Murder for Good

by Veronica Heley

  Fifi latched on to Susan with enthusiasm. No need to coax her to do what came naturally. Ellie told herself that it was only her imagination at work, but it did seem that the house welcomed the new life.

  Ellie, Thomas and Rafael watched the baby feed for a long moment, and then Rafael abandoned his stick and his sling. ‘If you don’t object, Ellie, I’ll get a cab to the flat and bring some of the baby’s stuff back here; Moses basket, buggy, changing mat. Susan has it all piled up ready. Babies seem to need a ton of belongings.’

  Thomas hovered over Susan and Fifi like a rather large fairy godfather. ‘Put Fifi’s stuff in the Quiet Room down the corridor. That can be the downstairs nursery till we can sort out something more permanent. Bring your stuff and Susan’s over, too. Dump everything in the spare bedroom and we’ll sort it out later.’

  Susan smiled up at Thomas. ‘Bless you both.’

  Thomas eased his back, fore and aft, and said, ‘Ah, there’s no place like home.’

  Once Rafael had departed, Thomas put his arm around Ellie and drew her out into the hall.

  ‘My dear, did I overstep the mark? It’s all right with you that they move in, isn’t it? And how are you feeling, yourself?’

  ‘It’s very all right that they move in with us. I had a good night’s sleep and I’m fine. How about you?’

  ‘I’m fine and dandy.’ He patted his stomach. ‘Do you think I’ve lost some weight? The hospital gave me a list of what I should and shouldn’t eat for a while. It sounds rather depressing. If Hetty’s really gone, I’m sure my stomach will settle down soon. Your cooking’s so good—’

  ‘Oh, blame it all on me.’

  He held her close and she leaned on him, holding him close, too. He kissed her ear. ‘If anything had happened to you …’

  ‘Ditto,’ said Ellie. ‘Double ditto.’

  A thin wail rose from the sitting room and was quickly stilled as Susan changed the baby on to her other side.

  Both Thomas and Ellie smiled. Thomas said, ‘It’s good to have a baby around the place.’ He looked at his watch, remembering his workload. ‘Ellie, I seem to have lost a couple of days’ work. If it’s all right with you, I’ll just check on one or two things …’ And off he went down the corridor to the library.

  Ellie knew what was expected of her, which was to provide tea and coffee all round. She could do with a cup, herself. So she went along to the corridor to soothe her cleaners’ wounded feelings, look over what Diana had ordered in the food department and turn herself back into the Universal Provider.

  Oh yes, and she must ring Lesley to tell her about the pills which Hetty had inadvertently left behind.

  Sunday afternoon

  Ellie was smiling as she opened the door to let Lesley in. ‘Come in, come in. Such a lot has been happening. We’re all at sixes and sevens. Rafael and Susan have moved in to the big guest room at the end of the corridor upstairs, and Fifi – that’s their baby – is supposed to be in the little bedroom opposite but at the moment she and Susan are both asleep on their big bed while Rafael moves in their bits and pieces around them.

  ‘Thomas is back, too. He’s asleep on his La-Z-boy in the sitting room. Yes, he’s much better but you never sleep properly in hospital, do you? Oh, except for me, I had a really good night but that’s due to the sleeping pills Hetty gave me. Me? I’m sorting out some food for supper. Join me in a cuppa in the kitchen?’

  ‘Yes, but Ellie …!’

  ‘All will be revealed. Or almost all. Some of it is guesswork. Let me tell you what I know and what I suspect. You can take it from there.’

  ‘You want to prefer charges against your housekeeper?’

  ‘Oh, that. Yes. She did drug me and lock me up. She did steal my money, my cards and my phone, and told lies to everyone so they wouldn’t come looking for me. Only, of course they weren’t fooled and Rafael stopped the cards for me so there’s no great harm done. Yes, she did do Thomas a lot of no good by feeding him some pills which didn’t agree with him, but hopefully he will recover from that all right. The most serious thing, I suppose, is that she set a booby trap which cost Rafael a couple of stitches in his forehead and a black eye, not to mention a sprained shoulder and ankle. I suppose you could put that down as misadventure. She couldn’t have known he’d be really hurt. None of that is sufficient to charge her with murder.’

