Almost Love

by Christina James

  “Edmund!” she said. “Thank you for calling me back. I’m sorry about all the messages that I left yesterday, but I was worried that you still had the key to the archive. But please do keep it today, because something dreadful has happened . . .”

  “You don’t know then?” Edmund’s voice was dull. “I thought perhaps you might have watched the local news, either last night or this morning.”

  “No, I haven’t had the chance. Was there something about the break-in? I’m surprised, because I thought that the police were trying to keep it as quiet as possible.”

  “What break-in? I don’t know about a break-in!” It would have been the same old peevish Edmund of before their affair, if he hadn’t also sounded so weary. Alex reflected with grim humour that they appeared to be entirely at cross-purposes with each other. Perhaps this had always been the case. She decided to humour him. He obviously had no time for her troubles at present.

  “What should I have heard about on the news?”

  Edmund sighed deeply, and said in a very low voice: “About Krystyna. I went with her to the psychiatrist yesterday afternoon – I took her in the car. We had something of a . . . of a disagreement on the way home, when the car was standing at a level crossing, and she jumped out. She ducked under the barrier and threw herself under an oncoming train.”

  “She’s dead?”

  “What do you think? Most people come off worse when they pick a fight with hundreds of tons of steel travelling towards them at sixty miles an hour.”

  “Oh, Edmund, I’m so sorry!”

  “Are you? Perhaps you should have thought of that before you led me on. She told the shrink that she suspected me of having an affair. I denied it, of course.”

  Alex did not protest against the accusation. She had a more important matter to address.

  “Did she say that she thought you were having an affair with me?”

  “No. If she had her suspicions, she didn’t say so. It wouldn’t have been like her to make wild accusations. Why do you ask? Are you worried that she might have got in touch with your precious Tom?”

  “The thought did cross my mind, mainly because of something that Tom himself said today.”

  “Well, he won’t find any proof now, whatever he may think.”

  “No, though we must be careful in the future.”

  Edmund groaned.

  “I don’t think that we have a future, to be honest, Alex, do you? I’m not sure that we ever did. It was just a sour dream, a silly make-believe relationship. And I’m ashamed of it now that Krystyna’s dead. I wouldn’t want to insult her memory by carrying it any further.”

  “I agree entirely,” said Alex, though she was smarting at his sanctimonious tone and more than a little aggrieved that she had allowed him to take the initiative in breaking off their liaison. She told herself to be more gracious. Edmund had just suffered bereavement, after all, and in the most horrific of circumstances. That he was feeling guilty about the shortcomings of his relationship with his wife was perfectly natural.

  “What were you saying about a break-in?”

  “Someone broke into our flat last night, just before I got home from work. Tom wasn’t there – he was working.”

  “Did they take anything?”

  “Not as far as we can tell. The police have sealed it off as a crime scene, so we’ve had to spend the night with one of Tom’s colleagues.”

  “A crime scene? Why?”

  “I – I can’t say.”

  “It seems a bit extreme, for a burglary, especially one in which nothing was apparently stolen. I’ve been burgled myself in the past and usually it’s difficult enough even to get them to take it seriously. There must be some reason why they’re taking it to such extremes.”

  “I suppose there must,” said Alex. “I’m not an expert on the law. Talking of rules, though, I’d really appreciate it if you could get the key of the archive back to me by tomorrow. As you know, I broke several of the Society’s rules by letting you take it and the file. I’m sorry to ask you for it when you have so much on your plate; you can post it to me if you prefer.”

  “Yes, Alex, I’ll post it to you,” said Edmund shortly. “Of course, it’s absolutely the most important thing on my mind at the moment.” His tone was vicious. “I’ll do it now.” Before she could reply there was a quiet click and silence.

  Chapter Forty

  Edmund Baker lived in a tall, three-storey Edwardian terrace on the main Spalding to Holbeach road. The houses were built of red brick elaborately faced with stone and decorated with wooden gables and finials. They resembled old-fashioned dolls’ houses and were sometimes disparagingly called the ‘dolly houses’ by the residents of the far less grand private housing estate that now abutted them. The builder who had bought the plot in 1908 had been planning to live in one of the houses himself and had chosen it because at the time it had been on the extreme outskirts of Holbeach, overlooking the fields, but now it was surrounded by other streets and very much part of the town. There were eight houses in the terrace, each one fronted by a small garden with a straight path to the front door.

  Edmund’s house was number seven, second to the end nearest to the town. It looked less well-cared-for than the others. The black-and-white paintwork was shabby and blistering in places; the garden contained several drooping standard roses, unsupported and in urgent need of rescue from the burgeoning weeds.

  Tim had checked the extent to which Edmund had already been subjected to police questioning since his wife’s death. As Superintendent Thornton had unnecessarily pointed out, it was essential that he should tread carefully, and not just for compassionate reasons. If Edmund Baker had committed a crime, he must not be given the opportunity to put up a smokescreen of righteous indignation by playing the bereaved husband. Luckily for Tim, the desk sergeant at Holbeach police station had told him that the statement that had been taken from Edmund on the previous evening was ‘adequate for an accident’ (whatever that meant), so there would be no more need for the local police to disturb Mr Baker unless further evidence emerged. No-one had called on him today. Of course, he would still have to attend the inquest when it took place.

