you’re out, pronto.’

  ‘I take it the place was called after a wealthy benefactress.’

  ‘That’s right, and she was a right old harridan apparently. How’s the baby?’

  ‘Blooming, thank you.’

  ‘Good, he’s a real poppet.’

  I resolved to tell Mark this when he was around nine.

  The nursing home was situated in Ralph Allen Drive and was a large house set in immaculate gardens. Right beside the main entrance the green people-carrier, almost a minibus in size, was parked. It was not the kind of vehicle to have room for wheelchairs, hence the need for residents to be reasonably mobile. I obeyed the sign for visitors to enter and go to reception.

  ‘The police,’ the young woman behind the desk gasped in sheer horror.

  ‘This is just a routine matter,’ I soothed. ‘But it does involve a request for information about a woman who no longer lives here. Is there someone I can speak to?’

  After a whispered exchange in an adjacent office I was shown in. A man who could have been anyone’s bank manager was caught red-handed trying to tidy his desk by sweeping most of what was on it into a drawer, including a newspaper. The Racing Times? Page three boobs?

  ‘I’m the director,’ he said in lofty tones, slamming shut the drawer with the paper still sticking out of it. ‘Rex Turner. What can I do for you?’

  ‘I’ll come straight to the point,’ I told him, seating myself having shown him my ID and keeping a straight face with difficulty. In such moments do the self-important wreck their pretensions. ‘There was a murder in the city recently in a house in Cherry Tree Row. You must have heard about it. The building belongs to a one-time client of yours who is now living in another nursing home. It would appear that the murder weapon is an item that was once in her possession and I’m trying to trace its whereabouts around the time she was here.’ It was at that moment I realized I was doing nothing of the kind.

  ‘Who would this person be?’

  ‘Miss Hilda Bennett.’

  His face betrayed nothing. ‘You must realize that I can’t—’

  ‘You’d have to if it came to a court of law,’ I interrupted.

  He steepled his fingers and stared at them before saying, ‘I remember her well. Her condition deteriorated rapidly and we could no longer have her here. In fact, she didn’t want to stay. But I’m afraid if you want to know about certain of her possessions I can’t help you as for various reasons we have quite a high turnover of staff and it’s unlikely that whoever was dealing with her is still working here.’

  ‘Did she become disruptive?’

  He again hesitated before answering. ‘You must understand that this is highly confidential.’

  ‘Unless what you tell me is important to the case it won’t go beyond this room.’

  ‘Our first difficulty was that she made it plain that she detested everyone, staff and residents alike. Matters came to a head when she kept walking out.’

  ‘Was this as a direct result of her illness or was there a real problem?’

  ‘Her doctor thought it was a mixture of both.’

  ‘Do you remember a woman by the name of Imelda Burnside working here?’

  ‘How did you find that out?’ he asked hoarsely.

  ‘From her sister.’

  ‘Look, if it emerges that—’

  ‘The murder victim was on your payroll?’ I finished for him. ‘Not good for business, eh?’

  ‘It’s just that—’

  ‘Mr Turner, this is a murder investigation. Was there a problem concerning the two women?’

  He remained silent for a moment and then reluctantly said, ‘There was. I believe Miss Bennett discovered that the Burnside woman was going out with her nephew. She was furious, shouting that she was common and after his money. But, you must understand, this was not instrumental in her wanting to leave.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No. After words were exchanged the carer, Burnside, was consigned to other clients. Things settled down for a while. We just had to make sure they did not come face to face.’

  ‘Surely Imelda was upset by this reaction.’

  ‘Probably, but she cooperated with the new arrangements. There are always difficulties with people suffering from dementia.’

  ‘When Miss Bennett walked out where did she end up?’

  ‘Once or twice back at the sheltered accommodation where she had lived previously, then at that house you mentioned she owned, and on the last occasion the police found her wandering in Victoria Park. She had been missing for hours and I’m afraid that was when we told her nephew she had to be moved to somewhere where her needs were better served.’

  ‘Was Imelda Burnside still working here after Miss Bennett left?’

  ‘No, she’d left about a fortnight before this final episode.’

  ‘Do clients have their own rooms or do they share?’

  ‘They have their own. It’s one of our advantages over other care homes.’

  ‘And you visit them?’

  ‘Not in their rooms. I chat to them in the lounges and they can request a private interview if they wish.’

  ‘Did you ever go into Miss Bennett’s room?’

  He began to weary of me. ‘Is this really—’

  ‘Please answer the question.’

  ‘Yes, I did. On the last occasion when she’d gone off on her own.’

  ‘Did you notice an old police truncheon on display anywhere? It had belonged to her great-grandfather.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘We don’t encourage clients to bang nails in the walls.’

