“And you think I—” She took a threatening step towards him.
“God, no. That isn’t what I’m saying.”
“I’m not a thief.”
“It never crossed my mind.”
“What was taken?” she asked—the first sign of interest and maybe the first crack in the stone wall.
“Certain items of his wife’s, in particular three valuable gowns.”
“She had some nice things.”
He sensed she might be ready to open up. “Do you recall Mr. Filiput saying anything of his wife’s had gone missing?”
“To me, his cleaner? He had better manners than that.”
This was verbal karate, and Diamond wasn’t winning. “I was told he couldn’t keep track of things and felt inadequate.”
“You were told? You already talked to someone else?”
“His doctor.”
“She knows more than I do, then.”
“I got the impression from her that you were more than just the cleaner.”
Her eyes blazed like chip pans. “You bastard. He was old enough to be my grandfather.”
The best he could think of to calm her down was, “Hold on, you’re not reading me right. All I’m suggesting is you went to some trouble to look after the old couple, shopping for them, and so on.”
“Piss off, will you?” she said, giving the sack a shake and moving on. “I’m doing a job here.”
“So am I. I thought just now you were willing to help.”
“Help with what? Their stolen goods? It’s a bit bloody late, isn’t it?”
“You might know if anything else was taken.”
“You lot are more concerned with property than people.”
He let a few seconds pass. “Can we try again, Mrs. Stratford? It’s obvious I caught you at a bad time.”
“What the hell do you mean by that?”
“You thought you were alone here.”
“Talking to myself when you came in?” she said.
“Well . . .”
“I was speaking lines, if you want to know.”
“You’re an actress?” Something he could work with.
“Actor—or trying to be. Understudying Maggie in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.”
“Maggie who?”
She gave a sharp, angry sigh. “It’s the part I play. I was running through a scene with Big Daddy when you interrupted.”
“I could see it was strong stuff. Is Maggie the Liz Taylor part?”
Her glare almost pinned him to the wall.
He’d said the wrong thing again.
“The role doesn’t belong to her or any other actor. I work from the script and do it my own way.”
“And you were well into it when I interrupted.”
“That’s why you got a mouthful. I can’t simply switch off.”
“Understood.” He’d humoured her enough about the acting. Much more and she’d be asking him to speak the Big Daddy bits. “So you double up your theatre work with some cleaning?”
“If you really want to know, the cleaning is my mainstay. I’d be a fool to pack it in.” She was starting to speak in a more measured way now.
“Were you in a production while you worked for the Filiputs?”
“The occasional walk-on at the Theatre Royal. Not much learning of lines.”
“That’s why you could be generous with your time, I expect.”
She nodded. “They were sweet, both of them. They let me fit my cleaning around all the read-throughs and rehearsals.”
He wanted to talk about Massimo Filiput. “He was rather lost after she died, I believe.”
“Well, it was so sudden, an accident. She fell downstairs, as you probably know.”
“Were you there at the time?”
“No, but I saw him next day. The shock was all too clear. He was crying, on and off. I did what I could to help out, took him to see the funeral director and the register office, stuff like that.”
“He had friends, didn’t he?”
“His railway buddies, you mean?” She rolled her eyes. “I called them his choo-choo chums. They were at the house the afternoon of the accident, a bunch of goofy old men who used to meet in each other’s houses and talk about trains.”
“When you say a bunch . . .?”
“Never more than four or five. Personally I can’t think of anything more boring than old trains, but Max enjoyed it and after Olga died the meetings kept him going, really.”
“Do you remember their names?”
She shook her head. “There was a gay couple. At least, I thought they must be gay because they arrived together and had a rapport that was fairly obvious. Max probably told me their names, but I had no reason to memorise them. I have enough of a job learning lines.”
“Gay men, you mean?”
“Women are daft about a lot of things, but they aren’t daft about trains.”
“Another of the railway people would have been Ivor Pellegrini,” he tried prompting her. “Grey-haired, clean-shaven, average height and build.”
“They all looked like that to me.” Which closed that avenue.
“Did he have any other regular visitors after his wife died?”
“There was Cyril who played Scrabble with him and Cyril’s housekeeper, Jessie, who did the driving as well as a bit of cooking for them while she was there.”
This was helpful, chiming in with earlier information. “The doctor mentioned Cyril, said he was a teaching colleague, retired.”
“Yes, he definitely wasn’t one of the railway lot. Nice old boy. We often had a joke. He liked teasing me about all the leading men I was supposed to have been with: ‘Didn’t I spot you last night in that commercial with George Clooney?’ sort of thing.”
“And Jessie was Cyril’s housekeeper? That’s an old-fashioned term.”
“His word for it. I was meant to get the message they lived together but didn’t share a room. I didn’t want to know about his living arrangements, thanks very much. What old men get up to in private is their business.”
“Was Jessie his age?”
