Murder in My Backyard

Chapter Three

Mary Raven sat in her car and dreamed of her secret lover. She had met him, one beautiful summer’s evening, at a barbecue on the wild, uninhabited part of the Brinkbonnie dunes owned by the Northumberland Wildlife Trust. The party had been organised by the Trust, and she was there partly because she was sympathetic to the cause and partly to cover the event for the Otterbridge Express. At first it was a predictable evening. The fires took too long to light, the sausages were burnt on the outside and pink in the middle, and bossy women with jolly Girl Guide voices shouted to them as if they were children:

“Come on, everyone. There are hundreds more sausages.”

Mary drank too much red wine from a plastic cup, then climbed over the dunes to look over the sea. It was late but still light, the sky’s violet and gold reflected in the wet sand and ebbing sea. Behind her she heard the children complaining as they were rounded up for bed, the first chords of guitar music, the strains of a protest song. The empty beach stretched south for seven miles towards Brinkbonnie village.

When he climbed up the dune and sat beside her, she was not surprised. Perhaps she had wandered away from the crowd in the hope that she would be followed. It was that sort of night: hot, romantic. She was ready for excitement and some sort of sexual adventure. When she saw who it was, she was not surprised, though at the time almost anyone would have done. She had been aware of him all evening and had sensed as he prodded cindered sausages with a long fork that he was ready for rebellion, too.

“Hello,” he said. “Are you all right?”

“Fine,” she said. She smiled at him.

“You look a bit lonely.”

“No,” she said. “ Just enjoying the evening.”

She stood up suddenly and ran down the steep bank of sand, sliding and tumbling, sending up a rainbow of fine sand that gleamed in the last of the light. She was wearing loose, clown’s trousers and a T-shirt in black and white stripes. When she reached the water, she looked back at him. Later she thought that if she had carried on up the beach without turning to see if he was still there, staring at her, none of it would have happened. He would have gone back to the fire, shaken the sand out of his trainers, and under the orders of the bossy women done his duty with black bin bags and rubber gloves. He would have gone straight home to his wife. But she did turn round, and he saw it as a challenge to follow her. He launched himself from the top of the dune and ran at full-tilt without stumbling. She was impressed by the run. She had expected a more cowardly descent, a sedate walk perhaps, with his hands behind him in case he fell. As he ran towards her she turned and walked away up the beach, just on the edge of the tide. He fell in beside her as if he were there by chance, as if in the whole vast expanse of the beach it was pure coincidence that he happened to be there.

Nothing extraordinary occurred that night. There was no wild passion in the marram grass. They walked almost the length of the beach until it got dark, acknowledging each other’s presence in the end with brief bursts of conversation. Afterwards she could not remember exactly what had been said. She had talked, she thought, about her mother. Perhaps she had been more drunk than she realised. Halfway back they stopped. He put his arm around her and pointed out the shape of one of the constellations-she could not remember which. When they returned to the point on the beach where the walk had started-she could see in the moonlight the skid marks of her slide down the dune-he kissed her.

“I must go,” he said.

“Yes,” she said. “ Of course.”

“I’ll be in touch,” he said. “ I’ll see you or phone you at home.”

Yeah, she thought. Like hell you will.

The extraordinary thing happened the next day. She woke up with a sense of elation and joy she had not experienced since the uncomplicated happiness of childhood. She had more energy. She felt that for the last twenty years she had only been half alive. Inevitably the elation faded, though it lasted undiminished for almost a week, and then her craving to be alone with him again began. She dreamed about the walk on the beach, reliving it every night before she went to sleep, yet with every rerun its magic grew less potent.

What’s the matter with me? she thought. I didn’t go through all this when I was sixteen. I’m an independent woman.

The need to see him again was humiliating. She drank too much to try to forget him.

He’s married, she thought. I mean, really. I don’t need this hassle.

And all the time she knew it was not the man’s company she wanted, but the elation and vitality that had followed it. She became desperate, like an addict, waiting for him to make an approach.

Then he phoned her at home late one Saturday afternoon.

“Mary,” he said.

She recognised his voice immediately. “ Yes.”

“I was wondering if you were free this evening. We could go out for a drink, a meal. We could go into town.”

Of course, she thought. Much less danger of being recognised in town.

“Mary,” he repeated, and she realised that he was as desperate as she was.

“Yes,” she said. “I’m free this evening.” She felt a sudden panic in case he was disappointed with her.

