Bad Blood (5 page)

Rafferty, after hearing about the organising, rather bossy-sounding Miss Frobisher, had expected her to be more physically imposing.

As he had already noted, Amelia Frobisher's apartment copied the overblown, fussy style of its owner. Most of the living room was taken up by three fat pink sofas, each of which had more frills than the Rafferty family's heirloom baptismal gown. The blinds were those flouncy things that reminded Rafferty of women's old fashioned tennis bloomers. As he looked at them, in his head, he could hear his ma's voice scorn them as dust-gatherers.

Amelia Frobisher shared one interior design preference with Rita Atkins. Photographs overflowed every surface. Invitations to weddings, christenings and birthday parties jostled for space on the mantelpiece. For all that she was an elderly spinster, it looked as though Amelia Frobisher enjoyed a rich and full life in the bosom of her family.

It was only as Rafferty got closer and studied them that he saw each of the invitations was penned by a remarkably similar hand. It occurred to him that Miss Frobisher had written them to herself in order to impress the other residents with the esteem in which she was held by her family.

From over his shoulder, Miss Frobisher's voice chilled the room by several degrees as she asked – nay, insisted, he take a seat. Her tone was frosty with annoyance as though – even though the invitations were displayed for the world to see – she felt his examination of such private things showed bad manners.

He felt her popping eyes bore in to his back and he looked hastily away from the array of cards in case she guessed his suspicion and he invited non-co-operation so early in the case.

But he needn't have worried; it seemed Amelia Frobisher was one of those people who lived on the surface of life and who only saw what they chose to see. Once he had done her bidding and taken a seat, she gave him a complacent smile that revealed dentures over-large for her gaunt face.

Settled opposite the better mannered Llewellyn, in an armchair upholstered in more fussy flounces, she nodded towards all the photographs and invitations and in a voice that managed to be gushing and condescending at the same time, she said, ‘Quite a crew, wouldn't you say, Inspector? I often used to feel sorry for poor, dear Clara, seeing so little of her family. So sad.’

This was the second resident of the sheltered block to express pity for Clara Mortimer. Again, Rafferty wondered how Mrs Mortimer had felt to be the recipient of such sentiments.

‘We're just trying to establish the late Mrs Mortimer's background,’ he said.

Amelia Frobisher sat up even straighter if that was possible, her head tilted at an angle as she waited for him to continue.

‘I understand from the warden that Mrs Mortimer had a daughter?’

Miss Frobisher nodded and smoothed her pepper and salt bun of hair even though it had no need of smoothing as it was held firmly in place by what Rafferty thought was called a snood.

‘Though you'd never know from Clara that she had a daughter; I only learned of this daughter's existence when she turned up here one day last week trailing some young man who strutted about as though he owned the place. Although he was much younger, I gained the distinct impression he was some kind of boyfriend. He had bleached hair and jeans that were so tight they verged on the obscene.’

With a few, tiny alterations to her features – a flare of a nostril here and a down turn to a lip there – Amelia Frobisher managed to convey her low opinion of Darryl No-name.

Rafferty was amused to note that her low opinion of Darryl hadn't stopped her taking what sounded like a more than passing glance at Darryl's tightly-be-jeaned nether regions. He thought he detected a frisson of regret, too, that a young man of such cocky confidence had never trailed after her.

Even 'Fancy' Freddie Talbot, he of the wandering eye, had proved less than accommodating in the trailing department, if what Rita Atkins had told them was true.

‘He caused a scene,’ she told them.

From her disapproving tone, Rafferty guessed that, to her, this was one of the great social solecisms.

Her features rearranged themselves into less judgemental lines though she was unable to conceal the gratification in her voice as she added, ‘I must say, I was astonished to discover that Clara's daughter should be such an unkempt creature. No wonder Clara never spoke of her.’ Her demure air retreated a little under her satisfaction at this. ‘I think Clara must have been ashamed of her.’

Unsurprising, Rafferty thought, if what the warden had told him about the daughter was true. ‘You found Mrs Mortimer‘s body, I understand?’

