The House At Sea’s End

‘It doesn’t sound like Ruth. Oh…’ she turns the card over and laughs. ‘It’s from that mad warlock. Cathbad. He’s the one that works at the university, isn’t he?’

Nelson acknowledges that he is.

‘Well, he’s certainly taking an interest in Kate. Harry, you don’t think…?’

‘What?’

‘You don’t think he could be the baby’s father?’

Nelson looks at his wife who is now pouring boiling water into the teapot. She always makes a proper pot, just like his mum does. In her bare feet, her black trousers sweeping the floor, her blonde hair loose, Michelle looks beautiful and rather touching, like a child dressed in her mother’s clothes. But she’s not a child; she’s forty (something she is consciously trying to forget). Has she really never suspected about Ruth? But Nelson knows the answer to this. With an attractive woman’s unconscious vanity, Michelle would never think of Ruth – overweight, untidy Ruth who thinks more about her career than her waistline – as a potential rival. Michelle likes Ruth but she really hardly thinks of her as a woman. She’s one of Nelson’s colleagues, like Clough or Judy, not a sexual threat at all.

Michelle hands Nelson a cup. ‘Shall we go?’

‘Where?’

‘To the naming ceremony. Shall we go? Might be a giggle.’

‘I don’t know,’ says Nelson, taking his tea and heading back to the study. ‘I’m up to my neck in work at the moment.’

Despite repeated attempts, he doesn’t get through to Whitcliffe until the morning. He tells his boss that he needs to speak to Archie again, new evidence has emerged which makes him a very important witness, related to the Superintendent or not. But Nelson is too late. His grandfather, Whitcliffe informs him stiffly, died last night, just before midnight.

CHAPTER 10

‘Was he ill?’ asks Clough, rather indistinctly, through a mouthful of chocolate chip cookie.

‘He seemed fine when Johnson and I saw him yesterday,’ says Nelson, swerving to overtake a farm lorry.

‘It’s Johnson, that’s what it is,’ says Clough. ‘She’s a jinx. Remember last year?’

Nelson does, indeed, remember last year, when Judy interviewed a sick old woman with star tling, and tragic, results.

‘Maybe he had a heart condition, though,’ says Clough, licking crumbs from his fingers. ‘How old did you say he was?’

‘Eighty-six,’ says Nelson.

‘There you go, then,’ says Clough. ‘Old age, that’s what did it. Mystery solved.’

Was it really as simple as that, wonders Nelson, as he takes the turning for Greenfields Care Home. Old man dies. No mystery, just the expected end of a long life. But eighty-six is no great age these days. His own mother, Maureen, is more active at seventy-four than many people in their thirties. Every day you read about people living to a hundred, or even older. The Queen must be worn out writing all those telegrams. And Archie Whitcliffe, standing proudly in his neat cardigan and regimental tie, had certainly seemed the picture of elderly good health. No-one at the Home had mentioned a heart condition and Archie showed no tell-tale signs of heightened colour or shortened breath. He had been calm and measured, even intimidating. If I had, I wouldn’t tell you. We took a blood oath, you see.

But only a few hours after saying those words Archie was dead. He died in his sleep, apparently of a massive stroke. That can happen at any age, Nelson knows, but nevertheless the sequence of events troubles him. That is why he is on his way to the Home, despite Whitcliffe’s thinly veiled discouragement. ‘Might be more respectful to wait a few days.’ Well, Nelson will be respectful, but he knows from experience the value of getting immediate statements. He wants to speak to the last people who saw Archie Whitcliffe alive.

He would have preferred to take Judy rather than Clough but Judy, much to his disgust, has the day off. ‘It was booked ages ago,’ says Nelson’s PA, Leah. ‘I think she’s having a wedding dress fitting.’ Jesus wept. The station is becoming more like an episode of Friends every day (he knows about Friends from his daughters). So, as two officers are required and it is imperative to stick to the rules, he has to take Clough and pray that he doesn’t give vent to his much-aired views on euthanasia (‘after seventy it’s kinder’).

Clough, however, seems subdued by the surroundings, though when the last person to have seen Archie alive turns out to be an extremely pretty Filipino carer, he cheers up considerably.

The carer is called Maria and her eyes are red from crying. Nelson doesn’t know why but he is relieved to see this evidence of human emotion. The owner of the Home, a formidable woman called Dorothy, said all the right things earlier but he had got the impression that Archie’s death was primarily an inconvenience to be dealt with as speedily and efficiently as possible. She hadn’t been too pleased to see two policemen littering up her entrance hall, either.

‘Everything’s quite above board,’ she said. ‘The doctor’s signed the certificate.’