  The desk sergeant offered to e-mail the statement to Tim, but he had already received it from Superintendent Thornton. It had struck him as a peculiarly detached and desiccated account of the violent death of a spouse, but that might partly be accounted for by the stolid prose of the policeman who had written it.

  Taking his cue from other residents of the terrace, he parked the BMW half on, half off the pavement. He got out and stood looking up at the six front windows of the house for a minute or so. He could discern no sign of life, but that did not mean that Edmund Baker might not be standing back from one of the elegantly-narrow upstairs windows and watching. Tim opened the rickety gate to number seven and made the short walk (about three strides in his case) to the substantial front door, which was protected from the elements by a small porch. A door-pull hung against one of the pillars of the porch. It was apparently of pre-Great War vintage, but proved still to be in sombre working order. He yanked it, and after some seconds heard its dirge-like bell tolling deep inside the house.

  Tim was about to mount the step to the porch when his foot encountered something soft and crinkly. Looking down, he saw three or four slender sprays of flowers done up in cellophane. He took hold of the card attached to one of them. ‘From the Reynolds next door’, it said. ‘Sleep well, Mrs Baker’. He was in the process of flipping over one of the other cards, which also had ‘Mrs Baker’ handwritten at the top of it, when the massive and rather grubby black-painted door opened abruptly. A man of middle height and stocky build with thick white hair and piercing blue eyes emerged from the house and came to stand opposite him in the porch. As Tim was still standing on the path, he was unable to look Edmund Baker in the face without peering up at him, an experienc
e that he found a little disconcerting. Their eyes met. Edmund gave him a stony look and then shifted his gaze to the flowers.

  “My God!” he said. “Whoever put those there? What an extraordinary idea! Why didn’t they ring the bell or, more to the point, wait until the funeral?”

  “I think that they’re meant as a tribute to Mrs Baker, sir – they’re intended to show sympathy for her, and for you. And my guess is that your neighbours didn’t want to intrude by ringing the bell.”

  “From the neighbours, are they? Probably just being nosy in that case. Talking of which, who are you and why have you come? I think I’ve seen you before somewhere, haven’t I? Are you from the undertaker’s?”

  Tim produced his identity card.

  “Detective Inspector Tim Yates, South Lincolnshire Police,” he said, feeling like a parrot. How many times did he say this during the course of a single week? He wondered if he could have a tape-recoding of it made, perhaps one that would play when he pressed a button on his key-ring.

  “I thought I’d seen you before. You came to talk to Oliver Sparham after Claudia disappeared, didn’t you? At the conference?”

  “Yes,” said Tim. “But I don’t recollect that we were introduced.”

  “We weren’t. You were too busy listening to Oliver’s story and being impressed with Alex Tarrant. Why are you here now? Is it something more to do with Claudia?”

  “No. It’s closer to home than that, Mr Baker. I’d like to ask you a few more questions about exactly what happened to your wife yesterday. I’m sorry to bother you with this again – I realise that you’ve already made a statement to the police, which I’ve read, and I know that talking about her . . . accident again must be distressing for you. Please accept my condolences for your loss. Evidently your wife was a well-respected lady.” Tim gestured at the flowers.

  “Yes, well if they’d shown how much they valued her a bit earlier, perhaps she’d still be with us now. I can’t think what more there is to say about the episode and I certainly don’t want to stand out here and talk about it. You’d better come in.”

  “Thank you, sir,” said Tim. “Should I gather these up for you?”

  “What? No, leave them where they are for the moment. I think that’s what they want, isn’t it? To be allowed their ostentatious display of ‘sympathy’? Otherwise there’d be no point in doing it.”

  Tim decided not to argue with Edmund Baker’s views on neighbourliness. He had more important things to discuss and did not wish to start an irrelevant argument. He stepped over the flowers, standing awkwardly as he held out his hand for Edmund Baker to shake. Edmund touched his fingertips briefly before turning away. He disappeared into the house so quickly that Tim was afraid that the door would close again if he did not himself leap through it with speed.

  He found himself standing in a small rectangular hallway with a black-and-white tiled floor. There was a strong musty smell. It was quite dark; a single dim light bulb was set in the high ceiling, its modest effort diminished further by its heavy dark-red shade. Tim’s eyes took a short while to accustom themselves to the gloom. Gradually he made out a staircase rising precipitately almost immediately in front of him. Beside it was a narrow passageway with two doors leading off to the right and another at the end of it. He took in that the décor was dingy in the extreme before refocusing quickly on his host. Edmund Baker was well ahead of him now and disappearing into the second of the two rooms on the right. Tim hurried after him. By the time that he reached the door, it was closing slowly. Tim reached it in time to stop the catch from fastening and knocked gently.

  “Mr Baker? May I come in?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous!” said Edmund Baker, flinging wide the door again. “Of course! Why do you think that I have come in here?”

