Murder in My Backyard

Chapter Five

Ramsay had banned them all from the kitchen until it had been checked forensically. If Mrs. Parry had been stabbed, he said, the murderer might have gone into the kitchen to clean himself up. And the knife. They were to look for bloodstains on the floor and by the sink. Banished from the kitchen, Hunter took shelter in an open shed, which was attached to the house. Logs were stacked against one wall and there was a heavy saw hanging on a nail. Ramsay found him there, drinking tea from a flask with the civilian scene of crime officer. When the S.O. C.O. saw Ramsay, he melted into the garden and Hunter was left to explain.

“It’s bloody cold outside, sir,” he said. “You can’t blame him. The village P. C. is keeping an eye on the site.”

Ramsay said nothing and Hunter continued: “ He’s got a police house in the village. You’ll be welcome to use it as a base, he says.”

“Thank him,” Ramsay said. “ I’ll see him later.”

“Do you want some tea?”

Ramsay shook his head. “ I’ve finished with the Laidlaws now,” he said. “You can take their statements. Where’s Olive Kerr?”

“Upstairs in the bathroom, washing her face. She was a bit upset.”

Outside, the scene of crime officer was bending diligently over the body. Hunter had been right. It was very cold.

“Can you give me any information about the murder weapon yet?” Ramsay asked.

The man looked up, eager to be helpful.

“We’re looking for a smooth, wide-bladed knife, I think,” he said. “The sort you’d find in any kitchen for cutting meat. Something sturdy but not at all unusual.”

“Anything else of use?”

The man shook his head. “Nothing yet.”

Ramsay went back into the house and found Olive Kerr standing uncertainly in the hall. Her eyes were red from crying.

“Come on,” he said. “ I’ll walk you home.”

“I can’t believe it,” she cried. “I was here yesterday afternoon helping her get ready for the family. Now I’ll never see her again.”

Gently he helped her off with her apron and on with her coat. They went out through the front door and onto the drive. It was so cold that the bitter wind took his breath away, but Olive hardly seemed to notice it. There were more policemen in the garden now, searching along the line of the wall.

“What are they doing?” she asked.

“Searching for the murder weapon,” he said. “Later I’ll have to ask you to look in the kitchen and see if anything’s missing. We’re looking for a meat knife.”

“I wouldn’t know,” she said. “ Mrs. Parry was careless with her things. There’s a pile of cutlery in the kitchen and more in the scullery.”

They came to the wrought-iron gate to the churchyard. “Do you always come to work this way?” he asked, having to shout against the wind.

“Usually,” she said. “It’s quicker than going all the way up the Otterbridge Road and down the drive.”

“Did you come this way today?”

“No,” she said. “It was so wild Tom gave me a lift to the end of the drive.”

So, Ramsay thought, you didn’t shut the gate behind you this morning. Either the murderer was very careful or he left by the drive. Or, he thought, it was one of the family.

When they got to the green, they turned to face the weather. She walked very quickly, stiff, upright, and proud. The waves beyond the cottages were huge and relentless, and Ramsay could taste the spray where he stood.

“I’ll be all right now,” she said. “ You can leave me here.”

“I’ve some questions to ask,” he said. “ I’ll have to come with you.”

She nodded briefly and walked on.

In the house behind the garage there was the smell of meat cooking. Tom Kerr must have been looking out for her because he had the door open before they reached it. He was a tall man, bearded, rather serious. His hair was balding and he made Ramsay think of a monk.

“I heard in church,” he said. “I was just thinking I should come and fetch you.”

He put his arm around her and Ramsay felt excluded, a little jealous. They were obviously very close.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “ I’ll have to come in. There are questions to ask. But I thought you’d be more comfortable here than in the Tower.”

“Yes,” she said. “Of course. Tom, this is Inspector Ramsay. He’s in charge of the investigation.”

Tom Kerr nodded and stood aside. “Maggie’s at work,” he said. “I told her she should stay here today, that you’d need us all around you, but you know what she’s like at the minute. There’s no talking to her.”

