‘Brilliant.’ Ellie fished out some of the old washing line that they no longer used, cut off a suitable length and tied knots at either end. ‘Mind you, I don’t think I’d be able to skip much nowadays. Nor you, Rose. We’d best take an end each and have Mikey jump over it as we swing it to and fro, until he gets the hang of it.’
Mikey looked sullen. He didn’t want to learn anything, thank you very much.
Rose said, ‘Come on, let me have a try first. You two hold the ends, swing it slowly, and I’ll see if I can remember how to do it.’
Ellie didn’t think Rose ought to be trying such tricks, but the ruse worked, for Mikey soon realized he could do far better than clumsy old Rose, and within five minutes he was begging to be allowed a go himself.
Thump, thump. Mikey made Rose sit down on the chair in the hall, to tell him what to do next. It wasn’t long before he was skipping on the spot, and Rose was encouraging him to count how many turns of the rope he could do before he got his feet tangled up in it. So that was him settled for the afternoon.
Ellie ignored the winking light on the answerphone to attend to her other charges. Which meant climbing the stairs again, oh dear.
Thomas had his iPad out and was frowning over it, worrying he’d forgotten something important. Ellie took it off him and said that if he had a nice nap now, he might be fit enough to come downstairs later to watch the telly. She knew she was treating him like a child, but it seemed to work for he snuggled down under the duvet without protesting too much.
Vera was sitting up in bed, brushing out her hair and wondering if Mikey could go upstairs and find her a clean pair of pyjamas. Ellie went, instead. Worrying a bit. Praying a bit. Hoping the rain would stop soon.
Saturday afternoon
She was getting too old for this lark. She hadn’t been able to sleep for thinking of Petra. Silly girl, she oughtn’t to have threatened to go to the police. Where had she said her son was staying? Well, he’d be properly looked after, no doubt.
Oh, the stink of blood. She wouldn’t be able to wear her best black coat again till it had been cleaned. She couldn’t take it her local dry cleaners, where questions might be asked because of the blood. Suppose she said she’d had a nosebleed? Yes, that would do. It would save her having to take it to some place where she wasn’t known.
One good thing. She’d had to change her handbag over because the black one was saturated with blood and gin and, regretfully, would have to be disposed of in some public refuse bin. What a shame. But she found her diary in the inner pocket of her brown bag. She was so pleased. She couldn’t think what had happened to it. And she was right, there was something important she had to do on Monday.
She’d promised to see Evan at the funeral, but she’d have to wear her navy coat because it was the only other warm one she’d got. She couldn’t find her navy handbag. It must be somewhere around but she was not going to worry herself about it. The brown would have to do.
Poor Evan, how are the mighty fallen. Condemned to a wheelchair with an unfeeling, uncaring wife. She could have told him what Diana would be like before he married her, but there, he’d always been a bad picker where women were concerned.
She wished she didn’t feel so tired, but she mustn’t be selfish. So long as she had breath in her body, she must carry out the tasks she’d been given to do. One last effort. She could manage that. She’d grind up the pills with her little mortar and pestle and dissolve them in a miniature bottle of whisky. He liked whisky. And the bottle would fit nicely into her handbag when she went to the funeral.
She wondered if they’d sing ‘Brother James’s Air.’ It was one of her favourites.
Sunday morning
Sunday is a day of rest. Discuss.
It wasn’t a day of rest when you had two members of the household down with flu and a third in trouble with the law. Not for Ellie, anyway.
The rain had stopped for the moment. Amazing.
Vera seemed to be on the mend. She suggested she return to her flat upstairs so that she’d be out of Ellie’s way. Ellie wasn’t sure the girl was capable of climbing the stairs by herself, but with a bit of a push from behind she made it, laughing at how weak she was but glad to be back among her own things. Also back in his own quarters was Mikey, the young imp, eating toast in front of the telly, still in his pyjamas. And Midge, giving himself a once over.
Ellie’s spirits lifted. At least the tide had turned for Vera, and soon perhaps she’d be able to join in the fight for Mikey’s future.
