Death in Holy Orders (43 page)

“That seems highly unlikely unless they met outside Ashcombe House. However, I can check the dates for you. All our records are now, of course, on computer, but we haven’t gone back as far as twelve years. We only keep the staff records in case prospective employers ask us for a reference. Both these files are in the main house. There may be information on Miss Arbuthnot’s medical record that I regard as confidential. You’ll understand I can’t pass that on.”

Kate said, “It would be helpful if we could see both files, Mrs. Munroe’s record of employment and Miss Arbuthnot’s medical record.”

“I don’t think I could allow that. Of course, this situation is unusual. I’ve never been faced with this kind of request before. You have hardly been forthcoming about your interest either in Mrs. Munroe or in Miss Arbuthnot. I think I should have a word with Mrs. Barton—she’s our chairman—before we go any further.”

Before Kate had decided how to respond, Robbins said, “If all this sounds vague it’s because we don’t ourselves know what we’re looking for. We only know that something important happened in Mrs. Munroe’s life twelve years ago. She seems to have been a lady with few interests outside her job, and it’s possible that it was something to do with Ashcombe House. Couldn’t you have a look at the two files to check we’ve got the dates right? If there’s nothing on Mrs. Munroe’s file that seems to you significant, then I’m afraid we’ve been wasting your time. If there is something, then you could consult Mrs. Barton before deciding whether it would be right to reveal it.”

Miss Whetstone looked at him steadily for a moment. “That seems sensible. I’ll see if I can lay hands on the records. It may take a little time.”

At that moment the door was opened and a nurse put her head round. “The ambulance has just arrived, Miss Whetstone, with Mrs. Wilson. Her daughters are with her.”

Miss Whetstone’s face immediately brightened into happy
expectancy. She might have been welcoming a fellow-guest into a prestigious hotel.

“Good. Good. I’ll come. I’ll come now. We’re putting her in with Helen, aren’t we? I think she’ll be more comfortable with someone her own age.” She turned to Kate. “I’ll be busy for a little time. Do you want to come back or wait?”

Kate felt that their physical presence in her office offered the best hope of getting the information quickly. She said, “We’ll wait if we may, please,” but after hearing the first two words Miss Whetstone was out of the door.

Kate said, “Thank you, Sergeant. That was helpful.”

She strode over to the window and stood quietly watching the comings and goings in the corridor. Glancing at Robbins, she saw that his face was white and set in a mask of endurance. She thought she could detect a bead of moisture at the corner of his eye and quickly looked away. She thought, I’m not as good or as kind as I used to be two years ago. What’s happening to me? AD was right when I spoke to him. If I can’t give this job what it needs, and that includes humanity, maybe I’d be better leaving. Thinking of Dalgliesh, she wished with a sudden intensity that he were there. She smiled, remembering how in such a situation he could never resist the lure of words. It sometimes seemed to her that his reading was an obsession. He would be too scrupulous to study the papers left on the desk unless they were relevant to the inquiry, but he would certainly be moving over to study the numerous notices on the large corkboard which obscured part of the window.

Neither she nor Robbins spoke, and they remained standing as they had been when Miss Whetstone got up from her chair. They were not kept waiting long. It was just under a quarter of an hour when she returned with two folders and again seated herself at her desk and laid them before her.

“Do sit down, please,” she said.

Kate felt like a candidate at an interview awaiting the humiliating exposure of an unimpressive record.

Miss Whetstone had obviously studied the files before returning. She said, “I’m afraid there’s nothing here to help you. Margaret Munroe came to us on 1 June 1988 and left on 30 April 1994. She was suffering from a deteriorating condition of
the heart and was strongly recommended by her doctor to seek less demanding work. She went, as you know, to St. Anselm’s mainly to look after the linen and to undertake such minor nursing tasks as might be expected in a small college consisting mostly of healthy young men. There’s little on her record except the usual applications for annual leave, medical certificates and an annual confidential report. I arrived six months after she left, so have no personal knowledge of her, but she seems to have been a conscientious and sympathetic if unimaginative nurse. The lack of imagination may have been a virtue; the lack of sentimentality certainly was. No one here is ever helped by over-emotionalism.”

