‘For not letting new residents into Mrs Cuthbert’s rooms next door to her?’
‘Derek’s told you about that then? Yes, it was as though she was saying, My caprices may cost you money now, but you’ll make a killing out of me once I’m dead. Oh my, what have I just said.’
‘Don’t worry, it’s the questions I’m asking, don’t feel bad.’
He didn’t tell her she had just given him his first motive for the murder. But as they were on the subject,
‘I’m sorry to ask, but someone needs to answer this: can you think of anyone who’d want to harm Stella, even ague with her; anyone she’d fallen out with, perhaps another resident?’
The questions felt absurd even as he asked it and she had no clear answer. By now they had reached the shops in the High Street, and he waited for her outside the grocers. When she returned he tried safer ground,
‘Got everything you wanted?’
‘Could you hold these?’
He took the small bag of fruit to leave her hands free to light another cigarette from a fresh pack.
‘Thanks. I can’t even smoke in my room now, you know. It drives me potty.’
Although the kind of woman Grey guessed it would be hard to do anything chivalrous for, she didn’t think to ask for the grocery bag back and nor did he offer it, glad to do even the smallest thing for her at such a trying time,
‘If you don’t mind a couple more questions…’
‘Fire away.’
‘These might seem odd in the circumstances, but you knew her routine and so might be the one to answer them: what time would she close the curtains, put her pyjamas on?’
‘No, Inspector, those are excellent questions, the very best kind. I’ve been thinking exactly the same thing myself; only the answers don’t add up. I don’t want to go back yet — sit with me?’
Just before they reached the Cedars was a bench that looked across to the trees that gave the building its name. Placed there with the oranges between them, she continued,
‘Tell me, Inspector: I wish I’d thought to look at the time, but was her bed disturbed? Had she been in it yet that evening?’
‘Undisturbed,’ he recalled Cori saying.
‘Then we’re looking at a very narrow window, but at the wrong time.’
‘Go on.’
‘Stella was one of those for whom late nights weren’t a pleasure but a chore — after a certain time she would only start worrying about how tired she’d be the next morning, and she loved her mornings.’
‘So…’
‘So, there was no downstairs entertainments on that evening as there would be at weekends — we bring in singers and such, the residents love it — nor did she come down to watch any television with the others, despite there being a documentary on that I’d thought would be right up her street. Indeed, I believe my sighting of her coming back from her walk at eight is still the last time anyone saw her that night.’
‘It is.’
‘So, I know from times I’ve called on her by evening, that if she knew she was staying in and wasn’t expecting any visitors then you could find her relaxing in her nightclothes at any time after her walk.’
‘So she could have been dressed like that from eight?’
‘Yes; and with it being a dull night, most likely closed the curtains at the same time. But…’ and an air or expectation hung over the pause, ‘…on such a lazy evening she wouldn’t be in bed any later than half-nine.’
‘She’d go to sleep so early?’
‘Maybe not to sleep, but by that time she’d be reading in bed or listening to the radio there.’
‘So to be caught dressed like that, but with her bed still undisturbed…’
‘What time to you think… it occurred?’
‘The doctor can’t say for certain yet.’
‘But you’re thinking later rather than earlier?’
Grey nodded, wondered momentarily who was running this investigation; as she continued,
‘In which case, why had Stella gone up to spend the evening in her room, put on her pyjamas to relax, but then not gone to bed? What was keeping her up till, well, who knows how late? And that’s not all.’
Grey hoped this wasn’t going to get complicated.
‘Now the documentary almost everyone was watching downstairs finished at ten, and so for the next while the place would have been alive with people going up to bed, and with the orderlies checking on people after that. That would push us toward eleven o’clock before anyone could have hoped to have gotten up and down those stairs without being seen.’
There was another option, which Grey resisted offering but knew he had to,
‘Forgive me, but you’re assuming the person on the stairs was someone a person wouldn’t expect to see there…’
‘One of us? Do such a thing? Unthinkable.’ Rachel bridled on the bench, Grey fearing she was about to get up and end their talk.
‘Is it so unthinkable?’ He trod gently, ‘She appears to have let them in… you saw for yourself that her door and windows had not been damaged the night before…’
She answered calmly, ‘Inspector, you want me to countenance the possibility that one of our residents or staff, one of my friends, performed this act? Accept that community spirit has broken down to that degree even in such a building as ours? And you think that that’s a world I can bear to imagine living in?’
She summarised, ‘Now, something had kept Stella in her room last night, had kept her up later than usual; someone — even if someone she knew — got into her room and out again without being seen at the busiest time of the night, as I cannot believe she wouldn’t have at least been in bed by the time the building would have quietened down. Something earlier that evening — possibly involving her student who Derek saw on the stairs a little before — must have already disturbed her enough to keep her up at least a good hour later than she would have expected. And that’s what we need you to find out, Inspector; and I can’t help you.’
‘Why?’ he asked; to her bewilderment,
‘Because I wasn’t there.’
Once again it was brought home to Grey how out of the loop he was with this case, when he hadn’t even seen people’s statements of where they were the previous night.
‘You’ve told all this to one of the officers in the dayroom?’
‘Some of it.’
‘So tell me too.’
‘I get three evenings off a week — the orderlies are there, and I keep my mobile on.’
The spare nature of that answer left Grey awash with new questions for her; but he also knew he had much to get back to the Cedars to sort out,
‘Ms Sowton, I need to ask one last big question: you say she wouldn’t have changed into her nightclothes had she been expecting visitors…’
‘Ah, but you’re wondering if there aren’t certain visitors for whom it’s a positive advantage to have changed into your nightclothes for?’
Her candour relieved the tension from the question.
‘It’s good of you to grant our residents the possibility of a sex life, Inspector. So few do, especially the families. The old are as entitled to romance as anyone else in the world — in my time we’ve had four marriages and who knows how many affairs.’
‘And Ms Dunbar?’
‘Stella was not one of them.’
‘Never?’
She paused before answering, ‘I’m not going to claim to be the one who knew her best, though I’ve as good a claim as any for the years I’ve worked here; but we’re in and out of their rooms every day, and so there’s no way that if something was going on that we wouldn’t know about it.’
‘So, to the best of your knowledge…’
‘To the best of my knowledge. Now, before they start to miss me…’
The pair rose for the short walk back, Grey looking to the trees,
‘I can see why she’d want to be up early, waking to a view like that.’
‘She was early to bed and early to rise, always down for breakfast by eight.’