A Colourful Death: A Cornish Mystery (37 page)

“I suppose it’s proper for me to tell you, since there seems to be some suspicion about his death. Fenwick left everything to her, apart from a few minor bequests. The terrible thing, and I dread having to break it to her, is that the will very definitely specifies ‘to my wife, Stella Fenwick.’ As Stella Weller, she inherits nothing.”

Nick straightened with a look of enlightenment. “Ah, now I understand. The question is, did she realise that? If he told her he had made and signed a new will in her favour, she quite likely assumed it went into effect immediately. All the same, she didn’t want him to die too soon, leaving her a rich widow only a few days after the murder of her lover. It was supposed to happen after the honeymoon, wasn’t it, Inspector?”

“That’s my guess, Mr Gresham.”

“And you know what went wrong, you say?”

“I’m fairly certain it was entirely her own fault, her lack of thorough forethought. I need more information about the medical side of things. Polmenna, fetch the nurse. Miss Jamieson, did you say, Mrs Trewynn?”

“Yes, Inspector. I do hope you won’t have to bother my old ladies. They’re already upset.”

“
Your
old ladies? I thought they were Mrs Stearns’s.”

Before Eleanor started an explanation that at best Scumble wouldn’t really want to hear, and that at worst would make him accuse her of interference, Nick interrupted.

“If I’m not putting two and two together to make five, I think you’d better talk to the maid, Maybelle, too. I was chatting to her—”

“Flirting,” Eleanor muttered to herself.

Nick heard and winked at her. “A bright girl, but she obviously had something on her mind. I coaxed it out of her. Definitely a story you need to hear, though I doubt if it provides quite the proof you’re looking for.”

“Well, what is it?”

“You should hear it direct from her, Inspector.”

“All right, Polmenna can get her after the nurse.”

“It would be better if I went. She’s a black immigrant and a bit skittish where the police are concerned. They don’t have the best of reputations in that community.”

“You don’t need to tell me. You can fetch her, but if I find you’ve been coaching her to get your own back at Weller—”

“
Miss
Weller,” Meadowes objected. He still looked thoroughly bewildered.

“I might be tempted,” Nick said at the same time, grinning, “but that it would get Maybelle into trouble, too. If you’re so suspicious of my motives, I wonder that you let me sit in on all this.”

“For one thing, you do provide an occasional snippet of useful information,” Scumble retorted. “We might not have got round to the maid for some time. More to the point, I want as many witnesses to
Miss
Weller’s behaviour as I can get. If I can’t find proof positive, you and Mrs Trewynn may be essential to the case.”

Eleanor sighed. She didn’t really want to be an essential witness, no matter what Stella had done. And though it was now perfectly obvious that she had stabbed Geoffrey, what hand she had had in Dr Fenwick’s death was still not entirely clear.

DC Polmenna ushered in Miss Jamieson. The poor woman was obviously both upset and nervous. Eleanor jumped up and went to meet her.

“It’s all right, Miss Jamieson. The inspector just wants to ask you a few questions.”

“I don’t know anything!”

“Yes you do, dear. You’re a Registered Nurse, which means you have specialised knowledge that the rest of us lack, and you’re also trained to be observant.”

“Oh, well, if that’s all…” She stood in front of the desk with her hands folded in front of her, as apprehensive as if she faced an unpredictable consultant doing his hospital rounds.

“Do sit down, Miss Jamieson.”

“I’d rather stand, sir, if you don’t mind.”

Scumble rolled his eyes. Megan would undoubtedly be better at handling her, Eleanor thought. It was a pity she wasn’t here—but she’d be better at handling Stella, too. “No hurry,” Scumble had told her, so she was probably keeping Stella out of the way till summoned. Eleanor hoped she wasn’t having too difficult a time of it. Or perhaps she was deliberately encouraging hysteria, real or not, both to delay their return to the office and in hope of an inadvertent admission.

“Polmenna, take notes. Miss Jamieson, tell me about this emergency you had last night.”

“I wasn’t here, sir. I have the nine-to-five shift.”

“But you know about it.”

“Well, then, I do. Mrs Hendred, that’s on one to nine in the morning, told me what Gloria—Miss Flitch—who works five till one told her. I did notice Colonel Nesbit didn’t have much appetite for his lunch and he drank several cups of tea at tea-time. I mentioned it to Gloria—and she said she’d keep an eye on him.”

“What do these symptoms signify?”

