Murder in My Backyard

Chapter Fifteen

Ramsay stood on the storm porch at Grey’s Farm and knocked on the door. He could see Robert Grey in the tractor shed, bent over the engine, but although the farmer must have seen the return of the Land Rover, he made no move to come into the house. Ramsay thought his feet were wet enough and refused to cross the muddy yard to fetch the man. The door was opened by the woman who had come into the yard when he had strayed into the drive by mistake. She was tall, attractive, rather grave. Her dark hair had a streak of grey along the centre parting. Behind her he saw a wide hall with uneven flags on the floor where eggs were stacked in trays.

“Yes?” she said, imperious, ready to send him away though she must have guessed who he was.

“I’m Inspector Ramsay,” he said. “Northumbria police. I’ll need to speak to you and your husband.”

“We’ll not be able to help you,” she said.

“A man was murdered on your land,” he said. “You can see it’s important that I talk to you.”

She opened the door wider to let him into the hall, then stood outside and called to her husband.

“Robert. Come here, please. The policeman wants to speak to you.”

It was the voice of a woman speaking to a child or an employee, not to an equal. Ramsay wondered what sort of relationship they had. He presumed that the farm had been inherited from her family and thought she might have married Grey to do the work. The man walked to join them. He was shorter than she was, slightly bow-legged. At the door he stopped and took off his boots.

“We’ll go into the kitchen,” she said. “ It’s the only warm room in the house.”

She must have been in the middle of baking. There were bowls and trays on the table and the smell of cooking in the air. On one chair there was a pile of unironed clothes, but the woman did not apologise for the mess.

“You’d better sit down,” she said.

“I won’t disturb you for long,” Ramsay said.

“Well,” she said. “You’ve done that already.”

He ignored her and turned to Grey.

“What time did you find the body?” he asked.

In his wife’s presence the man seemed even more awkward and inarticulate than he had before. It was not, Ramsay thought, that he was stupid. He had difficulty expressing himself as accurately as he wanted and that frustrated him.

“I don’t know,” Grey said. “ Not exactly. I went up the hill to see how much feed was left. In case there’s another cold spell. Quarter to twelve perhaps. It must have been about midday when I met you.”

“Yes,” Ramsay said. “When was the last time you went to the barn?”

Grey shrugged. “About a week ago,” he said. He turned to his wife. “That would be right, wouldn’t it, Celia? It was about a week ago.”

“I can’t remember,” she said indifferently.

“You’ve not been up there since Charlie went missing?”

“No,” Grey said. “Certainly not since then.”

“Was Charlie Elliot a good friend of yours?”

“Not exactly a friend. I’d met him in the Castle, of course. He bought me a few drinks.”

“Did he know you well enough to ask you a favour?”

“I don’t understand,” Grey said. “What sort of favour?”

“Did he ask you if he could camp out in your barn?”

“Of course not,” Grey said. “I wouldn’t have allowed that. He was wanted for murder.”

“What were you doing on Monday evening?”

“I was in the Castle,” Grey said. “Having a few drinks.”

“Where were you, Mrs. Grey?”

“I was here,” she said.

“Did you hear anything unusual?” he asked. She shook her head.

“If Charlie Elliot had come through your farmyard you would surely have heard,” he said.

“Not necessarily,” she said.

“But what about the dogs? Wouldn’t a stranger coming into the yard have disturbed them?”

“Perhaps,” she said. “I don’t know. Perhaps I was busy and didn’t hear them. Or perhaps Charlie got onto the hill through the fields without coming past the house.”

“Oh,” Ramsay said. “He certainly came past the house. I stopped the Land Rover on the way down and there’s a motorcycle track quite clear in the mud.”

She said nothing.

Ramsay turned again to Robert Grey. “Where were you on Saturday night?” he asked. “ On the evening of Mrs. Parry’s death.”

But before Grey could reply, Celia interrupted.

“He wasn’t here,” she said. “His mother lives in Penrith and she’s been ill for a while. He went to the hospital to visit her. You can phone his sister if you like. She’ll confirm it.”

“And where were you, Mrs. Grey?”

