Not a Very Nice Woman

by John Eider

‘I’ve set things back for you as they were when we arrived, sir,’ began the Constable.

  ‘Good, and push the door closed, won’t you.’ Grey didn’t want someone who knew the victim hearing what they had to say. ‘And so this was exactly as it was when she was found?’

  They entered the flat down a short passageway. Leading off from this were the kitchen, bedroom, bathroom and other spaces. It then opened out to the main lounge and dining area, which filled the whole width of the flat at the front and was dominated by one huge window currently glowing faint red through the curtains with the daylight outside.

  The nearest part of the room was set out as a lounge with a three-piece suite, leading through to a half-dining table set against the wall below the large window. The room was lit by only a standard lamp next to the easy chairs and a low-hanging lamp at the dining table end.

  Grey instantly understood what Rachel Sowton had meant about the change of light from the corridor, as it was a full two seconds after entering the gloom of the flat before he saw that at the centre of the lounge area before them was a woman’s body, lying face down and with her head over her left arm.

  ‘The lights were on?’ Grey knew forensics would have had given themselves more light to work in.

  ‘Yes, sir, just like this.’

  ‘Thank you, get the curtains open now though will you, and turn the lights off.’ He hated rooms being like this in daytime – wonderfully atmospheric for reading or relaxing at night, but decadent and offensive to his work ethic by day when sunlight and fresh air ought to be let in and people should to be getting active. From what the Duty manager had said this was something like the victim’s feelings too.

  The curtains opened, he could see she was dressed in dark-green silk pyjamas and dressing gown, with only the untouched grey hair that fell over her face to give any indication of age. The uniform colour of the dressing gown’s material, albeit deep and vivid, was in contrast to the fiendish patterns of the Chinese rug she appeared to have fallen onto and which must have cushioned that final fall to earth.

  ‘So what were the chain of events this morning?’ asked Grey as he circled the rug. ‘We weren’t told of any of this over the phone; only that a second death had flagged up on the computer.’

  ‘Ah yes.’ The Constable rifled through his notebook. ‘There was a Mr Tanner, died here nine weeks ago. We’ve double-checked with the Infirmary: there was nothing suspicious there, a heart attack at eighty-three. It all looks innocent enough.’

  ‘A grim relief. But not so in Ms Dunbar’s case evidently.’

  Continued the Constable, ‘After she was first found and reported, the ambulancemen who came to collect her noticed the bruising on her neck, and made a second call to us. This must have been after you were first contacted.’

  A besmocked figure poked their head in around the door, ‘You’ll let us know when we can take the body, sir?’

  ‘Could you turn her over a little?’ he asked instead. The man came in with another and gently rolled the lifeless form of the lady still clad in expensive silk.

  Kneeling beside Cori, the pair of them looked closer, she observing,

  ‘Look, there’s the bruising to the neck. Her hair covered it at first.’

  ‘And she’d have been long dead by then?’ asked Grey of the scenes of crime men.

  ‘Yes, sir. The doctor estimated some time late last night or early this morning. He sends his apologies, by the way: he was called to an urgent operation at the Infirmary.’

  ‘That’s quite all right; tell him I anticipate his report as always. And no other signs of injury?’

  ‘Not that we could see, sir, but once we get her back to the lab…’

  Grey nodded, and left them to their grim work. Standing to the side of the removal he asked the Constable for whatever else he had to tell them. He himself began mooching around the lounge, Cori directed to do likewise in the dining area.

  Began the Constable, ‘There are no signs of a break in: the door was found locked this morning and it, the lock and the frosted windows facing the corridor are all unmarked. The big window over the dining table does have a panel that opens quite wide outwards…’

  ‘Pre building regs,’ muttered Grey.

  ‘…but the building has a sheer front and you’d need to be Spiderman to get in that way. The windows are still locked anyway. Regards a burglary, there’s nothing in the flat that the Duty Manager or another of the victim’s friends could see as missing or having been disturbed, not even that little lot.’

  His eyes directed Grey to a sizeable unit against the side wall at the dining table end of the room, and which might have been a dresser but for its fingerprint-dusted glass front. When Grey looked closer through the mess left by his forensic colleagues he saw it was being used as a display case for very many pieces of small silverware – teaspoons, mounted badges, snuff boxes – clearly a collecting passion of the victim.

  ‘And did anyone hear anything last night?’

  ‘No reports so far.’

  ‘Thank you,’ he said to the man who went to keep watch outside.

  ‘There’s a diary, sir,’ said Cori by him at the dining table, where she now sat in the light from the window turning the small pages to find today. ‘More an appointments book than a journal,’ she summarised as the Inspector turned to her. ‘On the day she died there’s the initials “EN” then what looks like a time, four till six, and then a final initial, “P”.’

  ‘So that’s a student, arriving after school hours… and “P”?’

  ‘Paid, I’d guess.’

  ‘Of course,’ agreed Grey, ‘she wasn’t teaching them for nothing. Any other names?’

  ‘This “EN” and an “SK”, both recurring; and for this morning, “RR, No Appointment.”’

  ‘Are RR in there anywhere else?’