  It was a good question, Tim thought, and not one that he could easily answer after he had entered the room and taken in what faced him there.

  His senses were assailed with a witch’s brew of filth and foul smells. As a policeman of some ten years’ standing, he had had plenty of first-hand experience of domestic squalor, but rarely at such sordid levels, and never before in a house like this. He was confronted with the kind of unsavoury turmoil that he had come to associate with drugs squats or the houses from which the very elderly, after years of trying to cope on their own, were finally persuaded into care. Crumpled sheets of newspaper, used cups and plates (some still bearing the congealed remains of meals), half-empty wine and medicine bottles and fast-food packaging were jumbled together on the floor and on all the available flat surfaces. Closer scrutiny revealed that the debris was even more unpleasant than he had first thought; the heaps of detritus also contained used sticking plasters, piles of dirty clothes, and opened cat-food tins. The single sofa bore an unsteady pile of books and magazines topped with a yellow tea-towel that had been folded like a bandana. It was encrusted with something dried-on and dark. Trails of spilt liquids criss-crossed the floor tiles. The stench of decay was overpowering.

  Edmund Baker responded to the surprise that Tim could not conceal with a look of sardonic amusement.

  “Not a pretty sight, is it? I must apologise for bringing you in here. Unfortunately, the kitchen is even worse. You do know, I take it, that my wife had been clinically depressed for some time before her death?”

  “I saw in your statement that when she died you were returning together from a visit to a psychiatrist. I’m also aware that severely-depressed women sometimes cease to take an interest in themselves or their homes. Was there no-one who could help her when she became ill?” It was the most tactful way he could devise of asking Edmund why he himself had not attempted to put right the worst of the disorder and, indeed, to insinuate the question of whether he had attempted to support his wife in any way whatsoever.

  “Our sons both left home some time ago. In spite of the flowers outside, she was not on intimate terms with the neighbours. I work long hours myself, whereas, after her retirement from a part-time teaching post it was her job to maintain the house. We had a cleaner when she was working.” The final sentence sounded defensive; all the same, Edmund Baker evidently thought that his insistence on maintaining this division of labour was justified, and not negotiable in the event of illness. “I must admit, though,” he added, half to himself, “I hadn’t realised quite how bad a state the downstairs rooms were in. I’ve been out in the evenings a lot lately and my office is upstairs. The upstairs of the house is in better order; she was still changing the beds, for example.” Tim noted his use of the plural.

  “When did you first become aware of your wife’s illness, sir?”

  “This time around, two or three weeks ago. She told me of it herself – she’s been depressed before, and recognised the symptoms. If she hadn’t told me I’d still have found out, because she was close to both her mother and her sister and they are very interfering.”

  “Did you notice nothing wrong yourself, sir?”

  “Not exactly. Krystyna could at no point during our marriage have been described as an upbeat person and she’d been subdued on and off ever since she retired. In retrospect, retirement wasn’t a wise move for her. She’d been complaining of fatigue and she was only a couple of years off pensionable age – though she had neglected to pay into the pension fund, so there was nothing to lose on that score. I didn’t stand in her way, therefore, when she said that she wanted to pack in. You behold the result.”

  “Would you say that you were on good terms?”

  “As good as most people who’ve been married as long as we have. When she wasn’t depressed, I still enjoyed her company, up to a point. I must admit that her depressed moods irritated me. I thought that she should pull herself together – engage in some useful activity to give point to her life. I don’t just mean catching up with the housework, obviously. I wouldn’t say that we were close, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Did
you talk to her doctor?”

  “No. She saw the doctor on her own. It was only when she was referred to the psychiatrist that I got involved. I offered to go with her to keep the appointment.”

  “Understandably, you were concerned about her health?”

  “Yes, of course I was. I also wanted to make sure that she wasn’t being sold down the river by the guy. He wasn’t available on the NHS and I didn’t want her to rack up massive bills unless he could convince me that he was doing her some good.”

  “Indeed. Can you talk me through the events of yesterday afternoon? Were you here with her all day?”

  “No. I was working in the morning. I was . . . I had to go to Spalding on business. I promised Krystyna I’d get back here in time to drive her to the psychiatrist. I knew it would take us more than half an hour to get there. Her appointment was for 3 p.m. and I think I got back here just after two.”

  “Where is the psychiatrist based?”

  “At Rauceby.” Edmund’s face reassumed the same defiant expression that it had presented when Tim had first entered the room. Tim was aware that this was because Rauceby was a mental hospital for severely-disturbed patients, and that Edmund would know that he knew it.

  “She was a voluntary patient?”

  “Yes, obviously; otherwise she wouldn’t have been allowed home. She was just an outpatient. But I think that this time the doctor might have sectioned her – for her own good – if she hadn’t agreed to treatment. As I said, she had a history of depression. She was actually an inmate at Rauceby some years back, when she was ‘ill’ the first time round.”

  “Did you stay with her when she saw the psychiatrist – what is his name, by the way? I understand from what you’ve said already that it was a man?”