A Day in the Death of Dorothea Cassidy (17 page)

Ramsay said nothing. It was as if Corkhill had not spoken. He sat at the table and arranged papers in front of him, a fussy civil servant, then switched on the tape-recorder to begin the interview.

‘We have a problem, Mr Corkhill,’ he said in his polite, civil servant’s voice, ‘and we think you may be able to help us. Perhaps you would be kind enough to answer a few questions.’

Corkhill looked up. ‘What
is
this all about?’ he said.

‘Come now, Mr Corkhill,’ Ramsay said, ‘I’m sure you know. I would have thought that the news of Mrs Cassidy’s murder must have reached the Ridgeway by now. A major talking-point, I should have thought, the murder of a vicar’s wife in a town like Otterbridge.’

Corkhill shrugged. ‘ Nothing to do with me, pal.’

‘But you did know Mrs Cassidy?’ Ramsay persisted.

‘So did most of Otterbridge,’ Corkhill said. ‘She had her nose into everything.’

‘But recently I understand you came under her special attention.’

Corkhill refused to answer directly. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘ this is intimidation. Why pick on me? I know you haven’t locked away the old boy who had her car on his drive. I saw him today.’

‘Do you know Mr Tanner?’

Corkhill smiled, aware that his ploy to distract Ramsay had succeeded.

‘I’ve met him a few times,’ he said airily. He paused for dramatic effect. ‘Usually in the bookies on the Ridgeway. He’s a regular there. Always loses. Didn’t you know? Not much of a detective are you? I saw him there today.’

Ramsay wrote a brief note but did not give Corkhill the satisfaction of a direct response.

‘To return to Mrs Cassidy,’ he said. ‘You didn’t like her very much did you, Mr Corkhill? She interfered in your private life and I suspect that you rather resented it.’

‘Not at first,’ Corkhill said. ‘At first I thought she was all right. On our side.’

‘But later you came to resent her?’ Ramsay persisted.

Corkhill was finding it increasingly difficult to maintain the pose of flippancy. He needed a drink, and the soft, insinuating questions had begun to irritate him. His uncertainty made him want to lash out.

‘She was an interfering cow!’ he said. ‘Theresa and me had everything arranged. We were going to work together, a team, like the real gypsies. Then Mrs bloody Cassidy stuck her nose in and spoilt it. You don’t know what she was like …’

‘No,’ Ramsay said. ‘Well … perhaps you had better tell me. Did you meet her at Miss Stringer’s house?’

‘There was no way of bloody avoiding it once she took on the lad,’ Corkhill said. ‘I thought she understood me. She’d travelled herself. We talked. Then she found a few bruises on the kid and everything changed. She came to the house, all high and mighty, laying down the law. “I think this is a family problem, don’t you? And you’re part of the family, Mr Corkhill.”’ He spoke in a falsetto parody of a woman’s voice. ‘She was so bloody sure of herself,’ he went on. ‘And so bloody sure that she knew what was best for us all.’

‘It’s a responsibility taking on a woman with two kids,’ Ramsay said. ‘How did you get on with Clive?’

Corkhill shrugged. ‘ He’s all right,’ he said. ‘ Not very bright but then brains don’t run in the family.’

‘What about Beverley?’ Ramsay asked. ‘Is she a backward child?’

‘No,’ Corkhill said grudgingly. ‘She’s got more about her than her brother.’

‘That must have been very difficult,’ Ramsay said. ‘I understand that bright children are often demanding.’

‘Look,’ Corkhill said, confiding, world-weary. ‘ I know what this is all about. I had it all out with that Mrs Cassidy. “Why do you blame everything on me?” I told her. “ How do you know it wasn’t Theresa who knocked the kid around. She lost a baby before after all.”’

‘But it wasn’t Theresa who knocked Beverley around, was it?’ Ramsay said. ‘Theresa told us what happened. And she told Mrs Cassidy yesterday. Mrs Cassidy wanted to talk to you about it. And she persuaded Theresa that she couldn’t go away with you. You wouldn’t like that.’

Corkhill longed for a drink. His attention was wandering and he could think of nothing else. He moved restlessly in his seat. Ramsay noted his discomfort.

‘Now I want to talk about yesterday,’ the inspector said. ‘Perhaps you could give me an account of your movements. You worked on the fair in the morning?’

Corkhill nodded.

‘What time did you get back to Miss Stringer’s house?’