Kate said, “And Miss Arbuthnot?”

“Clara Arbuthnot died a month before Margaret Munroe came to us. She can’t, therefore, have been nursed by Mrs. Munroe, and if they did meet, it wasn’t here as patient and nurse.”

Kate asked, “Did Miss Arbuthnot die alone?”

“No patient dies alone here, Inspector. Certainly she had no relations, but a priest, a Reverend Hubert Johnson, saw her at her request before she died.”

Kate said, “Would it be possible to speak to him, Miss Whetstone?”

Miss Whetstone said drily, “That, I’m afraid, is beyond the capacity even of the Metropolitan Police. He was a patient here at the time, receiving a temporary period of care, and died here two years later.”

“So there’s no one now who has any personal memory of Mrs. Munroe’s life twelve years ago?”

“Shirley Legge is our longest-serving staff member. We don’t have a high turnover, but the work does make very special demands, and we take the view that it’s probably wise for nurses to have a change from terminal cases from time to time. I think she’s the only nurse who was here twelve years ago, although I would have to check. Frankly, Inspector, I haven’t the time. You could certainly have a word with Mrs. Legge. I think she’s on duty.”

Kate said, “I’m afraid we’re being something of a nuisance, but it would be helpful to see her. Thank you.”

Again Miss Whetstone disappeared, leaving the two records on her desk. Kate’s first impulse was to take a look at them, but something stopped her. Partly it was her belief that Miss Whetstone had been honest with them and that there was nothing more to be learned, and partly a realization that their every movement was visible through the glass partition. Why antagonize Miss Whetstone now? It wouldn’t help the inquiry.

The Matron returned five minutes later with a sharp-featured middle-aged woman whom she introduced as Mrs. Shirley Legge. Mrs. Legge wasted no time.

“Matron says you’re asking about Margaret Munroe. Afraid I can’t help you. I did know her but not all that well. She didn’t go in for close friendships. I remember she was a widow and had this son who’d won a scholarship to some public school or other, I can’t remember which. He was keen on going into the Army and I think they were paying for him at university before he took a commission. Something like that anyway. I’m sorry to hear she’s dead. I think there were only the two of them, so it’ll be tough on the son.”

Kate said, “The son died before her. Killed in Northern Ireland.”

“That would have been hard for her. I don’t suppose she cared much about dying herself after that happened. The boy was her life. Sorry I can’t be more helpful. If anything important did happen to her while she was here, she didn’t tell me. You could try Mildred Fawcett.” She turned to Miss Whetstone. “You remember Mildred, Miss Whetstone? She retired shortly after you arrived. She knew Margaret Munroe. I think they trained together at the old Westminster Hospital. Might be worth having a word.”

Kate said, “Miss Whetstone, are you likely to have her address on record?”

It was Shirley Legge who answered. “No need to bother. I can tell you that. We still exchange Christmas cards. And she’s got the kind of address that sticks in the memory. It’s a cottage just outside Medgrave, off the A146, Clippety-Clop Cottage. I think there used to be farm horses stabled nearby.”

So here at last they had struck lucky. Mildred Fawcett might well have retired to a cottage in Cornwall or to the Northeast.
Instead Clippety-Clop Cottage was directly on their road to St. Anselm’s. Kate thanked Miss Whetstone and Shirley Legge for their help and asked if they could have a look at the local telephone directory. Here again they were lucky. Miss Fawcett’s number was listed.

A wooden box on the counter of the reception desk was labelled “Flowers Fund,” and Kate folded and slipped in a five-pound note. She doubted whether this was legitimate expenditure of police funds, and she wasn’t sure whether the gesture had been one of generosity or a small superstitious offering to fate.

B
ack in the car, their seat belts fastened, Kate rang Clippety-Clop Cottage but got no reply. She said, “I’d better report on progress—or the lack of it.”

The conversation was brief. Putting down the telephone, she said, “We see Mildred Fawcett as planned, if we can reach her. Then he wants us back as quickly as possible. The pathologist has just left.”

“Did AD say how it happened? Was it an accident?”

“Too early to tell, but that’s what it looks like. And if it wasn’t, how the hell can we prove it?”

Robbins said, “The fourth death.”

