Murder in My Backyard

Chapter Four

As Ramsay drove into the village he saw a poster advertising the meeting to protest against the proposed housing development on the Tower field. How would I feel, he wondered, if the developer at Heppleburn decided to put up a new housing estate behind my cottage? He answered the question immediately. Murderous, he thought. I’d feel murderous.

When he drove between the high walls towards the Tower, the drive was crowded with familiar cars, and in a huddle in the corner of the garden, hands deep in Barbour jacket pockets so that they might have been landowners preparing for a day’s shooting, were his superiors, who waited uneasily for him to take over the investigation. It was always the same. Formality dictated that they had to be there, but they would take little active part in the investigation and they preferred not to interfere. Then they could claim not to be responsible for any mistake. When Ramsay got out of the car and approached them, he felt they were more anxious than usual. The body was still there, wet, half covered with leaves. He bent and looked carefully for a moment. The woman was lying facedown on the grass. The wound was in her back and her clothes were soaked with blood.

“She was stabbed,” he said, almost to himself. “And only once. The murderer was either very confident or he knew what he was doing.” He stood up and turned away to face the group who watched him.

“Who is it?” he asked.

The superintendent, young, able, lazy, who had recently returned from an exchange visit to Colorado, answered indirectly.

“Steve,” he said. “We might have a difficult one here.”

“Why? Who is it?”

“Her name’s Alice Parry. Does that mean anything to you?”

Ramsay shook his head.

“She’s a magistrate and a well-known lady. Her nephew’s James Laidlaw, editor of the Otterbridge Express.”

“Yes,” Ramsay said. “I know James Laidlaw. Does that matter?”

“Steve! Does it matter? Remember Heppleburn. We need the press on our side.”

“Yes,” he said. “Of course.”

This is all I need, he thought. The press will be here, watching every move we make.

“Has the murder weapon been found?” he asked.

“No, and we’ve no information yet on what we’re looking for.”

Then the superintendent went away, telling Ramsay to be careful, that he would deal with all press enquiries, and Ramsay was left alone with the smell of ivy and wet leaves.

By then it was eleven o’clock and the congregation for parish communion were coming out of the church. The vicar, his cassock billowing about him in the breeze, stood at the door to greet his parishioners. There had been a christening and the mother stood proudly, holding the baby in its long robe while admiring friends took photographs. Then there was the giving of the amice-the coal, bread, salt, and money wrapped up in a napkin that in Northumberland churches is given to the first child the baby meets-and more photographs. Ramsay wished they would all go, but some of the congregation must have heard about the murder because they came up to the wrought-iron gate and stared at the policeman searching the garden.

He found his sergeant, Gordon Hunter, in the kitchen talking to Olive Kerr.

“Sorry to call you out,” Hunter said cheerfully. “How are you settling in?”

Ramsay said nothing. He disapproved of Hunter’s easy familiarity. Perhaps it had been a mistake after all to invite him into his home. A murder enquiry needed tact and gravity. Yet he noticed that even the straight-backed, straitlaced woman was responding to the sergeant’s attention. Hunter would be making her feel special, playing the part of the attractive, rather wayward son who needed looking after. Soon she would be making him tea and telling him to wrap up warm before he went out because the wind was cold. Hunter whispered something to Olive, which made her smile, then stood up.

“We need screens,” Ramsay said. “ There are already people in the churchyard staring. They can’t see the body from there, but it’ll not be long before we have the press in the garden.”

“The press is here already,” Hunter said. “ In the house. One of Mrs. Parry’s nephews is the editor of the Otterbridge Express.”

“I know,” Ramsay said. He was already feeling depressed. “Tell me who else is here.”

“Laidlaw’s wife, Stella, and their daughter, Carolyn, and his brother and his family. They’re all in here.”

