‘Clutching at Straws’

RUTH RENDELL

OFFICER: Chief Inspector Reginald Wexford

FORCE: Kingsmarkham Police, Sussex

TIME: 1979

CASES: ‘From Doon with Death’ (1964), ‘Some Lie and Some Die’ (1973),

‘Death Notes’ (1981), ‘Kissing The Gunner’s Daughter’ (1992) etc.

PROFILE: Comfortably married with two grown-up daughters, Chief Inspector

Reg Wexford is in late middle age and while undoubtedly dedicated to his job

maintains strong interests outside the Force. He is an intensely domesticated man

and close to his wife, Dora, who often provides a respite and ready ear when he

wants to escape from the ugliness of a murder enquiry. Described as rather

wrinkled and ungainly in appearance, and bulky despite regular bouts of dieting,

he has small eyes and curiously shaped, three-cornered ears. A highly moral

officer who clings to strong and decent values, Wexford is noted for his tolerance

and interest in people, their faults and weaknesses and what makes them commit

murder. The Chief Inspector is also never lost for a quotation to offer at any

appropriate moment-all drawn from the books which provide another of his offduty diversions. Apart from the support of his family, Wexford derives a great

deal from his strait-laced but determined assistant, Detective Inspector Michael

Burden, who is some twenty years his junior.

CREATOR: Ruth Rendell (b. 1930), who has made these two sensitive and

complex policemen popular with a huge worldwide audience over the past thirty

years, was a local newspaper journalist in West Essex before turning to crime

writing and becoming a bestselling author with almost her first book. By Ruth’s

own admission, Wexford is based on her father: an intellectual and highly moral

man who similarly delighted in quoting from literature with all the erudition of a

university don! Apart from the series of Kingsmarkham novels, she has also

published a number of other books under the pen name of Barbara Vine which

have been highly praised for their brilliant psychological insight. A number have

been adapted for television in tandem with stories about CI Wexford, who has

been continually played since 1990 by George Baker. ‘Clutching At Straws’

(1979) finds Wexford once again having to use all his powers of tolerance and

insight into human nature to cope with the nasty insinuations of local gossip as he

endeavours to get to the bottom of what initially seems like the perfectly natural

death of a very old lady.

THE STORY:

They looked shocked and affronted and somehow ashamed.

Above all, they looked old. Chief Inspector Wexford thought that

in the nature of things a woman of seventy ought to be an orphan,

ought to have been an orphan for twenty years. This one had been

an orphan for scarcely twenty days. Her husband, sitting opposite

her, pulling his wispy moustache, slowly and mechanically

shaking his head, seemed older than she, perhaps not so many

years the junior of his late mother-in-law. He wore a brown

cardigan with a small neat darn at one elbow and sheepskin

slippers, and when he spoke he snuffled. His wife kept saying she

couldn’t believe her ears, she couldn’t believe it, why were

people so wicked? Wexford didn’t answer that. He couldn’t,

though he had often wondered himself.

‘My mother died of a stroke,’ Mrs Betts said tremulously. ‘It was

on the death certificate, Dr Moss put it on the death certificate.’

Betts snuffled and wheezed. He reminded Wexford of an aged

rabbit, a rabbit with myxomatosis perhaps. It was partly the effect

of the brown woolly cardigan and the furry slippers, and partly

the moustache and the unshaven bristly chin. ‘She was ninetytwo,’ Betts said in his thick catarrhal voice. ‘Ninety-two. I reckon

you lot must have got bats in the belfry.’

‘I mean,’ said Mrs Betts, ‘are you saying Dr Moss was telling an

untruth? A doctor?’

‘Why don’t you ask him? We’re only ordinary people, the wife

and me, we’re not educated. Doctor said a cerebral haemorrhage’Betts stumbled a little over the words-‘and in plain language

that’s a stroke.

That’s what he said. Are you saying me or the wife gave Mother

a stroke? Are you saying that?’

‘I’m making no allegations, Mr Betts.’ Wexford felt

uncomfortable, wished himself anywhere but in this newly

decorated, paint-smartened house. ‘I am merely making inquiries

which information received obliges me to do.’

‘Gossip,’ said Mrs Betts bitterly. ‘This street’s a hotbed of gossip.

Pity they’ve got nothing better to do. Oh, I know what they’re

saying. Half of them turn up their noses and look the other way

when I pass them. All except Elsie Parrish, and that goes without

saying.’

‘She’s been a brick,’ said her husband. ‘A real brick is Elsie.’ He

stared at Wexford with a kind of timid outrage. ‘Haven’t you folk

got nothing better to do than listen to a bunch of old hens? What

about the real crime? What about the muggings and the breakins?’

Wexford sighed. But he went on doggedly questioning,

remembering what the nurse had said, what Dr Moss had said,

keeping in the forefront of his mind that motive which was so

much more than merely wanting an aged parent out of the way. If

he hadn’t been a policeman with a profound respect for the law

and for human life, he might have felt that these two, or one of

them, had been provoked beyond bearing to do murder.

One of them? Or both? Or neither? Ivy Wrangton had either died

an unnatural death or else there had been a series of coincidences

and unexplained contingencies which were nothing short of

incredible.

It was the nurse who had started it, coming to him three days

before. Sergeant Martin brought her to him because what she

alleged was so serious. Chief Inspector Wexford knew her by

sight, had seen her making her calls, and had sometimes

wondered how district nurses could endure their jobs, the

unremitting daily toil, the poor pay, the unsavoury tasks. Perhaps

she felt the same about his. She was a fair pretty woman, about

thirty-five, overweight, with big red hands, who always looked

tired. She looked tired now, though she hadn’t long been back

from two weeks’ holiday. She was in her summer uniform, blue

and white print dress, white apron, dark cardigan, small round

hat, and the stout shoes that served for summer and winter alike.

Nurse Radcliffe, Judith Radcliffe.

‘Mr Wexford?’ she said, ‘Chief Inspector Wexford? Yes. I

believe I used to look in on your daughter after she’d had a baby.

I was doing my midwifery then. I can’t remember her name but

the baby’s was Benjamin.’

Wexford smiled and told her his daughter’s name and wondered,

looking at the bland faded blue eyes and the stolid set of the neck

and shoulders, just how intelligent this woman was, how

perceptive and how truthful. He pulled up one of the little yellow

chairs for her. His office was cheerful and sunny-looking even

when the sun wasn’t shining, not much like a police station.

‘Please sit down, Nurse Radcliffe,’ he said. ‘Sergeant Martin’s

given me some idea what you’ve come about.’

‘I feel rather awful. You may think I’m making a mountain out of

a molehill.’

‘I shouldn’t worry about that. If I do I’ll tell you so and we’ll

forget it. No one else will know of it, it’ll be between us and these

four walls.’

At that she gave a short laugh. ‘Oh, dear, I’m afraid it’s gone

much further than that already. I’ve three patients in Castle Road

and each one of them mentioned it to me. That’s what Castle

Road gossip is at the moment, poor old Mrs Wrangton’s death.

And I just thought-well, you can’t have that much smoke without

fire, can you?’

