'Wise to what?' inquired Seymour, to whom all this was literally as well as figuratively territory antipodean, his two surviving grandparents living close to their eldest son, Seymour's uncle Andy, in New Zealand.
'The old folk problem,' said the warden. 'People live a long time these days. Trouble is they don't stay young longer, they stay old longer. It's when they start needing looked after, either because they can't get about any more, or because they're into SD, that the bother starts. I see it coming on, I just pass the word to the social workers. They start working at the relatives to take the old people to live with them. They say it's best for them. Well, maybe. It's certainly best for the local authority. Once you get an elderly relative being looked after in your house, you've got a hell of a job to get shut of him! There's not the hospital beds, you see. The authority just doesn't want to know. But now folk are getting wise, they've seen it on the telly, old folk don't come home to die any more, they come home to live and be a worry and a bother and a burden for years maybe.'
'So what happens?'
'If no one takes 'em in, the authority's got no choice. But you've got to be really hard not to take your old mam or dad in just for a couple of weeks, haven't you? Hello, Mrs Campbell. Here's a nice young bobby for you to dazzle. Always said you were a bobby-dazzler, didn't I?'
Mrs Campbell who had appeared with a shopping basket was a great relief to Seymour. All this talk about senile dementia had filled him with foreboding, and it was a pleasant surprise to see this bright-eyed, handsome woman in an elegant fur coat and a truly remarkable hat which seemed to be composed entirely of orange feathers. She gave him a cup of tea and in the round, confident tones of the middle class expressed her great distress at the sad news about Tap Parrinder.
'Such a nice man. So independent, and good with his hands too. It's so nice to have a man about the place, Mr Seymour, someone you can turn to if you need something lifted or fixed. Mr Tempest, the warden, is very obliging, of course, but he's not the same as a real neighbour, if you know what I mean. I do hope we get a replacement as nice, and preferably another man. We do seem to be rather top-heavy with females, I'm afraid. Not that I'm complaining, Mr Seymour. I never anticipated finishing my days in council accommodation, but to tell you the truth, I've been quite delighted with the class of person I've met in the flats, quite delighted!'
After another cup of tea, Seymour finally got down to extracting firm answers to his questions.
She had last spoken to Parrinder on Friday morning.
'He'd been a little under the weather for the past few days, just a cold, but he hadn't gone out. I called to ask him if he wanted anything from the shops when I went out later as I usually do on Friday. He said no, he was still all right.'
'Still?'
'Yes. I'd looked in from time to time earlier in the week. I offered to collect his pension but he said he might as well let it stand as he had plenty of stuff in his fridge to keep him going.'
'Did he say anything about going out later?' asked Seymour.
'Oh no. I'd have certainly told him what I thought if he'd even hinted it. It was so nasty, even I put off my shopping till Saturday, after all. He was standing looking out of his window as we talked and I remember saying to him I might change my mind and not go till Saturday if it didn't get any better and he said something about yes, but it makes the ground nice and heavy, doesn't it? As if that was a good thing! And then he goes out in it without telling anyone. But he was such an independent man. Independence! It's your greatest fault and your greatest virtue, you men. You have to do things your own way, Mr Seymour. Your own way. There's no denying you!'
She smiled coyly at him and Seymour finished his tea and took his leave, promising to call in again if ever he were passing.
He almost gave the demented Mrs Escott a miss, but he had a fairly strongly developed sense of duty and also knew that those omissions which the sharp eye of Sergeant Wield didn't spot, the milder but no less perceptive gaze of Inspector Pascoe would surely pick up.
Mrs Escott was even more of a relief than Mrs Campbell. Instead of some wild woman of the woods, with mad eyes and unkempt hair, he found himself in the presence of a very ordinary-looking, rather dumpy lady with neat grey hair whose only sign of disturbance was that her soft brown eyes filled with tears when she discovered his mission.
She bustled around making a pot of tea which Seymour didn't really want but guessed was a therapeutic response. He placed himself so that he could see into the tiny kitchen and check that she actually lit the gas. Everything was carried out swiftly and efficiently and the tea tasted fine, no salt instead of sugar, or any other mad substitution. His expression of gratitude must have been slightly overdone for he caught her looking at him as if she suspected he was slightly odd, a disconcerting reversal.
She was able to fill in a little more of Parrinder's Friday timetable. She had called in to see him at about two o'clock that afternoon. He was watching some racing on the television and she had made a cup of tea and they had sat together and talked for about an hour. He had made no mention of any plans for going out later, but that didn't surprise her. Not that he was a secretive man, but he was certainly one who made his own decisions independent of anyone else.
'Did he drink a lot?' wondered Seymour.
'Oh no,' she said. 'He liked a drop of rum when he could afford it, but he wasn't what you would call a drinker.'
Seymour made notes. It was beginning to seem possible that Parrinder had met his 'accident' as he was heading across the recreation ground on his way into town later that evening rather than on his return, though the latter was by no means ruled out. It had been ten o'clock when Mr Cox found him. Presumably he had been lying there for some time for the wet and the cold to strike home with such deadly effect. It would have been dark by five o'clock on such a dreary day and very few pedestrians would have been out and about in such a place in such conditions.
'Mr Seymour,' said Mrs Escott in her rather gentle voice which had a great deal of the West Country beneath its patina of Yorkshire vowels and usages. 'All these questions – was Mr Parrinder attacked by someone? When I heard about it this morning, they just said he'd fallen and broken something.'
For a woman whose mind was failing, she was sharp enough to be the first to ask the question direct, thought Seymour.
'We don't know,' he said, adding reassuringly, 'But don't you worry about it. Maybe it was just an accident. That's what I'm trying to find out.'
'That recreation ground,' she said, her eyes filling again. 'It's a dreadful place when it's dark. All those muggings you read about. I won't go near the place, I don't even like it much in daylight either. Poor Tap, poor Tap.'
J
The double dose of tea had got to Seymour and he asked permission to use the bathroom.
'Yes, of course,' said the woman, directing him, and drying her tears at the same time.
Seymour went in. It was a ground-floor flat and Mrs Escott, not trusting to frosted glass to protect her privacy, also had heavy curtains drawn so that the room was in deep gloom. Seymour reached out, grasped the light cord and pulled.
No light came on, at least not in here, and distantly he heard a double-noted bell begin to clamour an urgent summons.
'Oh shit,' he said.
Chapter 10
'Oh my country! How I love my country!'
George Headingley had had a mixed morning.