Now for Thomas. He greeted her with, ‘Is it Sunday?’ and tried to get out of bed on legs that wobbled. ‘Am I supposed to be taking a service somewhere?’
‘No, you’re not. Get back into bed this minute.’ His temperature was almost normal. Praise be, indeed.
‘I’m hungry.’
Was he really? Well, perhaps it was time he started to eat again. ‘What would you like?’
‘Scrambled eggs and smoked salmon. Earl Grey tea.’
Back downstairs, Ellie collected the Sunday papers from the cage behind the door and stacked them with all the other newspapers and post that had been accumulating since the flu bug had struck. She found Rose in the kitchen, looking bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.
She said, ‘Both their temperatures are down. Only just above the mark. And Thomas actually wants something to eat.’
‘Praise be!’ said Rose.
Ellie took a tray of food up to Thomas, who ate the lot and asked for the small portable television they kept for guests and which they hardly ever used themselves. After having some breakfast herself, Ellie decided she really ought at least to listen to the answerphone messages. She thought there’d probably be some on Thomas’s separate phone in his study as well, so she started there.
Message number one. A minister wondered if Thomas could take the morning service in a neighbouring church the following Sunday. Ellie rang the number, which went to voicemail, and left a message saying it was unlikely, because he was still in bed with the flu.
Someone – garbled name – rang about an article they’d sent in by email and what did Thomas think about it? They hadn’t left a phone number but Ellie punched the reply button and her call went to voicemail. She left a message to say Thomas was in bed and would deal with it when he could.
She booted up his computer, watched the number of incoming emails rise to the thirties and then the forties … and go on rising. Well, she couldn’t do anything about any of that. She went offline and switched the computer off. She supposed that if she were really clever she might have been able to put a reply message on saying that Thomas was ill, etc., etc. But she wasn’t that clever. He could deal with it when he was better.
She moved to her own study and accessed the messages on her own answerphone. What a pleasant surprise! Kate and Mr Greenbody had been liaising like mad, and they planned to bring their Pryce files to Ellie’s at noon today, to compare notes. Kate said she’d arranged for her husband to take the children to a Messy Church service, and they were all going to have lunch out afterwards. She proposed to send the bill for lunch to Ellie, if that was all right by her.
Very much so.
Thump, thump. Much faster than before. Mikey must be back in the hall, practising his skipping. At this rate he’d be up to Olympic standards before supper.
The other messages for her were the usual. The cleaners hoped to make it by Tuesday but warned her that it probably wouldn’t be the usual team; an old friend put off an arranged meeting in town due to flu having struck in their family; another friend wondered if Ellie could babysit her grandchildren who were staying with her. Well … no. Not at the moment.
Thump, thump. Thump, thump, thump. Mikey was getting faster and faster.
Ellie rubbed her eyes. She hadn’t slept well and still felt tired. She went and sat in Thomas’s quiet room for a while. It was peaceful there. Some quirk of the building meant you couldn’t even hear the doorbell or the phone ringing.
She w
oke with a start. Had she really dropped off for a while? She shook herself back to the present. Was it really Sunday? Yes, it was. How much would the invalids eat? And what was there in the freezer to cook for them?
Sunday at noon
‘Yoo-hoo! It’s us!’
‘Us’ was not only Kate, but also Mr Greenbody. They were burdened with laptops and box files. Ellie came out of the kitchen to see Kate leading Mr Greenbody into the dining room and switching on the lights.
‘All right by you if we work in here?’ said Kate. As if she’d accept ‘no’ for an answer.
‘Would you like some coffee?’
‘No, thanks. We’ve got just over an hour,’ said Kate, dealing out papers on the big table and switching on her laptop with the other hand. ‘All right by you, Ken?’
So his name was Ken? Sometimes Kate made Ellie feel her age.
Mikey had disappeared again. Probably up with his mother. Ellie went back to the kitchen to unpack the dishwasher.
Some time later Kate appeared in the doorway to the kitchen. ‘Come and see what we’ve found.’ She was grinning, and so was Mr Greenbody. Ken.
