Again it was Rebecca Isaac who answered. ‘Through an advert in the Shrewsbury Chronicle . She advertised to do cleaning and mentioned that she was particularly happy to work with the elderly as she’d done some sort of nursing. She sounded ideal for Mother.’ She gave another quick, puzzled look at her husband. ‘She was wonderful. She did everything, cleaned and shopped and tidied up, did any errands, even drove Mother to the doctor’s or the dentist’s. She picked up her prescriptions and cooked her lunch. She did just about everything. She was a real treasure. A find. Mother was really fond of her. In fact, she was so good that when we finally brought Mother to live with us we gave her a cheque for two thousand pounds. In recognition of her help.’
‘Very generous,’ Delia commented.
‘Well – we thought a lot of her. She was a lovely woman and she made Mother’s life so much easier.’ Paul Isaac seemed to think something more was expected and added to his wife’s comments. ‘She was pleasant too. Always friendly. When we visited she cooked us meals and generally made us welcome. To be honest, we couldn’t have wanted anyone better.’
‘What about her family?’
They looked at one another. ‘I don’t remember her mentioning a husband,’ Paul Isaac said dubiously. ‘And I haven’t a clue whether she wore a wedding ring or not. She might have had a son or a daughter but I don’t recall anything about them. She didn’t talk about anything to do with her personal life. We certainly never met any relations of hers. It was all about Mother.’
‘Do you know if a son or a daughter ever visited her at your mother’s house?’
‘Not that we know of.’ They answered in unison without any consultation, Paul Isaac adding unnecessarily, ‘If they visited when we weren’t there we wouldn’t have known anything about it, would we?’
‘Quite. And the garden?’
Paul Isaac answered again. ‘A firm of gardeners came round. Greenfingers they were called.’ He chuckled. ‘A very memorable name. They came round one morning a week, once a fortnight through the winter to tidy up. They did the lawns, the hedges, maintenance. They weren’t cheap but they kept the grounds immaculate. Mother wasn’t short of money and she would have been upset to have seen the place fall into neglect, so it was money well spent.’
Delia copied it all down religiously without a clue whether any of it would prove relevant. ‘So you brought your mother to live with you in…?’ She looked up enquiringly.
‘October 2002.’
‘Why then?’
‘She was getting older. Into her eighties. Oh, I don’t know,’ Rebecca Isaac said. ‘The world suddenly seemed to have become a more dangerous place, people a little more vulnerable, families a little more precious. I lost a brother in the Twin Towers attack. He was my only brother. I have no sisters. My parents are both dead. We felt. We both felt,’ she corrected, ‘that we wanted what family we had near. Paul is an only child. The winter was coming. Travel can be tricky. The motorways… well.’ Rebecca Isaac gave her a sudden smile. ‘We don’t need to tell you, Constable Shaw. You’ve come down it this morning. It’s a nightmare. If there had been a sudden crisis we couldn’t have been certain of arriving even using the M54. We didn’t want her to go into a home even if Mother would have accepted that arrangement.’ She waved her hands around vaguely. ‘This is a big enough place. Plenty big enough. We wouldn’t be on top of one another. Paul’s children had both left school to go to university. We’d had some alterations done for her so she had her privacy and dignity, her own bed-sitting room and bathroom. I was more than happy to cook for her and make sure she ate properly.’ She looked up. ‘It seemed the obvious thing to do. We were all happy with the arrangement.’ Paul Isaac glanced at his wife and they smiled at one other. The arrangement, it seemed, had worked for both of them.
Delia noted the term of affection Rebecca had used for her mother-in-law. She called her ‘Mother’. This gave her a picture of the deceased Mrs Isaac, of a warm, independent person, dignified, loved and elderly. She could have had nothing to do with the concealment of a baby’s body, surely? They belonged in different worlds.
She tried to retrieve something from the interview. ‘I know this is a long shot but can you think of any circumstance that a child could have been secreted in the loft while your mother lived at number 41?’
Both of them shook their heads.
‘No one ever went there with a baby,’ Paul said, ‘not that we remember. Or pregnant. Our friends and acquaintances would have gone to antenatal clinics and pre-birth exercises, parent classes. That’s the sort of world we belong to, Constable Shaw – not concealing a pregnancy and then a child’s body, being ashamed of it like that. It isn’t our way. It’s not civilized. Even if someone we knew was pregnant and didn’t want to be they’d simply go and have a legal and safe termination on the National Health Service or privately in a clinic. None of our friends or acquaintances would go through the trauma of having a baby away from trained midwives, doctors, pain relief, a hospital, a paediatrician. It’s too risky. But if by a long long stretch of imagination they had found themselves in this awful and frightening situation and the baby died they wouldn’t just hide the body. They would want it buried, have a funeral, mourn. It’s our culture, Constable Shaw. It wouldn’t make any sense. It’s just not the way we do things.’
WPC Shaw could see the absolute, unarguable logic behind his words. ‘Excuse me asking,’ she said, not even knowing why she was asking this, ‘but how long have you been married?’
Paul Isaac answered very stiffly. ‘Rebecca and I were married in 2000. If it’s got anything to do with you.’
‘I am expecting our first child,’ Rebecca said gently, putting her hand over her husband’s. ‘Paul and his first wife were divorced in the late 1990s.’
‘Thank you.’ Delia Shaw knew she’d lost a bit of face with her last question but now she’d alienated the Isaacs she felt that she should try to retrieve something more tangible from the interview even if it was in a misguided direction and distanced them still further from the truth. ‘Your mother’s house was obviously worth a lot of money.’
The Isaacs waited, looking vaguely affronted at the bluntness of the comment and a little wary.
WPC Shaw felt she was in pursuit. ‘What was the value of her estate when she died?’
It brought out the sting in both of them. Rebecca’s mouth tightened and she gave a swift, worried glance at her husband.
‘I can’t see what that’s got to do with your enquiry,’ Paul Isaac said stiffly.
WPC Shaw waited.
‘A little over two million in all.’
‘That’s a lot of money.’
Paul Isaac dipped his head.
Delia Shaw addressed her next question directly to him. ‘Your father?’
‘Died back in the 80s.’
‘What did he do for a living?’
The Isaacs exchanged a strained look and appeared even more uneasy. Rebecca Isaac started rubbing her fingers together with a soft, dry, rasping sound.
‘He was an undertaker,’ Paul Isaac said reluctantly.
PC Shaw was taken aback. She hadn’t expected this answer. She had a moment’s hesitation while she wondered what to do next. She didn’t want to go just yet. She felt she was on the verge of discovering something of potential significance. Perhaps she could still flush something useful out of this interview. She stood up, decision made. ‘Would it be an awful nuisance if I took a look at the rooms your mother inhabited?’
‘If you must,’ Paul Isaac said reluctantly and WPC Shaw knew now that any pretence of friendliness was over.
They wanted her to go.
The Isaacs had converted two large, sunny rooms on the ground floor into a sitting room with an electric adjustable bed in one corner and a walk-in shower and bathroom, everything made easy for the elderly lady. It was clean and had obviously been scrubbed and tidied since the old lady’s death, yet there was still that lingering scent of an elderly female. A little like fusty rose petals. Delia looked around for something which would give her a clue into the late Mrs Isaac’s character. She scanned the room and finally found it in the bookshelves. The late Mrs Isaac had been an avid reader of crime fiction. She found plenty of classics, Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie as well as a few surprises, Patricia Cornwell and Michael Connolly. A Val McDermid.