  ‘Murder? You’re joking! Who said anything about murder? What I’m interested in is the money that’s been left to Thomas.’

  ‘Ah, yes.’ Ellie led the way down the corridor to the kitchen. ‘Let’s have a cuppa. Diana ordered some biscuits, not my usual ones, but they should do. I’ve never been fond of coconut. Do you like coconut?’

  Lesley gave in. ‘All right, I’ll have a cuppa and listen to your story.’

  ‘Oh, my!’ Ellie gave a cry of joy. ‘Look! Diana’s ordered Jaffa cakes!’

  Ellie never bought Jaffa cakes because she and Thomas were always trying to lose weight and once you opened a packet of those succulent delicacies, they had to be eaten straight away, before they went hard and became unpalatable. Well, that was the theory, anyway.

  Ellie crammed one into her mouth and took another. Oh, bliss! Oh, rapture!

  Lesley tried to look disapproving, but then took two herself. ‘Begin at the beginning.’

  ‘Background coming up. This is what I’ve gathered so far. Hetty was born in north London to a couple who split up soon after. Her mother worked as a cleaner, changing jobs frequently because she said she was always being cheated of her money by her employers. They did eventually get a council flat but it was badly maintained and gave her mother asthma because of the mould on the bathroom wall. Hetty was bright enough to get some O-levels and might have gone on to college education if her mother hadn’t been accidentally run over by a bus and she herself had gone down with some sort of glandular problem, which meant she couldn’t work for a while. She had to go on the social, who mismanaged her case so that when a neighbour laid false accusations against her, Hetty lost the council flat and had to move into a series of rented rooms.’

  Lesley took a third Jaffa cake. ‘I sense a pattern emerging. Whatever bad luck she had, it was always someone else’s fault?’

  ‘Indeed. Hetty tried very hard to better herself. She took all sorts of part-time jobs, as a cleaner, in a shop, looking after the elderly, and she applied once more for council housing.’

  ‘Council housing for single people is at a premium. What’s the waiting list? Ten years?’

  ‘Very likely. Still living in rented accommodation, this time in west London, she had an on-and-off relationship with a feckless man who drank her earnings and beat her up before disappearing to jail because, in addition to his other gifts, he was a career burglar. Refusing to be daunted, Hetty set about building up her savings once again, hoping that eventually she’d have enough to buy her own little flat in this neighbourhood.’

  ‘Fat chance,’ said Lesley, taking another Jaffa cake. ‘On a minimum wage.’

  ‘Yes. Thomas visits an old people’s home nearby. One day he walked in on a full-scale riot with half the residents accusing one of the cleaners of stealing from them, and the other half in full-throated uproar, declaring it was the woman who worked part-time in the office.’

  ‘Hetty was the cleaner?’

  ‘No, Hetty was the woman in the office. She was in tears, swearing that she might have made a mistake but she would never, ever … et cetera. The cleaner then came clean and confessed to having taken some, though not all, of the missing items. Long story short, both women got the sack. Thomas took them to a cafe, fed them tea and cake and generally put them back on track, so to speak. Hetty continued to swear she hadn’t stolen anything, ever, and I really don’t think she had. I’m sure Thomas would have spotted it if she’d lied. Thomas was sorry for her.’

  ‘Uh-oh!’

  ‘Yes, it didn’t take me long to work out that she was a passive-aggressive personality. You’d have thought Thomas wou
ld have got there before me, but he didn’t. She said she was at her wits’ end and going to be thrown out of her rented room if the old people’s home didn’t pay the wages due to her that week. He went back to the office and got them for her. She was ever so grateful. He kept in touch through her various ups and downs until one day she rang to say she’d had to leave her accommodation because the owner’s dog had bitten her, and that’s when he made his big mistake. Knowing that our upstairs flat was empty and being redecorated he asked me if I’d let her stay for a couple of weeks till she got back on her feet. I agreed. Hetty fell on his neck and thanked him.

