find an inheritor could have ended in a public auction with the proceeds going to the Treasury, which is the last thing anyone would have wanted…’
‘…because you’d have lost control of the flat?’
‘…because then no one would have benefited; just some dodgy landlord somewhere probably, wanting to put three students in there, and going against all our rules of tenant acceptability. How would that have honoured Miss Woods’ wishes?’
‘So, Stella bullied your father into instead renting the place to Charlie, when he was never even sure it was the Trust’s to rent?’
‘It was a chartable act — the rent barely covered our costs of collecting it. Nor could you say it wasn’t the solution closest to Mrs Woods’ intentions. Nor could you even say that had we argued the case then the Treasury Solicitor wouldn’t have awarded us the leasehold.’
‘But you weren’t prepared to take the risk…’
Her silence said it all.
‘So,’ the Inspector mused, ‘this ultra-orderly process for the transition of assets has so far resulted in two legal nightmares, neither as it stands resolved?’
‘That’s only twice in fifteen years, Inspector, and with innumerable amicable handovers in-between.’
The three of them sat in gloomy silence, before Raine Rossiter concluded bleakly,
‘Anyway, I promise you it will all be cleared up within the year.’
Grey was glad to here it, having precisely no desire to have to refer this to Financial Crimes or whichever unit in a neighbouring city would have such a situation fall under its remit.
She continued, ‘Forgive me for saying it, but now Stella isn’t here to block the sale then Mrs Cuthbert’s flat next door to hers can be cleared of its… foliage and offered to the next on the waiting list; while Stella’s own will is to be read after the funeral, but I can tell you now that it instructs quite clearly and unambiguously for her flat and other assets to be transferred directly to the Trust.’
‘And so Charlie’s flat?’
‘That is another matter. Once Charlie was installed then my father’s doubts became rather past-tense.’
‘And with Charlie gone too?’
‘Then as soon as he’s buried I go to the Treasury Solicitor.’
‘And if they ask why you didn’t go to them fifteen years ago?’
‘Then I can do a bad thing, Inspector: I can claim the previous decision to be one made many years ago by a now-retired solicitor and a now-deceased Trustee, their actions a best attempt at doing the right if naive thing.’
‘Thank you for being honest.’
‘Thank you for believing me.’
The meeting at a natural conclusion, he gestured to the door,
‘I’ll show you out,’ yet as he stood he had a flash of memory, saying,
‘” RR, No Appointment. ”’
‘Sorry?’ asked Raine, also rising.
‘Stella’s diary — she had a system of initialling names. RR is you, of course, I’ve just realised; so did you know she was coming to see you on Tuesday morning?’
‘The morning after she died? No. I swear. Andrea, was there anything..?’
‘There was nothing in the book,’ the receptionist confirmed, ‘but then didn’t you just say “No appointment”?’
‘Would she normally have called before seeing you?’ he asked Raine.
‘Yes: I can be out and about, I’m not always in the office.’
‘Then she decided to visit you the next day, deciding after working hours on the evening before; which was the night she died.’
‘What can that mean?’
‘I don’t know yet; but when I do I swear I’ll let you know.’
With the two women and their treasured archive box safely escorted back through reception (and refusing the offer of a Constable to drop it back at the office for them) Grey returned to his desk, where he thought awhile before chasing his other leads. The finances of the Cedars were indeed a tangled mess, with Stella and Charlie squarely at the centre of them; but there was surely not enough here to warrant a motive for murder, was there? Yet in investigating their finances he had learnt so much about them both: Stella with her determination to always do what she thought was right, and this often leaving others in difficult situations; and as for Charlie… well, Grey wasn’t sure the man could have saved himself from destitution without Stella’s help — and all this for the man she had once battled across the floor of the Council Chamber, and who as chief advocate for the new estate she so opposed must have seemed to her no less than the destroyer of her town.
This case was getting nowhere, only into deeper waters. Opening the blinds to let more sun in, the Inspector leant his head back and closed his eyes.
Chapter 11 — An Administrative Oversight
‘You’re friend’s already down there,’ said the Senior Librarian, grumpily opening the door to the archive floor. Sergeant Smith went downstairs to see Sarah already at the desks turning to greet her.
‘Hi Cori,’ — as Sarah called her; for while Boss suited fine for the Inspector, Cori thought Ma’am sounded ridiculously formal for herself.
‘Hi Sarah. What is up with her?’
‘I think I upset her mentioning Stella.’
‘She sure could rub people up the wrong way.’
‘Oh, and I’ve a message for you.’ (This was from the phonecall transferred from the Inspector’s office earlier.) ‘You had a call from a Mrs Foreshore of the Southney School, she had some names for you which I promised to pass on.’
‘Oh, excellent, let me grab a pen… go on.’
Sarah related eagerly (as Cori transferred the details to her notebook),
‘She said that Stella Dunbar had been tutoring a lad last year, got him into an interview with an Oxford college apparently, but that obviously he’d since left town; but that this year there are only two girls who the teachers there knew about, but that they do matched the initials you gave her: a Stacie Kehoe and an Esther Night; both fourteen, in the same class, friends so their teachers believe; and that the long-dark-haired one is definitely Esther Night.’
It was moments like this that make a detective’s job worthwhile.
‘And they had contact numbers at the school office?’
Cori’s enthusiasm was to be short lived however: the number for the Kehoes bringing the news that their daughter was at school, only for the school to then say she’d not been in that day; meanwhile the Nights’ phone gave only a standard answerphone announcement, to which Cori told her story and asked for an urgent reply.
‘Sir?’
At the Inspector’s door was a mixed pair of Constables fresh from the mess room.
‘You asked for background checks?’ the young man reminded him. Grey knew he had requested checks recently, but couldn’t immediately remember of whom.
‘I looked up Rachel Sowton for you, sir,’ began his partner, who Grey had seen around the office with her counterpart and had wondered if they weren’t an item out of uniform. ‘She was cautioned for drugs eight years ago, and has been noted at various libertarian rallies in London.’
‘Do we keep a note of things like that?’
‘We have to these days, sir.’
‘Go on.’
‘The electoral role has her at the Cedars for sixteen years, before then at various flats around town.’
‘Okay.’