That had been how it all started. They met in Newcastle in a poorly lit wine bar and she drank Perrier all evening because she wanted nothing to cloud her memory. Then she had taken him back to her flat and he had stayed all night.

“What will you tell your wife?” she asked. It was five in the morning, blackbirds were singing fit to burst outside, and he was shambling, naked, round the room retrieving his clothes.

“She’ll blame herself,” he said. “ We’ve been through a bad time lately.”

“So you only phoned me because you had a row with your wife?” Mary spoke carefully. If she made too many demands on him, he might not see her again.

“No,” he said. “Of course not. It wasn’t like that. You can’t understand what she’s like. I’ve been looking for an excuse since the night of the barbecue.”

And that was true as well, he thought. She had haunted him. The phone call might have been an impulse, a way of escaping from his wife, a way of proving to himself that he was still attractive, but it was hard to forget Mary Raven.

After that they met every week, at least once, sometimes twice. Usually he came to Mary’s flat. He never stayed the night again. She never introduced him to her other friends. They teased her about her secret lover, but she just smiled. That first joyous elation returned, but only occasionally, and she persisted with him in the hope that it would last.

Perhaps I should be satisfied with those moments, Mary thought, sitting in the car as the light faded and the wind blew stronger than ever. But she knew she wanted more than that.

In the Tower the dining room was decorated as it always was on March 1, with vases of daffodils. They were everywhere, on the polished wood table and on the windowsills and even standing on the floor. In the old days, when Anthony Parry was still alive, they would have been forced to listen to records of Max Boyce live at the Neath Rugby Club and even to male choirs singing the Welsh national anthem. Now the daffodils were enough to remind them of St. David’s Day.

No-one except Carolyn noticed that Alice had been crying. If they saw that her eyes were red, it would never have occurred to them that she might be upset. She was not the sort to howl alone in her bedroom. She was made, they all thought, of sterner stuff. She stood at the head of the table ladling soup into bowls, an indomitable English lady, secretary of the WI, organiser of the village horticultural society, and now founding member of the Save Brinkbonnie campaign. She was wearing clothes she must have had for years: flared purple trousers that she had bought, in fact, when she had taken the boys for a trip to London in 1969 and a silk tunic her husband had brought home from a trip to Hong Kong.

It was Peter’s first grown-up dinner at Brinkbonnie and for the first ten minutes he was so excited to be there, at the table between Aunt Alice and his mother, that nothing else mattered. The disappointment came slowly. He had expected a special attention from Alice, a conspiratorial joy in his achievement at persuading his parents to allow him to stay up. He had thought she would listen to his jokes. But throughout the meal she was distant and preoccupied and he wondered if he had offended her in some way. He became nervous and knocked over his mother’s wine with his elbow.

“Peter,” his mother said. “ If you can’t sit still, you’ll have to go to bed like the twins.”

Then he looked to Alice for her customary support, but she seemed hardly to have noticed the incident, and there was none of the laughter, the assurance that it was only an accident and really did not matter, which he might have expected.

At the end of the meal he sat sullen and silent. He had looked forward to this weekend for months and now it was all spoiled.

Immediately after the meal he was sent to bed. He had a room near the top of the Tower that he shared with the twins. His brothers were asleep in their cots snuffling and snoring. The strong winds had blown the storm over and the rain had stopped, but the wind was still fierce and it was cold. The noise was deafening. The gale blew around the old stonework and through the trees behind the house. Night had come suddenly and it was dark. Peter thought it was very exciting. His mother pulled his sleeping bag around him and sat on the bed to kiss him. This attention was unusual. At home she was always in a hurry to clear up before going to a meeting or running a class and there was only time for a quick story. Now she sat close to him and waited in the dark and noisy room.

“Mum,” he whispered, hoping to keep her there. “ What’s wrong with Aunt Alice?”

“Wrong?” she said. “ Nothing’s wrong. What do you mean?”

“She didn’t talk to me,” he said. “And she didn’t say anything about the treasure hunt. She always does a treasure hunt on the first night.”

Judy laughed. “ She has more important things to think about than you children,” she said. She began to stroke his forehead. “Besides, there might be a treasure hunt tomorrow.”

“No,” he said, quite certain. “ It’s always on the first night.”

“Oh, well,” she said easily. “ I expect there’ll be other treats.” She stood up. “ Will you be all right?” she asked. “With all this wind?”

