The Detective's Daughter

24

Friday, 14 January 2011

Stella brought the flowers into the house. The snow on the wrapping paper was melting and soaked her fleece. The hall would have been more of a shock had she not seen it when she met the detective yesterday. The sprinklings of fingerprint powder made the room look dreary. Furniture had been shunted out from the walls; the spindly-legged hall table was in the middle of the room. Stella restored it to its position by the front door; when she lifted it a wave of exhaustion winded her. She listened for Mrs Ramsay’s shuffling footsteps, but there was nothing. The clocks had stopped: with Mrs Ramsay dead and Stella absent for a week, no one had wound them.

She snipped off the stamens to avoid staining her fleece, stuffed the lilies in a water jug – Mrs Ramsay having broken both vases – and placed it in the dining-room grate.

Through the window, she saw Jack was on the path finishing his cigarette. On the way, they had detoured off the Hogarth roundabout to the river where at Hammersmith Terrace Jack had pushed a Clean Slate price list through the letterbox of the corner house. Stella had mined the internet and found that Sarah Glyde, the potter in the police interview, still lived there. If she did not respond to the card – which was likely – Jack said he had another idea. Stella put off asking what it was.

They stacked cleaning materials, rolls of plastic sacks, a box of latex rubber gloves and the vacuum cleaner in the hall. Stella sat at the kitchen table where she used to have her morning cup of coffee with Mrs Ramsay. She ignored the empty chair, unzipped her rucksack and produced a fresh spiral-bound pad with the new Clean Slate logo. Her heart lifted momentarily; she was back at work.

She allocated a room per page and by the time Jack had brought in the rest of the equipment she had a list of tasks with respective timings.

He stopped in the doorway. ‘Where are the flowers? Her lilies? Did the police nick them?’

‘Calm down! I put them in the dining room, where she likes – liked…’ Stella ripped off the page with kitchen tasks and slid it across to him. ‘You start in here.’

‘Shall I make up some flatpack boxes and fill them with crockery and pans?’

‘No, do as I’ve suggested: clean and put everything back.’ Stella was stern. ‘Restore order, then we’ll take stock.’

Jack shrugged in acquiescence and glanced at her pad.

On her way out Stella stopped. Jack was retching. He was going to be sick on the floor. She grabbed his shoulders and shoved him over to the sink. The dead lilies were still there, rotten and foul-smelling; they had smeared the enamel and she scrabbled them out of the way. Jack heaved, gulping in air; he was ashen and blotches of red on his cheeks highlighted a bluish haze of stubble. His fringe swung forward and Stella reached around and tucked the longest strand behind his ear; she supported his forehead.

‘Take deep breaths and look out of the window. That’s it. In. Out. In. Out. Fix on the horizon.’

Eventually Jack straightened up. She poured him a glass of water.

‘Did you eat breakfast?’

‘I had milk.’

‘Breakfast is the most important meal. If you have nothing else—’

‘You’re my mother now, are you?’ He sipped the water. His face glistened with beads of sweat and he shook, spilling water down his wrist. Stella wiped it dry with her sleeve.

‘You should eat.’ She went into the hall and returned with her rucksack from which she produced an unopened packet of Rich Tea biscuits. Whipping the tab from around the top, she lifted off the exposed biscuits, four in all, and handed them to Jack.

She pulled out a jar of tea bags and a tin of powdered milk. Soon they were seated at the table, neither of them in Isabel Ramsay’s chair, eating biscuits and drinking tea and, for Jack, hot milk.

‘If we crack on with this today we’ll get a lot done. I’ll start at the top and we’ll meet halfway by tomorrow evening. You are OK to work, aren’t you?’ She was brisk, filling further pages on her pad with columns and capitalized headings. Jack still had a horrible pallor and was sitting sideways with his face averted.

‘What’s the matter?’ Stella was not good with illness; she did not tolerate it in herself.

‘It’s your stationery.’ His hands were clasped between clenched thighs. She marvelled that he had scared off Paul, a heavily set man with a black belt in judo.

‘What’s wrong with it?’ No one had criticized her branding, not even Jackie. ‘Clients love it.’

‘I hate it.’ He chewed his bottom lip.

She could not bear it if he vomited; he had eaten a lot of biscuits.

‘Don’t tell me my logo is making you sick.’ Stella had chosen the green and blue with the same level of consideration as stabbing a pin on a map; it might have been mauve or red.

‘Pantone 375.’ Jack uttered the words as if in a trance.

‘Green I call it.’ The designer had provided Pantone codes for the printers to be sure the colour was reproduced faithfully in different mediums: the light blue was Pantone 277 and Jack was right, the vivid green was number 375.

‘How can a colour make you ill?’

‘It always has.’

‘You’re going to see my logo all the time when you work for me.’ Stella waved the pad, making Jack flinch. The masthead consisted of rectangles and squares, the green slipstream of one sweeping brush swishing across blue and green lettering. The logo was on pads for preparing quotes, letterheads, compliment slips and the vehicle livery – one van so far. The others would lose their staid black and white lettering next week.

