Murder in My Backyard

Chapter Seventeen

On Wednesday morning Stella Laidlaw had still not seen Max. She had expected him to arrive the day before and had been prepared for him from early morning, as expectant and smartly dressed as a lover. She imagined that every car that approached the drive belonged to him, and by late afternoon she was in a frenzy of anxiety in case James came home from work before Max arrived. At four o’clock she phoned the surgery, but the receptionist said Dr. Laidlaw was out on an urgent call. Stella did not believe her and shouted and made a scene. Then she phoned Max at home, but Judy answered and Stella put the phone down without saying anything. There was a temptation to spite Max by telling Judy all she suspected, but secrecy, Stella knew, was her greatest source of power.

When James came in from work on Tuesday night, he found Stella more tense than he could remember. She was sobbing and shaking. She wished she was dead, she said. She wished it was all over for her, too. James tried to comfort her. He felt exhausted himself, but he put her to bed like a child and sat with her until she finally slept. In the morning the crisis seemed to be over and her confidence restored. She woke quite normally. He tried to insist on staying with her, or on fetching the doctor to be with her, but she sent him to work. She was at her most charming, apologising for making so much fuss the night before. She was so much trouble to him, she said. She did not know how he put up with her.

Carolyn watched her mother’s performance with a new, dull detachment. In the past, scenes like these would have upset her dreadfully. She would have hidden in her bedroom, her head under the blankets, trying to persuade herself that nothing out of the ordinary was happening. Now the hysteria hardly touched her. She wondered why she had ever considered her mother’s moods of such importance.

She watched the weeping woman with curiosity, as if her mother were a strange child throwing a tantrum in the street. James and Stella were so wrapped up in each other that they did not notice the change in Carolyn. They did not realise that she had hardly slept for nights and that she had eaten little. When she made her way to school, she stumbled with tiredness.

James was relieved to leave the house, but all day he was thinking about Stella, remembering how she had been before Carolyn was born, wondering if she would ever be like that again. Wednesday was the day before publication, the busiest time for the Express, but he could not forget her.

When Ramsay came to the office in Otterbridge, it was late morning and James Laidlaw was holding an editorial meeting. His door was open on to the large, open-plan office to allow the cigarette smoke to escape and he was working through the list of news lines supplied by his reporters to decide which items should go on the front page.

“It’ll be the Charlie Elliot murder, will it?” A large, elderly reporter with a peculiar crew-cut sat on the opposite side of the desk. He was looking at black and white photographs of the Tower, Charlie Elliot in army uniform, and Brinkbonnie village, squinting at them, trying to judge which picture had the most impact. “We’ll need to cover the Alice Parry story, too. It’s obviously related. I know the Journal’s done that in detail over several days, but we can run our own angle.”

“Yes,” James Laidlaw said. Worry about Stella made him preoccupied, rather aloof. Even his aunt’s death could not touch him. “What have we got so far?”

“A look at the facts as we know them, with details of Charlie Elliot’s last movements and a map of the area. An interview with the father, Fred Elliot. You know the idea: ‘ I was convinced my son was never capable of murder.’ I thought we might include a background piece on the planning issue. Something about the high feelings raised by new developments in small communities.”

James looked up. “ I’m not sure that would be relevant anymore,” he said. “ Not after Charlie Elliot’s death. It looks more like the work of a lunatic now.”

“We’ll hold the planning piece for another week then,” the reporter said. “We’ll concentrate on the murders.”

“What have we got from the police?” James asked. “ Not much. They’re giving nothing away.”

“There’s nothing here from Mary Raven. What’s she been doing this week?”

The reporter shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. He had little time for Mary. He thought she was unreliable and disrespectful. “She said she was working on a special feature. I assumed she had your approval. She was in last night, but I’ve not seen her since.”

“No,” James said slowly. “She hasn’t talked to me about any feature.” There was a pause. “When she comes in again, tell her I want to speak to her.”