“I was here,” she said, then added bitterly, “I’m always here.”

She got up to take scones out of the oven and to shake them onto a wire cooling tray.

“How well did you know Mrs. Parry?” Ramsay asked. The question was directed at them both, but again Celia answered.

“Quite well,” Celia said. “ We were both on the committee of the WI. She was a good woman. I liked her.”

“Everyone seems to have liked her,” Ramsay said, “but she was stabbed to death. Have you any idea why?”

For the first time Celia Grey’s composure seemed shaken. “ No,” she said. “ Of course not. Unless it had anything to do with the development on Tower meadow.”

“Have you never considered any of your land for building, Mr. Grey?”

And this time Grey did answer, stammering in his attempt to get the words out.

“I’d sell nothing to that bastard Henshaw,” he said. “Nothing.” He got to his feet. “ Look, I’m busy. I’ve a lot to do. I’ll be in the shed if you want me.”

When Grey left the room, Celia turned back to the oven. She lifted a fruitcake onto the table and put a skewer into the centre, then replaced it at the bottom of the oven. Ramsay might not have been there.

“I wanted to talk to your son,” he said, “but I expect he’s still at school.”

She looked at him seriously. “ Why do you want to speak to Ian?” she asked. “He’s got nothing to do with this.”

“He’s not in any trouble,” Ramsay said. “He might just have seen something.”

“He’s not at school,” she said. “ He’s upstairs. He’s got the flu.”

“Can I speak to him? It won’t take long. You can be present if you want to.”

She shrugged and disappeared from the room. She came back sometime later followed by a teenage boy. He was pale and seemed genuinely unwell. Ramsay recognised him as one of the boys who had passed him while he was standing at the bus shelter on the first night of the investigation. He sat next to the big, old-fashioned range and huddled into his polo-neck sweater.

“I’ll get on with this washing up,” Celia said, “while you talk to him. You won’t mind that?”

“No,” Ramsay said. “Of course not.”

She moved to the sink with her pile of bowls and spoons, and as she passed him she turned to her son with a look that was half threat and half entreaty. The boy took out a large handkerchief and blew his nose. Ramsay could not tell whether or not he had received whatever message the mother was trying to send.

“It’s about Saturday night,” Ramsay said. “Were you at home?”

The boy glanced over at his mother, but she did not turn to face them. Ramsay thought she was concentrating on not showing a reaction. She lifted a soapy mixing bowl from the sink and placed it upside down on the draining board.

“No,” he said at last. “I went out with a mate.”

“Which mate?”

He gave the name of the boy who lived in the council house Ramsay had visited earlier that day.

“Where did you go?”

Ian shrugged. “Just about the village.”

“Where in the village?”

“We were at Dave’s house for a bit, playing records,” Ian said, “but his mam and dad wanted to watch television, so we went out.”

He began to cough. His eyes were streaming and he spoke with a hoarse croak.

“Where did you go then?” Ramsay asked. “Did you come back here?”

“No,” the boy said quickly. “We didn’t come here.”

“Oh?” Ramsay said. “ Why was that then?”

The boy looked embarrassed. “It was Saturday night,” he said. “I wanted to be out of the house.”

“If you didn’t come home, where did you go?” Ramsay realised he sounded impatient and added: “It really might be important.”

“Just around,” the boy said infuriatingly.

“Perhaps you could be more specific.”

“We met a friend,” Ian said.

“Where did you meet him?”

“In the bus shelter on the green. It was too windy to hang around.”

At last, Ramsay thought. At last.

“Was anyone else around in the village?”

“I don’t know,” Ian said automatically. He sneezed into his handkerchief.

“Look!” his mother cried. “ Can’t you see how ill he is? Is all this necessary?”

“I’m sorry,” Ramsay said. He turned back to the boy.

“Please think. As you say, it was very windy. You would have noticed. Did you see anyone in the square or outside the church?”

“There was the woman,” the boy said.

“Which woman?” It was impossible to tell from Ramsay’s voice how excited he was.

“I don’t know who she was,” Ian said. “I’d never seen her before. She was hanging around the churchyard.”

“What time was that?”

