favours, dear.’
‘And the trousers? Do you recognise them?’ He shows her a photo of the baggy cord trousers she had struggled to secure around her slim waist as she skied and then struggled even more to keep wearing during that terrible attack. They too are laid out; the legs are parted, inviting penetration. The blood spatters, once so evident, have blended over time into the brown of the cord fabric, but must still be present. Evelyn squints at the picture again, adjusting her glasses on the bridge of her nose.
‘They look like Jim’s old gardening trousers to me.’
‘Jim? Who’s Jim?’
‘My gardener. Pat, you should make sure he gets these trousers back right away, he doesn’t want to wear his good clothes to work in the garden at Kingsley.’
‘Jim?’ Pat gasps. ‘You haven’t used Jim for years. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he was long dead by now.’ She leans towards Inspector Williams and says in a stage whisper, ‘I doubt very much if they’re his. And I can’t think why on earth they’d be in that suitcase, if they were.’
‘Dead? Jim’s dead? Why ever didn’t you tell me? You know how much I’ve always valued Jim’s help. Such a reliable man! He’s worked for me for years. Really, Pat, you mustn’t hide the facts from me. Now, where’s my diary? I must send flowers to his widow, right now.’
Pat reaches out to stop Evelyn rummaging in her handbag. ‘Later, Aunt, later. Let the Inspector finish asking his questions first.’
‘Oh, very well, but you mustn’t keep these things from me, you know, Pat. It’s very remiss of you.’ She smiles at the detective. ‘Now, where were we?’
He gives that polite clearing of the throat again. ‘We’ve noticed stains on both these items of clothing, here, here and here.’ He points with his pencil at circled areas on the photos, indicating smudges on both garments. ‘Initial tests indicate that these marks are bloodstains. They’re old stains, admittedly, but have you any idea how they might have got onto these items?’
Evelyn knows exactly how that spray of blood spattered across her clothes, how he screamed, how she took him by surprise. She feels her fingers twitching for her sharp pencil, but she needs a moment to formulate a response. She gazes at the photos, then turns her attention to first Pat, then the policeman, then back again to the pictures. ‘I did once have to rush Jim to A&E at the hospital,’ she says. ‘There was quite a bit of blood then. I think a branch had sprung back on him when he was pruning the climbing roses. I seem to remember it was the Kiftsgate over that oak tree – you know the one, Pat? It caught him just above the eye and also right on his ear. There was quite a lot of blood everywhere. Could have been very nasty if it had hit him directly in the eye. I knew someone who was blinded by a rose once. Jim had to have stitches that time. Oh, Jim was always shedding blood on my behalf!’
‘I see,’ Inspector Williams says, reaching to clear away all the photographs, but she leans forward and stops him, pointing at one of the pictures, which shows a labelled bottle standing next to some papers.
‘Oh, look! There’s a bottle of slivovitz. How did that get there? We used to drink it all the time in Germany. Inspector, you wouldn’t mind if I had that, would you? Maybe you can bring it in with you next time? I’ve completely run out of sherry.’
42
Forest Lawns
2 December 2016
My darling,
Sometimes I think I can’t tell what is true and what isn’t. Yesterday, when I was being asked about the clothing in the suitcase, I talked about Jim. I shouldn’t have, should I, if I can’t remember anything? Or is that far enough back for it to be all right? People here often remember the past better than the present.
Maybe I’ll play just one more game and then I’ll stop. This lovely home with its sweet, kind people tries to keep everyone occupied, but really, we’re all just sitting in life’s last waiting room with very little to do. Most of us can’t manage to go on long outings any more, very few can concentrate long enough to read anything more demanding than a page of a newspaper and every day brings another degree of deterioration. A dear man told me yesterday that he’d had a lifetime of achievement but