Mountains and molehills, Wexford thought, smoke and fire. This

promised to be a real volcano. He said firmly, ‘I think you’d

better tell me all about it.’

She was rather pathetic. ‘It’s best you hear it from someone

professional.’ She planted her feet rather wide apart in front of

her and leant forward, her hands on her knees. ‘Mrs Wrangton

was a very old woman. She was ninety-two. But allowing for her

age, she was as fit as a fiddle, thin, strong, her heart as sound as a

bell. The day she died was the day I went away on holiday, but I

was in there the day before to give her her bath-I did that once a

week, she couldn’t get in and out of the bath on her own-and I

remember thinking she was fitter than I’d seen her for months.

You could have knocked me down with a feather when I came

back from holiday and heard she’d had a stroke the next day.’

‘When did you come back, Nurse Radcliffe?’

‘Last Friday, Friday the sixteenth. Well, it’s Thursday now and I

was back on my district on Monday and the first thing I heard

was that Mrs Wrangton was dead and suggestions she’d beenwell, helped on her way.’ She paused, worked something out on

her fingers. ‘I went away June second, that was the day she died,

and the funeral was June seventh.’

‘Funeral?’

‘Well, cremation,’ said Nurse Radcliffe, glancing up as Wexford

faintly sighed. ‘Dr Moss attended Mrs Wrangton. She was really

Dr Crocker’s patient, but he was on holiday too like me. Look,

Mr Wexford, I don’t know the details of what happened that day,

June second, not first-hand, only what the Castle Road ladies say.

D’you want to hear that?’

‘You haven’t yet told me what she died of.’

‘A stroke-according to Dr Moss.’

‘I’m not at all sure,’ said Wexford dryly, ‘how one sets about

giving someone a stroke. Would you give them a bad fright or

push an empty hypodermic into them or get them into a rage or

what?’

‘I really don’t know.’ Nurse Radcliffe looked a little put out and

as if she would like to say, had she dared, that to find this out was

Wexford’s job, not hers. She veered away from the actual death.

‘Mrs Wrangton and her daughter-that’s Mrs Betts, Mrs Doreen

Betts-they hated each other, they were like cat and dog. And I

don’t think Mr Betts had spoken to Mrs Wrangton for a year or

more. Considering the house was Mrs Wrangton’s and every stick

of furniture in it belonged to her, I used to think they were very

ungrateful. I never liked the way Mrs Betts spoke about her

mother, let alone the way she spoke to her, but I couldn’t say a

word. Mr Betts is retired now but he only had a very ordinary sort

of job in the Post Office and they lived rent-free in Mrs

Wrangton’s home. It’s a nice house, you know, late Victorian,

and they built to last in those days. I used to think it badly needed

doing up and it was a pity Mr Betts couldn’t get down to a bit of

painting, when Mrs Wrangton said to me she was having

decorators in, having the whole house done up inside and out-‘

Wexford cut short the flow of what seemed like irrelevancies.

‘Why were the Bettses and Mrs Wrangton on such bad terms?’

The look he got implied that seldom had Nurse Radcliffe come

across such depths of naivety. ‘It’s a sad fact, Mr Wexford, that

people can outstay their welcome in this world. To put it bluntly,

Mr and Mrs Betts couldn’t wait for something to happen to Mrs

Wrangton.’ Her voice lingered over the euphemism. ‘They hadn’t

been married all that long, you know,’ she said surprisingly.

‘Only five or six years. Mrs Betts was just a spinster before that,

living at home with mother. Mr Betts was a widower that she met

at the Over Sixties Club. Mrs Wrangton used to say she could

have done better for herself-seems funny to say that about a

woman of her age, doesn’t it?-and that Mr Betts was only after

the house and her money.’

‘You mean she said it to you?’

‘Well, not just to me, to anybody,’ said Nurse Radcliffe,

unconsciously blackening the dead woman to whom she showed

such conscious bias. ‘She really felt it, I think she bitterly

resented having him in the house.’

Wexford moved a little impatiently in his chair. ‘If we were to

investigate every death just because the victim happened to be on

bad terms with his or her relations-‘

‘Oh, no, no, it’s not just that, not at all. Mrs Betts sent for Dr

Moss on May twenty-third, just four days after Dr Crocker went

away. Why did she? There wasn’t anything wrong with Mrs

Wrangton. I was getting her dressed after her bath and I was

amazed to see Dr Moss. Mrs Wrangton said, I don’t know what

you’re doing here, I never asked my daughter to send for you.

Just because I overslept a bit this morning, she said. She was so

proud of her good health, poor dear, never had an illness in her

long life but the once and that was more an allergy than an

illness.

‘I can tell you why he was sent for, Mr Wexford. So that when

Mrs Wrangton died he’d be within his rights signing the death

certificate. He wasn’t her doctor, you see, but it’d be all right if

he’d attended her within the past two weeks, that’s the law.

They’re all saying Mrs Betts waited for Dr Crocker to go away,

she knew he’d never have accepted her mother’s death like that.

He’d have asked for a post mortem and then the fat would have

been in the fire.’

Nurse Radcliffe didn’t specify how, and Wexford thought better

of interrupting her again. ‘The last time I saw Mrs Wrangton,’

she went on, ‘was on June first. I had a word with the painter as I

was going out. There were two of them but this was a young boy,

about twenty. I asked him when they expected to finish, and he

said, sooner than they thought, next week, because Mrs Betts had

told them just to finish the kitchen and the outside and then to

leave it. I thought it was funny at the time, Mrs Wrangton hadn’t

said a word to me about it. In fact, what she’d said was, wouldn’t

it be nice when the bathroom walls were all tiled and I wouldn’t

have to worry about splashing when I bathed her.

‘Mr Wexford, it’s possible Mrs Betts stopped that work because

she knew her mother was going to die the next day. She

personally didn’t want the whole house redecorated and she

didn’t want to have to pay for it out of the money her mother left

her.’

‘Was there much money?’ Wexford asked.

‘I’d guess a few thousands in the bank, maybe three or four, and

there was the house, wasn’t there? I know she’d made a will, I

witnessed it. I and Dr Crocker. In the presence,’ said Nurse

Radcliffe sententiously, ‘of the legatee and of each other, which

is the law. But naturally I didn’t see what its provisions were. Mrs

Wrangton did tell me the house was to go to Mrs Betts and there

was a little something for her friend Elsie Parrish. Beyond that, I

couldn’t tell you. Mind you, Mrs Parrish won’t have it that there

could have been foul play. I met her in Castle Road and she said,

wasn’t it wicked the things people were saying?’

‘Who is Elsie Parrish?’

‘A very nice old friend of Mrs Wrangton’s. Nearly eighty but as

spry as a cricket. And that brings me to the worst thing. June

second, that Friday afternoon, Mr and Mrs Betts went off to a

whist drive. Mrs Parrish knew they were going. Mrs Betts had

promised to knock on her door before they went so that she could

come round and sit with Mrs Wrangton. She sometimes did that.