“I don’t know. About nine o’clock.”

“What did she look like?”

“Small,” Ian said. “ Dark-haired. Scruffy. I don’t remember properly.”

The thing was a matter of complete indifference to him, but Ramsay waited, willing him to recall more details.

“She had a bright red jacket,” the boy said at last. “I’m sure she did. Dave made a joke about it.”

Mary Raven, Ramsay thought. It must have been Mary Raven.

“If you saw her again would you recognise her?”

“Probably.”

“What was she doing?”

“Nothing,” Ian said. “Just hanging around. Sometimes she walked over to the gate to the Tower. We thought she must be waiting for someone.”

But what a wait! Ramsay thought. From nine o’clock until eleven when Charlie Elliot saw her. Who could she have been waiting for? Alice Parry? Surely no story could be so important to a reporter on a local paper. What had she discovered?

“How long did you stay in the bus shelter?”

“Ten minutes,” he said. “ No more. It was cold.”

“What did you do then?”

“We went to Dave’s house,” Ian said. “His mam and dad had gone out to the pub.”

“What time did you leave Dave’s house to go home?” Ramsay asked.

“Just after midnight.”

“You must have walked across the green on your way home,” Ramsay said. “Was the woman still in the churchyard?”

“No,” the boy said. “ I looked. She had gone. No-one was there.”

“Did you see anyone else?”

“A couple of old men on their way home from the pub.”

“What about Charlie Elliot?”

“No,” Ian said. “I didn’t see him.”

“Did any cars go past?”

“Not that I remember.”

“You didn’t see a blue Rover that night?”

At the sink the woman put the last wooden spoon on the draining board, wiped her hands on a towel by the range, and turned to face the policeman. He was aware of her immense control.

“I don’t understand where all these questions are leading, Inspector,” she said. “I don’t want Ian mixed up in all this.”

“Oh,” Ramsay said easily, “I’m sure Ian will have heard the rumours in the village. He’ll know what’s been going on. He’ll know that Charlie Elliot was suspected of killing Alice Parry. And now your husband’s found his body in your barn on the hill. In my experience teenagers aren’t easily upset.” He turned back to the boy. “ What were you doing on Monday evening? Did you hear anything unusual?”

But it seemed that Ian had supplied all the useful information he had. On Monday the cold had already started and he had come straight home from school. He had been in his bedroom doing homework for most of the evening. He had not heard anything unusual. He’d been listening to records. Through earphones. His dad always complained if there was noise.

Celia Grey saw Ramsay out of the house with obvious relief. There was tension and unhappiness in the family, he thought, but as always in a serious investigation it was impossible to tell if they were the result of unrelated domestic problems or connected to the case. He paused for a moment in the yard, expecting Robert Grey to come, but the farmer had disappeared. As he walked back towards the Otterbridge Road, two Land Rovers filled with policemen drove past on their way to the hill. Hunter must have organised that, he thought. Hunter will be in his element now. He imagined the crowd of them working together, the banter, the shared drinks at the end of the day in Otterbridge, and felt lonely and left out.

But I was right about Mary Raven, he thought. She was in the churchyard that night and Charlie Elliot saw her. I was right about that. Mary Raven was the link between the village and the Laidlaws. She worked for James and had been haunting the village all that day. He knew she must be involved.

Ramsay walked down the Otterbridge Road, intending to collect his car, but he saw Colin Henshaw in his uniform of waxed jacket and Wellingtons ahead of him and followed him on, past the Castle Hotel towards the sea. A group of women was standing on the pavement, some with pushchairs and children, waiting for the school bus to bring the older children back from Otterbridge. Ramsay became aware that they were excited, angry. There were raised voices. As he walked on down the hill behind Henshaw, he saw the object of their hostility. In the Tower meadow, between the house and the dunes, a surveyor and two assistants were working with a theodolite and a tape. The women saw Henshaw and surrounded him, blocking his path to the field.

“You can’t start building,” one of them said. “Not until the council’s come to a decision about taking an appeal to the high court.”

“I’m not building,” he said.

“What are you doing then?” She was a farmer’s daughter, fearless, unintimidated.

