Murder in My Backyard

Chapter Twenty-One

Brinkbonnie was quiet, its people shocked and in mourning. There had been tragedies in the village before-many years before a young boy, the son of a fisherman, had been swept from the beach by a freak wave and, more recently, the teacher’s wife had been killed in a car crash on the Otterbridge Road-but on those occasions the grief was shared. People came together to remember the dead and fight off the sense of their own mortality. After the murders of Alice Parry and Charlie Elliot, that was impossible. There was nothing left to hold people together and households turned in on themselves, sometimes regarding members of their own family with doubt and mistrust. They spoke of Alice Parry and Charlie Elliot as little as possible and regarded the press and the police, who insisted on prying with questions, with equal hostility. Only the very old men, who saw the death of people younger than themselves as some sort of victory, continued to go to the pub and talk about the case with a grim humour.

On the farm on the hill Robert Grey worked as normal until the late afternoon, when he, too, went to the pub and got thoroughly drunk. At home he seemed preoccupied by some secret trouble of his own and he hardly talked to his wife and son. Ian was still at home from school and watched his father with curiosity, as if expecting some sudden, unpredictable outburst. He would have liked to go up to his father and offer him comfort, support, one man to another, but he knew that might offend his mother and he loved her too much for that. So Ian sat in the kitchen and watched his father across the farmyard.

Celia Grey was in the kitchen making bread. She stood at the table pushing and tearing at the dough while the smell of yeast filled the house. Ian was reminded of his grandmother, who had lived with them for as long as he could remember, but who had recently died. When he was younger, the old lady had baked every week. It occurred to Ian then that for generations women who looked like his mother had stood in the kitchen running the farm. In the only sense that mattered, the farm belonged to her. His father’s name, scratched on the five-bar gate, was only a gesture of possession and independence. When the bread came out of the oven and Celia Grey knocked it out of the tins, it was, as he knew it would be, perfect. She was incapable of doing anything badly. She moved the kettle onto the hot part of the range.

“Go and fetch your father,” she said. “ Tell him I’m making some tea.”

He nodded, pulled on Wellingtons, and went outside.

Robert Grey was in the far end of the tractor shed, in the shadow. He stood quite still, with his back to the boy.

“Dad,” Ian said. “Mum said you’re to come in for tea.”

The farmer turned quickly. He was holding a wide screwdriver that looked like a knife.

“No,” he said. “I’ll not come in. I’ll just finish this, then I’ll be out of her way.”

“Dad,” Ian said. “ What are you going to do? Things can’t go on like this.”

The farmer moved towards him, the screwdriver still in his hand.

“No,” he said slowly. “ Things can’t go on like this.”

He threw the screwdriver onto a grubby workbench and walked out across the yard towards the village.

Since Charlie Elliot’s death the post office had been closed, and one of the major talking points in the pub among the old men was their inability to collect their pensions.

“Of course old Fred has had a bad time,” they grumbled, “ but it’s about time he started thinking about other folk.”

Even the news that a relief postmistress would be sent out from Otterbridge the following week did nothing to console them. It wouldn’t be the same, they said. Nothing in the village would be the same.

Fred Elliot would not talk to anybody except his widowed sister who had come down from Berwick to look after him and to her he spoke only in monosyllables. He could not explain to her his sense of responsibility, but he went over it again and again in his mind. He knew it was all his fault. If he had told the policeman about Charlie leaving the house again on Saturday night, his son might still be alive.

“I only did what I thought best,” he repeated to his sister, who clucked about him not listening, not understanding.

“Of course you did, pet,” she said. “Of course you did.”

Sometimes when his sister was busy, he would escape to the shed in the backyard to count and tidy the piles of waste-paper, which he intended to sell to provide funds for the hospital where his wife had died. That gave him some comfort, but his sister always found him there and dragged him back to the fire as if he were a naughty child.

“It won’t do you any good,” she said, “brooding on your own out there.” She sat him in his favourite armchair and made him tea and pretended not to notice that he was crying.

In the house behind the garage Maggie sometimes found the tension almost unbearable. Work was no relief with the old men gloatingly reconstructing the crimes as they slurped their beer. Often, when the boys came home from school, she ran away with them and the dogs to the beach. There they would chase together into the wind, shouting to each other, laughing, trying to forget the solemn silence in the house, the sound of Olive crying to herself in her bedroom when she thought no-one was listening. The boys made death-defying leaps from the highest dunes to the beach and ran along the water’s edge until the water splashed over their Wellingtons.

