Murder in My Backyard

Chapter Twenty-Two

In the police house Hunter was coordinating the search for Max Laidlaw.

“We should find Mary Raven,” Ramsay said. “ I’m sure he was having an affair with her. She’ll lead you to him. She’s been in Brinkbonnie today.”

“What has she been doing here?” Hunter was hardly interested. That bloody woman, he thought. Ramsay’s obsessed with her.

“She wants to speak to Henshaw. Something to do with a story.”

“Bloody reporters,” Hunter said.

“I want you to go to Wytham,” Ramsay said, “to talk to a woman there.” He was torn. He would have liked to go to Wytham himself to see the woman Robson had suggested. He was still committed to the theory that Henshaw was a blackmailer. But it was more important, he thought, to stay in Brinkbonnie, to be accessible if one of the community leaders there wanted to speak to him. He explained Robson’s idea to Hunter and was aware immediately of the sergeant’s scepticism.

“Talk to her,” he said. “Be discreet. Just ask how she planned the campaign against Henshaw and why it came to nothing in the end. Find out if she was really active all the way through. You might need to talk to other people in the place, too. If she makes some excuse for having dropped out of the fight, press her. Be sympathetic. Give her the chance to tell you. Ask if Henshaw made any contact with her.”

Go teach your grandmother to suck eggs, Hunter thought, but he said nothing. He was glad of the excuse to get out of Brinkbonnie. He hated the lack of activity and the constant wind. A few new houses would be an improvement, he thought. They might even liven the place up.

He found Jane Massie’s house very easily. It was, as Jack Robson had said, close to the new housing estate on the opposite side of the main road, backing onto open countryside. As he parked, Hunter looked at the development with some envy. If he won the pools, he thought, he wouldn’t mind living in a place like that. Somewhere with a bit of class and style. In contrast, the Massies’ house was not to his taste. It was built of grey stone, square and solid. The window frames needed a lick of paint.

When Hunter knocked at the door, there was no reply, and he found Jane Massie in the long back garden feeding hens. She was a short woman, rather overweight, probably in her early thirties. He was surprised. From Ramsay’s description, he had expected someone older. She was wearing a calf-length dress in a patterned corduroy and the sort of shoes with buckles he had only seen on children. He dismissed her in his mind as an aging hippie, but all the same he found her attractive. Her face was young and very pretty. When she saw him, she hitched up her skirt and climbed out of the hen run to meet him. Two small boys in dungarees appeared from the hen house and clambered after her.

She did not seem shocked to see a stranger wandering through the back garden. She seemed, to Hunter, to have great self-confidence. He knew few women like her and was nervous.

“Hello,” she said. “Can I help you?” She came, as he had expected, from the south.

The boys hid behind her.

“Mrs. Massie,” he said, “I’m Sergeant Hunter from the Northumbria police. Could I have a few words with you?”

“Yes,” she said. “What’s wrong? There’s not been an accident?”

“No,” he said. “ It’s nothing like that.”

She took him into the house through a back door into a kitchen that smelled of lentils and garlic. She rinsed her hands under the tap.

“I’m sorry I panicked,” she said. “My husband’s away on business. I hate the thought of him driving down the A1. You hear of so many accidents. Would you like some tea? We don’t drink coffee, I’m afraid.”

He nodded.

“How can I help you?” she asked. In the garden the boys were splashing each other from muddy puddles, but she made no attempt to stop them. He thought his mother would have skinned him alive if he’d dirtied his clothes like that.

“We’re conducting an investigation into certain planning irregularities that might have taken place when the estate over the road was built,” he said. “ I understand you were involved in opposing the development.”

“I certainly was,” she said. “It’s a dreadful eyesore. It’s about time someone put a stop to Henshaw. It’s too late for us, but it might stop some other village from being ruined.”

“Were you aware while you were running the campaign that some of Henshaw’s tactics might be dishonest?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “ Not exactly. Everything seemed to be going as we had expected until the builder appealed to the Department of the Environment inspector. It was a terrible surprise then when Henshaw won.”

“Were you involved in the campaign all the way through?”

“Oh, yes,” she said angrily. “Even when everyone all around me seemed to be losing interest. I kept going to the bitter end.”

“What do you mean that the people around you lost interest?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said. “ The village just seemed to give up and accept its fate.”

“It wasn’t that one or two prominent members of your committee dropped out?”

She shook her head. “No,” she said. “It was nothing like that. The committee remained remarkably united. They were very supportive.”

There was a pause. Hunter drank his tea.

“It couldn’t have been that at the end of the campaign you all got”-he hesitated, searching for the word he wanted- “complacent? You thought you would win so you didn’t bother to put up much of a fight?”

“No,” she said. “Really, I’ve thought about it and I’m sure our tactics were just right. My husband’s in public relations and he advised us. Look, if you’re interested, I can show you a file of letters I sent asking for support-to councillors, the local M.P., the media. I kept copies of them all. We had a concerted attack in the last couple of weeks just before the appeal was heard.”

She disappeared into another room and returned with a yellow envelope file bursting with typewritten notes and letters. She sorted through them and took out a handful to show Hunter.