“That’s my business,” he said.

“No,” she said. She was redheaded. “ It’s our business. Village business.”

He pushed past the women and climbed the stile into the field. He stood, calf-deep in mud, separated from the farmer’s daughter by the fence.

“If you don’t like my plans for the village,” he said quietly, “ what are you going to do about it? Murder me to keep your precious village intact? That’s what Charlie Elliot did to Alice Parry after all.”

“You don’t know that,” the woman cried. “ It’s your greed that was responsible for her death!”

“Greed!” he shouted back. “ You’re a fine one to talk about greed. Don’t tell me that you’re worried about scenic beauty. The only thing that bothers you is that a new development would bring your house prices down.”

The redhead saw the school bus coming down the hill and controlled herself.

“I’m not going to descend to your level by having a public slanging match,” she said. “ But you’ll not get away with it. I can promise you that.”

The children spilled out of the bus and the mothers moved away.

Ramsay walked on down the street to the stile.

“Mr. Henshaw!” he called. “ Could I have a word, please?”

The builder turned and scowled, but moved back towards the fence.

“What do you want?” he said. “I’ve had enough disruptions for one day. I’ve got to make a living. Not like those bloody women with their fancy talk.”

“Have you heard that we’ve found Charlie Elliot?” Ramsay asked.

“No,” Henshaw said. “ Does that mean you’re all going to go away and leave us in peace?”

“Not exactly,” Ramsay said. “ He was murdered. He was found by Mr. Grey on the land behind your house.”

Henshaw said nothing.

“It might be considered a suspicious coincidence,” Ramsay said. “The two people in the village who opposed your plans most vehemently are dead. I suppose that’s convenient for you.”

“Look,” Henshaw said. “I’m a powerful man. I can get my own way without resorting to violence.”

“But that wasn’t the case in the past, was it?” Ramsay said. “I’ve been hearing rumours that you used to find violence rather useful.”

“I’ve been convicted of nothing,” Henshaw said. “You shouldn’t listen to gossip.”

“Perhaps not,” Ramsay said. “ I have some good news for you. Your story about Saturday night has been confirmed. We know Mrs. Parry was alive when she left you. She was seen in the pub late that night.”

“There you are then,” Henshaw said. “What did I tell you? This business has nothing to do with me.” It seemed to Ramsay that he was too relieved. “Now perhaps you’ll leave me and my wife alone.”

“Of course,” Ramsay said. “ We don’t intend to intrude.” He paused. “Are you sure you didn’t leave your house after Mrs. Parry went to the pub on Saturday night?”

Henshaw was suddenly furious. “ What do you mean?” he cried. “What’s she been saying?”

“Who?” Ramsay asked mildly. “What’s who been saying?”

“Have you been to my house again,” Henshaw demanded, “talking to my wife without my permission?”

“No,” Ramsay said. “ I’ve not been to your home. Do you think Mrs. Henshaw has some information that might be useful?”

“No,” Henshaw said. “ This is all a waste of time.” He turned on Ramsay. “You should have stopped those women from bothering me. This is my land. That’s what we pay you for.”

“Oh,” Ramsay said, “I should have thought you could handle them.” He was about to return to the subject of Henshaw’s movements on Saturday night, but the builder interrupted him.

“And it’s not only them.” He nodded towards the gaggle of women disappearing up the street. “That reporter from the Express phoned me up this morning. Could she come to see me? she asked. She’s doing an article on local businessmen. Like hell you are, I told her. Sod off and bother some other bugger. I’ll get the police on you for harassment.”

Ramsay knew Henshaw was trying to distract him, to stop him from following up the questions about Saturday night, but he was interested all the same.

“Which reporter?” he asked, though he knew the answer already.

“Raven,” Henshaw said. “They call her Mary Raven.”

Of course, Ramsay thought. It always comes back to her.

She was the vital link between all of the major suspects in the case.

“If she gets in touch with you again,” Ramsay said, “ will you let me know?”

Henshaw nodded. He had recovered his composure and Ramsay allowed him to turn and walk away to the surveyors, then went back to the Castle to collect his car.