He looked through the open door and across the large office and saw Ramsay standing at reception.

“Well,” he said to the reporters. “We’re organised now. That’s all then.”

Ramsay had climbed the narrow stairs and was standing with the receptionist.

“I was hoping to speak to Miss Raven,” he said. “ Is she here?”

Before the receptionist could answer, James Laidlaw had crossed the large office.

“Inspector!” he said. “ Did you want to talk to me? Is there any news?”

“No,” Ramsay said. “ No news. Is Miss Raven here?”

“I’m afraid not,” James said. “It seems that she’s not been at work this morning. Perhaps she’s ill. Have you heard from her, Marjory?”

“Yes,” Marjory looked awkward. “ She did phone in.”

“Well,” James said. “ What’s the matter with her?”

“I don’t know,” Marjory said. “Not exactly. I think she’s going through some emotional problems. She didn’t sound well. She told me she’d given up men and was going to throw herself into work. It was an important story. Something about a bankrupt businessman. The biggest story of her career, she said.”

“That wouldn’t be difficult,” James said shortly.

“I need to talk to her,” Ramsay said. “It’s rather urgent. If she comes into the office today, will you ask her to get in touch with me at the Incident Room.”

“I can’t help you, I’m afraid,” the receptionist said. “I’m taking the afternoon off. It’s my grandson’s birthday and I’m having the children to tea. I was just going home.”

She took a coat from the peg behind the door and tied a silk scarf round her hair, and picked up a large wicker basket. James Laidlaw listened to the exchange between Marjory and Ramsay without reaction. He nodded briefly and walked back to his office, apparently preoccupied with his own thoughts.

“You stay here,” Ramsay said to Hunter. “Talk to Mary Raven’s colleagues. See if you can find out what she’s up to and where she might be.”

He followed the receptionist, who was already halfway down the stairs.

“Can I give you a lift somewhere?” he called after her.

He held open the door to let her out and they stood together on the pavement. It was market day and in Front Street stalls were still set out with rails of cheap clothing and trays of vegetables. Now, at lunchtime, the stall-holders were shouting their special offers to clear the goods that would not keep for another day and the pavement was littered with old cabbage leaves.

“Are you sure?” She smiled, easily, motherly, used to respect. “You must be very busy. I don’t want to put you out.”

“No,” he said. “I’d like to take you.”

He had reached a stage in the investigation when there were too many leads to follow, too much to do. He would welcome a break in the confusion, a breathing space. Besides, he wanted to find out more about Mary Raven.

He lifted her basket into the boot and opened the car door for her. She directed him out of the town towards a small modern estate with big houses and gardens full of trees. It was not sufficiently ostentatious, Ramsay thought, to have been built by Henshaw.

“Perhaps I shouldn’t have mentioned where Mary was going in front of James,” Marjory said, suddenly guilty. “ She likes to keep her leads secret until the story’s finished. I think she’s afraid he’ll cramp her style.”

“Would he do that?”

“No,” she said. “ I shouldn’t think so. He just likes to keep a tight rein on the newspaper. He’s very proud of it.”

“Mary didn’t go home last night,” Ramsay said. “She didn’t say where she’d been staying, did she?”

“No,” Marjory said. “ She said she had a hangover. I didn’t like to tell James that. He disapproves of her drinking.”

“What sort of relationship do Mary and James have?” Ramsay asked.

“Oh,” Marjory said. “ Very prickly. They’re both rather strong-willed. But I think there’s an element of mutual respect, too. She’s a good reporter, you know. James would miss her if she left.”

She pointed to the entrance of a cul-de-sac, where two toddlers played on the pavement with dolls and prams.

“Could you drop me here?” she said. “ Thank you very much for the lift. It’s a long walk and there’s a lot to do this afternoon before the grandchildren come to tea.”

