Murder in My Backyard

Chapter Eleven

When Stella Laidlaw woke early that Monday morning, she knew it was going to be one of her bad days. A bullying father and a weak, overindulgent mother had left her with a great capacity for self-pity and an inflated idea of her own importance. She was special. She deserved attention, consideration, to be spoiled. When her family failed to live up to her expectations, she threw childish tantrums, swearing, shouting, and breaking crockery, or she punished them by retreating into herself. If she felt any guilt after these scenes, she reminded herself that she was ill and that excused everything. When she woke on that Monday morning, she felt unbearably tense. The skin on her face itched as if it had some allergic reaction to the air in the bedroom. Her hands were sweating. Her breath came in short, shallow gasps. When she had gone to her doctor with these symptoms, he talked of panic attacks, suggested that she might learn some useful relaxation techniques. But Stella knew what she needed to relax and it had nothing to do with lying on the floor taking deep breaths. Today the tension made her angry. She blamed her discomfort on Max, on James, and most venomously on Alice Parry.

At breakfast Stella was at her most imperious, demanding hot coffee and fresh orange juice, and when James provided these, they were rejected or ignored. She wore a white dressing gown with wide sleeves, and to Carolyn, who saw her as if for the first time, she looked like the white witch from Narnia. Carolyn was as tense as her mother. She had found it impossible to sleep and her face was grey and strained. She felt as if she were under the weight of a terrible responsibility, as if she were the parent and these unhappy adults were her children. She stood up and began to pack her schoolbag with books.

“You’re not going to school!” Stella cried. “ Not today. You’ve had a terrible shock, darling. You must stay at home.”

“No,” Carolyn said, frightened. “I’d rather go to school.”

“Why don’t you stay with your mother today?” James said, and she returned to the table, unable to stand the thought of one of Stella’s scenes.

Stella’s swings of mood were unpredictable, savage, and cruel to a sensitive child. Carolyn hated it most when her mother made a fuss in public, but she knew that the times when Stella was silent and withdrawn caused her father the most pain. Yet whatever her mood James was gentle with his wife. He spoiled and petted her, bringing her presents, flowers, dresses. Then he was rewarded by her laughter and her tears of contrition and her protestations that she loved him more than anyone in the world had ever loved before.

After breakfast Stella went to her room. She sat in front of the mirror and stretched her long swan’s neck so that the lines of tension in her face disappeared and she looked beautiful again.

Carolyn began to stack the breakfast plates on the draining board in the smart new kitchen that Stella had planned the summer before then lost all interest in. James hovered behind her, and she felt his misery so much that she turned round to face him. Now that Aunt Alice was dead, she had no-one else left to love.

“Look what she’s doing to us!” Carolyn said.

“She’s ill,” he said.

“If she’s ill she should go to hospital.”

“She doesn’t like hospital.”

“I don’t care,” Carolyn said. “ We can’t go on like this. She’s dangerous. She makes us all different. I can’t stop being angry. The doctor thinks she should be in hospital.”

Her father looked confused. “No,” he said. “You don’t understand. She would hate it.”

Once, not when Stella was loud and dramatic, but when she was tired and childlike, James had sent for the doctor and asked for his help.

Carolyn had sat, unnoticed, at the other end of the room and listened to the conversation. She remembered quite clearly what the doctor had said.

“Can’t you give her anything?” James had pleaded. “She seems desperate.”

“It would only make her worse. That’s part of the problem.”

“What can I do?”

“Stand up to her. She knows she can manipulate you.”

“But I want to help her.”

“Then persuade her to go into hospital for a while. She needs time away from you both to sort herself out. You look after her too well. She needs to face up to her problems herself.”

“I don’t know,” James had said. “It seems so hard. I’ll think about it.”

He had tried to take the doctor’s advice, but whenever he did talk to Stella indirectly about going to the hospital, as if by magic she would improve. She would emerge from her bedroom and begin to play her part in the house again. She would help Carolyn with homework and encourage her in violin practice. She would make herself beautiful and go with James to civic functions or into Newcastle to the theatre. She would plan dinner parties and the house would be full of other well-dressed people.

For Carolyn the times of normality were almost worse than the periods of depression, because she knew with a helpless certainty that the relief was only temporary. Each day, when her mother was well, she would wake up wondering if this would be the day of crisis, when Stella would erupt in temper or retreat into silence. At the same time she knew that this anxiety was wasteful and she should make the most of her mother’s happiness while it lasted. There was no-one to talk to about this worry. When her mother was well, her father seemed able to convince himself that she would remain so for ever. Only Aunt Alice seemed to understand a little of Carolyn’s insecurity, and now she was no longer there to provide comfort and sympathy.

Stella did not come downstairs until lunchtime and then she ate very little.

“I’ll have to go out this afternoon,” James said. “ You don’t mind? It’s work. I’ll not be long.”

Stella looked at him incredulously. “ But no-one will expect you to be there today,” she said. “They’ll have heard about Alice.”

