A Lesson in Dying

Chapter Twelve

The news of Jack’s disappearance spread round the village and as time went on the rumours grew wilder and more unlikely. He had been seen by the customers of the Northumberland Arms to get into a taxi. Some claimed to have heard the destination. They had noted his suitcase and before Patty received his letter the following day the gossip had already started. He’d had to get away, some said, because he was so upset by Kitty’s death, but the men in the Northumberland Arms discounted that, he hadn’t looked upset to them. He was like his old self. He’d had a bit of a joke and he’d bought a round. No one listened to them for long. Rumour was more exciting than reality. Women in the bus queue, shopping bags at their feet, discussed it. One suggested that he intended to commit suicide too. Perhaps he could not face life without Kitty. The other women were enchanted. The idea brought romance to the grey, November day. It was like being at the pictures.

By the time Patty had dropped the children at school the gossip was more vicious. There was speculation that he was running away from the police. He had killed Paul Wilcox, people said, to prove Kitty’s innocence. They had been having an affair for years, since before Joan’s death. Kitty had killed Medburn to set herself free, then Jack had murdered Wilcox to throw suspicion elsewhere. Now he had run away. Patty heard the gossip in the schoolyard and the playground and wherever she went she felt their curiosity and sympathy. She was angry and worried, and wondered what on earth her father was doing.

Ramsay learned of Jack’s disappearance in the school. The teachers were grumbling because the caretaker had not arrived and no one else knew how to work the boiler. The cleaner, whose husband had been in the Northumberland Arms the night before, told of his suitcase and the taxi which had come to take him to Newcastle.

‘I saw him with his suitcase,’ Ramsay said casually. ‘ I thought he was going to stay at his daughter’s.’ Poor old bugger, he thought. I don’t blame him for wanting to get away.

He was back at the school, asking questions with a renewed energy, a nervous frenzy. He had been given to the end of the week to get a result. Then he would be moved to what his boss called a ‘ less sensitive assignment’. Patty’s confidence in him had provided a new determination to prove them all wrong. He stayed around the school through a kind of superstition, as if the answer to the case was in the stone walls if only he knew the magic to release it. By mid-morning he realized he was being foolish and knew he was in the way. He left the school and went out into the damp and gloomy village.

Patty saw Ramsay next at six o’clock that evening. Jim had come home from work and the children were watching television. She was in the kitchen peeling potatoes and it was Jim who opened the door to him.

‘Yes?’ she heard her husband say. ‘What do you want?’

‘Can I speak to Patty?’

‘Aye. I suppose you’d better come in.’

The three of them stood in the small kitchen and Jim looked at the policeman with obvious hostility.

‘Have you seen your father?’ Ramsay asked.

‘No,’ she said. ‘You know as well as I do. You’ll have heard all the gossip. He’s gone away for a few days.’

‘No,’ Ramsay said. ‘He phoned me up this afternoon. It was a peculiar phone call. I wasn’t sure if he was quite sober. He said he knew who had killed Medburn and Wilcox and that he’d meet me at his house to tell me all about it as soon as he got back. He was expecting to be here by five. I’ve been hanging around for him.’

‘He hasn’t been in touch with me today.’ She was offended. Why hadn’t her father consulted her before disappearing? She had thought they were partners. ‘Where was he phoning from?’

‘He didn’t say. He didn’t say much. He was in a call box and his money had run out. Or perhaps he didn’t want to tell me any more. It was somewhere noisy. A bus station probably. There was the sound of engines and a crackly public address system.’ He looked at Patty. ‘You’ve no idea where he might be?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘ I don’t think I understand him at all any more.’

‘He’s no fool,’ Jim said. ‘Not Jack. He can look after himself.’

‘I’ll talk to the taxi driver who picked him up yesterday evening,’ Ramsay said, ‘ We’ll see if we can find out where he’s been.’ He found it a relief to have something concrete to do. He touched Patty on the shoulder. ‘Don’t worry!’ he said. ‘We’ll find him and get him back.’

Jack had arrived later than he had expected. There had been traffic jams on the A1, and the town was further south than he had realized. It was midnight when he climbed out of the coach, stiff and bleary-eyed. He had slept on and off. The place was strange to him and he felt he did not have sufficient courage to leave the bus station and go out into the town to find somewhere to stay. It was surely too late for that and bus stations were the same everywhere, so he felt safe where he was. The waiting room had not been locked. He found a chair there and, surrounded by overflowing rubbish bins and clutching the handle of his suitcase, he slept.

