‘Well, anyway, better go sort out the packing crates,’ said Richie.
‘I’ll come and help you. They’re in a right mess.’ Marshall jumped up.
Flora smelt a rat.
‘Just hold it right there, you two,’ she ordered. They stopped by the door, Marshall a foot taller than Richie but his body language just as tense. ‘Would someone like to tell me what’s going on here?’
Neither one of them would meet her eye.
‘Richie? Where exactly were you delivering these mystery leaflets?’
‘On the industrial estate.’ The words were out of Richie’s mouth before Marshall could nudge him silent. Flora looked at them both, confused. Then realisation dawned.
‘Marshall Goodman. You are just the worst, the most sneaky, underhanded person I have ever met!’
‘Oh, come on, Flora,’ Marshall said, clearly deciding the best form of defence was attack. ‘If I’d told you, you’d have said no way. We have to do something – business is going real badly. If we don’t branch out soon there’ll be no business left.’
‘But it’s not for you to decide, is it? This is my business, not yours. I’m sick of this, Marshall.’
‘And I’m sick of you sitting on your skinny ass all day doing nothing about it.’
‘I’m not doing nothing!’ Flora tried to keep the wail out of her voice. ‘I’ve had loads of ideas and you veto every one.’
‘Like you veto all mine,’ he countered stubbornly.
‘Guys?’ They turned to face Richie, who backed away, hands raised as if in surrender. ‘I’m, like, outta here. You two have issues.’ Grabbing the keys off the table, he made for the door and paused at the top of the steps.
‘By the way,’ he said over his shoulder, ‘your dog’s gone. Little bleeder snuck out ages ago.’
***
By the time they located Otto – fast asleep under the wheels of the van, nearly giving Flora a heart attack (‘What is it with all these suicidal dogs?’ Marshall joked) – it was nearly lunchtime, and Marshall suggested they call a truce and walk into town for something to eat.
‘My treat,’ he said.
Flora allowed herself to be persuaded, placing Otto carefully in her tote bag with his little head poking over the side. Really, his constant panting must be the sign of some illness. Pets taking after their owners was one thing, but surely Otto couldn’t have asthma too? She made a mental note to tell Joy to take him to the vet. Once she managed to persuade the old lady that her pooch wasn’t in mortal danger and offloaded him, of course.
They walked side by side up the hill, Marshall keeping to the outside of the narrow pavement, nearest the road. Whenever they met a pedestrian coming the other way and had to move off the kerb to make room, Marshall’s arm hovered at her back protectively. Did he think she was so feeble she’d just fall into the road without him there? She gritted her teeth and tried not to let her irritation show.
Marshall was oblivious. ‘You know, Flora, I haven’t got anything against the handyman thing–’
‘Handy person. And it’s not just about fixing things up. It’s a whole removals counselling service. You know, helping them with the stress of moving. Putting up curtains and hanging pictures and stuff is only part of it – I’m talking about offering a service that takes care of everything. Mail redirection, new utilities, things like that, but also someone to talk to when it all gets too much. You know how they get. I really think it would help.’
‘Right. It’s just, would they be willing to pay for it? I know you want to put your degree to good use and all.’ He tailed off. Flora could read his mind: Why don’t you put your degree to good use and leave me to run the business? She set her face determinedly forward and fixed her eyes on the castle ahead. Marshall sighed. ‘I just don’t think it’s got the same money-making potential as my idea, is all.’
Marshall’s idea, as Flora had heard many times before, was to branch out into commercial storage. Shakers owned some lock-up units out Telford way, currently rented for a pittance to people who had too much furniture for their overcrowded homes. Marshall’s brainwave was to kick these people out and offer secure storage to local companies, complete with archiving and retrieval.
‘It’s big business,’ he told her the first time he brought it up. ‘I’ve done a cash flow forecast – it could make a huge difference to us.’
Flora hadn’t so much as glanced at the figures. She’d dismissed the idea straight off. Why? Because she liked dealing with people, she told him. That was Peter Lively’s vision for Shakers and so it was also hers. She wasn’t about to go all corporate and sell out. No matter how tight things were.
