Winifred Fleck was the kind of thin, straight, pared-down woman who cannot be said to have reached fifty but rather looks as if she has always been there. She wore a nylon overall as sterile as a surgeon's smock, and her right hand held a duster of such a shocking yellow, dust probably flew away at the very sight of it.
"Mrs. Fleck?" said Novello.
"Yes."
"I'm Detective Constable Novello, Mid-Yorkshire CID," she said displaying her warrant card. "It's about your aunt, Mrs. Agnes Lightfoot. I believe she used to live with you."
She used the past tense almost without thinking. The glimpse of the interior through the open door confirmed that the gods of geometry and hygiene ruled inside also. No way was an elderly relative being cared for within these walls, not unless she was moribund and pinned down in a straitjacket of starched white sheets.
"Yes," said Winifred Fleck.
Words, too, were contaminants, it seemed. The fewer you used, the less the risk.
"So what happened? Did she die, Mrs. Fleck?"
Novello tried to infuse a suitable degree of sympathy into her tone but felt that she wasn't altogether successful. Sympathy seemed a commodity which would be wasted here. Also, if truth were told, she couldn't help hoping that the old lady had passed peacefully away. Then she could abandon this wild goose chase and get back to the real work going on around Danby without her.
"No," said Mrs. Fleck.
"No?" echoed Novello. This woman clearly needed some form of accelerant to get her going. Coldly she considered the possibilities, carefully selected the best.
"Perhaps we could talk about this inside? It's so warm out here, I'm sweating cobbles. I'd give my right arm for a cold drink and a fag."
Novello didn't smoke. But the threat of her presence in this temple of hygiene, spraying perspiration and ash all over the place, must be good for a trade-off.
It was.
"She's at Wark House."
"Sorry?" said Novello mishearing workhouse, and thinking this was a bit blunt, even for South Yorkshire.
"Wark House. The nursing home."
"Ah, yes. But she did live with you?"
"For a while. Then she got to be too much. With my back."
"I see. How long was it she lived here, then?"
"Four years, nigh on."
"Four years. And then she got to be too much?"
Mrs. Fleck glared as if sensing a slight.
"She had another stroke. We couldn't manage her. Not with my back."
We. So there was a Mr. Fleck. Probably hanging up in a cupboard so's not to crease the antimacassars.
"And she's still alive?"
"Oh, yes."
That sounded certain, if unenthusiastic.
"You visit her?"
"I look in if I'm up there. I help out sometimes. Just the light work now. With my back."
Plowright had said she'd been a care assistant in a nursing home. With her back!
Novello reproached herself for lack of charity. The woman had, after all, taken her aunt in when there was no one else to look after her. And it was one thing taking care of an old lady who was a bit doddery, but quite another nursing a bedridden invalid. Novello wondered how she'd cope, shuddered at the thought, and gave Mrs. Fleck a guilt-inspired smile as she said, "If you'd give me the address, I'll not take up any more of your time."
She got the address and directions and took her leave.
As she moved away, Mrs. Fleck said, "What's this about?"
At last, curiosity. Novello had been wondering about its absence.
"Just an inquiry," she replied. "Nothing to concern yourself with."
Lovely language, English. One word covering both legitimate anxiety and sticking your neb in!
She closed the gate carefully, resisting the temptation to wipe it with her handkerchief, and got into her car. It was almost a pleasure to be back in that chaotic, unhygienic box, even if it did take a couple of minutes to dig out her map. Mrs. Fleck's directions had been typically precise, but Novello was determined to make sure she lost no more time.
In fact, Wark House proved as easy to find as the woman had indicated. She drove along a main road till, with a suddenness which surprised her, she was out of the city and into wild moorland. Away to her right she could see a lone building standing against the skyline like the Bates house in Psycho. She turned off toward it on a steadily climbing minor road and five minutes later found herself passing through a gateway which would not have looked out of place at the entrance to a small walled city.