“Yes,” he said. “I like it. I’m never scared at Brinkbonnie.”

When Judy returned to the dining room, they were all still sitting at the dining table. Alice had switched on the lights and drawn the curtains. They were drinking coffee, their elbows on the table, and as she entered the room she expected to hear the familiar family gossip, the old stories about Anthony, about other St. David’s days, about James’s and Max’s childhoods.

But they were silent. She thought of Peter’s whispered question, “What’s wrong with Aunt Alice?,” and realised that Alice had always started the after-dinner conversations, bringing the others in until the whole family were included. Without Alice they had nothing to say to each other.

As Judy took her place at the table, Alice broke the silence.

“Carolyn,” she said. “I realise it’s not bedtime yet, pet, but would you mind going up to your room? I’m sure your mother will come up to see you later.”

Carolyn got up and drifted out without a word, but the adults were surprised. Weekends at Brinkbonnie were informal, chaotic affairs with the children wandering around in their nightclothes until midnight and the parents complaining that it was impossible then to return them to a normal routine.

“I want to talk to you,” Alice said, “about this development in the village. I feel strongly about it. I’m going to fight it.”

They looked at each other, amused. Why was she taking herself so seriously? She was famous for her involvement with environmental issues, something of a joke even to Judy, who supported her. Alice the Green, James called her, secretly, to Stella.

“It’s too late now,” James said. “You’ve sold the land.”

“It was in good faith,” Alice said, “for small, cheap houses in the village. People like Fred Elliot’s son who want to stay in the area. Not executive detached residences with double garages and two bathrooms.” She looked at James sharply. “ I expect your help,” she told him.

“There was no proper contract,” James said. “There’s nothing I can do.”

“You could run a story about it in the Express.”

“Everyone knows you’re my aunt. How seriously would that be taken?”

“You wouldn’t have to comment,” Alice raged. “Let me put my point of view and let the builder give his. The reader can make up his own mind who’s right.”

“You’re too late,” James said, so irritated that he lost his usual politeness. “The planning procedure’s over. The decision has been taken.”

“The council could appeal,” Alice insisted stubbornly. “ If they felt public opinion was against the development, they’d appeal against the planning inspector’s decision.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s no good. We carried the story when the plans first went before the council. I’m not going to do it again.”

“Then why did you send a reporter to the action meeting this afternoon?” Alice demanded. “What was Mary Raven doing here?”

The name seemed to shock James, and for the first time he seemed uneasy.

“She came to the house after the meeting,” Alice continued. “ I found her a very pleasant woman, very committed. We had a long conversation. She was most sympathetic.”

James shrugged. “She’s young,” he said. “No sense of proportion, no objectivity. She belongs to all those conservation groups. I’ve told her before that the Express isn’t just a vehicle for her own propaganda.”

“You don’t understand!” For the first time they realised how upset Alice was. They were afraid she would cry. “ You don’t understand how important this is to me!”

There was a silence.

“Alice,” Judy said at last. “What is this all about?”

The older woman got up suddenly and left the room. When she returned, she was carrying something that a child might have made at school, a collage of newspaper and magazine cuttings on a pink card. She set it on the table and they read the words, made up of letters from different sizes of prints and different sorts of typefaces.

“If you kill this village,” it read, “we’ll kill you.”

“You’re not taking this seriously,” James cried. “ Really. It’s just some crank.”

“I don’t take the threat seriously,” Alice said. “Of course I don’t. But I take the sense of outrage seriously. This afternoon at the protest meeting I was accused of hypocrisy, of caring more about money than about the people who live in Brinkbonnie. But it’s not true. This development is part of the greed and materialism that will ruin our countryside if we let it…” She paused dramatically, and Judy was reminded that Alice had made exactly the same speech at the county meeting of the WI with the tune of “Jerusalem” playing behind her. Judy pictured her aunt on the stage, articulate and ferocious, and remembered the cheers and applause that had followed her words.

But today there was no applause and Alice continued more quietly. “I love it here,” she said. “When Anthony and I moved into the Tower, we were strangers, but people made us feel that we belonged. When he was ill, the house was always full of flowers-gifts from our friends. And when he died, there was always someone to talk to. The Tower and my friends in Brinkbonnie mean more to me, perhaps even more than my family. Now I feel I’ve betrayed them and I’m not going to let it happen.” She looked directly at James. “ The Tower will be yours one day,” she told him. “Perhaps you should think that you have some responsibility for Brinkbonnie, too. Otherwise I might have to consider leaving the house to someone who’s prepared to take the responsibility more seriously.”