Maybe Marshall was justified in being pissed off with her – or just “pissed”, as he would say – but her plan was equally viable. And had been dismissed just as categorically by him.
They were at an impasse, with Flora not about to make the first move. She decided to change the subject: Marshall wasn’t the only one who could go on the attack.
‘For someone who’s so concerned with the bottom line, you don’t seem too bothered about Rockfords and their imminent theft of all our customers.’ She stepped to one side to let a woman with a pushchair pass and Marshall’s hand went up to her back as if on elastic. ‘And will you please just give it a rest with the whole gallant gent crap?’
They’d walked another couple of yards in silence before Marshall stopped dead in the middle of the pavement, a great immovable object in the stream of lunchtime shoppers.
‘You know what, Flora?’ His voice was so low she had to lean in and crane her neck to hear. ‘You can go to hell.’ And with that he struck off back down the hill, and Flora wouldn’t have stood a chance of catching him up even if she’d wanted to.
Which she certainly did not.
Flora decided to take a detour of her own. She would go to the one place where she might get some sympathy, or at least where it was guaranteed to be quiet.
‘Come on, Otto,’ she said to the sleeping dog. ‘Let’s go visit your mummy.’
***
Flora planned to grab something to eat at the Maples, after Marshall had reneged so grumpily on his offer of lunch. She headed towards the main block, her nose sniffing out today’s special. Otto sat in her bag, panting and snuffling as though he had just run a marathon.
But in the main building the comforting smell of home-cooked food was oddly absent. And it wasn’t the only absence: when Flora reached the dining area she was amazed – and a little perturbed – to find it empty. The tables were set, each with clean napkins and shiny silver cutlery and the Maples’ trademark vase of flowers in the centre, but the chairs around each table were still neatly arranged and untouched.
Flora’s stomach turned over uneasily. You don’t deprive the over sixties of their lunch routine and get off lightly. The residents of Sleepy City set their clocks by mealtimes.
She exited the dining room through the rear doors and made for the corridor which led to the warden’s office. If anyone knew what was going on it would be Cynthia. But Flora stopped short in the central lobby, where a crowd had gathered at the foot of the stairs. As the retirement village had only been open a year and was still to reach capacity, Flora guessed its entire population was standing in the cramped lobby, along with most of the staff. A few muffled sobs reached her ears above a low hum of voices. All she could see were the backs of people’s heads – a dazzling display of bald patches and comb-overs and perms rinsed in blue and silver.
Vera was leaning against the library door with a dazed expression on her face. Flora hurried over.
‘What’s going on?’ She craned her neck to try and see. Damn being so short she needed stepladders to bolt her own front door. She considered dropping to the floor for a better view, but decided against it.
‘I think he’s dead.’ Vera looked ready to faint.
‘What?’ Flora grabbed Vera’s arm and led her to a nearby armchair. The old lady fanned herself with a copy of
Shropshire Life while Otto was attached to his lead and stowed safely behind the magazine rack.
‘What happened? Was it another accident?’ Flora recoiled when Vera nodded. Not again! The Maples was becoming a dangerous place to keep a pet, and this would only feed into Joy’s paranoia about Mr Felix and his supposed vendetta. She pushed a cone of water from the cooler into Vera’s hand and went to investigate. Nudging through the outer layer of the crowd, she found Mr Felix leaning on a crutch holding a soil-stained trowel and looking, at most, only vaguely interested.
Taking this as reassurance that the calamity wasn’t too great, Flora said, ‘So which poor mutt’s bought it this time?’
Mr Felix regarded her coolly. ‘I hardly think that’s an appropriate way to talk about the Captain, young lady.’ He raised his eyebrows and turned away. His hands were filthy, as were the hems of his trousers. Flora took a second to process his words. The Captain? An appropriate way to talk about the Captain?
