Too Good to Be True

2 The Landlady

Inspector Jimmy Perez booked into the Stonebridge Hotel on the main street of the village. It had a public bar and a dining room already serving high tea. In the lobby he could smell chips and smoked haddock. He’d thought that his ex-wife might have asked him to stay in her home. He hadn’t realised that his work was to be kept secret from her husband.

In his room he phoned Robert Anderson, a local cop. They’d worked together in Aberdeen before Jimmy had gone home to Shetland.

‘What brings you all the way down here, Jimmy?’

‘Well, we’re all Police Scotland now.’

Robert gave a little laugh. ‘So we are, but I wouldn’t come meddling in Shetland.’

‘The Anna Blackwell case?’ Jimmy said. ‘What did you make of it?’

‘Why do you want to know?’

‘Sarah King is my ex-wife. She’s finding it tough. Apparently her family is being targeted by gossips.’

There was a pause. ‘Ah well,’ Robert said at last, ‘I’m guessing Anna’s little girl is finding it tough too. It seems there are no relatives to take her so she’s gone into care.’

Jimmy thought about this. Anna had been a teacher. She must have loved kids. Would she kill herself knowing there was nobody to look after her daughter? ‘Have you dropped the case?’ he asked.

‘Aye, there’s no sign of murder. No break-in at the house. And it wouldn’t be easy to force-feed a healthy woman a load of pills. Anna’s daughter was at a sleepover at a friend’s house, so there’s no witness to what happened. It seems that Anna had drunk the best part of a bottle of wine. She didn’t leave a suicide note but suicide’s the way the lawyer in charge of the case, the Fiscal, is thinking. We think there’ll be an open verdict to allow that it might have been an accident. It’ll be kinder for the kid when she’s older.’

‘Do you think Anna was having an affair with the doctor, Tom King?’

‘Is that what the gossips in Stonebridge are saying?’ Robert sounded surprised.

‘According to Sarah.’

‘I’d heard that Sarah and Anna had fallen out about something that happened at the school, but there was no mention of the husband.’ Robert made the row sound petty, as if the women were kids who’d fallen out in the playground.

‘So you don’t mind me poking around?’ Jimmy asked. ‘I’ve said I’ll stay for two days. I can’t give it longer than that.’

There was a long pause at the end of the phone. ‘You’ll do what you want anyway, won’t you, Jimmy? You’ve always been a stubborn bastard. Just let me know if you find anything.’

The next day Jimmy Perez woke early. The first snow of winter had fallen. A light coating of white that made the village, with its backdrop of trees, look like a Christmas card.

Breakfast was fried and tasty. He thought of Cassie, who was only six but had strong views on healthy eating. Cassie was his stepdaughter and the love of his life now that her mother was dead.

The landlady, who told him her name was Elspeth, was nosy. His food came with a string of questions. She was like a hound sniffing for information.

‘Are you here for the fishing?’ she asked. Then, without waiting for a reply, she went on. ‘Of course it’s not really the weather for fishing. So maybe you’re a walker? We get folk staying who have walked Hadrian’s Wall and then come north of the border to see what we have to offer.’

‘I used to know Anna Blackwell,’ Jimmy said. He still hated lying after years as a cop, but it stopped the woman asking her questions. ‘The woman who died. I wanted to see where she lived.’

‘Poor lassie. What a tragedy!’ Elspeth sat at the empty seat at his table and poured herself a cup of tea from his pot. Then she went on to tell him everything she knew about the dead teacher.

‘She looked so young when she turned up in Stonebridge,’ Elspeth said. ‘Hardly more than a child herself. Not old enough to have a child of her own. Of course there was talk. But Maggie the head teacher said she was good at her job, and Freda, who used to teach the little ones, had got so fat that she could hardly get out of her chair. So it was time for someone new!’

Elspeth paused for breath. ‘Some parents didn’t take to Anna. They thought she let the children get away with murder. But the kids in the first class were only wee and they shouldn’t be told to shut up all day. My granddaughter loved her to bits.’

‘Oh?’

That was all it took to set Elspeth off again. ‘Mrs High-and-Mighty Sarah King tried to get Anna sacked. Just because she’s the doctor’s wife she thinks she runs this place. She went to Maggie with a list of parents’ names and told her they all thought Anna wasn’t a fit person to look after the kids.’ The woman looked sad. ‘It was horrid. A kind of witch-hunt. No wonder the poor lassie got ill with stress. She came to this village full of joy and ended up like a hermit locked in her house all day. They had to get in a supply teacher to take her class for a while. Then Freda took the job on again and she’s back there now.’

Jimmy Perez could see why Sarah hadn’t told him about her campaign to get Anna sacked. It had been a nasty thing to do and Sarah must be feeling guilty. No wonder she was coming under fire from the gossips in the village. But he could understand too why everyone assumed Anna had committed suicide.

‘How old was Anna’s little girl?’ He took a last bite of toast.

‘Four. Anna must still have been a teenager when she fell pregnant. The lassie’s name is Lucy. She was in Anna’s class at the school. So she’s lost her mother and her teacher all at once.’

‘What’s happened to her now?’ Jimmy already knew the answer but he wanted to hear it from Elspeth.

‘They’ve taken her into care. They couldn’t trace her family, you see.’ Elspeth looked up at Perez. ‘If you were Anna’s friend you might know someone who could love her? Who could take her in?’

Jimmy shook his head sadly. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know her that well.’