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Troubled Blood
Part Three - 20
“Irritable bowel syndrome. It flares up. The pain is sometimes —well. The funny thing is, I was fine all the time I was away—I’ve been staying with my eldest daughter, they’re in Hampshire, that’s why I didn’t get your letter straight away—but the moment I got home, I called Jan, I said, you’ll have to come, I’m in that much pain—and my GP’s no use,” she added, with a little moue of disgust. “Woman. All my own fault, according to her! I should be cutting out everything that makes life worth living—I was telling them, Jan,” she said, as her friend backed into the room with a laden tea tray, “that you’re a saint.”
“Oh, carry on. Everyone likes a good review,” said Janice cheerfully. Strike was halfway out of his chair to help her with the tray, on which stood both teapot and cafetière, but like Mrs. Gupta she refused help, depositing it on a padded ottoman. An assortment of chocolate biscuits, some foil-wrapped, lay on a doily; the sugar bowl had tongs and the flowered fine bone china suggested “for best.” Janice joined her friend on the sofa and poured out the hot drinks, serving Irene first.
“Help yourself to biscuits,” Irene told her visitors, and then, eyeing Strike hungrily, “So—the famous Cameron Strike! I nearly had a heart attack when I saw your name at the bottom of the letter. And you’re going to try and crack Creed, are you? Will he talk to you, do you think? Will they let you go and see him?”
Troubled Blood
Part Three - 20
“So you think Douthwaite’s visits to Margot were because of his health?” asked Robin. “Not because he had a romantic interest in—?”
“He did send her chocolates one time,” said Irene, “but if you ask me, it was more like she was an agony aunt.”
“Well, ’e ’ad these ’ead pains and ’e was def’nitely nervous. Depressed, maybe,” said Janice. “Everyone ’ad blamed him for what happened to that poor girl ’oo killed ’erself, but I don’t know… and some of me ovver neighbors told me there were young men coming in and out of his flat—”
Troubled Blood
Part Three - 20
“I don’t know what that said. I had to go into her consulting room to give her a message, see, and I saw it lying on her desk. Same writing, I recognized it at once. She didn’t like me seeing it, I could tell. Screwed it up and threw it in the bin.”
Janice passed round fresh cups of tea and coffee. Irene helped herself to another chocolate biscuit.
“I doubt you’ll know,” said Strike, “but I wondered if you ever had any reason to suspect that Margot was pregnant before she—”