“Quite a bit younger. Forties, maybe. I guess he employed her to take care of him. That’s the deal with a housekeeper, isn’t it? And of course she acted as chauffeur as well on the days they visited. He’d given up driving. She was always nicely dressed, short brown hair with blonde highlights, and fun to be with.”
“Are they still about?”
“I haven’t seen them since Max’s funeral. They aren’t from Bath.”
“So you got to his funeral? That was nice. Who else was there?”
“Very few apart from the ones I just mentioned. It was a low-key event, quite short, at Haycombe cremmy. Non-religious. No hymns or prayers. Cyril got up and said some nice, witty things, but respectful. The main bit I remember was while the curtains were closing they played a number by The Kinks called ‘Last of the Steam-Powered Trains.’ There wasn’t a dry eye in the house. Oh, and there was a wreath in the shape of a train.”
“From his railway friends? They were there?”
“To a man. And we all went back to Cavendish Crescent and shared some bottles of prosecco. They didn’t last long.”
“Going back a bit, you said you weren’t at the house on the day of Olga’s accident.”
Suddenly she was back in her Tennessee Williams role. “Don’t you believe me? What are you hinting at, Mr. Policeman? Do I have to scream to make myself understood? I wasn’t there when the old lady died. End of.”
“But the railway club were. What about Cyril and Jessie?”
“No. They came on different days. Max used to say steam and Scrabble don’t mix.”
“Where do they live?”
“Cyril and Jessie? Somewhere this side of Salisbury in the Wylye valley. The
y’re decent people. You can cross them off your list. I’m less confident about the choo-choo lot. After Max’s funeral they were like vultures sorting through his photo collection and the old posters.”
“Didn’t anybody try and stop them?”
“Far from it. There was a po-faced woman there from the solicitors who arranged the funeral and she told everyone the bigger, more collectable items would go into a sale, but Max had said in his will that things like posters and timetables and old photos should be distributed among his railway cronies. She didn’t know their worth and wasn’t able to share them out so she suggested they helped themselves. It was mayhem after that, really distasteful.”
“Collectors aren’t going to miss an opportunity like that.”
“It was insane. Jessie had a mug of coffee knocked out of her hand. She should have put in a claim for a new skirt, in my opinion.”
“Was she wearing black?”
“Purple wool, and it showed. I made sure she sponged it with white vinegar in the kitchen, which is what you do, but there was still a mark.”
“I hope he offered to pay.”
“He did apologise at the time. She didn’t want to make an issue of it. She had to put on one of the overalls I used for work and she was too self-conscious to show herself again. I had to go back to the room where it happened and collect her handbag. She and Cyril left not long after.”
“I’ve got ahead of myself, asking about the funeral,” he said. “Would you mind telling me about the morning you found him dead?”
“Why?”
Not easy to answer without giving more away than he planned to tell her.
“I’m piecing together the last months of his life.”
His answer seemed to satisfy her. “It came as a shock, but you can’t prepare for anything like that.” She shook her head, remembering. “I turned up at the house as usual and rang. Sometimes he wasn’t up in the mornings, but there was a key I knew about so I let myself in. He wasn’t downstairs, so I made a start on clearing up the kitchen. I say that, but it wasn’t a mess. He generally left it tidy before going to bed. After twenty minutes or so, he still hadn’t appeared, so I made him a coffee and took it up to the bedroom. The door was closed. I knocked, spoke his name, got no response, opened the door a little and saw there was no movement from the bed. He was face up, eyes closed, mouth gaping and it was obvious he wasn’t breathing. I called Dr. Mukherjee and she was there inside ten minutes. She was very good, understood I was shaken and sent me to make a fresh cup of tea.” She paused and her eyes were moist with the memory—or good acting. “We agreed he’d found the best way to go, at home, in his own bed.”
“You said there was a key you knew about. What did you mean by that?”
“His back-up key. He used to worry about locking himself out, so he kept a spare near the front door behind a drainpipe.”
“Not the best security.”
“You can’t tell ninety-year-olds how to run their lives. You can try, but they won’t listen. Everything in that house was done as it had been all his life, right down to the loose tea that was the bane of my life. He had something against teabags. He collected all his tea leaves and dried them off and I was supposed to crush them to powder and sprinkle them over the carpets and wait ten minutes before I did the vacuuming. Have you ever heard of that?”
Diamond shook his head. “It must be a generational thing. I may look old to you, but I’m not ninety. What was the point?”
“He reckoned they absorb odours, so they freshen the carpets in some way. Grass works just as well, he said.”
“Do you mean grass as in lawns, or cannabis?”
She rolled her eyes in scorn. “Grass clippings from a mower. He was spaced out enough, without smoking pot.”
“It might work.”
“But we always had plenty of tea leaves, so we never tried grass. Have we finished? I’ve got loads to do here and I want to get home some time.”
