All Passion Spent - Bergotte (pdf e book reader .txt) 📗

up shoe laces… neither do I for that matter. Give me a pair of simple slip-ons any day. Like these ones I am wearing,” replied Irene, pushing her toes into the shoe she had recently taken off. She completed the form and laid down her pen. “That’s finished,” she said, with a sigh of relief.

“I really must be going now,” he said, rising from his chair. Gerrard descended in the lift and went out to his car. It had been raining while he had been inside the home but now the skies had cleared and the journey back to Bath would be a more pleasant if uneventful one. He drove in silence, deep in thought, forgetting to switch on the CD player in the car. How long would great uncle Jack remain in his present condition? When would the serious decline happen? How long had he yet to live? These were the questions that vexed him. And the crucial one – was there enough money to keep him in that place until the old man passed away? Gerrard had taken on the legal responsibility for Jack’s money and it was a responsibility he wanted to discharge well.

From quite a distance Gerrard saw the board outside the newsagent’s shop advising the general public of recent news headlines in the Bath Chronicle. WOMAN’S BODY FOUND IN PARK. It looked a bit torn… probably there since Monday night, thought Gerrard. There was a parking space available right outside the shop. Gerrard braked and swung into it. He went inside and bought a copy. On the front page he saw a small paragraph giving a few sparse details of the case.


It was close to one o’clock when Gerrard turned into the police car park in Bath once more. Anna was in the office, head bent over a PC keyboard, writing up reports. She looked up when he entered the room. “Have you seen today’s Chronicle, Anna?” he asked tersely. She could tell by that he was upset about something. “I can’t say I have, sir,” she replied softly, trying to mollify him a little. He held up the newspaper for her to see. “Did you tell them that, I quote, ‘the police, are baffled by the discovery of the body’ … did you tell them that?” he demanded. “No sir, it’s their gloss on what I did say to them.” “Which was?” “That an investigation is under way into the cause of death.”

Well, thought Gerrard, you must have given some indication that we are stumped by this case, before it’s even begun. Don’t let Anna Rossi speak to the press again. But, he kept these thoughts to himself. “I think I need to ring the press office and clarify a few things,” said Gerrard, “and in future, when the press ask you anything you say, ‘no comment’. Is that understood?” “Yes sir,” said a tight-lipped Anna Rossi.


CHAPTER FIVE

Tuesday, October 24: afternoon

Gerrard and Rossi were en route from the police station to Sydney Place, the large row of houses opposite Sydney Gardens. They had given up on the car and decided to walk through the city. It was while they were making their way along Pultney Street that Gerrard recognised a familiar figure approaching him, a rather shapely figure, Dr Eve Terry the police surgeon. A forensic pathologist, who was also an amateur painter, even while she had been in medical school in London, Dr Terry had known Gerrard for ten years. She was carrying what seemed to be a picture under her arm.
“Hello Peter, how are you?”
“I thought you were supposed to be ill?”
“Who told you that?”
“That long streak of misery, Dr Ray.”
“Yes, ‘Sting’ is a bit of a misery. Got anything interesting on at the moment?” Ignoring her question he asked her directly, “What’s been wrong with you?”
“Chest complaint, bronchial pneumonia. I’m convalescing at the moment, I’ll probably be back on Monday. Are you going to introduce us then?”
“Oh, you don’t know each other?” Gerrard introduced her to Anna and then asked, “What have you got there, one of your paintings?”
“Yes, it’s a small portrait. I’m getting it framed and I’ve lugged it from my car, parked miles away. I do portraits and landscapes. I’m going to the exhibition at the museum down the road, you know, the city one, not the Holburne, opposite the music shop, Milsoms, end of Pultney Bridge.”
“Yes, I know it.”
“Are you going to answer my question?”
“What was that?”
“You can be very perverse at times. I asked, are you doing anything interesting at the moment, regarding police work?” “Yes, a suspicious death, which is how I met Dr Ray.”
“Tell me more.”
“We don’t know a lot at the moment. A woman’s body was found in Sydney Gardens yesterday morning. It’s probably been there since Saturday evening, that’s all.”
“Sounds interesting.”
“Yes, I think it is… how about coming round to see me soon.” “When?”
“Are you free tomorrow, early evening, about seven, say?” “Yes, I think I can manage that. I’ll call you if I can’t for any reason.”

As they moved away from the pathologist Anna was conscious that she had not contributed a single word to the conversation. She was also conscious of feelings that she did not realise until then that she had. I don’t understand it. There’s no reason for me to feel this way, she thought. I’m going to fight these feelings, they’re not me. But, yes they are. Gerrard was pointing the way and saying something about evidence, but she was neither hearing his voice nor seeing his gesticulations.

