She was short and plump, with white hair, a round, soft-skinned face, remarkable for the bright, vague, forget-me-not blue eyes and nothing else. At a guess, she was about fifty, and when she smiled she showed big, dead-looking white teeth that couldn’t have been her own. She was wearing a fawn-coloured coat and skirt that must have cost a lot of money, but fitted her nowhere. In her small, fat, white hand she held a paper sack.
“Good morning,” she said, and flashed the big teeth at me.
She startled me. I wasn’t expecting to see this plump, matronly woman who looked as if she had just come in from a shopping expedition and was now about to cook the lunch.
“I’m sorry to trouble you,” I said, lifting my hat. “I’m looking for Nurse Gurney.” I waved to the half-open front door behind me. “She lives there, doesn’t she?”
The plump woman dipped into the paper sack and took out a plum. She examined it closely, the eyes in her vacant, fat face suspicious. Satisfied, she popped it into her mouth. I watched her, fascinated.
“Why, yes,” she said in a muffled voice. “Yes, she does.” She raised her cupped hand, turned the stone out of her mouth into her hand in a refined way and dropped the stone back into the sack. “Have a plum?”
I said I didn’t care for plums, and thanked her.
“They’re good for you,” she said, dipped into the sack and fished our another. But this time it didn’t pass her scrutiny and she put it back and found another more to her liking.
“You haven’t seen her, have you?” I asked, watching the plum disappear between the big teeth.
“Seen who?”