Early in the morning he was woken by cleaners and the noise of the first buses. He washed and shaved in the public lavatory and went out into the town. In a cobbled market square, stalls were being erected. He felt light-hearted and brave like a soldier in his first action. He might have been in a foreign country with the strange accents all around him, the different beer advertised on the hoardings, the unfamiliar people. He had never seen so many Asian people and the glittering saris and the exotic fruit and vegetables on the market stalls fascinated him. There were students carrying books and files and men in suits on their way to the office. He felt he had led a completely sheltered life. There had been the grime of the pit and the grey houses of Heppleburn, and he had missed out on all this colour. He understood why his elder daughter never came home.

He found an Italian café in a side street where a group of workmen were eating breakfast. They were speaking in Italian, very loudly, shouting jokes to the proprietors over the sound of the espresso machine and the jukebox. He was hungry and ate a fried breakfast and a pile of toast. He could have stayed there all morning, watching the customers, enjoying the warmth and the noise.

At nine o’clock he went into an estate agent’s office and asked if they had a map of the town. He was afraid they would not give him one unless they thought he was a serious purchaser, so he came out with an armful of property details too. He put the glossy brochures of alarmingly expensive houses into a bin and sat on a bench in a covered precinct to read the map.

Ashton Road was a pleasant, red-brick terrace opposite the park. There were trees in the gardens, with russet-coloured leaves, and the sun caught the latticed window panes. They were unpretentious houses, ordinary, but in his mood of discovery and new experience he thought they were beautiful. The warm brick and the tall chimneys enchanted him. He walked down the pavement, his head turned towards them like a tourist walking through London for the first time.

The house he wanted was at the end of the terrace, on a corner. There were black wrought-iron gates into a small garden, where one late rose was still in bloom. What must I look like, he thought, standing here? Like those chaps on the dole who go round selling dusters at the door. What will she think?

He rang the bell and a dog barked. A woman opened the door to him. She was tall and slender, with a nervous, worried face. He knew immediately that he had come to the right place.

‘Mrs Carpenter?’ he said. ‘ I wonder if I could speak to you. It’s about your son.’ She stood aside to let him in.

On the way home the bus stopped at York and he phoned Ramsay. He was tired by then and the noise all around him prevented him from thinking or speaking clearly. It took a long time to get put through to him. He realized he must sound confused and elated to the policeman, but no longer cared. Soon he would share the responsibility of knowledge and it would all be over. When he returned to the bus it was full and noisy and he had no chance to sleep. It was late afternoon when they arrived at Newcastle. He was relieved to be almost home. He thought he would catch a bus to Heppleburn – he had spent too much already on this escapade and a taxi would be an extravagance – but when he got out at the Haymarket Miss Hunt was there in her red Metro.

‘Mr Robson,’ she said. ‘What a coincidence! Come in and I’ll give you a lift.’

He hesitated for a moment, but he was tired and not thinking clearly. Besides, it was one way of finding out if he were right. In his mood of exhilaration he thought he was invincible. It was only when he had lifted his suitcase on to the back seat and had sat comfortably on the passenger seat that he realized a shotgun was resting on her knee, the barrel pointing towards him. It was partly hidden by her long black cape.

‘I knew when to meet you,’ she said. ‘I received a telephone call at the school this morning. It was from my daughter.’ The mask of politeness slipped and her voice changed. ‘ The policeman was in the office when I took the phone call. I found that rather amusing.’ She began to laugh.

She drove out of the city and took the road north, so he knew she was taking him to her bungalow, not to Heppleburn. In his absence the fog had thickened and the police had lit burning braziers to mark the roundabouts. The cars crawled from one cat’s eye to the next and he had no idea where he was.

‘Where did you get the gun?’ he asked. The question had been troubling him during the drive through Newcastle. Her silence was unnerving him too and he wanted to get her to speak to him.

‘From my elderly neighbour,’ Irene Hunt said. ‘She keeps it to protect herself from imagined intruders. She’s so confused that she won’t notice that it’s gone. I took the Heminevrin from her too.

The doctor prescribed it for her months ago, but she’d forgotten all about it and there was nearly a bottle left.’

He realized that they must be in Nellington. The illuminated sign of the pub lurched crazily out of the fog above them. She turned off the main road towards the sea, though he did not see the junction or the signpost. It was so black that he did not know how she kept to the road.

‘When did you find out that Matthew was your grandson?’ he asked.

She smiled fondly but her voice was firm. ‘No more questions,’ she said. ‘Not until we get home. I don’t want to put the car in the ditch. You might run away. But don’t be anxious. I’ll satisfy your curiosity before I kill you.’

She had left the light on in the bungalow porch, so he knew they had arrived. There was no light in the farmhouse, though somewhere in the darkness he could hear the dogs howling as if they had been chained for the night.

