Murder in My Backyard

by Cleeves, Ann

  “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 o
ver 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.

  Chapter Six

  At the Tower the Laidlaws were preparing to leave for home. There was a pile of suitcases at the foot of the stairs. One of the twins was crying in a monotonous, exhausted way that seemed to get on all their nerves. Stella Laidlaw sat on the bottom step, clutching a fat handbag to her stomach, like a child with a favourite toy, only her eyes showing over the white collar of her sweater. Peter was asleep with his head on Carolyn’s knee, his face white and strained. They were waiting, it seemed, for Ramsay. Hunter had said that no-one could leave without his permission.

  “We can’t face spending another night here,” James said. “I’m sure you can understand that, Inspector. The children need to be in their own homes.”

  Ramsay looked at them. They were irritated by the delay but showed no other emotion. Do you really have no feelings? he thought. Or have you spent all your lives learning how not to express them? He raised no objections to their leaving. He was glad to see them go.

  Hunter helped the Laidlaws to load the cars. He even stood awkwardly for a while with a baby in each arm. The wind was even colder, carrying flurries of snow, blowing scraps of garden waste across the lawn. As they watched, a square pink card flapped and lifted with the leaves then came to rest against the bumper of James’s car. Ramsay picked it up carefully by one corner and held it to show them. The card was damp and the corners of the letters were unstuck, but it was clearly Alice Parry’s anonymous letter.

  “Where did this come from?” Ramsay turned on Hunter, aware as he spoke that his anger was unfair. It wasn’t Hunter’s fault. “I thought they’d searched the garden.”

  Hunter shrugged. He was thinking of the delights of the Bigg Market: the teenage girls dressed in tiny skirts, the disco music spilling onto the streets through open pub doors. Policing was only a job to him. The pleasures of his time off were more important to him. Ramsay’s anger did not concern him. He had a date with a student nurse and he regretted that more.

  “It’s very blowy,” he said. “ It could have been dropped anywhere in the village.”

  “Quite a coincidence,” Ramsay said. “ Talk to them. See if there’s anywhere they might have missed.”

  Hunter nodded, handed the twins back to their mother, and walked away without a word. The cars moved off down the drive. Ramsay stood outside for a moment watching them disappear through the trees. It was almost dark and Ramsay thought there would be more snow.

  In the kitchen the forensic team were just finishing.

  “Anything?” Ramsay asked.

  The officer shook his head. “ Sorry,” he said. “It’s spotless. That doesn’t mean that the sink wasn’t used, but there’s no evidence. Nothing on the floor either.”

  Ramsay shrugged. It was the worst sort of information. It didn’t eliminate or identify anyone. He was no further forward. He filled a kettle to make coffee.

  “Did you look at the knives?” he asked.

  “Yes. We’ll take one or two of the more likely ones back to the lab to check, but I don’t think your murder weapon’s among them.”

  “That’ll please them,” Ramsay said. “They’ll have to continue the search outside.”

  “You’re a hard man,” the officer said. “ It’s practically dark out there and it’s freezing.”

  It was cold even in the kitchen. The family must have switched off the heating. Ramsay shivered and made instant coffee in a mug. The forensic team left. He heard them calling to each other outside and the sound of their cars going up the drive.

  When Hunter came in, he was wearing only denim jeans, a sweater, and a thin leather jacket. He never seemed to feel the cold.

  “They say that card couldn’t have been in the garden,” he said. “They searched everywhere. They wouldn’t have missed it. Is that tea?”

  Ramsay shook his head. “You’ve drunk enough tea to sink a battleship. What do you think of all this?”

  Hunter shrugged. “Attempted robbery?” he said. “If she was late coming back from Henshaw’s, she might have surprised someone who saw the house in darkness. The back door hadn’t been locked, so there’d be no sign of a break-in even if he managed to get inside. I can’t see any of the family knocking her off for h
er money, and no-one’s going to commit murder for the sake of a few houses.”

  Ramsay thought of the view from his cottage window. I might, he thought, if there was no other way. But only if I believed it would stop the houses being built. “Alice Parry’s death makes no difference to the development,” he said. “Henshaw owns the land anyway and can do what he likes with it. If someone in the village killed her, it was out of envy or hatred. It served no practical purpose.”

  “What about Henshaw?” Hunter asked. “ Mrs. Parry could have made things awkward for him. Especially if she persuaded her nephew to make a fuss in his paper.”

  “Yes,” Ramsay said. “ I want to talk to Henshaw. But he’ll be used to opposition to planning applications. I’ll go and see him when I’m finished here. He was the last person to see her alive.”

  “Do we know that she reached him last night?”

  “Yes,” Ramsay said. “I sent someone to take a statement this morning. He claims they had a friendly discussion and she left about eleven. We’ll have a house-to-house to see if anyone saw Mrs. Parry on her way home. The pub would have been emptying then. There should have been a few people about.”

  Hunter stood throughout the conversation. He was restless. The inspector had made a fuss about him drinking tea, but he sat now, his hands clasped around the mug of coffee, uncertain, it seemed, what to do next. Ramsay had been promoted beyond his competence, Hunter thought. The words sounded good and he repeated them in his mind. The Heppleburn fiasco had almost finished him off. In Heppleburn Ramsay had arrested a women who had committed suicide in custody. The press had complained about police brutality and, on top of his divorce, the lads had all thought Ramsay’s career was over. Yet here he was, still in charge, when there were younger officers to take his place.