  ‘It could have been anywhere.’

  ‘If it was there I didn’t see it.’

  I thanked him and left.

  TWENTY

  It has become important to me, whenever possible, to do my thinking at the scene of the crime and this time I was going to have to be very professional and detached. Making no reference to my previous offer on the house, I merely showed my ID to the woman in the estate agents, someone I had not seen before, and came away with the keys.

  The weather had turned wet and gloomy as only the West Country can sometimes be and I anticipated that the little house would be even darker with the creepers and other plants rampant across the windows. Not so, I saw a
s I parked the car. Everything had been cut back, the shrubs in the front garden pruned, alas cutting off most of the flower buds, and the tiny lawn had been mowed, scalped actually.

  There was a car parked right outside and the front door was open. Sounds of activity were coming from within and the tiled floor just inside the front door was wet. I already knew that the knocker was seized solid with paint or dirt so rapped on the open door with my knuckles.

  Hot and bothered, David Bennett poked his head around a corner and then frowned deeply. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I’m not here in any official capacity,’ I said, wondering whether I ought to go away, right now.

  ‘What capacity are you here in then?’ he demanded to know.

  ‘It was me who found the body. But I live locally and had already put in an offer for the place.’

  He emerged, wet patches on his clothes, holding a dripping scrubbing brush. ‘You can give me a hand if you like.’

  ‘No, thanks.’

  Coming right up to me he said, ‘D’you still want to buy it?’

  ‘I might. But someone’s put in a higher offer.’

  ‘As of yesterday I’ve got power of attorney. Auntie’s worse, bananas, so it’s me who decides. And no one’s said anything to me about higher offers.’

  ‘May I have another look round?’

  ‘Please do,’ he said eagerly. He stood aside but I indicated that he should lead the way. I was not going to turn my back on this man.

  ‘The place was filthy.’ Bennett said chattily. ‘All the buyers seemed to have gone cold so I thought I’d better do something about it. The agent was a bit sniffy about the state of it too. Bloody great spiders. I got some spray stuff and polished them all off, I tell you.’ He turned to leer at me. ‘I know how all you ladies hate creepy-crawlies.’

  I never thought that I would mourn the death of a spider.

  Downstairs, I followed Bennett from room to room and was forced to admit that he had done a lot of cleaning. With the vegetation removed from the windows everywhere was now starkly light which unfortunately showed up the cracks in the plaster of the walls and ceilings and the woodworm holes in the floorboards. I saw with dismay that there was a large damp patch that I had not noticed before on the wall above the fireplace in the right-hand living room and when we reached the kitchen could hardly fail to notice that the dry rot, or whatever it was, was escaping from the cupboard under the sink and creeping across the bare boards of the floor. There was a lingering smell of decomposition.

  ‘Needs a lot of money spending on it,’ Bennett said gloomily. ‘But it’ll be great when it’s finished. She never spent a penny on the place herself and it got to the stage where it wasn’t fit to live in. She’s always been odd, frankly.’

  ‘That’s what Imelda’s sister thought.’

  ‘Oh, she did have a sister then,’ Bennett said in offhand fashion.

  I leaned on the larder door, the larder door. ‘Be honest with me. Do you think Imelda really wrote that letter saying that she was going to live with her or did someone else?’

  ‘I think . . .’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Someone else might have done.’

  ‘And you’re positive you received it?’

  ‘You said this wasn’t an official visit.’

  ‘It isn’t, but if I’m to buy this house I need to know the full story, don’t I?’ I conjured a jolly smile.

  ‘Yes, it was left here, on the mantelpiece. But I’d never seen Imelda’s handwriting so it’s possible she didn’t write it.’

  ‘What kind of state was your aunt in just over twelve months ago?’

  ‘Not too bad. But trying to leave where she was. She didn’t like it there.’

  ‘She found out you were going out with Imelda.’

  ‘Did she?’

  ‘Perhaps Imelda told her herself – she was working there.’

  ‘Oh, yes, I suppose she was.’

  ‘Apparently she was furious.’

  ‘Auntie was like that.’

  ‘Mr Bennett, didn’t Imelda say anything to you about this?’

  ‘Er, no, we weren’t really speaking then on account of her still living here when I’d asked her to go.’

  ‘And you’d had words.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you’d hit her.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Funny, DCI Carrick said that you’d admitted you had.’

  ‘Look—’ Bennett began angrily.

  ‘Are you covering up for your aunt? Did she so bitterly resent the fact that her carer – she’d been shouting that Imelda was common and only after your money – had lived here with you that she came here and battered her with her great-grandfather’s police truncheon?’