There was silence. The threat seemed so out of character that they could hardly believe they were understanding her properly. They stared at James.

“That’s blackmail,” he said at last. He spoke very quietly. “ I don’t give in to blackmail.”

“Think about it,” she said. “I told you that I was going to fight this development. I’m prepared to use everything I can to stop it.”

She got up suddenly, went to a sideboard, and poured herself a drink. She brought the bottle of Scotch and some glasses back to the table. When she spoke again, they were reminded of the old Alice, of cheerful, eccentric good humour.

“I expect you all think I’m very silly,” she said. “And I really don’t want to offend anyone. But it’s so important to me. You do understand, don’t you, how important it is?” She looked around the table, inviting their sympathy, some response of support, but they were all too shocked to answer. “Have a drink!” she said. “It’s St. David’s night. Anthony always got drunk on St. David’s night. Don’t you remember that time when it snowed and he insisted we all go sledging by moonlight?”

Then they joined in the conversation, glad to hide their awkwardness with the familiar words, but the stories soon trailed away and they were left again with silence. Stella stood up first. Throughout the discussion she had been blankly unresponsive, as if she had not even been listening to what was going on.

“I’ll just go and check on Carolyn,” she said. “Make sure she’s asleep.”

She spoke with a jerky abruptness, which did nothing to relieve the tension, and they were glad when Alice stood up, too.

“Come on, Max,” she said. “ I want a word with you. Come into the kitchen and help me with these dishes.”

When the others offered halfheartedly to help, she turned them away. “ No, no,” she said. “ I’m not going to do it all. Just tidy it up for Olive to see to in the morning. Besides, I want a private word with Max.”

Carolyn had fallen asleep almost immediately, but Stella stayed in her bedroom, staring at the child without attempting to touch her. There was nothing to do. Carolyn scarcely moved in her sleep and the sheets and blankets were still firmly tucked around her. All of her clothes were neatly folded on the chair. But Stella did not feel ready yet to return downstairs. The confrontation between James and his aunt had disturbed her. She did not know what to make of it. More important, she was not sure yet how it would affect her. She had always seen the Tower as part of her future. As the old panic and insecurity returned, she felt that they all ought to be more considerate towards her. Didn’t they know that stress was bad for her and that the sort of hostility they had both expressed was likely to make her ill again? She decided to wait in the bedroom until James realised she was missing. That way she would avoid the unpleasantness of any further argument and it might frighten him into realising that he should treat her more carefully. She needed the reassurance that he still worried about her.

She knelt on the floor by the long window and looked out into the garden. She could hear the movement of the big yew trees in the churchyard beyond the wall. Occasionally the wind blew the clouds away from the moon and the garden was lit. Otherwise all she could see were a street light beyond the churchyard, where there was a gate onto the village green, and occasional headlights as cars moved slowly down the Otterbridge Road towards the sea.

It took her a while to realise that there was a woman in the churchyard, walking backwards and forwards along the path from the green to the small wrought-iron gate in the wall that marked the boundary with the Tower garden. Stella saw the woman first in a brief flash of moonlight, a small figure, half hidden by the gravestones, with long hair that streamed behind her in the wind. She saw her again when the woman paused under the street light, but she was then too far away for her to see the details of her face or her clothes, though something about the way she stood and walked seemed familiar. The church clock struck ten and the woman looked up at it, as if she could hardly believe the time. Then she moved away from the light to begin pacing once again up and down the path between the Tower and the green. Stella could not see her clearly after that but was aware of a movement in the moonlight, a shadow blown, it seemed, by the breeze between the white marble stones.

When James came to find her, Stella did not mention the figure. Perhaps she thought he would think it one of her old hallucinations and would return to the subject of hospital and the need for proper treatment. Perhaps Stella hoped to save the fact of the woman until she really needed it, until she was in a situation when she needed them all to take notice of her, like money saved for a rainy day.

“What are you still doing here?” he asked gently when he came into the room. “The others are wondering where you are.”

She got up quickly and moved away from the window.

“It was all that fighting,” she said. “ It upset me. You know I shouldn’t be upset.”

“Yes,” he said. “ I know.” He put his arm around her and led her out of the room and held her tight as they walked down the stairs. But as they approached the living room, it was clear that Alice was involved in an argument again.

