‘Just like her. Wouldn’t you know!’ The door opened a fraction more, revealing a bony woman in her fifties. She was wearing a plastic apron over a T-shirt and jeans, and her hands were encased in yellow household cleaning gloves. ‘Well, don’t just stand there. Come on in. You’ll forgive me not offering you a cuppa, but I’ve a lot to do. The For Sale board went up yesterday against my wishes for the place is not fit to be seen, but would my brother listen? Not he! My niece and her boyfriend have been staying here and did they do diddly-squat to keep the place clean and tidy, never mind getting the house ready to show? Not they!’
She led the way into a high-ceilinged sitting room which was filled with an old-fashioned three-piece suite, footstools, coffee tables, a glass-fronted cabinet and a small television set. All pre-Second World War, except for the television set. Pictures with dark, heavy frames had been taken off the wall and stacked in a corner, while posters of gigs had been Sellotaped on to the wallpaper in their place. Ornaments of the Toby Jug variety had been crammed into the cabinet, and there were three – no, four – small clocks, now mercifully silent. Thin, unlined curtains had been drawn halfway across the window and the room seemed dark. It smelled of stale beer and something else, less pleasant. There was a fine layer of dust over everything.
Did the place smell of cats? No. Not cats. Stale food? An empty drink can rolled under Ellie’s foot and she nearly fell.
The woman pounced on the can and threw it in a rubbish bin on wheels which she’d stationed in the middle of the room. The bin was already overflowing with newspapers, plastic food trays and pizza boxes.
‘You see what comes of letting youngsters look after the house?’ The woman continued on her way round the room, collecting trash as she went. ‘You don’t mind if I carry on, do you? I need to get this room and the next done before I leave. I have to get back before EastEnders, don’t I? Who did you say you were?’
‘My name is Ellie Quicke. It was my husband, a minister in the local circuit, who inherited some money from your stepmother. Can I help at all? I could do the dusting if you tidy.’
‘I’m Dawn Pullin, her stepdaughter. Your husband’s a minister? Hah! I don’t believe in all that stuff. I know Mum did, more fool her, though Dad wasn’t that bothered. I don’t hold with bells and smells. They give me hay fever.’
‘It’s not that kind of church,’ said Ellie, dumping her jacket and handbag to pick up a duster and a can of polish. ‘My husband is a retired minister who brought her communion one day after she’d broken her ankle and her own minister was poorly. He got talking to Mrs Pullin about this and that. He liked your stepmother. He was surprised to hear she’d left him some money, but also grateful.’
The woman looked at her watch and stripped off her gloves. ‘I’ve been at it since ten and hardly touched the surface. Time for a cuppa. You won’t mind the mess in the kitchen, will you? They left a mountain of washing-up to do, and I daren’t think what the sheets are like in the bedrooms.’
Ellie picked up her cue. ‘I could wash up for you, if you like?’ It was definitely the right thing to say.
‘I’ll admit I could do with a hand.’
Ellie blanched when she saw how dated the kitchen equipment was, and how much washing-up needed doing, but there seemed to be plenty of hot water so she got down to it. Meanwhile Dawn sought out some clean mugs and boiled a kettle, complaining that everything was broken, including the immersion heater, and what the plumber was going to charge to look at the damp patch on the landing she couldn’t imagine. There was hot water only because she’d turned the central heating on since the house felt damp and for some reason that had triggered the hot water system into life.
Finally, they sat at the table to sip a cuppa each. Dawn said, ‘I shoulda brought a sandwich, but I didn’t think.’ She opened a tin which had contained biscuits and upended it to shower crumbs on the table. ‘See? No biscuits. Locusts, that’s what they were. Never thought of replacing anything. Not so much as a toilet roll, so I don’t advise your using the loo while you’re here.’
‘Understood. The family let your niece stay here for a while?’
