A Lesson in Dying

Chapter Four

The next day the school was closed, not as a mark of respect for Harold Medburn, but because the police needed more time there. Irene Hunt was asked to work as usual. She was deputy head and the Education Department at County Hall wanted her to be at the school, though there was little she could do. She would have preferred to be at home. It seemed unfair that she would not benefit from the additional holiday.

Miss Hunt liked to be at home. She lived in a small bungalow twenty miles north of Heppleburn on the coast. She had bought it the year before in preparation for her retirement. Everyone who saw it, and many who had never been near the place, said it was quite unsuitable for an elderly lady. It was build next to a farm at the top of a low cliff. The nearest village was two miles away at the end of a lane. She had views of Coquet Island, of ruined castles and bare hillsides, but it was cold and in a wind the draughts rattled under the doors, flapping rugs and curtains. Towards the sea there was an exposed garden, terraced and held back from the cliff by low stone walls. It was too big, her critics said, to be managed by one person. Miss Hunt had great plans for the garden. The bungalow suited her very well. For too long she had worried about what other people thought of her. Now for her last years she deserved to be allowed to live as she pleased.

Harold Medburn had been one of the fiercest opponents of her move from the convenient new house at Heppleburn to the bungalow on the cliff.

‘It’s too far away,’ he had grumbled when she mentioned the move one day in the staff room. ‘You’ll be late and in winter you’ll never get here. You should think again about it.’

She had given up arguing with him years before and ignored him then. When finally she announced that the move had taken place he was astounded. He had been certain that she would take his advice.

Miss Hunt liked the bungalow because of its privacy. She had been entranced by the large windows and the clarity of the light. She had enjoyed painting in watercolour since she was a student and hoped with more time to develop her skill. She would be sensible, of course, about the house – it was no romantic dream. She would have double glazing fitted with the lump sum she received on her retirement. But she was quite passionate about the house. She was determined to end her days there on her own. If ever the time came when she was unable to look after herself, she would take her own life. She knew what it was like to be in another person’s power and refused to contemplate that happening again, even if that power were the institutional kindness of a geriatric hospital or old people’s home.

The police arrived at the bungalow to interview her on the Sunday morning, and early on the same afternoon Matthew came to see her.

He had woken early. It was still dark and he felt ill. He switched on the bedside lamp to see what time it was, but the sudden light hurt his head and he had to shut his eyes. When he opened them again, slowly, he saw his clothes scattered over the bedroom floor and an empty beer can propped on the window sill. He could not remember getting home. His memory of the evening before returned gradually, and with a growing horror he recalled what had happened. Perhaps he was still drunk, because he fell again into a heavy sleep and when he woke up it was light and the milkman was whistling along the pavement outside his window.

He got out of bed and felt sick again. Before dressing, before even making tea, he picked all the clothes from the bedroom floor and stuffed them into the washing machine in the kitchen. It was as if he wanted to clear away all traces of the previous evening. He wanted to pretend that it had never happened. The washing machine was an old one of his mother’s, a present when he had first moved to Heppleburn.

‘I can go to the launderette,’ he had said. ‘I managed before.’ A washing machine seemed a frightening symbol of domesticity.

‘You’re not a student now,’ she said. ‘Besides, I need a new one.’

His mother had been thrilled when he had been appointed to Heppleburn school. It had been her idea that he should apply. She had seen the advertisement in The Teacher and pointed it out to him. ‘Northumberland,’ she said, ‘it’s the most beautiful county in England. If you got that I could come up and stay with you in the holidays.’ Now that seemed a long time ago.

As he remembered his mother, he thought he should write to her. He always wrote to her on Sunday mornings. It seemed important to maintain the usual routine, though he felt so ill. He made tea and toast and sat at the small table in the kitchen while the washing machine churned. He wrote: ‘ There was a Hallowe’en party at the school last night. I think everyone enjoyed it.’ Except me, he thought. I didn’t enjoy it at all.

