Page 56 of Good Bad Girl

“Iama detective—”

“But not a good one. Not yet. You’ll hate me for saying this, but there are some things only experience can teach a person. I might have been a mere store detective, but I learned how to watch people and see who they really are beneath the disguises we all wear. My daughter said you thought there were three suspects in this case, including her.”

“That’s right.”

“That’s poppycock and piffle. But probably due to a lack of experience and common sense. We all make mistakes, that’s how we learn. Don’t be too hard on yourself when you realize how wrong you’ve been.”

“Thanks, I’ll try not to be. Are you talking about the daughter you hadn’t seen or spoken to for months until yesterday? She thought you were missing. Sounds as though you’ve been reunited.”

“We often ignore each other for months at a time.”

The detective nods, takes another sip from her vat of coffee. “Mother and daughter relationships can be complicated—”

“I don’t see what’s complicated about it. We just don’t like each other.”

“I see, silly me. So... why was your daughter at the care home yesterday?”

Edith shrugs. “It was Mother’s Day. I suspect it was a mix of guilt and anger. It’s always been difficult for her.”

“Mother’s Day?”

“That’s what I said. Are you hard of hearing?”

DCI Chapman puffs out her cheeks before loudly blowing air from her lips. She pinches the bridge of her nose between her thumb and her index finger. Edith notices that her nails are all painted in different colors. “Why is Mother’s Day a difficult day for your daughter?” the detective asks.

“That’s a much better question, there’s hope for you yet. Mother’s Day is how all of these events are connected. Because that’s when the other one took the baby.”

“What baby?”

“And thenyouarrested the baby for something she didn’t do. Are you really allowed to have pink hair and work here? They wouldn’t have put up with those sorts of shenanigans in my day.” The detective leans her elbows on the table and holds her head in her hands. “The problem with your generation...” Edith continues. “One of the many problems, in my opinion, is that you’ve forgotten the art of listening. You know how to use your eyes, staring at your screens all day long, but you don’t use your ears. It was my fault.”

“What was?”

“All of it.”

DCI Chapman steeples her fingers. She laces them together except for her index fingers so that her hands look like a gun. “Are you telling me that the murder in the care home was your fault?”

“No! But everything else was. A few months after the baby wastaken Clio’s husband suggested they arrange a service at the local church, even though neither of them was religious. He said they needed some form of closure in order to move on—as though Clio ever could—then he left my daughter soon afterward. So I suppose it did helphimto move on with his life—he moved far away and started a new one. That day, at the church, we all watched while they buried a tiny, empty white coffin, but the baby wasn’t dead.”

The detective stares at her as though she is speaking a foreign language.

“Mrs. Elliot, I think it might be best if we take you back to the Windsor—”

“Fiddlesticks. I’m not going back there!” Edith stands up so fast her chair topples to the floor. “I do not belong in a home!”

“Then we’ll have to call your daughter.”

“Fat lot of use she’ll be. Might as well call the tooth fairy. Talking to you really is like talking to a brick wall but less interesting. Tell me, are you fluent in gobbledygook or do you only speak gibberish? Why can’t you see what is right under your nose? There were a queue of people with a motive to kill Joy Bonetta. The most obvious solution is rarely the right one.”

“With all due respect, I disagree.”

“With all due disrespect, I don’t give a fig what you think. People literally get away with murder because of incompetent twits like you. I had a friend at the care home named May and she was murdered, and nobody did a damn thing about it.”

The detective leans forward. “Go on.”

“May was admittedly a few sandwiches short of a picnic—she would sometimes get confused and tell people she was looking for her corgis—but she had a beautiful mind. She could not be beaten at Cluedo or gin rummy and we were friends.”

“Fascinating stuff, but what does that have to do with this?”

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