  Cori looked, ‘Oh yes, three weeks ago, but this time with a set time.’

  Grey thought aloud, ‘Today’s a weekday morning, so RR can’t be a child; and “No Appointment” – does that suggest that they’re someone she was going to see?’

  But neither had an answer.

  ‘I wonder how much this place cost her?’ asked Grey.

  ‘If she was a professional all her life, probably not more than she could afford.’

  He surveyed his surroundings in natural light, ‘It’s nice here, though, isn’t it.’ The place was cosy but well-appointed, the decorations few but well-made.

  ‘I don’t think they’re the poorest people who come to live here.’

  ‘No, quite. We could do with learning more about this Trust.’

  ‘It looks like she used the table as a desk, sir.’ Cori gestured to the neat piles of notebooks, pens and school textbooks sat along its edges.

  ‘”European History for Year Nine,”’ read Grey.

  ‘Senior school, your old Third Year,’ she clarified. ‘There’re a few different subjects here, and for different ages too.’

  ‘A good place to be creative,’ he murmured looking over the desk and out to the view of the trees beyond.

  As Cori went to get up she saw something by her feet, leaning down to pick up an opened and empty envelope,

  ‘Return address in London,’ she noted. ‘Is that an auction house?’ she asked Grey, who also half-recognised the name,

  ‘Might be. No sign of the letter that came in it though.’ He scanned the table. ‘I wonder where she kept her correspondence?’

  ‘There’s drawers in the display case.’

  Indeed there were, two thin ones below the glass-fronted upper portion and two wooden doors below. Grey tried them and all were locked.

  ‘Have you seen any keys?’ he asked.

  ‘Not yet. Have you looked down here?’ she asked, nodding to the lounge area.

  ‘Okay, I’ll check this main room. You start on the others.’

  As she headed off he looked more closely at his surroundings. On the wall facing the display cabinet he saw a framed Cer
tificate in Education, signed in the scrawled hand of a supervisor long dead and dated Nineteen Sixty-three. Moving back to the lounge area itself, with the three-piece-suite and twenty-year-old television, he thought this area at least seemed a little more built for comfort. There were two paintings, both originals and placed where she would have been able to see them. Grey was no expert, but would have thought them early Twentieth Century, still representational but vivid in their use of colour. As well as these there were vases and other coloured glassware scattered around the room to brighten the place up.

  Against one wall was a small electric fire. On its mantelpiece (which was there only for show, there being no flue behind it) was a small display of seashells and postcards – which under closer examination were all from friends staying at British or European seaside resorts, postmarked recently and saying no more than the usual holidaymaking fluff.

  He sat down in the chair that looked most lived-in, hoping it might give him the victim’s perspective on things. Beside him was a small glass-fronted cupboard with more silver objet d’art, and on top of this a digital radio that he sensed had had more use than the dusty-buttoned TV. Sure enough, when he rummaged through the small wooden-framed and woven-sided magazine rack at the other side the chair he found that week’s Radio Times folded over at yesterday’s radio listings.

  Also in the wooden rack – the likes of which he hadn’t seen for decades – was the promised bundle of keys. Going back to the dining area, he first tried them in the lock of the glass doors to look again more clearly at the collection of silver trinkets, for a piece had earlier caught his eye through the fingerprint smudges. Opening the doors he saw it there gleaming: silver like the other items, but in this case the precious metal was merely the backing and decorated surrounds of an enamelled brooch bearing the portrait of a lady with her hair piled up, her ivory cheeks rouged, and her silk dress painted a blue that hadn’t faded with the years. Placed as the centrepiece of the collection it was exquisite, and bar a couple of statuettes the only piece here to bear a human likeness.

  Being gentle so as not to rattle the contents on display above, he found the right keys to open the cabinet’s two thin drawers. In one he found only a clutch of bills, bank statements and other papers to be kept safe, and in the other draw more of the same but going back further.

  Beneath the drawers were two carpentered doors, and unlocking these just as carefully he discovered some more educational materials.

  They looked like they hadn’t been touched for a while, some bearing the logo not of a cedar but of an oak tree within a shield. Beside these were folders, which when he opened them were full of yellowed pages: draft proposals and minutes of meetings, typewritten and sometimes photocopied. The spine of one of these folders read TRUST, and he guessed they dated from the formation of the Cedars as a care home that Rachel Sowton had mentioned earlier. Beneath these was a still older-looking boxfile. He pulled the lot out to get at it, papers falling everywhere as he did so.

  Cori moved methodically through the remaining rooms. The kitchen was small and perfectly formed, everything of good quality and neat and in its right place; similarly the bathroom, which when she opened the cabinet above the sink revealed nothing more medicinal than a toothbrush and floss.

  ‘Enjoying yourself?’ she asked, emerging finally from the bedroom. She knelt down beside Grey to help tidy the fallen papers.

  ‘Find anything in there?’ he asked.

  ‘No, the bedroom’s as neat and tidy as everywhere else. Oh, and the bed’s still made. Great painting on the wall though, all these colourful shapes blending to make a landscape. You’d love it.’

  ‘Yes, there’re some good ones in here too.’

