The Elephant Girl(107)

‘Death always is for those who have trouble accepting facts.’

Helen glared at him. For a family solicitor he was taking a lot of liberties. Maybe she ought to just sack him. Instead she decided to tell him about the syringe and the confrontation in Ruth’s office.

‘Letitia wanted to get rid of her. She thought Aggie was losing it, and Ruth, well, for some reason she’s always had a bitter relationship with her mother.’

And somehow everything comes back to me, she thought.

‘Mrs Ransome always knew you’d come right in the end.’ Sweetman smiled grimly. ‘Try to persuade one of your aunts, although if they’re involved, as you suggest, they could just refuse, and that’d be that. Unless you have some sort of leverage.’

‘I understand.’

She had just the thing which might help persuade one of them.

Helen hadn’t been to Ruth’s house since she was five. She didn’t remember the actual house nor her reasons for being there, but what stood out in her mind was stumbling upon Ruth weeping into a tea towel in the kitchen.

Alarmed, she’d run back into the drawing room. ‘Mummy, Auntie Ruth has hurt herself. She’s crying.’

Her mother ran a hand over Helen’s hair. ‘Is she? Oh, dear.’ Mimi looked at Aggie and Auntie Letitia, then Uncle Jeremy, who turned away.

‘Someone needs to cuddle her.’

No one said anything, and Helen had a nasty feeling she often had when the grown-ups were around, that they knew something she didn’t. Frowning, she went back into the kitchen and patted Auntie Ruth on the back awkwardly.

‘Where does it hurt?’ she asked. ‘Would you like me to blow on it?’

Auntie Ruth simply stared at her in a way which told her she’d done the wrong thing, then sobbed into the tea towel again while Helen’s chest hurt as if someone had punched her in it.

Years later she’d learned the source of Ruth’s unhappiness: her inability to have children. Her husband having an affair with Mimi must have made things so much worse. A small part of her hated Ruth for rejecting her when her mother died, another part understood it. Reluctantly.

Ruth opened the door in her dressing gown, an old blue towelling robe remarkably tattered for someone so wealthy. Her face was blotchy and her eyes red as if she’d been crying or hadn’t slept.

‘Oh, it’s you,’ she said. ‘What do you want?’

‘I want to talk to you.’

‘What about? I thought we’d done talking.’

‘Aggie,’ said Helen.

Ruth sighed. ‘You’d better come in, then.’ She led the way to the kitchen at the back of the house and flicked the switch on the kettle. ‘Coffee?’

‘I’m fine, thanks.’

Her aunt switched the kettle off again with another sigh.

‘But you have some. Don’t mind me.’

Ruth shook her head and pulled out a kitchen chair. ‘Talking about her won’t bring her back.’

Helen sat down opposite her. ‘I’d like a post-mortem done on Aggie.’

‘A post-mortem? What on earth for?’

‘I don’t think she died of natural causes.’

Ruth covered her eyes with her hand and rubbed her brow as if to massage away a headache. ‘Helen, please …’

‘You and Letitia wanted to get rid of her.’

‘Not in that sense.’

‘And I found your cardigan with a syringe in it. What do you think will happen if I tell the police that?’

Ruth looked up. Her face, with yesterday’s make-up still embedded in her wrinkles, seemed suddenly ancient. ‘I may have wanted my mother dead a million times, but it was just something I said. People do, you know. They don’t mean it. I never quite forgave her for … well, her lack of understanding. I just wanted to be a wife and mother, not some high-flying company executive. And when that dream fell by the wayside, she just brushed my feelings aside as if they were unimportant.

‘Go ahead, tell the police,’ she went on, ‘but Mrs Sanders can back me up that I helped Mother with her insulin sometimes. She told me the nurse was being too rough with her, but I think she just wanted my company and didn’t want to ask because it’d make her look weak. So I went along with it and accepted this was her roundabout way of apologising.’

What could she say to that? Ruth had a point. Aggie had possessed an uncanny ability to be both direct and subtle at the same time.

‘Are you all right?’ Ruth asked suddenly. ‘When was the last time you ate? Would you like me to make you a sandwich? Or I can heat up some soup. You look like you could do with it.’

‘I don’t want a sandwich.’