The views from here were spectacular, mile after mile of rolling moor, attractive now in its golden robe of bright sunlight, but in lowering cloud and driving rain hardly a prospect calculated to comfort the old and the dying.
Inside, she took a deep breath, recalling Father Kerrigan's technique for grading the old folks' homes he visited. "If you can smell piss in the hallway, start asking questions."
Wark House passed that test, which was a relief. In fact looking around she was pleasantly surprised by the contrast with its forbidding exterior.
A nurse came out of a room, spotted her, asked if she could help.
"Could I see the matron, please?"
She was taken to an open-doored, open-windowed office where a small black woman of about forty sat behind a paper-strewn desk. Her dress was nurselike but not aggressively so, and her smile was natural rather than professional.
"Shirley Novello," said Novello, taking the outstretched hand.
"Billie Saltair," said the woman. "What can I do for you?"
Novello glanced at the door to make sure the nurse had moved out of earshot.
"Close it if you like," said the matron. "I keep it open so's people can see how hard I work. Also this weather, I'd love to create a draft. Usually up here, you open a window and you get hit by a gale that would scatter all this paper round the building in ten seconds flat, which is probably the best way of dealing with it."
Novello closed the door.
"I'm a police officer," she said. "Nothing to worry about, but people can get the wrong idea."
"Is that so?" said Saltair, mildly amused. "Better tell me the right idea before I join them."
"You've got a Mrs. Agnes Lightfoot staying here, I believe."
"That's right."
"How is she?"
"She's fine, considering."
"Considering what?"
"Considering she can't walk, is half blind, has problems with her speech, and hardly ever gets a visitor."
"Not even Mrs. Fleck?"
"You know Winifred?" said the matron neutrally.
"I've met her. She works here, doesn't she?"
"Occasionally."
"Yes, of course. Her back."
"Ah, you've met her back too?"
The two women regarded each other deadpan for a moment, then began to smile.
"Perhaps I'd better explain," said Novello, deciding that with Billie Saltair, frankness was likely to provoke frankness.
She outlined the background of the case succinctly, finishing by saying, "So all you've got to do is confirm Mrs. Lightfoot hasn't had any strange man in his thirties visiting her in the past couple of weeks and I can get out of your hair."
Saltair was frowning and shaking her head.
"Sorry, I can't do that," she said.
"Oh, come on! It's hardly privileged medical information, is it?" said Novello, irritated, especially as her liking for the matron had led her to strain her own bounds of professional discretion.
"You're getting me wrong," said the matron. "What I mean is I can't tell you Agnes hasn't had any such visitor. There was a man came last week, Friday morning it was. I wasn't here, but I got told all about it when I got back. It was news, you see, Agnes being visited. Unfortunately it was Sally that met him when he turned up on the doorstep. Sally's our youngest nurse, just started. Normally any new visitor would be steered along here first, just so's we can run an eye over them, also put them in the p
icture about whoever they're wanting to see, once we've judged them genuine. But Sally didn't take this fellow to meet my deputy, just led him straight into Agnes's room and left him there. And by the time she mentioned it to Mary--that's my deputy--the bird had flown."
"Could I talk to Sally?" asked Novello, trying to keep it casual, but with her stomach churning with excitement. Up to now she'd been putting this whole thing down to ultracautious Pascoe covering every angle. She'd ignored his reputation for finding corners of an investigation other cops couldn't reach. What was it that one of her friendlier male colleagues, DC Dennis Seymour, had said when he had invited her to have supper with him and his nice Irish wife and they'd lounged around afterward drinking Old Bushmill? "Big Andy's easy to follow. He walks through walls and you just pour in after him through the gap. But that Pascoe's something else. He creeps through cracks and you've no idea where the clever sod's taking you."
Saltair had gone to the door and yelled at someone to ask Sally to step along when she had a moment.
"Anything else you can tell me about this guy?" asked Novello.
"It's all hearsay with me, best leave it to Sally," said Saltair, which suggested to Novello's sensitive ear that there was.
"Okay," she said. "So what about Agnes? were you here when she came into the home?"