‘Two o’clock. Half past.’ He wanted the interview to be over so he could get out.

‘What did you and Theresa talk about?’

‘Nothing!’ Corkhill said defensively. ‘I wanted some peace before I started work again. What would there be to talk about?’

‘Her daughter had been taken into care,’ Ramsay said. ‘She might have thought that worth a mention.’

The sarcasm was lost on Corkhill.

‘Oh that!’ he said. ‘She was rambling on about that but I told her to shut up.’

‘I thought you had a row. Didn’t Theresa tell you she wasn’t going to come away with you after all?’

This surprised Corkhill. He hadn’t expected Ramsay to have so much detailed information about him.

‘You were angry, weren’t you?’ Ramsay went on. ‘You thought Theresa had let you down. And you blamed Dorothea Cassidy. She came back later to talk to Theresa. Did you wait to have it out with her?’

‘No!’ Corkhill said. ‘I didn’t touch her. I didn’t even see her then. I was bloody angry and I went out to work.’

‘What time was that?’

‘About four o’clock.’

‘What happened then?’ Ramsay asked. ‘ How did you get into town?’

‘I walked. I’ve not got money to spend on bus fares.’

‘Did you stop anywhere on the way?’

Corkhill hesitated. ‘I needed a drink,’ he said. ‘ I stopped at the off licence on the estate.’

‘Did you see Dorothea’s car on its way to the Ridgeway?’

Corkhill shook his head. ‘I was bloody angry,’ he said. ‘ I didn’t see anything.’

‘What time did you get to the fair?’

‘Half past four, quarter to five. And I was there all evening. My mate will tell you.’

‘You didn’t slip away to the pub? For a meal?’

‘It was too busy,’ he said. ‘We had some chips on the site.’

That’s it then, Ramsay thought. It’s impossible for him to have killed Dorothea Cassidy. Even without the news of Clive’s death they would have to let him go. He was preparing to tell Corkhill that the boy was dead when Corkhill volunteered information of his own.

‘She was there last night,’ he said. ‘At the fair. She didn’t come to my ride but I saw her all the same.’

‘Who?’ Ramsay demanded. ‘Who was there?’

‘The vicar’s wife. Mrs Cassidy.’ He spoke as if Ramsay was a fool.

‘Are you sure?’

‘Of course I’m sure. She was wearing that blue jacket. I’d know her anywhere.’

‘Did you talk to her?’

‘No,’ Corkhill said, reluctantly, as if admitting some lack of courage. ‘ By then I’d calmed down again. It didn’t seem worth making a fuss.’

‘What time did you see her?’

He shrugged. ‘ I don’t know. It wasn’t late. Some time between eight and half past.’

‘Was she on her own?’

‘No,’ Corkhill said. Despite himself he was enjoying the sense of importance the information was giving him. He could tell Ramsay was excited. He paused, tantalising the inspector, smiling.

‘Well?’ Ramsay said. ‘Who was with her?’

‘It was a woman,’ Corkhill said. ‘A pale thing, pretty enough.’

‘What were they doing?’

‘How should I know?’ Corkhill said. ‘I was busy. There was a crowd.’

‘But you must have seen something.’

‘They were walking together, talking. There’s nothing else to say.’

Ramsay was already planning the next stage of the investigation. They would put as many men as he could spare into the fair that night, with photographs of Dorothea. Who was the woman with her? Corkhill’s description had stirred some vague memory. Perhaps Cassidy would know, he thought.

‘Can I go then?’ Corkhill said, suddenly cocky.

‘Not yet,’ Ramsay said. ‘I’m afraid I have some news for you.’ He spoke in exactly the same tone as before. ‘Clive Stringer is dead. He was found murdered this afternoon.’

He watched the man carefully and was convinced it came as a surprise to him.

‘I didn’t know,’ Corkhill said. Then, with a burst of temper, ‘I suppose you want to pin that on me too!’

Ramsay shook his head.

‘Just make a statement,’ he said. ‘ Then you can go. I expect Theresa will be glad of your support at a time like this.’

Corkhill shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’ve had enough. I’m not going back there. She’s too much like bloody trouble. I’m leaving, going back on the road. On my own.’

He stared out of the window.

Ramsay stood up to leave the room when Corkhill spoke again.

‘Poor bastard,’ he said. ‘He didn’t have much of a life, did he?’

It seemed a fitting epitaph for the boy.