It wasn’t right to leave her alone, not at her age. Well, Mrs

Parrish waited in and Mrs Betts never came, so naturally she

thought the Bettses had changed their minds and hadn’t gone out.

But they had. They deliberately didn’t call to fetch Mrs Parrish.

They left Mrs Wrangton all alone but for that young painter, and

they’d never done such a thing before, not once.’

Wexford digested all this in silence, not liking it but not really

seeing it as a possible murder case. Nurse Radcliffe seemed to

have dried up. She slackened back in the chair with a sigh.

‘You mentioned an allergy?’

‘Oh, my goodness, that was about fifty years ago! Only some

kind of hayfever, I think. There’s asthma in the family. Mrs

Betts’s brother had asthma all his life, and Mrs Betts gets

urticaria-nettle rash, that is. They’re all connected, you know.’

He nodded. He had the impression she had a bombshell yet to

explode, or that the volcano was about to erupt. ‘If they weren’t

there,’ he said, ‘how could either of them possibly have hastened

Mrs Wrangton’s end?’

‘They’d been back two hours before she died. When they came

back she was in a coma, and they waited one hour and twenty

minutes before they phoned Dr Moss.’

‘Would you have signed that death certificate, then?’ said

Wexford to Dr Crocker. They were in the bungalow that housed

two consulting rooms and a waiting room. Dr Crocker’s evening

surgery was over, the last patient packed off with reassurance and

a prescription. Crocker gave Wexford rather a defiant look.

‘Of course I would. Why not? Mrs Wrangton was ninety-two. It’s

ridiculous of Radcliffe to say she didn’t expect her to die. You

expect everyone of ninety-two to die and pretty soon. I hope

nobody’s casting any aspersions on my extremely able partner.’

‘I’m not,’ said Wexford. ‘There’s nothing I’d like more than for

this to turn out a lot of hot air. But I do have to ask you, don’t I? I

do have to ask Jim Moss.’

Dr Crocker looked a little mollified. He and the Chief Inspector

were lifelong friends, they had been at school together, had lived

most of their lives in Kingsmarkham where Crocker had his

practice, and Wexford was head of the CID. But for a medical

practitioner, no amount of friendship will excuse hints that he or

one of his fellows have been negligent. And he prickled up again

when Wexford said, ‘How could he know it was a stroke without

a post mortem?’

‘God give me patience! He saw her before she was dead, didn’t

he? He got there about half an hour before she died. There are

unmistakable signs of stroke, Reg. An experienced medical man

couldn’t fail to recognise them. The patient is unconscious, the

face flushed, the pulse slow, the breathing stertorous with a

puffing of the cheeks during expiration. The only possible

confusion is with narcotic poisoning, but in narcotic poisoning

the pupils of the eyes are widely dilated whereas in apoplexy or

stroke they’re contracted. Does that satisfy you?’

‘Well, OK, it was a stroke, but aren’t I right in thinking a stroke

can be the consequence of something else-of an operation, for

instance, or in the case of a young woman, of childbirth, or in an

old person even of bedsores?’

‘Old Ivy Wrangton didn’t have bedsores and she hadn’t had a

baby for seventy years. She had a stroke because she was ninetytwo and her arteries were worn out. The days of our age,’ quoted

the doctor solemnly, ‘are threescore years and ten, and though

men be so strong that they come to fourscore years, yet is their

strength then but labour and sorrow. She’d reached fourscore

years and twelve and she was worn out.’

Dr Crocker had been pacing up and down, getting heated, but

now came to sit on the edge of his desk, a favourite perch of his.

‘A damn good thing she was cremated,’ he said. ‘That puts out of

court all the ghastliness of exhumation and cutting her up. She

was a remarkable old woman, you know, Reg. Tough as old

boots. She told me once about having her first baby. She was

eighteen, out scrubbing the doorstep when she had a labour pain.

Indoors she went, called her mother to fetch the midwife, and lay

down on her bed. The baby was born after two more pains, and

the daughter came even easier.’

‘Yes, I heard there’s been another child.’ Wexford saw the

absurdity of referring to someone who must necessarily be in his

seventies as a child. ‘Mrs Betts has a brother?’ he corrected

himself.

‘Had. He died last winter. He was an old man, Reg, and he’d

been bronchial all his life. Seventy-four is old till you start

comparing it with Mrs Wrangton’s age. She was so proud of her

good health, boasted about never being ill. I used to drop in every

three months or so as a matter of routine, and when I’d ask her

how she was she’d say, I’m fine, Doctor, I’m in the pink.’

‘But I understand she’d had some illness connected with an

allergy?’ Wexford was clutching at straws. ‘Nurse Radcliffe told

me about it. I’ve been wondering if anything to do with that could

have contributed to-?’

‘Of course not,’ the doctor cut in. ‘How could it? That was when

she was middle-aged and the so-called illness was an asthmatic

attack with some swelling of the eyes and a bit of gastric trouble.

I fancy she used to exaggerate it the way healthy people do when

they’re talking about the one little bit of illness they’ve ever had...

Oh, here’s Jim, I thought I’d heard his last patient leave.’

Dr Moss, small, dark, and trim, came in from the corridor

between the consulting rooms. He gave Wexford the very wide

smile that showed thirty-two large white teeth which the Chief

Inspector had never been able precisely to define as false, as

crowns, or simply as his own. The teeth were rather too big for

Dr Moss’s face which was small and smooth and lightly tanned.

His small black eyes didn’t smile at all.

‘Enter the villainous medico,’ he said, ‘who is notoriously in

cahoots with greedy legatees and paranoid Post Office clerks.

What evidence can I show you? The number of my Swiss bank

account? Or shall I produce the hammer, a crafty tap from which

ensured an immediate subarachnoid haemorrhage?’

It is very difficult to counter this kind of facetiousness. Wexford

knew he would only get more fatuous pleasantries, heavy irony,

outrageous confessions, if he attempted to rebut any of it or if he

were to assure Moss that this wasn’t what he had meant at all. He

smiled stiffly, tapping his foot against the leg of Crocker’s desk,

while Dr Moss elaborated on his fantasy of himself as corrupt, a

kind of latterday William Palmer, poison-bottle-happy and ever

ready with his hypodermic to gratify the impatient next-of-kin.

At length, unable to bear any more of it, Wexford cut across the

seemingly interminable harangue and said to Crocker, ‘You

witnessed her will, I understand?’

‘I and that busybody Radcliffe, that’s right. If you want to know

what’s in it, the house and three thousand pounds go to Doreen

Betts, and the residue to another patient of mine, a Mrs Parrish.

Residue would have been about fifteen hundred at that time, Mrs

Wrangton told me, but considering her money was in a building

society and she managed to save out of her pension and her

annuity, I imagine it’ll be a good deal more by now.’

Wexford nodded. By now Dr Moss had dried up, having run out,

presumably, of subject matter and witticisms. His teeth radiated

his face like lamps, and when his mouth was closed he looked

rather ill-tempered and sinister. Wexford decided to try the direct

and simple approach. He apologised.

‘I’d no intention of suggesting you’d been negligent, Dr Moss.

