Troubled Blood

“Dorothy never showed no emotion about it, but Dorothy never did show much emotion about anything. What could we do?” Janice repeated, her palms turned upward. “Obviously I could see the way Margot’s mind was working, because she knew Maud owned the ’ouse, and now Dorothy and Carl were sitting pretty, and… well, it’s the kind of thing doctors consider, of course they do. It’ll come back on them, if they’ve missed anything. But in the end, Margot never done nothing about it and as far as I know there was never any bother.

“There,” Janice concluded, with a slight air of relief at having got this off her chest. “Now you know.”

“Thank you,” said Strike, making a note. “That’s very helpful. Tell me: did you ever mention this to Talbot?”

“No,” said Janice, “but someone else mighta done. Ev’ryone knew Maud ’ad died, and ’ow she died, because Dorothy took a day off for the funeral. I’ll be honest, by the end of all my interviews wiv Talbot, I just wanted to get out of there. Mostly ’e wanted me to talk about me dreams. It was creepy, honestly. Weird, the ’ole thing.”

“I’m sure it was,” said Strike. “Well, there’s just one more thing I wanted to ask, and then I’m done. My partner managed to track down Paul Satchwell.”

“Oh,” said Janice, with no sign of embarrassment or discomfort. “Right. That was Margot’s old boyfriend, wasn’t it?”

“Yes. Well, we were surprised to find out you know each other.”

Janice looked at him blankly.

“What?”

“That you know each other,” Strike repeated.

“Me and Paul Satchwell?” said Janice with a little laugh. “I’ve never even met the man!”

“Really?” said Strike, watching her closely. “When he heard you’d told us about the sighting of Margot in Leamington Spa, he got quite angry. He said words to the effect,” Strike read off his notebook, “that you were trying to cause trouble for him.”

There was a long silence. A frown line appeared between Janice’s round blue eyes. At last she said,

“Did ’e mention me by name?”

“No,” said Strike. “As a matter of fact, he seemed to have forgotten it. He just remembered you as ‘the nurse.’ He also told Robin that you and Margot didn’t like each other.”

“’E said Margot didn’t like me?” said Janice, with the emphasis on the last word.

“I’m afraid so,” said Strike, watching her.

“But… no, sorry, that’s not right,” said Janice. “We used to get on great! Ovver than that one time wiv Kev and ’is tummy… all right, I did get shirty wiv ’er then, but I knew she meant it kindly. She fort she was doing me a favor, examining ’im… I took offense because… well, you do get a bit defensive, as a mother, if you fink another woman’s judging you for not taking care of your kids properly. I was on me own with Kev and… you just feel it more, when you’re on your own.”

“So why,” Strike asked, “would Satchwell say he knew you, and that you wanted to get him into trouble?”

The silence that followed was broken by the sound of a train passing beyond the hedge: a great rushing rumble built and subsided, and the quiet of the sitting room closed like a bubble in its wake, holding the detective and the nurse in suspension as they looked at each other.

“I fink you already know,” said Janice at last.

“Know what?”

“Don’t give me that. All them fings you’ve solved—you’re not a stupid man. I fink you already know, and all this is to try and scare me into telling you.”

“I’m certainly not trying to scare—”

“I know you didn’t like ’er,” said Janice abruptly. “Irene. Don’t bovver pretending, I know she annoyed you. If I couldn’t read people I wouldn’t ’ave been any good at my job, going in and out of strangers’ ’ouses all the time, would I? And I was very good at my job,” said Janice, and somehow the remark didn’t seem arrogant. “Listen: you saw Irene in one of ’er show-off moods. She was so excited to meet you, she put on a big act.

“It’s not easy for women, living alone when they’re used to company, you know. Even me, coming back from Dubai, it’s been a readjustment. You get used to ’aving family around you and then you’re back in the empty ’ouse again, alone… Me, I don’t mind me own company, but Irene ’ates it.

“She’s been a very good friend to me, Irene,” said Janice, with a kind of quiet ferocity. “Very kind. She ’elped me out financially, after Larry died, back when I ’ad nothing. I’ve always been welcome in ’er ’ouse. We’re company for each other, we go back a long way. So she might ’ave a few airs and graces, so what? So ’ave plenty of people…”

There was another brief pause.