Ramsay called a constable into the room to help Corkhill make his statement then returned to his office. When he got there the phone was ringing.

‘It’s your aunt,’ someone said. ‘She says it’s urgent.’

Ramsay almost refused to speak to her. Tell her I’m too busy, he wanted to say. She can leave a message. But the conversation with Corkhill had chilled him. Corkhill had lost the habit of human contact. He cared for Theresa but preferred loneliness to the responsibilities that came through living with her. Perhaps I’m like that, Ramsay thought. I resent the demands of friendship. So when Annie came through to him he spoke to her kindly, with unusual warmth. But he knew it was all pretence and like Corkhill he was better on his own.

In Armstrong House Annie Ramsay had been playing detectives. At lunchtime she had cancelled the afternoon’s bingo. It wasn’t fitting, she said, after such a tragedy. All the same it brought everyone together for a laugh and a cup of tea and she missed it.

When she first got back from the hospital she pottered around her flat, making scones, thinking that later she would take them round to Emily’s so they could share some tea. She wasn’t much of a cook. Not like her mother … With the memory of her mother, the warm kitchen, the big range in the pit cottage where she had grown up, she pulled herself together. She had always vowed that she would never become one of those old people who bored the pants off the world by talking about when they were bairns. There was more to life than dreaming about the past. Her flat was too quiet, that was the trouble. It looked over the respectable street leading to the park and at this time in the afternoon the children were at school and the parents were away in their offices in the town. She wanted a bit of bustle, a bit of something to watch.

At the front of the building there was a small patch of garden – some lawn, a few pots of geraniums and a wooden bench donated, according to the plaque on the back, by St Mary’s Mother’s Union. The bench was seldom used – too bloody uncomfortable for one thing, Annie thought as she settled herself on to it. And too close to the busy road with its noise, fumes and dust. From where she sat she could see the main road into town and round the corner into Armstrong Street. There, in the mid-afternoon heat, everything seemed quiet, lifeless. In one of the gardens was a pram with a dazzling white sun-shade, but throughout the afternoon the baby made no sound. A little way up the street a car was started. It pulled into the street and disappeared over the brow of the hill into shadow. Annie was aware of it because it was the first thing to move in the street since she had been sitting there, but later she was unable to describe it at all.

‘What about the colour?’ Ramsay would say impatiently when she phoned him. ‘You must have seen that.’

But she had to tell the truth and say she had no idea. She was able, however, to give him an accurate time, because as the car drove off the bell in the primary school on the main street was rung and the children ran out to the lollipop lady on the zebra crossing. The school day finished at a quarter to four.

She spent a few minutes looking at the children, trying to recognise the ones who lived locally, delighting in how brown and healthy they were. When she looked back into Armstrong Street she saw Walter Tanner walking from the direction towards which the car had driven. She had never liked Walter Tanner – his mother had gone to school with Annie and she had always found her a snooty cow – but as she watched him walk slowly along the street she was moved to pity.

‘It was as if he had all the cares of the world on his shoulders,’ she would tell Ramsay later.

‘But the time? What time did Mr Tanner get home?’

‘Ten to four,’ she would say, quite certain, tempted for a moment to lie, just to please him.

‘Are you sure that it couldn’t have been earlier?’

And she would shake her head disappointed and frustrated because she couldn’t be of more help.

She had watched Walter Tanner shuffle down the street to his front door and pause there as if he needed to collect his breath. She had seen him take out his keys, then push open the door, surprised at not needing to use them. She had missed the arrival of the ambulance, Gordon Hunter and the pathologist, because she had decided by then that detecting might run in the family and she could do some investigating of her own.

It had occurred to her while she was sitting in the sun that Thursday was the day the church was cleaned. There was a rota. Annie took her turn with the other ladies to polish pews, hoover the floor and do the silver. Dorothea had tried to persuade some men to be involved in these domestic chores but they had been surprisingly resistant. So, someone would have been in the church the evening before. The hoover, the dusters and the polish were kept in the scullery next to the vicarage kitchen. If Dorothea had returned to the vicarage after all it was possible that one of the cleaning ladies had seen her.

Annie Ramsay found the rota in the drawer of her kitchen table. The first two names against 20 June were of no interest to her. They were active pensioners, keen bowlers, who did their cleaning early in the morning to leave the rest of the day free for their sport. The third was more hopeful. She went under the improbable name of Cuthbertina David and she lived in a flat in Armstrong House.