‘It’s no good shouting,’ Irene Hunt said. ‘The old lady’s deaf and even if she were to hear you she’d take no notice.’ She got out of the car and locked the door meticulously behind her. ‘Come on,’ she said, suddenly irritated like a child denied a treat. ‘Come inside. I want to tell you all about it.’

Jack followed her. He left his suitcase inside the car and thought it unlikely that he would need it now. Inside, she drew all the curtains and put a light to the fire. It caught immediately and the flames were reflected on the walls of the room and her eager face.

‘Sit down,’ she said, as if he were some friend who had called in without invitation. ‘You must be tired.’

‘It never occurred to me,’ he said, ‘that Mrs Carpenter might phone you.’

‘We’re very close,’ she said proudly.

‘Yet she never told Matthew about you.’

‘That was her husband’s fault,’ she said. ‘When the children were young they were close to her adoptive parents. He’d never let her tell them the truth. He said it would confuse them. When he left her she didn’t want to admit that she’d lied. She did persuade Matthew to apply for the job at Heppleburn. That was kind. As it turned out it was just as well Matthew never knew I was his grandmother. It was difficult enough for him at Heppleburn without Medburn knowing he was a relative of mine.’

Jack sat in a large, comfortable armchair. He felt as if he were slipping into sleep. Miss Hunt held the gun lightly across her lap and he was almost too tired to care if she used it or not. But he did want to know what had happened and it occurred to him that the longer he could persuade her to keep talking, the more chance there was that he would survive.

‘Why did you kill Medburn?’ he asked.

‘Because of Matthew, of course,’ she said fiercely. ‘The headmaster had been tormenting me for years, but that was different. I love Matthew. He’s the only relative I’ve had to care for. He had to be protected.’

Her voice was high-pitched and wild and he wondered why none of them had realized before how desperate she was. He supposed they were so used to her that they took her for granted. They did not look behind the formal, authoritarian exterior. And she was convinced that her action was justified. She had no cause to show fear or remorse.

‘You killed Medburn because he was going to sack Matthew?’

She nodded.

‘He told me on the day of the Harvest Festival,’ she said. ‘Do you remember? It was the day of the Parents’Association committee meeting when your daughter suggested that we had the Hallowe’en party. I thought: if only I were a witch. I’d shape a spell and make him disappear for ever. Then I decided I’d kill him anyway. It wasn’t as if he was worth anything. He had no intrinsic value. He was an ugly little man. I couldn’t see anything wrong in it.’

She was rambling and Jack looked at the gun, wondering whether she might forget it and allow it to slip from her knee to the floor.

‘I enjoyed getting the details right,’ she said. ‘I told you, didn’t I, that I had ambitions to be a theatre designer until my parents sent me north in disgrace? I designed it like a stage act. Anne’s father was an actor…’ She stopped, lost in thought, then continued. ‘It took me longer than I expected to carry Medburn to the small playground. He was heavier than he looked.’ She seemed lost in memory and the gun began to slide between her knees towards the floor, but she caught it and held it firmly. She leaned forward and talked earnestly. ‘I had to plan it all,’ she said, ‘in every detail. It wasn’t easy, you know.’

She looked up at him as if she expected approval.

‘I knew about the Heminevrin,’ she went on, ‘ because the old lady’s daughter complained to me once that she couldn’t get her to take it. “ The doctor says it’ll stop her wandering around at night,” she said, “but she just spits it out because it tastes so bad. You’d think they could put something in it to make it taste better.” I didn’t think that would matter with Medburn because everyone knew he had no sense of taste, but even he noticed it. “This coffee isn’t up to your normal standard, Miss Hunt,” he said, being as pompous as ever, but he drank it all the same.’

‘You must have phoned him,’ Jack said, determined to maintain the conversation. ‘I suppose you asked him to come back to school. How did you manage that?’

‘I said I had a message from Angela Brayshaw,’ she said. ‘He thought he’d kept that affair secret, but everyone could tell how infatuated he was with her. He came rushing round to school like a little boy in love. I had the coffee ready, with the drug in his mug. I told him that Angela had arranged to come back to school early, so they could have some time together before the party started. He looked so pleased with himself, so smug. I pretended to leave and sat in my classroom to wait. When I went back to the hall a quarter of an hour later he was unconscious. I strangled him, then dragged him into the small playground and strung him up on the netball hoop. I had the noose ready. I was pleased with the result. He looked very…? dramatic hanging there. It was most appropriate for Hallowe’en. All the time I was working I was conscious that someone might come and surprise me.’ She stopped and looked directly at him. ‘ It was exciting,’ she said. ‘I have never been so excited in my life. I wanted to humiliate him as he had humiliated me.’

