The Price of Butcher's Meat (44 page)

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One name that won’t figure high on Pete’s list.

Franny Roote.

Hard to believe he’s here for the good of his health.

Except of course if that’s exactly why the poor sod’s here!

Need to watch developments there carefully. I’ve invested too much
good drinking time bringing Pascoe on to see him brought down ’cos he
feels he owes a slippery bastard like Roote.

Any road, time to stop talking to myself.

Interrogation ain’t much different from fornication.

Keep ’em waiting till they want it as much as you!

Nurse Sheldon should be on the boil by now, so here I come, ready
or not!

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Pet! There you are, lass. All right if I come in?

Looks to me like you’re in already.

So I am. Must be your animal magnetism that does it. You’ve got
us poor sods skittering around like iron filings.

All right, Andy, or should I call you Superintendent? You can cut
the crap. Lester’s warned me you were on your way, and why.

Warned? Nay, that’s not a very friendly word, and me and him the
best of mates. Must have got it wrong, luv. Likely he mentioned in
passing I might be dropping in—and would you cooperate?—that

’ud be a quite natural thing for a boss to tell one of his staff, letting her
know it would be fine to take a few minutes off her professional duties
to cooperate with the police.

Nice try, Andy, but I’ll make up my own lies, thank you. Talking
of which, as I’d take odds you already know, Lester rang to ask
me to back up the lies he told you and, if necessary, add any of
my own to support them. That’s not a look of real surprise on
your face, is it, Andy?

Not just on my face, luv. A lot farther down than that. You’ve not
just taken the wind out of my sails, you’ve bent my rudder! So
you’ve decided to turn poor old Fester in, have you? Good thinking, Pet, on every count. You’re doing your duty as a good citizen,
and you’re keeping yourself out of the clag. So what’s the lying
bastard been up to?

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Nothing, except trying to watch out for me. Which is really nice
of him, and I must admit it gives me a warm glow to know he’s
willing to go out on a limb for me . . .

No more than you’ve done for him, Pet, and very nice limbs they are.

Sorry, that weren’t very gentlemanly, were it? I don’t mean to upset
you . . .

Andy, I’ve been nursing a long time now and I’ve had to deal with
patients who’ve used everything from filthy slander to assault with
loaded bedpans to try and upset me. Got me going a couple of times
too, but I soon learned that all you need to do is remember them
lying facedown with a thermometer up their backsides, and you
soon see things in perspective. So stop trying to be provocative and
just listen for a change.

I’m listening, I’m listening.

Right. I love Lester.

Oh aye? That why you jumped me in the shower?

Look, I’m sorry about that. I don’t know what came over me. I
was feeling a bit down, things didn’t seem to be going too well
with Lester. We should have seen each other the night before, but
he called it off—I think Lady Denham crashing his party had
upset him—and then when I saw her coming into the home the
next morning, I thought, Has she been here all night? So when I
looked in on you and realized you were in the shower . . . I’m
sorry . . .

Nay, lass, don’t fret. So long as it’s not spoilt it for you with other
men. You were saying, you love old Fester . . .

Yes, I do. Don’t know where it’s going exactly, but even if it goes
nowhere, I think far too much of him to let him put his reputation at risk defending me. I’m not trying to make myself out to
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be some pillar of virtue here either. Last night after we came
back from the hall, I was more than willing to accept Lester’s
offer to cover up for me. Like I said, it really made me feel good
knowing he’d do that for me. But this morning, specially after I
heard about poor Ollie Hollis, I got to thinking this is more than
just a simple case of someone knocking off a nasty old woman
who’d been asking for it anyway. Telling you lot the truth is important, if only because not telling you the truth could slow
down your investigation, and if someone else gets killed, I don’t
want to feel in any way responsible. What’s up? You might look
a bit pleased instead of sitting there groaning like I’d just told
you we were going to have to operate on your piles.

Nay, lass, of course I’m pleased you’re going to come clean, only
I were half-expecting the way you’ve been rattling on that you
were building up to a full confession!

Then you’re going to be disappointed. But two things you ought to
know. One is that not long before the storm broke, Lady Denham
and me had a bit of a storm of our own. No prizes for guessing what
about. I’d been having a wander round the grounds and I came
back by the stables. No hunters there anymore since she called it a
day after Sir Harry broke his neck, but she still kept her old hack,
Ginger. Liked to feel something between her legs, and I bet if she’d
ended up in a wheelchair she’d have had it built twice as high as
normal so’s she could still look down on the peasants.

Didn’t like her much, did you, luv?

You really are a great detective, aren’t you, Andy! Anyway, I
thought I’d say hello to the horse. I like horses, specially when
they don’t have idiots perched on their backs. But as I got near I
saw the door was ajar and I could hear a voice inside. It was
Daph Denham, though I didn’t recognize it straight away, it
sounded so soft and sad—human, you know, not her usual way
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of talking, like you were a public meeting she’d rather not be attending.

Oh aye. And who were she talking to?

Ginger, of course! Everyone says . . . said that the horses were really the only things she loved. She could treat humans like dirt,
but her horses got the best of everything. Perhaps this was where
she headed when she was unhappy . . .

Nay, lass! Don’t go sentimental on me.

Why not? There’s good in all of us, Andy, though it takes a clever
surgeon to find it in some.

I’ll remember that. So what was this sad human stuff she were saying?