He felt jealous of her calm domesticity. He wanted to invite himself to tea, too. He knew there would be homemade cakes and chocolate biscuits. He was forty. Soon he would be old enough to have grandchildren of his own, but even when he and Diana were very close she had made it clear that children were out of the question. Perhaps she had been right. It would never have worked. Marjory climbed out of the car and declined his offer to carry her bags to the house. He acknowledged her thanks and drove smoothly away.

The decision to talk to Stella Laidlaw was an impulse, like the impulse to drive the receptionist home. James had made it clear that he would be working all afternoon on the Express and Ramsay had never talked to Stella alone. The discovery that Mary Raven had a secret lover made it important to check James Laidlaw’s movements. He was the most likely candidate, and if James were having an affair with the young reporter, Stella might have guessed. That might explain the woman’s nervousness, her lapses into silence, her brittle bursts of conversation.

He drove through the affluent suburbs of the town towards the river. The houses here were older, mock-Tudor mansions with long, sloping gardens and high walls to ensure privacy. Here the children would not be allowed into the street to play. Diana’s sister lived in one of these houses, close to the Otterbridge Lawn Tennis Club, and even approaching the area made him uneasy. He was reminded of awkward, tedious evenings of conversation when his main objective was to say as little as possible and Diana, as bored as he was, became increasingly more outrageous. Diana had always laughed at his discomfort. She had told him to relax and be himself. She loved him, she had said. Her family would, too, if he allowed them to get to know him. Besides, they were too boring to bother about. He did not have her confidence and had never found it that easy.

Ramsay drove onto the gravel drive and waited in the car for a moment, collecting his thoughts, deciding the most important questions to ask. When he walked towards the front door, he saw Stella Laidlaw staring at him from an upstairs window. She must have recognised him, but even after he had rung the doorbell and stood back onto the drive to wait, she did not move. Their eyes met and she stared at him with horror.

When at last she came to open the door, it might have been a different woman. She was smiling, gay, almost flirtatious, but managed just to miss the right tone. She asked him to sit by the fire, suggested that she make him coffee with an insistence that was embarrassing. She was trying too hard to make a good impression.

“Now, Inspector,” she said. “How can I help you?” But as she spoke, she glanced at the small gilt clock on the mantelpiece, and he thought that despite her hospitality she wanted him gone as soon as possible.

“You will have heard that Charlie Elliot was murdered,” he said.

“Yes,” she said, and giggled nervously. “And we all blamed poor Charlie for Alice Parry’s murder. You must feel rather foolish, Inspector, to have allowed another tragedy to occur.”

Ramsay ignored the comment and continued. “We must assume that there was some connection between both murders,” he said. “So I’m talking again to everyone who was in Brinkbonnie on Saturday night. How well did you know Charlie Elliot?”

“Not at all,” she said. “ I’m not even sure that I ever met him, though I go to Kerr’s garage for petrol sometimes and he might have served me there.”

“But you knew of him?”

“Oh,” she said. “I knew of him. Staying with Alice was like taking part in a soap opera. We had to listen to the story of everyone who lived in the village. Over and over again. Charlie Elliot was infatuated with Maggie Kerr and had dropped out of the army when he found out she’d separated from her husband. Then he and Tom Kerr had a fight and Tom punched him on the nose. That was a real scandal because Tom’s a pillar of the church and it was supposed to be a deadly secret, though most of the village must have heard about it in the end. According to Alice, he felt so guilty that he didn’t feel able to sack Charlie from the job in the garage although he was being such a pain in the arse and making Maggie’s life hell. It was quite romantic, but very tedious.”

“Did Alice have any idea how the situation between Elliot and Maggie could be resolved?” Ramsay asked.

“Endless ideas,” Stella said. “All totally impractical and rather interfering. She wasn’t the saint the others have made her out to be, you know, just a nosy old woman. She even talked at one time of having Maggie and the boys to stay as lodgers at the Tower, though goodness knows what damage that would have done.”

“Did she ever talk to Charlie about Maggie?”

