Murder in My Backyard

Chapter Eighteen

Max Laidlaw waited for two days after the phone call before making a decision to see Stella. It was a gesture of pride and independence, although he knew he would do what she wanted in the end. Even on Wednesday he waited until he had completed all of his house calls before driving to her house. Let her stew, he thought. She had caused him anxiety enough. He had hardly slept for two days. Judy’s endless questions, her reassurance, her persistence to know “the truth,” was wearing him out. You don’t really want the truth, he felt like saying. You want comfortable words, security, a well-behaved husband. The impulse to tell her everything had long gone.

On Tuesday the publicity surrounding Charlie Elliot’s death irritated him beyond reason. Everyone was talking about it; colleagues and patients regarded him as a source of gossip. Several times he tried to phone Mary Raven, but there was no reply, and he almost wept with frustration. He had come to believe that only in Mary’s company could he find peace. On Tuesday night, when Judy was asleep, he tried to phone Mary again, but although it was almost midnight there was still no reply, and he imagined her with another man, in terrible danger, arrested by the police.

The next day, Wednesday, his helplessness turned to aggression. From his weakness and his lack of power, which was illustrated by Stella’s ability to use him, grew a violent anger that acted like a drug. It stopped him from thinking clearly and prevented him from considering the options that had seemed to provide a way out earlier in the week. He wanted revenge for the sleepless nights of worry, the disruption to his family life, even for his own sense of guilt. Someone had to pay.

The first person to pay had been Judy. At her insistence, he had returned home for lunch and at first it was pleasant. The kitchen door into the garden was open and the twins were playing happily outside. The children’s voices and the birdsong and the mild spring sunshine relaxed him and he thought his worry had been unnecessary. He would help Stella once more, he thought, just once more, then it would all be over. But Judy began again to question him about his conversation with Alice on the evening of her death and he lost his temper.

“It’s none of your business,” he shouted. “None of your bloody business.”

The twins stopped their game and stared through the open door, fascinated by his anger. Judy cried and there was a humiliating scene as she put her arms around him, dripping tears all over his face.

“Please, Max,” she said. “I don’t care what you’ve done. I can handle anything. But I can’t take this silence. I want you to trust me.”

Then he turned on her. “You think I killed Alice,” he shouted. “Don’t you? How can I trust you when you think me capable of that? What about Charlie Elliot? Do you think I murdered him, too?”

“I don’t know,” she cried. “I really don’t know. I want to know where you were on Tuesday morning. I got up to see to the twins and you weren’t there. What am I supposed to think?”

“I’m a doctor,” he yelled. “I get called out in the middle of the night. You should be used to that by now.”

Then he left the house, only half hearing the voice behind him calling him to come back, begging him to talk to her. He was pleased that he was hurting her.

He had one house call to do, and to his surprise he completed it calmly and efficiently. It was only as he drove to the other side of Otterbridge that the sense of imminent violence returned and grew. He drove automatically because he knew the road well, and when he arrived at the Laidlaws’ house, it was with surprise, because he could not remember how he got there. He walked across the gravel, past the pool of crocuses, purple against the green of the lawn, and thumped on the door with his fist.

Stella opened the door immediately and he did not realise at first how angry she was. She looked quite cool and elegant, dressed in primrose yellow-a linen skirt and a fine woollen cardigan buttoned to her neck. Playing the part of the country lady again, he thought bitterly. If only her posh friends knew.

“Max!” she said, but her surprise was an affectation. She had been waiting for him for two days. She added, tight-lipped: “I was expecting you this morning. Or yesterday.”

Yet despite her temper she was beginning to relax and grow more confident. He was here now and the agony of waiting was over.

“I had a surgery this morning,” he said. Her imperious performance had put him off his stride. He knew he sounded defensive. “ I’m a doctor with real patients. I’ve more important things to do than run after you.”

“But, Max,” she said, “I am a real patient. A private patient.”

She looked at him greedily, but the well-bred voice did not change. “Have you brought my prescription? How kind!”

Her delicate fingers, as fine as claws, reached out for the envelope Max was holding.

“Thank you,” she said. “ How much do I owe you?”

It was as if he were a tradesman. He tried to show his disgust.

“I wouldn’t take your money,” he said.

She shrugged. “ Well,” she said. “ That’s very generous.”

