“Piss off, will you?” she said, giving the sack a shake and moving on. “I’m doing a job here.”
“So am I. I thought just now you were willing to help.”
“Help with what? Their stolen goods? It’s a bit bloody late, isn’t it?”
“You might know if anything else was taken.”
“You lot are more concerned with property than people.”
He let a few seconds pass. “Can we try again, Mrs. Stratford? It’s obvious I caught you at a bad time.”
“What the hell do you mean by that?”
“You thought you were alone here.”
“Talking to myself when you came in?” she said.
“Well…”
“I was speaking lines, if you want to know.”
“You’re an actress?” Something he could work with.
“Actor-or trying to be. Understudying Maggie in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.”
“Maggie who?”
She gave a sharp, angry sigh. “It’s the part I play. I was running through a scene with Big Daddy when you interrupted.”
“I could see it was strong stuff. Is Maggie the Liz Taylor part?”
Her glare almost pinned him to the wall.
He’d said the wrong thing again.
“The role doesn’t belong to her or any other actor. I work from the script and do it my own way.”
“And you were well into it when I interrupted.”
“That’s why you got a mouthful. I can’t simply switch off.”
“Understood.” He’d humoured her enough about the acting. Much more and she’d be asking him to speak the Big Daddy bits. “So you double up your theatre work with some cleaning?”
“If you really want to know, the cleaning is my mainstay. I’d be a fool to pack it in.” She was starting to speak in a more measured way now.
“Were you in a production while you worked for the Filiputs?”
“The occasional walk-on at the Theatre Royal. Not much learning of lines.”
“That’s why you could be generous with your time, I expect.”
She nodded. “They were sweet, both of them. They let me fit my cleaning around all the read-throughs and rehearsals.”
He wanted to talk about Massimo Filiput. “He was rather lost after she died, I believe.”
“Well, it was so sudden, an accident. She fell downstairs, as you probably know.”
“Were you there at the time?”
“No, but I saw him next day. The shock was all too clear. He was crying, on and off. I did what I could to help out, took him to see the funeral director and the register office, stuff like that.”
“He had friends, didn’t he?”
“His railway buddies, you mean?” She rolled her eyes. “I called them his choo-choo chums. They were at the house the afternoon of the accident, a bunch of goofy old men who used to meet in each other’s houses and talk about trains.”
“When you say a bunch…?”
“Never more than four or five. Personally I can’t think of anything more boring than old trains, but Max enjoyed it and after Olga died the meetings kept him going, really.”
“Do you remember their names?”
She shook her head. “There was a gay couple. At least, I thought they must be gay because they arrived together and had a rapport that was fairly obvious. Max probably told me their names, but I had no reason to memorise them. I have enough of a job learning lines.”
“Gay men, you mean?”
“Women are daft about a lot of things, but they aren’t daft about trains.”
“Another of the railway people would have been Ivor Pellegrini,” he tried prompting her. “Grey-haired, clean-shaven, average height and build.”
“They all looked like that to me.” Which closed that avenue.
“Did he have any other regular visitors after his wife died?”
“There was Cyril who played Scrabble with him and Cyril’s housekeeper, Jessie, who did the driving as well as a bit of cooking for them while she was there.”
This was helpful, chiming in with earlier information. “The doctor mentioned Cyril, said he was a teaching colleague, retired.”
“Yes, he definitely wasn’t one of the railway lot. Nice old boy. We often had a joke. He liked teasing me about all the leading men I was supposed to have been with: ‘Didn’t I spot you last night in that commercial with George Clooney?’ sort of thing.”
“And Jessie was Cyril’s housekeeper? That’s an old-fashioned term.”
“His word for it. I was meant to get the message they lived together but didn’t share a room. I didn’t want to know about his living arrangements, thanks very much. What old men get up to in private is their business.”
“Was Jessie his age?”
“Quite a bit younger. Forties, maybe. I guess he employed her to take care of him. That’s the deal with a housekeeper, isn’t it? And of course she acted as chauffeur as well on the days they visited. He’d given up driving. She was always nicely dressed, short brown hair with blonde highlights, and fun to be with.”
“Are they still about?”
“I haven’t seen them since Max’s funeral. They aren’t from Bath.”
“So you got to his funeral? That was nice. Who else was there?”
“Very few apart from the ones I just mentioned. It was a low-key event, quite short, at Haycombe cremmy. Non-religious. No hymns or prayers. Cyril got up and said some nice, witty things, but respectful. The main bit I remember was while the curtains were closing they played a number by The Kinks called ‘Last of the Steam-Powered Trains.’ There wasn’t a dry eye in the house. Oh, and there was a wreath in the shape of a train.”
“From his railway friends? They were there?”
“To a man. And we all went back to Cavendish Crescent and shared some bottles of prosecco. They didn’t last long.”
“Going back a bit, you said you weren’t at the house on the day of Olga’s accident.”
Suddenly she was back in her Tennessee Williams role. “Don’t you believe me? What are you hinting at, Mr. Policeman? Do I have to scream to make myself understood? I wasn’t there when the old lady died. End of.”
“But the railway club were. What about Cyril and Jessie?”
“No. They came on different days. Max used to say steam and Scrabble don’t mix.”
“Where do they live?”
“Cyril and Jessie? Somewhere this side of Salisbury in the Wylye valley. They’re decent people. You can cross them off your list. I’m less confident about the choo-choo lot. After Max’s funeral they were like vultures sorting through his photo collection and the old posters.”
“Didn’t anybody try and stop them?”
“Far from it. There was a po-faced woman there from the solicitors who arranged the funeral and she told everyone the bigger, more collectable items would go into a sale, but Max had said in his will that things like posters and timetables and old photos should be distributed among his railway cronies. She didn’t know their worth and wasn’t able to share them out so she suggested they helped themselves. It was mayhem after that, really distasteful.”
“Collectors aren’t going to miss an opportunity like that.”
“It was insane. Jessie had a mug of coffee knocked out of her hand. She should have put in a claim for a new skirt, in my opinion.”
“Was she wearing black?”
“Purple wool, and it showed. I made sure she sponged it with white vinegar in the kitchen, which is what you do, but there was still a mark.”
“I hope he offered to pay.”
“He did apologise at the time. She didn’t want to make an issue of it. She had to put on one of the overalls I used for work and she was too self-conscious to show herself again. I had to go back to the room where it happened and collect her handbag. She and Cyril left not long after.”
“I’ve got ahead of myself, asking about the funeral,” he said. “Would you mind telling me about the morning you found him dead?”
“Why?”