A Dreadful Past, page 6
‘Police.’ Carmen Pharoah held up her ID card. Ventnor did the same.
‘All right,’ the woman replied after glancing at each card. ‘I see you’re genuine. Is there some trouble?’
‘Mrs Graham?’ Pharoah asked. ‘Mrs Anne Graham?’
‘Miss … but yes, Miss Anne Graham, and I dare say that you’ll be calling about the murder of the Middleton family all those years ago? Horrible thing to have happened.’
‘Yes, yes, we are.’ Carmen Pharoah replaced her ID card in her handbag. ‘How did you know that?’
‘I didn’t. I guessed.’ Miss Graham glanced continually from Carmen Pharoah to Thompson Ventnor and then back to Pharoah and Ventnor. ‘I thought you’d be very likely calling on me when I saw the evening news on television last night. It said that the police were taking another look at the murders. I must say, you took your time to re-open the case but at least you’re having another stab at it. So good for you, I say. Good for you.’
‘We’re not re-opening it.’ Ventnor held firm eye contact with Miss Graham. ‘It was never closed. Cases are only closed upon a conviction being obtained. But anyway, you sound angry, Miss Graham. Were you fond of the family?’
‘No, no, I wasn’t,’ Miss Graham snorted. ‘I didn’t like them much at all really but I thought then, and I still think, that the police stopped their inquiries all too soon … But then I’m not a copper so I suppose you had your reasons. Or the police all those years ago had their reasons. So why are you investigating again?’
‘We have the time,’ Carmen Pharoah replied quickly and strongly, sensing that Thompson Ventnor was going to tell Miss Graham about the Wedgwood vase which had been seen in the window of an antiques shop and further sensing that it was an item of information which was at that time best withheld from Miss Graham.
‘Yes … it’s a quiet period,’ Ventnor confirmed, taking his cue from Carmen Pharoah. ‘We have the time and so we thought we’d use it. Simple as that.’
‘So how can I help the police?’ Miss Graham continued to look at the two officers with her cold green, piercing eyes. ‘I am sure I told the police everything I knew last time. I found the family when I called to clean that day. They were all in a heap … a bloody mess and the house was smashed up. It’s a sight I have not been able to forget. I just cannot drive it from my mind. Even with the vodka … it just stays.’
‘No … no … it wouldn’t be,’ Carmen Pharoah replied sensitively and sympathetically. ‘Images like that are not easy to forget. But we heard you did well, how you kept your head, left the house as soon as you saw what had happened and ran to a nearby house and raised the alarm. So we can also say good for you.’
Miss Graham gave a small shrug of her right shoulder in response to the compliment.
‘We wondered if we could go over the events again with you, for our benefit being new to the investigation, and we also wondered if there might be anything you might now remember which you did not mention at the time,’ Ventnor added. ‘Or anything which only seems relevant with the passing of time. It has been twenty years, after all.’
‘Twenty …’ Miss Graham’s voice faltered. ‘Has it really been twenty years?’
‘Yes.’ Thompson Ventnor smiled. ‘Time flies, as they say.’
‘I can’t think of anything I didn’t tell the police at the time but I’ll answer your questions, if you like,’ Miss Graham replied in a sudden display of meekness in her high-pitched, rasping voice. ‘You’d better come in. You’d be better inside than out here on the step. I can see a few curtains twitching already. They’re a nosey lot round here, really nosey. I mean, one life to lead is enough for me so I keep myself to myself but round here … it’s like it’s their life and everyone else’s as well. So you’d better come in.’ She turned and walked into the poorly lit hallway of her home. Carmen Pharoah stepped nimbly over the threshold and into the house. Thompson Ventnor followed her and shut the door gently behind him. Miss Graham led the officers into her back room which looked out on to a small rear garden surrounded by an evidently very recently trimmed privet hedge. The upper floor of a house in the next street could be seen beyond the garden hedge and above that was a blue sky with heavy white clouds at seven tenths in RAF speak. The room itself was quickly read by Pharoah and Thompson, who both thought its age and social status appropriate. It was, they saw, cluttered but not untidy, nor did it appear to be unclean. Artefacts which were in evidence were those to be expected for a single lady occupier in her late sixties. The curtains were kept in a half-closed position so that while there was sufficient light to see within the room, the room also had, the officers found, a soft, shadowy, almost sleep-inducing gloom about it. The house suffered from dampness and said dampness found and gripped the chests of both officers. Miss Graham sat in an armchair and invited Pharoah and Thompson to also take a seat. Carmen Pharoah sat in a second armchair which faced the chair in which Miss Graham sat, while Ventnor chose to sit on an upright chair which stood next to a small table. He took out his notebook and placed it on the table. He also took a ballpoint pen from his pocket and held it in his hand, poised, ready to write.