  ‘She’s quite personable, you know, and a hard worker. She really does try. Within a week I knew it wasn’t going to work out for all sorts of reasons. For one thing, she couldn’t bear our cat, Midge, and he couldn’t stand her. You may say that’s a trivial reason, and if she’d kept to her own quarters it wouldn’t have mattered, but she wasn’t happy to do that. She wanted to be part of our family and started to edge her way into the kitchen down here. That’s her side of the story. What I’ve told you so far, I’ve heard from her own lips, or from Thomas. Now for the bit I can’t prove.’

  Ellie reached for another Jaffa cake, only to find the packet empty. How had that happened? She was sure she hadn’t had more than two or three. Maybe four.

  Lesley had the last one in her hand. ‘Are we coming to the money?’

  ‘We are. In the course of her various jobs in the community, Hetty had access to elderly people’s homes. I believe that when she cleaned for them, she did their shopping and she took them out for walks. If one of them died, she helped to clear out their belongings in the bathroom cabinets, on the bedside tables and in the kitchen cupboards. She found packets and bottles of all sorts of medicines prescribed by doctors for the ailments that afflict older people. She found strong painkillers, sleeping tablets, pills for angina, for high blood pressure and low, for diabetes, for cramp, for emphysema, for asthma, for different forms of cancer. You name it, it’s hanging around after the person concerned has died. Someone is supposed to take the leftover pills to the pharmacist to be destroyed.

  ‘I believe that Hetty put them in her bag to do just that but then the next old lady she visited was having trouble sleeping and told Hetty that the pills the doctor had been giving her didn’t do any good. So Hetty topped up that person’s sleeping tablets with ones that she had to hand. Now, Thomas was also visiting this old dear as part of his job. Hetty told the woman how good Thomas had been to her. Hetty was overflowing with gratitude to Thomas for taking her in. I think that, quite innocently, Hetty suggested to the old lady that she might leave a little something to Thomas in her will.’

  ‘And something for Hetty as well?’

  ‘It seems likely, doesn’t it? And why ever not? A couple of hundred to Thomas, and perhaps the same to Hetty? Lesley, I suggest you might find it worthwhile to get copies of all the wills by which Thomas has benefited, to see if Hetty is also mentioned in them. It would take me for ever to get those copies, but you could do it overnight.’

  Lesley pushed her mug forward for a refill. ‘You think Hetty was feathering her own nest at the same time that she was encouraging people to give Thomas a hefty tip?’

  ‘It makes sense.’ Ellie refilled both their mugs. ‘The old lady died, possibly without help from Hetty’s cache of pills, possibly with their assistance. Thomas and, I think, Hetty were among those who’d been left some money. Fine. Hetty had lost that particular job so started to look for another. She was probably registered with an agency who passed her on to this person and that, taking her cache of pills with her … possibly with some additions from the cupboards of the recently deceased.’

  Lesley made a note. ‘Wills. Agency. The agency you use?’

  ‘No. It wasn’t. I checked. They’d never heard of her. But there’s several domestic agencies hereabouts, and she could be registered with any one of them.’

  ‘Go on. You think that, having done it once, she went on to do it again and again, which is why Thomas has been inundated with cheques.’

  ‘It’s going to be difficult to prove but yes, that’s what I think. Only, back at the ranch here, the situation had changed. Thomas had begun to realize he’d made a mistake in taking her in, and to worry about the origin of the money which was being showered on him from all directions. He couldn’t understand it, and neither could I. At the same time, I made it clear to Hetty that we would like her to move on. So, far from being grateful to Thomas, she now began to wish him ill, to punish him for his change of heart. She put ground-up Ibuprofen in his jar of instant coffee. Most people find Ibuprofen helpful, but some end up with very nasty gastric problems. Thomas was made ill by them. The doctors say he should recover, but it will take time for his stomach to settle down.’

  ‘Then she turned on you, too?’

  ‘Well, I did break down the door to her flat. Admittedly, that was only after I discovered she’d put a lock on the door to her rooms without permission, and asked her repeatedly for the key. I think that as long as she had the flat here, she felt safe. When I asked her to go, it tipped her over into action. I don’t think violence is her usual way of reacting. Yes, she did feed me sleeping pills and lock me in upstairs. And yes, she made a mess here in the kitchen, and set up a booby trap in the library … though that was probably aimed at Thomas and not Rafael.

