All the Daughters

by Penny Freedman

  The clutch of reporters at the back of hotel had grown in size by the time they left. No longer anonymous, with Sarah in her uniform beside him, he had to push through the mob issuing a curt ‘No comment at this stage’ as he went.

  Colin Fletcher’s surgery was in a row of well-proportioned regency houses not far from the back gate of the abbey. At two o’clock in the afternoon there was nothing going on except, it appeared, a baby clinic, judging from the scrum of mothers, push-chairs, fractious toddlers and wailing infants that occupied the downstairs waiting room. Directed upstairs, Scott and Sarah found Colin Fletcher sitting at his desk in a high-ceilinged room with a view of the abbey tower. In fact, it was that view that seemed to be occupying him, Scott noticed, rather than his computer screen or his heaped in-tray. He had called ‘Come in’ to their knock but was turned away from them as they entered and only swivelled his chair round when Scott spoke.

  ‘I hope this isn’t an inconvenient time, Dr Fletcher? I’m DCI David Scott. And this is PC Sarah Shepherd. She is acting as liaison officer with the Carson family.’

  ‘Ah, yes.’

  He looked terrible, Scott thought. He was a big man with a strong face and a head of vigorous greying hair but his eyes, under their bushy brows, seemed to have sunk into his head and his face had a yellow pallor. He was still capable of mustering his professional manner though. He stood up and reached across to shake hands, his grip firm. ‘Do sit down,’ he said.

  ‘I have the statement you made yesterday, Dr Fletcher,’ Scott said, ‘but I would just like to run through it with you again.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘It must have been quite a shock for you, finding Marina Carson as you did and we don’t always remember things clearly in those circumstances.’

  ‘I suppose not.’

  ‘You say in your statement that Mrs Carson phoned you just before one o’clock and asked you to come out to her house.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And this was connected with the fall that she had suffered the day before?’

  ‘Not directly. She –’ He gave a sigh. ‘She was in a highly anxious state. Experiencing a panic attack, in fact. I could hear that she was having difficulty breathing.’

  ‘And it’s usual, is it, for you to go out to a patient under those circumstances?’

  ‘With some patients, yes.’

  ‘What sort of patients are those?’

  ‘Particularly vulnerable patients. The very elderly.’

  ‘Which Glenys isn’t.’

  ‘Isn’t what?’

  ‘Very elderly.’

  ‘No.’

  Colin Fletcher looked at him for a moment, his expression unreadable, then abruptly pushed back his chair and stood up. ‘Look,’ he said, slapping a hand on his desk, ‘you’re here because you want to find out how Marina died, and we all want to know that, of course we do, but I fail to see how that’s helped by questioning my professional ethics.’

  ‘I wasn’t –’

  ‘Oh I think you were. I think it bothers you that Glenys seemed to get preferential treatment. Well Glenys and Hector are old friends of ours. We’ve seen them through some difficult times. And Glenys called me for help. It was lunch time. I wasn’t on duty. No other patients suffered from my going out to Lower Shepton. It wasn’t a professional visit. I went because Glenys was alone and frightened.’

  ‘Well thank you for clarifying that,’ Scott said, as Colin Fletcher sat down again, heavily, and leaned back in his chair. ‘We’re just trying to build as complete a picture as possible of the events of that afternoon. Did Mrs Carson tell you what exactly she was frightened of?’

  Colin Fletcher rubbed his eyes for a moment. ‘Yes. She believed she was being – stalked, if you like. She believed that someone had been getting into the house. She thought that her fall down the stairs had been deliberately engineered.’

  ‘And do you think she was right?’

  ‘I – don’t know what to think.’

  Scott thought he had rarely heard a man sound so utterly weary.

  ‘Perhaps you could tell us what you found when you got to Charter Hall,’ he said. ‘What time was that, by the way?’

  ‘Twenty past one. I was there only for a few moments. Glenys was desperate to get out of the house and wanted me to drive her to the station, so we got straight into the car and I drove her there.’