‘We understand that you cleaned Mr and Mrs Middleton’s house out beyond Skelton way at the time that the family was murdered?’ Carmen Pharoah began. ‘We’d like to establish that fact before we go any further.’
‘Yes.’ Anne Graham’s reply was short – curt, almost – so thought Ventnor, as though the previously glimpsed meekness had vanished.
‘How often did you visit?’ Carmen Pharoah continued. ‘Weekly, we believe?’
‘Yes, just once each week, midweek,’ Anne Graham replied. ‘I did a full day at their house. Usually on a Wednesday. More than usual, most often on a Wednesday. Other clients I had at the time I did half days for but it was a full day at Mr and Mrs Middleton’s. Always a full day. I was as regular as I could be but sometimes I got called in by the dole people to ask why I hadn’t got a job, but that wasn’t very often – once every couple of months or so.’
‘You were claiming the dole while you were working?’ Carmen Pharoah raised eyebrows. ‘Bit naughty of you, wasn’t it?’ Her voice contained a soft note of disapproval.
‘Yes, but so what?’ Anne Graham replied defensively. ‘Everyone did it. Folk still do it. You can’t survive on the dole. You try surviving on it. So I worked for cash-in-hand and everybody was happy. But when the social security people asked why I hadn’t found work, I said, “Look, I’ve got no bits of paper, I’ve got no qualifications. What I have got are convictions for theft and soliciting for purposes of prostitution. So what chance have I got of getting paid employment? Who will hire a thieving street girl?”’
‘Have you?’ Carmen Pharoah gasped. ‘You are not known to us – our criminal record check on you was negative.’
‘Well, that’s because it was just a little lie I used to tell to get them off my little old back, sweetheart.’ Anne Graham smiled. ‘It helped me a lot. They gave me a lot less grief that way. You see, I knew that the social security people couldn’t access people’s criminal records to check my little story so I invented quite a track record of previous convictions which they knew I had to declare when I was sent for a job interview. So I never got offered any job at all but I was working five days a week near enough … and it was all cash-in-hand. I was canny, though – I’m a survivor. I never flashed my money around; I always looked like a starving doley, I mean, ragged clothes, the lot. But I was well-set in those days. Really nicely well-set. I used to nip out the back when I went to my jobs and I used to use my clients’ cleaning equipment and materials. It was a very nice little number I had going for me but the old body gave out. All that cleaning didn’t help … arthritis, sciatica, rheumatism … my body just got old and now the state pension is sufficient. I was careful not to flash the cash about, like I said, and I put it all in the bank. All that I could, anyway. I still have a bit put by. So for twenty-five, thirty years, I was earning the average wage, not paying any tax on it and getting the dole on top of it. So yes … I’ve got a bit put by, enough for my vodka and my cigarettes. So I don’t complain.’
‘I see,’ Carmen Pharoah replied dryly. ‘It was quite a way out to the Middletons’ house from the centre of York. Did you cycle or use the bus?’
‘Most often, almost each time I visited I cycled, but I would use the bus in bad weather. There was a good bus service. Their house was just beyond Skelton and I took the Skipton bus,’ Anne Graham explained. ‘Sometimes I took the Thirsk bus – same route, though. There was a bus stop about ten minutes’ walk from their house. I could cope with that easily enough. I never had much to carry. In very bad weather – I mean, really heavy rain or snow – I didn’t go at all. It meant I didn’t get paid, but that was the deal. My job with them was still safe.’