With a mounting sense of dread, Flora pushed her way to the front of the crowd. At the foot of the stairs were two medics dressed in Maples-issue white uniforms with bright red insignias on their backs. They were working in tandem, one holding the Captain’s head while the other pumped his chest. From Flora’s vantage point one thing was clear: the Captain wasn’t breathing.
***
‘Oh, my God.’
Flora was barely aware she’d spoken. That the Captain wasn’t responding to the medics’ ministrations was horribly obvious, and Flora fought the urge to jump in and try to help. But what could she do? She knew nothing about first aid, was squeamish over a paper cut.
She took a step back. The voices of the medics continued, low and authoritative, encouraging, holding her attention hypnotically. In her peripheral vision, Flora could see one of the Captain’s medals a couple of feet away from his flung-out hand. She recognised its shape, the distinctive silver wings. It should have been pinned carefully to his proud chest, not discarded on the polished tile floor while the brave man who had received it lay staring blankly into nowhere. He wasn’t asleep. He wasn’t unconscious.
He wasn’t really there at all.
Instinctively Flora looked up, as if following his lead. High above, three U-shaped balconies curved around the lobby’s walls. The ceiling beyond was a wide glass roof lantern, flooding the balconies with natural light. Flora had moved two residents into rooms on the first floor. Semi-care, they were called, with more on-tap services than the self-contained units around the quadrant outside the main building. The second floor contained a variety of multi-purpose rooms and offices, along with the guest accommodation for visiting relatives. Above that, the Special Care rooms. The third floor.
Where the Captain had been moved a couple of months ago.
Someone took her hand – an old lady called May, or possibly Mavis – and they stood side by side in silence. Flora’s ears were ringing, a low hum that signalled her desire to escape this reality, slip sideways into a different one. It had been exactly the same the day her mother announced she had cancer; the same again when she’d gotten news of her father’s heart attack. Ringing. Blocking out the real world. If only such a thing were possible.
The scent of flowers on the nearby lobby table was overpowering. Flora dropped her companion’s hand and took another step back. She could sense by the slowing down of their movements, by a subtle shift in the air, that the medics had run out of options. The backs of their necks, red from effort, held a grim stiffness. The murmuring of the waiting crowd grew louder.
Flora forced back a sob. A sudden queasiness made her head spin; she reached out blindly to steady herself against the wall. Not dead. Surely not. Not the Captain. She’d spoken to him only the other day; he’d been picking a flower in the gardens for his buttonhole, had given her a rakish grin and doffed an imaginary cap as she passed. She looked up at the balconies above, and then down again to where the Captain now lay.
Had he fallen?
She looked up again. Not from there, surely. His position was wrong. Without knowing how she knew, Flora was sure of that much. Besides, there was no evidence of a violent impact. Her mind shrank away from imagining what such evidence might have looked like, and she shivered involuntarily at the thought. Of course, he might not have fallen at all – he could have collapsed right there next to the table with the flowers and leaflets. She shivered again. It shouldn’t have been so shocking to come across death in a retirement village. She needed to get a grip, quell the rising nausea and sense of panic that threatened to overwhelm her. She forced herself to stare at the leaflets in front of her. The text blurred together and swam in and out of focus. Line dancing. Pilates. Bobby’s Bingo.
The line dancing notice made her think of Joy, and she looked around for her friend, the panic rising again. But then she remembered: Joy had had a fall of her own. She would be devastated when she heard about this.
The medics were standing now, and one of them produced a scratchy-looking grey blanket and handed it to his colleague. Flora couldn’t bear to watch. She spun away. The warden was standing right behind her.
Too shocked to speak, Flora simply stared at the older woman, her eyes a question mark.
‘He fell,’ said the warden quietly. ‘Down the stairs.’
Flora waited a beat, then turned back to look at the stairs, trying and failing to avoid seeing once again what lay right in the centre of their wide first step. The Captain was covered now, which seemed worse somehow than seeing his staring eyes and his carefully combed hair and useless curled up fingers. She forced her gaze beyond where the medics were lifting him onto a green fold-up stretcher and considered the stairs. It helped to have something else to think about.
‘But how?’ She hadn’t been addressing the warden directly, but Cynthia took it upon herself to answer.
