Murder in My Backyard (5 page)

Carolyn had fallen asleep almost immediately, but Stella stayed in her bedroom, staring at the child without attempting to touch her. There was nothing to do. Carolyn scarcely moved in her sleep and the sheets and blankets were still firmly tucked around her. All of her clothes were neatly folded on the chair. But Stella did not feel ready yet to return downstairs. The confrontation between James and his aunt had disturbed her. She did not know what to make of it. More important, she was not sure yet how it would affect her. She had always seen the Tower as part of her future. As the old panic and insecurity returned, she felt that they all ought to be more considerate towards her. Didn’t they know that stress was bad for her and that the sort of hostility they had both expressed was likely to make her ill again? She decided to wait in the bedroom until James realised she was missing. That way she would avoid the unpleasantness of any further argument and it might frighten him into realising that he should treat her more carefully. She needed the reassurance that he still worried about her.

She knelt on the floor by the long window and looked out into the garden. She could hear the movement of the big yew trees in the churchyard beyond the wall. Occasionally the wind blew the clouds away from the moon and the garden was lit. Otherwise all she could see were a street light beyond the churchyard, where there was a gate onto the village green, and occasional headlights as cars moved slowly down the Otterbridge Road towards the sea.

It took her a while to realise that there was a woman in the churchyard, walking backwards and forwards along the path from the green to the small wrought-iron gate in the wall that marked the boundary with the Tower garden. Stella saw the woman first in a brief flash of moonlight, a small figure, half hidden by the gravestones, with long hair that streamed behind her in the wind. She saw her again when the woman paused under the street light, but she was then too far away for her to see the details of her face or her clothes, though something about the way she stood and walked seemed familiar. The church clock struck ten and the woman looked up at it, as if she could hardly believe the time. Then she moved away from the light to begin pacing once again up and down the path between the Tower and the green. Stella could not see her clearly after that but was aware of a movement in the moonlight, a shadow blown, it seemed, by the breeze between the white marble stones.

When James came to find her, Stella did not mention the figure. Perhaps she thought he would think it one of her old hallucinations and would return to the subject of hospital and the need for proper treatment. Perhaps Stella hoped to save the fact of the woman until she really needed it, until she was in a situation when she needed them all to take notice of her, like money saved for a rainy day.

“What are you still doing here?” he asked gently when he came into the room. “The others are wondering where you are.”

She got up quickly and moved away from the window.

“It was all that fighting,” she said. “ It upset me. You know I shouldn’t be upset.”

“Yes,” he said. “ I know.” He put his arm around her and led her out of the room and held her tight as they walked down the stairs. But as they approached the living room, it was clear that Alice was involved in an argument again.

“I must talk to him,” she was saying. “I won’t sleep until I’ve talked to him.” She was wearing a parka with a furlined hood, one of the sort that boys of eight or nine wear, and was pulling a pair of Wellingtons over the purple flares.

“But it’s late,” Judy said. “ Why don’t you wait until morning? Or phone him, if you want to talk to him now.”

“It’s all so simple,” Alice said. “It came to me when I was talking to Max. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before. It’s obvious I’ll have to buy back the land.”

“What are you doing, Aunt Alice?” James asked. He stood just inside the room, his arm still around Stella’s shoulders, blocking the door.

“She’s going to see Henshaw,” Judy said helplessly, “ to persuade him to sell her the land.”

“That’s ridiculous,” James said. “ He’s spent thousands drawing up the plans. He’ll not sell it back to you now.”

Alice sat on the carpet, so she could pull more effectively on the Wellingtons. She looked up at James.

“That depends,” she said, “what I offer to pay for it.”

“At least let me come with you,” James said. “I don’t like the idea of your being out there on your own.”

“I don’t need a bodyguard,” she said. “ Not yet.” She stood up and waited for James to move away from the door. “Don’t stay up for me. This may take some time.”

She went out into the garden, slamming the front door behind her.

