A Lesson in Dying (10 page)

‘How good to see you!’ he said. ‘Come in. Shall I take your coat? Or would you rather keep it on for a while.’

‘I’ll keep it,’ she said.

In the cavernous corners of the house there were competing noises and strange echoes. His wife was a music teacher and must have had an early pupil because the nerve-jangling squeal of a poorly played violin came from a room at the end of the corridor. Upstairs there was the surprising sound of a pop record.

They had taken in a lodger, the vicar said in explanation, an unmarried mother whose parents had thrown her out. As if on cue a baby started crying. He seemed to take it all for granted but to Patty the sounds were tantalizing, glimpses of a freer, more confident way of living. She wished she knew more about the household. Like the family in the old mill it had a sophistication she associated with the south.

‘Come in,’ Peter said again, taking Patty’s arm and leading her into his study. He must have seen that she was cold because he stooped and lit a small Calor gas heater.

‘Now,’ he said. ‘How can I help you?’

‘It’s about Harold Medburn,’ she said, then stopped. She was not sure how to continue. But there had always been an element of hero worship in her relationship with Mansfield and she decided that she could trust him with the truth. ‘ My father doesn’t think that Kitty killed him,’ she said in a rush. ‘He wants to prove her innocent. He asked me to talk to you. Mr Medburn was a church warden and you must have known him very well.’

‘I see.’ He seemed surprised. He bent and warmed long, blue fingers in front of the fire to give himself time to think.

‘Perhaps you think we shouldn’t interfere,’ she said.

‘Not exactly,’ he said. ‘Don’t you think it might be a little dangerous? It’s not a thing to be taken lightly.’

‘We’re not taking it lightly,’ she said. Then more honestly she added: ‘Well, perhaps I am. I think it’s exciting: It’s hard to be sorry that Mr Medburn’s dead. But Dad’s not playing at this. Kitty was a friend of his a long time ago, before he met my mother. I’ve never seen him so serious about anything.’

‘I don’t understand how I can help,’ Peter Mansfield said. ‘I don’t think Kitty killed her husband but I’ve no way of proving it.’

‘You could tell us about Harold Medburn,’ she said. ‘He didn’t have any other close friends. There’s no one else to ask.’

‘He was no friend of mine,’ the vicar said so sharply that Patty gazed at him in astonishment. He looked awkward. Usually he wore kindness and tolerance as part of his clerical garb. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘ I didn’t mean to be abrupt. I could never like Medburn. He made life very difficult for Julie and me when we first came. He was always prying and challenging my authority. He made Julie’s life a misery. This was my first parish and I was too inexperienced to know how to deal with him. He undermined my confidence. At one time I thought I might have to leave the Church altogether.’

‘But you didn’t?’

‘No,’ Mansfield said. ‘I suppose I realized what a sad little man he was. He was no threat to anyone.’

‘Someone saw him as a threat,’ Patty said. ‘Someone killed him.’

‘Yes,’ Mansfield said earnestly, ‘ and that’s why I find it hard to believe that the murderer is Kitty. She knew him too. She knew how weak and lonely he was. I don’t think she was ever frightened of him – he could do nothing more to hurt her.’

‘Why did they marry?’ Patty asked. ‘Did you ever find out?’

The vicar shook his head. ‘That was long before my time and I never asked. Kitty has never come to church. Perhaps they were lonely. They both seem to be outsiders. Kitty does marvellous work with the old people in the village and everyone admires her, but she had no real friends.’

‘Except my father,’ Patty said.

‘Perhaps,’ the vicar said. He paused. ‘I don’t mean to be impertinent but I’m not sure how real that friendship is. You know Jack better than me but wasn’t it a romantic memory that only returned when your father was on his own and Kitty was in trouble? I doubt whether the relationship would have survived years of marriage. She’s a destructive woman in many ways.’

Patty did not know what to say. She assumed the vicar thought she might be hurt because Jack’s affection was directed at someone other than her mother. She wanted to tell him that he was wrong, that she only wanted Jack to be happy.

‘It matters a lot to him,’ she said, ‘to prove that Kitty’s innocent.’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I think it would be wiser to leave it to the police, but I can see that.’