“Look,” she said. “All these are dated in the month before the appeal. I really don’t think we could have done any more. We just didn’t get the response from the public that we could have hoped for. Perhaps the campaign had just been going on for too long and they had a sort of protest fatigue. This sort of development had happened so often in the county that it just didn’t seem exciting anymore.”

“Do you know Henshaw?” Hunter asked. “ Personally?”

She laughed. “ No,” she said. “We don’t move in the same social circles.”

“Did he ever approach you during the campaign?”

“Not during the campaign,” she said. “ He came here afterwards, when the inspector’s decision was finally made public, to gloat. He stood on the doorstep and shook my hand and said that now that the due process of law had been completed he hoped we could be good neighbours.”

“What did you say?”

She shrugged. “What could I say? As far as I knew he was right. Everything was legal and aboveboard. I was as gracious as I could manage, wished him luck for the future, and asked him for a donation for playgroup equipment. As he was so keen to be a good neighbour. I’m on the playgroup committee and we’re always short of money.”

“Did you get your donation?” Hunter asked.

She smiled wryly. “Oh, yes, we got it. And just as the bulldozers were moving in, there was a picture in the local paper of Henshaw surrounded by grateful toddlers and piles of new toys. He knows more about public relations than my husband.”

“Yes,” Hunter said. “I see.” So Ramsay was wrong again, he thought. He should have more sense than to believe Jack Robson’s fairy stories.

She looked at her watch. “I haven’t been a lot of help, have I?” she asked. “ If there’s nothing else you want to know, I’ll have to be out soon to collect my older boys from school. I should avoid that while you’ve got the chance. There’ll be no peace then.”

She let him out of the back door and into the garden again. As he left he saw her rounding up her sons, scolding them halfheartedly for the state they were in, laughing as she gathered them to her.

In the police house Ramsay sat alone and waited for something to happen. He was not sure what he was expecting but sensed that they were close to some resolution. He put out a general call that he should be notified of Mary Raven’s whereabouts, but he did not want to apprehend her. If they found Max Laidlaw, he should be brought in for questioning immediately.

He telephoned Judy, who answered the phone very quickly.

“Yes,” she said. “ Who’s there?” He could sense her holding her breath, praying that it was her husband.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s Inspector Ramsay. I was calling to find out if you’ve heard from your husband.”

“No,” she said. “ I’ve heard nothing. No-one seems to know where he is.”

The children must have been returned to her because in the background he heard one of the children calling for a drink.

“Try not to worry,” he said. “ If Max does get in touch, perhaps you could let me know.”

“Yes,” she said. She sounded exhausted. “Of course.” She seemed not even to have the energy to replace the receiver because as he pressed the cradle to cut off the call he heard the toddler talking again.

The afternoon wore on and he waited for a knock at the door, for the message that someone in the village wanted to talk to him. He switched on the light to make the place more welcoming and phoned the Otterbridge Incident Room again. Mary Raven had been seen in Otterbridge, they said. They were keeping an eye on her.

“Don’t lose her!” Ramsay said. “And don’t pick her up unless she takes you to Max Laidlaw.”

He settled down to wait again.

He welcomed Hunter’s return at least as a break from the tension, but he was disappointed that it was the policeman and not one of the locals who stood outside waiting to be let in.

“Well?” he demanded as soon as Hunter was inside. “How did you get on?”

Hunter shook his head. “I’m sorry,” he said. “ Robson’s theory won’t work. Jane Massie was really committed to the campaign to stop the houses being built. I believed her. She showed me evidence, too. She wrote lots of letters all the way through. There’s no way that the campaign collapsed because she dropped out, and she says that the same committee ran the thing all the way through. No-one made any excuses to leave or not pull their weight.”

Ramsay was listening intently. “Did Henshaw make any approaches to her while the planning process was going through?” he asked.

Hunter shook his head again. “ Not until it was all over,” he said, “and then he gave a donation to the village playgroup. Jane Massie runs that, too.”

Then Ramsay lost patience. He had been waiting long enough. He wanted to talk to Henshaw again, to confront him with his wife’s statement that he had left the house on Saturday night after Alice Parry’s visit. He felt that the builder was mocking him.

“Stay here,” he said to Hunter. “I’m expecting someone from the village to make an approach. Be gentle with them. I don’t want them frightened off.”

He slammed the door behind him and walked quickly across the green to the Otterbridge Road. Perhaps it was because he was so angry and preoccupied that he made the same mistake as he had on the night after Alice Parry’s murder and walked into the Greys’ farmyard instead of the Henshaws’ drive. The place was quiet. He felt rather ridiculous, standing in the muddy farmyard looking round him absentmindedly, and the embarrassment of his previous mistake returned. He imagined Celia Grey looking down on him from one of the upstairs windows, sneering at his indecision. It would be impossible now to turn round and go away. Charlie Elliot’s body had been found on Grey’s land, so he had a perfectly good excuse for being there. So, still imagining that he was being watched, trying to present an air of purpose, he walked towards the back door. If it had not been for his pride, he would never have seen Henshaw’s Rover tucked into one of the machinery sheds. Only the bumper was showing.

