A Lesson in Dying (8 page)

He waited to talk to Miss Hunt until he saw her go into the staff room. He thought she might be more prepared to give him her full attention there than in the classroom where there was work to do.

‘Would you like coffee?’ she asked. When he had come to the bungalow the day before he had pleased her. ‘I’m making some for myself.’

‘That would be very nice,’ he said. He seemed relaxed and easy. He sat on one of the chairs without being asked.

‘Now,’ she said, ‘ How can I help you, Inspector?’ He was tall and dark and quite athletic, with a gentle local accent. She had known physical education teachers of a similar type. He was middle-aged but fit and wearing well. She could imagine him rock climbing.

‘Have you time to answer some questions?’ he asked. ‘It would save me having to trouble you at home again.’

‘Of course,’ she said.

‘The gown he was wearing when the body was found,’ Ramsay said. ‘It
was
his?’

‘Oh yes,’ she said, and despite herself there was a trace of bitterness in her voice. ‘He never went to university as a young man, you know. He wasn’t particularly academic. He went to college later, in middle age, and took a Bachelor of Education then. We all thought he intended to try for promotion to a bigger school, but he never moved. He was very proud of his gown.’

‘Where was it kept?’

‘In his office. On a hook on the door.’

‘I see,’ he said. He took a pipe from his pocket and began to fill it with tobacco from a leather pouch. She waited for him to light it, but he seemed to change his mind and laid it carefully on the low table before him.

‘How did Mr Medburn die?’ Irene asked. She was enjoying Ramsay’s company. The question came naturally.

‘He was dead before he was hung up,’ the policeman said. ‘He was strangled but not by the noose of bandages. We think he may have been drugged first.’

They drank instant coffee in silence.

‘Is there anything else you want to ask me?’ she said in the end. ‘I think I should go back to my classroom. I feel I should be working even though the children aren’t here.’

‘Did he take any private pupils?’ Ramsay asked.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m sure not.’

‘He didn’t work for one of the examination boards, marking papers?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘He was a primary specialist.’

‘So he had no other income?’

‘I’m sure he didn’t.’

‘No one seems very sorry he’s dead,’ the policeman said suddenly, and she thought perhaps he was clever, more imaginative than she had first supposed.

‘No,’ she said. ‘He wasn’t very popular.’

‘Why was that then? Did he pick on the children?’

‘Not on the children, no. He was a good teacher in a lot of ways, though a little boring by today’s standards. No. Adults were his victims.’

‘Did he knock his wife around?’ He asked the question in the same level, matter-of-fact tone.

She was very shocked. She supposed that in his work the detective must mix often with men who beat their wives, but it seemed offensive to suggest that she was acquainted with such people. ‘No,’ she said. ‘There was nothing like that.’ Then, feeling surprisingly disloyal, she added: ‘He was too subtle, you see, for that kind of violence.’

‘You sound almost glad that he’s dead,’ Ramsay said.

Irene Hunt thought then that her original assessment of him was correct but that after all he had an instinctive intelligence, like an animal’s.

‘Do I?’ she said. ‘Life will be a lot easier, you know, without him.’

She took their cups to the sink and washed them. The policeman sat back in his chair and watched her.

Outside in the corridor, Jack Robson was cleaning the floor where the police had finished. He had heard every word of the conversation, but neither the policeman nor Miss Hunt took any notice of him. He was as much a part of the school furniture as the blackboards and the wall bars in the gym.

All day, in the village, Jack had been asking questions about Medburn and Angela Brayshaw. Patty’s description of her conversation with Angela had excited him. There was already the possibility of another motive.