  Bennett stared at me.

  ‘And then in her confused, no, crazy state, she found a knife in the kitchen and cut off her head, putting that in the cupboard upstairs and the body here in this larder. To get her revenge as well as give you a horrible shock. Because she hates everybody.’

  ‘She might have done,’ he agreed.

  ‘I suggest that you know she did.’

  There was a protracted silence before Bennett said, ‘OK, she did. I’d had a call from the home to say that Auntie had gone walkabout again so I first called in where she’d been the last time, at the sheltered accommodation, no luck, and then came here. The place was in a real mess, blood everywhere. Auntie was standing like something turned to stone, over there by the sink. She was covered in blood too. The knife was still in her hand and she’d obviously been trying to wash the blood off it. She wouldn’t speak to me.’

  ‘Where was the body?’

  ‘She must have already dealt with it. I didn’t want to look for it, believe you me. I suppose I panicked. I gave her a coat of Imelda’s and told her to take off her outer clothes so I could burn them. Then I took her back to the home and told them I’d found her just wandering around. They said that was the last straw, they couldn’t cope with her any longer.’

  ‘Then you came back, cleaned up the house, shifted out all the furniture and got rid of it having first disposed of Imelda’s car.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Why? If you’d gone to the police without touching anything and told them the truth the outcome would have merely been that your aunt was sent to a secure mental hospital.’

  ‘As I said, I panicked. I thought I’d be number one suspect.’

  ‘Because of your criminal record for violence against women.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What did you do with the car?’

  ‘Sold it. It was mine. She’d only been using it.’

  ‘A set of keys for it was found in her bag buried, together with her clothes, in the garden. Did you really think that you were going to succeed in making this woman just disappear?’

  ‘I’ve told you – I panicked.’

  ‘No, actually, you’re lying. Forensic tests have proved that Imelda wasn’t killed in the house, but probably in the garden which is where her head was cut off. You battered her to death and did what followed in order to shift any blame on to your aunt, the act of a deranged woman, should you subsequently find yourself charged with the murder. There was no letter saying she was going to live with her sister, who insists such a move was never mentioned. And that night when your aunt wandered off she was found by the police in Victoria Park.’

  He was still staring at me.

  ‘Imelda was quite a big, strong girl,’ I continued, watching him carefully. ‘Carers have to be in order to be able to lift people. Your aunt would never have been able to move her body, even with the head removed, let alone wrap it in bedding and put it in the larder. You hit Imelda and when she ran into the garden to try to escape you killed her. On one of the rare occasions you’d visited your aunt you’d helped yourself to the truncheon, no doubt thinking it might be worth something and you could sell it. And that gave y
ou the idea.’

  ‘You can’t prove any of this,’ Bennett whispered.

  ‘Another thing is that I’m still mulling over what you said just now about not knowing about offers on this house. Someone accepted my original offer and then went on to tell that estate agent to tell me I could have it for a lot less. In a panic then, were you in anticipation of your power of attorney? Sell the place with poor auntie not able to understand what’s happening and then hightail it back to New Zealand with the money? I think you’ll find that the police have a pretty good case against you.’

  He came a bit closer. ‘What if I did kill her? She was just a bloody nuisance – you’re a bloody nuisance.’

  ‘You admit it then?’

  ‘Why not, just between us two. It is just you, isn’t it? You haven’t told anyone else what you think.’

  He was blocking the doorway into the hall and I was hoping I could make it through the back door and get over the high wall in the garden before he could grab me. ‘This isn’t my theory. My colleague reckons you’re guilty and, in roughly his words, you made the killing look as though it had been done by some nutter.’

  ‘Your colleague?’ Bennett said blankly.

  ‘Remember me?’ Patrick said, appearing behind him. He gave me a big smile. ‘I thought we could have lunch.’

  Bennett moved quickly to stand by the back door, probably thinking himself now out of range and having visibly changed his mind about trying to bulldoze the newcomer out of the way.

  ‘I heard most of what was said,’ Patrick informed him. ‘You’ve been tailed ever since you were first pulled in for questioning, Bennett, and the guy whose turn it was rang in pronto when the two of you were here together. Carrick rang me and will soon be here. It’s his case and he can arrest and charge you.’

  Patrick had already been in the city centre so had grabbed a taxi and arrived before the DCI, neither he nor James wanting to take any risks. Carrick arrived about two minutes later and we all went to the nick where I was requested to put the case as I saw it on record. Bennett meanwhile was apparently raging around a cell, shouting obscenities and promising what he would do to me should we ever meet again. I was beginning to think that Hilda Bennett was not the only one in her family to be mentally unbalanced.