Not a Very Nice Woman

by John Eider

Arriving at their station, squeezed around the rim of a gardened square between the library and the town’s civic buildings, they pulled in beside the squad cars and vans in the yard behind. Grey looked up at the window he knew his Superintendent could often be found peering out from, though he was not there that afternoon, gone home early to whatever it was he had asked Grey to interrupt him in with news that evening. With his Sergeant the Inspector went straight through to the main office, where their administrative support was already working through the materials sent through earlier.

  ‘Hello, sir,’ chirped Sarah Cobb. ‘We were expecting you back earlier, your drinks have gone cold.’

  ‘Lovely, thanks,’ said Cori through gulping lukewarm tea.

  ‘That poor old lady,’ continued Sarah.

  ‘Did you know her?’ asked her boss, suddenly concerned.

  ‘Oh no, but one of my Nan’s friends was there, it’s a lovely place.’

  ‘It is that,’ agreed Grey to a smile from Cori.

  ‘Have you found anything yet, sir?’

  ‘Not much, just a lot of character stuff. We’re relying on you.’

  ‘Okay, well I haven’t got the whole way back yet but I’ve found out a few little pieces: Stella Dunbar is on the electoral role and the tax system going back to the mid-Seventies, everything consistent with her being seventy-one years old and having paid her way for several decades. She’s not showing as ever being on our police records, even the digitised archives.’

  ‘Sounds a blameless life.’

  ‘Tracing forward from her Certificate In Education, I called the teaching unions, one of whom had her listed as a member working at the Tudor Oak Independent School from Seventy-four to Ninety-five.’

  ‘That’s where Brough wants for Connor,’ started Cori. ‘Brooke too if her brother likes it.’

  ‘Best in the area, I hear,’ said Grey diplomatically.

  ‘I believe it’s quite expensive,’ was all Sarah added, knowing her boss shared her social outlook; but Grey was thinking,

  ‘The kind of place, do you reckon, that might award an employee an engraved silver watch?’

  ‘”For All The Help You’ve Given Us”,’ recalled Cori.

  ‘Twenty-one years’ service might deserve it.’

  ‘Anyway,’ continued Sarah, ‘this also fits with the Tax Office, who record a change of status around that time to self-employed.’

  ‘When she became a private tutor,’ noted Cori.

  ‘And I found something else out there – I called the Property Registry…’

  ‘You’ve done so much!’

  ‘Not really, sir, I’ve had most of the day and it’s all very easy nowadays. Anyway, she’s had two flats within the building.’

  ‘Yes, Derek Waldron told me she’d moved to the top floor for more privacy.’

  ‘Well, the Registry told me that she didn’t buy the first flat, but that it was willed to her.’

  ‘Who by?’

  ‘Another Dunbar, though they had no more than a name. However, the will was handled by a firm of solicitors in town: Rossiter’s – you pass the office in the High Street.’

  ‘And now the Trust’s solicitors.’

  ‘Yes, they confirmed it when I called them – there’ll be someone at the office all afternoon.’

  ‘Then we must get over there.’ Grey was as usual agog at their assistant’s efficiency. ‘In the sixteen years of the Trust has there been any trouble at the Cedars? Tax evasion, dodgy accounting? Anything on our books?’

  ‘None I can find, sir.’

  ‘Then please find me some impropriety somewhere, Sarah.’

  ‘I’ll try my best. Oh yes, and there’s one other lead: the teaching union I spoke to had Stella listed as a Mrs S Mars for her first term at Tudor Oak.’

  ‘A marriage?’

  ‘I’ve found nothing else out yet, though this would also be about the time she appears on the electoral role as Dunbar.’

  ‘But her certificate read Dunbar in Sixty-three.’

  ‘She must have married and then reverted,’ suggested Cori.

  ‘I haven’t got to the records of that yet.’

  ‘At last we find your limit, Sarah,’ said Grey in a way he knew she’d read the humour of. He slapped his hands on his knees,

  ‘Then we have places to get to before they close – Cori, get to the Southney School and ask if they have the names of students seeing private tutors; otherwise ask for girls with long dark hair, initials EN or SK.’

  ‘Right-ho.’