‘Yes, I'd just been down to rescue my mat and–‘ Amelia Frobisher's lips compressed as if she had just realised she had let slip something she would rather have kept to herself. Then the thin lips parted to add, in a throwaway air that more or less said – what else can you expect from the hired help? ‘But I imagine Rita Atkins has already told you all about that.’

Rafferty nodded. ‘Mrs Atkins did mention something of the sort. I understand that Mrs Mortimer complained to her about it.’

‘It was a big fuss over nothing,' she retorted. 'I don't know what Rita Atkins has been saying to you, Inspector, but knowing Rita, she'll have made it sound as if the apartments were engulfed in some kind of civil war. It was only a mat, for goodness’ sake, scarcely a worthy reason for bringing out the big battalions.’

‘So Mrs Mortimer's complaint caused no enmity between you?’

‘Enmity?’ she repeated sharply. ‘Certainly not. What a ridiculous idea.’ With a note of condescension cooling her voice, she remarked, ‘Poor Rita longs for a little colour in her drab drudge's life, Inspector. You noticed those appalling ‘celebrity’ magazines that she reads littering her home?’

Rafferty gave a brief nod of acknowledgement.

‘Not to put too fine a point on it, Rita Atkins has a tendency to dramatise daily life. And if it's not dramatic enough for her, she improves on it. She exists more in a make-believe world than in reality. I understand that in the eighteen months she's been warden here, she's worn out two video recorders and a – a DVD, would it be?’

Rafferty nodded. He could see no sign of a TV, video or DVD in Amelia Frobisher's living room, although a whole shop-full of electrical gadgets could, doubtless, have found concealment beneath the many frills and flounces. He could only suppose their non-existence went to support the myth that, with her busy social life amongst her loving family, she wouldn't have time for such frivolities – although the fact that she had leisure enough to make a time-consuming and ugly mat for the entrance rather gave the lie to this.

Rafferty was about to mention the fickle Freddie Talbot when, as if suspecting that Rita Atkins would have taken pleasure in revealing Talbot's betrayal, Amelia Frobisher brought the subject up herself. She succeeded in making light of it.

‘I used to have a gentleman acquaintance, a Mr Frederick Talbot. He was only a friend, nothing more. It was a friendship of habit rather than one of depth. I was rather relieved to have an excuse to cut him off when he made a fool of himself with Clara Mortimer. As I told him, I expect my friends to have a certain dignity, especially when they're old enough to have learned how to behave. He'd embarrassed me by his foolish importuning of Clara.’

Her embarrassment was unlikely to have been reduced when she learned this importuning had been witnessed by Rita Atkins. Rafferty had already concluded that social embarrassment would be top of Amelia Frobisher's list of intolerable behaviour in others.

The importunate and humiliated Freddie Talbot would have to be checked out; it wasn't only women spurned who reacted with violence and Freddie Talbot had been spurned twice over – once by Mrs Mortimer and then by the betrayed and aggrieved Amelia Frobisher. With difficulty, he persuaded Miss Frobisher to supply them with his address and phone number.

After he had soothed her ruffled flounces at this indignity, she calmed down sufficiently to return to what she had been talking about previously.

‘I might have known that the little differences Clara Mortimer and I had over the mat and Freddy Talbot would be seized on by Rita and blown out of proportion. They were both fusses over trifles' – thus was Freddie Talbot's defection dismissed. 'As for the mat – I made it – Clara took exception to it being in the public area of the apartments and complained to Rita Atkins.'

Miss Frobisher gave a weary sigh for the problems brought by the serving classes and added, 'Mrs Atkins and I have a particularly difficult relationship, Inspector. She's a woman of limited social skills and has an unfortunate tendency to loudness and vulgarity. She's also an inveterate gossip, as I'm sure you discovered for yourself.'

Miss Frobisher, no slouch in the gossip stakes herself, sat back, apparently well pleased with her character assassination.