Despite the secret sobbing, Maggie was more concerned about her father than her mother. It was natural that her mother should be upset. She and Alice Parry had been friends. But in a week her father seemed to have aged so that she hardly recognised him. He had always been the stern one, the one to insist on discipline when the boys misbehaved at table, to supervise their schoolwork. Now he was hardly aware of their presence. The boys sensed it and stole unusual privileges-late television, sweets before meals, rudeness to their mother-but still they failed to provoke him to any reaction.

On Friday morning, almost a week after Alice Parry’s death, Tom Kerr had arranged to meet the vicar in the church to discuss the music for Easter. Kerr was also sacristan and he felt a major responsibility for preparing the church for the festival, but throughout the conversation his mind wandered and he saw the priest looking at him strangely.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “This terrible business has upset me. I can’t concentrate on anything.”

“No,” the vicar said. “ Of course.”

Let me talk to you, Kerr wanted to say. I need help. But the moment was lost and the vicar looked at his watch and then hurried away to a mothers’ union meeting in the neighbouring parish. Kerr lingered in the church.

Maggie found him there, sitting on one of the pews close to the aisle, not praying but staring at the light coming through the stained-glass window above the altar.

“Dad,” she said. “What’s the matter? Mam’s worried about you. She saw the vicar leave half an hour ago.”

She squeezed past and sat beside him on the polished pew. It was Lent and the church was bare. Maggie wished her father would stand up and walk out into the fresh air. Churches made her uncomfortable.

“I don’t know what to do,” Tom Kerr said. “ I’ve been foolish. I’m in terrible trouble and I don’t know what to do to put it right.”

“Tell me,” she said. “Perhaps I can help.”

“No,” he said sharply. “This is my business. No-one else must get involved. I’ll have to sort it out for myself.”

“It’s my fault, isn’t it?” she cried. “It’s something to do with Charlie. What have you done?”

He turned to face her and the warm light from the stained glass reflected on his spectacles so that she could not see his eyes.

“You’ll have to leave it to me,” he said. “ Now go away. I want to be on my own to think.”

She left him, trying to tell herself that he was a stubborn man with too many principles. His imagined crimes would be trivial compared with the things she could dream up. But she remembered his terrifying and merciless temper and her anxiety grew.

When Ramsay arrived in Brinkbonnie at midday, he went to the garage first. If Henshaw were blackmailing or threatening one of the leaders of the village, Ramsay thought, Tom Kerr would know. He seemed to have assumed responsibility for the place’s moral welfare. The workshop was unlocked and Ramsay went inside, but it was empty, and when he knocked at the door of the house, there was no reply. He walked on past the row of cottages and crossed the road towards the pub. In the Tower field the surveyors were back, sitting close to the hedge to eat their sandwiches so that they could not be easily seen from the street.

In the Castle Hotel Maggie Kerr was behind the bar and the same old men sat staring at their beer and the dominoes board. There Ramsay made himself popular. He bought them all drinks and sat down with them and encouraged them to gossip. There must be scandal in a village like this, he said. There must be secrets, skeletons in cupboards. The old men chuckled and said he was right. “Man, you could write a book about the things that go on in this village.” But their scandals had happened years before. They talked about the American soldiers based in Otterbridge and children born out of wedlock during the war. They talked of family fueds and grievances stored for twenty years. None of it helped Ramsay at all, and he was about to leave when they started talking about Robert and Celia Grey. Again they began their story many years before. It had all started with the old lady, they said, Celia’s mother. She was the cause of all their problems, sitting in the corner of the kitchen like a poisonous old spider, giving out her orders. No wonder Celia went a bit wild when the old cow died.

“Wild?” Ramsay said. “ I wouldn’t call Celia Grey wild.”

“No,” they said. “Well, strong-willed then. She knows what she wants and nothing will stop her getting it.”

“Tell me about it,” Ramsay said, buying more drinks, hoping for details.

The old men accepted the drinks but became coy when he pressed them to be more specific about the Greys’ problems. They were happier talking about the past.

Ramsay became impatient and left the pub for the post office. Under the watchful eye of Elliot’s sister, he talked to the postmaster.

“Mr. Elliot,” he said carefully. “ When you first got involved with the Save Brinkbonnie campaign, did Henshaw ever approach you with money to stop your objections?”