Mr Greenbody was tapping away with two fingers at his computer. ‘What a clever little woman it’s been.’
Kate said, ‘We thought at first that we could work out what she’s been doing from the figures on our computers but decided in the end that we had to go back to the actual pieces of paper.’ She laid her right hand on one pile of paper. ‘These are her utility bills. They can’t be faked, they haven’t been inflated and the ones Mrs Pryce paid in the past compare pretty well with those the trust has paid since.’ She moved her hand to a similar pile. ‘Here we have the rest of the bills which Mrs Pryce passed and we have allowed. TV licence, Dynorod for a blocked up drain, that sort of thing. These bills were acceptable.’
‘But,’ said Ellie.
Kate’s grinned widened. ‘Yes. But. These –’ and she indicated a much larger pile – ‘are Ken’s bills for the water leak which meant she had to move out of her flat while it was gutted. Hotel bill, new plumbing, wiring, new bathroom, kitchen, redecorating, new television and computer, new carpets and furniture. Right? Ken queried these at the time but Mrs Pryce told him, eventually, to pay.’
Ken said, apologetically, ‘I asked her if she’d like me to query the amounts charged as I’d had similar work done myself at our house, and thought the bills excessive. But she said to pass them as a one off.’
‘I can’t blame her,’ said Ellie.
‘I know, I know.’ Kate clearly disapproved of letting anything pass, but reluctantly had to admit that Mrs Pryce had the right to decide. She moved the stacks she’d dealt with further along the table and squared her elbows over yet another, even bigger pile. ‘Now we come to the stack of bills which she’s been sending us since we took over managing her accounts. The criterion was to pay anything for which she’d received threatening notices. She started small but soon became bolder, and we’ve paid a lot of stuff which Ken here tells me Mrs Pryce had always refused to accept … in particular her food bills, bills for clothing and for taxis. I’m at fault here. I didn’t check with Ken to see what Mrs Pryce had or had not allowed. It’s only now I’m beginning to see that she’s not only billed us for things which Ken had already covered, but inflated the amounts, too.’
Ken nodded. ‘The service charge for the flat, for instance. It’s payable a year in advance. I paid it six months ago, but she asked Kate to pay it again, two months ago.’
‘Oh dear,’ said Ellie.
Kate held up her hand. ‘That’s nothing compared to the duplication of the work on her flat.’ She handed Ellie a sheaf of bills. ‘These bills covered the same things that Ken had paid out for last year, and for the same reason. She said that a water leak had destroyed her flat and she had to have completely new plumbing, kitchen, electrics, bathroom, carpets, decorating, furniture, plus a new computer and a new television set. Oh, except that she claimed to have gone away on holiday while the work was done this time, instead of moving out to a hotel as she’d done before. That added the cost of her air fares into the equation.’
Ellie clutched her head. ‘How have we been so easy to fool?’
‘She never thought we’d compare notes. What we think she’s done,’ said Ken, enjoying himself, ‘is to take each one of the original invoices from a supplier and photocopy the heading on to a new sheet of paper. Then she filled in details of the work done or the piece of equipment bought, using different fonts on her own computer. Most times she copied the wording of the original, upped the total, added a new date, and Bob’s your uncle.’
‘Here,’ said Kate, showing Ellie an invoice from a firm of carpet suppliers, ‘is the one Mrs Pryce passed. And here –’ another bill, which looked identical except for the date – ‘is the one she sent to us recently. Note how much more she’s charged us than she charged Ken.’
Ellie was bewildered. ‘But wouldn’t we have paid each supplier individually? She can’t have got them all to take a kickback in her efforts to defraud us.’
‘No, she didn’t. On both occasions she said she’d asked a friend to project manage the whole thing for her while she was away. He submitted a sheaf of unpaid bills, plus one for his time and trouble, amounting to an extra ten per cent. We paid him the total, and he reimbursed everyone. His covering invoice is here—’
‘We’ve just checked, and his name and address don’t exist,’ said Ken, laughing. ‘She made them up, both times. Easy enough to do on a computer. But she made one slip. The telephone number she gave first time is that of a hairdresser in Pimlico, but second time round she can’t have photocopied the heading properly and was forced to type in the telephone number herself. I thought it was familiar and checked whose it might be and—’
‘It was Terry’s?’ said Ellie. ‘Terry was her “project man-ager”?’