‘Fact is we didn’t know what to do with the house until probate was granted. Neither my brother nor I could afford to buy one another out so we knew we’d have to sell. To leave it empty was asking for trouble, what with squatters and a dripping tap in the bathroom and a spot of what I swear is wet rot on the landing and all. We argued about it something chronic. I’ve my own little council flat, Lewisham way, and that’s nigh on a day’s journey, what with two buses and a stint on the Underground. I work mornings at the school as a dinner lady, and then in the cleaners down the road in the afternoons. I wasn’t going to give up my jobs to look after this place for six months, now, was I? Then my brother – him that works for the town hall, though what with the cuts I don’t know how long that’s going to last – he said he couldn’t get to his job if he moved over here, and his wife that’s a fair cow, pardon my language, but she is, she said she was blowed if she’d put her job at the hairdresser’s at risk. And she didn’t say “blowed”, if you know what I mean.’
Ellie knew. ‘So you let your niece move in and look after the house till probate was granted and you could sell it?’
‘I insisted she sign a month to month lease, no rent but paying for the repairs. My brother didn’t think it was necessary, but he’s a fool where she’s concerned, and luckily the solicitor agreed with me. We had her sign everything, right and tight, but did she look after the house? Did she, heck! She got that no-good boyfriend of hers to patch up this and that, like putting a plaster on a fatal wound, if you ask me, but finally we got her out and I agreed I’d come over when I could and make a start getting the place ready to sell.
‘So I got a day off and here I am. And did I have a shock when I walked in here this morning! It’s clear that the job’s more than I can cope with in one day, not to mention it needs a plumber and a carpenter too, I dare say. I rang my brother just before you came to put him in the picture. I said we should sue my niece for damages and he said, “Oh, come on!” I said, “You should see the mess the place is in. It’s going to knock thousands off the price to put it on the market like this.”’
Ellie nodded. ‘At least. Have you had a survey done?’
‘My brother said it wasn’t necessary and that the house should sell like hot cakes, being in this nice neighbourhood. I told him that was pie in the sky. Then I said I shouldn’t be out of pocket because his daughter has let things slip and that if he didn’t stir his stumps and do something about it, I was going to go to the police and charge her with damaging my property.’
‘Really?’ Ellie admired someone who could stand up to the next generation.
Dawn nodded. ‘Well, I probably wouldn’t have, but the moment I threatened to bring the police in, he said he’d come round and see what could be done. After all, we really don’t want the police poking their noses in again, do we?’
Ellie choked on her tea. ‘Oh? The police were here before? Why?’
Dawn gave a long, heavy sigh. ‘There was this awful palaver over our stepmother’s death. To hear them talk, you’d have thought she’d been murdered in her bed. The questions they asked! It went on for days. I lost a day and a half’s work and when I asked the police who was going to make that time up for me, they were quite rude. In the end they agreed it was just what we’d all thought in the beginning.’
Ellie felt the hairs rise on the back of her neck. ‘There was cause to suspect something not quite right about your stepmother’s death?’
‘No, of course not. It was an accident, but Her Next Door had to poke her nose in, didn’t she? She used to come round to complain every time one of the kitties strayed into her beloved garden and did a whoopsie, which you can’t stop cats doing, now can you? They always covered it over neatly, as cats do.’
Ellie said, ‘Your neighbour had a grudge against your stepmother’s cats? Well, it’s true, they do
go over the garden wall and pay a call wherever they wish to do so, and I suppose it can be annoying if they scratch up the earth where you’ve sowed some seeds. But what has that got to do with her death?’
‘Oh, she was just making trouble, like she always did. She said she heard shouting in the kitchen the night of the accident. She said it must have been one of us, seeing as we were always on at our stepmother to sell up and downsize. What she heard was our stepmother’s radio that she played far too loudly. But there you are, you can’t tell some people, can you?’
Ellie looked around and, sure enough, there was a big, old-fashioned Bakelite wireless on a wooden cabinet set against the interior wall. Noise from that might well penetrate next door.
‘I think I can understand the situation,’ said Ellie, with care. ‘I’m in a somewhat similar position myself. This is a big old house, and valuable. Your stepmother was getting on in years and you felt she would be happier in a small flat somewhere, while you and your brother could do with the money from the sale of the house. Is that right? Did you argue about it?’
