A Dreadful Past (8 page)

‘How often did you visit?' Carmen Pharoah continued. ‘Weekly, we believe?'

‘Yes, just once each week, midweek,' Anne Graham replied. ‘I did a full day at their house. Usually on a Wednesday. More than usual, most often on a Wednesday. Other clients I had at the time I did half days for but it was a full day at Mr and Mrs Middleton's. Always a full day. I was as regular as I could be but sometimes I got called in by the dole people to ask why I hadn't got a job, but that wasn't very often – once every couple of months or so.'

‘You were claiming the dole while you were working?' Carmen Pharoah raised eyebrows. ‘Bit naughty of you, wasn't it?' Her voice contained a soft note of disapproval.

‘Yes, but so what?' Anne Graham replied defensively. ‘Everyone did it. Folk still do it. You can't survive on the dole. You try surviving on it. So I worked for cash-in-hand and everybody was happy. But when the social security people asked why I hadn't found work, I said, “Look, I've got no bits of paper, I've got no qualifications. What I have got are convictions for theft and soliciting for purposes of prostitution. So what chance have I got of getting paid employment? Who will hire a thieving street girl?”'

‘Have you?' Carmen Pharoah gasped. ‘You are not known to us – our criminal record check on you was negative.'

‘Well, that's because it was just a little lie I used to tell to get them off my little old back, sweetheart.' Anne Graham smiled. ‘It helped me a lot. They gave me a lot less grief that way. You see, I knew that the social security people couldn't access people's criminal records to check my little story so I invented quite a track record of previous convictions which they knew I had to declare when I was sent for a job interview. So I never got offered any job at all but I was working five days a week near enough … and it was all cash-in-hand. I was canny, though – I'm a survivor. I never flashed my money around; I always looked like a starving doley, I mean, ragged clothes, the lot. But I was well-set in those days. Really nicely well-set. I used to nip out the back when I went to my jobs and I used to use my clients' cleaning equipment and materials. It was a very nice little number I had going for me but the old body gave out. All that cleaning didn't help … arthritis, sciatica, rheumatism … my body just got old and now the state pension is sufficient. I was careful not to flash the cash about, like I said, and I put it all in the bank. All that I could, anyway. I still have a bit put by. So for twenty-five, thirty years, I was earning the average wage, not paying any tax on it and getting the dole on top of it. So yes … I've got a bit put by, enough for my vodka and my cigarettes. So I don't complain.'

‘I see,' Carmen Pharoah replied dryly. ‘It was quite a way out to the Middletons' house from the centre of York. Did you cycle or use the bus?'

‘Most often, almost each time I visited I cycled, but I would use the bus in bad weather. There was a good bus service. Their house was just beyond Skelton and I took the Skipton bus,' Anne Graham explained. ‘Sometimes I took the Thirsk bus – same route, though. There was a bus stop about ten minutes' walk from their house. I could cope with that easily enough. I never had much to carry. In very bad weather – I mean, really heavy rain or snow – I didn't go at all. It meant I didn't get paid, but that was the deal. My job with them was still safe.'

‘I understand,' Carmen Pharoah replied calmly though still with a note of disapproval. ‘It is the case with all self-employed cleaners, I suppose, all self-employed persons in any capacity. No work means no pay. End of story.'

‘Yes, and that's the downside of the black economy, as I am told it's called.' Anne Graham sighed. ‘All those local authority employees or those civil servants who still get paid if they don't turn in for the day … Must be nice that – you phone in sick and then have a nice, calm and relaxing day pottering about your house, all the time knowing you'll still be getting paid. They have no fear of redundancy either, those people. Not bad. That's not a bad number to have, isn't that. Not a bad little number at all.'

‘So you spent all day at the Middletons'?' Carmen Pharoah clarified.

‘Yes, as I said, all day once a week and I got there most weeks. I reckon I got there over forty times a year – forty-plus weeks out of fifty-two – that's not a bad attendance record. Really only very bad weather would stop me, like I said … or perhaps ill health on my part but I was fit for most of my life. I stayed away over Christmas and New Year and also when they went away on their family holidays, and I took two weeks each year to go and visit my older sister who lives in Ramsgate down in the south of England. It's handy having a sister who lives in a holiday resort. She still lives there and I still visit. We used to take the ferry across to France for a day, me and her. But most weeks I was there, at the Middletons', keeping the dust down.'