‘And got ten per cent of the total for his trouble first time round. The second time she probably pocketed the lot because it was payment for work already done. We will have to pursue her through the small claims courts to get the money back.’
Oh. That would mean months of hassle and unpleasantness.
Kate wasn’t finished yet. ‘Now to the even more serious problem. The invoice for the car. Either young Terry supplied her with the bill and they shared the proceeds, or she thought the scam up all by herself. Whichever way, once the Licensing people are informed that she’s “bought” a non-existent car, they will be decidedly unpleasant about it.’
‘We haven’t found everything yet,’ said Ken. ‘One of the last things Mrs Pryce did was to tell Edwina that we wouldn’t accept her food bills any longer, nor pay for her account at Harrods, her subscription to the National Trust, and so on. Yet she’s been passing these to Kate for payment recently.’
Ellie cringed. ‘So when we took over paying her bills, she tested us out with small amounts at first, to see how much she could get away with? She realized pretty soon that we weren’t going to check back to see what Mrs Pryce had allowed before and took us for … how much?’
A quick glance between Kate and Ken. ‘We’re not sure yet. We need to go through things in more detail. But at a conservative guess, over a hundred thousand pounds.’
That took her breath away. Ellie wiped the back of her hand across her forehead.
Silence. The other two looked at her with compassion. Kate stirred, looking at her watch. ‘I have to go. I said I’d meet the family at the Carvery.’
‘We need to do a lot more work on these papers,’ said Ken, ‘but it’s getting late and I promised to be back for lunch. Mrs Quicke, is there anything else I can do before I go?’
‘Give me a brain transplant? This is all my fault,’ said Ellie. ‘I knew what the woman was like, and I ought to have foreseen that she’d try to take us for a ride. I am so angry with myself I can’t think straight, but one thing’s for sure: I can’t let the trust pay for my mistakes. I’ll have to make good our losses.’
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‘No, no,’ said Kate, rapidly packing papers away and shutting down her laptop. ‘It’s not your fault. It’s no one’s fault. Or rather, it’s Edwina’s crime and she will have to pay for it. It’ll take a while for us to assess the damage, but then we can turn the car invoice and the rest over to the police, who may or may not decide to prosecute her for fraud. If they don’t, we’ll have to take out a civil action in the courts to recover what we can.’
Ken frowned. ‘I don’t think Mrs Pryce would have done that.’
‘Mrs Pryce is dead. Long live Ellie Quicke.’ Kate gave Ellie a hug and vanished. The front door banged behind her.
Ken slowly gathered his own papers together. ‘You look as if you could do with a stiff drink. It’s a shock when people whom you’ve trusted let you down.’
‘I underestimated her capacity to do damage, and I didn’t take any sensible precautions to prevent this happening. I suppose it is possible that the trust may wish to write the debt off, but I know that Thomas will agree with me that the money must be repaid.’
‘Then get it off her. Another idea. Why not get Terry Pryce to tell on her? You know that I went on acting for him after Mrs Pryce passed away? He’d got himself into trouble, minor stuff. Drunk and disorderly in the town centre, for which he was fined. Speeding; points on his licence and a fine. I saw him through all that so he asked me to represent him when he was interviewed by the police some months ago when he wrote off his car, and later, at the court hearing when he lost his licence. He did manage to keep his job throughout, but it was a near thing. Suppose I threaten to inform his employers that he is alleged to have taken part in this fraud? I suspect he might be anxious to distance himself from Edwina, and to put all the blame on her. Would you like me to try it?’
‘If only! But we haven’t time. I have to meet her first thing tomorrow. Is it possible – could you spare the time to be here as well, so that we can make it clear to her that we can prove fraud?’
Murder With Mercy Page 21