Elliot looked up at him in wonder. “No,” he said. “ Even Henshaw knows me well enough to realise I’d not be taken in by anything like that.”

That was true, Ramsay thought. Fred Elliot was the last person Henshaw would approach to sabotage the Campaign. He was too obviously incorruptible.

“What about Charlie?” Ramsay asked. “ Did Henshaw put any pressure on Charlie?”

But at the name of his son Fred Elliot went to pieces. He began to cry and his sister stood between them, holding her apron wide as if she were protecting a child from a dangerous animal. She made strange shooing noises.

“Go away,” she said. “Can’t you see he’s no use to you? Leave him to grieve in peace.”

So Ramsay went back onto the street to continue his search for information.

In the churchyard preparations were beginning for Alice Parry’s funeral. An old man leaned on a spade, pressing it against the turf as if testing to see how hard a job he would have in digging the grave. He seemed daunted by the task because he laid the spade on the grass and began to walk away towards the back of the church.

“Excuse me!” Ramsay shouted, and the old man turned slowly to stare at him. “ Have you seen Mr. Kerr?”

The gravedigger looked at him, giving no sign that he had heard the question.

“You must know Mr. Kerr,” Ramsay said. “ He’s the choirmaster.”

“No,” the old man said. “I’ve not seen him today.” He walked off.

On the church porch, emerging at last to go back to the garage to work, Tom Kerr heard the exchange. He leaned against the closed door and waited until he heard the policeman move on before he scuttled home across the green, but he knew it would be impossible to hide from Ramsay for ever.

Ramsay moved up the Otterbridge Road towards the Henshaws’ bungalow. It was likely, he thought, that Colin Henshaw would be out during the day. Perhaps Rosemary Henshaw would speak to him more freely if he saw her alone. He turned into the drive and was relieved to see that the garage was empty. The Renault was parked on the gravel, but Henshaw’s Rover had gone.

Rosemary Henshaw looked more comfortable, more approachable than when Ramsay had last seen her. She still wore makeup, but she was not so shiny or impenetrable as she had been that Sunday night. She was dressed in a pale green jogging suit that was stretched across her stomach. Ramsay thought he had disturbed her in the middle of her lunch. When she opened the door, she was brushing crumbs from the front of her sweatshirt.

“Yes?” she said. Then: “ You’re the policeman, aren’t you. You were here the other night.”

Ramsay smiled at her. “You were kind enough to tell me to drop in if I thought you could help,” he said.

Hunter isn’t the only one who can turn on the charm, he thought. But Hunter’s so much better at it than I am.

“Of course,” she said. She seemed pleased to have the company. “Come into the kitchen. I was just having a sandwich. Perhaps you’d like something.”

“You’re not expecting your husband?” Ramsay said.

She giggled as if the questions were a proposition. “He’s always busy,” she said. “He’s working on different developments all over the country. I never know where he’s working, but he lets me know if he’s going to be back early and he’s said nothing today.”

She took him through the house, which was as glossy and dust-free as her face, to the kitchen, which seemed full of electrical gadgets. There was a portable television on a work top and an earnest young woman with a shrill Scottish accent gave consumer advice. Rosemary Henshaw switched it off.

“What would you like to eat?” she asked. “ I could pop something from the freezer into the microwave. It wouldn’t take a minute. Or a sandwich. I could do you a sandwich.”

Ramsay said that a sandwich would be very nice. She sliced a stottie deftly and began to fill it with ham and tomato.

“What time did your husband go out this morning?” Ramsay asked.

“I don’t know,” she said, giggling again. “ He was gone when I got up. I’m dreadful in the mornings. He sees himself out.”

“What about Tuesday morning?” Ramsay asked. “ Did he go out early then?”

“Why?” she asked, suddenly suspicious. “What’s this all about?”

Ramsay answered the question though he knew she must already know why he was asking. She was no fool.

“Charlie Elliot was murdered on Tuesday morning, very early,” Ramsay said. “ You must have heard that.”

“I heard he was dead,” she said. “I didn’t ask for any details. I don’t want to know.”

“He was stabbed,” Ramsay said. “Just like Alice Parry.”

“I don’t understand what’s going on,” she cried. “ Everyone said he killed the old lady.”

“Well,” Ramsay said. “ Now he’s dead.”

There was a silence and then she turned to him.