‘He tripped. Right at the top there. He started down, but he wasn’t using the handrail. He tripped,’ she said again. A faint tut escaped her lips.
‘You saw it happen?’
The warden nodded. ‘Nobody else was here. There was nothing I could do. The medics were on the scene in seconds. But …’
They watched the medics lift the Captain off the ground in one smooth, practised movement. The crowd of onlookers parted, carving a path from the foot of the stairs to the back exit, a direct route to the medical centre. And then what? thought Flora. What would happen to him now?
‘Move back, please. Move back.’ The taller medic, walking backwards, nodded to the warden, who gave herself a sudden shake as if waking from a dream.
‘Come on now.’ Suddenly she was officious, back in charge. ‘Everyone should go to their rooms until someone comes and gets you.’ Like they were children. ‘Lunch will be served in half an hour. Everything is under control.’
The residents obeyed meekly, not one of them grumbling about lunch. Their faces were white, their expressions flown open. Death must be held at bay, not seen close up and personal.
The staff scurried away, all wearing the same resigned expression. As the warden started to move with them, Flora touched her lightly on the back. ‘What happened?’ she said again, trying to keep her voice steady. She meant, how did it happen? How could it happen, especially to someone so dear and dignified as the Captain? But the warden clearly wasn’t one for subtext. She shook her head and told Flora again that he had fallen down the flight of stairs from the first floor.
‘Was he ill? Did he trip?’
But Flora was talking to the warden’s retreating back.
Alone in the lobby now, she looked across to where she’d left Vera and Otto. The easy chair was empty, with Otto peering out from behind as if waiting to see if the coast was clear. Something shiny on the tiled floor caught her eye. She bent and picked up the Captain’s medal, blinking back her tears. Its wings glinted in the sun from the roof lantern high above. She could picture him so clearly, standing in the garden with his pink rose, his moustache neatly combed, his medals polished and pinn
ed just so.
Did he comb that moustache every morning? When he dressed today in his suit and tie and pinned his medals proudly to his chest, there was no way he could have known he would end up lying under a Maples-issue blanket before the day was out.
Clutching the medal so tightly it bit into her flesh, Flora sank to the floor by Otto’s side and rested her head on her knees. She wrapped her arms around her legs and rocked gently. She thought about the morning her mum had gotten ready for that first, devastating appointment with the doctor. How could Kitty Lively have known when she put on her make-up that by the time her husband came home from work her mascara would be washed away by tears, her lipstick chewed off a hundred times over?
It was the not knowing that did it. The getting on with the most mundane of tasks without the faintest clue of what was around the corner. Flora pressed her face into her hands and let the tears fall. She cried for the Captain, and for her mum and dad. But underneath it all, she cried for herself.
Chapter 6
‘So, let me get this straight. You’re saying that the Captain didn’t fall down the stairs at all. You’re saying he was pushed. And naturally it was all Mr Felix’s fault. The guy you don’t like because his trousers are too long.’
Flora was beyond tired. Forty-eight hours after the Captain’s death and she was still feeling totally flattened by the news. She hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in three days due to Otto’s midnight wanderings, and she was not in the mood to indulge her friend’s fantasies for a second longer.
But Joy nodded vigorously, failing to notice Flora’s abrasive tone. ‘Yes, exactly. Except for the trousers bit. I thought I’d explained it to you, Flora. Mr Felix is really Aubrey, the caretaker’s son. Don’t you remember?’
‘Of course I do.’ Flora groaned. Remember? Joy’s ridiculous stories were indelibly inked on her brain. ‘But I still don’t believe it. Mr Felix is nothing but a harmless old man. And he’s pretty ancient himself, in case you haven’t noticed. Not to mention disabled. No, I’m not saying that all pensioners are past it, you don’t have to look at me like that. I just can’t see him being capable of any of the things you’re accusing him of. Otto, Merlin, the Captain … If you want my honest opinion, you’re being really unfair.’
Murder at the Maples: A Flora Lively Mystery Page 7