“All right, Sergeant, I can count.”

She drove carefully out of the drive but once on the road increased her speed. Miss Betterton’s death was unsettling in more ways than its initial impact of shock. Kate wasn’t unusual in needing to feel that the police, once on the job, were in command. An investigation might go well or ill, but it was they who questioned, probed, dissected, assessed, decided on strategy and held the cords of control. But there was something about the Crampton murder, an anxiety subtle and unvoiced, which had lain at the back of her mind almost from the beginning but which until now she hadn’t faced. It was the realization that the power might lie elsewhere, that despite Dalgliesh’s intelligence and experience there was another mind at work equally intelligent and with a different experience. She feared that the control, which once lost could never be regained, might already have slipped from their hands. She was impatient to be back at St. Anselm’s as soon as possible. In the mean time it
was pointless to speculate; so far their journey had produced nothing that was new.

She said, “Sorry I was so short. There’s no point in discussing it until we have more facts. For now we concentrate on finishing the job in hand.”

Robbins said, “If we’re on a wild-goose chase, at least they’re flying in the right direction.”

Once they approached Medgrave, Kate slowed down almost to a crawl: more time would be lost by missing the cottage than by driving slowly. She said, “You look to the left, I’ll take the right. We could always ask, but I’d rather not. I don’t want to advertise our visit.”

It wasn’t necessary to ask. As they approached the village she saw a neat brick-and-tile cottage standing some forty feet back from the green verge on a slight rise of the road. A white board on the gate bore the name in carefully painted bold black letters:
CLIPPETY-CLOP COTTAGE
. It had a central porch with the date 1893 carved in stone above it and two identical bow windows on the ground floor with a line of three above. The paintwork was a shiny white, the windowpanes glittered and the flagstones leading to the front door were free of weeds. The immediate impression was of order and comfort. There was room to park on the verge, and they moved up the path to an iron knocker in the shape of a horseshoe. There was no reply.

Kate said, “Probably out, but it’s worth going round the back.”

The early drizzle had ceased, and although the air was still sharp the day had lightened and there were threads of barely discernible blue in the eastern sky. A stone path to the left of the house led to an unlocked gate and into the garden. Kate, born and bred in the inner city, knew little of gardening, but she could see at once that an enthusiast had been at work. The spacing of the trees and shrubs, the careful design of the beds and the neat vegetable patch at the end showed that Miss Fawcett was an expert. The slight rise of the ground meant too that she had a view. The autumn landscape stretched untrammelled in all its varied greens, golds and browns under the wide East Anglian sky.

A woman, hoe in hand, bending over one of the beds, rose as
they approached and came towards them. She was tall and Gypsy-like, with a brown face, deeply wrinkled, and black hair hardly touched with grey combed tightly back and fastened at the nape of her neck. She was wearing a long woollen skirt with an apron of sacking over it with a wide central pocket, heavy shoes and gardening gloves. She seemed neither surprised nor disconcerted to see them.

Kate introduced herself and Sergeant Robbins, showed her identification and repeated the essentials of what she had previously said to Miss Whetstone. She added, “They weren’t able to help at the hospice, but Mrs. Shirley Legge said that you were there twelve years ago and knew Mrs. Munroe. We found your number and did try to telephone, but there was no reply.”

“I expect I was at the bottom of the garden. Friends tell me I should have a mobile, but that’s the last thing I want. They’re an abomination. I’ve given up travelling by train until they introduce mobile-free compartments.”

Unlike Miss Whetstone, she asked no questions. One might imagine, thought Kate, that visits from two officers of the Metropolitan Police were a regular occurrence. She gazed at Kate steadily, then said, “You’d better come in and I’ll see if I can help.”

They were led through a brick-floored pantry with a deep stone sink under the window and fitted bookshelves and cupboards along the opposite wall. There was a smell of moist earth and apples, with a trace of paraffin. The room was obviously used partly as a tool-shed and storeroom. Kate’s eyes took in a box of apples on the shelf, onions threaded on a string, swathes of twine, buckets, a curled garden hose on a hook and a rack of garden tools, all clean. Miss Fawcett took off her apron and shoes and preceded them bare-footed into the sitting-room.