The Detective's Daughter (17 page)

She had put the granules out on her desk in the office to bring with her on her next visit. Jackie had accused Stella of liking to please Mrs Ramsay and she denied it, saying she was merely doing her job.

Mrs Ramsay’s one pleasure was the arrival each Friday of a bouquet of lilies. Stella felt vaguely guilty that she did not buy her own mum flowers; her mother griped that Terry had never given her flowers.

At the 10 a.m. knock, Mrs Ramsay hastened to the door, patting her hair, smoothing her stomach, and would affect surprise and coquettish delight at the sight of the courier, a leather-clad man. He never lingered over her exclamations and kept on his helmet. When he had gone, Mrs Ramsay, her face a hectic flush, spent the next hour arranging the white flowers which for Stella spelled funerals. She would shuffle through to the dining-room table, the vase precarious in her bony hands, stamens staining her blouse, murmuring: ‘Such a sweet thing, so kind, he always was a poppet. My guests adore flowers – men especially, despite what they say.’

Ignoring Stella’s offer of help she would lower the vase, top-heavy with blooms, into the grate. This was the stage in the procedure when she got another cloud of pollen on her clothes and became distracted, her mood dampened. Stella would spend rest of the morning trying to cheer her up because she did not like to leave Mrs Ramsay feeling low.

The detective was still on the phone. Stella went over to one of the windows, and inspected the fingerprint dust on the pelmets. One morning, while cleaning these, she had overheard Mrs Ramsay on the kitchen phone complaining about the lilies. This had struck her as an unreasonable response to a present, even for Mrs Ramsay who, although exacting, had scrupulous manners. Stella had dropped the cloth when she got it.

Mrs Ramsay had sent the bouquet to herself.

On her final visit, Mrs Ramsay had told Stella that until her forties she had preferred white roses.

‘I grow them in my private garden. No one knows about them. Ah, how those intoxicating blousy blooms become one’s friends!’

‘What made you prefer lilies?’

‘Nothing lasts forever.’ Mrs Ramsay had looked at Stella as if she were a stranger with no business asking her anything and, fluttering her hands, pointed out a smudge of grease under the cooker hood.

‘A load of china was broken and a clock, look at that casing, it’s got to be worth a few bob. I’m thinking she must have tried to defend herself.’ Cashman had finished his call and was bending by the fireplace where Stella saw broken pieces of both Mrs Ramsay’s vases in the grate amongst glass and the smashed carriage clock that used to be on the mantelpiece.

‘Did you leave those flowers on the table?’ Stupid question: the police would have moved nothing.

‘We don’t touch anything. The intruder must have dumped them there.’

Stella smoothed a wrinkle in the cloth without him seeing. The lilies smelled stronger as a through draught picked up the scent. She turned to see who had come in, but there was no one.

‘I think she did this herself.’ Stella saw it all. Mrs Ramsay would have had one of her tempers. She had not grown old gracefully; her increasing frailty frustrated her.

‘Wouldn’t she have it cleared up?’

‘She’d fallen a couple of times so wouldn’t have risked it. She knew I would do it.’

‘Bit of a duchess, was she!’ He sniffed.

‘It’s what she pays me for.’ She did not say that Mrs Ramsay would have left the mess for Lizzie, the live-in help, nor that Mrs Jackson – the next-door neighbour with the stolen cat – had told her that Lizzie dated from her mother-in-law’s era and had been dead for thirty years. It was Lizzie’s name at the top of the lists that Mrs Ramsay left for Stella.

‘The noise may have alerted her. Perhaps the intruder intended it as a weapon,’ Cashman suggested.

‘I’d go for that poker,’ Stella returned. ‘Where did he break in?’

‘Ah, well, that’s where it’s good you’re here. There’s no sign of forced entry. Mrs Ramsay either knew her visitor and was happy to open the door, or – more likely, given it was night – they let themselves in with a key.’

Stella saw where this was going.

‘I don’t employ murderers, Detective Inspector.’

‘Course you don’t, but we know things can get out of hand. Might she have upset one of your people? Who worked here before you took over?’ His face reddened as he ploughed on. ‘Did they have a grudge, or got greedy? There are valuable artefacts here.’

Stupid, then, to destroy them.