“Why are you here?” she asked. “I don’t understand what it has to do with us.”

“It’s to do with everybody,” he said, suddenly angry. “Everyone in Brinkbonnie. Alice Parry and Charlie Elliot lived here. Elliot’s body was found in the small stone barn on the hill behind your house. The land is owned by your neighbours, the Greys. You all have an interest in getting the thing resolved.”

“Yes,” she said, though he could not tell if she understood. “ Yes, I see that.”

“So,” he said gently. “ Will you tell me where your husband was on Tuesday morning?” He watched her face, saw her prepare to lie then change her mind.

“I don’t know,” she said. “He did go out very early. I heard him go and it was still dark. I presumed it was work.”

“Did you ask him why he left so early?”

“No,” she said. She gave no explanation for the lack of communication between them. “No.”

“And what about Saturday night?” Ramsay asked softly. “ He did go out, didn’t he, after Alice Parry left your house?”

“Yes,” she said, and began to cry. Tears were her usual weapon against confrontation. “ I don’t know where he was. He won’t tell me.”

“What happened when Mrs. Parry was here on Saturday night?” Ramsay asked. She was so distraught that he hoped she would answer without thinking, under the spell of his sympathy. “It wasn’t a cosy little chat after all, was it?”

But if he expected her to be honest, he was disappointed. She looked up sharply and he knew she was preparing to lie.

“It was!” she said. She seemed terrified. “It happened just like Colin told you.”

“There’s no reason to be frightened, you know,” he said. “ We can give you all the protection you need.”

“No!” she cried. “I don’t need protection from Colin. He’s my husband. You’re mad.”

She was almost hysterical and seemed not to care that he did not believe her. He sat in silence, hoping that she might grow calmer and volunteer to change her story, but she got up and fetched a packet of cigarettes from her handbag.

She lit one, her hands shaking. Eventually she did regain her composure, but her story did not change.

“You must understand,” she said at last, “ that Colin and Mrs. Parry got on very well that evening. She was angry when she arrived, but by the time she left, things had been sorted out between them.”

“How had things been sorted out?” Ramsay asked. “What did your husband say to Mrs. Parry to make her change her mind?”

“Nothing,” she said awkwardly, but she would not meet his eyes. “There was nothing to tell. She realised, I suppose, that the battle had been lost. There was nothing she could do to make him change his mind.”

There was a silence. Through the kitchen window Ramsay saw the elderly gardener push a barrow of dead leaves over the patio towards the compost heap.

“I’m sorry to have upset you,” Ramsay said. “ It’s been a difficult time for everyone. Could you answer a few more questions?”

She nodded.

“It’s about your husband’s business,” Ramsay said. “I’m a layman and there are some points in the planning procedure that I don’t quite understand. Quite often the local council rejects his plans, but Mr. Henshaw always seems to win an appeal. Can you explain how he does that?”

She looked at him suspiciously, thinking that the question had some deeper significance.

“He’s clever,” she said. “ He knows what the planning inspector will accept.” Then she smiled. “ Besides, he’s a lot of important contacts.”

“Yes,” Ramsay said. “I’m sure he has. I wanted to ask you about that. Did he ever discuss his contacts with you? In Brinkbonnie, for example, did he have someone to help him here?”

She shook her head. “I can’t help you,” she said quickly.

“You’ll have to talk to Colin. I don’t know anything about his business. I told that reporter the same.”

“Oh,” Ramsay said. “ Has Mary Raven been bothering you again?”

“Yes,” Rosemary Henshaw said, glad of the change of subject. “Nosy little madam. She was here today calling for Colin. I told her he didn’t want to talk to her. She said it would be good publicity for his business. I told her he was doing well enough. He didn’t need her sort of publicity.”

“When was she here?” Ramsay asked.

“Not very long ago,” she said. “Just before I started my lunch. I’m surprised you didn’t see her on the road.”

She stood up and began to fuss with coffee, searching in a tin for biscuits. But Ramsay did not want to prolong the interview. He had learned enough.

“Will you tell Mr. Henshaw that I’ll be in the police house in the village until this evening,” he said as he left. “There might be something he wants to tell me.”

Then he went out, striding down the drive and the Otterbridge Road through Brinkbonnie, walking in the middle of the street so that the people hiding behind their net curtains would not miss him. He wanted everyone to see him make his way to the police house. He was convinced that someone in the village had information for him.