The mail still came. The bills still got paid. The plate on the door still read �Purves�. It all suggested a life carrying on as normal, but that mail, those bills, that name plate were just false alarms; echoes of a life that had ended.

The mail still came. The bills still got paid. The plate on the door still read "Purves". It all suggested a life carrying on as normal, but that mail, those bills, that name plate were just false alarms; echoes of a life that had ended, of a woman who lived quietly and died unnoticed.

Isabella Purves wasn't someone who left many footprints in other lives. She didn't appear to have any family or friends who visited and the only time her life crossed with those of the people who lived and worked near her was when she popped out to weed the communal garden, clean the stairs or walk past in her little hiking boots on the way to who knows where.

Had she not died silently in her Edinburgh flat, Isabella would have been 90 this year and she certainly adhered to many of the cliches of a woman her age; perhaps that was why so many didn't see her when they passed her on the stairs or the street. She wore long, sensible skirts and thick, black tights and wore her hair in tight curls with the merest hint of blue. Just like Miss Marple, someone said.

Perhaps it says something about lives lived behind doors that even her postman, who had been on the same round for 10 years, had only seen her once. "She never got much mail," he said. "It was only occasional, so that's why I didn't suspect anything."

It may not have been much, but the automatic parts of a life go on after death so the mail still came through the letter box and, slowly, formed a pile that the police officers who broke in had to climb over to get to Isabella. She lay there for five years, and had it not been for a pipe that burst and dripped giveaway drips into the neighbour's flat below, five years might have become six or seven or eight or nine.

Pensioners have been discovered before after dying solitary, unnoticed deaths, but this is the worst. In the 1990s, the deaths of Ian Pattison, 62, and Brian Blair, also 62, and Angus Cooper, 73, in Edinburgh prompted changes in policy and announcements that this should never happen again. And then it did. In 2006, Bruce Hendrie, 70, and his sister Robina Marshall, 79, were found dead, having lain undiscovered for 15 days.

Yesterday Labour leader Iain Gray said that health and social work departments should now examine the viability of the automatic checks for non-responsive individuals.

"These sad circumstances are a reminder to us all to make an effort to speak to our neighbours whenever we get the chance, especially those who are elderly and on their own," said Mr Gray.

Malcolm Chisholm, MSP for Edinburgh North and Leith, which was Isabella's constituency, said: "In Edinburgh there is a great sense of community, but with such a bustling, sometimes transient population, it is worthwhile and really important that young and old reach out and build those bridges."

Perhaps it was that transient nature of the population that meant an octogenarian could die unheeded. Not everyone was just passing through, though. The flower shop under Ms Purves's flat has been owned by 59-year-old Giovanni Cilia for 20 years. He remembers a woman living a solitary life. "I used to see her with a huge rucksack and big walking boots but I never knew where she was going."

There must have been somebody who should have worried'

Few people were at home yesterday in the stairwell where Isabella Purves lived.

Those who were, weren't exactly sure who their current neighbours were, far less the woman who passed away unnoticed and unmourned in the top floor flat around five years ago.

Although only a few yards from the terraces of the New Town and the busy riverside flats of Canonmills, Rodney Street is home to a more transient, less affluent population of students, short-term tenants, and, self-evidently, the lonely. Last Thursday, Eileen Gammack, 60, who was visiting her brother Neil in the flat below Ms Purves's, noticed water dripping from the ceiling and called the council. Five days later, an official arrived and the door was forced.

Neighbour Lucy Balloch, 28, said: "It's shocking. I feel bad that I was not aware of it, even though I wasn't living here when she was still alive.

"It's a shame that people come and go in these flats and you don't know many people. We all have different schedules. It's a common thing, especially in the city. But she must have had a doctor, a social worker. There must have been somebody who should have worried."

Her partner, 33-year-old chef Stefan Agiostini, said it would have been less likely to happen in his native Rome. He said: "Michael Jackson dies and everyone sends flowers, but people don't realise their neighbour has been dead for years, an old woman.

"It's very sad. The splitting of families, with kids leaving home, happens quite early here. It's just something I've noticed. There's a little less family unity."