It’s me, Alma! Are you all right?’ Still no reply. The music ceased and a man’s voice began to speak, crisp and cheerful.
She ran out of the room and along the corridor, down a few steps and round a corner, to Miss Jordan’s room. There was no sound from within. She rapped loudly and without ceremony, calling out, ‘Miss Jordan! Are you awake?’
There was a stir from inside and Miss Jordan’s voice called back sleepily, ‘Is that you, Alma?’
Without more ado Alma went in. The curtains were still drawn together. In the half-light Miss Jordan began to raise herself from the pillows.
‘There’s something wrong,’ Alma said urgently. ‘Mrs Foster – I can’t make her hear. Her door’s locked.’
Miss Jordan came fully awake. She flung back the clothes and sprang out of bed. She dragged on a dressing-gown, thrust her feet into slippers.
‘I don’t like it,’ Alma said rapidly. ‘I can hear the radio playing. I knocked and knocked but she doesn’t answer.’
They left the room at a run. ‘I tried to get in,’ Alma said, ‘but the doors are locked. Both doors.’
They reached Mrs Foster’s room. Miss Jordan rattled the door handle, calling out, then she ran into Mr Foster’s room, followed by Alma. She tried again.
‘She tried to do something once before,’ Alma said. ‘Years ago. Before I came here. She took a lot of tablets.’
‘Is there another key?’ Miss Jordan said urgently. ‘To either door?’
Alma frowned fiercely down at the floor. ‘I can’t think of one. I can’t remember a spare key.’
‘Then we’ll have to get help. Someone to break the door down.’
‘The Pritchards,’ Alma said at once. ‘Down at the cottage. You go, I’ll stay here.’ Miss Jordan, slimly built, would be able to run a good deal faster than Alma.
Alma stayed by the bedroom door, keeping up the fruitless calling and knocking. It seemed an age before she again heard the sound of running.
Young Bob Pritchard came racing into view along the corridor. ‘Stand away!’ he ordered as he reached the door.
He sprang back against the opposite wall, then leapt forward at the door, striking it with his raised foot. The door creaked. He went back to the wall and sprang again with all his strength. This time the panel gave.
As he struggled to get the door open Alma saw his father, Ned Pritchard, still quick and active at seventy, appear round the bend in the corridor, with Miss Jordan behind him. A smell of burning oatmeal floated up from the kitchen. The porridge, Alma registered – it’s boiled over.
‘You’ve managed it, then,’ Ned called out as the door gave way. Alma followed Bob at a rush into the bedroom.
The lights were full on, the curtains drawn together. Beside the bed the radio played and sang.
Ned and Miss Jordan reached the door and came breathlessly in.
Mrs Foster was in a reclining position, leaning back against the lacy pillows. She wore a little jacket of peach-coloured satin over a nightdress of apricot chiffon. Her head had slipped to one side and her eyes were closed. Her face was peaceful, with a faint smile, as if she were sleeping. She looked young and pretty.
Her hands were relaxed on the lace coverlet. Under the fingers of one lay the silver-framed photograph of her father and under the fingers of the other a picture postcard.
Bob Pritchard leaned down and touched her forehead. With his other hand he circled her wrist. No pulse; she was icy cold. No one spoke. There was silence in the room except for the radio.
‘Shall I phone the doctor?’ Alma asked in a harsh breathless voice.
‘You’d better.’ Bob removed his hand from the wrist. ‘But she’s dead all right. Been dead for hours.’
He turned and switched off the radio. On the bedside table stood a tumbler holding a little water. Beside it a bottle of white tablets, two-thirds full.
Miss Jordan leaned across and felt the icy fingers. ‘I’m afraid you’re right.’ She gave a long trembling sigh.
‘She’s done it again,’ Ned Pritchard said from the foot of the bed.
They all turned to look at him. ‘She tried once before,’ he said. ‘When her father died.’
He gazed sadly down at her. She looked no older now than she’d done then, nine years ago that was, must be. ‘They found her in time then,’ he said. ‘They hushed it up. This time,’ he added without surprise, ‘she’s managed to pull it off.’
The inquest on Vera Foster was opened and adjourned a few days after her death, the body released for burial within a week. The funeral was small and private, as quiet as it was possible to make it in the circumstances.
The resumed inquest was set down for a date three weeks after the funeral.
Shortly before lunch on a Tuesday afternoon towards the end of October, Detective-Chief Inspector Kelsey stood at the window of his office in the central police station in Cannonbridge. He stared out at the pouring rain.
‘The inquest on Mrs Foster this afternoon,’ he said to Detective Sergeant Lambert. ‘You can drop me there, say a quarter to three.’ He ran a hand over his springing hair, the colour of old carrots. ‘I’ll give you a ring when it’s over. You can come along and pick me up.’
‘It’ll be suicide, of course,’ Sergeant Lambert said. The enquiries into Mrs Foster’s death had proceeded along a straightforward path. Perfectly clear-cut case.
The Chief nodded. No suggestion of anything else. According to the medical report Mrs Foster had swallowed a fatal dose of pain-killing tablets at a time when her husband was sitting with a highly respectable estate agent in full view of several people in the lounge of the Falcon Hotel seventy miles away in Lowesmoor. She was dead before her husband said goodnight to the agent and went upstairs to bed.
The Chief peered out at the driving rain with bleak hostility. ‘Filthy day,’ he said irritably. Rainy weather never agreed with him. Made him sneeze. Something to do with atmospheric pressure, he thought vaguely, made the lining of his nose congested.
‘I detest October,’ he added sourly. What he really detested was inquests. And, in particular, inquests on suicides. They always made him feel horribly depressed.
He felt a sudden powerful yearning for something sweet to thrust into his mouth. It was now some time since he’d succeeded in giving up smoking and it was only rarely that he still felt the old primitive longing for the death-dealing cigarette.
He’d managed very well on bags of toffees and bars of chocolate but now it seemed that even the confectionery substitute was forbidden.
‘You’ve got to lose that,’ the doctor had said at his last checkup, slapping the roll of flesh that strove