But put yourself in my position-‘

‘Impossible!’

‘Very well. Let me put it this way. Try to understand that in my

position I had no choice but to make inquiries.’

‘Mrs Betts might try an action for slander. She can count on my

support. The Bettses had neither the opportunity nor the motive to

do violence to Mrs Wrangton, but a bunch of tongue-clacking old

witches are allowed to take their characters away just the same.’

‘Motive,’ said Wexford gently, ‘I’m afraid they did have, the

straightforward one of getting rid of Mrs Wrangton who had

become an encumbrance to them, and of inheriting her house.’

‘Nonsense.’ Momentarily the teeth showed in a white blaze.

‘They were going to get rid of her in any case. They would have

had the house to themselves in any case. Mrs Wrangton was

going into a nursing home.’ He paused, enjoying the effect of

what he had said. For the rest of her days,’ he added with a touch

of drama.

Dr Crocker shifted off the edge of the desk. ‘I never knew that.’

‘No? Well, it was you told her about a new nursing home opening

in Stowerton, or so she said. She told me all about it that day Mrs

Betts called me when you’d gone away. Some time at the end of

May, it was. She was having the house decorated for her daughter

and son-in-law prior to her leaving.’

‘Did she tell you that too?’ asked Wexford.

‘No, but it was obvious. I can tell you exactly what happened

during that visit if it makes you happy. That interfering harpy,

Radcliffe, had just been bathing her, and when she’d dressed her

she left. Thank God. I’d never met Mrs Wrangton before. There

was nothing wrong with her, bar extreme old age and her blood

pressure up a bit, and I was rather narked that Mrs Betts had

called me out. Mrs Wrangton said her daughter got nervous when

she slept late in the mornings as she’d done that day and the day

before. Wasn’t to be wondered at, she said, considering she’d

been sitting up in bed watching the World Cup on television till

all hours. Only Mrs Betts and her husband didn’t know that and I

wasn’t to tell them. Well, we had a conspiratorial laugh over that,

I liked her, she was a game old dear, and then she started talking

about the nursing home-what’s it called? Springfield?

Sunnyside?’

‘Summerland,’ said Dr Crocker.

‘Cost you a lot, that will, I said, and she said she’d got a good bit

coming in which would die with her anyway. I assumed she

meant an annuity. We talked for about five minutes and I got the

impression she’d been tossing around this nursing home idea for

months. I asked her what her daughter thought and she said...’

‘Yes?’ prompted Wexford.

‘Oh my God, people like you make one see sinister nuances in

the most innocent remarks. It’s just that she said, “You’d reckon

Doreen’d be only too glad to see the back of me, wouldn’t you?”

I mean, it rather implied she wouldn’t be glad. I don’t know what

she was inferring and I didn’t ask. But you can rest assured Mrs

Betts had no motive for killing her mother. Leaving sentiment

apart, it was all the same to her whether her mother were alive or

dead. The Bettses would still have got the house and after her

death Mrs Wrangton’s capital. The next time I saw her she was

unconscious, she was dying. She did die, at seven-thirty, on June

second.’

Both Wexford’s parents had died before he was forty. His wife’s

mother had been dead twenty years, her father fifteen. None of

these people had been beyond their seventies, so therefore

Wexford had no personal experience of the geriatric problem. It

seemed to him that for a woman like Mrs Wrangton, to end one’s

days in a nursing home with companionship and good nursing

and in pleasant surroundings was not so bad a fate. And an

obvious blessing to the daughter and son-in-law whose affection

for a parent might be renewed when they only encountered her

for an hour or so a week.

No, Doreen Betts and her husband had no motive for helping Mrs

Wrangton out of this world, for by retiring to Summerland she

wouldn’t even make inroads into that three or four thousand

pounds of capital. Her pension and her annuity would cover the

fees. Wexford wondered what those fees would be, and

remembered vaguely from a few years back hearing a figure of

£20 a week mentioned in a similar connection. Somebody’s old

aunt, some friend of his wife’s. You’d have to allow for inflation,

of course, but surely it would cost no more than £30 week now.

With the retirement pension at £18 and the annuity worth, say,

another £20, Mrs Wrangton could amply have afforded

Summerland.

But she had died first-of natural causes. It no longer mattered that

she and Harry Betts hadn’t been on speaking terms, that no one

had fetched Elsie Parrish, that Dr Moss had been called out to

visit a healthy woman, that Mrs Betts had given orders to stop the

painting. There was no motive. Eventually the tongues would

cease to wag, Mrs Wrangton’s will would be proved, and the

Bettses settle down to enjoy the rest of their lives in their newly

decorated home.

Wexford put it out of his head, apart from wondering whether he

should visit Castle Road and drop a word of warning to the

gossips. Immediately he saw how impossible this would be. The

slander would be denied, and besides, he hardly saw his function

as extending so far. No, let it die a natural death-as Mrs Wrangton

had.

On Monday morning he was having breakfast, his wife reading a

letter just arrived from her sister in Wales.

‘Frances says Bill’s mother has got to go into a nursing home at

last.’ Bill was Wexford’s brother-in-law. ‘It’s either that or Fran

having her, which really isn’t on.’

Wexford from behind his newspaper, made noises indicative of

sympathy with and support for Frances. He was reading a

verbatim report of the trial of some bank robbers.

‘Ninety pounds a week,’ said Dora.

‘What did you say?’

‘I was talking to myself, dear. You read your paper.’

‘Did you say ninety pounds a week?’

‘That’s right. For the nursing home. I shouldn’t think Bill and

Fran could stand that for long. It’s getting on for five thousand a

year.’

‘But...’ Wexford almost stammered, ‘I thought a couple of years

ago you said it was twenty a week for what’s-her-name,

Rosemary’s aunt, wherever they put her?’

‘Darling,’ said Dora gently, ‘first of all, that wasn’t a couple of

years ago, it was at least twelve years ago. And secondly, haven’t

you ever heard of the rising cost of living?’

An hour later he was in the matron’s office of Summerland,

having made no attempt to disguise who he was, but presenting

himself as there to inquire about a prospective home for an aged

relative of his wife’s. Aunt Lillian. Such a woman had actually

existed, perhaps still did exist in the remote Westmorland village

from which the Wexfords had last heard of her in a letter dated

1959.

The matron was an Irishwoman, Mrs Corrigan. She seemed about

the same age as Nurse Radcliffe. At her knee stood a boy of

perhaps six, and at her feet, playing with a toy tractor, was

another of three. Outside the window three little girls were trying

to coax a black cat from its refuge under a car. You might have

thought this was a children’s home but for the presence of half a

dozen old women sitting on the lawn in a half circle, dozing,

muttering to themselves, or just staring. The grounds were full of

flowers, mauve and white lilac everywhere, roses coming out.

From behind a hedge came the sound of a lawnmower, plied

perhaps by the philoprogenitive Mr Corrigan.

‘Our fees are ninety- five pounds a week, Mr Wexford,’ said the

matron. ‘And with the extra for laundry and dry-cleaning, sure

and you might say five thousand a year for a good round figure.’

‘I see.’

