The Baby-Snatcher

Chapter Ten

On his way down the hill from the Coastguard House Ramsay saw Hunter leave Kim Houghton’s house. The sergeant paused for a moment outside number eight, leaning his notepad on the window sill to scribble a few notes, then he knocked at the door. It was opened immediately by a large elderly woman brandishing a mop like an offensive weapon. She seemed nervous about letting him in, stood, blocking the doorway, feet apart, but Hunter must have talked her around because when Ramsay looked again the door was shut and Cotter’s Row was quiet.

The whole Headland was quiet. There were no dog-walkers or pram-pushers. Even the washing lines along the backyards were empty. The only activity was in an area around the jetty. There a group of overalled officers were stooped, searching, but they were too far off for Ramsay to hear voices. The cloud had lifted and there was pale sunshine, a view down the coast as far as St Mary’s Island.

He was tempted for a moment to walk on down to the jetty to ask what had been found. He would have welcomed evidence that Kath Howe had been killed there, her body tipped immediately into the cut to be carried away and brought back on the next tide. It would have been something to work on. But it seemed a dreadful discourtesy to walk down Cotter’s Row without calling on the Howes and at number two he stopped. He stood on the pavement, preparing what he might say, especially to the girl.

In the house across the road a curtain was lifted then fell back into place. He tapped gently on the door. Sally Wedderburn answered it and let him in.

Sally was a redhead with a pale, freckled skin and brown eyes. Hunter thought Ramsay was grooming her for stardom, and perhaps he was. Perhaps he wanted to prove to Prue that he could take positive action to push a woman up the ladder, that he was doing what he could to support her cause. Recently he had recognized the danger of trying to please Prue and made an effort to be more clear-sighted. Sally was a good officer but she needed to learn patience. Which she would be doing sitting in this tiny house with nothing to do but listen.

‘How’s it going?’ he asked in a whisper. They were standing very close together in the narrow hall.

‘The women are in the living room. Mr Howe’s upstairs. He said he wanted to be on his own.’

‘Distressed?’

‘Not outwardly. He was all set to go to work this morning until I persuaded him it probably wouldn’t be a good idea. More puzzled. As if he can’t get his head around the idea that his wife’s dead.’

‘And the women?’

‘Shocked I suppose. No tears. Not while I’m there at least. They don’t talk. Not to each other or to me.’ She was disappointed. She had hoped to have something for him and felt she had failed.

‘Time enough for that.’ But he was disappointed, too.

‘Do you want to come through?’

‘I’ll see Mr Howe first. Don’t announce me. I’ll go on up.’

He found Bernard Howe in a room at the front of the house. Although it was clearly the biggest bedroom most of the space was taken by a high double bed, spread with a blue candlewick quilt. There was a wardrobe but no chest of drawers and clothes were piled untidily on shelves which covered one wall. The shelves also held books and the equipment for Uncle Bernie’s magic act. There were strings of brightly coloured ribbons, chiffon scarves, wooden boxes. A cup hook had been fixed to the highest shelf and hanging from it, by its neck, was a ventriloquist’s dummy. The latex head was egg shaped, bald at the top with long wispy strands of hair at the back and the sides. It looked remarkably like Mr Howe, a mirror image of the man who sat on the bed, playing with a pack of cards, shuffling and twisting them with supple fat fingers.

‘Practising?’ Ramsay asked.

Bernard Howe looked up, startled. He had not heard the footsteps on the stairs.

‘I find it very relaxing,’ he said. ‘ The doctor wanted to give me tranquillizers, but Kath wouldn’t have approved of that.’

‘Wouldn’t she?’

‘No. She was a strong woman. She didn’t like props of any sort.’ He set down the cards and gave both hands a little flick so the cuffs of the shirt and the cardigan he was wearing settled back over his wrists.

‘Who are you?’ he asked. It was a direct, childlike question which Ramsay found unnerving.

‘Stephen Ramsay. I’m a detective inspector. In charge of the case.’

‘There is a case then? She didn’t just fall? No one’s said. Not really. I mean perhaps Miss Wedderburn explained but I didn’t take it in.’

‘We weren’t sure until this morning. But she didn’t just fall. She was stabbed.’

‘Ah.’ All his reactions seemed very slow. Ramsay thought they would have made an odd couple: Kathleen with her principles, her tense and purposeful marching, and Bernard. He groped for a word to describe Bernard and came up with simple. Not in the sense of unintelligent because it was clear he held down a reasonable job, but uncomplicated, easily satisfied.

‘How long have you been married?’ Ramsay asked. He took a seat beside Bernard on the bed.

‘Nearly seventeen years.’ He had not had to think about it. ‘We both worked in the same office. Clerical officers with the Civil Service. And then we got married.’ He still seemed mildly surprised at that as if he had woken one morning to discover he had a wife. He turned to face Ramsay. ‘She took me on,’ he said.

‘And you’re still doing the same job?’

‘More or less. It’s not the same. It was all paper then. Now it’s computers. I quite liked computers once I got into them.’ And Ramsay could see that he would. He would enjoy the clear instructions, the simple rules. He would get lost in the patterns.

‘I haven’t progressed much in the organization.’ Bernard smiled sadly. ‘ Not management material I see that. Kath would have been better at it than me – much more assertive – but she gave up work when Marilyn was born. Most people did in those days.’ He paused, considered. ‘I think she might have been happier if she’d carried on working. Not so restless.’

‘Did you suggest that?’

‘Oh no!’ He was shocked by the idea. ‘It was her decision, wasn’t it? Mother offered to look after Marilyn but Kath said that would only cause trouble and I could see she was right.’

‘Was it Mrs Howe’s decision to move to the Headland?’