“He’s diabetic, you see. It could be just a temporary quirk but both together could mean his insulin dose needed upping. By dinner-time he had other symptoms that made it obvious he was suffering from hyperglycemia—that’s high blood sugar. Gloria did a test but she didn’t like to give him more insulin on her own initiative, because he was already on a very high dose, so she rang Dr Fenwick. He came at once. He was a very good doctor. I can’t believe he’s dead.” Her already reddened eyes filled with tears.

“That’s enough for now,” Scumble said hurriedly. “We’ll have to talk to you again later, and to Miss Flitch, of course. Thank you.”

Nick was obviously dying to speak, like a schoolboy waving his hand for his teacher’s attention. He restrained himself until the nurse was well out of the room, then said, “One is sickened by too little insulin, the other dies of too much. As you said, Inspector, she just didn’t think it through. You really ought to talk to Maybelle now.”

“Go see if you can persuade her I don’t bite!”

“What, never?” Nick skedaddled before Scumble could respond.

“I don’t understand,” Meadowes said plaintively. “Surely, Inspector, you’re not accusing—”

“I’m not ready to make any accusations in front of a lawyer, sir.” As he spoke, he took out a notebook and started jotting down what Eleanor assumed were notes to himself, perhaps reminders of questions he wanted to ask. Without looking up, he continued, “I’m afraid you’ll have to wait a little longer, unless Mrs Trewynn would care to explain to you.”

“Mrs Trewynn?” the solicitor appealed.

“Oh dear, I think I’ve got it all worked out, but whether I can keep it straight is another matter. First, I’m sure you can’t be aware that Stella was leading a double life.”

Scumble raised his head and looked at her in surprise.

“Well, what would you call it?” she asked defensively.

“No, no, you’re quite right. I just hadn’t looked at it in quite that way before. Go on.”

Put off her stride by the knowledge that he was listening to her, Eleanor bravely went on. “Here, she was a respectable nurse, Miss Weller, and as such Dr Fenwick employed her. In Padstow she was a sculptress, known as Stella Maris, and she lived what I’m afraid I can only call a rather irregular life, even by today’s standards.”

“Good heavens!” Meadowes wiped his forehead.

“Or perhaps not. I’m not entirely certain what today’s standards are. If any. To put it bluntly, she lived with a fellow-artist, a painter, and it seems she was not faithful even to him.” Eleanor felt a need to wipe her own forehead. It was very difficult talking about such a subject to an old-fashioned gentleman who was so obviously deeply shocked.

The most he could summon up was a weak “tut-tut.”

“Dr Fenwick fell for Stella and proposed to her. I didn’t know him, so I can’t say whether she might have been in love with him.”

“A very personable chap,” Meadowes uttered, “but considerably older.”

“And richer,” Eleanor said dryly. “It seems probable, judging by her subsequent actions, that she told her lover and he threatened to tell the doctor of her liaison. Perhaps she didn’t realise how jealous he would be. At any rate, it would appear that she stabbed him to death, previously arranging matters so that suspicion would fall on someone else, someone against whom she had a grudge.”

“Dear me, dear me!”

“It seems possible, as Mr Scumble suggested, that she didn’t consider what would happen when the scapegoat was released. I tend to think she knew she would come under suspicion but she expected the process to take long enough for her to escape into her other life. She was the respectable Nurse Weller. She was to become the even more respectable Mrs Fenwick, whereupon she’d be off to Greece for a couple of weeks. By the time she returned, the hue and cry should have died down.”

“Most unlikely. Most improvident,” Meadowes asserted, as if a client had gone against his advice in the matter of some investment.

“She didn’t think ahead. Or no further than to decide she’d rather be a rich widow than a rich wife. Again she prepared a clever snare, this time one that would kill her husband in her absence and after the passage of a period of time such that his death would not, she hoped, be connected with that of her lover. But again, she didn’t think far enough ahead, didn’t work out all the consequences of her actions.”

“Spot on, Mrs Trewynn,” Scumble congratulated her. “At least, that’s pretty much how I see it. But you’re out of time.”

Nick ushered in Maybelle, who looked even more nervous and upset than had Miss Jamieson.

Scumble bared his teeth in what he probably thought was a friendly smile and made his best effort at geniality. “Come in, come in, Miss Maybelle. I’m hoping you can tidy up a few loose ends for me.”