Perhaps Medburn had another lover. Perhaps there were other jealousies. Perhaps Angela had found Medburn’s attentions unwelcome, hateful even. Jack was sure that someone in Heppleburn would have information about Medburn, and that morning he set out to make it known that he needed the information too. First he went to the small chemist shop in the high street to ask if someone had been in during the previous week to buy a quantity of bandages. The police had been there before him but it gave him the opportunity to explain why he wanted to know. Medburn’s murderer must have had bandages, he said, to twist into a noose. He made a nuisance of himself in the grocer’s shop and the post office, where he waited to talk to the pensioners, because they were always the best gossips. They all knew him as a diligent and caring councillor who fought with officials and bureaucrats on their behalf. They wanted to help him. By lunch-time, when he had to go to school, everyone in the village knew he intended to prove Kitty innocent. Everyone in Heppleburn knew where to find him. He had thought that all he had to do was wait for the information to come to him. Now, Ramsay’s questions to Irene Hunt about the headmaster suggested that he had a source of income they had been unable to trace. Medburn was mean. His reluctance to part with money was legendary in the village and Jack would not have been surprised to learn that he had some other work, something the taxman knew nothing about. If he could discover what that was, he might find another candidate for murder. He had other questions to put in the village.

He stayed in the school until five thirty and by then most of the policemen had gone, and it was ready for classes to resume the next day. He took off his brown overall, hung it in his room and lit a cigarette. As he walked down the corridor to go out into the playground, the inspector who had been talking to Irene Hunt waved at him through the window of the hall. Jack thought Ramsay’s face was familiar and he wondered if perhaps he had worked down the pit with the policeman’s father.

Outside it was nearly dark and he could see the orange street lights, filtered through hazy smoke, in the village below him. The sudden cold weather had encouraged people to light fires, and a cloud of smoke hung in the valley.

As he walked down the steep lane the familiar smell of the smoke and sulphur took him back to childhood. It was the smell of winter. It reminded him of the back kitchen at home, where his mother made pans of leek broth on the black-leaded range and boiled kettles of hot water for his father’s bath.

There was a fire in the bar of the Northumberland Arms. It was a gloomy place with dark-stained wood panelling and leaded windows. The lights never seemed quite bright enough. During the war the pub had been used by submariners stationed in Blyth and the walls were hung with photographs of men in uniform and ships and submarines. The pub had just opened and the bar was empty. The landlady, a thin, grey little woman with twig-like arms and enormous energy, was putting clean ashtrays on the tables and seemed surprised to see him.

‘By man, you’re early tonight,’ she said.

‘I need a drink,’ he said. ‘I’ve worked hard today getting the school ready for the bairns to go back.’

‘Are the police still there then?’ she asked. She was avid for news. He hoped she had other information with which to reciprocate.

‘Aye, I don’t know when they’ll be finished. They say that the school can open again tomorrow. Miss Hunt will be in charge until they get a new head.’

She polished the last ashtray with a duster then scuttled behind the bar to serve him.

‘A pint of Scotch is it?’

He nodded and watched her pull the beer. ‘And something for yourself,’ he said.

She poured a small glass of whisky and sipped at it, like a pigeon taking grain.

‘What do you think of Mr Medburn getting himself murdered?’ she asked. Nothing so exciting had ever happened in the village before.

‘I don’t think Kitty killed him,’ he said firmly.

‘Do you not?’ Her eyes were bright and she pecked again at the whisky.

‘No.’ He looked at her across the bar. ‘You haven’t heard anything,’ he said, ‘ which might help? People talk to you.’

‘Folks were scared of him,’ she said. ‘ I know that.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You should talk to Miss Hunt,’ she said. ‘She was scared of him. My daughter was dinner nanny at the school years ago and she heard some things then …’

‘What sort of things?’

But she refused to say and changed the subject abruptly.

‘I’ve heard Angela Brayshaw got herself into a terrible lot of debt,’ she said. ‘ They were going to take her house off her, but her mother stepped in and paid off the building society. I hear Angela will be working at the nursing home now. She won’t like that.’

He drank the rest of his beer. ‘ No,’ he said, ‘ she won’t like that.’ He smiled broadly. ‘ Thanks,’ he said, ‘you’ve been a great help.’

She winked at him as he went out. Walking out of the gloomy pub into the street he almost bumped into the policeman who had been at the school. It occurred to him that Ramsay had followed him and was waiting for him. As if I was a bloody criminal, he thought. He had never liked the police, and the miners’ strike had made things worse.

‘Councillor Robson,’ Ramsay said. ‘I was hoping to talk to you.’

‘I can’t stop now,’ Robson said. ‘ My daughter’s expecting me.’ It was a lie. He had made no arrangements to visit Patty.

‘I’ll give you a lift,’ Ramsay said smoothly. ‘ I was wanting to talk to Mrs Atkins again.’