‘Is there nothing you can tell us which would help?’ she asked.

‘Medburn enjoyed power,’ Mansfield said. ‘ It was an indication, I suppose, of his own inadequacy, but it was hard to be charitable about its consequences.’

‘Was he evil?’ she asked suddenly. It was a religious question. She might have been at confirmation class, though she would never have asked such a question of the old priest.

Mansfield seemed shocked and avoided a direct answer. ‘That sort of judgement is not for me to make,’ he said. He moved away from the fire and leant on the edge of his desk. He seemed to have come to a decision to talk to her. ‘I remember soon after I came here,’ he said, ‘a woman came into the church. She was trying to trace Irene Hunt. That seemed a matter of great importance to her. Harold was in the church at the time and I suggested that she talk to him. I didn’t know Medburn very well then, and although I was aware that Miss Hunt taught in the school I knew nothing about her. I can remember how pleased he was when I introduced the woman to him and I saw him again when she had gone. He was very smug and satisfied with himself. “What will Miss Hunt say,” he said, “when I tell her?” When I knew him better I realized that I had probably given him the opportunity of discovering something about one of his staff, something which she would probably prefer him not to know. I felt as if I had betrayed a confidence.’

‘Who was the woman?’

The vicar shook his head. ‘ I never asked,’ he said. ‘It was none of my business. But I expect that Harold found out all about her. I had the thing on my conscience for a long time afterwards. I never liked to ask Miss Hunt what came of it. Of course it’s possible that I misjudged Harold and he simply passed on the address.’

‘What was the woman like?’ Patty asked.

‘She was in her thirties,’ he said. ‘Tall and very dark. She caught my attention because she was remarkably beautiful.’

‘Have you any idea who killed him?’ she asked suddenly.

He hesitated before replying: ‘ No,’ he said. ‘ I’m sorry.’

She was not sure he would tell her anyway.

‘I think I should go now,’ Patty said. She felt awkward again, sitting there, presuming to take his time. It was too easy to take him for granted and perhaps he resented her assumption that he was prepared to talk to her. She felt that he would want something in return – an indication that she might share his faith and commitment – and that she was unwilling to give.

He must have realized that, because he smiled sadly as he let her out into the garden and he said nothing about hoping to see her in church again. He seemed almost pleased to be rid of her. As she walked away from the house she heard the sound of the printing machine thumping again, and of someone playing a scale on the violin.

By the time she walked to her father’s home the sun had melted the frost and the people she met in the street said what a beautiful day it was and that they must make the most of it before the winter came.

In the house nothing had changed since Joan had died, and very little was different from when she was a child. She opened the door with her own key and she might have been coming home after a day at school. There was the same red carpet with the pattern of flowers and leaves, the same hideous three-piece suite. The mantelshelf was crammed with the ornaments Joan had collected on her coach trips with the Mothers’ Union. There was even the same smell of furniture polish. Patty went in to clean for Jack once a week and took far more care than she did with her own housework. Otherwise he managed for himself, much better than she would ever have imagined. Before Joan’s death he had done nothing in the house. She had polished his boots, brought in the coal and added sugar to his tea. Now he cooked for himself and did his own laundry.

He was sitting in the front room by the fire, his boots off, reading a library book. Joan had liked the television but now he never watched it during the day. Patty offered to make some tea, but he put down his book and went into the kitchen to do it himself. He came back with the pot and cups on a tray and a packet of his favourite shortcake biscuits.

‘Did you go to see the vicar?’ he asked. She nodded and told the story of the mysterious woman who had come to the church looking for Irene Hunt.

‘What do you make of it?’ she asked.

‘I think Medburn was blackmailing Miss Hunt,’ he said. He remembered again what the landlady of the Northumberland Arms had said about the staff being frightened of the headmaster. His idea had been confirmed.

‘Will you talk to her?’ Patty said. ‘Miss Hunt still makes me feel like a six-year-old.’

‘I’ll talk to her,’ Jack said, ‘but not in school. She’ll give nothing away there. I’ll wait until the weekend and go to see her at home.’ He did not like to admit that he too was frightened of her.