  ‘Yes. We are investigating some tyre tracks at Charter Hall. My forensics officers will need to take a look at your car.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘There’s something in your statement that I’d like you to clarify, if you would. You say that on the way to the station Mrs Carson remembered that she ought to leave a message telling Marina where she had gone, and that was why you returned to the house.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But you didn’t return to the house till three o’clock. Why didn’t you go straight back, since you were only a few minutes away?’

  Colin Fletcher gazed back at him for moment, then got up again and walked over to the window. ‘I was embarrassed,’ he said eventually, turned away from them, looking out of the window. ‘Embarrassed for Glenys. She’s just lost her daughter under terrible circumstances and I didn’t want you – the police – to think she was a neglectful mother.’ He turned. ‘The truth is, Glenys didn’t ask me to leave a message. She didn’t think of it. She was preoccupied with getting the train. It was only later, when I was at my desk dealing with paperwork, that I thought of it. I realised that Hector and Marina would have no idea where Glenys was, and given the state she was in they would be terribly worried. I had no way of contacting either of them. So I went back to leave a note for them.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘I apologise if I wasn’t strictly accurate in my statement.’

  ‘Yes. And can you tell me again what happened when you returned to Charter Hall – at just before three, is that right?’

  ‘Yes. I rang the doorbell in case someone was there – Hector, for instance – and as I was standing there I looked in through the glass panel of the door and could see someone – I couldn’t tell who – lying at the foot of the stairs. I rang the bell again and hammered on the door but there was no response, so I used my shoe to break the glass and reached through to open the door.’

  ‘Did you realise immediately that she was dead?’

  ‘I thought so from the angle she was lying at. I checked for vital signs but there were none.’

  ‘What did you do then?’

  ‘I phoned the police.’

  ‘Was that because you didn’t think her fall had been accidental?’

  ‘It was a sudden death. That’s all.’

  As they left the surgery Sarah Shepherd said, ‘He seems more traumatised that the parents, don’t you think? I might be better employed looking after him.’

  7

  FRIDAY 24th SEPTEMBER

  Bring your hand to the buttery bar and let it drink

  David Scott refused to talk to me yesterday when I rang him. I rang twice. Both times I heard the phone ring and I heard it click off. I understand that I hurt his feelings but that was more than two years ago and I think it’s unmanly of him to sulk.

  Anyway, I have to talk to him and, if he’s in charge of this case, then he’s going to have to talk to me. I have to talk to him because I heard Ellie crying in the night and because, no matter how wrong she was to let Marina go home without checking that her mother was there and no matter how much she blames herself, and probably always will, there are plenty of other people who have more to answer for than Ellie. There are Marina’s parents, for a start, who seem to have made her responsible for them rather than sheltering her from the cruel world, and then there’s the school. It would suit Tom Urquhart to load all the blame onto Ellie but he’s bloody well not going to. If he tries, I shall threaten to go public on staffing practices that put an unqualified novice teacher in charge of a difficult tutor group and left her to sink or swim without
any kind of mentoring arrangements. And there are the wretched children who were bullying Marina and who may or may not have literally pushed her too far. It’s that fall that haunts me. The image is there at the corner of my vision, it seems, all the time: the spindly child, all arms and legs, turning and twisting in the air. My stomach churns each time with the panic of it – the terrified, screaming step into space.

  If someone pushed her or made her fall then I passionately want the police to find out who it was, but they’re not going to achieve anything by bullying Ellie and I need David to acknowledge that. He’s not much of a morning person, as I recall; early morning calls take him unawares. It’s now half past seven and I think it’s time. I dial and it rings for some time, but then I hear him.

  ‘David Scott.’

  ‘David,’ I say in the bracing tones of a PE teacher. ‘Good morning! I hope you’re not busy.’

  There is a clunk and a clatter and he says nothing. Has he fainted? Or thrown the phone across the room? Then he speaks, his voice muffled. ‘Gina?’

  ‘Certainly.’

  ‘Do you know what time it is?’