‘Yes.’ Of course, Ramsay thought, it would be. ‘Before that,’ Bernard continued, ‘we lived with my mother in her house in Newcastle. There was plenty of room even when Marilyn came along and it was handy for work.’ His voice was wistful. ‘And the pictures.’

‘But your wife decided she wanted a home of her own?’

‘Perhaps she did.’ It seemed a new idea. ‘Though it wasn’t just that. Marilyn was coming up to secondary school age. Kath wanted her to go to Otterbridge High. She’d looked at all the schools in the area and thought it was best. Especially for music. She took the decision very seriously after proper research. The children from the Headland go to Otterbridge and there’s a school bus. We couldn’t have afforded to live anywhere else in the catchment area.’

So the lives of the family had been disrupted to satisfy Kathleen Howe’s ambition to send Marilyn to a good school.

‘Didn’t your mother mind being deserted?’ Ramsay asked lightly.

Bernard’s head jerked up. The dummy’s head pulled by its string. ‘There was a row,’ he said. ‘It was horrible.’ He paused. ‘She said some, very unkind things about Kathleen. Mother and I quite fell out for a while.’

‘But you patched it up?’

‘Oh yes. Mother couldn’t stay cross for long. Not with me. I go to see her every Thursday night after work. She’s very good for her age, still living in the same house.’ He smiled confidentially. ‘She cooks my supper. Always the same thing, cauliflower cheese. My favourite.’ He hesitated. ‘She wouldn’t speak to Kath, though. She wouldn’t have her in the house again.’

‘Has she ever come here?’

‘Oh no! I don’t think Mother would feel at home in Cotter’s Row. It’s not at all what she’s used to.’

‘And Marilyn? Does your mother see her?’

‘Occasionally, though Kath didn’t encourage it.’ He looked up with a sudden bright thought. ‘ I suppose we’ll be able to visit Mother together now. That’ll be nice.’ The absence of grief in the statement shocked Ramsay. It also occurred to him that someone who could come out with something like that to a detective was either very innocent or very clever.

‘Tell me about Saturday,’ Ramsay said. ‘The day Mrs Howe disappeared.’

Bernard did not reply. He was smiling to himself and Ramsay saw he was still planning the reunion between Marilyn and her grandmother.

‘Was it an ordinary Saturday?’ he persisted. ‘Had anything unusual happened?’

Bernard shook his head.

‘The four of you had breakfast together?’

‘That’s right. And then Claire went to work at the Coastguard House. Marilyn was going to school. As I said, she’s very musical. Kath’s always encouraged that. She started the violin when she was four and she’s passed all the exams. But this time it was the choir. I’m sure that’s right. An extra rehearsal before the music festival.’ He screwed up his face in concentration, became again the latex mask hanging on the wall.

‘Kath walked with her to the bus stop. She said she needed some fresh air. The school bus comes right on to the Headland to pick up the children but because it was Saturday Marilyn had to get the service bus and the stop for that’s on the other side of the crossing. They had a bit of an argument about it. Marilyn said it would look stupid, her mother seeing her on to the bus at her age. Kath insisted. She said, “ You shouldn’t care what people think”. She was always saying that. She’s right, of course, but it does matter, doesn’t it, when you’re sixteen?’ He paused for breath. Ramsay was surprised by the insight. He hadn’t given Bernard credit for sufficient imagination to put himself in the place of a sixteen-year-old. ‘Anyway,’ Bernard went on, ‘in the end they must have gone off together.’

‘And then a little later your wife came back?’

‘Yes. I think so.’

‘You don’t sound entirely certain.’

‘No.’

Ramsay felt a sudden urge to shake him.

‘Why aren’t you sure? Can’t you remember?’

Bernard Howe pleated the candlewick quilt with his fingers.

‘I was up here, preparing for the afternoon’s performance. It takes a lot of concentration.’ As seriously as an actor about to play Lear. ‘ I’m sure I heard the door open and shut and I called down, “Is that you, Kath?” Something like that. I hoped she might make some tea. She usually did in the mornings. I thought she’d bring it up.’

‘But she didn’t?’

‘No.’ He was at least certain about that. It still rankled.

‘And you didn’t see her again?’

‘No. When I came down to get some lunch she wasn’t there. I thought she’d probably gone out to the shop in Heppleburn.’

‘Did she tell you at breakfast that was what she intended to do?’

‘No,’ he said uncertainly. Then, with sudden inspiration, ‘She said something about dyeing wool. I’d forgotten. It’s something she’d taken to lately, spinning. She had these fads. She hoped to make money out of it but I didn’t think anything would come of it. I suppose it gave her something to do. Now Marilyn didn’t need her so much.’

‘And she was going out to dye the wool?’ Ramsay didn’t know much about the process but he’d supposed it was something you did inside, boiling water in a big pan, stirring with a long stick.

‘She was going out to collect lichens to make the dye,’ Bernard said. ‘At least I think that was it.’

‘But she didn’t shout up that she was going?’

‘No.’

‘Did you hear the door slam shut again?’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I really can’t remember.’ He stared out of the window as if he expected the interview to be over.

‘Mr Howe.’ Ramsay spoke quietly. ‘We need to find out why your wife was attacked. There was no sexual assault and so far as we know she didn’t disturb some other crime. Motive is important. You do see that, Mr Howe?’

‘Yes.’ He seemed to find the idea interesting.

‘Mr Howe, can you think of anyone who might have wanted your wife dead?’

He gave the matter proper consideration. He didn’t dismiss it out of hand.

‘No,’ he said at last. ‘I can’t think of anyone who would have killed her.’

Ramsay was halfway down the narrow stairs before he realized that Bernard Howe had not actually answered the question.