“For goodness’ sake, man, she’s better at work. What good would she do here? Leave her alone. None of this is her fault.”

The sharpness of her words shocked Ramsay and it occurred to him that there was a tension between them that had nothing to do with Alice Parry. He supposed that it was none of his business. Unless it had a bearing on the investigation.

Tom Kerr accepted the rebuke apologetically. “There’s a fire in the lounge,” he said. “Why don’t you go in there? The boys have been playing upstairs since they came back from Sunday school. They’ll not disturb you. I’ll make you some coffee and bring it in.”

Olive nodded and led Ramsay into a small room with large, heavy furniture. She picked up a coal scuttle and rattled the fuel loose and thrust it onto the fire. The flames were damped briefly by the coal dust then burned again.

“Tell me about Mrs. Parry,” Ramsay said. He settled comfortably into one of the armchairs. He wanted to show her that he was in no hurry, that he could listen to her all morning if she would talk to him. “How did she seem yesterday? You probably knew her as well as anyone.”

She nodded, acknowledging the statement as a compliment before replying. “ She was canny,” Olive said. “ Just like she always was. I never knew Alice Parry anything but thoughtful and kind. The meeting had upset her and she was angry about Henshaw and his houses, of course, but she was always in a state about something, and that had been rumbling on for days.”

She paused. “I blame myself for that,” she said. “ I started it all off. My daughter’s divorced and she and the bairns live with us. I was always complaining that there was nowhere in Brinkbonnie she could afford to buy and the council houses all sold off. I didn’t know it then, but Mrs. Parry went off to talk to Henshaw about that land. I told them in the village she was only acting for the best, but they didn’t belive me.”

“Who didn’t believe you?” Ramsay asked.

She looked at him stubbornly and shook her head. “I don’t tell tales,” she said.

“Alice Parry was murdered,” Ramsay said. “Whoever killed her is dangerous and must be found before it happens again. Last night she had an anonymous letter from someone in the village threatening her because of her part in the new development. I have to know who felt strongly enough to send her that letter, even if it’s only to eliminate them from our enquiries.”

Olive Kerr sat up in her chair.

“You should talk to Fred Elliot,” she said. “He’s the postmaster and he’s leading the campaign against Henshaw. He’s a parish councillor. He’d not have sent any letter to Mrs. Parry. But his son, Charlie, is a difficult man. Likes an argument. You know the type. My man took him on as a mechanic when he came back from the army. I wasn’t happy about it. I thought there’d be trouble. But Tom is a good man. He though it was his duty…” Ramsay thought she was going to tell him something else, something personal, but she straightened her back and continued: “Charlie might have sent the letter just to stir up trouble.”

“Does he live with his father?”

Olive laughed, a sharp, bitter laugh. “Charlie can’t afford a house of his own either. Mrs. Parry’s scheme would have helped him, too.”

There was a knock on the door and Tom Kerr came in, carrying a tray with cups of coffee that rattled on their saucers as he set it on the table.

“I’ll leave you to it,” he said, and then directly to Olive: “ I’ll be in the kitchen if you need me.”

Ramsay stood up and handed one of the cups to Olive.

“Tell me about the family,” he said. “ How did Mrs. Parry get on with them?”

Olive sniffed and spooned sugar into the thick brown liquid.

“Well enough,” she said. “ I suppose. She loved the bairns. Spoiled them silly. Not my way of bringing up children, but you couldn’t blame her. She never had any of her own, though she practically looked after Carolyn singlehanded until she was one. Stella was poorly-postnatal depression, they said, though she’s always had trouble with her nerves. She was in hospital a lot and her family weren’t much use. So James used to bring the baby there before he went to work and pick her up in the evening.”

“What about the adults?” Ramsay asked. “ Were they close to her?”