‘You’ll be lucky if you get any sense out of her tonight,’ Jack said spitefully. ‘ It’ll be chaos in there. It always is. The bairns’ll not be in bed yet.’

‘All the same,’ Ramsay said, ‘you’ll not say no to a lift.’

His car was parked outside the British Legion Hall.

‘You seem to have been taking a lot of interest in this case,’ the inspector said.

Jack remained stubbornly silent.

‘If you have any information you will come to see me,’ Ramsay said gently. ‘I understand that Mrs Medburn was an old friend of yours.’

Sly bastard, Jack thought. What business is it of yours? You think she killed him. But still he said nothing. He allowed himself to be helped into the big, comfortable car, then Ramsay drove to Patty’s house and parked immaculately close to the kerb.

‘Surely you don’t need to come in now,’ Jack said irritably. ‘You can talk to Patty tomorrow.’

‘I’ll just come to the door,’ Ramsay said, ‘and ask Mrs Atkins if it’s convenient.’

Jack had hoped that it would be a mess, that Ramsay would find it impossible to make himself heard above the noise of the television and the children’s games. He had thought that they would still be at their tea, had imagined the smell of fried food, the floor covered with Andrew’s Lego and Jennifer’s crayons. But Patty was alone there. Jim had taken Andrew to cubs and Jennifer was at a friend’s for tea. The toys had been put away and the dishes, if unwashed, were hidden in the kitchen.

‘Dad,’ she said as she opened the door and saw him standing there, a Charlie Chaplin figure with the policeman by his side. ‘What have you been doing? Why are you here?’

‘I thought Mr Robson was expected,’ Ramsay said in mock surprise. She was aware of him immediately, felt flushed and awkward in front of him as she invited him in, moved a pile of magazines from a chair so that Ramsay could sit down.

‘It was kind of you to bring my father home,’ she said.

Look at her! Jack thought. Just because he’s got a pretty face.

‘It was no trouble,’ the policeman said. ‘I was hoping you could help me again. It’s about Harold Medburn. No one seems to have known him very well.’

‘I’ll help you if I can,’ she said, despite Jack’s obvious disapproval, ‘but I only ever met him at school. Dad probably knew him better than me.’

‘I’m interested in the sort of man he was,’ Ramsay continued. ‘Were people frightened of him?’

‘He wasn’t liked,’ Patty said. ‘ I suppose we all found him a bit … intimidating. What do you think, Dad?’

But Jack did not answer. Ramsay’s question to Irene Hunt and to Patty had suddenly taken on a new significance. He remembered what the landlady of the Northumberland Arms had said.

‘Why do you want to know? he asked, turning suddenly towards the policeman.

Ramsay shrugged. ‘We’re just trying to tie up some loose ends,’ he said.

But Jack did not believe him. Medburn was a blackmailer, he thought. That’s what it’s all about. He had money they can’t explain away. And I know who he was blackmailing.

When he went with Patty to show Ramsay to the door he was almost gracious and thanked him for the lift.

Ramsay hesitated for a moment outside the door. He liked Robson. The old man reminded him of his father. But Ramsay was convinced that Kitty Medburn had murdered her husband and thought the old man was playing foolish games.

Patty persuaded Jack to spend the night with her and the family – his house would be cold, she said – but he found it hard to sleep and wished he had insisted on going home. First he was disturbed by Jennifer who refused to settle on the camp bed in her parents’ room; and when the house was quiet he thought of Kitty and the tall policeman and the people who had been Medburn’s victims. They’d be glad that Medburn was dead and would want to forget him. Jack had started the investigation with his intentions firm and starkly clear. He would save Kitty whatever the cost in reputation or inconvenience to other people. Now it seemed the thing was not so simple. If Kitty were innocent someone else must be guilty, and the unpleasantness which had surrounded Medburn during his life would continue long after he had been buried. Jack would need to discover Medburn’s secrets and would become as much an object of hatred as the headmaster had been. Yet as he lay in Jennifer’s small bed waiting for the morning a childish persistence and romanticism made him cling to his original purpose. He saw Kitty as Rapunzel, locked in a tower, and himself as the prince charged to rescue her. Then, as in the stories, they would live happily ever after.