‘I understand,’ Carmen Pharoah replied calmly though still with a note of disapproval. ‘It is the case with all self-employed cleaners, I suppose, all self-employed persons in any capacity. No work means no pay. End of story.’
‘Yes, and that’s the downside of the black economy, as I am told it’s called.’ Anne Graham sighed. ‘All those local authority employees or those civil servants who still get paid if they don’t turn in for the day … Must be nice that – you phone in sick and then have a nice, calm and relaxing day pottering about your house, all the time knowing you’ll still be getting paid. They have no fear of redundancy either, those people. Not bad. That’s not a bad number to have, isn’t that. Not a bad little number at all.’
‘So you spent all day at the Middletons’?’ Carmen Pharoah clarified.
‘Yes, as I said, all day once a week and I got there most weeks. I reckon I got there over forty times a year – forty-plus weeks out of fifty-two – that’s not a bad attendance record. Really only very bad weather would stop me, like I said … or perhaps ill health on my part but I was fit for most of my life. I stayed away over Christmas and New Year and also when they went away on their family holidays, and I took two weeks each year to go and visit my older sister who lives in Ramsgate down in the south of England. It’s handy having a sister who lives in a holiday resort. She still lives there and I still visit. We used to take the ferry across to France for a day, me and her. But most weeks I was there, at the Middletons’, keeping the dust down.’
‘All right.’ Carmen Pharoah nodded. ‘So you ate there?’
‘Yes,’ Anne Graham replied in her raspy, high-pitched voice, ‘they provided that … They provided the little woman with a lunch. If you could call it lunch. All the money they had and all I was given was a bowl of soup, a bread roll and a cup of tea. But at least they didn’t expect me to bring a packed lunch. Other clients I had included me in their home, gave me a proper lunch if I was there all day – meat and two veg, a real meal – and I sat at the dining table with the family, but not the nose-in-the-air-Middletons. Not them. I got served my little snack in the kitchen and was kept well out of the way. I was firmly put and kept in my place in the Middletons’ house, all right.’
‘You sound as though you didn’t like them very much,’ Carmen Pharoah commented.
‘I didn’t,’ Anne Graham replied flatly. ‘I didn’t like them at all and I am not sorry if it shows. Not sorry at all.’
‘So why work for them,’ Carmen Pharoah probed, ‘especially since you had to trek all the way out to Skelton – further than Skelton, in fact?’
‘They paid well,’ Anne Graham sniffed. ‘That’s the reason. I was feeling their pocket, wasn’t I? They were lawyers … well, he was a lawyer anyway, and that’s how lawyers work, so I was once told. Lawyers don’t get a flat fee, like the same fee applied to each client for the same type of service, no matter the client. They don’t work like that. Lawyers “feel their clients’ pocket” and they charge what they believe the client can afford. Imagine being the lawyer to the royal family or to a film star; just imagine what you could charge in such circumstances. Can you imagine being able to feel pockets like that? So I thought, well if he’s doing it … I’ll do it to him. It seemed fair to me – completely fair. It still does. So I was charging them twice as much as my other clients got charged. It was like working for one day and getting paid for two days.’ Anne Graham paused. ‘So the journey out to their house and back once a week was worth it. I reckon in those days I had a client base of six or seven or eight houses … it varied over time. The Middletons and one other were full days; the others were half day jobs and I also needed a half day to myself to go and sign on for my dole money each week. If I missed a client I’d work for them on Saturday.’
‘Had it all worked out, didn’t you?’ Carmen Pharoah observed. ‘All ticking over nicely.’