Didn’t hear much of it, it was the intonation that struck. But I
did catch something about trusting people, and a pig squealing, I
think.

Mebbe she were thinking the animal rights people were right and
she should give up the pigs and go veggie?

Didn’t get the timing right then, did she? Like I say, I surprised myself by feeling a bit sorry for her, her own party, lady-of- the-manoring it over the hoi polloi, and still she ends up talking to a
horse! I’d have moved away quietly, only there was an old feed pail
by the door and, as I turned, I gave it a kick. The horse neighed—must
have thought it was feeding time—and Lady D called, “Who’s
there?” I’d still have made my getaway if there’d been time, but she
was at the door in a flash. Looked me up and down, then said, “Oh,
it’s only you, Nurse Sheldon.” She always called me Nurse Sheldon,
like it was a put-down.

And were you? Put down, I mean?

No. I was still feeling sorry for her. I took a sip of my wine—I had
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a glass of red—champagne goes to my head—and I said, “Hello,
Lady Denham. Just admiring your grounds. Looking really lovely,
aren’t they?” That seemed to provoke her.

Why? Sounds pretty bland to me.

I think that may have been the trouble. I usually look her in the
eye, give as good as I get, without being openly rude. This time, I
don’t know, maybe I sounded too polite, a bit friendly even, as if
I was feeling sorry for her. I think she caught that, and that’s what
got her rag.

So what did she do?

She lost it. Thinking about it later, I reckon that whatever it was
sent her to the stables, it was something that had made her very
angry and very sorry for herself at the same time. It was the unhappy
bit that came out as she was talking to Ginger, but now all the anger came bubbling up—no, not bubbling, exploding! I couldn’t believe what I was hearing! She told me I had no right to go wandering
round her property at will, I was only there on sufferance as a paid
employee of the Avalon, to represent the nursing staff, and if I had
any true sense of my place I’d be back on the lawn, making sure the
important guests like Dr. Feldenhammer got properly looked after,
instead of wandering round, half inebriated, sticking my nose in
where I had no right to be.

By God, lass! And you stood there taking this?

Well, no. After a bit I got angry too. Do you blame me? I said
things I shouldn’t have said.

Like what?

That she thought she was so special but in fact she was a laughing-stock. A geriatric nymphomaniac running after a man twenty years
younger than herself, a man who found her at best ridiculous, at
worst revolting.

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You don’t take prisoners, do you, Pet!

I’m not proud of some of the things I said, Andy. I ended by telling her it was time the world knew exactly what kind of monster
she was and then even her sodding title wouldn’t protect her. By
this time she’d stopped yelling back at me. She just stood there,
looking at me like I was a piece of dog dirt. And she said something like, “What I am, I am, Nurse Sheldon. I do what I need to
do and I accept the consequences. Now go away. You are pathetic.” Suddenly I ran out of things to say. That’s when I threw
my wine over her.

Why? I mean that was nowt compared to what you’d been saying
to her. A geriatric nymphomaniac! She must have said summat
more than, “You are pathetic.” Summat really offensive. Or threatening. Come to think of it, this thing about letting the world
know what kind of monster she was—what’s that mean? Just
fancying old Fester doesn’t make her a monster, not in my book,
anyway.

You know what it’s like in a row, Andy. Words just come out.

Mebbe. Okay. Then what? You and her ran at each other and
started pulling each other’s hair?

No. She stood there like the wine was nothing, I was nothing. I
walked away. All right, maybe I walked away because I was
afraid of what I might say or do next, but I didn’t do or say it. I
went and found Lester and told him what had happened.

Looking for a comforting hug, were you?

To warn him that the big moment had likely come. He was going
to be faced with a choice, her or me.

Rarely a wise move, luv, facing a man with a choice. What did he
say?

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He said he’d have a word with her, get things sorted. I was still pretty
wound up. I said he better had, and quick, I wasn’t going to put up
with that old biddy treating me like dirt any longer. Then the storm
started and everyone rushed back to the house. I made for the conservatory. It was dark in there and I found a corner hidden away
behind a shrub.

By yourself?

Yes. I didn’t want to talk to anyone. Other people came into the
conservatory, but I don’t think any of them saw me. I just sat
there and fumed till the storm passed. Then I went outside.

So Lester was telling a porkie when he gave you an alibi?

Yes. I didn’t want him to, but when we got back here last night,
he said that if Daph Denham had mentioned our bust- up to anyone, it might look bad. It was simpler if he said we’d been together in the conservatory during the storm and it would save the
police wasting time going down a dead end.

Very civic-minded of him. And after the storm? Were you there
when they found Lady D?

In fact, no. Someone spotted your friend, Franny Roote . . .

Nay, lass, not my friend.

Sorry. He speaks very highly of you. Anyway, his wheelchair had
got stuck at the bottom of the lawn, which was really boggy after
the downpour, and the poor lad had managed to tip it over trying
to get it to move. I don’t know how long he’d been lying there, trying to get the chair upright and drag himself back in. He was a
right mess, soaking wet and covered with mud. Someone had to
look after him, and I was the obvious choice. I got him back in the
chair and a couple of us manhandled it onto firmer ground. Then
I pushed him back to the hall. I heard this uproar behind us—that
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must have been when they found Lady Denham’s body—but I
was concentrating on getting poor Franny back inside where I
could check him out properly.