“I must talk to him,” she was saying. “I won’t sleep until I’ve talked to him.” She was wearing a parka with a furlined hood, one of the sort that boys of eight or nine wear, and was pulling a pair of Wellingtons over the purple flares.

“But it’s late,” Judy said. “ Why don’t you wait until morning? Or phone him, if you want to talk to him now.”

“It’s all so simple,” Alice said. “It came to me when I was talking to Max. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before. It’s obvious I’ll have to buy back the land.”

“What are you doing, Aunt Alice?” James asked. He stood just inside the room, his arm still around Stella’s shoulders, blocking the door.

“She’s going to see Henshaw,” Judy said helplessly, “ to persuade him to sell her the land.”

“That’s ridiculous,” James said. “ He’s spent thousands drawing up the plans. He’ll not sell it back to you now.”

Alice sat on the carpet, so she could pull more effectively on the Wellingtons. She looked up at James.

“That depends,” she said, “what I offer to pay for it.”

“At least let me come with you,” James said. “I don’t like the idea of your being out there on your own.”

“I don’t need a bodyguard,” she said. “ Not yet.” She stood up and waited for James to move away from the door. “Don’t stay up for me. This may take some time.”

She went out into the garden, slamming the front door behind her.

Judy made more coffee and they sat in the small, square sitting room until the fire died to embers. There was some talk of going out to meet Alice to make sure that she got safely home, but they decided she was a grown woman who knew her own mind and they drifted eventually to bed.

Peter woke soon after it got light, while his parents and the twins were still asleep. He dressed quickly and quietly, then ran downstairs to the kitchen, where he expected to find his great-aunt. Aunt Alice seemed to need no sleep at all, his parents always said. She was always last to bed after a party and first up the next morning. She had the constitution of an ox. Usually, early in the morning, Peter would find her in the kitchen, sitting on the wooden rocking chair next to the Rayburn, wearing the old lab coat she used as a dressing gown, a cat on each knee. But today the kitchen was empty and the cats came up to him, rubbing against his legs, hoping for food. Peter felt the disappointment of the night before. Aunt Alice had let him down again. He liked the morning ritual at Brinkbonnie. His aunt would make tea in a brown earthenware pot and set out the cups on a tray-for her, a wide, shallow one, the size of a soup bowl, and for him, a small yellow one with poppies on the rim. Then they would drink the tea, eat digestive biscuits, and plan the day’s events.

There was a tap on the kitchen door and he thought for a moment that it would be Aunt Alice. But what would she be doing outside? There was another knock, this time louder and more impatient. Peter went to open the door and was surprised when it was unlocked. Usually when his aunt let him out into the garden in the morning, she took a big brass key from a hook by the door to open it. Olive Kerr stood outside, stamping her feet with cold and anger at being kept waiting. She was a large-boned, aggressive woman. She ignored Peter and swept past him. Soon after there was the sound of the Hoover in the dining room.

The boy stood uncertainly in the kitchen, trapped by Mrs. Kerr’s activity. He was frightened of her. She had a haughty, imperious manner, and reminded him of his headmistress. She returned to the kitchen to fetch polish and dusters and he slipped hurriedly outside into the garden.

It was a cold, raw day and he wished he had waited to put on a coat. The wind blew a smell of salt and seaweed. In the kitchen he heard his father shouting that it was cold because some fool had left the door open, but Peter took no notice. He was even less eager to see his father than to see Mrs. Kerr. He wished he knew where his aunt was.

He zigzagged, the wind blowing him towards the churchyard wall. In the corner there was a swing, which his great-uncle had tied to one of the heftier trees when Carolyn was still a toddler. The ropes creaked as he sat on the wooden seat and moved himself forward. With every swing he kicked a pile of leaves swept up in the autumn so that the wind picked them up and scattered them away in a brown whirlwind across the garden.

At that moment his father came to the kitchen door and shouted to him. “Peter!” He sounded resigned rather than angry. “What are you doing out there? What will your mother say? You must be freezing. Have you seen Aunt Alice?”

Peter did not answer immediately. He had seen, under the pile of leaves, a black Wellington and a piece of purple fabric. He jumped from the swing and ran towards his father, chasing and stumbling towards the house, crying.

Max took over then. He sent Peter indoors and went to look under the leaves himself. It was only later that Peter was told by his mother that Alice was dead.