Page 136 of Troubled Blood

“Oh, yes,” said Cynthia. “No, I must admit, I’ve been expecting something like this for a while. I hope it isn’t going to make things worse for her.”

“Er—well, we hope that, too, obviously,” said Strike, and Cynthia laughed and said, “Oh, no, of course, yes.”

Strike took out his notebook, in which a few photocopied sheets were folded, and a pen.

“Could we begin with the statement you gave the police?”

“You’ve got it?” said Cynthia, looking startled. “The original?”

“A photocopy,” he said, unfolding it.

“How… funny. Seeing it again, after all this time. I was eighteen. Eighteen! It seems a century ago, hahaha!”

The signature at the bottom of the uppermost page, Robin saw, was rounded and rather childish. Strike handed the photocopied pages to Cynthia, who took them looking almost frightened.

“I’m afraid I’m awfully dyslexic,” she said. “I was forty-two before I was diagnosed. My parents thought I was bone idle, hahaha… um, so…”

“Would you rather I read it to you?” Strike suggested. Cynthia handed it back to him at once.

“Oh, thank you—this is how I learn all my guiding notes, by listening to audio disks, hahaha…”

Strike flattened out the photocopied papers on the table.

“Please interrupt if you want to add or change anything,” he told Cynthia, who nodded and said that she would.

““Name, Cynthia Jane Phipps… date of birth, July the twentieth 1957… address, ‘The Annexe, Broom House, Church Road’… that would be Margot’s—?”

“I had self-contained rooms over the double garage,” said Cynthia. Robin thought she laid slight emphasis on “self-contained.”

“‘I am employed as nanny to Dr. Phipps and Dr. Bamborough’s infant daughter, and I live in their house—’”

“Self-contained studio,” said Cynthia. “It had its own entrance.”

“‘My hours…’ Don’t think we need any of that,” muttered Strike. “Here we go. ‘On the morning of the eleventh of October I began work at 7 a.m. I saw Dr. Bamborough before she left for work. She seemed entirely as usual. She reminded me that she would be late home because she was meeting her friend Miss Oonagh Kennedy for drinks near her place of work. As Dr. Phipps was bedbound due to his recent accident—’”

“Anna told you about Roy’s von Willebrand Disease?” said Cynthia anxiously.

“Er—I don’t think she told us, but it’s mentioned in the police report.”

“Oh, didn’t she say?” said Cynthia, who seemed unhappy to hear it. “Well, he’s a Type Three. That’s serious, as bad as hemophilia. His knee swelled up and he was in a lot of pain, could hardly move,” said Cynthia.

“Yes,” said Strike, “it’s all in the police—”

“No, because he’d had an accident on the seventh,” said Cynthia, who seemed determined to say this. “It was a wet day, pouring with rain, you can check that. He was walking around a corner of the hospital, heading for the car park, and an out-patient rode right into him on a pushbike. Roy got tangled up in the front wheel, slipped, hit his knee and had a major bleed. These days he has prophylactic injections so it doesn’t happen the way it used to, but back then, if he injured himself, it could lay him up for weeks.”

“Right,” said Strike, and judging it to be the most tactful thing to do, he made careful note of all these details, which he’d already read in Roy’s own statements and police interviews.

“No, Anna knows her dad was ill that day. She’s always known,” Cynthia added.

Strike continued reading the statement aloud. It was a retelling of facts Strike and Robin already knew. Cynthia had been in charge of baby Anna at home. Roy’s mother had come over during the day. Wilma Bayliss had cleaned for three hours and left. Cynthia had taken occasional cups of tea to the invalid and his mother. At 6 p.m., Evelyn Phipps had gone home to her bungalow to play bridge with friends, leaving a tray of food for her son.

“‘At 8 p.m. in the evening I was watching television in the sitting room downstairs when I heard the phone ring in the hall. I would usually only ever answer the phone if both Dr. Phipps and Dr. Bamborough were out. As Dr. Phipps was in, and could answer the phone from the extension beside his bed, I didn’t answer.

“‘About five minutes later, I heard the gong that Mrs. Evelyn Phipps had placed beside Dr. Phipps’s bed, in case of emergency. I went upstairs. Dr. Phipps was still in bed. He told me that it had been Miss Kennedy on the phone. Dr. Bamborough hadn’t turned up at the pub. Dr. Phipps said he thought she must have been delayed at work or forgotten. He asked me to tell Dr. Bamborough to go up to their bedroom as soon as she came in.

“‘I went back downstairs. About an hour later, I heard the gong again and went upstairs and found Dr. Phipps now quite worried about his wife. He asked me whether she’d come in yet. I said that she hadn’t. He asked me to stay in the room while he phoned Miss Kennedy at home. Miss Kennedy still hadn’t seen or heard from Dr. Bamborough. Dr. Phipps hung up and asked me what Dr. Bamborough had been carrying when she left the house that morning. I told him just a handbag and her doctor’s bag. He asked me whether Dr. Bamborough had said anything about visiting her parents. I said she hadn’t. He asked me to stay while he called Dr. Bamborough’s mother.

“‘Mrs. Bamborough hadn’t heard from her daughter or seen her. Dr. Phipps was now quite worried and asked me to go downstairs and look in the drawer in the base of the clock on the mantelpiece in the sitting room and see whether there was anything in there. I went and looked. There was nothing there. I went back upstairs and told Dr. Phipps that the clock drawer was empty. Dr. Phipps explained that this was a place he and his wife sometimes left each other private notes. I hadn’t known about this previously.