Judy made more coffee and they sat in the small, square sitting room until the fire died to embers. There was some talk of going out to meet Alice to make sure that she got safely home, but they decided she was a grown woman who knew her own mind and they drifted eventually to bed.

Peter woke soon after it got light, while his parents and the twins were still asleep. He dressed quickly and quietly, then ran downstairs to the kitchen, where he expected to find his great-aunt. Aunt Alice seemed to need no sleep at all, his parents always said. She was always last to bed after a party and first up the next morning. She had the constitution of an ox. Usually, early in the morning, Peter would find her in the kitchen, sitting on the wooden rocking chair next to the Rayburn, wearing the old lab coat she used as a dressing gown, a cat on each knee. But today the kitchen was empty and the cats came up to him, rubbing against his legs, hoping for food. Peter felt the disappointment of the night before. Aunt Alice had let him down again. He liked the morning ritual at Brinkbonnie. His aunt would make tea in a brown earthenware pot and set out the cups on a tray—for her, a wide, shallow one, the size of a soup bowl, and for him, a small yellow one with poppies on the rim. Then they would drink the tea, eat digestive biscuits, and plan the day’s events.

There was a tap on the kitchen door and he thought for a moment that it would be Aunt Alice. But what would she be doing outside? There was another knock, this time louder and more impatient. Peter went to open the door and was surprised when it was unlocked. Usually when his aunt let him out into the garden in the morning, she took a big brass key from a hook by the door to open it. Olive Kerr stood outside, stamping her feet with cold and anger at being kept waiting. She was a large-boned, aggressive woman. She ignored Peter and swept past him. Soon after there was the sound of the Hoover in the dining room.

The boy stood uncertainly in the kitchen, trapped by Mrs. Kerr’s activity. He was frightened of her. She had a haughty, imperious manner, and reminded him of his headmistress. She returned to the kitchen to fetch polish and dusters and he slipped hurriedly outside into the garden.

It was a cold, raw day and he wished he had waited to put on a coat. The wind blew a smell of salt and seaweed. In the kitchen he heard his father shouting that it was cold because some fool had left the door open, but Peter took no notice. He was even less eager to see his father than to see Mrs. Kerr. He wished he knew where his aunt was.

He zigzagged, the wind blowing him towards the churchyard wall. In the corner there was a swing, which his great-uncle had tied to one of the heftier trees when Carolyn was still a toddler. The ropes creaked as he sat on the wooden seat and moved himself forward. With every swing he kicked a pile of leaves swept up in the autumn so that the wind picked them up and scattered them away in a brown whirlwind across the garden.

At that moment his father came to the kitchen door and shouted to him. “Peter!” He sounded resigned rather than angry. “What
are
you doing out there? What will your mother say? You must be freezing. Have you seen Aunt Alice?”

Peter did not answer immediately. He had seen, under the pile of leaves, a black Wellington and a piece of purple fabric. He jumped from the swing and ran towards his father, chasing and stumbling towards the house, crying.

Max took over then. He sent Peter indoors and went to look under the leaves himself. It was only later that Peter was told by his mother that Alice was dead.

As Ramsay drove into the village he saw a poster advertising the meeting to protest against the proposed housing development on the Tower field. How would I feel, he wondered, if the developer at Heppleburn decided to put up a new housing estate behind my cottage? He answered the question immediately. Murderous, he thought. I’d feel murderous.

When he drove between the high walls towards the Tower, the drive was crowded with familiar cars, and in a huddle in the corner of the garden, hands deep in Barbour jacket pockets so that they might have been landowners preparing for a day’s shooting, were his superiors, who waited uneasily for him to take over the investigation. It was always the same. Formality dictated that they had to be there, but they would take little active part in the investigation and they preferred not to interfere. Then they could claim not to be responsible for any mistake. When Ramsay got out of the car and approached them, he felt they were more anxious than usual. The body was still there, wet, half covered with leaves. He bent and looked carefully for a moment. The woman was lying facedown on the grass. The wound was in her back and her clothes were soaked with blood.