“Probably, though she never said. She wouldn’t have told me, anyway. She’d know I’d not approve. Charlie would have told her to mind her own bloody business. And quite right, too.”

Again, as she finished talking, she glanced at the clock. Ramsay paused and changed the subject of the conversation. “I must ask you some questions about yesterday morning,” he said. “ Charlie Elliot was killed between five and six-thirty. I have to know where everyone involved in Mrs. Parry’s case was at that time. It’s a matter of elimination. I’m sure you understand.”

“I don’t know where James was,” she said. “Asleep, I presume. We slept in separate rooms on Monday night. He was very sweet about it but said I was so restless I kept him awake. I was in rather a state on Tuesday morning – I have trouble sometimes with my nerves and it was a bad day. He was there when I woke up.”

“Were you in your room all night?” Ramsay asked.

“No,” she said. “ If you must know, I find it so damned hard to sleep I got up in the early hours and went for a drive. I thought the speed might relax me and help me sleep. It usually does.”

“But it didn’t work?”

“No,” she said. “ It didn’t work.”

“What time did you go out and when did you get back?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “And I don’t know where I went, either. I just drove.”

“Do you and your husband each have a car?” Ramsay asked.

She nodded.

“And you took your car?”

“Yes, of course. It was parked outside the house. James keeps his in the garage.”

“So you didn’t notice whether your husband’s car was there or not when you left the house?”

“Of course it was there. Why wouldn’t it be there? What would James be doing driving round in the middle of the night?”

“But you didn’t see it?” Ramsay asked.

“No,” she agreed. “ I didn’t see it.”

“Do you have any social contact with your husband’s colleagues?” Ramsay asked.

“As little as possible,” she said.

“You don’t get on with them?”

“Oh,” she said. “ I get on with them. I get on with most people. But when they’re all together they just talk about work and I find that tiresome. James is almost obsessive about the Express. I tell him he should delegate more and that he cares more about the bloody paper than he does about me, but it doesn’t make any difference. It still takes up all his time.”

“Does James discuss his staff with you?”

“He discusses everything with me,” she said angrily, but he doubted if she stopped thinking about herself long enough to listen.

“There’s a young reporter,” he said. “ Mary Raven. We’d like to talk to her, but she’s proving a little elusive. You have no idea where she might be?”

Stella smiled and seemed pleased with herself. There was little indication that she was jealous of the woman or that she resented her.

“No,” she said. “I don’t know where she is. She’s got something of a reputation, you know. She drinks a lot and I’m afraid she might be a bit promiscuous. James can be rather pompous and doesn’t like it. I tell him it does him good to have someone young in the place. It stops him getting boring.”

She looked at the clock again and this time Ramsay had no excuse to stay. He felt frustrated. He felt he had achieved nothing from the interview. He knew that Stella had been performing for him and that he could trust nothing she had said. At the door she stood with the same fixed smile on her face and waited until he had driven into the street. Then she shut the door behind her.

Just after Ramsay had turned into the road, he had to stop at a pedestrian crossing to allow an elderly lady across the road. It was only because of the delay that he saw Max Laidlaw’s car drive through the gates and park outside the Laidlaws’ house. The inspector turned into a side street so that he had a view of the front of the house. He saw Max knock on the door and Stella answer it. She was obviously furious and in her anger she was very tall, very regal. She took something from Max’s hand and there was an exchange, possibly, thought Ramsay, an argument. Max turned and strode back to his car. He reversed it into the street at great speed; almost causing an accident, then drove off without noticing Ramsay’s car at all. Stella Laidlaw stood in the doorway watching the incident with a degree of satisfaction, posed as if for a photograph, framed by the buds of forsythia that grew on either side of it. Then she disappeared back into the house.

Before Ramsay could start his car, Stella ran out into the street, tying the belt of the full-length beige mackintosh as she went. She began to hurry towards the centre of the town. Ramsay waited for a few minutes, but she was walking so quickly that he was afraid he would lose her. He locked his car and began to follow her.