She was wearing black stretch leggings and a long black sweater, which reached almost to her knees. Her hair was tied back from her face. Her eyes were dark-rimmed and hollow. She wore vivid red lipstick.

“I’m sorry,” James said. “Really, I have to go.”

Carolyn was surprised. Usually he never stood up to her mother.

“But I hate being on my own.” Stella slammed her coffee mug onto the table. “ You know I hate it.”

“You won’t be on your own,” James said mildly. “ Carolyn will be here.”

“But I don’t want Carolyn,” she screamed. “ I want you.”

Carolyn felt tears suddenly come into her eyes, as if she had been slapped. She knew her father was upset enough, so she turned away. She did not want him to see her crying.

“That’s ridiculous,” James said uncomfortably. “ I’m sorry. I really have to go. There’s this week’s paper to put together. I can’t leave it all to the others.”

He put his arm round Carolyn’s shoulder and squeezed it, then prepared to leave the house. As he went out through the front door, Stella shouted after him: “You care more about that paper than you do about me!”

When he had gone, the house was quiet. Stella wandered into the sitting room and picked up a magazine. It was a long, narrow room with a window at the end overlooking the garden. There was a view down to the river. It was lit by the cold light of the remaining snow outside. There was a marble fireplace and the chairs were covered in marble-patterned fabric in a frosty blue. Carolyn followed her into the room. She never liked her mother’s company when she was in this mood, but if Stella was left alone she worried. She laid out the pieces of a jigsaw on a low, white table and knelt on the carpet to do it.

“I’m sorry about that scene,” Stella said suddenly. “ I don’t know what came over me. I was upset, I suppose, about Aunt Alice.”

“That’s all right,” Carolyn said.

“Don’t you want to watch television?” Stella asked. “There are some good children’s programmes on this afternoon.”

“I don’t mind.”

“If you want to go to your room to watch it, I’ll be fine,” Stella said. “I didn’t mean what I said to Daddy. I was just upset. I don’t mind being on my own.”

“Well,” Carolyn said, relieved to be released. “If you’re sure…”

Stella smiled. “Of course.”

As Carolyn was on her way out of the room, Stella stretched out her hand, palm down, like a princess waiting to be kissed. Carolyn took it and held it for a moment, then she ran upstairs. When she came down a little later to fetch a drink from the kitchen, her mother was in the hall on the telephone. Carolyn could not hear what she was saying and as soon as Stella saw her coming down the stairs she hung up.

“Who was that?” Carolyn asked, curiosity overcoming the care that she usually took when she questioned her mother.

“Daddy,” Stella said. She seemed, Carolyn thought, pleased with herself. “ I phoned him to apologise for being so silly earlier.”

“Will he be home soon?”

“I don’t know,” Stella said absently. “I don’t expect he’ll be long.”

James Laidlaw walked to the office. As soon as he was out in the street he realised he was not properly dressed for the weather. The cold took his breath away and he thought he should have put on a warmer jacket. He could not return to the house to fetch one. Stella might not let him out so easily again. He followed the footpath along the river past the abbey. The river was frozen at the banks and a dirty-looking swan moved slowly along a channel in the middle. There might be a story in that, he thought: the effect of the cold weather so late in the spring on wildlife. He’d get one of the youngsters to look into it tomorrow. From the riverbank there were some steps onto the bridge that crossed the Otter and led into the town. The people James passed in the street seemed grey and unhappy, suffering, he supposed, from the unseasonable poor weather. He walked quickly, hoping the movement would fight off the cold.

He looked for Mary Raven’s Mini in one of the spaces along the wide main street, but there was no sign of it. The Express had premises on two floors over the Blue Anchor Inn, and access was by a narrow door by the pub’s entrance. There was a steep staircase, and another glass door at the top led to the office where the receptionist sat and he and the other reporters worked. The receptionist was the wife of the high school’s headmaster, solid and sensible. She supervised the young staff with a motherly compassion.

“Is Mary in?” he asked.

“I haven’t seen her,” she said, “but I’ve just come in from lunch. I was sorry to hear about Mrs. Parry.”

“Yes,” he said. “ It was a terrible shock.”

He walked through into the big room where all the reporters worked, but most of the desks were empty, the computer screens blank. It was the quiet time of the week, despite what he had said to Stella. In a corner one telesales woman was trying to persuade an estate agent to buy advertising. She looked up as he went past and smiled sympathetically. He looked in the small kitchen, thinking Mary might be there making the dreadful instant coffee that she drank black and continuously and that had stained all of the mugs in the place, but there was no sign of her. His office seemed unnaturally cold. He shivered, fetched the electric fire they kept for emergencies, and plugged it in beside his desk. Then he made a cup of Mary’s coffee and stirred in powdered milk and sugar to hide the taste. He began to work.

Mary Raven woke that morning with a hangover to the sound of the independent local radio station on her radio alarm. There was inane music and a breathy reporter talking about the “tragic death of Alice Parry.” She had been out all the day before, drinking with her friends in Newcastle, and it was the first time she had heard the death reported. She switched radio channels for a more detailed review of the local news, then showered and dressed. The flat was a pit. There were unwashed pans in the kitchen and clothes all over the bedroom floor. She had to search through a drawer of laddered tights and single socks to find a clean pair of knickers. But the worst of the hangover seemed to have disappeared and she was left only with a dull, persistent headache.