‘All right.' Carmen Pharoah nodded. ‘So you ate there?'

‘Yes,' Anne Graham replied in her raspy, high-pitched voice, ‘they provided that … They provided the little woman with a lunch. If you could call it lunch. All the money they had and all I was given was a bowl of soup, a bread roll and a cup of tea. But at least they didn't expect me to bring a packed lunch. Other clients I had included me in their home, gave me a proper lunch if I was there all day – meat and two veg, a real meal – and I sat at the dining table with the family, but not the nose-in-the-air-Middletons. Not them. I got served my little snack in the kitchen and was kept well out of the way. I was firmly put and kept in my place in the Middletons' house, all right.'

‘You sound as though you didn't like them very much,' Carmen Pharoah commented.

‘I didn't,' Anne Graham replied flatly. ‘I didn't like them at all and I am not sorry if it shows. Not sorry at all.'

‘So why work for them,' Carmen Pharoah probed, ‘especially since you had to trek all the way out to Skelton – further than Skelton, in fact?'

‘They paid well,' Anne Graham sniffed. ‘That's the reason. I was feeling their pocket, wasn't I? They were lawyers … well, he was a lawyer anyway, and that's how lawyers work, so I was once told. Lawyers don't get a flat fee, like the same fee applied to each client for the same type of service, no matter the client. They don't work like that. Lawyers “feel their clients' pocket” and they charge what they believe the client can afford. Imagine being the lawyer to the royal family or to a film star; just imagine what you could charge in such circumstances. Can you imagine being able to feel pockets like that? So I thought, well if he's doing it … I'll do it to him. It seemed fair to me – completely fair. It still does. So I was charging them twice as much as my other clients got charged. It was like working for one day and getting paid for two days.' Anne Graham paused. ‘So the journey out to their house and back once a week was worth it. I reckon in those days I had a client base of six or seven or eight houses … it varied over time. The Middletons and one other were full days; the others were half day jobs and I also needed a half day to myself to go and sign on for my dole money each week. If I missed a client I'd work for them on Saturday.'

‘Had it all worked out, didn't you?' Carmen Pharoah observed. ‘All ticking over nicely.'

‘Suppose I did. I suppose I could say that things ticked over like clockwork quite nicely for me in those days. Quite nicely indeed.' Anne Graham looked beyond Carmen Pharoah and her eyes seemed to focus on the further wall of the room for a few moments. ‘Yes … they were good days, in a sense. I can't complain at all. Not really. I was doing all right for my little old self, so I was.' Anne Graham refocused her eyes on Carmen Pharoah. ‘But I didn't mind taking money from the Middletons, I didn't mind that at all … and a good cleaner makes herself indispensable. You know how it is – she gets to know where things are kept, what goes where, how the householder likes things done, so it gets to the stage where the householder starts to fear the trouble they'll have finding another cleaner they can trust because I never stole from any of my clients, and then breaking another cleaner in. It's handy for any cleaner when you've reached that stage and that is where I was with the Middletons, them with their old-fashioned ways. I had to call him “sir” and her “ma'am” and the children “Master Noel” and “Mistress Sara”, while I was addressed as “Graham” or “Miss Graham” by the children. What's that expression, “time shift”?'

‘Warp.' Ventnor smiled from his seat at the table. ‘Time warp – is that the expression you're thinking of?'

‘Yes, that's it.' Anne Graham raised a thin, bony finger up and held it vertically towards Thompson Ventnor. ‘Thank you. That's the expression. It was like being in a time warp visiting that house; it was exactly like going back to the nineteenth century. I am surprised that I was not; expected to curtsey when myself and any one member of the family came into or left each other's presence. Really, I kid you not; doing that would not have been out of place in that household. It was like that. They belonged to a different time. Theirs was a different era.'

‘So we understand – we are getting that self-same impression from other sources,' Carmen Pharoah replied. Then she asked, ‘We are informed that you had a key to let yourself into the house?'