"Sure I was. I've been here from the start. This place used to be the family house of one of the consultants at the hospital I worked at. His wife died, his family moved on, and he was rattling around in here, so he decided to move out. But he saw the way things were going back in the eighties--health care for the aged was going to be a major growth industry--so instead of selling up, he turned the place into what you see and made his favorite staff nurse, who happened to be me, an offer I couldn't refuse. That was seventeen years ago. Jesus, where does the time go?"
"And Winifred Fleck?"
"She came along at the start too. As a care assistant. She'd had some experience and she was pretty good. Not overendowed with human sympathy maybe, but you may have noticed that when it comes to hygiene and good order, she's got no equal."
"It did strike me that her lawn looked freeze wrapped," said Novello.
"Yes, well, mustn't mock. Too much. Hygiene's really important in a place like this, and having someone like Winifred around really kept us on our toes. Must say we were all a bit surprised way back when we heard she was taking an invalid aunt in."
Novello said lightly, "I suppose we're all inclined to take care of our well-to-do relatives."
"Indeed. And if that had been a motive, I could have understood it. But Agnes had a few hundred in the bank, no more. I know because when she had her second stroke and came in here, she was on full grant from the start."
"Sorry, what does that mean?"
"Put simply, the more you've got saved up, the larger your personal contribution to our fees. But if your savings are under what was a fairly modest limit ten years back, then Social Services pick up the tab. The limit's gone up quite a lot since then, with a lot of well-heeled people complaining it was a tax on thrift."
"And the authorities check up on this?"
"Oh, yes. They require sight of bank statements and so on for a couple of years before admission just to make sure there hasn't been some recent large movement of funds in anticipation of care need."
"Which bank?" Novello surprised herself and the matron by asking. But she looked it up and said, "The Mid-Yorkshire Savings." As Novello made a note, she mused, "So Agnes had nothing or very little when she came here. Of course, that doesn't necessarily mean she had nothing when she went to live with Winifred."
She saw instantly that she had made a bad move. Billie Saltair's lips puckered like she was sucking a lemon and she said, "Let's get one thing straight, Detective Constable. Winnie Fleck can be a pain in the arse, and I know she'd stoop a hell of a long way, bad back and all, to pick up a penny, but she's as honest as the day is long. Sure, if old Agnes did have a fortune, Winifred would expect her share of it as her due when the old lady died. But she wouldn't screw it out of her, no way."
"Sorry," said Novello meekly, but was saved from further apology by the arrival of a young nurse with short red hair and an anxious expression.
"Sally, this is Shirley Novello," said the matron, obviously judging that any mention of the police would only increase the girl's tension. "We were just talking about Agnes. Miss Novello thinks she might know the visitor she had last week and as you're the only one who actually met him, I'd like you to tell her whatever you can remember. It's okay. There's nothing wrong."
She smiled reassuringly and the girl relaxed slightly and began talking, "Well, he just came in and when I spoke to him and he said he was Agnes's grandson, I got quite excited 'cos I knew Agnes didn't get many visits so I just took him straight along to her room, we usually bring her down to the dayroom after eleven but she hadn't been feeling too clever so it seemed best to let her lie on and see how she felt after lunch. ..."
The nurse spoke in a flash flood of words which a linguist might have been content to observe from the bank till it died away of its own accord. Billie Saltair, however, bravely plunged in with "Okay, Sally, we get the picture. Miss Novello?"
"He told you he was Agnes's grandson?" said Novello.
"Oh, yes, that's why I took him straight up, he said, "Hello, I believe you've got my grandmother Mrs. Agnes Lightfoot living here," and I said, yes--"
"Did he tell you his name?" said Novello, following the matron's example.
"No, but when I took him in and said, Agnes, I've got a visitor for you, it's your grandson, she said, "Benny, Benny, is that you? I knew you'd come someday, I always knew," and then he took her hand and sat down by the bed and I left them together 'cos I didn't want to intrude. ..."