  ‘Meanwhile, Sarah, there’s something we didn’t know earlier to ask you about: one of those who found the victim, Charlie Prove, had a daughter who may have been killed, possibly around the time the Trust was formed and certainly before he moved in. I know no more than that. As soon as you know all you can about Stella, please move on to him. Oh, and get the rest of the office on Derek Waldron and Rachel Sowton, I want to trust them and I can’t until we’ve checked them out.’

  ‘What about you, sir?’ asked Cori.

  I’m off to Rossiter’s solicitors; and if we’re all back in time, which we should be, then on to Tudor Oak School.’

  ‘But it’s a school, sir. They won’t be open much longer today.’

  ‘Well we’re not going to get there by three thirty even if we leave now, and the other sites are closer and as important. Could you call them this moment, Sarah, and have someone who remembers those days stay and wait for us. This is all too important – we have to go to the only place we knew she ever was before the Cedars.’

  Two schools in one afternoon, thought Cori, who like many an adult had taken years of being a parent to approach their child’s house of learning without the ghosts of her own education being also in attendance. It was all there though as she entered the front door of the modern Combined Administration Building and followed the sign along the corridor for the office: the metal chairs, the naïve art, the scuffs along the skirting boards from cleaning machines.

  ‘Can we help you?’

  Cori thought she knew why the Inspector has assigned himself the solicitor’s office, as an unknown man would rouse even more suspicion in a school secretary than that which she was under now. The woman was maybe fifty and seemed effortlessly stern – perhaps set so, Cori imagined, from a thousand ‘Come back here!’s.

  She had her badge ready,

  ‘Sergeant Smith, Southney Station. I wonder, could I have a word?’

  Her identification as a police officer, while reassuring to the secretary in one way seemed alarming in another,

  ‘Miss Foreshore. Won’t you sit?’

  A part of Cori couldn’t resist the impression that she was here to be asked about her homework.

  ‘Please don’t tell me one of the children are in trouble. What have they done now?’

  ‘It’s not that. No one’s in trouble.’

  ‘Then it’s a parent. Oh Lord. Which child? I’ll fetch them for you.’

  ‘No, please don’t worry. It’s not that,’ she repeated. ‘We are investigating a serious matter, but one that I’m sure none of your children will prove to be caught up in.’ A white lie, but necessary for the lady’s nerves.

  ‘Oh?’ the secretary was still far from settled.

  ‘I wonder, do you know a Ms Stella Dunbar?’

  ‘She’s one of our tutors.’

  ‘I’m afraid she died last night.’

  ‘And you want to tell her students? I understand. She was English Lit., wasn’t she?’ The lady began rustling through her well-organised desk drawers.

  ‘She seemed like a few different subjects.’ Cori remembered the books on Stella’s dining table. ‘But what I really need are the names of those who saw her.’

  ‘Well that’s why I ask her subject: you see we only keep a list here of those qualified tutors we know in the area, to recommend to parents. But as for the students who were seeing them at any one time, well, that’s a private matter between the tutor and the parents.’


  ‘And do you remember recommending any parents?’

  ‘Well… there are several tutors, and so many parents; and it might not have been me here when they came in to ask… Ah, here we are.’ Miss Foreshore pulled a piece of paper from the cantilevers and dividers, ‘So what do we know about her? Oh yes, there’s almost every subject listed here, and all ages too. That will be trickier.’

  ‘Why so?’ asked Cori as she took the piece of paper offered.

  ‘Well often the student’s teacher in that subject will know if there’s a tutor, might even have recommended the parents to them. Had she taught only one subject I would have known the teacher to ask. As it is, the best bet will be for me to announce the news in the Staff Room tomorrow morning before registration – that’s the one time all the teachers are guaranteed to be there. They need to know in case they have students with appointments: we don’t want a child going around there after school and finding she’s not there. I wonder, could I ask?’

  ‘Of course. I’m afraid her death appears violent… though clearly not the work of a child,’ added Cori quickly to reassure the secretary.

  ‘And do you know who..?’

  ‘I’m afraid not; however a student was there that day and might have seen something.’

