Past Tense Read Free Page B

have been hidden in the circumstances. ‘Loose in a brown envelope. Didn’t look at ’em much, though, I can tell you. Couldn’t get to the drawer herself, not lately anyway.’
    â€˜Josephine wasn’t ever one for talking about the past, either,’ said Sheila, who took her share of the caring when someone else on the staff didn’t come in.
    â€˜Unlike some,’ groaned Ellen feelingly. ‘I tell you, Sheila, if I have to hear about that Kathleen in number 11’s safari trip one more time I shall scream. I’ve begun to wish those lions she saw had eaten her. Or, come to that, Lady Alice’s tale about crossing the Bay of Biscay in the war with U-boats about when she was in the Wrens…’
    â€˜I hope, though, that that vase wasn’t as valuable as it looked,’ said the deputy matron, sticking to the point. She sighed. ‘I don’t know what Linda will say when she gets back from the church, I’m sure. I don’t know when the family’ll be coming back here either but we’ll have to tell them then about its being broken.’
    â€˜But that’s not it…’ insisted Ellen with vigour.
    â€˜No?’ said Sheila, puzzled.
    â€˜What you don’t understand, Sheila, is that that room has been kep’ locked ever since Josephine died.’
    â€˜Someone must have knocked it over,’ pointed out Sheila mildly, careful not to cast aspersions. ‘It can’t have fallen on its own. Not short of an earthquake.’
    â€˜So they must,’ agreed Ellen, ‘but if it wasn’t me – and I tell you it wasn’t – then who was it? That’s what I want to know.’
    â€˜And what were they doing in there, anyway?’ asked the deputy matron, catching on. ‘Nobody had any business to be in that room after the old lady died, never mind that it was kept locked and the key hung on the board on the wall in Linda’s office here.’
    â€˜Exactly. That niece of hers – if that’s what she is – Jan somebody…’
    â€˜Wakefield,’ supplied the deputy matron. ‘Wife of Josephine’s next of kin. It should have been him taking care of things, only he’s away somewhere on business.’
    â€˜Her, then. Linda was with her all the time she was here when she came up to get the old lady’s papers for the registrar and that vase will have been all right then or we’d have heard all about it and no mistake.’
    â€˜We would,’ sighed Sheila, on whose shoulders much of the minutiae of running the place fell. Mrs Luxton, the matron, dealt with the paperwork and the ever-burgeoning requirements of the regulatory authorities.
    â€˜So,’ said Ellen ineluctably, ‘short of that earthquake you mentioned, how come that vase fell off the shelf and broke if the room has been kept locked ever since? Or, at least, until I went in this morning to give the room a bit of a tidy before the family come?’
    Sheila frowned. ‘Think carefully. Is there anything actually missing from the room that you can see?’
    Ellen Steele shook her head. ‘Not that I noticed. Mind you, there wasn’t a lot left in it to start with – not since them lovely rings went with the body to the undertaker’s, like Morton’s said Josephine had asked.’ She sniffed. ‘Not, I must say, that that stopped that young woman who come having a good hunt for anything valuable. Never been near the place before, either.’
    â€˜She did say that neither she nor her husband knew anything about his great-aunt being in here or they would have visited.’
    Ellen sniffed again, not mollified by this. ‘Didn’t stop the old lady naming him as her next of kin, did it? Funny that, if you was to ask me. Mind you, Sheila, that wife of his got here pretty quickly after she’d died. People always do.’
    The deputy matron did not attempt to