“She was stabbed,” he said, almost to himself. “And only once. The murderer was either very confident or he knew what he was doing.” He stood up and turned away to face the group who watched him.

“Who is it?” he asked.

The superintendent, young, able, lazy, who had recently returned from an exchange visit to Colorado, answered indirectly.

“Steve,” he said. “We might have a difficult one here.”

“Why? Who is it?”

“Her name’s Alice Parry. Does that mean anything to you?”

Ramsay shook his head.

“She’s a magistrate and a well-known lady. Her nephew’s James Laidlaw, editor of the
Otterbridge Express
.”

“Yes,” Ramsay said. “I know James Laidlaw. Does that matter?”

“Steve! Does it matter? Remember Heppleburn. We need the press on our side.”

“Yes,” he said. “Of course.”

This is all I need, he thought. The press will be here, watching every move we make.

“Has the murder weapon been found?” he asked.

“No, and we’ve no information yet on what we’re looking for.”

Then the superintendent went away, telling Ramsay to be careful, that he would deal with all press enquiries, and Ramsay was left alone with the smell of ivy and wet leaves.

By then it was eleven o’clock and the congregation for parish communion were coming out of the church. The vicar, his cassock billowing about him in the breeze, stood at the door to greet his parishioners. There had been a christening and the mother stood proudly, holding the baby in its long robe while admiring friends took photographs. Then there was the giving of the amice—the coal, bread, salt, and money wrapped up in a napkin that in Northumberland churches is given to the first child the baby meets—and more photographs. Ramsay wished they would all go, but some of the congregation must have heard about the murder because they came up to the wrought-iron gate and stared at the policeman searching the garden.

He found his sergeant, Gordon Hunter, in the kitchen talking to Olive Kerr.

“Sorry to call you out,” Hunter said cheerfully. “How are you settling in?”

Ramsay said nothing. He disapproved of Hunter’s easy familiarity. Perhaps it had been a mistake after all to invite him into his home. A murder enquiry needed tact and gravity. Yet he noticed that even the straight-backed, straitlaced woman was responding to the sergeant’s attention. Hunter would be making her feel special, playing the part of the attractive, rather wayward son who needed looking after. Soon she would be making him tea and telling him to wrap up warm before he went out because the wind was cold. Hunter whispered something to Olive, which made her smile, then stood up.

“We need screens,” Ramsay said. “ There are already people in the churchyard staring. They can’t see the body from there, but it’ll not be long before we have the press in the garden.”

“The press is here already,” Hunter said. “ In the house. One of Mrs. Parry’s nephews is the editor of the
Otterbridge Express
.”

“I know,” Ramsay said. He was already feeling depressed. “Tell me who else is here.”

“Laidlaw’s wife, Stella, and their daughter, Carolyn, and his brother and his family. They’re all in here.”

Hunter led him through the hall to the warm square room where the family had waited the night before for Alice’s return. As soon as he saw them all, Ramsay knew that these were Diana’s sort of people and the thought triggered a profound unease and an excitement. They could easily have been friends of Diana’s, invited to her dinner parties, sharing evenings at the theatre, meals in dimly lit foreign restaurants. He recognised the style. Although the women wore jeans and hand-knitted sweaters, their wardrobes were probably full of clothes that Diana might have chosen to wear. It had always surprised him that Diana would admit quite happily to having found a bargain in a charity shop or at a jumble sale—“ a real silk shirt and only five pounds”—but refuse to go near the cut-price chain stores in the high street where his mother always shopped. It always seemed to him a strange sort of snobbishness, though Diana always said he had no taste and could not possibly understand. Throughout the interview with the Laidlaws he felt that, with Diana’s arrogance, they were saying the same thing. You’re different from us, they implied. You’re from a different background. How can you possibly understand?

Yet he felt from the beginning that because they were Diana’s sort of people, he did understand them. It was his secret weapon, that understanding. They would always underestimate him.

He stood just inside the door and looked around the room. James Laidlaw sat on a worn leather Chesterfield reading an old copy of the
Times
. He recognised Ramsay and stood up.