‘Not more than once or twice a year,’ said Parker.
‘I knew she was coming yesterday. Mrs Crown told me. I saw her in the Post Office and she said Rhoda’d phoned to say she was coming on account of old Mr Comfrey’d had a stroke. But I never saw her, didn’t really know her to speak to.’
Burden said, ‘Who is Mrs Crown?’
‘Miss Comfrey’s auntie. She lives in the next house to old Mr Comfrey. She’s the one you want to see.’
‘No doubt, but there’s no one in.’
‘I tell you what,’ said Stella Parker who seemed to have twice her husband’s grasp and intelligence, ‘I don’t want to put myself forward, but I do read detective books, and if it’s sort of background stuff you want, you couldn’t do better than talk to Brian’s gran. She’s lived here all her life, she was born in one of those cottages.’
‘Your grandmother lives with you?’
‘Helped us buy this place with her savings,’ said Parker, ‘and moved in with us. It works OK, doesn’t it, Stell? She’s a wonder, my gran.’
Wexford smiled and got up. ‘I may want to talk to her but not tonight. You’ll be notified about the inquest, Mr Parker. It shouldn’t be too much of an ordeal. Now, d’you know when Mrs Crown will be home?’
‘When the pubs turn out,’ said Parker.
‘I think the infirmary next, Mike,’ said Wexford. ‘From the vague sort of time Crocker gave us, it’s beginning to look to me as if Rhoda Comfrey was killed on her way back from visiting her father in hospital. She’d have used that footpath as a short cut from the bus stop.’
‘Visiting time at Stowerton’s seven till eight in the evenings,’ said Burden. ‘We may be able to fix the time of death more accurately this way than by any post-mortem findings.’
‘The pub-orientated aunt should help us there. If this old boy’s compos mentis, we’ll get his daughter’s London address from him.’
‘We’ll also have to break the news,’ said Burden.
Departing visitors were queueing at the bus stop outside Stowerton Royal Infirmary. Had Rhoda Comfrey queued there on the previous night? It was ten past eight. A man in the porter’s lodge told them that James Albert Comfrey was a patient in Lytton Ward. They went along a corridor and up two flights of stairs. A pair of glass double doors, the entrance to Lytton Ward, were closed. As Wexford pushed them open, a young nurse of Malaysian or Thai origin popped up in their path and announced in a chirrup that they couldn’t come in now.
‘Police,’ said Burden. ‘We’d like to see the sister in charge.’
‘If you please, my dear,’ said Wexford, and the girl gave him a broad smile before hurrying off. ‘Do you have to be so bloody rude, Mike?’
She came back with Sister Lynch, a tall dark-haired Irishwoman in her late twenties. ‘What can I do for you gentlemen?’ She listened, clicked her tongue as Wexford gave her the bare details. ‘There’s a terrible thing. A woman’s not safe to walk abroad. And Miss Comfrey in here only last night to see her father.’
‘We’ll have to see him. Sister.’
‘Not tonight you won’t. Chief Inspector. I’m sure I’m sorry, but I couldn’t allow it, not with the old gentlemen all settling down for the night. They’d none of them get a wink of sleep, and it’s going off duty I am myself in ten minutes. I’ll tell him myself tomorrow, though whether it’ll sink in at all I doubt.’
‘He’s senile?’
‘There’s a word, Chief Inspector, that I’m never knowing the meaning of. Eighty-five he is, and he’s had a major stroke. Mostly he sleeps. If that’s to be senile, senile he is. You’ll be wasting your valuable time seeing him. I’ll break it to him as best I can. Now would there be anything else?’
‘Miss Comfrey’s home address, please.’
‘Certainly.’ Sister Lynch beckoned to a dark-skinned girl who had appeared, pushing a trolley of drugs. ‘Would you get Miss Comfrey’s home address from records, Nurse Mahmud?’
‘Did you talk to Miss Comfrey last night. Sister?’
‘No more than to say hallo and that the old gentleman was just the same. And I said good-bye to her too. She was talking to Mrs Wells and they left together. Mrs Wells’s husband is in the next bed to Mr Comfrey. Here’s the address you were wanting. Thank you, nurse. Number one, Carlyle Villas, Forest Road, Kingsmarkham.’ Sister Lynch studied the card which had been handed to her. ‘No phone I see.’
‘I’m afraid you’ve got Mr Comfrey’s address there,’ said Wexford. ‘It’s his daughter’s we want.’
‘But that is his daughter’s, his and his daughter’s.’
Wexford shook his head. ‘No. She lived in London.’
‘It’s the only one we have,’ said Sister Lynch, a slight edge to her voice. ‘As far as we know. Miss Comfrey lived in Kingsmarkham with her father.’
‘Then I’m afraid you were misled. Suppose you had had to get in touch with her – for instance, if her father had taken a turn for the worse – how would you have done so? Notified her by letter? Or sent a messenger.?
Sister Lynch had begun to look huffy. He was questioning her efficiency. ‘That wouldn’t have been necessary. Miss Comfrey phoned in almost every day. Last Thursday, now, she phoned on the very day her father had his stroke.’
‘And yet you say she hadn’t a phone? Sister, I need that address. I shall have to see Mr Comfrey.’
Her eyes went to her watch and noted the time. She said very sharply, ‘Aren’t I telling you, the poor old gentleman’s no more than a vegetable at all? As for giving you an address, you’d as likely get an answer out of my little dog.’
‘Very well. In the absence of Miss Comfrey’s address, I’ll have Mrs Wells’s please.’ This was provided, and Wexford said. ‘We’ll come back tomorrow.’
‘You must suit yourselves. And now I’ll take my leave of you.’
Wexford murmured as they left, ‘There is nothing you could take from me that I would more willingly part withal,’ and then to Burden, who was smugly looking as if his early rudeness had been justified and he hoped his superior realized it, ‘We’ll get it from the aunt. Odd, though, isn’t it, her not giving her home address to the hospital?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. Underhand, but not odd. These old people can be a terrible drag. And it’s always the women who are expected to look after them. I mean, old Comfrey’ll be let out some time and he won’t be able to live on his own any more. A single woman and a daughter is a gift to all those busybody doctors and social workers. They’d seize on her. Wouldn’t even consider expecting it of a son. If she gave them her real address they’d pounce on that as a convalescent home for the old boy.’
‘You’re the last person I thought I’d ever hear handing out Women’s Lib propaganda,’ said Wexford. ‘Wonders will never cease. But doesn’t it strike you that your theory only increases her chances of getting stuck with her father? They think she’s on the spot, they think she lives with him already.’
‘There’ll be an explanation. It isn’t important, is it?’
‘It’s a departure from the norm, and that makes it important to me. I think Mrs Wells next, Mike, and then back to Forest Road to wait for the aunt.'
Mrs Wells was seventy years old, slow of speech and rather confused. She had seen and spoken to Rhoda Comfrey twice before on her previous visits to the hospital, once in May and once in July. On the evening before they had got on the bus together outside the hospital at eight-fifteen. What had they talked about? Mrs Wells thought it had mostly been about her husband’s hip operation. Miss Comfrey hadn’t said much, had seemed a bit nervous and uneasy. Worried about her father, Mrs Wells thought. No, she didn’t know her London address, believed in fact that she lived in Forest Road where she had said she was returning. Mrs Wells had left the bus at the Kingsbrook Bridge, but her companion had remained on it, having a ticket to the next fare stage.