“I’m just trying to eliminate possible lines of inquiry,” said Strike.
There was a longer pause. Janice’s eyes drifted over the tea tray and on to the picture of her late partner, with his stained teeth and his kind, sleepy eyes. Finally, she sighed and said,
“All right, but I want you to write down that this was Margot’s idea, not mine, all right? I’m not accusing no one.”
“Fair enough,” said Strike, pen poised over his notebook.
“All right then, well—it was very sensitive, because of us working wiv ’er—Dorothy, I mean.
“Dorothy and Carl lived wiv Dorothy’s mother. ’Er name was Maud, though I wouldn’t remember that if Carl ’adn’t been ’ere the ovver day. We were talking and I mentioned ’is gran, and ’e called ’er ‘bloody Maud,’ not ‘Grandma’ or nothing.
“Anyway, Maud ’ad an infection on ’er leg, a sore what was taking its time ’ealing. It needed dressing and looking after, so I was visiting the ’ouse a lot. Ev’ry time I was in there, she told me she owned the ’ouse, not Dorothy. She was letting ’er daughter and grandson live wiv ’er. She liked saying it, you know. Feeling the power.
“I wouldn’t say she’d be much fun to live with. Sour old lady. Nothing ever right for ’er. She moaned a lot about ’er grandson being spoiled—but like I said, ’e was an ’oly terror when ’e was younger, so I can’t blame ’er there.
“Anyway,” said Janice, “before the sore on ’er leg was ’ealed, she died, after falling downstairs. Now, ’er walking wasn’t great, because she’d been laid up for a bit with this sore leg, and she needed a stick. People do fall downstairs, and if you’re elderly, obviously that can ’ave serious consequences, but…
“Well, a week afterward, Margot asked me into ’er consulting room for a word, and… well, yeah, I got the impression Margot was maybe a bit uneasy about it. She never said anyfing outright, just asked me what I fort. I knew what she was saying… but what could we do? We weren’t there when she fell and the family said they was downstairs and just ’eard ’er take the tumble, and there she was at the bottom of the stairs, knocked out cold, and she died two nights later in ’ospital.
“Dorothy never showed no emotion about it, but Dorothy never did show much emotion about anything. What could we do?” Janice repeated, her palms turned upward. “Obviously I could see the way Margot’s mind was working, because she knew Maud owned the ’ouse, and now Dorothy and Carl were sitting pretty, and… well, it’s the kind of thing doctors consider, of course they do. It’ll come back on them, if they’ve missed anything. But in the end, Margot never done nothing about it and as far as I know there was never any bother.
“There,” Janice concluded, with a slight air of relief at having got this off her chest. “Now you know.”
“Thank you,” said Strike, making a note. “That’s very helpful. Tell me: did you ever mention this to Talbot?”
“No,” said Janice, “but someone else mighta done. Ev’ryone knew Maud ’ad died, and ’ow she died, because Dorothy took a day off for the funeral. I’ll be honest, by the end of all my interviews wiv Talbot, I just wanted to get out of there. Mostly ’e wanted me to talk about me dreams. It was creepy, honestly. Weird, the ’ole thing.”
“I’m sure it was,” said Strike. “Well, there’s just one more thing I wanted to ask, and then I’m done. My partner managed to track down Paul Satchwell.”
“Oh,” said Janice, with no sign of embarrassment or discomfort. “Right. That was Margot’s old boyfriend, wasn’t it?”
“Yes. Well, we were surprised to find out you know each other.”
Janice looked at him blankly.
“What?”
“That you know each other,” Strike repeated.
“Me and Paul Satchwell?” said Janice with a little laugh. “I’ve never even met the man!”
“Really?” said Strike, watching her closely. “When he heard you’d told us about the sighting of Margot in Leamington Spa, he got quite angry. He said words to the effect,” Strike read off his notebook, “that you were trying to cause trouble for him.”
There was a long silence. A frown line appeared between Janice’s round blue eyes. At last she said,
“Did ’e mention me by name?”
“No,” said Strike. “As a matter of fact, he seemed to have forgotten it. He just remembered you as ‘the nurse.’ He also told Robin that you and Margot didn’t like each other.”
“’E said Margot didn’t like me?” said Janice, with the emphasis on the last word.
“I’m afraid so,” said Strike, watching her.
“But… no, sorry, that’s not right,” said Janice. “We used to get on great! Ovver than that one time wiv Kev and ’is tummy… all right, I did get shirty wiv ’er then, but I knew she meant it kindly. She fort she was doing me a favor, examining ’im… I took offense because… well, you do get a bit defensive, as a mother, if you fink another woman’s judging you for not taking care of your kids properly. I was on me own with Kev and… you just feel it more, when you’re on your own.”
“So why,” Strike asked, “would Satchwell say he knew you, and that you wanted to get him into trouble?”
The silence that followed was broken by the sound of a train passing beyond the hedge: a great rushing rumble built and subsided, and the quiet of the sitting room closed like a bubble in its wake, holding the detective and the nurse in suspension as they looked at each other.
“I fink you already know,” said Janice at last.
“Know what?”
“Don’t give me that. All them fings you’ve solved—you’re not a stupid man. I fink you already know, and all this is to try and scare me into telling you.”
“I’m certainly not trying to scare—”
“I know you didn’t like ’er,” said Janice abruptly. “Irene.