"You did okay, Sally," said Novello, smiling. "You were quite right. They needed to be alone. So, her grandson after all these years. How did he look? Not a short, fat chap, was he?"
"Oh, no, he was quite tall and very thin, even his face, sort of long and narrow, and brown, with the sun I mean, well, I know everyone's quite brown just now what with all this heat wave, but his face was sort of leathery like he was used to being out in the sun all of the time which isn't surprising because they get this kind of weather all the time in Australia--"
"Hold on," said Novello. "Why do you say Australia?"
"Because of the way he talked--he had this accent, you know, sort of cockney but different, like the way they speak in Australian movies and Neighbors on the telly."
"And his clothes?"
"Blue-and-white checked shirt, short sleeves, dark blue cotton slacks, black moccasins," said Sally with a precision almost shocking by comparison with her customary loquaciousness.
"Age?" said Novello hoping to stay tuned to this new wavelength.
"Thirties maybe. Hard to say with that leathery, sunburnt look."
"How long did he stay?"
"Well, I don't know exactly, there was a bit of a crisis with Eddie, that's Mr. Tibbett, having a fall, and we had to get him into bed and then call out the doctor just to make sure he hadn't done himself any real harm and next time I looked in on Agnes, he'd gone, her grandson I mean--"
Clearly clothes and looks were her special subject.
"You didn't happen to notice how he got here?" said Novello. "Car? Taxi? Bike?"
"Sorry," said the girl. "He was in the hallway when I saw him, I didn't see if there was a car or anything. ..."
This time she tailed off of her own accord, sounding distressed.
"Hey," said Novello brightly. "It doesn't matter. You've been a real help. It's not that important. Old Agnes's grandson! I bet she's talked about nothing else since his visit."
"Not really," said Sally. "She doesn't say a lot. It's hard for her, finding the words, you see. I asked her about him, you know, just making conversation. But all she said was, "I knew he'd come, he's a good lad, whatever they say." And when I tried to ask a few questions, she just cl
osed her eyes, so I didn't say anything else. I thought she probably wanted to keep the memory to herself. It could be all she's got."
Novello smiled and said, "No. She's got good nurses and friends like you, Sally, and that's a lot. Thank you. You've been really helpful."
The girl flushed, glanced at the matron, who nodded dismissal, then left the room at a lope.
"You handle people well," said Saltair.
"Thanks. And sorry again for treading on your toes about Winifred."
"But you'll still check?"
"If I told you one of your patients didn't have a heart condition, would you simply put in on his record?"
"Certainly not. But Winifred isn't one of your patients. I mean, she's got nothing to do with this other business, has she?"
"Not that I can see," said Novello. "Not, in fact, that I can see very much at all."
"So Sally hasn't helped?"
"In one way, of course she has. But sometimes more information just means more confusion."
"I know the feeling. Like symptoms. They don't always help diagnose the right disease."
Novello reached out her hand.
"Anyway, thanks for your help. Look, I don't see any point to me bothering Agnes now. Or at any time, from the sound of it. But there may be others who think differently. I'll need to discuss all this with my superiors. They may want to talk to her."
"They'll need to talk to me first," said Billie Saltair with an anticipatory smile. "No one tells me what to do at the Wark."
"Not even your boss?"
"My boss?" said Saltair sounding surprised.
"The owner. The consultant who made you the offer you couldn't refuse."
"Oh, you mean my husband?" She laughed at Novello's expression. "I should have said. That was the offer I couldn't refuse. He's retired now." She grinned rather wickedly. "I've told him there's a bed waiting for him here the first sign he gives of senility, like trying to interfere with the way I run things. I think he half believes me."
And so do I, thought Novello as she headed out into the savage brightness of that moorland sun.
And so do I!
Wield yawned.
Sergeant Clark, not normally an imaginative man, somehow found himself thinking of a visit to Wookey Hole he'd made on holiday years back.
Hill, Reginald - Dalziel and Pascoe 17 - On Beulah Height Page 24
