Gallery Whispers

22

It seemed to Stevie Steele that while Joan Ball couldn't have been more than fifty-five, her hands looked as if they could have been ninety. They hung from her wrists like two claws as she spoke to her visitors, knuckles hugely swollen, fingers twisted cruelly into her palms.

She caught the young detective's glance. 'What do you think of my talons, sergeant?' she asked, holding one up against the light from a table lamp beside her chair.

'I think it's a damn shame. Miss Ball. Don't they make it difficult for you to live out in the country? I mean, you can't drive, can you.'

'No, I can't. But I manage all right. The Social Services are very good; they provide all sorts of support. Home help; someone to do my shopping and so on. Then there are the disabled charity people; they helped me with adapting the house, and in other ways too. I have a brother in North Berwick who takes me about, and a sister in Edinburgh. And of course, Gaynor was a great help to me too, in all sorts of ways. For example she was good with a sewing machine, so she would alter clothes for me. I can't manage buttons or zips any more: too small and fiddly. She would replace them with Velcro fastenings. She was a very kind person, very thoughtful; I'll miss her a great deal.'

Her steady gaze moved from Steele to Rose. 'I take it that you want to ask me more questions about her.'

'You take it right,' the chief inspector replied. 'Did you see much of Mrs Weston in the two weeks before her death?' she asked.

'Quite a bit, really; she was off work all that time.'

'Did she tell you why?'

'She said that she had a little women's trouble, and that she had been ordered to stay at home for a couple of weeks. No gentleman callers.' Her eyes narrowed as she looked at Rose. 'Would I be correct in guessing that it was a little more serious than that?'

'Yes you would. Mrs Weston was very ill; without hope of recovery in fact.'

'I see. So she decided to end her life, and now you're looking for the person who helped her.'

'How do you work that one out?'

'Come on sergeant.' She threw him a withering look. 'Almost the first question I was asked when I was interviewed before was whether I had seen Nolan's car, or the man Futcher's, outside Gaynor's house that night.'

'And you still can't recall seeing either one?' asked Rose.

'No, because they weren't there. But that doesn't matter a damn.

The covered parking at the far end of the square is never full. There's no car in my space, for example. If Gaynor had a visitor he could easily have put his car in there, or even left it on the approach road.'

'None of the other residents saw anything parked on that road. I don't suppose there's any way of checking the other possibility. In any event, we're pretty satisfied that neither Professor Weston nor Mr Futcher were there that night, so we have to look for alternatives.

'We've been through Mrs Weston's address book; as far as we can tell most of the entries and telephone numbers in there relate to business associates.'

'Yes; that would be right. Gaynor's work was her life; her professional and social circles were pretty much interchangeable.

However, I don't believe that there was anyone at work with whom she was particularly close.'

'No one at all?'

'I suppose you could talk to her secretary, and the other staff in her business.'

'We have,' said Steele. 'The secretary knew of her relationship with Futcher, but that was all. The other three employees didn't even know where she lived, other than that it was in East Lothian. Rosamund, the secretary, is the only one who's ever been out there.'

'However,' Rose continued, 'Mrs Weston once made a remark which suggested that there might have been a third man in her life. Do you know anything about that?'

Joan Ball frowned. 'Gaynor never mentioned anything to me about a third man.' Rose groaned inwardly, but even as she did, the woman drew in a deep breath, clasping her twisted hands together. 'Nevertheless,' she went on, 'I did have a suspicion that there might be.

Whenever she had a visitor she would always mention it at some point.

I always knew when Futcher was there, or Nolan such… a nice man, Nolan. I remember the times when Rosamund came to visit; if they had a rush job on, sometimes Gaynor would work at weekends.

'But there were, I think three occasions on which I saw a car there, at night, following which she didn't say anything.'

'Can you describe the car?'

'Four wheels and a roof, other than that I'm lost. I have no memory for colours, and I wouldn't know one make from another… other than Beetles; I used to have one of them. But this wasn't a Beetle.'

'You can't be sure the visitor was a man, though,' said the chief inspector.