‘The ladies only have to share a room with one other lady. We

bathe them once a week and change their clothes once a week.

And if you could please see to it your aunt only had synthetic

fabrics, if you know what I mean, for the lot’s popped in the

washing machine all together. We like the fee a month in advance

and paid on a banker’s order, if you please.’

‘I’m afraid I don’t please,’ said Wexford. ‘Your charges are more

than I expected. I shall have to make other arrangements.’

‘Then there’s no more to be said,’ said Mrs Corrigan with a smile

nearly equalling the candlepower of Dr Moss’s.

‘Just out of curiosity, Mrs Corrigan, how do your-er, guests meet

your fees? Five thousand a year is more than most incomes would

be equal to.’

‘Sure and aren’t they widows, Mr Wexford, and didn’t their

husbands leave them their houses? Mostly the ladies sell their

houses, and with prices the way they are today that’s enough to

keep them in Summerland for four years or five.’

Mrs Wrangton had intended to sell her house, and she was having

it redecorated inside and out in order to get a better price. She had

intended to sell the roof over the Bettses’ head-no wonder she

had implied to Dr Moss that Doreen Betts would be sorry to see

the back of her. What a woman? What malevolence at ninetytwo! And who could have said she wouldn’t have been within her

moral as well as her legal rights to sell? It was her house. Doreen

Wrangton might long ago have found a home of her own, ought

perhaps to have done so, and as Doreen Betts she might have

expected her husband to provide one for her. It is universally

admitted to be wrong to anticipate stepping into dead men’s

shoes. And yet what a monstrous revenge to have on an

uncongenial son-in-law, a not always cooperative daughter. There

was a subtlety about it that evoked Wexford’s admiration nearly

as much as its cruelty aroused his disgust. It was a motive all

right, and a strong one.

So at last he had found himself in Castle Road, in the Bettses’

living-room, confronting an elderly orphan and her husband. The

room was papered in a silvery oyster colour, the woodwork ivory.

He was sure that that door had never previously sported a shade

lighter than chocolate brown, just as the hall walls had, until their

recent coat of magnolia, been gloomily clothed in dark Lincrusta.

When the two of them had protested bitterly about the gossip and

the apparent inability of the police to get their priorities right,

Doreen Betts agreed without too much mutiny to answer

Wexford’s questions. To the first one she reacted passionately.

‘Mother would never have done it. I know she wouldn’t, it was

all bluff with her. Even Mother wouldn’t have been that cruel.’

Her husband pulled his moustache, slowly shuffling his slippered

feet back and forth. His angry excitement had resulted in a drop

of water appearing on the end of his nose. It hung there,

trembling.

Doreen Betts said, ‘I knew she didn’t mean to go ahead with it

when I said, “Can I tell the builders to leave the upstairs?” And

she said, “I daresay.” That’s what she said, “I daresay,” she said,

“I’m not bothered either way.” Of course she wouldn’t have gone

ahead with it. You don’t even get a room to yourself in that place.

Ninety-five pounds a week! They’ll put you in a bed at eight

o’clock, Mother, I said, so don’t think they’ll let you sit up till all

hours watching TV.’

‘Quite right,’ said Harry Betts ambiguously.

‘Why, if we’d known Mother meant to do a thing like that, we

could have lived in Harry’s flat when we got married. He had a

nice little flat over the freezer centre in the High Street. It wasn’t

just one room like Mother went about saying, it was a proper flat,

wasn’t it, Harry? What would we have done if Mother had done a

thing like that? We’d have had nowhere.’ Her husband’s headshaking, the trembling droplet, the fidgety feet, seemed suddenly

to unnerve her. She said to him, distress in her voice, ‘I’m going

to have a little talk to the officer on my own, dear.’

Wexford followed her into the room where Mrs Wrangton had

slept for the last years of her life. It was on the ground floor at the

back, presumably originally designated as a dining-room, with a

pair of windows looking out on to a narrow concrete terrace and a

very long, very narrow garden. No redecorations had been carried

out here. The walls were papered in a pattern of faded

nasturtiums, the woodwork grained to look like walnut. Mrs

Wrangton’s double bed was still there, the mattress uncovered, a

pile of folded blankets on top of it. There was a television set in

this room as well as in the front room, and it had been placed so

that the occupant of the bed could watch it.

‘Mother came to sleep down here a few years back,’ said Mrs

Betts. ‘There’s a toilet just down the passage. She couldn’t

manage the stairs any more except when nurse helped her.’ She

sat on the edge of the mattress, nervously fingering a cage-like

object of metal bars. ‘I’ll have to see about her walking frame

going back, I’ll have to get on to the welfare people.’ Her hands

resting on it, she said dolefully, ‘Mother hated Harry. She always

said he wasn’t good enough for me. She did everything she could

to stop me marrying him.’ Mrs Betts’s voice took on a rebellious

girlish note. ‘I think it’s awful having to ask your mother’s

consent to marry when you’re sixty-five, don’t you?’

At any rate, he thought, she had gone ahead without receiving it.

He looked wonderingly at this grey wisp of a woman. Seventy

years old, who talked as if she were a fairy princess.

‘You see, she talked for years of changing her will and leaving

the house to my brother. It was after he died that the nursinghome business started. She quarrelled outright with Harry. Elsie

Parrish was in here and Mother accused Harry in front of her of

only marrying me to get this place. Harry never spoke a word to

Mother again, and quite right too. I said to Mother, “You’re a

wicked woman, you promised me years ago I’d have this house

and now you’re going back on your word. Cheats never prosper,”

I said.’

The daughter had inherited the mother’s tongue. Wexford could

imagine the altercations, overheard by visitors, by neighbours,

which had contributed to the gossip. He turned to look at the

framed photograph on a mahogany tallboy. A wedding picture,

circa 1903. The bride was seated, lilies in her lap under a bolster

of a bosom hung with lace and pearls. The bridegroom stood

behind her, frock coat, black handlebar moustache. Ivy Wrangton

must have been seventeen, Wexford calculated, her face plain,

puffy, young, her figure modishly pouter pigeon-like, her hair in

that most unflattering of fashions, the cottage loaf. She had been

rather plump then, but thin, according to Nurse Radcliffe, in old

age.

Wexford said quietly, apparently idly, ‘Mrs Betts, why did you

send for Dr Moss on May twenty-third? Your mother wasn’t ill.

She hadn’t complained of feeling ill.’

She held the walking frame, pushing it backwards and forwards.

‘Why shouldn’t I? Dr Crocker was away. Elsie came in at nine

and Mother was still asleep, and Elsie said it wasn’t right the

amount she slept. We couldn’t wake her, though we shook her,

we were so worried. I wasn’t to know she’d get up as fit as a flea

ten minutes after I’d phoned for him, was I?’

‘Tell me about the day your mother died, Mrs Betts, Friday, June

second,’ he said, and it occurred to him that no one had yet told

him anything much about that day.

‘Well...’ Her mouth trembled and she said quickly, ‘You don’t

think Harry did anything to Mother, do you? He wouldn’t, I

swear he wouldn’t.’