He addressed the envelope and propped the letter on the mantelpiece, because he could not buy a stamp until the next day. I’ll take it to school, he thought, and buy a stamp there. He decided to visit Miss Hunt on impulse, because he needed to be out of the house, because she had helped him at the party and because he wanted to find out how the evening had ended. He lived in a flat over a chemist’s shop and his head thumped as he clattered down the concrete steps to the pavement.

Miss Hunt saw him coming from a long way off. She watched him leave the main road and cycle down the lane. It took him longer than it normally would have done, because he was cycling against the wind. She was ridiculously pleased to see him. She watched him from the bedroom window with the pair of binoculars she kept for looking at boats in the bay. His hair was blown away from his face. He was wearing old clothes – a navy jersey and denim jeans with a red patch on the knee. He looked much younger and happier than when he was teaching. Perhaps he would be happy more often now. When he rode into the farmyard, moving quickly because be was sheltered by the buildings from the pressure of the wind, she already had the bungalow door open to greet him. She was holding a black tom cat.

Matthew’s face was red from the exertion of cycling. The farm dogs raced up to him, barking furiously, then started to jump up at him, so his jersey was muddy and even more disreputable than ever.

‘Come in,’ she said warmly.

She was as tall as he was. Her hair was short and well cut. She had style, he thought, despite her age. He propped his bicycle against the low wall which surrounded her front garden and followed her towards the house. The dogs bounced after him to the gate, still barking. His arms seemed very long and bony, bare wrists stretched out of the sleeves of his jersey. He sat on the door mat in the wood-frame porch and took off the suede desert boots with broken laces which she had never seen before. Then he walked into the house. He was wearing odd socks.

Irene Hunt felt very fond of him. He reminded her of the only man she had ever loved.

‘I came to thank you,’ he said, ‘for making sure I got home last night. I’m afraid I made a fool of myself.’

She looked at him sharply.

‘Haven’t the police been to see you?’ she asked.

He shook his head. ‘I didn’t do anything illegal did I?’ he asked. ‘I was very drunk. I can’t remember everything, but I don’t think anyone called the police. You persuaded me to leave before I made too much of a fool of myself.’

She was thrown by this. It had not occurred to her that he would not have heard that Medburn had been killed. He had left the party long before Robson found the headmaster’s body in the small playground, but surely someone would have told him.

‘The headmaster is dead,’ she said, watching him closely. ‘He was murdered. Robson found his body. At first we thought it was suicide but the police say that’s impossible.’

He said nothing for a while. The colour drained from his face. She led him into the kitchen and sat him on a rocking chair by the boiler. She made him tea.

‘I could have killed him,’ Matthew said. ‘I was mad enough. He called me in to see him on Friday night. I’d never been to his home before. He was more friendly than he’d ever been and even offered me a drink. I didn’t know what to expect.’ He hesitated and then the words came out in a rush. ‘ He said I’d never make a teacher and he didn’t think I should complete the probationary year. It would be more dignified, he said, to resign and if I wasn’t prepared to do that he’d try to get me sacked.’ He looked at her. ‘I wanted to kill him.’

‘Is that why you drank so much on Saturday night?’

He nodded. ‘ It didn’t help,’ he said. ‘ But I felt so helpless. Do the police know who killed him?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘They were here this morning, but it’s impossible to tell what they’re thinking. They were asking a lot of questions about his wife.’

She opened the kitchen door onto the paved area at the back of the house, to let out the black cat which had been moaning at her leg. She looked down over the terraced garden to the cliff edge. A salt breeze blew in and they might have been in the open air.

‘I wouldn’t kill him,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t jeopardize all this for that man. He wasn’t worth it.’

She shut the door and the noise of the sea, which had invaded the kitchen, faded.

‘I understand that the police have taken Kitty Medburn into custody for questioning,’ Irene Hunt said suddenly. She was unsure how much she should tell Matthew, but it was comforting to have someone to talk to. ‘Apparently he was having an affair with another woman. The police asked me if I knew anything about it.’