‘Of course we argued about it. It was only common sense. She wouldn’t budge, not she. She liked her independence, she said, though she was getting slow on her pins and then she broke her ankle and it was extremely inconvenient for me or my brother to come over and do her shopping for her, and my sister-in-law never lifted a finger which is par for the course, if you get me. We did our best to look after her, and if it wasn’t enough then she had her savings to get some help in, didn’t she? But no, she wouldn’t have a cleaner more than once a week, and the doctor got social services involved and they were running in and out at all times of the day, nasty prying busybodies that they are. It was only common sense for her to downsize, but she was that obstinate!’
‘And she had the cats to look after.’ There was no evidence of cat dishes or cat litter to be seen. ‘What happened to them?’
‘We asked the Cat Protection people to take them to be rehomed. I couldn’t have them, not with my allergy, and my sister-in-law wouldn’t demean herself to look after anyone but herself. We knew the oldest cat probably wouldn’t be found another home, but there … It is what it is.’
Ellie said, ‘It must have been hard for you when the police took your neighbour’s story about a quarrel seriously?’
‘It was. Fortunately I’d collected my friend from her place that evening and we went to the pub together. It was quiz night, see, and we were there till closing time. We came second, which was a scandal, because we ought to have won by rights, but it’s men as run these things, isn’t it? My brother and his wife had a barbecue, with friends round. Not that they invited me and I don’t bear a grudge, not at my age. And my darling niece that’s trying to make it as a model – can you believe? – she and her boyfriend went to some party miles away and didn’t come back till morning.
‘No, we was lucky there. We’d all got alibis. What it was, our stepmother was cutting up some chicken for the kitties and, well, we don’t know what happened for sure, but I reckon one of them tripped her up and she fell on the knife. They say she wouldn’t have felt much, that it would have been all over in a minute or two. It depends where the knife goes in, you see. If you get an artery, it’s quick. I’m glad it was quick. She wouldn’t have liked going into a home, not really.’
Ellie said, ‘It must have been horrid, having the police around when you’re trying come to terms with your stepmother’s death. Had you seen her recently?’
‘N-no. Not really.’ A shrugging of shoulders. ‘Not after we’d had words about us wanting her to be sensible and sell up, and her saying we only wanted to feather our own nests, which was probably spot on for my brother, trying to satisfy my sister-in-law’s ambitions to move up the housing market, though she probably wouldn’t have been satisfied if he’d given her a house in Mayfair, knowing her.’
Ellie noted that Dawn had avoided answering the question about her own needs. Ellie suspected the woman could have done with a windfall herself. Ellie said, ‘They do say that a son is a son till he gets him a wife. So your brother wasn’t on good terms with your stepmother? How did you get on with her?’
Dawn shifted in her chair. ‘Our real mum died when we was small. Complications from a still birth. They did their best but everything went wrong. We was on our own with help from an auntie, but she had her own brood. Dad met this woman at the pub one night; she was serving behind the bar, quite a gadabout as they say. After a while she moved in to look after us and they got married. You know she came from someplace in Europe? Looking for a better life, wasn’t she? And found it. Don’t get me wrong, she did all right for us according to her lights, though it wasn’t the same. Couldn’t be, could it? Yes, it was all right when I was growing up, but then I had my spot of bother and Dad took against me.’
‘What happened?’
‘I was being courted by this lad. He thought I’d come into money, and I kept telling him my dad was as mean as a tick, but Alan was sure we’d be given a nice handout when we married, which we did down the registry. Only, Dad told him to get a job and pay his own gambling debts and our stepmother wouldn’t go against Dad, and there was me with a month-old baby and no money coming in. So Alan left me, didn’t he? In a rented room, which the landlord didn’t like my having a baby there. Give her her due, our stepmother slipped me the odd tenner, but Dad said he didn’t see why he should scrimp and save when he was coming up to retirement and I should go on the social, which is what I had to do. And then the baby died that winter. Asthma, they said. Because of the damp in the walls of our room.’