‘Tell me about that Friday.’

She made an effort to control herself, clenching her hands on the

metal bar. ‘We wanted to go to a whist drive. Elsie came round in

the morning and I said, if we went out would she sit with Mother,

and she said, OK, of course she would if I’d just give her a knock

before we left.’ Mrs Betts sighed and her voice steadied. ‘Elsie

lives two doors down. She and Mother had been pals for years

and she always came to sit with her when we went out. Though

it’s a lie’-her old eyes flashed like young ones-‘to say we were

always out. Once in a blue moon we went out.’

Wexford’s eyes went from the pudding-faced girl in the

photograph, her mouth smug and proud even then, to the long

strip of turfed-over garden-why did he feel Betts had done that

turfing, had uprooted flowers?-and back to the nervous little

woman on the mattress edge.

‘I gave Mother her lunch and she was sitting in the front room,

doing a bit of knitting. I popped down to Elsie’s and rang her bell

but she can’t have heard it, she didn’t come to the door. I rang

and rang and I thought, well, she’s gone out, she’s forgotten and

that’s that. But Harry said, Why not go out just the same? The

painter was there, he was only a bit of a boy, twenty, twenty-two,

but he and Mother got on a treat, a sight better than she and I ever

did, I can tell you. So the upshot was, we went off and left her

here with the painter-what was he called? Ray? Rafe? No, Roy,

that was it, Roy-with Roy doing the hall walls. She was OK, fit as

a flea. It was a nice day, so I left all the windows open because

that paint did smell. I’ll never forget the way she spoke to me

before I left. That was the last thing she ever said to me.

“Doreen,” she said, “you ought to be lucky at cards. You haven’t

been very lucky in love.” And she laughed and I’ll swear Roy

was laughing too.’

You’re building an edifice of motives for yourself, Mrs Betts,

reflected Wexford. ‘Go on,’ was all he said.

She moved directly into hearsay evidence, but Wexford didn’t

stop her. ‘Roy closed the door to keep the smell out, but he

popped in a few times to see if Mother was all right. They had a

bit of a chat, he said, and he offered to make her a cup of tea but

she didn’t want any. Then about half-past three Mother said she’d

got a headache-that was the onset of the stroke but she didn’t

know that, she put it down to the paint-and would he fetch her a

couple of her phenacetins from the bathroom. So he did and he

got her a glass of water and she said she’d try and have a sleep in

her chair. Anyway, the next thing he knew she was out in the hall

walking with her walking frame, going to have a lay-down on her

bed, she said.

‘Well, Harry and me came in at five-thirty and Roy was just

packing up. He said Mother was asleep in her bed, and I just put

my head round the door to check. She’d drawn the curtains.’ Mrs

Betts paused, then burst out, ‘To tell you the honest truth, I didn’t

look too closely, I thought, well thank God for half an hour’s

peace to have a cup of tea in before she starts picking on Harry. It

was just about a quarter to seven, ten to seven, before I went in

again. I could tell there was something going on, the way she was

breathing, sort of puffing out her cheeks, and red in the face.

There was blood on her lips.’ She looked fearfully at Wexford,

looked him in the eye for the first time. ‘I wiped that clean before

I called the doctor, I didn’t want him seeing that.

‘He came straight away. I thought maybe he’d call an ambulance

but he didn’t. He said she’d had a stroke and when people had

strokes they shouldn’t be moved. We stayed with her-well, doctor

and I stayed with her-but she passed away just before half-past.’

Wexford nodded. Something about what she had said was wrong.

He felt it. It wasn’t that she had told a lie, though she might well

have done so, but something else, something that rang

incongruously in that otherwise commonplace narrative, some

esoteric term in place of a household word... He was checking

back, almost there, when a footstep sounded in the hall, the door

opened, and a face appeared round it.

‘There you are Doreen!’ said the face, which was very pretty

considering its age. ‘I was just on my way to-oh, I beg your

pardon, I’m intruding.’

That’s all right,’ said Mrs Betts. ‘You can come in, Elsie.’ She

looked blankly at Wexford, her eyes once more old and tired.

‘This is Mrs Parrish.’

Elsie Parrish, Wexford decided, looked exactly as an old lady

should. She had a powdery, violet-cashew, creamy smell, which

might equally well have been associated with a very clean baby.

Her legs were neat and shapely in grey stockings, her hands in

white gloves with tiny darns at the fingertips, her coat silky navy

blue over blue flowery pleats, and her face withered rose leaves

with rouge on. The bouffant mass of silver hair was so profuse

that from a distance it might have been taken for a white silk

turban. She and Wexford walked down the street together

towards the shops, Elsie Parrish swinging a pink nylon string bag.

‘It’s wicked the way they gossip. You can’t understand how

people can be so evil minded. You’ll notice how none of them is

able to say how Doreen gave Ivy a stroke when she wasn’t even

there.’ Mrs Parrish gave a dry satirical laugh. ‘Perhaps they think

she bribed that poor young man, the painter, to give Ivy a fright. I

remember my mother saying that fright could give you a strokean apoplexy, she called it-or too much excitement or drinking too

much or overeating even.’

To his surprise, because this isn’t what old ladies of elegant

appearance usually do or perhaps should do, she opened her

handbag, took out a packet of cigarettes, and put one between her

lips. He shook his head when the packet was offered to him,

watched her light the cigarette with a match from a matchbook

with a black shiny cover. She puffed delicately. He didn’t think

he had ever before seen someone smoke a cigarette while wearing

white gloves.

He said, ‘Why didn’t you go round and sit with Mrs Wrangton,

that afternoon, Mrs Parrish?’

The day she died, you mean?’

‘Yes.’ Wexford had the impression she didn’t want to answer, she

didn’t want to suggest anything against Doreen Betts. She spoke

with care.

‘It’s quite true I’m getting rather deaf.’ He hadn’t noticed it. She

had heard everything he said, in the open noisy street, and he

hadn’t raised his voice. ‘I don’t always hear the bell. Doreen must

have rung and I didn’t hear. That’s the only explanation.’

Was it?

‘I thought she and Harry had changed their minds about going

out.’ Elsie Parrish put the cigarette to her lips between thumb and

forefinger. ‘I’d give a lot,’ she said, ‘to be able to go back in time.

I wouldn’t hesitate this time, I’d go round and check on Ivy

whether Doreen had asked me or not.’

‘Probably your presence would have made no difference,’ he

said, and then, ‘Mrs Betts had told the builders not to do any

work upstairs-‘

She interrupted him. ‘Maybe it didn’t need it. I’ve never been

upstairs in Ivy’s house, so I couldn’t say. Besides, when she’d

sold it the new people might have had their own decorating ideas,

mightn’t they?’

They were standing still now on the street corner, he about to go

in one direction, she in the other. She dropped the cigarette end,

stamped it out over-thoroughly with a high heel. From her

handbag she took a small lacy handkerchief and dabbed her

nostrils with it. The impression was that the tears, though near,

would be restrained. ‘She left me two thousand pounds. Dear Ivy,

she was so kind and generous. I knew I was to have something,

but I didn’t dream as much as that.” Elsie Parrish smiled, a

watery, girlish, rueful smile, but still he was totally unprepared

for what she said next. ‘I’m going to buy a car.’