Jack would have a set of polo shirts in Pantone 375 with Clean Slate embroidered in blue on the shoulders where the number is on a police shirt. If he had this reaction to a splash of green in a notebook, he would go into a coma when she made him wear the shirt. Besides reinforcing the brand, the outfit was precisely for people like him whose dishevelled appearance could put off clients.

‘It’s a phobia. You need to get it seen to because green’s hardly rare. There’s grass, trees, cars; it’s everywhere.’ She glanced out of the kitchen window at the snowy scene. ‘Except today. This must be a gift!’ Stella stifled a wry laugh, knowing better than to make an employee uncomfortable about a physical or mental condition.

‘In fact this shade is unusual.’ It was a portent but Jack kept this to himself. It was a year since he had seen the colour, when he had fainted in a chemist’s and ended up in Accident and Emergency. He had given false details. He had a strategy: he visualized another shade because he could not afford for it to happen while he was driving a train.

Stella left Jack dealing with the lilies in the sink and started in the main bedroom. She opened the wardrobe and Mrs Ramsay’s delicate perfume – like the evening scent of garden flowers – drifted out; she inhaled deeply. The wardrobe was in disarray, clothes off hangers and twisted or heaped on the floor. The hangers had tangled with each other and it took Stella twenty-six minutes – putting her behind schedule – to fold the garments and pile the hangers on the stripped mattress, before she could set to cleaning the wardrobe. Mrs Ramsay kept up a commentary urging Stella to direct the vacuum nozzle into the deepest recesses.

For the rest of the afternoon Jack and Stella worked without stopping or speaking to one another.

Stella had turned off the vacuum and was retracting the lead when she heard Jack’s phone. She crept on to the landing and halfway down the stairs. The fifth stair strained when she put her weight on it; she lowered herself to the next one. Jack was in the hall speaking quietly. She did not risk going lower or he would see her shadow on the wall.

‘I’m not due until the Dead Late… OK, an hour… Earls Court or Acton?’

She heard the click of his shoes on the floorboards and with no time to get back up the stairs darted into the drawing room where she was upset by more chaos. The ceiling-high doors dividing the room were flung wide to create a space the length and breadth of the house and the furniture pushed aside as if for a party. Stella found the cigarette box with the initials ‘I’ and ‘M’ on its lid under the coffee table, the contents spewed over the rug. She was on her knees gathering up the cigarettes when Jack walked in; he retrieved two she had missed.

‘These are stale.’ He sniffed them. ‘I doubt the family wants them.’

‘I’m tidying.’

‘That was my mother on the phone. Family crisis, ’fraid I have to go.’

‘What sort of crisis?’

‘She’s locked herself out. I have a key.’

Nettled, Stella looked pointedly at her watch. The wall clock by the tall boy had stopped at eleven. Her watch read five minutes to five; three minutes fast. They had been working for nearly five hours but she’d intended to go on until at least seven o’clock.

Jack’s mother, it seemed, relied on him.

‘Do you have to go far?’

‘Only South Kensington.’ Jack brushed his sleeves and trousers as if dust in the house was why he was shabby. Stella could imagine this mother: absent-minded and needy. She pictured a younger Mrs Ramsay who had Jack at her beck and call. The mother might be a problem.

‘Do you need a lift?’ Stella liked to know the background of her staff, meet their dependants; this was as good a time as any to see Mrs Harmon.

‘Stamford Brook station is up the road.’

‘You’re OK on the Underground?’

‘Why wouldn’t I be?’

‘What with your green thing, I assumed tunnels might be problematic, claustrophobia or moving fast.’ She broke her rule about personal information to offer: ‘My mother hates heights and haunts junk shops.’

‘Trains are fine. It’s only Pantone 375.’

When Jack had gone the house took on a new quiet and Stella decided after all that once she had put the sheets through the machine she would go.

She brought the bedding down and froze.

Jack had transformed the kitchen. The black and white tiled lino gleamed; the bus-like fridge and the grubby Bakelite wall telephone looked new. He had disposed of the lilies and, eradicating their stain, had restored the sink to flawless enamel. Crockery was arranged on shelves, handles pointing in one direction. He had wiped clean the whiteboard and the junk mail was pinned in rows on the cork tiles. Jars of lentils, rice and porridge reflected the warmth of the copper cylindrical lampshade. It could have been 1968 when Mrs Ramsay was in her thirties, beautiful and important, floating about the house: the free spirit she had told Stella that she still was. Stella had not believed her; the way he had cleaned the kitchen told her that Jack had.

As she stared at the battered kitchen table, now a feature with the garish red plastic fruit bowl in its centre, Stella saw jam-smeared children wriggling on the plastic chairs, chubby hands grabbing for bread, and heard their clamour of jokes and demands. Stella’s cleaning restored order; Jack had given the room life. She felt remorse that all this time Mrs Ramsay had not had the best.