‘What do you make of Paul Wilcox?’ he asked.

She shrugged. ‘ He’s pleasant enough,’ she said. ‘A bit of a wimp.’

‘He’s scared of something,’ Jack said. ‘He came to see me today to find out how much I know.’

‘He’s no murderer,’ she said. ‘He’d not have the guts.’

‘It must have been one of the Parents’ Association or the staff,’ he said. ‘Someone with access to the school. No one else could have taken Medburn’s gown from his room.’

‘So it was one of us,’ she said. She felt a sudden thrill of fear.

They drank their tea in silence. Patty would have liked to ask him about Kitty, about how he met her and how close they were, but she said nothing about Mansfield’s theory that Jack’s memory of Kitty Medburn was flawed – romanticized, distorted by his own loneliness. She was too excited by the investigation to want him to call it off now. Besides, he would never have believed her.

Every day the local newspapers were full of the news of Medburn’s murder and it was from the newspaper that Jack learned Kitty had been to court. There was even a film of her on the early evening television news, huddled among a crowd of policemen with a coat over her head, but he was too upset then to listen to the commentary. From the newspaper he learned that she had been charged with murder and remanded in custody to await trial. He was distressed by the news, by the huge headlines which talked about the
WITCHES
’
NIGHT MURDER
and which encouraged the readers to speculate that Kitty must have killed her husband by supernatural means. The media had been given no details of the method and circumstances of the murder, and the scarcity of information had led journalists into the realms of horror fiction. Jack would have liked to be in the court to give her comfort, so that she would have seen at least one friendly face, but despite his new experience in the council chamber he felt he was excluded completely from the criminal justice process. He did not know even if he would have been allowed to attend. He did not understand the terms used in the newspaper report. Was a remand centre the same as a prison? What did it mean that no plea was taken? He felt he was no use to her. She was being damned as a witch and there was nothing he could do.

It was a week after Harold Medburn’s death, and he caught a bus to see Irene Hunt. Patty offered to drive him in the car but he decided to go alone. The conversation with Miss Hunt would need tact and Patty had precious little of that. The weather was still clear and sunny, but it was cold and the days were so short now that it was dark by late afternoon. He did not warn Miss Hunt of his visit. If she were not there he would wait for her. The newspaper reports of Kitty’s ordeal had given him a sort of desperation.

The bus dropped him at Nellington, a small village with a pub and several houses and the grey scars of an open-cast mine. It was two o’clock when he climbed off the bus and he was tempted to go into the pub for a drink before he approached her, but he decided against it and began the walk down the lane to the bungalow.

Irene Hunt saw him coming – he was a slight, upright figure in a macintosh which was too long for him – and recognized him at once. She thought at first he was there to tell her that Matthew Carpenter had got himself into another scrape, then realized that was ridiculous. She was irritated by the unwanted company. If there was some problem at school, why had the man not phoned? She had thought the bungalow was secluded enough to protect her from this kind of intrusion. She did not want to appear too welcoming, and waited until he knocked at the door before going to open it.

In the farmyard it was unusually quiet. There were no dogs, no farm machinery. The farmhouse was so rundown that Jack thought it must be empty, then he saw that there was washing on the line. There were long discoloured bloomers, tent-like nightdresses and grey sheets. Jack found the silence and the space unnerving. He was aware of the vast sweep of the countryside behind him. It gave him a sense of vertigo. He wished Miss Hunt would let him in. He would feel more at ease in the small rooms of the bungalow.

‘Mr Robson,’ she said haughtily, feigning surprise. ‘Whatever are you doing here?’

‘I need to talk to you,’ he said. He moved inside the porch and felt happier, sheltered from the space outside. ‘It’s a private matter,’ he said more confidently. ‘I didn’t want to discuss it at school.’

She still would not let him into the house. ‘If you have any problems about work,’ she said, ‘it would be much better, don’t you think, to discuss them on Monday morning?’

‘I don’t have any problem,’ he said. He was confused by her attitude. Previously he had always found her so helpful and understanding. Perhaps the power of running the school has gone to her head, he thought.

‘It’s about Mr Medburn,’ he said. ‘I think you know more about him than you’ve told the police.’