‘Did you?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘He was a very secretive man. Clever and very secretive. I don’t blame Kitty for killing him. She’s had a lot to put up with. I don’t think anyone should be charged with his murder. We’re better off without him.’

If Matthew was shocked by her bitterness he did not comment on it. Perhaps he was more concerned by his own problems. He sat with his stockinged feet on the wooden rung of the rocking chair, his hands cupped around the mug of tea.

‘What should I do about the teaching?’ he asked abruptly.

‘What do you mean?’ she said.

‘Should I carry on with it?’

‘Of course you should,’ she said briskly, a teacher to her fingertips, urging a favourite child to have confidence in his own ability. ‘With a bit of support you’ll make an excellent teacher. Forget that the meeting with Medburn ever happened. There’s no need to tell the police about it. It’s no business of theirs, after all.’

Then she insisted on taking him for a walk along the cliff. Spikes of sunshine pierced the cloud, but it was still very cold. She pointed out her favourite features of the landscape and enjoyed his admiration of the view. Inland there was a subsidence lake, backed by a new conifer plantation. A skein of geese flew overhead, calling, then landed on the water. At the bottom of the cliff a girl on a chestnut horse galloped along the sandy beach, splashing through the pools. The drops of water glistened in the sunlight.

‘It’s lovely,’ he said. He had never been to her house before. ‘This is just the sort of house I’d live in. But don’t you find it lonely?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘I get on well with my neighbour. She’s rather confused and eccentric at times, but we’ve become good friends. Her sons farm the land and live in a bungalow in the village. She doesn’t want to leave the house. I don’t blame her.’

Back in the house she made more tea and toast. There was a fire in the living room and she refused to put on the light. Then she might feel she should draw the curtains and shut out the sea. The room was hung with her paintings.

It was nearly dusk when he set off on his bike for his flat in Heppleburn. She had not wanted him to go. It had been one of the most pleasant afternoons Irene Hunt could remember and she felt relaxed and ready to return to school the next day. She had long ago given up any thought of a family life and had persuaded herself that she would not enjoy it anyway, but this afternoon she regretted that she had never married. When Matthew left she felt very alone.

She got to school at a quarter to nine on the Monday morning. The police were on the premises. There was still white tape around the small playground and a uniformed constable stood by the wooden door in the wall. She ignored the activity and went straight to her classroom, as she would have done if the children had been there. At the main door into the school a policeman stopped her and asked who she was, then let her through. To Miss Hunt the police were an anonymous body, like Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Education or the Inland Revenue. She supposed that the men on their hands and knees in the playground had some specialized function, but she had no real interest. As her retirement came closer she was coming to feel that she was a stranger in the school. She was increasingly more detached from everything that went on there, even the horror of murder. She longed for her time as a teacher to be over, so she could spend her days in her bungalow with her paint and her cat and the noise of the waves.

At half past twelve when the children would usually have gone out to play before lunch she went to the staff room and made a cup of coffee. It was a luxury to have the place to herself. It was strangely tidy and uncluttered. She wondered if she should offer to make drinks for the policemen in the hall but decided not to disturb them. They might think she was prying like a common gossip. The kettle was just starting to boil when there was a knock on the door and a plain-clothed policeman came in, stooping slightly as if the door was too low. She recognized the inspector who had come to her bungalow the day before.

Ramsay had been at the school since early morning. After his wife had left him there was nothing to keep him at home and he was aware of the comments of his colleagues. Just because he couldn’t keep his wife, they said, he seems to think none of us want to spend time with our families. They said that he’d lost his sense of proportion, that there was more to life than work, after all. To Ramsay there was little more to life than work.

He had insisted that Medburn’s office, the staff room and all the corridors should be fingerprinted. When they told him it would take days, he shrugged. The murderer must have come into the school, he said, to get the black gown. No one had said that a long murder investigation was easy. Usually you found the culprit in the first hour. If not it was hard work. So he expected them to work hard. They knew who had killed Harold Medburn. They had to prove it.