“Wait there,” said Janice firmly. “I need to make a phone call.”

She got up and left the room. Strike waited. Beyond the net curtains, the sun suddenly slid out from behind a bullet-colored cloud, and turned the glass Cinderella coach on the mantelpiece neon bright.

Janice reappeared with a mobile in her hand.

“She’s not picking up,” she said, looking perturbed.

She sat back down on the sofa. There was another pause.

“Fine,” said Janice at last, as though Strike had harangued her into speech, “it wasn’t me ’oo knew Satchwell—it was Irene. But don’t you go thinking she’s done anyfing she shouldn’t’ve! I mean, not in a criminal sense. It worried ’er like ’ell, after. I was worried for ’er… Oh Gawd,” said Janice.

She took a deep breath then said,

“All right, well… she was engaged to Eddie at the time. Eddie was a lot older’n Irene. ’E worshipped the ground she walked on, an’ she loved ’im, too. She did,” said Janice, though Strike hadn’t contradicted her. “And she was really jealous if Eddie so much as looked at anyone else…

“But she always liked a drink and a flirt, Irene. It was ’armless. Mostly ’armless… that bloke Satchwell ’ad a band, didn’t ’e?”

“That’s right,” said Strike.

“Yeah, well, Irene saw ’em play at some pub. I wasn’t wiv ’er the night she met Satchwell. I never knew a fing about it till after Margot ’ad gone missing.

“So she watched Satchwell and—well, she fancied ’im. And after the band ’ad finished, she sees Satchwell come into the bar, and ’e goes right to the back of the room to Margot, ’oo’s standing there in a corner, in ’er raincoat. Irene fort Satchwell must’ve seen ’er from the stage. Irene ’adn’t spotted Margot before, because she was up the front, wiv ’er friends. Anyway, she watched ’em, and Satchwell and Margot ’ad a short chat—really short, Irene said—and it looked like it turned into an argument. And then Irene reckoned Margot spotted ’er, and that’s when Margot walked out.

“So then, Irene goes up to that Satchwell and tells ’im she loved the band and everything and, well, one thing led to another, and… yeah.”

“Why would Satchwell think she was a nurse?” asked Strike.

Janice grimaced.

“Well, to tell you the truth, that’s what the silly girl used to tell blokes she was, when they were chatting ’er up. She used to pretend to be a nurse because the fellas liked it. As long as they knew naff all about medical stuff she managed to fool ’em, because she’d ’eard the names of drugs and all that at work, though she got most of ’em wrong, God love ’er,” said Janice, with a small eye roll.

“So was this a one-night stand, or…”

“No. It was a two-, three-week thing. But it didn’t last. Margot disappearing… well, that put the kibosh on it. You can imagine.

“But for a couple of weeks there, Irene was… infatuated, I s’pose you’d say. She did love Eddie, you know… it was a bit of a feather in ’er cap to ’ave this older man, Eddie, successful business and everything, wanting to marry ’er, but… it’s funny, isn’t it?” said Janice quietly. “We’re all animals, when you take everything else away. She totally lost ’er ’ead over Paul Satchwell. Just for a few weeks. Tryin’ to see ’im as much as she could, sneaking around… I bet she scared the life out of ’im, actually,” said Janice soberly, “because from what she told me later, I fink ’e only took ’er to bed to spite Margot. Margot was ’oo ’e really wanted… and Irene realized that too late. She’d been used.”

“So the story of Irene’s sore tooth,” said Strike, “which then became the story of a shopping trip…”

“Yeah,” said Janice quietly. “She was with Satchwell that afternoon. She took that receipt off ’er sister to use with the police. I never knew till afterward. I ’ad her in floods of tears in my flat, pouring ’er ’eart out. Well, ’oo else could she tell? Not Eddie or ’er parents! She was terrified of it coming out, and losing Eddie. She’d woken up by then. All she wanted was Eddie, and she was scared ’e’d drop ’er if ’e found out about Satchwell.