His eyebrows went up.

‘I’ve kept my licence going. I haven’t driven since my husband

died and that’s twenty-two years ago. I had to sell our car and

I’ve always longed and longed for another.’ She really looked as

if she had, a yearning expression crumpling the roses still further.

‘I’m going to have my own dear little car!’ She was on the verge

of executing a dance on the pavement. ‘And dear Ivy made that

possible!’ Anxiously: ‘You don’t think I’m too old to drive?’

Wexford did, but he only said that this kind of judgment wasn’t

really within his province. She nodded, smiled again, then

whisked off surprisingly fast into the corner supermarket.

Wexford moved more slowly and thoughtfully away, his eyes

down. It was because he was looking down that he saw the

matchbook, and then he remembered fancying he had seen her

drop something when she got out that handkerchief.

She wasn’t in the shop. She must have left by the other exit into

the High Street and now she was nowhere to be seen. Deciding

that matchbooks were in the category of objects which no one

much minds losing, Wexford dropped it into his pocket and

forgot it.

‘You want Roy?’

‘That’s right,’ said Wexford.

The foreman, storekeeper, proprietor, whatever he was, didn’t ask

why. ‘You’ll find him,’ he said, ‘doing the Snowcem on them

flats up the Sewingbury Road.’

Wexford drove up there. Roy was a gigantic youth, broad

shouldered, heavily muscled, with an aureole of thick curly fair

hair. He came down the ladder and said he’d just been about to

knock off for his lea break, anyway. There was a truckers’ cafe

conveniently near. Roy lit a cigarette and put his elbows on the

table.

‘I never knew a thing about it till I turned up there the next day.’

‘But surely when Mrs Betts came in the afternoon before, she

asked you how her mother had been?’

‘Sure she did. And I said the truth, that the old lady had got a

headache and asked for something for it and I’d given it her, and

then she’d felt tired and gone in for a lay-down. But there was no

sign she was dying. My God, that’d never have crossed my

mind.’

A headache, Wexford reflected, was often one of the premonitory

signs of cerebral haemorrhage. Roy seemed to read his thoughts,

for he said quickly, ‘She’d had a good many headaches while I

was in the place working. Them non-drip plastic-based paints

have got a bit of a smell to them, used to turn me up at first. I

mean, you don’t want to get thinking there was anything out of

the way in her having an aspirin and laying down, guv. That had

happened two or three times while I was there. And she’d shovel

them aspirins down, swallow four as soon as look at you.’

Wexford said, ‘Tell me about that afternoon. Did anyone come

into the house between the time Mr and Mrs Betts went out and

the time they got back?’

Roy shook his head. ‘Definitely not, and I’d have known. I was

working on the hall, see? The front door was wide open on

account of the smell. Nobody could have come in there without

me seeing, could they? The other old girl-Mrs Betts, that is-she

locked the back door before she went out and I hadn’t no call to

unlock it. What else d’you want to know, guv?’

‘Exactly what happened, what you and Mrs Wrangton talked

about, the lot.’

Roy swigged his tea, then lit a fresh cigarette from the stub of the

last. ‘I got on OK with her, you know. I reckon she reminded me

of my gran. It’s a funny thing, but everyone got on OK with her

bar her own daughter and the old man. Funny old git, isn’t he?

Gave me the creeps. Well, to what you’re asking, I don’t know

that we talked much. I was painting, you see, and the door to the

front room was shut. I looked in a couple of times. She was

sitting there knitting, watching cricket on the TV. I do remember

she said I was making a nice job of the house and it was a pity

she wouldn’t be there to enjoy it. Well, I thought she meant she’d

be dead, you know the way they talk, and I said, “Now come on,

Mrs Wrangton, you mustn’t talk like that.” That made her laugh.

She said, “I don’t mean that, you naughty boy, I mean I’m going

into a nursing home and I’ve got to sell the place, didn’t you

know?” No, I said, I didn’t, but I reckoned it’d fetch a packet, big

old house like that, twenty thousand at least, I said, and she said

she hoped so.’

Wexford nodded. So Mrs Wrangton had intended to go ahead

with her plans, and Doreen Betts’s denial had either been

purposeful lying to demolish her motive or a post mortem

whitewashing of her mother’s character. For it had certainly been

black hearted enough, he thought, quite an act it had been, that of

deliberately turning your own daughter and her husband out of

their home.

He looked back to Roy. ‘You offered to make her some tea?’

‘Yeah, well, the daughter, Mrs Betts, said to make myself and her

a cup of tea if she wanted, but she didn’t want. She asked me to

turn off the TV and then she said she’d got a headache and would

I go up to the bathroom cupboard and get her aspirins? Well, I’d

seen Mrs Betts do it often enough, though I’d never actually-‘

‘You’re sure she said aspirins?’ Quite suddenly Wexford knew

what it was that had seemed incongruous to him in Mrs Betts’s

description of her mother’s last afternoon of life. Doreen Betts

had specified phenacetin instead of the common household

remedy. ‘You’re sure she used that word?’ he said.

Roy pursed his mouth. ‘Well, now you mention it, I’m not sure. I

reckon what she said was, my tablets or the tablets for my head,

something like that. You just do say aspirins, don’t you, like

naturally? I mean, that’s what everybody takes. Anyway, I

brought them down, the bottle, and gave them to her with a glass

of water, and she says she’s going to have a bit of shut-eye in her

chair. But the next thing I knew she was coming out, leaning on

that walking frame the welfare people give her. “I took four,

Roy,” she says, “but my head’s that bad, I reckon it’s worse, and

I’m ever so giddy.”

‘Well, I didn’t think much of that, they’re all giddy at that age,

aren’t they? I remember my gran. She says she’s got ringing in

her ears, so I said, “I’ll help you into your room, shall I?” And I

sort of give her my arm and helped her in and she lay down on

the bed with all her things on and shut her eyes. The light was

glaring, so I pulled the curtains over and then I went back to my

painting. I never heard another thing till Mrs Betts and the old

boy come in at half-past five...’

Wexford closed Practical Forensic Medicine by Francis E.

Camps and J. M. Cameron and made his way back to Castle

Road. He had decided to discuss the matter no further with Mrs

Betts. The presence of her husband, shuffling about almost

silently in his furry slippers, his feet like the paws of an old

hibernating animal, rather unnerved him. She made no demur at

his proposal to remove from the bathroom cabinet the

prescription bottle of painkilling tablets labelled: Mrs I.

Wrangton, Phenacetin.

Evening surgery had only just begun. Wexford went home for his

dinner, having sent two items away for fingerprint analysis. By

eight-thirty he was back in the surgery building and again Dr

Crocker had finished first. He groaned when he saw Wexford.

‘What is it now, Reg?’

‘Why did you prescribe phenacetin for Mrs Wrangton?’

‘Because I thought it suitable for her, of course. She was allergic

to aspirin.’

