Chapter 20
Joyce
So it seems we are investigating a murder. And better still, I have been in a police interview room. This diary is bringing me luck.
It was interesting watching Elizabeth in action. She is very impressive. Very calm. I wonder if we would have got along if we’d met thirty years ago. Probably not; we are from different worlds. But this place brings people together.
I do hope I’ll be of some help to Elizabeth in the investigation. Help to catch Tony Curran’s killer. Perhaps I will, in my own way.
I think that if I have a special skill, it is that I am often overlooked. Is that the word? Underestimated, perhaps?
Coopers Chase is full of the great and the good, people who have done something or other with their lives.
It’s really a lot of fun. There’s someone who helped design the Channel Tunnel, someone who has a disease named after them, and someone who was the ambassador to Paraguay or Uruguay. You know the type.
And me? Joyce Meadowcroft? What do they make of me, I wonder?
Harmless, certainly. Chatty? Guilty, I’m afraid.
But I think they know, deep down, that I’m not one of them.
A nurse, not a doctor, not that anyone would say that to my face.
They know that Joanna bought my flat here. Joanna is one of them. Me, not so much.
And yet, if there’s a row at Catering Committee, or if there’s a problem with the lake pumps, or if, as happened very recently, one resident’s dog impregnates another and all hell breaks loose, then who is there to fix it? Joyce Meadowcroft.
I am very happy to listen to the grandstanding, watch the chests puffing out, hear the furious threats of legal action, and wait for them to blow themselves out.
Then I step in and suggest that maybe there’s a way through, and perhaps there is a compromise to be reached, and perhaps dogs will be dogs.
Nobody here feels threatened by me, nobody sees me as a rival.
I’m just Joyce—gentle, chatty Joyce, always has her nose in everything.
So everyone calms down through me. Quiet, sensible Joyce. There is no more shouting and the problem is fixed, more often than not in a way that benefits me—something no one ever seems to notice.
So I am very happy to be overlooked, and always have been. And I do think perhaps that will be helpful in this investigation. Everyone can look at Elizabeth, and I’ll just get on with being me.
The Meadowcroft, by the way, is from my late husband, Gerry, and I have always liked it. I had many reasons to marry Gerry, and his surname was another to add to a long list. A friend of mine from nursing married a Bumstead. Barbara Bumstead. I think I might have found an excuse and called it off.
What a day. I think I’ll watch an old Cagney & Lacey, and then bed.
Whatever Elizabeth needs me to do next, I’ll be ready.