A Little Learning

by J M Gregson

  ‘That’s when he died, then, is it? Well, I’m afraid I have the requisite alibi. I was up at my son’s house, in Settle. It was my wife’s birthday, you see, and they put on a little party for her.’ He glanced automatically towards the baby grand piano at the side of the room, and they followed his gaze to a photograph in a silver frame, of a younger Culpepper with a surprisingly pretty wife smiling at his side, and four children between about eight and fourteen in front of them in a family group. As if he found such contemplation an indulgence, he said sharply. ‘You can check it out with all of the parties concerned, if you like. I’m sure they’ll bear me out.’

  Peach smiled. ‘I’m sure they will. What time did you return to the campus?’

  The brow above the elfin face furrowed, for almost the first time in their exchanges. ‘About half-past eleven, I think, or maybe a little earlier. It takes about an hour to drive back from Settle.’

  ‘All right. Now, whatever your feelings about Dr Carter, I want you to treat this question seriously. Can you think of anyone who had reason to dislike him seriously?’

  The smile was back on the elf. ‘I like that, Inspector. I fear most people nowadays would have said “to seriously dislike him”. Split the infinitive, you see. You didn’t. And no, I can’t think of anyone who might have killed young Claptrap. Not at this moment. But I assure you, I’ll give it serious thought. However I felt about the fellow, I don’t think people should be allowed to go bumping people off like that. Just as if we were in America.’

  ‘Please do go on thinking. You live on the site and probably have a clearer idea than we do of who had access to the Director’s house at that time.’

  ‘Almost anyone, I’m afraid, in the darkness of a Saturday night. You’d be surprised how quiet the campus is then.’ Percy and Lucy were silent as they drove away. They were easy enough with each other now not to fill silences which were better devoted to thinking. They were off the university site and driving back towards Brunton before Percy said, ‘Interesting chap, that. Not the sort we normally have to deal with.’

  There was another silence before Lucy Blake said thoughtfully, ‘I had ample time to study Dr Walter Culpepper, while you two were playing your word games. Very bright, but a bit unbalanced, I thought. I wonder if he’s unbalanced enough to have murdered his esteemed Director.’

  Ten

  Mrs Ruth Carter did not return to the Director’s house until Wednesday morning, as Peach had suggested. She insisted on Tuesday that her children go back to their studies in their different universities, assuring them that she would be fine, that going to the house where their father had died would upset them far more than it would her. She would let them know when the body was released for a funeral: the police had warned her that there was no immediate prospect of that.

  For the young man of twenty and the young woman of eighteen, it was a difficult situation: a father dead and removed to the mortuary from that huge house which did not belong to them, which they had scarcely occupied enough to call a home. The Carters had only moved in eighteen months ago, with their father’s appointment to the Directorship of the new UEL, and they had been away for much of that time. They looked at their mother, saw her restored amazingly quickly to that composed, well-organized figure they knew so well, and decided that it was best to leave her to deal with the situation in her own efficient way. Both of them were secretly relieved to be able to get back to their own friends and their own student concerns. What had happened at the UEL was a nightmare, but it still seemed slightly remote from them.

  For her part, Ruth Carter found on Tuesday night that for the first time in her life she was glad to see the back of her children. Mark and Samantha had never been as close to George as to her, and his own ruthless ambition and their developing adolescent concerns had driven them further apart in the last few years. She saw that they were shocked by the manner and suddenness of this death, rather than devastated by grief, and she was relieved for them.

  But she breathed a long sigh of release as she saw them depart from her mother’s house near Kendal. Very soon now, she would be away from here herself, and the need for her to dissimulate would be over.

  On Wednesday morning, Ruth drove slowly south down the M6 in her Fiesta, composing herself for the next stage in this extraordinary drama. She was surprised how calm she felt, even as she turned from the B-road onto the familiar UEL campus. She had felt during the days in Kendal that everyone would be watching her at this moment, that she would be the centre of student and staff attention as she returned to the scene of her husband’s murder.