When she was sitting in her car, trying to coax it to start, she decided not to go into the office immediately. She could not face James until her head was better. Besides, she needed time to work out for herself the implications of Alice Parry’s death. It was the first Monday of the month and the magistrates court would be sitting in Otterbridge. James Laidlaw usually covered the court himself, but Mary thought it unlikely that he would remember it today. It would provide a reasonable excuse for her absence from the office.

The courthouse was a red-brick building between the police station and the cattle market, with the same air of depression as an urban social security office. The waiting room was thick with smoke. There was a queue at the tea bar run by the WRVS and by then she was desperate for coffee. In a corner a well-dressed solicitor was talking to his client for the first time. Occasionally there were shouts of recognition as defendants waiting to go into court called to old friends.

Mary left her coat in the office of a friendly probation officer and slipped into the court, onto the press bench behind the prosecuting solicitor, just as three elderly magistrates came into the room. In the warm, calm, wood-panelled room Mary Raven listened to the cases and dozed until early afternoon. When the court finally rose at two-thirty, she felt she could not put off going to the office any longer. On the way out she was stopped by an anxious businessman who had been convicted of drunk driving and was convinced that he could persuade her to keep his name out of the Express, but she arrived at the High Street at three o’clock.

In the Express office James Laidlaw heard Mary’s car from his desk and walked to the window to watch her arrive. The car’s exhaust had been going for days and she claimed not to have the time or the money to get it mended. He wondered sometimes why he had ever employed her. Her lack of organisation was legendary. He watched her climb clumsily out of the small car and heard her come up the stairs. Then she burst into the office, dropping scarf, keys, files onto the floor.

“Don’t look at me like that, Marg!” she said to the receptionist. “You’ve got to be kind to me. I’ve got a hangover.”

“Where have you been?” James asked, standing in the doorway.

“Magistrates court,” she said. “ It’s the first Monday of the month. I knew you wouldn’t want to do it today. The flasher from Whittingham was up. Otherwise it was all motoring.”

“Oh.” James was momentarily distracted. “ What did he get?”

“Remanded for social enquiry reports,” she said. “ There were a couple of drunk drivings and a strange thing happened-” She broke off, realising that legal gossip was inappropriate. “ I’m so sorry about your aunt Alice, James,” she said. “ Isn’t it awful? She was such a nice lady.”

“Yes,” he said. “ She was.”

“I met her, you know, on the afternoon before she died.”

“Yes,” he said. “ She told me.”

“She was so sympathetic. So easy to talk to.”

“Have the police been to see you?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. “ They might have been to the flat. I haven’t been in much. I went to a party in Newcastle on Saturday night and stayed with friends in town. I didn’t get home until late last night. When exactly did she die?”

“Saturday night,” he said. “At about midnight.”

“So she died soon after I’d seen her,” she said. “Do the police know who killed her?”

He shrugged. “ They won’t tell me,” he said, “but there was a lot of ill feeling in the village about the new housing development.”

“I know,” she said. “I was at the residents’ meeting on Saturday afternoon. They were really angry.”

He looked at her sharply. “I wanted to talk to you about that,” he said. “ Why were you there? We’d decided not to cover the Brinkbonnie development because I couldn’t be objective.”

“I thought I could cover it objectively,” she said. “And if you didn’t want to run the story, someone else might.”

“We don’t work that way here,” he said. “I intend to run a paper with standards.”

“I’ve got standards!” she cried. Her face was flushed and he thought she looked like a moody teenager. He did not know how old she was. She had worked for him for five years and had seemed no younger then than she did now. He knew very little about what she did when she was on her own. She had kept her student friends and her social life seemed to consist of wild, alcoholic parties and evenings in smoky pubs.

“I thought it was a good story,” she said.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “ I didn’t mean to snap. I’m upset.” He looked at her. “She didn’t say anything that might help the police find out who killed her? They’ll want to talk to you, anyway.”

She shook her head. “We ended up talking about personal things,” she said. “She was so easy to confide in.”

“I’ll miss her,” he said, and returned to his desk to work.

They left the office together at five o’clock. He wondered if he should phone Stella to tell her that he was on his way home but decided against it. He had been half expecting her to ring him, to demand his presence back at the house, but there had been no call and that was a good sign. He pulled the glass door tightly shut behind them, then went down the stairs into the street. There was a smell of stale beer from the pub next door.

“Where are you off to tonight?” he asked, as he walked her to her car.

“Home,” she said bitterly. “ To an empty flat.”

He waited until she got into the Mini and revved it into life, then with grating and erratic lurches drove it away up the street. By now it was very cold. With the darkness the temperature had dropped. He thought for a moment of the plight of the swan on the river, trapped as the ice spread, then started quickly home, resisting the temptation to go into the Blue Anchor for a drink to warm him up first.