He waited to talk to Miss Hunt until he saw her go into the staff room. He thought she might be more prepared to give him her full attention there than in the classroom where there was work to do.

‘Would you like coffee?’ she asked. When he had come to the bungalow the day before he had pleased her. ‘I’m making some for myself.’

‘That would be very nice,’ he said. He seemed relaxed and easy. He sat on one of the chairs without being asked.

‘Now,’ she said, ‘ How can I help you, Inspector?’ He was tall and dark and quite athletic, with a gentle local accent. She had known physical education teachers of a similar type. He was middle-aged but fit and wearing well. She could imagine him rock climbing.

‘Have you time to answer some questions?’ he asked. ‘It would save me having to trouble you at home again.’

‘Of course,’ she said.

‘The gown he was wearing when the body was found,’ Ramsay said. ‘It was his?’

‘Oh yes,’ she said, and despite herself there was a trace of bitterness in her voice. ‘He never went to university as a young man, you know. He wasn’t particularly academic. He went to college later, in middle age, and took a Bachelor of Education then. We all thought he intended to try for promotion to a bigger school, but he never moved. He was very proud of his gown.’

‘Where was it kept?’

‘In his office. On a hook on the door.’

‘I see,’ he said. He took a pipe from his pocket and began to fill it with tobacco from a leather pouch. She waited for him to light it, but he seemed to change his mind and laid it carefully on the low table before him.

‘How did Mr Medburn die?’ Irene asked. She was enjoying Ramsay’s company. The question came naturally.

‘He was dead before he was hung up,’ the policeman said. ‘He was strangled but not by the noose of bandages. We think he may have been drugged first.’

They drank instant coffee in silence.

‘Is there anything else you want to ask me?’ she said in the end. ‘I think I should go back to my classroom. I feel I should be working even though the children aren’t here.’

‘Did he take any private pupils?’ Ramsay asked.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m sure not.’

‘He didn’t work for one of the examination boards, marking papers?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘He was a primary specialist.’

‘So he had no other income?’

‘I’m sure he didn’t.’

‘No one seems very sorry he’s dead,’ the policeman said suddenly, and she thought perhaps he was clever, more imaginative than she had first supposed.

‘No,’ she said. ‘He wasn’t very popular.’

‘Why was that then? Did he pick on the children?’

‘Not on the children, no. He was a good teacher in a lot of ways, though a little boring by today’s standards. No. Adults were his victims.’

‘Did he knock his wife around?’ He asked the question in the same level, matter-of-fact tone.

She was very shocked. She supposed that in his work the detective must mix often with men who beat their wives, but it seemed offensive to suggest that she was acquainted with such people. ‘No,’ she said. ‘There was nothing like that.’ Then, feeling surprisingly disloyal, she added: ‘He was too subtle, you see, for that kind of violence.’

‘You sound almost glad that he’s dead,’ Ramsay said.

Irene Hunt thought then that her original assessment of him was correct but that after all he had an instinctive intelligence, like an animal’s.

‘Do I?’ she said. ‘Life will be a lot easier, you know, without him.’

She took their cups to the sink and washed them. The policeman sat back in his chair and watched her.

Outside in the corridor, Jack Robson was cleaning the floor where the police had finished. He had heard every word of the conversation, but neither the policeman nor Miss Hunt took any notice of him. He was as much a part of the school furniture as the blackboards and the wall bars in the gym.

All day, in the village, Jack had been asking questions about Medburn and Angela Brayshaw. Patty’s description of her conversation with Angela had excited him. There was already the possibility of another motive.