  ‘7.32 a.m. and you’re heading an inquiry into the suspicious death of a child, so I’m assuming you’ve been up for hours.’

  ‘Gina, would you just tell me what you want?’ He’s not muffled any more; he’s crystal clear and very cool.

  I take a deep breath and go off the top board. ‘I want you to tell me that my daughter isn’t any kind of suspect. And I want you to tell Tom Urquhart that you’re not interested in her. Tom isn’t the man he once was and he’s being a real jobsworth over this. Ellie didn’t follow official procedure when she sent Marina Carson home from school and Tom’s entitled to be pissed off with her about that, but he won’t let her into school, for God’s sake, because someone might accuse him of exposing the children to a suspected criminal. You must know she’s not a criminal, so tell him she isn’t.’

  He says nothing for at least a minute, but I can hear odd sounds – a kettle going on, possibly. Finally, he says, ‘I can’t believe you’re asking this, Gina. You know I can’t let any personal feelings affect the way I handle an investigation. I can’t assume Eleanor’s in the clear just because she’s your daughter and you say she’s innocent. What kind of police officer would that make me?’

  Personal feelings: a little nugget of warmth settles in my chest. I pitch my voice lower, I speak more slowly. ‘I’m not asking you to do anything unprofessional, David, of course I’m not. I’m just saying if you do decide that Ellie’s sin of omission isn’t a police matter, then please will you tell Tom Urquhart so? Then Ellie can go back into school and I don’t have to spend another night lying awake listening to her sobbing in the room next door.’

  There is another silence, shorter this time, then a heavy sigh and he says, ‘We’re reviewing our evidence so far this morning. I have to tell you that it’s very early days to be ruling anyone in or out, but if – if we decide that Eleanor is out of the frame then, yes, I’ll tell Tom Urquhart.’

  I want to shower him with verbal kisses, entwine him in a virtual embrace, but I merely say, ‘Thank you. That’s all I ask.’ And I ring off.

  I can hear Freda toddling about upstairs so I scoop her up and bring her down and we both eat toast and marmite at the kitchen table. Then I take Ellie a cup of tea, take Freda into Annie and tell her to look after both of them, ignore her protests and cycle off to my day job.

  It’s a full morning: a staff meeting followed by a two-hour class on the language of business negotiation with a group of Chinese students taking MBAs. In their exam, they will have to role play a negotiation and it’s my job to provide them with handy phrases and useful linguistic strategies. I’m hardly the person to be teaching this course – I have never participated in a business negotiation of any kind, since it was Andrew who bludgeoned a bargain price out of the vendor when we bought our house, and I won’t demean myself by haggling even in an Istanbul market. I am an expert in what is known as cross-cultural pragmatic competence, however – the ability to give and understand subtle social signals in another language or another culture. So, armed with this knowledge and a good text book – The World of Business – I do my best.

  This morning we concentrate first on preliminary pleasantries. They find these extraordinarily difficult. I can’t believe that in China they just plunge straight into the hard bargaining, so I think the problem is that this bit really seems like “acting” and makes them self-conscious, whereas the negotiation itself has a goal and they forget that they’re acting. After the pleasantries we move on to co-operative language and I press on them such useful expressions as “I take your point”, “I understand the problem”, “if you were in my shoes”, “what would you do in my place?”, “our mutual advantage” et cetera. (From personal prejudice, I try to discourage “a win-win situation” but they’re awfully keen to use it). Sadly, I act as the internal examiner when it comes to the final test and I have to sit and witness their wilful abuse of my careful instruction. A couple of years ago, a sweet Thai woman, in the throes of salvaging her end of a deal, cried beseechingly to the large Greek she was partnered with, ‘Please put your shoes in my place!’ then turned to me and mouthed, ‘Sorry!’ before carrying on. Viewed as surrealist theatre, it works rather well.

