‘What light?’ Lorimer demanded.
Brenda Duncan frowned. ‘It was funny, now I come to think of it. The back corridor light just came on. I hadn’t noticed it was off until I was through the swing-doors then it just came on.’
Wilson scribbled something on his notepad.
‘Go on, please,’ Lorimer pressed her.
‘I didn’t see anything at first. I just walked along the corridor. It was that quiet. Then I heard a noise. A kind of scraping sound. It was the door down to the basement. Someone had left it open and it was creaking in the wind. I pushed it open and switched on the light. And then I saw her.’
This time the pause was for real. Lorimer could see fear loom large in the woman’s widening eyes and he could easily imagine her screams. But now her voice sank to a whisper as she stared past them.
‘She was lying on her back. I thought at first she’d fallen, so I hurried down the stairs.’ She swallowed hard. ‘Then I saw it. That flower. I knew then. I just knew she was dead.’
‘Did you feel for a pulse?’ Wilson asked.
She shook her head and Lorimer saw her eyes staring into space, mesmerised by that image fixed in her brain.
‘Kirsty was dead and all I could think of was that she hadn’t had her cocoa!’ Brenda Duncan suddenly burst into tears. The woman PC who had accompanied her into the lounge was by her side now and looking quizzically at Lorimer for instructions. No doubt she was expecting him to terminate the interview. Spare the poor woman any further suffering. Well, that wasn’t always Lorimer’s way. There were still things he needed to know.
‘How long was it between the time you saw Nurse MacLeod alive and the discovery of the body?’ The question brought a halt to the flow of tears. There was a wiping of eyes and the WPC retreated to her post by the lounge door. Brenda Duncan looked distractedly around her for a moment.
‘I’m not sure, really. I remember it was after midnight on the alarm clock in one of the rooms. I’d seen Kirsty about quarter-past eleven, maybe. She’d been writing up some paperwork before she went upstairs. I went through the front to check the rooms. I put fresh loo rolls in, give the basins a wipe, that sort of thing.’ She looked nervously at Lorimer. ‘I don’t know what time it was when I made the cocoa. Not long after.’
‘So that was the last time you saw her alive. At approximately eleven-fifteen?’
The woman’s lip trembled. ‘I just made her cocoa. We’d always have a blether. But she never came. She never came.’ Brenda Duncan clutched herself with both arms rocking back and forwards, whimpering softly.
‘Thank you, Mrs Duncan.’ Lorimer was finished with her for the moment. He nodded to Wilson who rose and helped the woman to her feet. ‘If you would just follow the officer out. We have a car to take you home,’ Lorimer’s detective sergeant reassured her. ‘There will be a statement to sign later on but we’ll let you know about that.’
‘Oh, just one more thing,’ Lorimer’s voice stopped them in their tracks. ‘What about the patient whose room is at the back of the nursing home?’
Brenda Duncan looked nonplussed. Then she gave a small shake of the head. ‘Oh. You mean Phyllis? She’s an MS patient. Totally paralysed. Can’t speak. Poor thing. Mrs Baillie can tell you more, I’m sure.’ She looked uncertainly at Lorimer then added, ‘Can I go now?’
‘Of course. Thank you for your help.’
Lorimer stood looking out as the police car drove off. She hadn’t mentioned seeing to Phyllis Logan that night. Had anybody spoken to the owner of the Grange? Was she even aware that a murder had taken place under her own roof?
Chapter Twelve
Sometimes he let his mind wander back to the time when he’d been happiest. In his memory the days were always sunny, the cloisters full of friendly shadows. The work had been hard, especially all the studying, but the compensations of having his own vocation made up for everything. There were days like today when the wind blowing from the west reminded him of the gardens with their high walls clad with espaliers and creeping vines. If he closed his eyes he was back there once more, the mumbling sound of bees as they staggered from one lavender bush to the next making his head feel drowsy. The soil had been fine and black beneath his fingernails, a joy to cultivate. And they’d been so pleased with him, hadn’t they?
A cold shadow crossed his face, making him look up as the sun disappeared for some moments. The nights, too, had been his. He’d plundered the hours of darkness, his footfall a bright echo on the stones of the chapel. A candle. He remembered there had been a candle, tall, the colour of honey, its flame bent side ways by the draught of his passing. The candle had stood for a sentinel on these special nights between midnight and dawn, flickering its pinpoint lights against the metal cross that lay within the coffin.
The bodies were always carefully dressed in white robes, the faces of the deceased facing skywards. Sometimes, watching them for long hours at a time, he wondered if their eyes would open and see him staring. In dreams he saw their dead eyes glaze like pale gobs of jelly, their heads turn accusingly in his direction. Perhaps that’s why he had given them the flower, to appease them, stop their looks of disdain. They seemed to know everything, to understand his innermost thoughts. He’d decided that they were dangerous, these dead people, especially the very old ones with their wrinkled flesh hanging in folds, the candlelight magnifying each crease on the tallow skin.
The first time he had placed a red flower between the praying hands the wind had sighed outside the chapel door like a benediction. Then he knew it was all right. He had a blessing. The priests had sounded their delight. Bells had rung in his honour and the clever boys had lifted him shoulder-high through the college gates. He’d been feather-light, a wisp on the air, able to float down into the coffin and embrace the cold figures lying there so stiff, so stately. Death was sweet. Couldn’t they understand that? Death released them all. He released them now, these women, from their hateful lives. Better to be dead and in a clean white coffin. Clean and cool with the flicker of candle-flame.
He groaned as the pain filled his thighs. Would they never leave him alone, these waking dead? Was he burdened with this task for all eternity?
Chapter Thirteen
Number twenty-eight Murray Street was one in a row of faded red sandstone tenements, once the glory of the tobacco merchants who had helped the city to prosper, but now split into a mismatch of bedsits and small flats. Kirsty MacLeod had rented one of the basement rooms.
Lorimer had spoken to the landlady briefly on the telephone. Now their feet thudded on the uncarpeted wooden stairs that led them in a spiral down to the lower level. Lorimer took in the landlady’s scuffed leather shoes and much-washed cardigan as she turned the stairs below him. Her clothes were covered in an old-fashioned overall, the kind his granny had worn to the steamie to wash the household linen, but he noticed the hem of her skirt was unravelling at the edge. Whatever rent her tenants were paying, it didn’t seem to make a fortune for the woman.
‘How long had Miss MacLeod been renting from you?’
‘Well, let me see,’ the woman turned her head towards Lorimer. ‘She’s been here about eighteen months.’ Lorimer caught a glimpse of tears start in her eyes. They had reached the bottom of the stairs and stopped outside a door marked 3B.
‘I can’t believe she’s dead,’ her words fell in a whisper and she looked away, suddenly embarrassed at her own emotion. She fiddled with the key in the lock. Lorimer cast his eyes over the green painted walls. The place reminded him of an institution rather than a warren of bedsits, although the faint smell of joss sticks lingering in the corridor spoke of a student life he remembered well. Lorimer stood on the threshold of the room. The dark green curtains were still drawn and his eyes took a few blinks to adjust to the dim light.