  But it was not like that. No one took any particular note of the bright red little car as she drove up the drive towards the old mansion. Even when she turned abruptly beneath the high trees with their autumn canopy and drove the brief distance to the Director’s house, she was conscious of no curious eyes marking her return.

  She had been told that there would be a policewoman here to greet her at her house. She was not sure whether that was a public-relations measure or a wish to see how she reacted on her return; Ruth knew that the spouse of a murder victim was always a subject of police interest until cleared of suspicion. But she had been at her mother’s for the whole of the weekend, hadn’t she? Surely that was the blandest and most impeccable of alibis, respectable to the point of being dull. So she had no need to feel embarrassed now.

  The bright girl with the striking red-brown hair who reintroduced herself as Detective Sergeant Blake certainly seemed to have no suspicions. Her bright eyes, blue in the daylight on the doorstep as she greeted the returning widow, almost green when they sat in the more subdued light of the kitchen, seemed to carry only concern and sympathy, not scepticism. Though she had seen the girl with Inspector Peach less than two days previously, Ruth had not immediately recognized her. Well, that was all to the good, she decided: it would show a fitting degree of disorientation in the face of tragedy.

  Lucy Blake did not press her about the depth of her grief. She noted that although Ruth Carter had assured them on Sunday that she would bring someone with her for the ordeal of re-entering this familiar house, she had felt strong enough to come alone. Lucy told her, almost apologetically, that there was a counsellor waiting to offer her services in the sitting room. ‘People are often much more disturbed than they realize, in situations like yours,’ she said. ‘Delayed shock can be the worst kind to deal with.’

  ‘I’m all right. I don’t need counselling.’ Ruth was trying to conceal her resentment that these strangers should be here, that even now she should be prevented from locking her doors on the outside world and exulting quietly in this death, feeling the strength and the freedom of her new situation.

  Lucy Blake didn’t argue with her. She nodded slowly. ‘Is there anything you would like to tell me, before I go?’

  ‘No. I’ve nothing to add to what I told your Detective Inspector Peach on Monday.’ She paused, looking round the familiar kitchen, watching the steam rise from the mug of tea which Lucy had made for her, resenting even that small incursion into her territory by strangers. ‘There’s one thing I’d like to do, though. I’d like to walk round the house. With you beside me, if you have the time.’

  They both knew what she meant. She wanted to see the place where her husband had died. And Lucy Blake was glad to have the chance to accompany her, to observe her reaction as she stood on the spot for the first time since that violent death. If it was the first time, of course; Lucy made the inevitable CID reservation about a woman whose self-assurance had already given her a certain amount of mystery, in a case they seemed no nearer to solving.

  Ruth Carter offered her nothing she could pin down, nothing which could establish the woman as either the conventional stricken widow or the cold-hearted accomplice in murder. They climbed the stairs deliberately, then moved slowly round each of the five bedrooms and two bathrooms on the upper storey of the big modern house.

  She let Ruth Carter decide the order of this pro
gress, and they came to the main bedroom, the one where George Andrew Carter had been shot through the head less than four days earlier, last. The widow hesitated for no more than a fraction of a second on the threshold, then stepped into the big bedroom with its two rectangular windows and its large, neatly made bed.

  The photographers had been able to photograph the body from all angles at their leisure, so there was no chalk outline of the position in which the corpse had lain, that evocative image so beloved of crime fiction. And once forensic had taken all the samples they needed, the floor had been cleansed of blood. There was no more than a damp, slightly discoloured patch on the carpet beyond the bed. But even that was evocative enough in its own way, for the active imagination, and Lucy studied her charge for any evidence of faintness or distress.

  There was none. Mrs Carter walked slowly to the far side of the bed, looked without flinching at the spot where her husband had fallen, then gave a brief nod of her head. Without either of them speaking, the pair descended the stairs and went on a brief tour of the ground-floor rooms, ending with the sitting room where the counsellor waited patiently to offer her services.