‘I got to know how Mrs Ramsay liked things done, sometimes it’s easier than training up staff.’ Stella resorted to sales patter. ‘We tailor our processes according to the customer. I pay my staff properly; they don’t look for ways to make up a shortfall. If I remember rightly the girl washed the floor in the wrong order of tasks then walked on it before it was dry. Easily done, some clients don’t mind, some do. It was ages ago.’

‘We’ll have to talk to her.’

‘By all means, bear in mind it’ll be an overseas call. She returned to Elblag three months ago.’

‘Is that a prison?’ He shot her a quick grin.

‘Small town in Poland, population about sixty thousand.’

‘Terry said you were good.’ Cashman whistled. ‘Look, Stella, you know from your dad we have to be thorough. Could I get you to print off the names of everyone who cleaned here, just to eliminate prints and establish motives?’

‘Doubt you’ll find many prints besides mine. I too am thorough.’ Stella knew it gained nothing to antagonize Martin Cashman; she should be co-operative. She used to tell herself to comply with Terry; if she chatted properly she could leave his house and wouldn’t have to see him until Christmas. Terry would be thinking the same thing.

‘Where did you find her?’ Stella became the policeman’s daughter. Cashman, like Terry, would work from a mix of preconceptions and prejudices.

‘On the bedroom floor, staring at the ceiling like she’d been scared out of her wits. Her phone was off the hook, indicating she went to use it and he got to her first.’

He was resting his foot on the low tubular radiator beneath the sill. Stella stopped herself demanding he remove it; she had cleaned the cast-iron columns last week.

‘See this?’

A hand print deteriorated to a smear as it travelled down the glass. Through the pane she saw the policewoman talking to someone but couldn’t see who it was.

‘She was trying to bang on the glass to attract attention, and her assailant dragged her off.’

Stella had seen such a mark many times.

‘It’s a test. For me.’

‘A what?’

‘If this was here at the end of a session, Mrs Ramsay complained.’ Stella flushed. There had not been a trap like this for weeks and she had presumed that Mrs Ramsay had concluded that with Stella she had met her match. She had begun bringing in glasses of fruit juice halfway through the shift and boiling a kettle for coffee before Stella had finished. Instead of the instant coffee reserved for ‘tradesmen’, Stella was given ground, strong without sugar, just how she liked it.

She should never have rested on her laurels. Page seven of the Clean Slate handbook warned:
Do not at any point imagine the client is your friend; it will compromise your work.

Mrs Ramsay had never trusted her.

‘I thought we had it tough.’ Cashman sucked his pen and, at home in this house that was not his, flung wide the connecting doors to the kitchen.

Fixed to the wall beside the broom cupboard was a Bakelite telephone, its fabric cord draped across a 1968 calendar that Mrs Ramsay kept because it celebrated her best decade. It was always open on June, with a picture of a red telephone box in swinging London’s King’s Road. Stella could imagine the young Isabel Ramsay, toting a cigarette as she barked orders down the phone to the florist, the grocer, the Harrods’ van driver, amidst plumes of blue smoke. Even in her seventies, Mrs Ramsay reminded Stella of the pre-assassination Jackie Kennedy. Jackie ‘O’ featured on the calendar’s August page in a black and white chequered jacket and sunglasses.

Mrs Ramsay said this had been a happy family home; soon it would be dismantled and the mementoes of a lifetime scuttled into rubbish bags and supermarket boxes.

‘We’ve contacted the eldest daughter. She was hazy about when she last saw her mother,’ Cashman said.

Stella did not remember when she had last seen Terry.

‘I spoke to her yesterday.’ She regretted the words as soon she had uttered them. He did not need to know Gina Cross had asked her to clear the house.

‘Why was that?’

‘She told me about Mrs Ramsay’s death.’ This was not true; Stella kept her voice level. She had to hope that the officer on scene guard on Tuesday had not said Stella had been unaware of Mrs Ramsay’s death until she came to the house.

Cashman appeared to change tack.

‘Did Mrs Ramsay mention they were mixed up in the Alice Howland case back in the day?’ Mistaking Stella’s blank expression for ignorance rather than determination to make no more careless slips, he was encouraged to continue: ‘A girl went missing. One of those investigations that chews away at you, though most of the guys must be pushing up the proverbials.’ He trailed off.

‘I keep a distance from my clients’ personal lives.’ Stella spoke into the silence and asked: ‘What makes you think Mrs Ramsay was killed?’ The evidence for murder was circumstantial and flimsy.