‘Anyway, unsurprisingly, Rita Atkins chose to take Clara's side. She told me it was against the apartments’ covenant for residents to place personal items in shared areas and removed my mat. Put it out with the rubbish if you please. Her highhandedness annoyed me, I admit.' Amelia Frobisher's thin chest arched bantam like, then subsided. 'But it was Mrs Atkins I was annoyed with rather than Clara.

‘Besides,' something resembling a laugh escaped from Amelia Frobisher's mousetrap mouth, 'I knew from her attendance at the residents' committee meetings that Clara could be something of a stickler for rules and regulations, so I was half expecting her to speak to the warden about it. Rita Atkins makes a habit of removing my mat and I, as regularly, put it back.’

This time the laugh was more of a girlish giggle struggling and failing to be coy. Issuing, as it did from the throat of the repressive Miss Frobisher, it brought a shiver to Rafferty's spine. Instinctively, he shrank back and was tightly embraced by the fat sofa, which wasn't nearly as soft as it looked, while Miss Frobisher continued with her girlish confidences.

‘It's become quite a little game between us,' she went on 'and at least it gives Rita a reason to get up at a respectable hour. I was intending to rescue my mat again this morning, when I noticed Clara‘s apartment door wasn't shut properly – it's one of those awkward doors and doesn't close if not pulled firmly by the door handle. Clara had the knack for it, though not everyone did. Anyway, I suppose Mrs Atkins got her wish because by the time I thought about the mat, it was too late to rescue it. Today's the day the rubbish is collected,’ she explained.

Since he had tripped over it, it was clear that the late-sleeping warden had this morning failed to remove the offending mat.

He was turning into Mr Popularity today, Rafferty thought. Not only had he already improved Rita Atkins's day, he suspected, as he opened his mouth to tell Amelia Frobisher that her mat was safe and still in place, that he was about to do the same for her. He could only pray she resisted any further attempts at coy flirtation when he told her the good news.

She flushed up, pink as her three fat settees when he told her and gave Rafferty a beam of approval such as he rarely received. But, to forestall anything further in way of gratitude from Amelia Frobisher, he was quick to jump in.

‘If we could just get back to more important matters – what time was it that you found Mrs Mortimer‘s body?’

‘It was eight o'clock. I remember Clara's beautiful mantle clock chimed the hour as I knocked and called her name. It was such a shock to find her like that, all bloodied and with her clothes in disarray.’ Amelia Frobisher put a fluttering hand to her thin bosom. ‘I thought this was a safe block. I can't understand how the man who attacked her can have got in. I don't believe any of the residents would be so careless of our security as to buzz strangers in. We're quite a little family here, you see, and we look out for one another.’

What family was that? Rafferty wondered: the Borgias? Their ruthless way of dispatching any who would thwart the family ambitions seemed to him to have something of an echo in this 'family', given the violence with which Clara Mortimer had been dispatched.

In spite of his no doubt fanciful comparison, Rafferty had noticed a fleeting bleakness in Miss Frobisher's eyes when she spoke of being a ‘family’ and he wondered – in spite of the plentiful and strategically-placed ‘invitations’ – if her own family weren't quite as welcoming as the carefully gathered collection of party invitations implied. It would explain her determination to create a second family amongst her fellow residents even if this desire seemed to bring with it more resentment and ill feeling than was usual in half-a-dozen such ill-assorted 'families'.

As if determined to outface him and the possibility that he had discovered the shameful secret that her blood kin, rather than issuing invitations to assorted family knees-ups, actually kept her at arms' length, when she spoke again, Amelia Frobisher's voice had acquired a determined jollity.

‘As I said, we're quite a little family here. We have our birthday teas and our regular outings to the local theatre, though generally only to matinees, as some of my fellow residents don't care to be out after dark. Occasionally, we even take a trip to one of the West End theatres. We have a charabanc to pick us up and bring us back. It's all most wonderful fun.’

Llewellyn, who, until now, had sat unobtrusively taking notes, put a stop to the telling of these jolly japes with a pertinent question to which they already had the answer. ‘And did Mrs Mortimer join you on these outings?’