“Close enough when they wanted something,” she said. “A nice weekend in the country, someone to mind the bairns when they wanted to be out. They never bothered to see if Mrs. Parry needed them. She liked their company and she wasn’t getting any younger. It wouldn’t have hurt them to call in and spend more time with her. They say they’re busy. We’re all busy. She never complained. Said she had her own life to live, and that was true enough. But she would have liked to see more of them, all the same…”

She paused, but Ramsay said nothing. He was thinking it would be dangerous to take what Mrs. Kerr was saying too seriously. She was reinforcing his own prejudices about the Laidlaws and he needed to keep an open mind. Still, he hoped she would continue. At the beginning of an investigation he had endless patience.

“I suppose she was closer to Judy than to the others,” Olive went on. “They had the same sort of interests and sometimes they went to meetings together, but I don’t think Mrs. Parry liked her anymore. I don’t know that she liked any of them, really.”

“Are either of the nephews short of money?” Ramsay asked, then wondered if he had been tactless and too abrupt. But Olive Kerr’s loyalty to Alice Parry did not extend to her nephews. She shook her head, disappointed almost that she had no positive information to give.

“No,” she said. “James always seems well off. They’ve just bought a big new house in Otterbridge. Stella’s got expensive tastes, but I expect her family sees her all right. She’s a Rutherford, you know. From Rothbury.” Ramsay nodded. Everyone in Northumberland had heard of the Rutherfords. Between them they owned half of the county. “Max and Judy were always moaning about money but only in the way those sort of people do. Doctors aren’t badly paid. They bought that house in Otterbridge when Max first qualified, so there can’t be much of a mortgage.”

It occurred to Ramsay that Olive had said the same thing before, that she and Mrs. Parry had often discussed the nephews’ financial and domestic arrangements. He imagined the women sharing coffee and moral superiority: “These young people don’t know what hard work means… Opportunity handed to them on a plate… It wasn’t the same when we were young. You had to make your own way then.”

There was another pause. “ I didn’t have to work there,” she cried suddenly. “ It wasn’t the money. She was a lovely woman.”

She started to cry and rubbed her eyes with a handkerchief clenched in a hard, red fist.

“Tell me about yesterday afternoon,” Ramsay said. “What time did you arrive at the Tower?”

“At about five o’clock,” Olive Kerr said. “I said I’d give Mrs. Parry a hand with the dinner. She was a good cook but messy. She needed someone to clear up after her.”

“Was she on her own then?”

“Yes. Max and Judy arrived about half an hour later.”

“Did she mention a reporter who had come to do an interview about the meeting?”

“Mary Raven, you mean. I saw her. She was walking back towards the village. I don’t think Mrs. Parry would have said anything about her if I hadn’t asked who she was. She was quite cagey about her and what they’d been talking about. It wasn’t like her. She never usually minded publicity.”

“Did anyone else come to the house that evening? Apart from the Laidlaws.”

“I didn’t see anyone, but then I wouldn’t have done. I hardly moved from the sink. Mrs. Parry had used every pan in the kitchen and I wanted to leave the place straight before I went home.”

She looked at her watch. “ That beef’ll be burnt to a cinder,” she said. “You’ll have to let me go or we’ll have no lunch today.”

“Yes,” he said. “ I’ve nearly finished.” She stood up in an attempt to persuade him to go, but he remained where he was for a moment.

“Mrs. Kerr,” he said, “ why didn’t you have dinner with the family last night? Wasn’t it usual for you to join them?”

“Yes,” she said. “ I usually had dinner with them on St. David’s Day. Mrs. Parry always invited me. But I had my own problems and I wouldn’t have been very good company.”

Then Ramsay did stand up and say that he would not take up any more of her time. As he left the house he saw Tom Kerr at the end of the corridor, peering out of the shadows to be sure that he had gone.

Ramsay walked back to the Tower slowly, his hands in his pockets, taking in every detail of his surroundings. He might have been a tourist. At first there was no-one else about. Even the Castle Hotel seemed almost empty. Inside, he supposed, Olive Kerr’s daughter would be serving the customers who had no Sunday dinner to hurry home to. By the main gate into the churchyard was the bus shelter where Stella had seen the teenagers on the night of Alice Parry’s death, and Ramsay stood there for a moment to shelter from the wind. As he waited, unnoticed, two boys dressed in black leather walked past. They seemed young, all the teenage bravado driven out of them by the cold, and they were whispering together, more like gossiping girls than boys. As they walked past he heard one of them say with the extravagance of the young: “ If my dad finds out he’ll kill him.”

