Chapter Twenty-Six

It was 4 p.m. on St. Valentine’s Day and, as Tim looked out of the grimy window of the briefing room at Spalding Police Station, he noticed with satisfaction that the evenings were beginning to draw out at last. It would be light for at least another hour. He had just finished giving his team a briefing, or rather he had led their regular information-sharing session, backed up as usual by Juliet’s painstaking work. Nothing of any great significance had been brought to light since the last meeting. There was a report from Andy Carstairs on what had been found during the excavations of the garden at Westlode Street, which was, precisely, nothing, unless you counted the long-buried skeletons of three dray horses. Ricky McFadyen was working with Crimewatch to rebroadcast the reconstruction of Kathryn Sheppard’s last movements which had been filmed fifteen years earlier, with ‘new evidence’ – though there was precious little of that, except the details of the discovery of her skeleton and the decision to release the information that she had taken the Friday of the last week that she had been seen alive as holiday. Tim himself had tried and failed to interview Hedley Atkins again. He’d been told by Hedley’s boss that he was taking a week’s holiday in Scotland. It was a nuisance, but they didn’t have sufficient evidence to take steps to trace Hedley and either demand his early return or travel to Scotland to interview him. They would have to wait until his holiday was over.

Following Tim’s earlier praise, Juliet seemed to have got hung up on the textiles stuff again. He realised that she had taken her researches to the point where they could no longer produce anything useful: the problem was that although it might be possible to identify the actual roll of cloth from which a garment had been cut and therefore establish its exact date of manufacture, it was quite impossible to ascertain how long it had belonged to its owner, or indeed whether there had been more than one owner. The same went for the ring and the plastic Indian. He didn’t like to discourage her, but tomorrow he would have to tell her not to spend any more time on such minutiae.

The whole team had now read the substantial police files on Dorothy Atkins’ arrest and trial, as well as the slenderer ones covering Kathryn Sheppard’s disappearance. He had encouraged them to do this, but he knew that there was a risk that they would find spurious links as well as real ones. He himself believed that the two murders of Doris Atkins and Kathryn Sheppard were linked in some way, but he continued to be sceptical about the nature of the link. He believed that it had yet to be proved that Dorothy had killed Doris and he was almost certain that she had not killed Kathryn. However, he was aware that his own brief account of his and Juliet’s visit to the nursing-home did not cast Dorothy in a sympathetic light.

After the team had gone their separate ways, he had remained standing in front of the glass information panels for a while, contemplating Juliet’s neat blue felt-tip handwriting and wondering if there really were any useful clues amongst all this welter of detail, or whether they were just collecting some elaborate and very expensive red herrings which would take them no further at all towards establishing the circumstances of Kathryn Sheppard’s death.

There was a knock at the door, and one of the administrative staff came in. “There is a call for you, Inspector,” she said. “It has come through on your direct line. Do you want me to transfer it to this room?”

It took him a while to register what he was saying. “Oh – no thank you – Sheila? – I will take it in my office.” Immediately he knew about it, he had a feeling about this call. He even wondered if the caller might be Tirzah. He had deliberately ignored her since the meeting at the nursing home three days before, neither calling her nor asking for permission to see her again, hoping that his apparent indifference would precipitate the sort of productive anger that Mrs. Meredith had been talking about. He had been told that Tirzah hated to be slighted. For this reason he took his time now, ambling into his office and seating himself comfortably in his swivel chair before he picked up the receiver.

“This is Inspector Yates speaking.”

The voice that replied was female, quietly modulated but obviously troubled. Not Tirzah, he knew that in an instant.

“Oh, hello, Inspector, this is Margaret Meredith. I thought you should know. Dorothy Atkins died earlier this afternoon.”

“Died!” he exclaimed. “But how? She wasn’t ill, was she?”

“Not as far as we know, Inspector, and as well as we can tell before we get the results of the autopsy, it wasn’t suicide either. She seems simply to have slipped away.”

“Indeed,” said Tim, raising one eyebrow. She could not see this, of course, but it was clear that she caught his tone.

“Tirzah wasn’t the suicidal type, Inspector. She may have driven other people to contemplate ending their lives, but she got too much enjoyment out of hers. Not necessarily innocent enjoyment, but I hardly need to tell you that.”

“How did she die? Did she collapse? Was she already in bed?”

“Neither of those. In fact, she was sitting in the chair in the day room, where you last saw her. She fell out of the chair on to the floor. She was sitting with Irene – one of our more challenged guests – and according to Irene, she suddenly keeled over. The sister on duty heard a bump as she fell. We called our usual doctor, of course, but he said that she had been dead for some minutes when he arrived. He thought that her death had been instant. A massive heart attack, in all probability.”

“Did Irene tell you anything else? Had she been talking to Tirzah?”

“Apparently she had. Tirzah went and sat with her and struck up a conversation. This was not unusual – I think I told you that sometimes she would befriend the guests, particularly the more confused ones; rarely the ones that were still mentally agile, for some reason. Irene can’t remember much of what she said – I wouldn’t expect her to be able to – but Natalia, one of the ward orderlies, overheard some of it. According to her, Tirzah was describing Doris Atkins’ death.”

“But you told me that that was a strictly taboo subject. You said never to question her about it.”

“I did say that and I would give the same advice again, even now. I have seen several people approach Tirzah with the aim of finding out exactly how Doris died, and each time she has reacted either with near-hysteria or a stony silence. I don’t think that she was simulating the hysteria, either. Something about Doris’s death really freaked her out.”

“That’s hardly surprising, is it? Many women – many men, for that matter – may contemplate murdering their mothers-in-law, but few actually do it. Even a hard-bitten woman like Tirzah must have had difficulty in facing up to the fact that she was a killer.”

