'Oh, yes.'
That sounded certain, if unenthusiastic.
'You visit her?'
'I look in if I'm up there. I help out sometimes. Just the light work now. With my back.'
Plowright had said she'd been a care assistant in a nursing home. With her back!
Novello reproached herself for lack of charity. The woman had, after all, taken her aunt in when there was no one else to look after her. And it was one thing taking care of an old lady who was a bit doddery, but quite another nursing a bedridden invalid. Novello wondered how she'd cope, shuddered at the thought, and gave Mrs. Fleck a guilt-inspired smile as she said, 'If you'd give me the address, I'll not take up any more of your time.'
She got the address and directions and took her leave.
As she moved away, Mrs. Fleck said, 'What's this about?'
At last, curiosity. Novello had been wondering about its absence.
'Just an inquiry,' she replied. 'Nothing to concern yourself with.'
Lovely language, English. One word covering both legitimate anxiety and sticking your neb in!
She closed the gate carefully, resisting the temptation to wipe it with her handkerchief, and got into her car. It was almost a pleasure to be back in that chaotic, unhygienic box, even if it did take a couple of minutes to dig out her map. Mrs. Fleck's directions had been typically precise, but Novello was determined to make sure she lost no more time.
In fact, Wark House proved as easy to find as the woman had indicated. She drove along a main road till, with a suddenness which surprised her, she was out of the city and into wild moorland. Away to her right she could see a lone building standing against the skyline like the Bates house in Psycho. She turned off toward it on a steadily climbing minor road and five minutes later found herself passing through a gateway which would not have looked out of place at the entrance to a small walled city.
The views from here were spectacular, mile after mile of rolling moor, attractive now in its golden robe of bright sunlight, but in lowering cloud and driving rain hardly a prospect calculated to comfort the old and the dying.
Inside, she took a deep breath, recalling Father Kerrigan's technique for grading the old folks' homes he visited. 'If you can smell piss in the hallway, start asking questions.'
Wark House passed that test, which was a relief. In fact looking around she was pleasantly surprised by the contrast with its forbidding exterior.
A nurse came out of a room, spotted her, asked if she could help.
'Could I see the matron, please?'
She was taken to an open-doored, open-windowed office where a small black woman of about forty sat behind a paper-strewn desk. Her dress was nurselike but not aggressively so, and her smile was natural rather than professional.
'Shirley Novello,' said Novello, taking the outstretched hand.
'Billie Saltair,' said the woman. 'What can I do for you?'
Novello glanced at the door to make sure the nurse had moved out of earshot.
'Close it if you like,' said the matron. 'I keep it open so's people can see how hard I work. Also this weather, I'd love to create a draft. Usually up here, you open a window and you get hit by a gale that would scatter all this paper round the building in ten seconds flat, which is probably the best way of dealing with it.'
Novello closed the door.
'I'm a police officer,' she said. 'Nothing to worry about, but people can get the wrong idea.'
'Is that so?' said Saltair, mildly amused. 'Better tell me the right idea before I join them.'
'You've got a Mrs. Agnes Lightfoot staying here, I believe.'
'That's right.'
'How is she?'
'She's fine, considering.'
'Considering what?'
'Considering she can't walk, is half blind, has problems with her speech, and hardly ever gets a visitor.'
'Not even Mrs. Fleck?'
'You know Winifred?' said the matron neutrally.
'I've met her. She works here, doesn't she?'
'Occasionally.'
'Yes, of course. Her back.'
'Ah, you've met her back too?'
The two women regarded each other deadpan for a moment, then began to smile.
'Perhaps I'd better explain,' said Novello, deciding that with Billie Saltair, frankness was likely to provoke frankness.
She outlined the background of the case succinctly, finishing by saying, 'So all you've got to do is confirm Mrs. Lightfoot hasn't had any strange man in his thirties visiting her in the past couple of weeks and I can get out of your hair.'
Saltair was frowning and shaking her head.
'Sorry, I can't do that,' she said.
'Oh, come on! It's hardly privileged medical information, is it?' said Novello, irritated, especially as her liking for the matron had led her to strain her own bounds of professional discretion.
'You're getting me wrong,' said the matron. 'What I mean is I can't tell you Agnes hasn't had any such visitor. There was a man came last week, Friday morning it was. I wasn't here, but I got told all about it when I got back. It was news, you see, Agnes being visited. Unfortunately it was Sally that met him when he turned up on the doorstep. Sally's our youngest nurse, just started. Normally any new visitor would be steered along here first, just so's we can run an eye over them, also put them in the picture about whoever they're wanting to see, once we've judged them genuine. But Sally didn't take this fellow to meet my deputy, just led him straight into Agnes's room and left him there. And by the time she mentioned it to Mary-that's my deputy-the bird had flown.'
'Could I talk to Sally?' asked Novello, trying to keep it casual, but with her stomach churning with excitement. Up to now she'd been putting this whole thing down to ultracautious Pascoe covering every angle. She'd ignored his reputation for finding corners of an investigation other cops couldn't reach. What was it that one of her friendlier male colleagues, DC Dennis Seymour, had said when he had invited her to have supper with him and his nice Irish wife and they'd lounged around afterward drinking Old Bushmill? 'Big Andy's easy to follow. He walks through walls and you just pour in after him through the gap. But that Pascoe's something else. He creeps through cracks and you've no idea where the clever sod's taking you.'
Saltair had gone to the door and yelled at someone to ask Sally to step along when she had a moment.
'Anything else you can tell me about this guy?' asked Novello.
'It's all hearsay with me, best leave it to Sally,' said Saltair, which suggested to Novello's sensitive ear that there was.
'Okay,' she said. 'So what about Agnes? were you here when she came into the home?'
'Sure I was. I've been here from the start. This place used to be the family house of one of the consultants at the hospital I worked at. His wife died, his family moved on, and he was rattling around in here, so he decided to move out. But he saw the way things were going back in the eighties-health care for the aged was going to be a major growth industry-so instead of selling up, he turned the place into what you see and made his favorite staff nurse, who happened to be me, an offer I couldn't refuse. That was seventeen years ago. Jesus, where does the time go?'
'And Winifred Fleck?'
'She came along at the start too. As a care assistant. She'd had some experience and she was pretty good. Not overendowed with human sympathy maybe, but you may have noticed that when it comes to hygiene and good order, she's got no equal.'
'It did strike me that her lawn looked freeze wrapped,' said Novello.
'Yes, well, mustn't mock. Too much. Hygiene's really important in a place like this, and having someone like Winifred around really kept us on our toes. Must say we were all a bit surprised way back when we heard she was taking an invalid aunt in.'