  ‘Poor dear, I do hope not.’ The secretary pondered a moment, before asking, ‘You’ll have been through Stella’s things: she didn’t leave any record of who she was tutoring?’

  ‘Only a diary with what we think may be initials: EN and SK; and we believe one was a girl with long dark hair, and that she had a female friend.’

  ‘But you don’t know which was the long-dark-haired girl? You’ll see that doesn’t give me much to go on. I can look through the registers and see if a name jumps out at me – it’s hard to think with just the initials; but otherwise we’ll have to hope a teacher knows something tomorrow.’

  ‘Then thank you. Can I ask, did you have any dealings with Ms Dunbar?’

  ‘Well only occasionally through the office. She was always very professional.’

  ‘And what did people think of her generally? Did you recommend her often?’

  ‘Oh yes, we did recommend her. Her fees were at the high end, but she earned them, Sergeant. In fact… she could rather embarrass a teacher with the effect she could have on a student: twenty, even forty percent improvements in grades when she really connected with them. There are a lot of people in this town with passes who wouldn’t have them if it hadn’t been for her. She will be missed.’

  ‘Here’s my number – call me any time with the slightest thing.’

  Cori thanked Miss Foreshore, and skipped quickly from the low-ceilinged building, off to walk the short way back to the station and prepare for school two.

  Rossiter’s Solicitors in Law had been a long-standing feature of Southney’s High Street, one of those shopfronts that remained the same decade in–decade out and which reassured in the belief that some things could be permanent and may endure. Of course Rossiter himself could not have endured for so long as the shop, and Grey, who hadn’t been in there for years nor could remember who had attended him then, assumed it would be a partner or descendant that he would need to speak to on this occasion.

  It was a woman buzzed by the secretary and who brought Grey into her office, calling for coffee to be provided,

  ‘Raine Rossiter, Inspector. I’m the third generation; and as long as there’s a Rossiter to run the shop we’ll be here on the High Street. Of course I’m married, this is only my professional name; like an actress,’ she giggled in a way Grey might normally have found irritating.

  ‘I’m afraid it’s sad news that brings me here.’

  ‘As is so often the case.’ Her mood changed in an instant. ‘A will, a loved one – people rarely visit us out of joy.’

  ‘Not sad for me personally, but thank you.’

  ‘I know, your assistant called ahead.’

  ‘Then you know about Ms Dunbar.’

  ‘Stella, dead.’ She shook her head.

  ‘I’m afraid so.’

  Who could imagine?’

  ‘How were you told?’

  ‘Rachel called me this morning.’

  ‘Now, you represent Ms Dunbar and the Trust?’

  ‘My father is the Trust’s named solicitor, but I do the day-to-day work around here now. But,’ her mood changed again, ‘a death at the Cedars doesn’t normally bring out an Inspector.’

  ‘I’m afraid it was no natural death. Stella was murdered.’

  At that moment the receptionist brought in the coffee.

  ‘Oh Andrea, you won’t believe what the Inspector’s come about.’ Raine Rossiter turned quickly to Grey, ‘You don’t mind if I tell her..? Andrea, Stella Dunbar’s death wasn’t natural, she’s been murdered.’

  Andrea’s reaction was no less dramatic than her employer’s; who instructed,

  ‘Call Rachel for me, will you, and tell her I’ll call myself as soon as I’m finished with the Inspector.’

  Andrea disappeared leaving the coffee unserved.

  Grey resumed, ‘There are certain details of the Trust I must know.’

  ‘They’re happy for you to know?’

  ‘They know it’s a murder investigation.’

  ‘There are several files – where should we start?’

  ‘The Trustees?’

  She took a card folder from a filing tray in her desk, the tray presumably for those papers she needed keeping handy, opened the folder and read,

  ‘The Cedars Trust, registered sixteen years ago; with Ms S Dunbar as a Trustee, along with a Mr D Waldron as the only other original one still listed, I notice. There’s a whole inventory of names here, past and present. Do you want them all?’ He nodded and she passed him the paper, ‘Ask Andrea to make you a copy on your way out.’

  He read the names, several recorded as long deceased while others were familiar from the day’s enquiries. One name jumped out,

  ‘Rachel Sowton is a Trustee?’