The back door was slightly open and the kitchen was empty. He knocked and called, but no-one answered. He waited, still thinking that his approach had been seen, then pushed open the door and went inside. The farmyard had been full of late-afternoon sunshine and long, warm shadows. When he entered the shadow of the kitchen, he shivered. He put his hand on the top of the range, but it was cold. The kitchen was much tidier than it had been on his previous visit, the sink and draining board empty, the work surfaces clear except for a bowl of rather mucky, recently collected eggs. The tile floor had been washed and in one corner it was still damp. He moved on through the door that led into the rest of the house, into the entrance hall where he had stood with Celia Grey on his last visit, trying to persuade her to allow him to talk to her son. The sun came in from an upstairs window and lit the specks of dust in the stairwell. There were two other doors leading from the hall. Both were huge and heavy and must have blocked out all sound. Both were shut tight. He called out and his voice echoed over the stone flags:

“Mrs. Grey! Are you there?” Immediately after speaking he opened the nearest of the doors.

They were sitting together in a small living room. Ramsay guessed that Celia Grey would consider it her own room. It would not be used by the rest of the family. It had no television and he could not imagine a teenage boy in here. The windows were small and it was still in shadow. There was a brick fireplace with a bowl of dried flowers on the grate. On a small sofa Henshaw and Celia sat close to each other. Henshaw was turned towards her, holding one of her hands in both of his. When he saw Ramsay, standing just inside the room, he jumped to his feet.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing here?” he demanded. “I thought you needed a search warrant before you did this sort of thing.”

“I did knock,” Ramsay said mildly. “I was hoping to talk to Mrs. Grey, but it’s convenient that you’re here, too.”

“You can’t talk to her now,” Henshaw blustered. “Can’t you see that she’s upset? You know what they found on their land earlier this week. It’s been a terrible shock.”

“Did Mrs. Grey have a shock on the evening of Alice Parry’s death?” Ramsay asked:

“What do you mean?”

“You came here, didn’t you, on Saturday night?” Ramsay asked. Without waiting for an answer, he turned to Celia Grey. “I think your husband was away,” he said, “and you sent your son out into the village. But Mr. Henshaw was late. He had an unexpected visitor. Someone it was hard to get rid of. Was Mr. Henshaw still here when Ian came home? Perhaps we should ask your son.”

“What are you saying?” It was Henshaw again, red-faced with anger and concern. “Bob and Celia are neighbours, friends. I’m here because I heard that Charlie Elliot had been found in the barn. I wanted to offer my help. He’s a good chap, Bob, but not very imaginative. I thought she might need some support.”

“Do you always park your car in the shed so it can’t be seen from the road?” Ramsay asked reasonably, and Henshaw’s outburst seemed unbalanced and irrational.

“I don’t know what you mean,” Henshaw said. “ You should watch what you’re saying.”

Celia Grey stood up and both men fell silent. “It’s no good, Colin,” she said. “He knows. I told you it would all come out in the end.”

“It’s none of their business,” Henshaw muttered. He gazed at her sentimentally. “How could anyone else understand?”

“I’m afraid it is my business,” Ramsay said. “Do you realise that you’re a suspect in a murder enquiry, Mr. Henshaw? We believe that Charlie Elliot was murdered by the same person as Alice Parry. We’re still looking for her killer. If you have any information that would eliminate you from our enquiries, it would be in your interest to give it.”

“Colin was here when Alice Parry was killed,” Celia Grey said. “You were right. My husband was visiting his mother in hospital in the Lake District. I’d rather you didn’t ask my son, but you were right about that, too. Colin was still here when he arrived home.”

“What about Monday evening?” Ramsay asked. “Was Mr. Henshaw here then, too? Is that why you didn’t notice any noise in the farmyard?”

She nodded.

“Thank you,” Ramsay said. They were a strangely matched couple, he thought. She seemed so upright and cold. He could picture her dressed in Puritan black and white as one of the New England settlers, motivated by principle and guilt.

Henshaw, in contrast, was driven by greed and ambition and seemed to have no sense of morality at all. Yet he looked at her now with tenderness and admiration and he had done everything in his power to protect her. “ It would have been easier,” Ramsay said, “if you’d told me straightaway.”

“I couldn’t have Celia bothered,” Henshaw muttered. “ I had to consider her reputation. She has her position in the village to think about. Don’t you know she’s chairwoman of the WI?”

There was no irony in his voice. It seemed to Ramsay then that Henshaw was the innocent and Celia Grey was the corrupter of souls. He wondered when and how the relationship had started. He thought it could have no future.

“Now I know all about your affair,” he said. “Perhaps you could tell me what really happened in your conversation with Alice Parry.”

“Nothing,” Henshaw said rudely. “I’ve told you everything that happened. There’s nothing more to say.”

Ramsay did not believe him, but time was slipping past and he was no nearer to reaching a solution. He left them, closeted in the half darkness, sharing their secret, frightened affection.