Perhaps Medburn had another lover. Perhaps there were other jealousies. Perhaps Angela had found Medburn’s attentions unwelcome, hateful even. Jack was sure that someone in Heppleburn would have information about Medburn, and that morning he set out to make it known that he needed the information too. First he went to the small chemist shop in the high street to ask if someone had been in during the previous week to buy a quantity of bandages. The police had been there before him but it gave him the opportunity to explain why he wanted to know. Medburn’s murderer must have had bandages, he said, to twist into a noose. He made a nuisance of himself in the grocer’s shop and the post office, where he waited to talk to the pensioners, because they were always the best gossips. They all knew him as a diligent and caring councillor who fought with officials and bureaucrats on their behalf. They wanted to help him. By lunch-time, when he had to go to school, everyone in the village knew he intended to prove Kitty innocent. Everyone in Heppleburn knew where to find him. He had thought that all he had to do was wait for the information to come to him. Now, Ramsay’s questions to Irene Hunt about the headmaster suggested that he had a source of income they had been unable to trace. Medburn was mean. His reluctance to part with money was legendary in the village and Jack would not have been surprised to learn that he had some other work, something the taxman knew nothing about. If he could discover what that was, he might find another candidate for murder. He had other questions to put in the village.

He stayed in the school until five thirty and by then most of the policemen had gone, and it was ready for classes to resume the next day. He took off his brown overall, hung it in his room and lit a cigarette. As he walked down the corridor to go out into the playground, the inspector who had been talking to Irene Hunt waved at him through the window of the hall. Jack thought Ramsay’s face was familiar and he wondered if perhaps he had worked down the pit with the policeman’s father.

Outside it was nearly dark and he could see the orange street lights, filtered through hazy smoke, in the village below him. The sudden cold weather had encouraged people to light fires, and a cloud of smoke hung in the valley.

As he walked down the steep lane the familiar smell of the smoke and sulphur took him back to childhood. It was the smell of winter. It reminded him of the back kitchen at home, where his mother made pans of leek broth on the black-leaded range and boiled kettles of hot water for his father’s bath.

There was a fire in the bar of the Northumberland Arms. It was a gloomy place with dark-stained wood panelling and leaded windows. The lights never seemed quite bright enough. During the war the pub had been used by submariners stationed in Blyth and the walls were hung with photographs of men in uniform and ships and submarines. The pub had just opened and the bar was empty. The landlady, a thin, grey little woman with twig-like arms and enormous energy, was putting clean ashtrays on the tables and seemed surprised to see him.

‘By man, you’re early tonight,’ she said.

‘I need a drink,’ he said. ‘I’ve worked hard today getting the school ready for the bairns to go back.’

‘Are the police still there then?’ she asked. She was avid for news. He hoped she had other information with which to reciprocate.

‘Aye, I don’t know when they’ll be finished. They say that the school can open again tomorrow. Miss Hunt will be in charge until they get a new head.’

She polished the last ashtray with a duster then scuttled behind the bar to serve him.

‘A pint of Scotch is it?’

He nodded and watched her pull the beer. ‘And something for yourself,’ he said.

She poured a small glass of whisky and sipped at it, like a pigeon taking grain.

‘What do you think of Mr Medburn getting himself murdered?’ she asked. Nothing so exciting had ever happened in the village before.

‘I don’t think Kitty killed him,’ he said firmly.

‘Do you not?’ Her eyes were bright and she pecked again at the whisky.

‘No.’ He looked at her across the bar. ‘You haven’t heard anything,’ he said, ‘ which might help? People talk to you.’

‘Folks were scared of him,’ she said. ‘ I know that.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You should talk to Miss Hunt,’ she said. ‘She was scared of him. My daughter was dinner nanny at the school years ago and she heard some things then…’

‘What sort of things?’

But she refused to say and changed the subject abruptly.

‘I’ve heard Angela Brayshaw got herself into a terrible lot of debt,’ she said. ‘ They were going to take her house off her, but her mother stepped in and paid off the building society. I hear Angela will be working at the nursing home now. She won’t like that.’