She turned scared eyes to Nick. “Loose ends? I don’t know nuthin’ about loose ends. You said—”

“It’s just a fancy way of saying ‘things he doesn’t know,’” Nick reassured her.

Reluctantly, Maybelle sat down and gave her full name. Once she got started, however, her story was clearly and smoothly told. One of her duties was to disinfect the dispensary—she pointed at a door that Eleanor hadn’t noticed before, on the far side of the office, first thing every morning. On Monday, she had gone in and found Miss Weller there. Miss Weller, who seemed flustered, had explained that she had neglected a couple of tasks she should have seen to on Sunday evening. She told Maybelle to come back in a few minutes.

“But I seen what she was doing, sir. She thinks I’m stupid, but I learn what I can. I want to be a nurse someday. She was messin’ with hyperdermies, them needles you use for injections, takin’ stuff outa one bottle and squirting it into another one. I didn’t think nuthin’ of it then, but when I come in this morning and they tole me the colonel’d been took ill ’cause of not gettin’ enough insulin, I guessed that was what she been messin’ with. Only I didn’t say nuthin’ ’cause they might’ve said I shoulda tole right away.”

And then she had gone upstairs to tidy the doctor’s flat and found him dead in his bed. Small wonder she was scared to death.

“Thank you, Maybelle, you’ve been very helpful,” Scumble said triumphantly. “I hope, later on, you’ll be able to show us exactly what Miss Weller was doing, since you’re obviously an excellent observer. We’ll take a formal statement then, for you to sign, but for now that will be all.”

“You mean I can go?”

“You can.” The inspector bared his fearsome grin again. “And once more, thank you for your cooperation.”

“That weren’t so bad,” Maybelle said to Nick as she passed him on the way to the door.

“Didn’t I tell you he’s almost human at times?” said Nick.

This time Scumble’s teeth were bared in a snarl, but as Nick had successfully persuaded the girl to talk to him, he could hardly complain.

“Polmenna, fetch Miss Weller,” he growled.

“Am I to understand, Inspector,” ventured Meadowes, looking as if the world had crashed about his ears, “that Miss Weller deliberately switched Dr Fenwick’s insulin with that of this colonel?”

“She might have given the colonel plain water,” said Scumble, “being hurried because of Maybelle’s interrupting. That would hasten his collapse, if I’m not mistaken. She doesn’t seem to have considered the effect of her plan on the colonel. That, of course, was what brought Dr Fenwick here three weeks before … Hush, here she comes.”

Stella made a magnificent entrance, supported by Megan. She should have been wearing Victorian widow’s weeds, with a black veil, Eleanor thought. She sank weakly into a chair.

“The one thing that makes it endurable,” she announced in a throbbing voice, “is that Freddy went to meet his maker knowing he had provided for me. If he was conscious at the last, it must have been a great consolation to him.”

Scumble, Nick, and Eleanor looked at Meadowes.

“Er.” The solicitor tugged at his tie, suddenly too tight. “Er, I’m afraid not, Miss Weller.”

“What?” she screeched, turning on him. “What the hell are you talking about? He told me he signed his new will, leaving everything to me. Don’t tell me the old coot was lying!”

“No indeed, no indeed. He did sign the will and it does indeed name you as chief beneficiary, but you in—as it were—your future role as Mrs Fenwick. As Stella Weller, you have no claim whatsoever upon his estate.”

Now Stella rounded on Eleanor. “This is all your fault, you meddlesome old bitch. If you hadn’t given Nick an alibi—” She rushed forward, outstretched hands ready to claw.

Rising swiftly from her seat, Eleanor raised her arms between Stella’s. Stepping diagonally forwards and to her right, with her right arm she knocked Stella’s left arm down. Stella’s chin collided with Eleanor’s left forearm and she staggered backwards. Before Eleanor had to take any further measures to protect herself, Megan and Polmenna grabbed Stella by the arms and pulled her away.

Nick sprang to steady Eleanor—not that she needed it. Teazle stopped barking and tried frantically to climb up her. Eleanor picked her up and had her face thoroughly licked.

“Aunt Nell, are you all right?” Megan shouted over Stella’s vituperation.

“Quite all right, dear.” Rather shakily, Eleanor dusted herself down. She never expected to actually have to use her Aikido in peaceful old England. How lucky she kept in practice! And the whole thing had happened quickly enough, she hoped, that everyone would assume she’d escaped the attack by sheer luck. She had no desire to be known as a martial arts aficionado.