if the original Helen’s had launched a thousand ships, this one would have been looking at a couple of tugs and the Isle of Wight ferry, tops.
Mind you, he thought on further inspection, she might have gone up the shipping register a bit in better times. She had obviously been crying a lot recently, and not sleeping too well: her eyes were swollen and brown- bagged, and she wasn’t wearing any make-up. Her expression was doleful, and her pale mouth drooped at the corners, which made her look older. But even at her best she wasn’t going to be someone who turned heads. Had Rogers been drunk when he met her, or did she have other qualities which spoke to the man who so far, it had to be said, had shown the depth of a rapidly evaporating rain puddle when it came to women?
She was looking at Slider earnestly, as if ready to read the truth or otherwise in his face when she asked, ‘So it’s true then? He is – dead?’
‘I’m afraid so,’ Slider said with such gentleness even Atherton was touched. ‘I saw him myself.’
‘I wasn’t sure. There was just one mention in the paper, and then nothing. I thought it might be a trick. I suppose I didn’t
‘I don’t know if it helps at all,’ Slider said, ‘but it would have been very quick. He wouldn’t have suffered. He wouldn’t even have known it was coming.’
She looked up at him consideringly. ‘No, I don’t think it does help. Not much. Not at the moment. But one day it might. All I can think of is that he’s not coming back. I’m never going to see him again.’ She stared at nothing for a blank moment, her face slack, her hands loose at her sides, and then came to life again, as though a faulty relay had reconnected. ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’
‘Thank you. That would be very welcome,’ Slider said. Atherton knew his methods: people with something to do with their hands talked more easily.
She led the way through the house. The stairs were straight ahead and the narrow hall dog-legged round them – hence the name for the style. There were two reception rooms on the left, one with the bay window to the front and the other with French windows to the back. At the end of the passage, straight ahead, was the original kitchen and scullery, which had been knocked together and had an extension added, to make one large kitchen- breakfast room. It was a very nice room, bright and sunny, with white walls and an oak floor, expensive modern fitments with granite work surfaces, and at the far end a large refectory table in the breakfast-room section, which had French doors on to the garden. A glance into the two rooms they had passed had shown them well furnished in an upper-middle-class taste. It was a comfortable house, the rooms were a good size, and it was no longer a surprise to Atherton that David Rogers had felt he could, at least partially, live here. It was certainly a lot more homelike than the Radisson Suites style of the Hofland Crescent house.
‘Can I help?’ Slider was saying.
‘No, I’m fine,’ Helen Aldous said. ‘Please sit down.’
Slider and Atherton sat at the table, one on either side, turning their chairs so they could face towards her, and she moved about, filling the kettle, putting it on, getting out teapot and tea caddy. ‘Do you mind mugs? And Earl Grey or builder’s?’
‘Mugs are fine,’ Slider said. ‘And builder’s, if you don’t mind.’
Atherton would have had Earl Grey for preference, but Slider always had his reasons so he just said, ‘Same for me.’
Slider, without even thinking about it, felt builder’s was the choice of the likeable and reliable man you could trust and tell things to. It seemed to work. She didn’t smile – she looked as though she’d never smile again – but she nodded as if in approval. Her movements about the room were brisk and capable. She didn’t slump in her misery, and Slider thought this was from old discipline. The way she walked and carried herself, the movements of her short-nailed hands, the awareness of her eyes – except in those pulled-plug moments of utter despair – all said ‘nurse’ to him.
‘Tell me how you first met David,’ he said. He wanted to get her talking while she was still busy with the tea-making, but he wanted it to be the easy stuff first. The more she told him before she got to the hard part, the more the hard part would flow.
‘That’s easy,’ she said. ‘He was a doctor and I was a nurse. We met at the Cloisterwood – that’s a private hospital in Middlesex.’
‘Yes, I know it,’ Slider said. His voice conveyed that there was nothing sensational at all in this revelation. ‘I didn’t know he worked there.’
FIFTEEN
Artful Dodgers
‘He didn’t,’ Helen said. ‘He visited from time to time, but I think that was just to see Sir Bernard Webber – socially, I mean. They were old friends.’
‘So where
‘When I first saw him, I thought he was a consultant at another hospital.’
‘When was that?’
‘That would be – about seven years ago. In the spring of ’03. I’d just gone to Cloisterwood from the Royal Free. It had been open about two years then. I wanted to get into plastics, but there were never very many openings in the National Health, so I thought I’d make the switch to private.’ She poured tea. ‘Do you take sugar?’
‘No, thanks. Neither of us.’
‘Well, that makes it easy. No, don’t get up. I can manage.’ She brought the three mugs over and sat down at the end of the table, between them.
‘So you were on the plastics side at Cloisterwood,’ Slider said, to get her going again.
‘Yes.’
‘And how did you meet David Rogers?’
‘I bumped into him. Literally. I was going in the staff entrance as he was coming out and he cannoned into me, nearly knocked me over. I banged my funny-bone on the door frame, so I was hopping about in agony, but you couldn’t want to be bumped into by a nicer person. He was so charming and apologetic, you’d think he’d broken my leg at least.’ She looked up sharply. ‘It wasn’t phony. I was never much to look at, not like some of the glamour- pusses on the wards, but I’ve had my share of pick-up lines. Men always think nurses are easy. And I know a bad hat when I see one. David wasn’t like that. He was just genuinely a nice man. He was really sorry for barging into me – and believe me, most consultants would have knocked you to the ground without thinking twice about it. And while he was making sure I was all right, we looked at each other and something just clicked.’ Her face softened as she remembered it, and for a moment she looked almost beautiful. ‘He asked if he could buy me a coffee to settle my nerves. I said I was just going on duty, and he said could he see me later, then. So we made a date. And it started from there.’
‘He told you he was a consultant?’
‘No, he didn’t actually say so. But when we met later and I said I was on plastics, he said that was his specialty, and we talked about it, and it was obvious that he really knew his stuff. He told me about his training, and it was sort of implied he was still a consultant.’
‘So you didn’t ask him where he was working?’
‘Not then. We had plenty of other things to talk about. I just assumed he was still at the hospital where he trained.’ Again the sharp look. ‘I know what you’re thinking, but he wasn’t trying to con me. Later, when it got serious between us, he told me all about it.’
‘All about—?’
‘About that woman. Mrs Lescroit.’ She took a fortifying sip of tea, and went on, staring past them out of the French windows into the sunny garden. ‘We’d been seeing each other about a year, not very regularly, but whenever he could manage it. He didn’t come often to Cloisterwood, and when he did, I didn’t usually see him, except at a distance. When we met it was always away from there. Nurses aren’t supposed to go out with doctors so we had to keep it secret. It suited me, anyway. The other girls would have made my life hell if they knew anything was going on between me and him. Anyway, this particular time, we’d been away for the weekend – the first time we’d done that. We came here, as it happens,’ she said, with the closest she’d come yet to a smile.