She could think of nothing else but Eve; a trained scientist and a trained artist. Anna could not articulate these deep feelings of resentment, even hatred that she harboured towards the woman they had just left. Not only that, Eve was attractive, beautiful. And yet, Gerrard did not seem to be that attracted to her. He treats her as he treats me, as a colleague… and a friend. Am I a friend? What is she to him?
“You haven’t been listening to a word I’ve been saying, Anna. What’s the matter?”
“Oh, nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“No, I was preoccupied with my own thoughts, that’s all.”
“A penny for them?”
“No… no… I’ll keep them to myself.” And now she began to wonder whether CI Gerrard had guessed or worked out what the matter was with her. She sighed to herself as they arrived at the end of the road and waited at the crossing by the Holburne Museum.

The pair of detectives crossed the road and looked for the numbers on the buildings. They went up to the top floor of one house, to be greeted by an old lady waiting for them on the landing. “I saw you arrive,” she said. “I was looking out of the window.”

The police officers introduced themselves and learned that the lady was Mrs Vera Phelps. They went inside and sat down in the front room, overlooking the park. The room was spacious and sparsely furnished. An old looking television set stood in the far corner of the room on the opposite side of the sash windows that gave out on to Sydney Place and the gardens. The ceiling was high with an elaborate rose at its centre from which hung an equally elaborate electric light. There were wall lights all round the room and many mementoes along the mantelpiece over the new gas fire in the old hearth.

“I got up to draw the curtains,” Vera explained. “I wasn’t actually looking out of the window. I was looking at these curtains. The window is very high and it is hard for me to reach up there and pull them across."
“This window looks directly out on the entrance to the park,” observed Anna. “Do you spend a lot of time looking out of the window?”
“I suppose I do, yes. Well, I looked out of the window immediately after I heard the noise.”
“What sound did you hear?”
“It was definitely the sound of screeching brakes, you know, from a car. A second later I looked out as I heard the scream of tyres on the road.”
“What did you actually see?”
“I saw a yellow car.”
“You’re sure it was a yellow car?”
“No, I can’t be absolutely sure, because it was so dark but I’m fairly certain.”
“Do you know what make of car it was?”
“No, I don’t know anything about cars, but it was a sports car, I would say.”
“Did you see the registration number, or any part of it?” asked Gerrard.
“No, I’m too far away, up here and my eyesight is not very good, now.”
“Was the car coming down or going up the hill?” he asked.
“It was coming down past here, towards Bath.”
“Did you see whether the driver was male or female?” interjected Anna
“No, I couldn’t see the driver properly. It could have been a man or a woman … I just don’t know.”
“And then…what did you do or see?” asked Gerrard.
“I saw the car hit the woman.”
“Where did the woman come from?”
“I don’t know. I assume she was crossing the road. One second the road was clear, the next moment this woman was being hit by the car. She went flying and came to rest on the other side of the road. Half in the road, half on the pavement, she was.”
“Did you do anything yourself after you had seen her being knocked down?”
“I started to go downstairs to see if I could help the woman. But when I got out on the street both the car and the woman had gone, completely disappeared. Mind you, it took me a long time, may be five or six minutes by the time I’d got the front door open and out into the street and crossed the road.”
“Did you raise the alarm?” Anna gently asked the old lady.
“No, I didn’t raise anything.”
“Why not? Why didn’t you call the emergency services?” demanded Gerrard.
“I didn’t think there was any emergency!”
“But you had just seen a woman knocked down by a car.” “Yes, but when I got down there, and they’d both disappeared I began to wonder whether I did see anything. I found it all very confusing.” Anna could see that her boss was getting extremely agitated by the replies given by Mrs Phelps. She tried to keep the atmosphere calm by asking her questions in subdued tones.
“So, did you tell anyone else what you thought you had seen, a neighbour perhaps?
“No, nobody.”
“To be absolutely clear,” said Gerrard, “if you were looking at the curtains and you did not look at the road until after you heard the sound of screeching brakes and screaming tyres on the road, it’s fair to say, isn’t it, that you didn’t actually see the accident, did you? You saw the lady lying in the road and the back of the only car in the road which was the yellow one, as it sped by?”
“As soon as I heard the noise I looked down. The driver braked before he hit the woman. And the hard braking caused the tyres to scream, again, before he hit the woman. I may be old but I’m not daft inspector.”
“No, you’re not daft,” agreed Gerrard, “I need to establish exactly what you saw, given that you say you were confused.”
“What I’ve told you is the truth,” said Vera.
“I don’t doubt it.” He paused and then said, “Good. Thank you very much. You