"Would it upset you to talk to me about Mrs. Primero, Miss Flower?" he asked gently, easing himself into a bentwood chair.
"Of course it wouldn't," said the sister, "she loves it."
Archery could bear no more. "This is rather a private matter, if you don't mind."
"Private! It's the whole ward's bedtime story, believe me." She flounced away, a crackling navy and white robot.
Alice Flower's voice was cracked and harsh. The strokes had affected her throat muscles or her vocal cords. But her accent was pleasant and correct, learnt, Archery supposed, in the kitchens and nurseries of educated people.
"What was it you wanted to know, sir?"
"First tell me about the Primero family."
"Oh, I can do that. I always took an interest." She gave a small rattling cough and turned her head to hide the twisted side of her mouth. "I went to Mrs. Primero when the boy was born..."
"The boy?"
"Mr. Edward, her only child he was."
Ah, thought Archery, the father of rich Roger and his sisters.
"He was a lovely boy and we always got on a treat, him and me. I reckon it really aged me and his poor mother when he died, sir. But he'd got a family of his own by then, thanks be to God, and Mr. Roger was the living spit of his father."
"I suppose Mr. Edward left him pretty well off, did he?"
"Oh, no, sir, that was the pity of it. You see, old Dr. Primero left his money to madam, being as Mr. Edward was doing so well at the time. But he lost everything on something in the city and when he was taken Mrs. Edward and the three kiddies were quite badly off." She coughed again, making Archery wince. He fancied he could see a terrible vain effort to raise those hands and cover the rattling lips. "Madam offered to help—not that she had more than she needed—but Mrs. Edward was that proud, she wouldn't take a penny from her mother-in-law. I never shall know how she managed. There was the three of them, you see. Mr. Roger he was the eldest, and then there was the two little mites, ever so much younger than their brother, but close together if you take my meaning. No more than eighteen months between them."
She rested her head back on the pillows and bit at her lip as if trying to pull it back into place. "Angela was the oldest. Time flies so I reckon she'd be twenty-six now. Then there was Isabel, named after madam. They was just babies when their Daddy died and it was years before we saw them.
"It was a bitter blow to madam, I can tell you, not knowing what had become of Mr. Roger. Then one day just out of the blue he turned up at Victor's Piece. Fancy, he was living in digs just over at Sewingbury, studying to be a solicitor with a very good firm. Somebody Mrs. Edward knew had got him in. He hadn't no idea his granny was still alive, let alone in Kingsmarkham, but he was looking up somebody in the phone book, in the line of business, sir, and there it was; Mrs. Rose Primero, Victor's Piece. Once he'd come over there was no stopping him. Not that we wanted to stop him, sir. Pretty nearly every Sunday he came and once or twice he fetched his little sisters all the way from London and brought them with him. Good as gold they were.
"Mr. Roger and madam, they used to have some laughs together. All the old photographs they'd have out and the tales she used to tell him!" She stopped suddenly and Archery watched the old face swell and grow purple. "It was a change for us to have a nice gentlemanlike young fellow about the place after that Painter." Her voice changed to a shrill whistling shriek. That dirty murdering beast!"
Across the ward another old woman in a bed like Alice Flower's smiled a toothless smile as of one hearing a familiar tale retold. The ward's bedtime story, the sister had said.
Archery leant towards her. "That was a dreadful day, Miss Flower," he said, "the day Mrs. Primero died." The fierce eyes flickered, red and spongey blue. "I expect you feel you'll never forget it..."
"Not to my dying day," said Alice Flower. Perhaps she thought of the now useless body that had once been so fine an instrument and was already three-quarters dead.
"Will you tell me about it?"
As soon as she began he realised how often she must have told it before. It was likely that some of these other old women were not absolutely bedridden, that sometimes in the evenings they got up and gathered round Alice Flower's bed. A tale, he thought, paraphrasing, to draw children from play and old women from the chimney corner.
"He was a devil," she said, "a terror. I was scared of him but I never let him know it. Take all and give nothing, that was his motto. Six pounds a year, that was all I got when I first went out into service. Him, he had his home and his wages, a lovely motor to drive. There's some folks want the moon. You'd think a big strong young fellow like that'd be only too glad to fetch the coal in for an old lady, but not Mr. Bert Painter. Beast Painter was what I called him.
"That Saturday night when he never come and he never come madam had to sit all by herself in the icy cold. Let me go over and speak to him, madam, I said, but she wouldn't have it. The morning's time enough, Alice, she said. I've said to myself over and over again, if he'd come that night I'd have been in there with them. He wouldn't have been able to tell no lies then."
"But he did come the next morning, Miss Flower..."
"She told him off good and proper. I could hear her giving him a dressing down."
"What were you doing?"
"Me? When he come in first I was doing the vegetables for madam's lunch, then I popped on the oven and put in the meat tin. They asked me all that at the court in London, the Old Bailey it was." She paused and there was suspicion in the look she gave him. "You writing a book about it all, are you, sir?"
"Something like that," said Archery.
"They wanted to know if I was sure I could hear all right. My hearing's better than that judge's, I can tell you. Just as well it is. If I'd been hard of hearing we might have all gone up in smoke that morning."
"How was that?"
"Beast Painter was in the drawing room with madam and I'd gone into the larder to get the vinegar for the mint sauce, when all of a sudden I heard a kind of a plop and sizzle. That's that funny old oven, I said, and sure enough it was. I popped back quick and opened the oven door. One of the potatoes had kind of spat out, sir, and fallen on the gas. All in flames it was and sizzling and roaring like a steam engine. I turned it off quick and then I did a silly thing. Poured water on it. Ought to have known better at my age. Ooh, the racket and the smoke! You couldn't hear yourself think."
There had been nothing about that in the trial transcript. Archery caught his breath in the excitement. "You couldn't hear yourself think..." While you were choked with smoke and deafened by hissing you might not hear a man go upstairs, search a bedroom and come down again. Alice's evidence in this matter had been one of the most important features of the case. For if Painter had been offered and had taken the two hundred pounds in Mrs. Primero's presence in the morning, what motive could he have had for killing her in the evening?
"Well, we had our lunch and Mr. Roger came. My poor old leg was aching from where I'd bruised it the night before getting a few lumps in on account of Beast Painter being out on the tiles. Mr. Roger was ever so nice about it, kept asking me if there was anything he could do, wash up or anything. But that isn't man's work and I always say it's better to keep going while you can.