With the envelope in her hand, her tension and ill temper had disappeared. She had lost the edge of desperation in her voice and could tease him. She smiled. “ Don’t look so cross, Max,” she said. “I won’t be bothering you again. Not for a while.”

“You won’t be bothering me again at all,” Max said. “You can do what you like. You’ll get nothing more out of me.”

“Max,” she said. “Darling. Don’t be so petulant. We’ve always been such good friends. You help me and I’ll help you.”

“Not anymore!” He was shouting. “ I don’t need your help. I can look after myself.”

He was aware suddenly that he sounded childish, just like Peter in a temper, and he fell silent. She looked at him triumphantly, pleased because she had roused him to temper, aware of her power. She reached out and, with one long finger, stroked his cheek from the corner of his eye to his chin. He flushed and for a moment she thought she had provoked him too far and he would hit her. She waited, still smiling because such a reaction would have been a kind of victory, but, horrified, he turned quickly and walked down the drive. He drove away, the need for violence unfulfilled.

Stella watched Max storm away. Poor Max, she thought. He had always been so weak. Hardly a man at all!

She went back into the living room and looked at the pretty little clock on the mantelpiece. It was half-past four. Her mind was very clear, emptied of everything except a determination to get her own way and her plans to achieve it. Carolyn had a violin lesson after school but would be home soon. Stella went into the kitchen and left a note for her daughter. She was in a hurry. She wanted to get into town and back before James returned from work.

On the way out of the house there was a moment of indecision, of self-disgust. After all James has done for you, she thought. You go behind his back and behave like this. But even as she paused on the doorstep, she knew that however disappointed James might be in her, he would never desert her. His admiration gave her the freedom to do as she pleased. This secrecy acted in the same way as the drugs Max had prescribed-it gave her confidence and power-but she was not afraid of what James would do if he found out. She would have liked to be the sort of wife he wanted, but the need for self-preservation was stronger and she hurried out of the house without looking back.

In the town the shops were beginning to close. Not far from home, Stella’s attention was caught briefly by the clothes in an expensive dress shop. She turned her head to look at a model in the window but moved on, hardly faltering. Ramsay thought at first that she was heading for the Express office. She walked through the abbey ruins and along the riverbank to the town centre. The breeze that blew over the water detached a strand of hair from the clip at the back of her head, but she fixed it without stopping. She came to the market square, which was now quite empty apart from a pile of trestles and tarpaulins in one corner, and even over the cobbles she maintained her pace. By the time she came to Front Street she was almost running with her black handbag held firmly under her arm and the slim black shoes tapping on the pavement. The other people in the street moved to let her pass, then stared after her, at the slender ankles under the expensive coat. She seemed preoccupied and did not thank them for allowing her to move without interruption.

Once, just as she was crossing the road, a middle-aged woman called after her: “Stella, my dear! How are you?” But Stella ignored her and slipped across the congested road behind a lorry full of sheep.

At the far end of Front Street Stella began to move more slowly. She looked about her. Ramsay had to take care not to be seen. As he hid in doorways and stooped to tie already fastened shoelaces, he felt uncomfortable, ridiculous. How could he justify this wasted time? He should be looking for Mary Raven. What would he do if Stella ended up in the smart wine bar in the High Street, sharing a bottle of claret with her husband or one of her friends? Yet as he came closer to her he saw a desperation and an increasing lack of control in her movements that made him think she might be dangerous.

At a street corner she stopped suddenly and looked all around her. She must have seen Ramsay but, in her haste and agitation, seemed not to recognise him. Perhaps she was looking for someone else. He stood, thinking she was on the verge of some crisis as the pale blue eyes searched both sides of the street, then she set off again with her jerky, unpredictable walk.

She’s mad, he thought. She’s quite crazy.

She disappeared then down an alley into a street of small shops. Ramsay’s way was blocked by a group of schoolgirls in the old-fashioned brown uniforms of an expensive Otterbridge day school, and when he pushed through into the street, there was no sign of Stella. Most of the shops were closed. The sun was low and the street was peaceful. A newsagent was bringing papers from a rack outside in preparation for closing and on the far corner a couple of men were sitting on the steps of a pub waiting for it to open. It seemed as if Stella Laidlaw had vanished into thin air. He ran down the pavement, pushing at locked doors, peering into shop windows. When he came to the chemist shop, he thought that it, too, had closed. The window was unlit and only a sign on the door saying that the pharmacist was on the out-of-hours duty rota made him look inside. Stella was there, the only customer. She was talking to a respectable elderly gentleman in a suit, who stood behind a counter where the dispensing took place. It was hard for Ramsay to see what was going on. The shop was disorganised and dusty, and the window was cluttered with bottles of shampoos and boxes of food supplements and milk drinks. A normal exchange seemed to be taking place. The chemist disappeared into a little room behind the counter and Stella waited, pacing between a pile of disposable nappies and a tray of lipsticks. The chemist returned; she took a wallet from her handbag, paid him, and then almost ran out of the shop, although the man called after her that he owed her some change.