'No, I can't, but the car was still there in the early hours of the morning on at least two of the occasions… I'm a poor sleeper… but gone by my breakfast-time. Read into that what you will. I can't help you any further I'm afraid.'

'Can you remember when these visits took place? That might help.'

'Over the last six or seven months. The most recent occasion was about a month ago.'

'Good. Even that gives us some extra help.' She stood, and Steele followed. 'Thank you very much. Miss Ball. We'll just go next door to Mrs Weston's now. I've brought the keys, and there's something inside I want to check.'

Their arthritic hostess showed them slowly to the door. 'Enjoy your holiday,' said Rose.

'I'll try. I'm going with a disabled group; they have people to help you pack and so on. I'd rather be on an ordinary tour, but it's for the best. The important thing is to get some warmth into these things.'

She held up a ravaged hand to wave them goodbye.

'She's a game lady,' Steele remarked as they stood outside in the evening darkness. 'Listen, ma'am, what did you mean about checking next door? I'm expected home at some point tonight.'

'It won't take long. I want to take a look at Mrs Weston's laptop.

She didn't keep personal appointments on her office machine. Maybe she had a computer diary out here. I looked at her Filofax myself, and if there had been anything in it about a night visit from a gentleman caller I'd have remembered.

'Let's just check while we're here.' She led the way across the grass to Gaynor Weston's front door, and opened it with a key from the labelled bunch in her pocket. Switching on the lights, she trotted up the short flight of stairs to the attic room which the dead woman had used as an office.

The laptop lay on a small desk, plugged into a wall socket. Quickly Rose opened it and looked at the small keyboard, until she found the start-up button in the top right-hand corner. The two detectives waited as the machine booted up. 'Do you know these machines?' asked the chief inspector.

'Yes. No problem.' Steele placed the cursor on the apple symbol in the menu bar and dragged it down until he found a folder headed 'recent applications'. He triggered it open and looked at the software list. 'Right,' he said briskly, 'Claris Organiser; that'll be it, if there's anything on here.' He opened the program, revealing a fresh, clean diary page for that day. Swinging the arrow up to the menu bar he selected Calendar, and a different page appeared showing four full days. Steele clicked on a tab at the side of the page. The display changed once more, setting out a full month. Several of the dates showed appointments.

'Look at the last one,' Rose whispered, pointing at the screen. 'It says; "Write to Ray", on the afternoon before her death.'

'But there was no note,' said Steele.

'No; yet I'll bet this was a woman who kept her appointments.

Let's look at the rest.'

They went back over the month. In the two weeks before the reference to her son, there were no entries, none until two words: 'St Martha's', and a time: '10am'. Three days before that was a further entry, 'Terry Futcher; 8pm', and on the Saturday before, 'NW, Ray; Aberdeen.'

'This is all personal stuff, Steve. No business appointments at all.'

Rose scanned quickly through the month. 'But I don't see anything here that helps. Can you go back?'

The Sergeant nodded, clicked on a minus symbol at the top of the page, and the previous month's listings appeared. He read through them, carefully. 'There,' he said, with a slight nod of his head towards the display. 'Look at the entry for the twenty-eighth; "Deacey, dinner, OH; 8pm" OH means Oldbams, I guess, but who's Deacey? Surname or forename?'

'Who knows? Let's see if he features earlier. Run over the previous months.'

The sergeant scrolled back through six more months of entries: they revealed four more visits by 'Deacey', the first of them, as Joan Ball had said, seven months earlier. There were also three entries referring to theatre dates with the same person.

'Looks like Mrs Weston's third arrow,' Rose murmured. 'Our mystery man.'

'Let's see if the mystery's answered here,' replied Steele. He went back to the menu bar and selected 'Contact list'. A series of names and telephone numbers appeared, listed alphabetically. Nolan Weston's name was there, also Terry Futcher's; there was no Deacey, no listing beginning with the letter 'D'.

'Bugger,' the sergeant swore quietly.

'Never mind, Stevie,' said Rose. 'He might not be listed in here, but with a name as unusual as that, it shouldn't take us long to fit a face to it.'