Hunter led him through the hall to the warm square room where the family had waited the night before for Alice’s return. As soon as he saw them all, Ramsay knew that these were Diana’s sort of people and the thought triggered a profound unease and an excitement. They could easily have been friends of Diana’s, invited to her dinner parties, sharing evenings at the theatre, meals in dimly lit foreign restaurants. He recognised the style. Although the women wore jeans and hand-knitted sweaters, their wardrobes were probably full of clothes that Diana might have chosen to wear. It had always surprised him that Diana would admit quite happily to having found a bargain in a charity shop or at a jumble sale-“ a real silk shirt and only five pounds”-but refuse to go near the cut-price chain stores in the high street where his mother always shopped. It always seemed to him a strange sort of snobbishness, though Diana always said he had no taste and could not possibly understand. Throughout the interview with the Laidlaws he felt that, with Diana’s arrogance, they were saying the same thing. You’re different from us, they implied. You’re from a different background. How can you possibly understand?

Yet he felt from the beginning that because they were Diana’s sort of people, he did understand them. It was his secret weapon, that understanding. They would always underestimate him.

He stood just inside the door and looked around the room. James Laidlaw sat on a worn leather Chesterfield reading an old copy of the Times. He recognised Ramsay and stood up.

“Inspector,” he said smoothly, “ I’m glad it’s you. It’s always easier to work with a person one knows.”

Ramsay nodded but said nothing. There seemed to have been no collective support or sympathy, no communication between them even. Max Laidlaw was sprawled on the floor. He was tall like his brother but younger, good-looking in a dark Celtic way. He seemed too inexperienced, Ramsay thought, to be a doctor. It was hard to imagine him taking responsibility. He was too careless of other people, too self-absorbed. He took no notice of Ramsay.

It was the women who held Ramsay’s attention. Their sophistication stirred memories that disturbed him. A fair, fine-boned woman sat on a small chair close to the fire smoking a cigarette. Her wrists were so thin and long that it seemed as if they would snap as she moved the cigarette to her mouth. She wore a white mohair sweater with a huge collar, and in contrast her eyes were very dark. She was so pale that he wondered if she were ill or had taken some medication. He had seen addicts with the same drawn pallor. But perhaps she was only scared, he thought, moved by her beauty. James Laidlaw saw Ramsay looking at the woman and introduced him.

“This is Stella,” he said. “My wife.” With the few words he gave the impression of great pride.

She turned towards Ramsay. Her neck was very long and the hair was tied back so tightly that her head seemed small. She smiled sadly. “ Good morning,” she said, and returned her gaze to the fire.

The other woman was quite different in colouring and stature. She had a round face like a child’s and copper-coloured hair. He thought she would easily be raised to anger. When James introduced her as Judy Laidlaw, she did not speak but glared at him. Ramsay thought she was probably the sort of woman who disliked policemen as a matter of principle.

At a coffee table away from the fire two children were making a jigsaw. They worked in silence, in a dreamlike absorption.

“I’m sorry,” Ramsay said. “You’ll be upset. But you realise I’ll have to ask some questions.”

“Of course,” James Laidlaw murmured. “Anything we can do to help.”

Judy stood up and walked quickly to the playing children. “Carolyn,” she said quietly. “Would you mind taking Peter into your bedroom to finish the puzzle? We want to talk.”

Ramsay thought for a moment that the girl would object or cause a scene. She turned towards her parents, who seemed not to notice that she was pleading to stay. Then, with an adult resignation, she picked up the jigsaw and left the room. Peter obediently followed her.

Judy stared at Ramsay with a mixture of hostility and curiosity. “That is all right?” she said. “Peter found the body. He still seems terribly confused and I don’t want to make things worse.”

“Of course,” Ramsay said. “ I’ll need to talk to him later, but it can wait.”

He stood by the fireplace and looked at them, waiting for some response, for their questions. Judy was struck by his stillness. He must be very confident, she thought, to stand there quite immobile, watching us, waiting for someone to break the silence. For the first time she considered the police not as despicable but as frightening. Suddenly the silence was too much for her.