‘I am sorry,’ said Ellie. ‘That must have been very hard.’
‘Tell the truth, I never got over it. Not really. Alan leaving, and then the baby following after. I could have married again. That’s what our stepmother said. I had one or two offers, but I didn’t fancy it, somehow. You can be let down once too often.’
‘I understand. But you couldn’t help dreaming that things might improve when your stepmother died. Not that you wanted her to, but you could see that one day you’d come into some money, enough to buy yourself somewhere decent. You did know she’d made a will in your favour?’
‘Sure. She made it the first time when Dad died. She had this leech, some friend who advised her on her investments and such. Probably made a fortune for himself out of her if the truth were but known. She called him her “gentleman friend”, which tells you all you need to know about him and her, right? He got her to update her will every year, would you believe? That way he pocketed a fee each time, didn’t he?’
‘Did she change the conditions each time?’
‘To be fair; no, not much. She left some money for a couple of old friends and some to the church, and someone she used to play bridge with, and yes, her cleaner. Some of the names changed every year as her old friends died off and she thought of leaving a bit to someone different. But yes, my brother and I knew we’d get the rest and yes, it was something to look forward to.’ Dawn looked around her. ‘Not that it’s much, when you come to look at it. It’s going to take for ever to clean the place up ready to go on the market.’
‘She left money to my husband, Thomas, too.’
Dawn wasn’t interested. ‘Well, that’s the way it was. It was her right to give someone a bit here and a bit there. I didn’t know some of the people at all, but we didn’t know everyone that came into the house looking for a handout, did we?’
That all sounded reasonable to Ellie. If Thomas had been one among many who’d benefited from the will, no one could point the finger at him or talk about undue influence.
Ellie probed one last time. ‘I expect she had friends who were also making their wills at that time of life, and they all talked about who they’d leave their money to and decided that some should go to the church.’
‘I suppose.’ Dawn was dubious. ‘She didn’t discuss that with us. I rang her once a week to see how her ankle was doing and that. I told her I was going to
come over the next Saturday to see if she wanted some shopping done, but she said not to put myself out if it was going to be that much trouble, so I didn’t. Truth to tell, I hadn’t seen her for over a couple of weeks when she died. If it hadn’t been for her leaving the wireless on, and Her Next Door being a nosy whatsit, she might not have been found for days. Unless the social had been round, which I suppose they might, seeing as they was supposed to see she was stocked up with food.’
‘You mean the neighbour realized something was wrong because the wireless was on all night?’
‘Yep. She come round, banging on the door and no one answered, so she rang the police. Can you believe she did that without telling us? Though to be fair, she didn’t have our phone numbers. The police were going to break in, which would have played merry hell with that old front door and we’d have had the devil of a job to get it repaired, but anyway, along came the social, as should have come the previous day but hadn’t, and she had a key and let them in.
‘Our stepmother was …’ Dawn gestured to the back door. ‘Huddled up over there. They called the ambulance, but …’ A shrug. ‘The blood was everywhere, all under her and, well, you know. There was some lino there – my niece got her boyfriend to take it out back and burn it, which he did, and what a stink that was, giving Her Next Door something else to shout about.’
‘Who was her doctor? There was a post-mortem?’
‘She went to the surgery just off the Lane, never saw the same doctor twice. Every time they gave her pills. More pills. Pills for this and for that, and when I opened the cabinet they all tumbled out, gave me such a fright. I don’t think she took half of those she was supposed to, but it all ended in tears anyway, didn’t it?’
‘Yes, it did. I’m so sorry. What a shock for you.’
‘In a way it was expected but yes, it was a shock. And another shock when the police started with their questions, and if we hadn’t had alibis I don’t know what might have happened. But she was all by herself, cutting up food for the kitties. One of them tripped her up and she fell, cutting an artery. It would all have been over in five minutes, they said. My brother and I were the residuary legatees but it turns out there wasn’t much money in the bank, and what there was went in bequests to old friends and the solicitors who are executors and bank charges and funeral expenses and that. We’ll get some money when the house is sold and not before.’
Murder for Good Page 7
