Georgina Paterson was a thin, pinched woman, of indeterminate middle age. She wore a grey cardigan, pulled tight around her shoulders.
'In there.' She pointed to a door off the hall, to the left. To Pringle's great relief, a coal effect gas fire was blazing away. Ushering the detectives to a settee, the woman sat in the chair closest to it.
'I'm very sorry about your brother, Mrs Paterson,' Pringle began.
He meant it; he was a kind man by nature. 'Were things, er, all right, at the hospital?'
She nodded. 'Yes, thank you. The staff there were very nice to me.
They made Anthony look very peaceful; all things considered.'
The superintendent looked up at the high mantelpiece above the hearth. Various family photographs were set upon it, including one of a wedding group; bride, groom, best man and bridesmaid. He pointed to it. 'Is that yours?' he asked.
Georgina Paterson nodded. 'Aye, that's our wedding, mine and Bert's. Thirty years we'd have been married, but for…' Her voice faltered.
'I'm sorry,' said Pringle once more. 'Has your husband been… gone long?'
'Sixteen and a half years,' she answered, composing herself. 'He was a miner. He was killed in an accident underground, hit by a runaway truck.' She looked across at Stevie Steele, saw him glancing round the big room.
'I know what you're thinkin', son,' she said, not unkindly. 'A big house this for a miner's widow. But there was negligence, you see.
My brother got me a good young lawyer, Mr Laidlaw, a customer of his at the bank, and he took up my case. The Coal Board settled out of court, and I got a great deal of money, plus a decent pension.
'It was Anthony who said I should buy this house. He and I used to like Joppa when we were bairns, and he thought it would be nice for me here. Also, since there are five bedrooms, he thought I could do bed and breakfasts in the summer, an' earn a bit more money.'
'And do you?' asked Pringle smiling.
'Yes indeed. I do very well too, especially in the summer, although I've got folk that come to me all year round — salesmen and the like.
As usual, Anthony's advice was right; he's aye been very good to me.
Rina — she was his wife — used to help me down here sometimes.' Mrs Paterson shook his head. 'My brother never got over her death, ye ken. After she went, I think that he was just waiting to go himself.'
The superintendent glanced up at another of the photographs above the fireplace. It showed a young man, in a University graduation gown. 'Is that your son?'
The woman beamed with instant pride. 'Aye, that's Francis, in his graduation gown. He's twenty-eight now. He's a doctor, you know,' she added, proudly. Pringle felt a tingling sensation in his stomach.
'Very good,' he said. 'Do you see much of him?'
'Not nearly as much as I'd like. He works in London, in Great Ormond Street, the hospital for sick kids, and he's still studyin', so he doesn't have much time off. He'll be up for his uncle's funeral though.
I spoke to him just there at lunchtime.'
'Is he your only child?'
'No, no. Ah've a daughter, Andrina; named after her auntie. She's twenty-one. She's a nurse, up at the Western.'
'Ah, where her uncle was treated?' asked Pringle casually.
The woman looked up at him, her eyes suddenly sharp. 'How did you know he was there?'
'We know that he had been ill, Mrs Paterson. In Edinburgh, all of the cancer patients are treated there.'
'Oh, I see.' She hesitated, wringing her hands in her lap. 'Ah'm sorry to be so abrupt with you, Mr Pringle. The thing is, my brother was extremely embarrassed by his illness, and by the way it was.
Anthony was a very fastidious man, so after the operation it was just mortifying for him to have to wear that bag. He never went out of the house afterwards, and he never saw anyone other than Andrina and me, or Francis, when he was up from London.'
'No one at all, Mrs Paterson?'
'Well, there was Mrs Leggat, the cleaning lady, she used to do his food shopping for him — no' that he ate much, poor man — and the outpatient visitors from the hospital and such, and Dr Lennie, his GP; but no one else, other than us.'
'No friends from the bank?'
'He didnae have many of those. His main friends were in the Rotary, and he cut himself off from them. But the bank? No none at all, really.'
'Did they know he was ill when they gave him early retirement?'
The bereaved sister shook her head. 'No. He knew, but he didn't tell them. He told me that if he had they wouldn't have let him retire, but put him on sick leave instead, so that if he had died they'd have had to pay out less to his estate than to him in his lump sum and pension. He was gey disillusioned towards the end of his career, Mr Pringle.'
'I can understand that,' said the policeman. 'He knew he was ill himself, though, before he went?'
'He knew for over a year, superintendent. He had symptoms all that time, but he kept them to himself. Eventually, just after he retired, he mentioned it to Francis, and he made him go to Dr Lennie. By that time…' She broke off for a few seconds.
'I went with him to the Western for his first appointment, jist taste hold his hand; you know how it is. His consultant, Mr Simmers, was a very nice man. He explained that the tumour was very large, but that there was still a chance, if it was removed, and if he had followup treatment. So they operated, and they gave him radiation treatment.
He was all right for a few months, but towards the end of the summer he began to lose weight again, until he had trouble even walking about the house.'
'Did Andrina nurse her uncle at all, Mrs Paterson?' asked Pringle.
'When he was in hospital, I mean?'
'No,' Mrs Paterson replied. 'She works in the cancer place, right enough, but in the breast unit, in Ward One. Some of her friends looked after him though, and they let her know how he was doing.'
She sighed. 'I'm glad, you know, that Anthony went suddenly like that. He was a very dignified man, was my brother. It would have been awful to see him just wither away, totally helpless. I know that thought frightened Andrina. She really loved her uncle, you know, and he doted on her.
'In the last few weeks, she'd been visiting him just about every day.
Her boyfriend used to go with her too, before he went off to University.
Anthony was very fond of him too. He's a nice lad, is young Raymond.'
Sometimes, the best detectives find that the key questions ask themselves. 'Raymond who?'
Mrs Paterson looked across at Stevie Steele as he spoke. 'Raymond Weston, son. His father's a professor, up at the Western.'
64
'Andy, when was the last time you took a holiday?'
He looked at her, his elbow on the high round table which circled one of the pillars in the Standing Order bar. 'I seem to remember,' he replied, 'that you and I were in Spain this summer, at your Dad's place. I seem to remember that you and I were all over each other then.'
'And I'm sure we will be again, next year,' said Alex. 'But you're dodging the question. You know bloody well what I mean. When was the last time you took a few days to yourself, to play golf, or to go wind-surfing. That spare room of yours is full of sports gear, gathering dust, and here you are, looking unfit, dog-tired, and if I may say so, just a wee bit podgy.'
He smiled at her, sourly. 'Gee thanks. Go on, give us a quick chorus of "You fat bastard, you fat bastard, you ate all the pies!" so the whole pub knows I've put on a couple of pounds. For your information, girlie, I've started working out again in the Fettes weights room, and I'm back playing squash with your father twice a week, now that the Chief's back in semi-harness.'
'Good, but none of that gets you out of the office. What are you doing to relax and to help you get away from the stress? That's what I'm asking.'