“Max said Alice had been murdered,” she said. “ Is that true? I can’t believe it.”

“Yes,” Ramsay said. “ Mrs. Parry was murdered. She was stabbed. It probably happened quite close to where Dr. Laidlaw found her. The murderer must have covered her body with the leaves. He, or she, might have thought it would take longer for Mrs. Parry to be found. If Peter hadn’t gone to play on the swing, it would have taken several hours, I should guess.”

“She?” Judy cried. “You don’t think a woman would do anything like that?”

Ramsay looked at her seriously. “Why not?” he said. “ It wouldn’t have taken any great strength, you know. Especially if the murderer was known to Mrs. Parry.”

He realised he was trying to shock them and checked himself. It was time, for the moment, to stick to fact. He directed his questions to Max.

“When you found the body,” he said, “was the wrought-iron gate between the garden and the churchyard open or shut?”

“Shut,” Max said. “ Definitely shut. When I saw that she was dead, I noticed the vicar coming from the green towards the church. I shouted to him for help, though I don’t know exactly what I expected him to do. It was so windy that he didn’t hear me. It was like one of those nightmares, you know, when you shout and no sound comes out. In the end I ran to fetch him. The catch on the gate is very stiff and it seemed to take hours to get it open. He didn’t realise that anything was wrong and just stood on the path smiling.”

When Max stopped talking, there was another silence. Ramsay looked at them all again. They were shocked, of course, but still very self-composed. If anyone was lying, it would be hard to find out. Yet if anything the shut gate indicated that the murderer was a member of the household. Would someone who had just committed murder stop in his flight to fasten a difficult catch on the gate? Then he remembered Olive Kerr and made a mental note to ask which way she had come into the house.

“Now,” Ramsay said. “ Tell me what you’re all doing here and what happened last night.”

“We always stay with Alice on St. David’s night,” James Laidlaw said. “ It’s a family tradition. Her husband was Welsh, and she liked to entertain.”

“You arrived yesterday?”

James nodded. “Late in the afternoon.”

“Did your aunt seem concerned, worried?”

James hesitated. “ Not really. She was angry about a new development planned for the edge of the village, but that was nothing unusual. She was always fighting for some cause or another. I’m afraid she was rather a crank.”

“No,” Judy said. “ That’s not true. She was well-read, intelligent, especially concerned about environmental problems.” She turned to Ramsay. “Alice was a scientist,” she told him, “ a chemist. She met her husband at Newcastle University, where they both worked. He was a historian and quite famous. You might have seen him on television. Alice may have dressed rather strangely and been a bit eccentric, but she was no fool.”

“Perhaps you could explain about the new houses and what they had to do with Mrs. Parry,” Ramsay said.

“Alice originally owned the land where the housing development is proposed,” Judy said. “She sold it to a builder on the understanding that it would be used for cheap starter homes for the village people. Then she found out that the development would be much bigger than she’d been led to believe and that he was going to build big executive homes for people prepared to commute into Newcastle. Of course the villagers are furious and think Alice sold out-though she let the land go to the builder for well under the market value.”

“What is the name of the builder?” The interruption was gentle and she hardly paused.

“Henshaw,” Judy said. “ Colin Henshaw.”

Ramsay recognised the name immediately as the builder who owned the land behind his cottage. He said nothing, and Judy continued:

“There was an action meeting in the hall yesterday afternoon. Alice went to it, and apparently it got very nasty. Later in the day she received a threatening letter. It really upset her.”

“Were you at the meeting?” Ramsay interrupted again. “Can you tell me exactly what happened?”

“No,” Judy said. “We didn’t arrive until it was all over. But one of your reporters went, didn’t she, James? She would be able to tell the inspector what went on.”

“Yes,” James said absently, “though I’m not sure how reliable she is.”

“What is her name?” Ramsay asked.

“Raven,” James said. “ Mary Raven.”

Ramsay turned to Judy. “ You mentioned a letter,” he said. “Could you tell me about that?”

