The Sleeping and the Dead

There was a wide hall, then a huge high-ceilinged room with a bay window looking out to sea. He had been expecting clutter, furniture from a big house crammed into a flat, but the room was surprisingly empty. There was one sofa – well made but modern – and a couple of coffee tables. On one lay a library book, a romantic novel, face down. The floor had been stripped and varnished and in front of the marble fireplace there was a Moroccan rug of a startling indigo blue.

She must have sensed his surprise.

‘Crispin drank everything away,’ she said. ‘If he hadn’t died when he did the flat would have gone too.’ She looked round the room, saw it perhaps through his eyes. ‘Why don’t we go into the kitchen? We’ll be more comfortable there.’

The kitchen was shabby too but less austere. There were herbs in pots on the window-sill, a bunch of flowers and a brightly coloured oilskin cloth on the table. A portable television stood on one of the counters. A plate and a cup were draining next to the sink.

‘Tea then,’ she said and set a kettle on the gas ring. Still she hadn’t asked Porteous what he was doing there.

‘I’m afraid I may have some bad news,’ he said.

‘Oh?’ She seemed untroubled. Perhaps years of living with an alcoholic had inured her to the possibility of bad news.

‘It’s your stepson Theo.’

‘Theo?’ It was as if she barely recognized the name. She seemed to trawl back through her memory before it made sense.

‘Have you seen him recently?’

‘No, no. Not for years.’

‘Had your husband kept in touch with him?’

‘My husband was very ill, Inspector. Long before he died.’

It was hardly an answer but he let it go.

The kettle gave a piercing whistle. She seemed grateful for the distraction. Her attention was taken up then with warming the pot and making the tea. Porteous set the photograph of Theo as Macbeth on the table. ‘Is that him?’

‘Oh goodness, after all this time, really I couldn’t say.’ She’d only glanced at the picture, was more intent on looking in the cupboard for matching cups among a jumble-sale assortment.

‘Please look at the photo carefully, Mrs Randle.’

‘I haven’t seen him since he was a young boy.’

‘All the same.’

He spoke firmly and her resistance went. She sat at the table, took a pair of reading glasses from the pocket of her skirt and studied the photograph.

‘It could be him,’ she said at last. ‘That hair. Yes, I rather think it is.’

‘Do you have any photos of him as a young boy?’

He could tell she was about to say no without thinking about it, then she caught his eye and changed her mind.

‘There was one. He was pageboy at our wedding. Even Crispin didn’t have the heart to get rid of those. Not that they were worth anything…’ She jumped to her feet. He thought she was about to fetch the album, but she poured out the tea and arranged chocolate biscuits on a plate.

‘If I could look at it…’ he prompted.

‘Yes.’ The forced gaiety disappeared quite suddenly. ‘I don’t see why not.’ She left the kitchen, shutting the door behind her. When she returned some time later her eyes were red. He wondered what had made her cry. He hadn’t told her yet that Theo was dead. She hadn’t asked.

She had certainly been happy when she married. She beamed from every shot. The photos were in a red leather album, separated by flimsy sheets of tissue paper. They had been taken in a garden. She hadn’t worn a traditional wedding dress but a short white frock with a lacy white coat over the top. She must have been in her early twenties but had the enthusiastic grin of a school girl. She held a posy of garden flowers and there was a circlet of ox-eye daisies in her hair. Randle stood beside her, proud, rather paternal. His face looked a little flushed and Porteous thought he might have been drinking heavily even then.

‘They were taken at Snowberry,’ she said. ‘That was Crispin’s house. It had been in the family for years. It was foolish of course but I thought I’d grow old there. I imagined it full of grandchildren at Christmas. I was very young. Perhaps I fell in love with Snowberry as much as I did with Crispin.’ She gave a sad little laugh. Her hands had stopped turning the pages of the album.

‘You said there was a photo of Theo,’ Porteous prompted gently.