‘You were clever,’ Jack said. ‘ I would have said that you were as surprised as the rest of us when I found his body.’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I would never have thought myself capable of it. I was pleased with myself. My boyfriend would have been proud of me.’

‘It must have been a bit of a shock when I turned up to talk to you,’ Jack said. He felt he was entitled to be proud of himself too.

‘It was,’ she said. ‘I didn’t think anyone would find out about Anne, but I still thought I was safe…’

She stood up suddenly, in a jerk, as if she had heard a noise outside, and walked to the window. She peered through the curtains then returned to her chair.

‘Why did you kill Paul Wilcox then?’ he asked. He took a cigarette from his pocket and lit it. It seemed unimportant now that he might offend her. ‘If you thought you were safe.’

She obviously disliked the implied criticism.

‘Perhaps I was too clever when I followed you to the school house on the night of the bonfire,’ she admitted. ‘ I felt helpless. I didn’t know how far you’d got with your investigation. I hoped to frighten you.’

‘You just made me more determined,’ he said.

‘Yes. I realize that.’

‘Paul Wilcox was already in the school house looking for some letters he’d sent to Angela Brayshaw. He saw you, didn’t he?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘He was looking out of the upstairs window and he saw me in the moonlight. He seemed too frightened then to realize the implication of it, but I was worried he’d see how important it was later. I never planned to kill him. It was quite spontaneous. I was on my way to Matthew’s and I saw Wilcox come out of the old mill and walk up the lane. I turned the car round and followed him. Just as I reached him it started to rain very heavily. I saw that as fate. I stopped the car beside him. “ Get in,” I said. “ I’ll give you a lift home.” He didn’t suspect anything. I always thought he was a fool. Then I saw him sitting there, starting to wonder. “What were you doing at the school house on the night of the bonfire?” he asked. “It was you I saw in the playground.” So I had to kill him. I took my scarf and twisted it round his neck as he was turning to get out of the car. It was easy then to tip him into the ditch.’

‘Wilcox had a wife and two children,’ Jack said.

‘He was weak and silly,’ she said quickly. ‘I couldn’t let him get in the way.’

She’s like a selfish child, he thought, determined to get her own way at any price.

‘And what about me?’ he cried. ‘ What excuse do you have for getting rid of me.’

‘You were warned,’ she said. ‘ It was your choice.’ She looked quite different, hunched over the gun, her knees wide apart like one of the incontinent old ladies at Burnside. She had lost her control and dignity. Her protective passion for Matthew had destroyed her.

‘Don’t you think they’ll realize you’re the murderer if they find my body here?’

‘Do you think I’m a fool?’ The words exploded from her and she was so angry and unbalanced that he was afraid she would shoot him immediately. ‘No one knows where you are. They think you’ve run away because you were depressed by Kitty’s death. So depressed that you might commit suicide yourself.’

‘I’d never kill myself. I’m no coward.’

‘No,’ she said, ‘but if they find your body that’s what they’ll think. The bottle of Heminevrin’s still nearly full. I’m stronger than you and I’ve got a gun. I’ll take you to your home and eventually someone will find your body there. Poor Jack, they’ll say, her death turned his mind. He was crazy with love.’

‘I’m not crazy,’ he said before he could stop himself.

‘Are you suggesting that I am?’ she spat at him. ‘Because I was looking after the only person I had the opportunity of loving?’

‘That’s not true,’ he said. ‘You had plenty of opportunity, a fine young woman like you. Perhaps you were crazy even then, brooding about that man who got you in trouble.’

He had provoked her too far. She stood up and pointed the gun towards him. Suddenly there was a knock at the door. She swung round, confused and bewildered as if the noise had emptied her mind of all thought.

‘Keep away!’ she shouted. ‘ Keep away or I’ll kill him.’

There was another knock. She prowled towards the window and looked out but the porch light was off and there was nothing to see. Jack sat quietly, unmoving.

‘Who is it?’ she shouted. ‘Who’s there?’

The unknown person knocked on the door again. The noise and the lack of response seemed to irritate her. She edged towards the door.

Suddenly there was the sound of breaking glass as the back door into the kitchen was broken. The room seemed full of policemen. Ramsay was there and Irene Hunt had collapsed on the floor, an old and ugly woman, her face wrinkled and running with tears.

‘She must be mad,’ Jack said. He felt he had to make an excuse for her. He hoped they would treat her gently.

‘She would have killed you,’ the policeman said. ‘You’d better come home. I promised Patty I’d get you back safely.’

As they walked up the lane to where the cars had been parked out of earshot of the bungalow, Jack found that the fog was lifting in patches and he could see stars above his head.