  ‘Yes, made so five years ago.’

  ‘And there’s a name missing here.’ He looked up and down the list again. ‘Charlie Prove.’

  ‘Charlie’s never been a Trustee,’ she said matter-of-factly.

  ‘But he should have been made one a decade ago.’

  Grey may have phrased this as a statement but would till have liked an answer. None forthcoming, he sidestepped,

  ‘So tell me, how does the money work?’

  ‘Well, all residents pay at least five thousand a year into the Trust, depending on need; though apart from the original group only residents who have been there for five years become Trustees and so can decide how that money is spent.’

  ‘And wasn’t there a one-off fee at the start?’

  ‘The original eight all put in a one-off fifteen thousand pounds to pay for building work, and also to buy the two downstairs flats they use communally.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Well, the Trust has for years been paying this back to them a little each year in the form of a subsidy on their fees.’

  Grey thought on this a moment,

  ‘So this makes the repayments a goodwill gesture to themselves, rather than repayments on a loan?’

  ‘That’s a way of looking at it.’

  ‘And meaning that if any of them did die before repayment, then there wasn’t going to be a balance of the loan left to pay to their estate?’

  ‘Yes. They forewent any financial advantage owing to their inheritors, to save the Trust that financial burden of a lump sum required to be paid out upon their death.’

  Very clever that, Grey considered of that first Committee.

  ‘How much of Stella’s was left to pay back to her?’

  ‘Only a fraction, I’d estimate.’

  So there was one potential motive annulled – her death would not benefit the Trust this way.

  ‘Let’s talk about Stella.’

  ‘Did you know her, Inspector?’

/>   ‘No. How well did you?’

  ‘I doubt there was a week we weren’t in touch.’

  ‘In touch with the Trust or with her?’

  ‘That tends… tended to be the same thing.’

  ‘You mean she ran things? But I thought there was the Committee?’

  But she caught something in his eye as he said this,

  ‘To ask like that I think you already know how things were run.’

  ‘Stella had a tendency to supervise?’

  ‘These are retirees we’re talking about, they’ve had a life of owning businesses and paying bills and they want someone else to take care of all that for them now. What’s more, they want care-home service for warden-controlled prices. Okay, they own their own flats, which aren’t cheap either, but someone has to run that place to budget.’

  ‘And that was Stella?’

  ‘With Rachel, yes.’

  ‘Was this why Rachel is a Trustee?’

  ‘She has to be, she’s more than just an employee.’

  ‘Stella wanted this?’

  ‘There was no disagreement.’

  ‘Was there often with Stella’s suggestions?’

  The solicitor considered her answer, ‘Some people felt the wrong side of her, I’m sure of it; but as a professional and as a woman making my way in the world, I understood her, Inspector, understood how we must sometimes be tough, even cold to the world.’

  ‘I’ll need the paperwork of her two flat purchases.’

  ‘Andrea will have them for you first thing tomorrow; though,’ she checked herself, ‘there was only one purchase, the first flat was willed.’

  He wasn’t sure he had been testing her, but it proved she knew her onions. It also got them where he wanted to be going,

  ‘That was… twenty-four years ago? Not that you’d have been here that long ago.’

  ‘I’m not sure I should respond to such flattery, Inspector,’ she answered even as her smile confirmed it had been welcomed. ‘That was indeed my father’s era, though I was his trainee by then. He took me everywhere with him, including to her school.’

  ‘Her school?’

  ‘Yes, that big place where she worked, I’ll never forget it. We met her in her lunch-hour; I don’t think she lived in town at that time.’

  ‘Had he dealt with Stella before?’

  ‘I got the impression she was new to him; after all it was the aunt who was the client.’

  ‘And the family?’

  ‘There are other Dunbars beside the aunt in the files, though nothing current. We can check that for you. I must say though, you are going back a long way – what on earth do you think was the motive? I mean, that is why you’re asking, isn’t it – to learn why someone killed her?’

  ‘You can’t think of any more recent reason?’

  ‘What kind of question’s that?’

  ‘Well, you saw her manage her finances; quite substantial amounts I’ve learnt.’