He drank the rest of his beer. ‘ No,’ he said, ‘ she won’t like that.’ He smiled broadly. ‘ Thanks,’ he said, ‘you’ve been a great help.’

She winked at him as he went out. Walking out of the gloomy pub into the street he almost bumped into the policeman who had been at the school. It occurred to him that Ramsay had followed him and was waiting for him. As if I was a bloody criminal, he thought. He had never liked the police, and the miners’ strike had made things worse.

‘Councillor Robson,’ Ramsay said. ‘I was hoping to talk to you.’

‘I can’t stop now,’ Robson said. ‘ My daughter’s expecting me.’ It was a lie. He had made no arrangements to visit Patty.

‘I’ll give you a lift,’ Ramsay said smoothly. ‘ I was wanting to talk to Mrs Atkins again.’

‘You’ll be lucky if you get any sense out of her tonight,’ Jack said spitefully. ‘ It’ll be chaos in there. It always is. The bairns’ll not be in bed yet.’

‘All the same,’ Ramsay said, ‘you’ll not say no to a lift.’

His car was parked outside the British Legion Hall.

‘You seem to have been taking a lot of interest in this case,’ the inspector said.

Jack remained stubbornly silent.

‘If you have any information you will come to see me,’ Ramsay said gently. ‘I understand that Mrs Medburn was an old friend of yours.’

Sly bastard, Jack thought. What business is it of yours? You think she killed him. But still he said nothing. He allowed himself to be helped into the big, comfortable car, then Ramsay drove to Patty’s house and parked immaculately close to the kerb.

‘Surely you don’t need to come in now,’ Jack said irritably. ‘You can talk to Patty tomorrow.’

‘I’ll just come to the door,’ Ramsay said, ‘and ask Mrs Atkins if it’s convenient.’

Jack had hoped that it would be a mess, that Ramsay would find it impossible to make himself heard above the noise of the television and the children’s games. He had thought that they would still be at their tea, had imagined the smell of fried food, the floor covered with Andrew’s Lego and Jennifer’s crayons. But Patty was alone there. Jim had taken Andrew to cubs and Jennifer was at a friend’s for tea. The toys had been put away and the dishes, if unwashed, were hidden in the kitchen.

‘Dad,’ she said as she opened the door and saw him standing there, a Charlie Chaplin figure with the policeman by his side. ‘What have you been doing? Why are you here?’

‘I thought Mr Robson was expected,’ Ramsay said in mock surprise. She was aware of him immediately, felt flushed and awkward in front of him as she invited him in, moved a pile of magazines from a chair so that Ramsay could sit down.

‘It was kind of you to bring my father home,’ she said.

Look at her! Jack thought. Just because he’s got a pretty face.

‘It was no trouble,’ the policeman said. ‘I was hoping you could help me again. It’s about Harold Medburn. No one seems to have known him very well.’

‘I’ll help you if I can,’ she said, despite Jack’s obvious disapproval, ‘but I only ever met him at school. Dad probably knew him better than me.’

‘I’m interested in the sort of man he was,’ Ramsay continued. ‘Were people frightened of him?’

‘He wasn’t liked,’ Patty said. ‘ I suppose we all found him a bit… intimidating. What do you think, Dad?’

But Jack did not answer. Ramsay’s question to Irene Hunt and to Patty had suddenly taken on a new significance. He remembered what the landlady of the Northumberland Arms had said.

‘Why do you want to know? he asked, turning suddenly towards the policeman.

Ramsay shrugged. ‘We’re just trying to tie up some loose ends,’ he said.

But Jack did not believe him. Medburn was a blackmailer, he thought. That’s what it’s all about. He had money they can’t explain away. And I know who he was blackmailing.

When he went with Patty to show Ramsay to the door he was almost gracious and thanked him for the lift.

Ramsay hesitated for a moment outside the door. He liked Robson. The old man reminded him of his father. But Ramsay was convinced that Kitty Medburn had murdered her husband and thought the old man was playing foolish games.