“It was delivered here some time after the meeting,” Judy said. “By hand, I suppose. But if Alice guessed who had made it, she didn’t say. It was anonymous. There was no handwriting, only words cut out from newspaper. It was horrible, violent. It said something like ‘If you kill our village, we’ll kill you.’”

“How did Mrs. Parry respond to the letter?”

“She wasn’t frightened,” Judy said. “ She was sad and upset but not frightened. She loved Brinkbonnie. She didn’t want her friends to think she’d let them down.” She looked at James and smiled a little maliciously. “She was angry, too. She thought James could do more to support her by making a fuss in the Express. She threatened to cut him out of her will if he didn’t help her.”

“Nonsense!” James said. “She said no such thing! This is preposterous.”

“Come on, James,” Max said, rolling onto an elbow. “ She may not have spelled it out, but that’s certainly what she implied.”

It seemed to Ramsay that the couples did not like each other very much. The brothers seemed to have little in common and the women had not acknowledged each other’s presence since he had been in the room. Stella raised her swanlike neck and looked at them as if the bickering was beneath her. She had contributed nothing to the conversation, yet he thought that in some subtle way she was manipulating the direction it was taking.

“Tell me more about this letter,” Ramsay said. “ Do you know what happened to it? Where is it now?”

“I don’t know,” Judy said. “ I didn’t see it in the dining room this morning. Perhaps Alice took it out with her.”

“Out?” Ramsay repeated. “Did Mrs. Parry go out after dinner last night?”

“Yes,” Judy said awkwardly. “At about ten o’clock.”

“Where on earth did she go at that time of night?”

“She went to see Henshaw,” Judy said. “She wanted to persuade him to sell her back the land.” Judy Laidlaw had become the family spokesperson. She was competent, articulate, and they seemed content to leave the responsibility to her. Yet occasionally, as she spoke, she glanced at Stella with undisguised spite, as if she were pleased to have the opportunity to put her and James in the wrong. “If James had promised her more support in the Express, she might never have felt it necessary to go.”

“But you let her go?” Ramsay asked. “On her own?”

“She was a very independent woman,” James said. “ Of course we tried to dissuade her, but she wouldn’t listen.”

“What time did she come back?”

They looked at each other, ashamed and defensive.

“She told us not to wait up,” Max said lamely.

Ramsay looked at each of them in turn.

“Did anyone see Mrs. Parry after she’d been to Henshaw’s last night?” he demanded.

No-one answered.

“Who went to bed first?” he asked. “How long did you wait for her?”

“I went first,” Judy said. “I didn’t hear Max come in. I fell asleep very quickly.”

“I was watching a late film on the television,” Max said. “ It didn’t finish until midnight. James and Stella went up before me.”

“And it didn’t occur to you to worry about Mrs. Parry?” Ramsay looked at them all in astonishment. Why did they feel so little guilt? They were, in a way, responsible for their aunt’s death. They should have taken more care of her.

Max shook his head. “I had a lot to think about,” he said. “Problems at work, you know. I expect you’ll find it hard to believe, but I’d even forgotten that she was still outside.”

“You didn’t lock any of the doors?”

Max shook his head again. “No,” he said. “Alice saw to all that.”

“And you didn’t go outside?”

There was perhaps a momentary hesitation. “ No,” Max said. “Why should I have done?”

Ramsay paused, then the focus of his questions became more general. He could sense their relief but was unsure if it was because one of them had been implicated in the murder or because, after all, they felt some shame in having let an old lady wander about alone so late at night.

“Did any strangers come to the house yesterday evening?” he asked.

“Not while we were here,” Judy said. “Olive Kerr was here until we sat down for dinner. Alice asked her to join us, but she said she wanted to go back to her own family. I suppose the letter must have been delivered by someone. And of course that reporter was here in the afternoon.”

“The reporter from the Otterbridge Express? She came to the Tower as well as to the meeting in the hall?”