Wrxrord looked despairingly at his friend. ‘Now hetells me. I’d

rather gathered that. I mean, today I caught on, but you might

have told me.’

‘For God’s sake! You knew. You said to me, “Nurse Radcliffe

told me all about it.” Those were your words. You said-‘

‘I thought it was asthma.’

Crocker sat on the edge of his desk. ‘Look, Reg, we’ve both been

barking up the wrong trees. There was asthma in Mrs Wrangton’s

family. Mrs Betts has nettle rash, her brother was a chronic

asthmatic. People with asthma or a family history of asthma are

sometimes allergic to acetylsalicylic acid or aspirin. In fact, about

ten per cent of such people are thought to have the allergy. One of

the reactions of the hypersensitive person to aspirin is an

asthmatic attack. That’s what Mrs Wrangton had when she was in

her forties, that and haematemesis. Which means,’ he added

kindly for the layman, ‘bringing up blood from an internal

haemorrhage.’

‘OK, I’m not bone ignorant,’ “Wexford snapped, ‘and I’ve been

reading up hypersensitivity to acetylsalicylic acid-‘

‘Mrs Wrangton couldn’t have had aspirin poisoning,’ said the

doctor quickly. ‘There were never any aspirins in the house. Mrs

Betts was strict about that.’

They were interrupted by the arrival of smiling Dr Moss.

Wexford wheeled round on him.

‘What would you expect to be the result of-let me see-one point

two grams of acetylsalicylic acid on a woman of ninety-two who

was hypersensitive to the drug?’

Moss looked at him warily. ‘I take it this is academic?’ Wexford

didn’t answer. ‘Well, it would depend on the degree of

hypersensitivity. Nausea, maybe, diarrhoea, dizziness, tinnitusthat’s ringing in the ears-breathing difficulties, gastric

haemorrhages, oedema of gastric mucosa, possible rupture of the

oesophagus. In a person of that age, consequent upon such a

shock and localised haemorrhages, I suppose a brain

haemorrhage-‘ He stopped, realising what he had said.

‘Thanks very much,’ said Wexford. ‘I think you’ve more or less

described what happened to Mrs Wrangton on June second after

she’d taken four three-hundred-milligram tablets of aspirin.’

Dr Moss was looking stunned. He looked as if he would never

smile again.

Wexford passed on an envelope to Dr Crocker.

‘Those are aspirins?’

Crocker looked at them, touched one to his tongue. ‘I suppose

so, but-‘

‘I’ve sent the rest away to be analysed. To be certain. There were

fifty-six in the bottle.’

‘Reg, it’s unthinkable there could have been a mistake on the part

of the pharmacist, but just supposing by a one-in-a-million

chance there was, she couldn’t have taken forty-four tablets of

aspirin. Not even over the months she couldn’t.’

‘You’re being a bit slow,’ said Wexford. ‘You prescribed one

hundred phenacetin, and one hundred phenacetin were put into

that bottle at Eraser’s, the chemist’s. Between the time the

prescription was made up and the day before, or a few days

before, or a week before she died, she took forty tablets of

phenacetin, leaving sixty in the bottle. But on June second she

took four tablets of aspirin. Or, to put it bluntly, some time before

June second someone removed those sixty tablets of phenacetin

and substituted sixty tablets of aspirin.’

Dr Moss found his voice. ‘That would be murder.’

‘Well...’ Wexford spoke hesitantly. ‘The hypersensitivity might

not have resulted in a stroke. The intent may only have been to

cause illness of a more or less severe kind. Ulceration of the

stomach, say. That would have meant hospitalisation for Mrs

Wrangton. On the Welfare State. No exorbitant nursing-home

fees to be paid there, no swallowing up of capital or selling of

property. Later on, if she survived, she would probably have been

transferred, again for free, to a geriatric ward in the same

hospital. It’s well known that no private nursing home will take

the chronically sick.’

‘You think Mrs Betts--?’ Dr Moss began.

‘No, I don’t. For two good reasons, Mrs Betts is the one person

who wouldn’t have done it this way. If she had wanted to kill her

mother or to make her seriously ill, why go to all the trouble of

changing over sixty tablets in a bottle, when she had only to give

Mrs Wrangton the aspirins in her hand? And if she had changed

them, wouldn’t she, immediately her mother was dead, have

changed them back again?’

‘Then who was it?’

‘I shall know tomorrow,’ said Wexford...

Dr Crocker came to him at his office in the police station.

‘Sorry I’m late. I just lost a patient.’

Wexford made sympathetic noises. Having walked round the

room, eyed the two available chairs, the doctor settled for the

edge of Wexford’s desk.

Yesterday,’ Wexford began, ‘I had a talk with Mrs Elsie Parrish.’

He Checked the doctor’s exclamation and sudden start forward.

‘Wait a minute, Len. She dropped a matchbook before we parted.

It was one of those with a glossy surface that very easily takes

prints. I had the prints on it and those on the phenacetin bottle

compared. There were Mrs Betts’s prints on the bottle, and a set

that were presumably Mrs Wrangton’s, and a man’s that were

presumably the painter’s. And there was also a very clear set

identical to those on the matchbook.

‘It was Elsie Parrish who changed those tablets, Len. She did it

because she knew that Mrs Wrangton fully intended to retire to

Summerland and that the first money to go, perhaps before the

house was sold, would be the few thousands of capital that she

and Doreen Betts were to share. Elsie Parrish had waited for

years for that money, she wanted to buy a car. A few more years

and if she herself survived it would be too late for driving cars.

Besides, by then her legacy would have been swallowed up in

nursing-home fees.’

‘A nice old creature like that?’ Dr Crocker said. ‘That’s no proof,

her prints on the bottle. She’ll have fetched that bottle often

enough for old Ivy.’

‘No. She told me she had never been upstairs in Ivy Wrangton’s

house.’

‘Oh, God.’

‘I don’t suppose she saw it as murder. It wouldn’t seem like

murder, or manslaughter, or grievous bodily harm, changing

tablets in a bottle.’ Wexford sat down, wrinkled up his face. He

said crossly, dispiritedly, ‘I don’t know what to do, Len. We’ve

no way of proving Mrs Wrangton died of aspirin poisoning. We

can’t exhume her, we can’t analyse “two handfuls of white dust

shut in an urn of brass”. And even if we could, would we be so

inhumane as to have a woman of-how old is Elsie Parrish?’

‘Seventy-eight.’

‘Seventy-eight up in court on a murder charge. On the other hand,

should she be allowed to profit from her crime? Should she be

permitted to terrorise pedestrians in a smart little Ford Fiesta?’

‘She won’t,’ said Crocker.

Something in his voice brought Wexford to his feet. ‘Why? What

d’you mean?’

The doctor slid lightly off the edge of the desk. ‘I told you I’d lost

a patient. Elsie Parrish died last night. A neighbour found her and

called me.’

‘Maybe that’s for the best. What did she die of?’

‘A stroke,’ said Dr Crocker, and went.

Document Outline

- Local Disk

- �Clutching at Straws�

Table of Contents

�Clutching at Straws