“If you say so, Inspector.” He remembered that she had used the same phrase once before. It was her way of telling him that she did not doubt that he was wrong.

“I don’t suppose you are going to let me question Irene.” He took her silence to indicate that his assumption was correct. “Is the ward orderly still there? I’m assuming that she is of sound mind, and reasonably coherent. Please tell me that she has not completed her shift and gone off home!”

“She has indeed completed her shift, but I have persuaded her to stay to talk to you. I had a feeling that that would be what you wanted to do.”

“Thank you,” said Tim, grabbing his coat. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

Tim arrived at the home barely thirty minutes later. He was shown straight to Mrs. Meredith’s office. Margaret Meredith had moved her chair from behind her desk and had placed it next to the visitor’s chair. She was seated on it, in close proximity to the occupant of the latter, and talking gently to a very small, very thin woman, who had a pasty complexion and mousy hair. The woman looked as if she had been crying. She was balancing a cup of tea precariously on her knee. As Tim entered the room, the tea-cup slid a few inches across her slippery pale blue nylon overall. She halted its glide and restored it to the centre of her lap. Tim noticed that her fingernails, which were bitten to the quick, had been varnished pillarbox red and that her hands were half-covered by the cuffs of the bulky long-sleeved grey sweater which she wore underneath the sleeveless overall.

“Inspector, this is Natalia Kopinsky. She overheard part of Dorothy Atkins’ conversation with Irene Morris earlier today. She is one of our ward orderlies.”

“Good afternoon,” said Tim, extending his hand. Natalia did not take it. She gave Mrs. Meredith one fearful look and then rooted her gaze on the floor. He realised that she was much older than he had at first thought – nearer to forty than the twenty-five that he had originally supposed.

“May I sit down?”

“Of course. Bring that chair over for yourself,” said Mrs. Meredith, indicating a dilapidated metal and canvas folding seat propped against one wall. “Would you like some tea?”

“Yes, please.” He opened out the chair and moved it a few feet closer to Mrs. Meredith and the woman before sitting on it, but at the same time took care to preserve some distance between himself and them. He had divined straight away that this interview was going to require some care, if he were to get anything out of the woman at all.

He took the cup that Margaret Meredith passed to him.

“How long have you worked here, Natalia?” he asked gently.

“Six year,” she said. Her voice was deep – almost guttural.

“Do you like it?”

“Yes,” she said flatly, fixing her gaze on Mrs. Meredith.

“I understand you were working in the day-room this afternoon. Do you often work in there?”

“Not often, but there was a mess. Irene Morris she spill lemon barley water everywhere and the floor very sticky. That was earlier, before she sit with Tirzah. I had already mopped up, but supervisor say I should polish.”

“So you had come back to polish after Irene started talking to Tirzah?”

“She not talk to Tirzah. Tirzah talk to her. Irene not talk much. I think she understand, though. I think she understand more than Tirzah realise.”

“Can you remember what Tirzah was saying?”

“Yes, though it was hard to understand. But Irene seemed to understand perfect, the way she was looking at Tirzah. She was very upset. It was horrible. Tirzah say that her mother have to die because of what she knew. She said it several times. She said that everyone who knew secrets had to die if they couldn’t be trustworthy. I think she was frightening Irene.”

“Did she say anything else?”

“Yes. She said that when a young girl had her whole life in front of her, she deserved to be protected. That we owe it to young people to protect them. That she would do it again.”

“And then what?”

“Irene was very afraid. She kept gasping, as if she couldn’t get her breath. I went to get a nurse.”

“The ward orderlies are instructed not to get directly involved in the care of the residents, unless it is an emergency,” said Mrs. Meredith. “Natalia did exactly the right thing by going to get help.”

“Then what?”

“Natalia didn’t go back with the nurse. Her supervisor wanted her to do something else. But the nurse reported that when she went to check on Irene Morris, she was sleeping peacefully in her wheelchair, and that Tirzah was seated at a table nearby, doing the crossword in today’s paper. The nurse asked her if anything had happened to distress Irene, and Tirzah said that she had seemed agitated earlier, but that she (Tirzah) had just assumed that she was tired. One of the things that has always made Tirzah so difficult to deal with is that she sticks to the truth. You might not agree with her interpretation of the facts, but she always presents them accurately. Used to present them, I should say.”

“I realise that she may not have anything useful to tell me, but may I speak to the nurse?”

“She’s gone off-shift now. She’s an agency nurse because we’re rather short-staffed at the moment, so it was not possible for me to detain her beyond her contractual hours. She will be here again tomorrow, though.”

“And Irene Morris?”

“I will show you Irene Morris, Inspector, but I would rather you did not try to question her. She is likely to become extremely agitated, even hysterical, and it is unlikely that she will tell you anything of value. She really is not capable of engaging in a dialogue – you will see what I mean. I’d be grateful if we could leave that until tomorrow, too. Do you need anything more from Natalia?” Natalia looked up as she heard her name. Tim wondered whether she had been following the rest of their conversation, or had just drifted off into a world of her own.

“Just one thing more,” said Tim, addressing the orderly again. “You say that Tirzah said that her mother had to die. Are you sure that she said ‘mother’ and not ‘mother-in-law’?”

“Yes. She say ‘mother’. Just ‘mother’.”

“Thank you, Natalia. You have been extremely helpful.”

She gave him a wan smile, and looked at Mrs. Meredith again.

“You can go home, now, Natalia. Thank you very much for staying to help.”

When she had gone, Tim said “Why was she so upset? Did she like Tirzah?”

“Possibly. Tirzah tended to make friends of the ward orderlies – I think so that she could get them to fetch and carry for her, though officially it wasn’t allowed. But I think that Natalia’s really just upset by the fact of her death. Death is upsetting, isn’t it, even when its cause is natural?”