She crammed the sheets into the drum, tossed in a capful of liquid and chose the ‘quick wash’ programme before retreating upstairs. In contrast to Jack she had made little impression on the bedroom. She slumped on the mattress and pulled Mrs Ramsay’s bedside pile on to her lap. A torn cutting was straining the spine of Our Mutual Friend. Stella had not noticed it when she came with Cashman. She took it out and smoothed it out on the mattress. It came from the Charbury District Advertiser. Unsettled by Jack’s abrupt departure and his work in the kitchen, Stella’s energy had entirely gone.

She caught the name Isabel Ramsay in the blurry newsprint and, sliding to the floor, her back to the bed, spread the newspaper over her knees. The entire page was devoted to the opening of Charbury’s refurbished village hall. Stella sighed at the idea that readers were prepared to plough their way through trivia such as an apple-bobbing contest and a lucky dip. Villagers had paid two pence to guess the number of marbles in a jar and Iris Rogers, the postmistress, won a Diana and Charles Wedding mug packed with delicious home-made chocolate truffles. There must have been a glut of mugs for they featured as a prize in most of the events including the cake-making competition judged by Mrs Isabel Ramsay (top right) of the White House. Mrs Ramsay had snipped the ribbon on the strike of noon after a speech by the leader of the Parish Council Geoffrey Markham. Blah blah. Stella was about to get up when she saw the picture accompanying the piece.

A middle-aged but elegant Mrs Ramsay with scissors was in the midst of a mass of faces – smiling, stern, laughing – all gazing at her. A church clock peeping out from behind her shoulder confirmed the time. A string of bunting slanted across the photograph beneath which a caption read: To the manor born: Mrs Ramsay launches Charbury’s new village hall.

Stella’s mind was racing. There was no date, the paper was torn and the opening paragraph splodged with a sticky substance like raspberry jam. Stella turned it over and found two half-page adverts: one for the sale of beds at a shop in Seaford, the other for a car dealership in Brighton: X-rated! Honeymoon in a brand-new X-reg Ford Escort. Drive off the forecourt now!

Terry had taught her registration plates. The date of the car sale was Saturday, 8 August, but gave no year. Registrations used to come in on 1 August. She counted on her fingers: her first car, a 1977 Datsun Sunny, was ‘S’, there was no ‘U’ so ‘X’ was 1981. She was being stupid: that explained the wedding mugs, the street party had celebrated the marriage of Lady Diana to Prince Charles on Wednesday, 29 July that year.

Two days after Kate was murdered.

Mrs Ramsay had made a comment on that final Friday morning to which Stella had paid no attention; rushing to her meeting in Chelsea, she had no patience to listen to how Mrs Ramsay was delayed by Geoffrey and his silly shoes: another of Mrs Ramsay’s batty remarks. She had been trying to tell Stella about that Monday in 1981.

Stella read the article properly, absorbing information that seconds ago she had dismissed as dull. Mrs Ramsay – wife of renowned local Professor Mark Ramsay – had opened Charbury’s village hall on Monday lunchtime. The Ramsays had lived at the White House since before Queen Victoria ascended the throne and had been opening buildings and fêtes in the village for generations. The family had funded a stained-glass window, the church roof and Charbury’s reading room, now defunct.

Councillor Geoffrey Markham had slipped on the steps and ripped his trousers and grazed his knee. This was linked to the royal couple because Prince Charles had slipped going into St Paul’s Cathedral for his wedding rehearsal.

Far below, the washing machine banged and thrummed its way to the climax of the spin cycle and was shaking to a stop when Stella reached the kitchen. She slung the sheets across two clothes horses in the children’s playroom; tomorrow she would fold them and stow them in the airing cupboard. Gina Cross would ask her to throw them away.

She was hungry and thought wistfully of Terry’s shepherd’s pies.

Terry.

The newspaper was where she had left it, on the rush matting beside the bed. She held it up to the light and studied the photograph: Mrs Ramsay wore a light-coloured dress and short jacket. Stella rushed back to the hall and tipped everything out of her rucksack.

The torn scrap she had extracted from the drain cover outside the Seaford Co-op had dried to the texture of brittle parchment. Despite the footprint across the picture she confirmed instantly that it was a photocopy of the article in the Charbury District Advertiser.

The house was back to normal: from the landing came the ticking of the grandfather clock and up in the sitting room the Swiss clock on the mantelpiece once again told the correct time. She faced Mrs Ramsay’s chair and heard the old lady’s voice chatting on, making no sense:

‘Delayed by a broken sole, truth be told… one does one’s best…’

Stella pulled herself together and punched in Jack’s number on her phone; it went to voicemail. She left a message to call her urgently, frustrated that his mother’s problems meant he did not even answer.

If Mrs Ramsay was in Sussex at midday on Monday, 27 July 1981, she could not, fifteen minutes earlier, have waved to Kate Rokesmith in St Peter’s Square.

There was only one explanation: Isabel Ramsay had lied to the police.