  ‘One odd thing – I haven’t found any medication.’

  ‘Seventy-one, and not even a bottle of aspirin in the place?’

  ‘Perhaps she kept herself healthy.’

  ‘But we’d all have a few aches and pains by that age; Lord knows I’ve got enough already.’

  ‘Then it may be that Rachel Sowton keeps all they need,’ she suddenly thought.

  He had to admit that was a better answer.

  Both kneeling over the yellowed papers to rearrange them at one side, they opened the boxfile to find not more of the same but instead some other education certificates, a silver pocket fob watch, and a small knitted teddybear.

  ‘Well, what do we make of these?’ asked Grey, squeezing the bear’s belly.

  ‘A blue bear,’ noted Cori, ‘and a man’s watch – they can’t have been hers.’

  ‘A son, and a father.’

  ‘Or a son and a husband.’

  ‘And why wasn’t this watch a part of the collection?’ Grey picked it up. Tied to it was a soft leather tag with an imprinted inscription. ‘Clever that, so they don’t harm the antique.’ He read, ‘“For All The Help You’ve Given Us.” That’s a message of thanks, not of love.’

  ‘Perhaps from her students, or where she taught?’

  ‘But a man’s watch?’

  ‘Well, if they knew it was what she collected…’

  ‘So why then hide it away?’

  ‘You know, boss,’ said Cori thoughtfully, ‘there isn’t a single photograph in this apartment.’

  ‘We need to ask Ms Sowton about family. I wonder why she didn’t keep a diary?’ he asked suddenly.

  ‘I don’t,’ answered Cori.

  ‘Nor do most, but I couldn’t live without mine. What do you do with all that stuff that you have nowhere else to say? If I had a table with that view I’d write and write.’ But he had lost her, soon getting back on track, ‘Have a look in that drawer. You’re good with bank statements.’

  Cori took the contents to the table and studied the columns of numbers carefully,

  ‘Hmm. Her income wasn’t huge, but with her pension and savings she seems to have been covering a whole different set of outgoings.’

  ‘I wonder how this Cedars Trust works?’

  ‘Yes, and she was a trustee as well as a resident.’

  ‘Something else to ask Ms Sowton.’ Grey went through to the lounge and sat down on the sofa, Cori following him in and sitting in the other single chair, each taking care beyond that of a police officer at a murder scene not to tread on the rug that had been Stella Dunbar’s resting place, and looking to the chair between the radio and magazine rack as though her ghostly presence lingered there. Grey summarised:

  ‘Stella Dunbar: she had a student here yesterday evening, and then would have had her tea. She had her usual walk around eight, the Duty Manager seeing her home, then possibly had another visitor later that evening, they leaving around ten – a student who wouldn’t usually have been here that late.

  ‘Now the early estimate suggests she died a little after then…’

  ‘Though yet to be confirmed.’

  ‘Granted. Now this evening visitor, if it was her visitor, was a schoolgirl. The marks on the victim’s neck looked to me like she’d been strangled with bare hands, which takes strength. Look around us: not a thing out of place, glass everywhere and none of it even chipped, cupboards full of carefully organised trinkets which the killer would have had to put back absolutely right if they’d been knocked. No commotion was caused for alarm to have been raised in the building last night. Now the victim was of advanced years, but she looked of average size and weight to me, and clearly had her faculties intact. Whoever did this was bigger than her and stronger than her, could grip her in their hands and keep her there till she died. It all took place in this very spot, and she didn’t have a chance.’

  Each sat sombrely, taking in the nightmare of what had occurred in that room the previous night.

  ‘You need to call the Superintendent, sir.’

  ‘I do. Can you find out what’s happening with the other residents? Hopefully someone’s been taking statements.’

  They got up and walked to the corridor, where Cori again found herself beside the rampant flora and feeling the leat
hery leaves and soft fronds of the plants that brushed her as she stood even outside Stella Dunbar’s door,

  ‘These are lovely though, aren’t they?’ She moved in their direction as if enchanted, ‘It looks like there’s a third door through here.’ She felt something brush her cheek as she passed through the plants and tried the door. ‘Locked; and there’s a vine wrapped itself around the handle – it would have broken if anyone had been in. I wonder whose room it is?’

  ‘We’ll add that to the list of things to ask our Duty Manager when we see her, wherever she may be.’

  ‘Probably downstairs, sir.’ The Constable, who had been called away for a while had now returned to his watch. ‘I suggested she keep people off the stairs while we took out the body.’

  ‘Very wise.’

  Mention of the residents reminded Grey of how few people they had seen within the building. This could have been through them keeping out of the officers’ way, or that life here was generally lived downstairs; however, Grey wasn’t sure even had there been the muffled sounds of people in their flats and the echo of feet on the stairs that the whispered magic spell of solitude that lived along these corridors would ever quite be dispelled.

  ‘She’ll be in the dayroom with the residents,’ the Constable continued. ‘That’s the big room on the ground floor, sir, with patio doors.’

  As Cori headed in that way, Grey re-entered the flat and prepared to call his boss.

  Chapter 3 – Derek Waldron