Then suddenly the street was full of brown-uniformed schoolgirls tunnelling through the narrow alley, no longer prim and pompous but with all the ambiguity of adolescence. At one moment they were posing, loose-tied and tarty, then they were children again, throwing a schoolbag from one to another, jumping to catch it and showing regulation-brown knickers. Then they were racing to the newsagent before it closed, hoping to buy… What? Ramsay wondered. Cigarettes? Romantic magazines? Gum? They pushed into the shop and the street was empty again, except for Stella Laidlaw hurrying away. In the narrowest part of the alley, framed on each side by high walls, another schoolgirl stood. She was younger than the rest. Her arms were straight beside her, one of them weighed down by a violin case, the other, as if for balance, by a briefcase full of books.

“Mummy!” she called, and if she had not spoken Stella would have walked right up to her without realising who it was. “What are you doing here?”

Stella stopped and smiled at her daughter, as if waking slowly from a dream.

“Why,” she said, “ I thought it would be nice to come and meet you so we can walk home together.”

She slipped her arm through Carolyn’s arm without offering to carry the bag or the violin, her attention fixed on the shops in the main street. The girl hung back, staring down the alley after her friends. She saw Ramsay, who was still standing outside the chemist shop. Their eyes met, but the child gave no sign that she had seen him and did not mention him to her mother.

In the shop the chemist was back in his dispensary. The doorbell brought him out into the shop to the counter.

“Yes,” he said. “ Can I help you?”

“Who was the woman who was here just now?”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” the chemist said. “ I can’t tell you that, you know.”

Ramsay showed his identification card. “What did she want?” he asked.

“She was bringing a prescription,” the chemist said rather defensively. “There was nothing unusual about it. Tranquilisers. She seemed rather neurotic, didn’t she. It was written by Dr. Laidlaw.”

“His surgery’s on the other side of town,” Ramsay said. “ Why did she bring it here to have it made up?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps it was more convenient.”

“Is it legal for a doctor to prescribe for his own relative?”

“But she wasn’t a relative,” the chemist said impatiently. “At least I had no indication that she was. The prescription was in the name of Raven. Mary Raven.”

On her walk home with her mother Carolyn felt the same panic that she had had some years ago when she had been pushed into the deep end of the swimming pool before she could swim. There was the same gasping breathlessness, the same sense of inevitable pain. Then, she had fought to the side of the pool and saved herself. Now she felt helpless. The sight of Ramsay close to her mother had confirmed all her worst fears. He must know everything.

In the house her mother suddenly became kind and solicitous. Carolyn wasn’t looking well, she said. There was a lot of flu about. Perhaps she should go to bed. But Carolyn was frightened to leave her mother alone and sat with her in the kitchen. Stella’s apparent concern for her well-being made her feel sick and angry, but it was better to put up with that than to be in bed, not knowing what Stella was up to.

“When will Dad be home?” she asked at last. Her mother was frying onions and mushrooms in a pan, and there was a smell of garlic.

“I don’t know,” Stella said. “He should be here by now. Perhaps he’s working late.” She seemed quite unconcerned and Carolyn marvelled at adults’ capacity for deceit. She was desperate for her father’s return.

“Haven’t you any homework to do, darling?” Stella asked. “Or violin practise?”

But Carolyn shook her head. She knew she could not concentrate on anything until she had spoken to her father.

Stella began to chop parsley with a wide-bladed knife, holding the handle with one hand and hitting the blade quickly with the palm of the other. Carolyn watched, fascinated, and when the phone rang, she was unable to move. Stella set the knife down on the chopping board and went out to answer the phone.

“That was Daddy,” she said when she returned, “He’s got a meeting and will be working late tonight, so it’ll just be us for supper.”

She smiled, and Carolyn, faint and exhausted, thought, This must be what it’s like to drown.