  By the end of this I am starving, but I’ve also got a load of e-mails to answer, I want to ring and see how Ellie is and I’m teaching again at two. I need to eat a sandwich at my desk, but this is not as easy as it sounds. The sandwiches in the senior common room come not in cellophane packs but arranged on plates with a tasteful garnish of parsley and what not, and a covering of clingfilm, and there has been a directive that staff should not take plates, cups and glasses away to their offices. We can’t be trusted, you see. Slobs and slatterns as we academics are, we don’t return them; instead we abandon them in our rooms, where they grow mould and are dug out weeks later from under a snowfall of paper.

  Well, today I’m prepared to brazen it out. I sweep into the SCR, scoop up a plate, pay for it and head for the door signalling, I hope, life-and-death matters to attend to. Before I get there – head down, purposeful stride – I run slap into Diane, who is clearing tables. Caught red-handed, I stop and gaze guiltily at my criminal cheese and coleslaw sandwich. Then I smile. ‘Diane!’ I cry. ‘I’m a sinner, I know, but I’ve got such a heap of work I’m going to take this away, but I promise I’ll wash it up and return it, good as new.’

  She purses her lips in exaggerated disapproval then she smiles too. ‘That’s all right, Gina. I know you’re well trained.’ She lowers her voice. ’It’s the men who are the problem.’

  ‘Tell me about it, Diane,’ I say and make to move on.

  She follows me to the door, adjusting her tray of dirty crockery. ‘I was hoping I’d see you, Gina,’ she says. ‘Didn’t you say your daughter was teaching at William Roper?’

  Did I say that? Probably. I chat to the ground staff and the domestic staff more than common courtesy requires. I don’t want to seem snooty and I overcompensate, I suppose. Diane cleans the English language building and you can’t sit in silence while someone empties your bin and spritzes antibacterial stuff into your handset. Children are useful common ground and it’s possible that Diane knows more than she needs to about Ellie and Annie by now.

  ‘Yes, she is,’ I say, mentally touching wood that this is, in fact, still the case.

  ‘So, did she know that poor little girl – Glenys Summers’ daughter?’

  ‘How did you –’

  ‘It’s in the local paper today. Front page. Haven’t you seen it? But I knew anyway. My sister-in-law, Renée, she cleans for the family. She’s been interviewed by the police and everything. She’s terribly upset. She thinks she could have stopped it happening.’

  ‘Why?’

  She looks at her laden tray and glances round the room. ‘Hold on a minute,’ she says, ‘and I’ll tell you about it. Just let me get rid o
f this tray.’

  It’s a quarter past one and my lunch hour is rapidly disappearing, but I have to hear this story. I sit at an empty table near the door and start to eat my sandwich. Diane joins me.

  ‘We’re not busy,’ she says, sitting down. ‘I can take five minutes. The thing is, Renée got a hoax phone call.’

  ‘When?’ I ask through a mouthful of coleslaw.

  ‘The day it happened. When was it? Wednesday. In the morning, a woman rang – sounded just like Glenys Summers, she said – and told her not to come in to work. Said she’d got a bad cold and wanted a quiet day in bed.’

  ‘And it wasn’t her?’

  ‘No, it wasn’t. So Renée thinks the police think it was the killer, or a – you know – accomplice wanting to make sure the coast was clear.’

  ‘Clear to kill Marina?’

  ‘No. I don’t suppose they were going to kill anyone. They wanted to burgle the place, didn’t they? And the poor child came home while they were there.’

  ‘But why would they kill her?’

  ‘Panicked, I suppose.’

  Oh God. And if Ellie hadn’t sent her home, she wouldn’t have been killed.

  ‘Diane,’ I say. ‘Ellie’s really upset about this too. Marina was in her class. I’d really like to know more. Do you think Renée would talk to me?’

  ‘I should think so. It’d save her going over it all again with me at least. She’s coming here this afternoon, actually. She’s going to pick me up when I finish here. My car’s in the garage so she’s giving me a lift home.’

  ‘What time do you finish?’

  ‘Half past four.’

  ‘Do you think you could ask her to get here a bit early and talk to me? Would she mind? I’d be really grateful.’

  ‘I can give her a call. Her boys stay for football on Fridays and their dad’ll pick them up.’