  ‘I assure you, no institution in this town is better run.’

  ‘And by just two women, three if we include yourself, the Committee little more than a rubber stamp.’

  ‘I resent that implication.’

  ‘You were her friend, that is clear enough. Please don’t let sentiment hold you back now.’

  ‘I assure you, there is nothing to tell, even were I held! I only wish that my friend were allowed the dignity in death she had in life.’

  He paused, ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Rossiter. Money is often the motive in a crime. You appreciate I wouldn’t be doing my job if I…’

  ‘That’s all right. I take it I’m not seriously on your suspects list?’

  ‘That would be no list I would want to put my name to.’

  ‘Then I rest assured.’ Her slight smile confirmed he was forgiven.

  ‘I think I have one more thing to ask you now though, and then will be very glad of the files tomorrow morning.’

  ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘In fact his name cropped up earlier. She had a friend, Charlie Prove..?’

  Raine Rossiter offered an exasperated groan, tilting her head back as she fell into her executive’s chair,

  ‘I’m not going to get out of here without talking about him, am I? Everything I’ve just said, about no enterprise being run better? Well, forget it when it comes to him.’

  Grey felt a door of long-held frustration being unlocked.

  ‘Not long over a year after they had created the Cedars Trust – its rules laid down, its rooms laid out, and after all the work my father had put in – then Stella, who’d been strictest of all the residents over needing to take their plan seriously, and how they weren’t just neighbours any more but had a responsibility to each other and needed to pay their money promptly; Stella, the architect of the whole scheme, called a special Committee meeting to say she had a friend who had no money, no means of paying his fees, but that once you’d heard his story you’d be as eager to have him be a resident as she was.’

  ‘You were there that day?’

  ‘No, but we learnt of it soon after – my father would be bending every rule to get him in.’

  ‘So, he got in, obviously.’

  ‘After a lot of negotiation he was given – given – a flat to rent at rates you wouldn’t even get a Social Services bed and breakfast room for, and all the rights of a resident for half the usual monthly fee; all of which – show no sentiment, you said – I can tell you now that Stella was paying for.’

  ‘Every penny?’

  Raine Rossiter nodded, ‘At first it was thought he could do some handywork around the place to pay his way, but he was useless. Have you met him, Inspector?’

  ‘Not yet: he’s under sedation.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘He found Stella, with Rachel Sowton.’

  She winced, ‘Then I’m afraid you won’t get much out of him for days.’

  This wasn’t what Grey wanted to hear.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she continued, ‘the way I talk about him you must think I hate him; but then how could anyone when they know his story.’

  ‘Our researcher is still tracing the file.’

  ‘Then I must tell you: he had a daughter, Eunice, who was murdered by her boyfriend. Well, I say murdered by him; he vanished that same night, went back up north we believe. He was a Scotsman, you see, though as unrepresentative of that happy race as he could be. Have you ever been to Edinburgh, Inspector?’

  ‘No, I can’t say I have.’

  ‘Do, when all this is over. Clear your head.’

  He checked his watch, ‘I really must be getting back to the station, but all that has left me with a couple of final questions: when Stella’s aunt willed her the flat, was there money attached?’

  ‘Yes, Inspector, rather a lot of it, though she continued to work for a number of years, up until about the time she thought of starting the Trust.’

  ‘Did anything happen sixteen years ago to prompt this?’

  ‘No; I think she just realised she wanted to slow down, work less, secure her future.’

  ‘By then she had the top floor flat?’

  ‘By then she had the top floor flat.’

  ‘And anything there I need to know about?’

  ‘You know, it’s not uncommon for people to move within buildings.’

  ‘How much of her money is left?’

  ‘She would have kept herself going a good few years yet.’

  ‘Even with Charlie Prove?’

  ‘Even with Charlie Prove.’

  ‘Then thank you, you’ve been very helpful. Oh, and tomorrow I think I’ll need the paperwork for Charlie’s flat transaction too.’

  He left the paper on her desk for them to add to what they’d bring tomorrow. They shook hands; and as Grey left through the reception overheard Andrea still on the phone, though he had the impression not to Rachel Sowton.

  Chapter 7 – Tudor Oak