‘Yes, yes.' Anne Graham grappled a cigarette from a packet and put it to her lips. She lit it with a yellow disposable lighter and pulled deeply on it. She exhaled the smoke with evident satisfaction. ‘These are killing me. So is the voddy, which I start on at about five o'clock each evening.' She shrugged. ‘Well, this is me. This is what I have amounted to in life. I reckon my doctor has written me off as a hopeless case, a real suicide pilot, a proper lost cause, and that's just little old me. But yes, I had the keys to the Middletons' house so I could let myself in. It took me five years to earn that level of trust, and once I had I became pretty well indispensable, but eventually, yes, I got the keys and then I got my head bitten off for using them, would you believe? It was one of those few times his nibs was at home instead of being in his office, or chambers, as he called them, in York feeling some poor client's pocket, and I mean poor in the sense of being unlucky that he was their solicitor.'

‘Yes …' Carmen Pharoah smiled gently, ‘we know what you mean.'

‘So anyway, that one day in I came,' Anne Graham inhaled, then exhaled and continued, ‘and him and her were having an argument in the kitchen. The door opens on to a sort of hallway next to the kitchen so he turns and rants on at me saying if I have the key that does not mean I can let myself in like I lived there. Knock first, he said. I mean shouted, he was angry with the world at that moment so I got really shouted at. “Only when you know no one is at home do you let yourself in.” I mean, what did they give me the keys for if I'm not supposed to use them? Tell me that? So anyway, I played the dimwit and I went on to say how sorry I was, “sir”, but privately I thought what an idiot he was, so anyway, after that, I always knocked on their main door each time I arrived for my day's work and only let myself in if I didn't get an answer, which is how he wanted it. So I kept my job and kept feeling his pocket as deeply as I could get away with. The more you are paid the more you can put up with. That's what I have found over the years. So I put up with his bad temper by keeping out of his way and thinking about the money.'

‘OK.' Carmen Pharoah took a deep breath. ‘The keys to the Middletons' house – how many were there?'

‘Two.' Anne Graham took another deep inhalation of the cigarette. ‘One small one for the spring-loaded barrel lock and a second key for the mortise lock … But why did he give me the keys if I wasn't supposed to use them? Tell me that, will you? Explain that, can you?'

‘Let's just carry on, please.' Carmen Pharoah held up her hand, palm outwards facing Anne Graham. ‘This is getting to the sort of details we need to know about … let's just keep this focused, please, Miss Graham.'

‘Well, they shouldn't have given me the keys if I wasn't supposed to use them, should they?' Anne Graham snorted indignantly, exhaling smoke as she spoke. ‘Talk about wanting your bread buttered on both sides. You can't have your cake and eat it, can you?'

‘All right!' Carmen Pharoah once again held up her hand. ‘Point taken. Now, did every member of the household have a set of keys?'

‘Yes.' Anne Graham nodded. ‘Once the children were grown they were given a set of the house keys. That I do know.'

‘Do you know if any other person besides yourself had a set of house keys?' Carmen Pharoah asked. ‘That is quite important. Very important really.'

‘I don't know but I don't think so,' Anne Graham informed her. ‘The only regular caller at the house seemed to be little me. They hadn't got a gardener, for instance, and they didn't have their groceries delivered. The only other set of keys I know about was a set permanently attached to the wall near the door at the end of a thin chain. That's the one thing I can say for Mr Middleton: he was very safety conscious. No one was going to get trapped in that house. He made it very difficult to get in but he also made it very easy to get out. I always felt safe in that house even though I didn't like the Middletons and their Victorian ways, but I never felt in fear or in any danger.'

‘So,' Carmen Pharoah paused, ‘let's cut to the chase, shall we? Let's focus on why myself and my colleague are here. The background is interesting and relevant but the murders … can I ask … were you upset by them?'

‘Upset?' Anne Graham shrugged. ‘Don't know how to describe what I felt. I was shocked by the sight I saw when I got to the house that morning and I was in a state of shock for the rest of that day but I can't say I was upset about the murders. I mean, the Middletons … they had a lot to be thankful for … a good education, a high level of income, a lovely house in its own grounds. Did you know the house used to be a farm?'