what they’re like in party mood.’
‘After a few drinks or drugs?’
‘That’s speculation, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’m waiting for the blood test results. You didn’t ever notice a devil-may-care side to Hilde’s character?’
‘It may have been there, but I wasn’t likely to see it.’
He’d heard nothing from Imogen that Julie hadn’t already reported, but there was another matter he’d promised to raise. ‘While I’m here, I want to ask about another young woman at Harmer House, who was also one of yours – Rose, is it, or Rosamund?’
She shifted in her chair and he noticed that her hands came together and were clasped tight. ‘Rosamund Black. She’s no longer there. She lost her memory, but her people came for her. They took her back to West London a couple of weeks ago.’
‘Have you heard from her since?’
‘No, but I wouldn’t expect to.’
‘You have an address for her, though? We’d like to get in touch with her.’
Imogen got up and returned to the filing cabinet. Presently she said, ‘It’s Twelve Turpin Street, Hounslow.’
‘And the people who came for her? Where do they live?’
‘Somewhere near, I gathered. The mother is in Twickenham.’ She gave a sigh, chiding herself as she stared at the notes. ‘I didn’t get their address. Their name is Jenkins. The stepsister is Doreen Jenkins.’
‘How exactly did this lady, Doreen Jenkins, get to know about Rose?’
She closed her eyes in an effort to remember. Something else wasn’t in the notes. ‘She heard from someone, a friend of Rose’s, that Rose had gone to Bath on a weekend hotel break. When Rose didn’t make her regular phone call, the old mother got worried, and the following weekend the stepsister and her partner came to Bath to try and get in touch with her. They saw a piece in the paper about a woman who had lost her memory and recognised the picture as Rose.’
‘And was it a happy reunion?’
‘Rose didn’t seem to know her sister, if that’s what you’re asking, but her memory still wasn’t functioning. She went with them of her own free will.’
‘You satisfied her that they were definitely her family?’
‘They satisfied her. And they satisfied me as well. They had photos with them, of Rose, alone and with the mother. There wasn’t any doubt.’
‘I’m not suggesting there is.’
Imogen’s lips tightened. ‘This is Ada, isn’t it? She’s been agitating because Rose hasn’t written to her. I keep telling her not to make waves. Rose will write in her own good time if she wishes to. She’s got enough on her plate trying to get back to normal.’
‘Quite probably. What is normal? Did you find out? Did the stepsister have anything else to say about Rose’s life in Hounslow?’
‘I can’t recall anything, except that Rose had been on a trip to Florida some time and still managed to phone her mother.’
The mention of the phone gave him an idea. ‘Do you have a set of London phone directories in this place?’
‘Behind you.’
He picked the first one off the shelf and looked up the name Black. ‘Hounslow, you said. Miss R. Black, 12 Turpin Street.’ Slowly he ran his finger down the columns. ‘Can’t find it here, Imogen.’
‘Perhaps she’s ex-directory.’
He replaced the directory. Beside it were a number of street atlases, including a London A-Z, which he picked up to study the index. ‘Turpin Street. You’re quite sure of that?’
‘I suppose it could have been Turpin Road.’
‘Doesn’t matter. There’s only one Turpin in this book and that’s Turpin Way in Wallington, a long way from Hounslow.
I hate to say this, my dear, but it looks as if you’ve been given a fast shuffle by this woman. Ada may be onto something after all.’
Twenty-one
It was ‘Be Nice to Julie’ day. ‘In case you’re waiting for me, I’m afraid I’ve got to work through,’ he thoughtfully told her. ‘But you can go off as soon as you like. Take your time. You’ve earned it twice over.’
Julie suppressed a smile. She knew why the old gannet couldn’t face lunch. She’d heard about his belated arrival at the mortuary only to discover that the autopsy on Hildegarde Henkel had been rescheduled, forcing him to watch the whole thing.
‘So don’t let me stop you, if you want to go down to the…’ he said, the voice trailing off, unable to articulate the word ‘canteen’.
She told him she’d eaten earlier. She asked if there was anything new on the case.
‘Depends which case you mean.’ The awkwardness between them was not only due to his nausea.
She said, not without irony, ‘I was under the impression we were working on Hildegarde Henkel.’
‘No progress there.’
‘Nothing came out of the post-mortem?’
‘Nothing we don’t know already.’
He was unwilling to say more than the minimum and she had no desire to pump him for information. People of his rank were supposed to communicate.
She waited.
Finally he felt compelled to speak. ‘We ought to put things right between us, Julie. Some straight-talking. That wasn’t very professional yesterday.’
‘Do you mean your sexist remark, or my reaction to it?’
‘Sexist, was it?’
‘No more than usual. The difference was that you made it personal.’
‘I can’t even remember what I said.’
‘I’ll tell you, then,’ she said. ‘I made some sympathetic remark about the dead woman and you said I was being a shade too sisterly for your taste, which I thought was bloody mean considering how much I take from you without bitching.’
‘Hold on,’ he said. ‘It was a light-hearted comment. I wasn’t attacking you.’
‘It was sarcasm.’
‘Yes, and I know what they say about that, but I thought you had enough of a sense of humour to take it with a smile.’
‘Spare me that old line, Mr Diamond.’
He gave a twitchy smile. ‘Look, it was only because you’re not one of those die-hard feminists that I made the remark. You call it sarcastic: I meant it to be ironic. I didn’t expect to touch a raw nerve. You and I know better than to fall out over a word, Julie.’
She said, ‘We’d have fallen out long before this if I’d objected to words. It’s the assumption behind them. You make snide remarks about my so-called feminist opinions as if I ride a broomstick and put curses on men. I’m another human being doing a job. I don’t ask for any more consideration than the men get. It’s about being treated as one of the human race instead of a lesser species.’
‘I’ve never thought of you as lesser anything,’ he told her.
She rolled her eyes upwards and said nothing.
‘Look at me,’ Diamond went on. ‘Would a fat, arrogant git like this choose anyone less than the best for a deputy? I rate you, Julie. I’m not going to turn into a New Man overnight, but I’m big enough to say that I rate you