Then they were gone. Ramsay wondered if he should chase after them to find out if they had been in the bus shelter on the previous night, but he turned back towards the Tower. There was more to be done there and the boys would be easy enough to trace in a place the size of Brinkbonnie. He walked into the churchyard and followed the path Alice Parry would have used on the day of her death coming back from the village hall. Ramsay wished he had known her. He thought he would have liked her.

Olive Kerr lifted the heavy meat tray out of the oven and clucked over it before setting it on top of the cooker to keep warm. Tom had followed her back into the kitchen and stood, waiting for her to speak, prepared to offer any comfort or reassurance she needed. But when she turned to face him, she said nothing about Alice Parry.

“You shouldn’t blame Maggie about that business with Charlie Elliot,” she said. “ I’ve been thinking we haven’t been fair to her. It’s not her fault.”

“She could have stayed with her husband,” Tom said. “ That would have provided a stable home for her boys and saved us all a lot of trouble.”

“But she was unhappy!” Oliver Kerr said. “You could see how unhappy she was. And all those arguments weren’t doing the boys any good.”

“I know,” he said. “I know I’m hard on her.” He paused. “But don’t you realise that her separation started it all? Charlie Elliot told me that he would never have left the army if he hadn’t known she would be free. That’s the only reason he came home.”

“All the same,” she said. “You can’t blame her. She gave him no encouragement.”

“I can’t stand him hanging around the house,” he said suddenly. “I see enough of him at work. Whenever I go out, he’s there, waiting for her. If she wants nothing to do with him, she should tell him.”

“She has told him,” Olive Kerr shouted back. “ She was engaged to Charlie Elliot when they were both eighteen. She broke it off after three months and she hasn’t been interested in him since. She’s told him so a dozen times. It’s not her fault that the man’s as daft as a ship’s cat and won’t listen to her.”

“Then why doesn’t he leave her alone?”

“I don’t know,” Olive said. “ He’s stubborn, lonely. Perhaps he’s hoping that she’ll change her mind. But pestering her will do no good. She’s as stubborn as he is.”

“It’s not a joke anymore,” Tom Kerr said. “A couple of nights ago I couldn’t sleep. It was two o’clock in the morning. And he was still out there in the street staring up at her window.”

“Why don’t you talk to Fred?” she asked. “ Perhaps he’d speak to him.”

“No,” Tom Kerr said. “He takes no more notice of his father than he does of me.”

There was a silence. She took a heavy meat knife from a drawer and began to carve the beef.

“You know,” she said, “you could do something about it if you want to.”

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“If he had no work in Brinkbonnie, he’d have to leave. There’d be nothing to keep him here then.”

“I’ve no grounds for sacking him,” he said, shocked. “ He’s a good enough worker. What excuse could I use for sacking him? And you know why I took him on.”

“You don’t need an excuse,” she cried. “You’re the boss. Why should you feel guilty?”

But he shook his head. “No,” he said. “ I couldn’t do that. It wouldn’t be right.”

“He’s making your daughter’s life a misery,” she said. “ Is that right?”

He did not reply.

She clattered plates from the top of the oven onto the table and began to serve the meal.

“I’ll tell you something,” she said. “If you don’t sort out Charlie Elliot, Maggie will. And I’m frightened about what might happen. Alice Parry’s death has made terrible things seem possible.”

“You’re upset,” he said. He was relieved that she had returned to the subject of Alice Parry. He found that easier to deal with. “Of course you’re upset.”

She lost her grip on the knife she was holding and it slipped onto the table and then onto the floor, scratching a tile.

“Go and tell the boys to wash their hands,” she said. “Their dinner’s ready.”

He picked up the knife and went slowly out of the room.