  ‘The booby trap did cause Rafael to have a nasty fall, but she didn’t attack either of us physically. It’s true that, after locking me into the spare room upstairs, she told everyone I’d booked myself into a nursing home for a while and not to contact me. That might have meant my starving to death, but that didn’t work, either. There’s nothing planned about the way she operates. I think she rationalizes everything to suit herself. If someone dies from her the pills she gives them, she tells herself that it’s their fault for taking the stuff. She really believes she can’t be held responsible. If people happen to die, then she inherits some cash. If they don’t, well, there’s always another day and another old person who needs help.’

  Lesley leaned back in her chair. ‘Do you really think she helped those who left money to Thomas to die?’

  ‘I don’t know. Some of them may have died of natural causes. Some have been dead and buried – or cremated – for six months at least.’ Ellie produced the two rather squashed packets of pills which she’d managed to retain from Hetty’s stash in the cushion. ‘I found these two in her quarters. One lot of pills are for blood pressure, the others are strong painkillers. Both packets have had some pills removed already. They are from two different pharmacies, but neither gives the name of the person who was supposed to take this medication. My fingerprints will be all over them but I suppose Hetty’s will be, too. She kept them for a purpose, didn’t she?’

  Lesley shook her head, slowly. ‘I see what you mean. You have no proof that she misused the medication. I agree that in theory we could exhume the bodies which were not cremated and test them for poison. No, not poison. If you’re right, we’d have to test them for an overdose of painkillers, sleeping tablets or of some perfectly ordinary medicine for asthma or high blood pressure. Even if we found levels too high for normal administration, we couldn’t prove that Hetty was responsible. We might charge her on imprisoning you, setting the booby trap and dosing Thomas with Ibuprofen … by the way, can you actually prove that she did that?’

  ‘I have the half-empty pack of pills we found where she’d been sitting, and we kept the jar of Thomas’s coffee and mine which we think she adulterated … except,’ said Ellie, looking at the empty windowsill, ‘the cleaners seem to have thrown them away when they were clearing everything up. Perhaps I could find it if I go through the rubbish bins …’ Ellie grimaced. ‘It’s not enough, is it?’

  Lesley said, ‘If you could find the jar of coffee, and if it contained traces of Ibuprofen, it might help, but you can’t prove that she was responsible. There’s no proof that she ever administered me
dication to anyone, let alone with malicious intent. The only thing you have is the fact that she imprisoned you upstairs.’

  ‘I can just see her front of the jury. She’d weep and say she didn’t know what she had come over her but it was all my fault for turning her out into the cold, and the booby trap – which has all been cleared away by the cleaners, by the way – was a bit of a joke that had gone wrong, and that her silly messages to everyone were also a joke, and no harm had come to me. No jury would convict her.’

  Lesley sighed. ‘You’re right. They wouldn’t.’

  Ellie said at last, ‘The problem is that unless she’s stopped, I think she’s going to go on doing it. What’s more, she’s taken the keys to this house with her. It would be a nuisance to have to change the locks here, but I suppose I will have to do it. I won’t have a minute’s peace till she’s been dealt with. So, Lesley, will you get hold of the wills and see if she’s named in all of them? I know that, even if she did benefit that way, it doesn’t prove that she had anything to do with the testators’ deaths, but if she realized we were on to her, it might make her think twice about doing it again.’

  Lesley made a note. ‘Yes, I’ll check the wills to see if she’s mentioned. If her name comes up more than twice, I’ll have a quiet word with her sometime. That should do the trick.’

  With that Ellie told herself she must be content.

  NINETEEN

  Monday morning

  Some Monday mornings are easier to cope with than others. Ellie began hers by making notes about what she needed to do that week. First, she must tell the trust about Monique’s money and, following from that, find out the exact position with regard to Evan and Diana’s house.

  Then, was it appropriate to mention Rafael and Susan’s weird suggestion of dividing the house into two? Rafael’s offer to serve on the trust must certainly go on the agenda.

  Ellie gazed out of the window. If so much more money was going to be at the trust’s disposal, did they need to take on extra staff to cope with the work involved? And in what direction should the trust go? Buy to let? Student accommodation? A hostel for single people?