In rivers, the water that you touch is the last of what has passed and the first of that which comes; so with present time.
– Leonardo da Vinci
NARRATIVE VERDICT
INQUEST TOUCHING THE DEATH OF VALERIE STEADMAN
Inquest concluded July 2016
Valerie Steadman died as a result of crush injuries to the pelvis and chest. Valerie Steadman would have died instantly as a result of these injuries and the delay in the arrival of the emergency services is not deemed to be a factor in this case.
On the night of April 12th 2016, Valerie Steadman was staying at Wynhope House as a guest of her half-sister Diana, Lady Helyarr. She was sleeping in the guest room on the top floor of the East Wing known as the Tower.
At 3.25 a.m. on the morning of April 13th, there was an earthquake of magnitude 5.4 (Richter scale) at a depth of 2.3 miles, the epicentre of which was approximately 3 miles from Wynhope House. An earthquake of 4.7–5.6 occurs in the UK every 10 years, an earthquake of 5.6 or larger every 100 years. Six buildings within a 10-mile radius of the epicentre suffered significant structural damage rendering them temporarily uninhabitable, a further 38 buildings suffered minor structural damage and there were a total of 3 fatalities attributed to the earthquake. Both the main section of Wynhope House and the adjoining Tower remained standing although structural damage to the joists joining the two parts of the residence was apparent.
At 3.37 a.m. on the morning of April 13th, there was a lesser aftershock of magnitude 4.6 (Richter scale). The combination of the two tremors and the disturbance to the foundations of the building caused by the recent excavation of a basement extension led the Tower to separate from the main house and collapse. The quality of, regulations pertaining to, and planning in regard of, the excavation are subject to a separate inquiry.
Valerie Steadman’s body was located beneath the rubble by the Fire and Rescue Service at the bottom of the staircase in the Tower in the area immediately inside and adjacent to the ground-floor front door at 10.09 a.m., April 13th.
The door leading from the first floor of the Tower to the first-floor landing of the main house and the door leading from the ground floor of the Tower wing directly onto the drive were both locked at the time the earthquake occurred. Despite an extensive search by forensic services, the key to these doors has not been found.
Minor bruising and cuts to Valerie Steadman’s knees and shins were commensurate with a fall on the spiral staircase in the Tower and were acquired prior to death. Bruising to both hands on the knuckles and damage to fingernails on the right hand were consistent with injuries likely to have been sustained while trying to open one or both of the wooden doors.
As the doors were locked by person or persons unknown and for reasons not established and as there is no clear indication as to why the key was not readily available to expedite the deceased’s escape between the first and second shocks, and bearing in mind that had the doors been unlocked the deceased may have escaped alive, the consequences of the doors being locked are both significant and enduring and therefore the jury in this matter records a narrative verdict.
Peter D. Merland
HM Coroner
Chapter One
Over half of the sitting room is now a bright, brilliant dazzling yellow; the rest is rent grey. Whoever designed these flats in the 1970s in Bracknell never thought about the fact that the windows are too high to let you see out unless you stand up and too narrow to let the light in when the sun is low over the tower blocks opposite. It can get you down, if you let it, but this place where they have arrived is so much better than the prison they have escaped. Valerie has been singing along, but now she picks up her mobile and turns down the volume on the radio.
‘Sorry, who did you say you are again?’
Less than two minutes later, because that’s all it takes, she is perched on the edge of the imitation leather sofa as if she has somewhere to go, knowing that there is nowhere to go from here, noticing that the Spring Sunshine has rubbed off from the paintbrush to the remote control to the cushion, the news leaving its fingerprints all over her life.
‘Oh, Mum,’ she says. ‘Not Mum. Not now.’
There is no point in singing any longer. Valerie switches on the telly. The reporter is ill at ease, looking over his shoulder as if he is about to be attacked, but in fact the destruction behind him is something to do with a tsunami, not a war. It is all a long way away and the news leaves the victims picking through the wreckage and switches instead to people chanting the name of their new president and celebrating in their thousands, a young man with a child on his shoulders cheering to the cameras above the surge and the swell of the chorus. ‘This is what hope feels like!’ he shouts. That’s how Valerie’s come to think of herself recently, a woman with the weight of her young son on her shoulders, a load that both grounds her and leaves her light as air and dancing. Leaning against the kitchen counter with her first cigarette for a long time, she studies this, their safe place, and imagines her mother visiting at last, hesitating at the door with potted-up purple crocuses from the supermarket in one hand, making up for lost time in the other in a what-might-have-been parallel future.
Valerie kicks the stepladder, which knocks the paint pot, which tips out a slow curl of a yellow tongue that licks last week’s paper spread out on the carpet, and a thin black cat springs from its sleep up onto the coffee table, rippling the scum on a cold cup of tea and sending part of a half-finished jigsaw of Elvis crumbling over the edge onto the floor.
Some time later, the slam of the back door tells her Mikey is back.
‘I’m home.’
Half in and half out of his anorak, the child first notices the smell of fresh paint and the proportion of the sitting room which has turned yellow while he’s been at school, and only then registers the fact that his mother is crying. Dropping his reading folder, he joins her in picking up the pieces of the broken jigsaw.
‘You all right, Mum?’ he asks.
He doesn’t want to repeat the question or hear the answer, so he says nothing more, kneels on the floor and presses the cardboard joints back into their sockets, the two of them together quietly reassembling the letters above Elvis’s head – Promised Land. He hands her a glittery bit of the star’s suit, she slots it into place.
‘Come and sit here, you!’ says Valerie, patting the sofa.
She budges up a bit, he sits cross-legged at the other end, picking at the hardened piece of glue on his school trousers which has not come out in the wash.
‘What’s