‘She had bruises on her leg, her shoulder and her right arm.’

He lounged against the sink that Stella had given a proper going over with ceramic cleaner. It was holding up well.

‘As I said, she had falls. She told me to keep them secret. I moved things to reduce hazards, but she put them back. She was hard to help. I tried to get her to see the doctor for her dizzy spells.’

‘Did she go?’

‘She never went out, don’t think she had house calls.’

‘One of the neighbours said she nicked their cat. A Mrs Jackson, know her?’

‘Yes and I wouldn’t go that far. Mrs Ramsay liked animals and made friends with them, that was all.’ As soon as she said this, Stella was convinced it was untrue; Mrs Ramsay did not like animals.

She had imprisoned Mrs Jackson’s cat in Eleanor’s old room, not, Stella was sure, because she cared about it, but to punish the creature. A punishment really intended for the youngest daughter who had left her room in a mess.

‘She was claustrophobic?’

‘Agoraphobic. Possibly.’

‘The autopsy will give us more on the bruising.’ He shut the book and crammed it in his jacket pocket.

Stella wanted the police gone from the house so tossed him a red herring: ‘She got headaches. Sometimes she spent all day in bed.’

Cashman wasn’t listening. Interview over.

‘Terry would’ve wrapped this up in a jiffy.’ He gave a tight smile. Stella bridled at the mention of Terry. She doubted he would have had a clue. Unlike any phone messages she left for him, he would have returned Martin Cashman’s call and played at detective; in fact he had called him last week.

‘You don’t think this is murder?’

‘Not for me to say.’ Stella shrugged. ‘I can’t see who would have wanted to murder her and I can’t see anything missing, only broken.’

Through the kitchen window she noticed the door to the summerhouse hanging open. The catch needed mending. It was an item on her list of surprises for Mrs Ramsay.

‘You’d have a better idea than the daughter about what’s different. Do you mind if we pop upstairs and you cast your eye?’

Other than rumpled blankets – Mrs Ramsay had never taken to a duvet – Stella reported the bedroom unchanged. A twisted sheet trailing over the bedspread was proof only that Mrs Ramsay slept badly, tossing and turning, getting up and roaming the house or going to the toilet. The water glasses were in their places beside the bed; one with a lipstick stain on its rim was half empty. The SOCO team had not reached the top floor so Cashman should not have brought her here.

He trusted her.

Stella took care where she put her feet, and folded her arms to stop herself touching anything. This was for show; her fingerprints would be everywhere.

Here, where she spent many hours reading or lying in the dark with a migraine, Mrs Ramsay’s absence was more noticeable. Stella avoided magazines on the floor by Mrs Ramsay’s side of the bed and read the title of a book on the bedside cabinet.
Emma.
Mrs Ramsay shunned books with deaths in them and as a safeguard flicked to see who was still alive in the last chapter. She had said Jane Austen suited her perfectly.

Stella pictured Mrs Ramsay propped up against plump duck-down pillows, penning another list to Lizzie.

She walked around to Mark Ramsay’s side. His staged presence, including the empty water glass, had given her the creeps but she did not share this with the waiting detective. The glass was full and a paperback edition of
Our Mutual Friend
by Charles Dickens, with two dog-eared copies of
The Lancet
from June and May 1999, lay beside it. The books changed each time she came.

‘Did she have a partner?’ The detective was straining to keep irony out of the enquiry; his equal opportunity training a straw loosely clutched. Terry never had that trouble, to him all people were equal and no one mattered more than someone else, including his family.

‘She never got over her husband’s passing.’ There was something on the floor by the bed. Casually dropping her car keys Stella went as if to retrieve them.

It was squashed filter of a roll-up cigarette. Stella scooped it up with her keys.

‘Terry mentioned the old lady when he phoned, weird.’

Stella’s stomach flipped. Irrationally she fumed that Terry discussed her clients with anyone and she crossed the room to where two sash windows looked out on to the Square and tried to control her temper.

Two children straggled along a path in the park: the little boy wobbled on a bicycle pushed by an older girl. The bike jack-knifed and he tumbled on to the verge. Stella could hear his cries. The girl propped the bike against a bench and hauled the boy to his feet and the wailing subsided as she straightened him out.