“I think so.” Judy looked around at the family for confirmation. “Isn’t that what Alice said? That she had a discussion with Mary Raven after the meeting?”

But the others, it seemed, could not remember.

“You didn’t see any strangers at the house?” Ramsay persisted. “There was no-one hanging around the drive or in the churchyard?”

Stella Laidlaw smiled suddenly and spoke for the first time.

“Only those teenagers who hang around the bus stop on the green,” she said. “They were there, I think.”

“Can you see the green from the house?”

“Oh,” she said, “ you can see most of the village from our bedroom window.” She remembered the moonlit figure pacing between the gravestones and smiled again, hugging the information to herself. Ramsay saw the smile and thought how heartless the woman was. She had nothing, after all, to be pleased about. All four Laidlaws would be under suspicion and subject to intrusion and prying questions until the investigation was over. Every family had secrets and he would know most of the Laidlaws’ before the thing was finished. The thought gave him no pleasure.

“Will both Max and James benefit under Mrs. Parry’s will?” he asked, and as he had expected the question provoked righteous indignation.

Could he really think, they asked, that they would hurt Alice? They all loved her.

“You do see why I have to ask?” Ramsay said mildly. “ If you don’t wish to discuss it with me, I can talk to Mrs. Parry’s solicitor.”

“The Tower comes to me with the understanding that it’s to stay in the family,” James said. “I’ll respect her wishes, of course. She hadn’t a lot of capital, but what there is goes to Max. Neither of us stands to make a fortune from her death.”

“This is ludicrous,” Max said. “You should be talking to Henshaw. He must have been the last person to see my aunt alive. And what about the maniacs in the village who called that meeting yesterday and want to stop the building? What about the lunatic who wrote that letter?”

Ramsay ignored the outburst and stood up abruptly. He felt he had spent enough time with them. In other circumstances he would have muttered something about leaving them alone with their grief. But grief seemed beyond them.

“Thank you for your attention,” he said. “ Please stay in the Tower until one of my officers has taken statements from you. Then you’ll be free to go.”

As he left the room he could sense their resentment.

In the playroom at the top of the stairs the children had finished the jigsaw puzzle and were talking with an earnest intensity that would have surprised their parents. It was a small cluttered room with a bare wooden floor and faded print wallpaper. The toys were mostly old, strange, unlike the bright plastic ones they had at home. There was a fort with carved soldiers and a large metal spinning top. On a trestle table along one wall there was a model railway with peeling papier-mâché hills and houses made of balsa wood. It had belonged to Peter’s father and had been built by Anthony Parry, but Peter had been told that he was still too young to play with it unsupervised.

As Carolyn spoke to him he looked at the trains with longing. It seemed a terrible injustice that he could not touch them, and that thought on top of all his other misery made him cry suddenly. Carolyn watched in frustration as tears ran down his cheeks.

“It’s no good crying,” she said crossly. “ I’m only trying to help you.” She felt so much older than he and knew she would have to take all the responsibility. “ We must sort out what we’re going to tell them.”

“I won’t tell them anything!” he cried, looking up at her. “I promise.” For the first time ever he was frightened of her. He had loved his cousin ever since he could remember, but the violence of her words made him wish she would leave him alone. Yet he still wanted to please her.

“Of course you’ll have to tell them something,” she said. “They won’t ignore us just because we’re children. Not this time. You found the body. The police will want to talk to you.”

“Will they?” She seemed so clever. He knew he would trust her judgement. She had always protected him from unpleasantness. He stood up and wandered to the window. A pile of old annuals were stacked on the sill. Before he had started school Carolyn had read them all to him. Outside the policeman who had spoken to his parents appeared on the grass. Frightened, Peter turned back to the room and his cousin.

“Answer all the questions about finding Aunt Alice,” she said. “Tell them just what happened. That won’t matter. But when they ask you about last night, this is what you must say…”

She took his hand and pulled him close to her, so he could feel her fine hair on his cheek, then he listened carefully as she repeated her instructions.