I see in the paper that some committee or other has been looking into the problems of old men living alone. They’re giving cause for concern. In the next fifteen years the numbers are due to rise by 65 percent. They’re not as good as women at managing. When an old man is widowed, he can’t adapt. His social life shrinks and he deteriorates mentally and physically and he’s unlikely to seek help, poor old soul. The way I see it, I’m performing a service, saving them from misery and the state from a lot of extra expense. Do enough, and I might even make the honours list.
11
“If I wanted to copy the entire contents of someone’s computer, is there a simple way to do it?” Diamond asked Ingeborg.
“Hacking, you mean?”
“Not really. That sounds tricky. I said a simple way. They make it look easy in spy films.”
“That’s different. They’re after one file usually, or one document. They go to the actual computer and use some kind of USB device.”
“A memory stick?”
“Exactly, but if you wanted to copy everything you’d need more capacity, an external hard drive.”
“Is that huge?”
She shook her head. “About the size of my iPhone. It comes with a USB cable. You slot that into the port and you’re in business.”
“That’s what I’m interested in doing.”
“I can show you if you like,” she said. “It won’t take long.” They were in his office with his computer between them on the desk. He’d returned there after his encounter with Mrs. Stratford, the cleaner. It was already after six.
“I doubt if showing it to me will make much difference.”
“But it’s a breeze.” She didn’t add, “Even you could do it,” but she didn’t need to. His problems with technology were legendary.
“What I’d really like is for you to come with me and make sure it’s done the right way.”
“Come where, guv?”
“Henrietta Road.”
“Pellegrini’s place?” Her eyebrows took flight like game birds. “Wow. You really are into spying.”
“I should have thought of it when I was there before. Those printed pages about murder must have come from his computer. I want to check.”
“A spot of breaking and entering?”
“It won’t be a break-in. I can let us in.”
“By going back to that sister at the hospital and asking to borrow Pellegrini’s keys again? Will she play ball?”
“No need.” He dipped into his pocket and held up a shiny new key. “I thought I might need to go back, so I did the old trick of making a wax impression, except I used BluTack.”
Ingeborg laughed. “James Bond has nothing on you.”
They went in his car, stopping off at Weston Lock industrial estate to buy an external hard drive. He saw that Ingeborg had not exaggerated when she said it was no larger than an iPhone.
“You’ll be seeing the workshop for yourself,” he said to her as they headed over Pulteney Bridge and turned left at the Laura Place fountain. “It says a lot about the man.”
“Let’s hope nobody sees us. You said it’s in front of the house?”
“Coming up shortly. Relax, Inge. We’re on the side of law and order. We can do stuff like this.”
She didn’t answer, but the set of her mouth showed she wasn’t persuaded.
“In pursuit of the truth,” he added.
“Oh yeah?”
Diamond gave up trying. Ingeborg was right, of course. At best this was an unsanctioned undercover operation and at worst a shameful invasion of someone else’s home.
They parked on the drive of Pellegrini’s large villa-style house, in a position sheltered from the busy road. Before getting out, he told Ingeborg, “For the record, you were never here. If anyone discovers my part in this, I did it alone.”
“Copied the hard drive?”
> “All my own work. Nobody thinks I’m that clueless . . . do they?”
She didn’t comment.
He opened the boot of his car and took out the skein of cream-coloured silk that was the coiled Fortuny dress. After Paloma had unwound it and gone into ecstasies she had reluctantly twisted it back into its compact shape for him and he’d been driving about with it since.
At the workshop door, they hesitated when Ingeborg pointed to the notice about the response alarm. Diamond showed her where the bell was, above their heads. It hadn’t been tripped the first time he’d let himself in, so he had to assume they’d be all right with a key that fitted. He took a deep breath, inserted and turned it.
The door opened and no bells went off.
Inside, he took a torch from his pocket and showed her the locomotive name-plate above the door.
The model railway track.
And the three cremation urns.
He stood on a chair and returned the coiled gown to the urn it had come from.
“I’d better start work,” Ingeborg said and sat at the computer. “You want everything that’s on here?”
“Please.” He shone the torch beam at the keyboard.
She brought up a page that meant nothing to Diamond. “It has a hundred gigabytes of memory, of which only a small percentage has been used.”
“Do we need to know that?”
“It tells us what we’re dealing with.”
“Plug in the thing, Inge, and let’s get started.”
He tried to interest himself in what she was doing, but it was all a mystery to him. He just wanted the job done and to be out of there.
Clumsy as usual, he rested his arm on the stack of magazines and sent half of them skittering across the floor.
“Bugger.”
“Careful how you put them back,” Ingeborg said. “They were all squared up.”
“Can you manage without the torch?”
She was working with the lighted screen. “I can now.”
He started collecting the magazines. They’d been in date order. Pellegrini was a stickler for tidiness.
“If anyone checks these for prints, mine are going to be all over them.”
Another One Goes Tonight Page 16