  DS Blake introduced them, then said she must be on her way. Ruth Carter waited until she heard the front door of the house close behind her and then said, ‘I don’t need counselling.’

  The woman was a motherly blonde, perhaps ten years older than her. ‘A lot of people feel that, love. But we don’t always see our own needs very clearly, in a situation like this.’

  ‘I see mine quite clearly. I want to be on my own. I shall come to terms with what has happened in my own way.’

  ‘There is no shame in feeling the need for a little support. It is a dreadful thing which has happened to you, one which most people never have to deal with. I’m not saying we can solve any problems. Not really: you’ll have to do that yourself, by coming to terms with what has happened, as you say. But we can be a support. I know you have your own children, that they have been with you in the days since this happened. And you will have your own friends here. We never try to interfere with any of that. But sometimes someone from outside the situation, someone with experience, who has seen awful things before, can be of use to you, can provide the kind of support which —’

  ‘I don’t want your help.’ They were sitting opposite each other, and Ruth looked for the first time into the blue, concerned eyes. ‘I appreciate that you can be of help to some. Perhaps of great help, for all I know. What I do know is that you can’t do anything for me.’

  The woman rose, sensing the moment when it was no longer sensible to press. ‘I’ll leave my card on the mantelpiece. If you should change your mind, if you should feel that we can be of help in any way at all, please don’t hesitate to call me. There’s no shame in allowing yourself to call on others for a little support, you know, Mrs Carter.’

  Ruth Carter, recognizing a sentiment the woman had plainly uttered many times, smiled into the concerned face and offered her hand again. ‘I promise I’ll call, the minute I feel you can help me. It’s just that at this moment, I feel a pressing need to be on my own.’

  The counsellor nodded, put on her coat, turned as she went down the drive to give a small valedictory wave to the calm figure standing so still in the doorway of the big house. Grief took people in different ways. It was part of her role not to make moral pronouncements. When she took a last look back at the house in the trees, the front door was shut.

  The counsellor hurried along the path under the trees, back towards the main car park where she had left her car. She had gone no more than thirty yards when she glimpsed a rather gangly man coming the other way, his coat collar turned up against the November cold. It was in truth very mild, but the man certainly looked cold, with his nose reddening in the damp air. She sensed as she looked at him that he had been standing around here for some time.

  Waiting for that policewoman to drive away? Waiting for her to leave? Waiting his moment until the woman in the house should be left on her own? He was a well-dressed, rather diffident figure. He did not look as he came abreast of her to be at all dangerous. But the widow should be left alone with her grief, as she had requested: the counsellor was jealous enough of her own role to feel that if Ruth Carter did not require her company, she could benefit from no one else’s. She said, ‘Excuse me, but were you going to the Director’s house?’

  He looked for a moment as though he would deny it. Then he must have sensed that she would know he could be going nowhere else, along this path. He said, ‘I was, yes.’

  ‘I’m afraid I have to tell you that Mrs Carter doesn’t wish to be disturbed. She’s had a bereavement. A particularly distressing one, I’m afraid. She’s expressly asked to be left alone.’

  The man hesitated, until she thought for a moment that he would turn and walk back with her. Then he said, ‘I know all about that. Perhaps I should introduce myself.’ He tugged rather self-consciously at the top of his coat, pulling it away from his neck to reveal a thin line of white dog collar beneath. ‘I’ m Tom Matthews, the University Chaplain. I know what’s happened. And I know Mrs Carter. I — er, I feel I must offer my support at this time.’

  She should have felt a little jealousy at his presumption that he could succeed where a professional counsellor had failed. Instead, she was sorry for him, sorry for a poor clergyman who felt that his supposed contact with the Almighty could enable him to offer comfort where it was not wanted. She said, ‘I’m a counsellor, and she’s just rejected my services. I don’t know if Mrs Carter is a Christian, but I can’t see you having a much better hearing than I had.’