‘Suppose I did. I suppose I could say that things ticked over like clockwork quite nicely for me in those days. Quite nicely indeed.’ Anne Graham looked beyond Carmen Pharoah and her eyes seemed to focus on the further wall of the room for a few moments. ‘Yes … they were good days, in a sense. I can’t complain at all. Not really. I was doing all right for my little old self, so I was.’ Anne Graham refocused her eyes on Carmen Pharoah. ‘But I didn’t mind taking money from the Middletons, I didn’t mind that at all … and a good cleaner makes herself indispensable. You know how it is – she gets to know where things are kept, what goes where, how the householder likes things done, so it gets to the stage where the householder starts to fear the trouble they’ll have finding another cleaner they can trust because I never stole from any of my clients, and then breaking another cleaner in. It’s handy for any cleaner when you’ve reached that stage and that is where I was with the Middletons, them with their old-fashioned ways. I had to call him “sir” and her “ma’am” and the children “Master Noel” and “Mistress Sara”, while I was addressed as “Graham” or “Miss Graham” by the children. What’s that expression, “time shift”?’
‘Warp.’ Ventnor smiled from his seat at the table. ‘Time warp – is that the expression you’re thinking of?’
‘Yes, that’s it.’ Anne Graham raised a thin, bony finger up and held it vertically towards Thompson Ventnor. ‘Thank you. That’s the expression. It was like being in a time warp visiting that house; it was exactly like going back to the nineteenth century. I am surprised that I was not; expected to curtsey when myself and any one member of the family came into or left each other’s presence. Really, I kid you not; doing that would not have been out of place in that household. It was like that. They belonged to a different time. Theirs was a different era.’
‘So we understand – we are getting that self-same impression from other sources,’ Carmen Pharoah replied. Then she asked, ‘We are informed that you had a key to let yourself into the house?’
‘Yes, yes.’ Anne Graham grappled a cigarette from a packet and put it to her lips. She lit it with a yellow disposable lighter and pulled deeply on it. She exhaled the smoke with evident satisfaction. ‘These are killing me. So is the voddy, which I start on at about five o’clock each evening.’ She shrugged. ‘Well, this is me. This is what I have amounted to in life. I reckon my doctor has written me off as a hopeless case, a real suicide pilot, a proper lost cause, and that’s just little old me. But yes, I had the keys to the Middletons’ house so I could let myself in. It took me five years to earn that level of trust, and once I had I became pretty well indispensable, but eventually, yes, I got the keys and then I got my head bitten off for using them, would you believe? It was one of those few times his nibs was at home instead of being in his office, or chambers, as he called them, in York feeling some poor client’s pocket, and I mean poor in the sense of being unlucky that he was their solicitor.’
‘Yes …’ Carmen Pharoah smiled gently, ‘we know what you mean.’
‘So anyway, that one day in I came,’ Anne Graham inhaled, then exhaled and continued, ‘and him and her were having an argument in the kitchen. The door opens on to a sort of hallway next to the kitchen so he turns and rants on at me saying if I have the key that does not mean I can let myself in like I lived there. Knock first, he said. I mean shouted, he was angry with the world at that moment so I got really shouted at. “Only when you know no one is at home do you let yourself in.” I mean, what did they give me the keys for if I’m not supposed to use them? Tell me that? So anyway, I played the dimwit and I went on to say how sorry I was, “sir”, but privately I thought what an idiot he was, so anyway, after that, I always knocked on their main door each time I arrived for my day’s work and only let myself in if I didn’t get an answer, which is how he wanted it. So I kept my job and kept feeling his pocket as deeply as I could get away with. The more you are paid the more you can put up with. That’s what I have found over the years. So I put up with his bad temper by keeping out of his way and thinking about the money.’
‘OK.’ Carmen Pharoah took a deep breath. ‘The keys to the Middletons’ house – how many were there?’
‘Two.’ Anne Graham took another deep inhalation of the cigarette. ‘One small one for the spring-loaded barrel lock and a second key for the mortise lock … But why did he give me the keys if I wasn’t supposed to use them? Tell me that, will you? Explain that, can you?’
‘Let’s just carry on, please.’ Carmen Pharoah held up her hand, palm outwards facing Anne Graham. ‘This is getting to the sort of details we need to know about … let’s just keep this focused, please, Miss Graham.’
‘Well, they shouldn’t have given me the keys if I wasn’t supposed to use them, should they?’ Anne Graham snorted indignantly, exhaling smoke as she spoke. ‘Talk about wanting your bread buttered on both sides. You can’t have your cake and eat it, can you?’