  The Reverend Thomas Matthews smiled — a professional smile, she felt. ‘I am the appointed University Chaplain. It is my duty to offer whatever comfort I can, at a time like this. And I do know Mrs Carter, a little. I feel she will probably see me. At least I must try.’

  He raised the end of his cap to her, in an old-fashioned farewell she found curiously touching. A nice man, this, going forward with fortitude to his inevitable dismissal. She hoped Mrs Carter would rebuff him gently. She rejected the temptation to wait for him, to witness his doorstep dismissal and then commiserate as they went away together. It was unworthy; in the unlikely event of his comfort being accepted where hers had been rejected, she should be pleased, not miffed. In a way, they were part of the same service.

  Tom Matthews looked round as he went up the drive to the house to make sure that he was not observed. Ruth Carter must have been watching through one of the front windows, for the door opened silently as he arrived, and he passed smoothly into the interior of the house.

  For just an instant, they were awkward with each other. Then he said, ‘I thought they’d never go. I was getting quite cold, stamping my feet underneath those trees.’

  She said tersely, ‘The policewoman was all right. But then I had to get rid of the counsellor they had arranged for me.’

  He nodded. ‘I saw her. She tried to stop me coming in. Said you wouldn’t want to see me.’

  They burst out laughing together at the absurdity of that thought. Then she was in his arms, feeling his hands pressing urgently on the small of her back, searching for his lips with hers, until they fastened upon each other, tenderly at first, then with the urgency that had been building up since the weekend.

  Eleven

  The pigeon stared down speculatively at Detective Inspector Peach as he parked his car against the wall of the police station car park. Percy looked round at the rotting sycamore leaves, up at the low grey clouds of the dismal sky, and caught the bright bead of the pigeon’s eye. ‘Morning, Charlie,’ he said. The pigeon regarded him speculatively for a moment, then raised each foot in turn, delivered a non-committal coo, and defecated slowly on top of the wall.

  ‘Exactly!’ said Peach. He sighed and went into the station.

  He climbed the stairs gloomily, rehearsing his report on the state of play for Superintendent Tommy Bloody Tucker. ‘Thought I’d just put you in the pi
cture about the Carter case, sir.’

  ‘Made an arrest yet, have you?’ said Tucker brightly.

  That’s all I need on a miserable Wednesday morning, thought Percy. Tucker in his martinet mood, trying hard to be brisk and unforgiving, like a proper superintendent. ‘Bit of a puzzler, sir, this one is.’

  ‘That’s Peachspeak for no progress, isn’t it? Oh, I’ve worked with you long enough to know you pretty well now, Percy,’ said Tucker jovially, rather pleased with himself.

  Use of first name: always a danger signal, Percy reminded himself. ‘Wide range of acquaintances Claptrap Carter had, sir.’

  ‘No excuse for backsliding. Lots of crime victims have a wide circle of acquaintances, you know. And I’d rather you didn’t call the victim Claptrap. It might slip out in public.’

  ‘Claptrap Carter, sir,’ said Peach, ruminatively and unrepentantly. ‘Everyone seems to have called him that. Freemason, you know, sir.’ He announced the victim’s membership of the brotherhood as if it immediately explained the nickname.

  ‘Yes, I do. And I can’t see how that it has anything to do with the case. You have a phobia about the Masons, Peach.’

  ‘Yes, sir. No Masonic connections to be investigated, then. That will certainly cut down on the work for the team. It seems a bit sweeping, but if you’re confident we can safely ignore all the Masons in the area, I’ll announce it at tomorrow morning’s briefing for the team. I dare say it will raise a few eyebrows, especially when it gets out to the press, but if those are your orders —’

  ‘Those are not my orders, Peach! We have to keep an open mind on this. However unlikely it may seem, you should not rule all Masonic people out of suspicion. Though scarcely any Masons are in fact convicted of crimes, we must show that we —’