Murder in My Backyard (23 page)

“But you knew of him?”

“Oh,” she said. “I knew of him. Staying with Alice was like taking part in a soap opera. We had to listen to the story of everyone who lived in the village. Over and over again. Charlie Elliot was infatuated with Maggie Kerr and had dropped out of the army when he found out she’d separated from her husband. Then he and Tom Kerr had a fight and Tom punched him on the nose. That was a real scandal because Tom’s a pillar of the church and it was supposed to be a deadly secret, though most of the village must have heard about it in the end. According to Alice, he felt so guilty that he didn’t feel able to sack Charlie from the job in the garage although he was being such a pain in the arse and making Maggie’s life hell. It was quite romantic, but very tedious.”

“Did Alice have any idea how the situation between Elliot and Maggie could be resolved?” Ramsay asked.

“Endless ideas,” Stella said. “All totally impractical and rather interfering. She wasn’t the saint the others have made her out to be, you know, just a nosy old woman. She even talked at one time of having Maggie and the boys to stay as lodgers at the Tower, though goodness knows what damage that would have done.”

“Did she ever talk to Charlie about Maggie?”

“Probably, though she never said. She wouldn’t have told me, anyway. She’d know I’d not approve. Charlie would have told her to mind her own bloody business. And quite right, too.”

Again, as she finished talking, she glanced at the clock. Ramsay paused and changed the subject of the conversation. “I must ask you some questions about yesterday morning,” he said. “ Charlie Elliot was killed between five and six-thirty. I have to know where everyone involved in Mrs. Parry’s case was at that time. It’s a matter of elimination. I’m sure you understand.”

“I don’t know where James was,” she said. “Asleep, I presume. We slept in separate rooms on Monday night. He was very sweet about it but said I was so restless I kept him awake. I was in rather a state on Tuesday morning — I have trouble sometimes with my nerves and it was a bad day. He was there when I woke up.”

“Were you in your room all night?” Ramsay asked.

“No,” she said. “ If you must know, I find it so damned hard to sleep I got up in the early hours and went for a drive. I thought the speed might relax me and help me sleep. It usually does.”

“But it didn’t work?”

“No,” she said. “ It didn’t work.”

“What time did you go out and when did you get back?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “And I don’t know where I went, either. I just drove.”

“Do you and your husband each have a car?” Ramsay asked.

She nodded.

“And you took your car?”

“Yes, of course. It was parked outside the house. James keeps his in the garage.”

“So you didn’t notice whether your husband’s car was there or not when you left the house?”

“Of course it was there. Why wouldn’t it be there? What would James be doing driving round in the middle of the night?”

“But you didn’t see it?” Ramsay asked.

“No,” she agreed. “ I didn’t see it.”

“Do you have any social contact with your husband’s colleagues?” Ramsay asked.

“As little as possible,” she said.

“You don’t get on with them?”

“Oh,” she said. “ I get on with them. I get on with most people. But when they’re all together they just talk about work and I find that tiresome. James is almost obsessive about the
Express.
I tell him he should delegate more and that he cares more about the bloody paper than he does about me, but it doesn’t make any difference. It still takes up all his time.”

“Does James discuss his staff with you?”

“He discusses everything with me,” she said angrily, but he doubted if she stopped thinking about herself long enough to listen.

“There’s a young reporter,” he said. “ Mary Raven. We’d like to talk to her, but she’s proving a little elusive. You have no idea where she might be?”

Stella smiled and seemed pleased with herself. There was little indication that she was jealous of the woman or that she resented her.

“No,” she said. “I don’t know where she is. She’s got something of a reputation, you know. She drinks a lot and I’m afraid she might be a bit promiscuous. James can be rather pompous and doesn’t like it. I tell him it does him good to have someone young in the place. It stops him getting boring.”

She looked at the clock again and this time Ramsay had no excuse to stay. He felt frustrated. He felt he had achieved nothing from the interview. He knew that Stella had been performing for him and that he could trust nothing she had said. At the door she stood with the same fixed smile on her face and waited until he had driven into the street. Then she shut the door behind her.

Just after Ramsay had turned into the road, he had to stop at a pedestrian crossing to allow an elderly lady across the road. It was only because of the delay that he saw Max Laidlaw’s car drive through the gates and park outside the Laidlaws’ house. The inspector turned into a side street so that he had a view of the front of the house. He saw Max knock on the door and Stella answer it. She was obviously furious and in her anger she was very tall, very regal. She took something from Max’s hand and there was an exchange, possibly, thought Ramsay, an argument. Max turned and strode back to his car. He reversed it into the street at great speed; almost causing an accident, then drove off without noticing Ramsay’s car at all. Stella Laidlaw stood in the doorway watching the incident with a degree of satisfaction, posed as if for a photograph, framed by the buds of forsythia that grew on either side of it. Then she disappeared back into the house.

Before Ramsay could start his car, Stella ran out into the street, tying the belt of the full-length beige mackintosh as she went. She began to hurry towards the centre of the town. Ramsay waited for a few minutes, but she was walking so quickly that he was afraid he would lose her. He locked his car and began to follow her.

Max Laidlaw waited for two days after the phone call before making a decision to see Stella. It was a gesture of pride and independence, although he knew he would do what she wanted in the end. Even on Wednesday he waited until he had completed all of his house calls before driving to her house. Let her stew, he thought. She had caused him anxiety enough. He had hardly slept for two days. Judy’s endless questions, her reassurance, her persistence to know “the truth,” was wearing him out. You don’t really want the truth, he felt like saying. You want comfortable words, security, a well-behaved husband. The impulse to tell her everything had long gone.

On Tuesday the publicity surrounding Charlie Elliot’s death irritated him beyond reason. Everyone was talking about it; colleagues and patients regarded him as a source of gossip. Several times he tried to phone Mary Raven, but there was no reply, and he almost wept with frustration. He had come to believe that only in Mary’s company could he find peace. On Tuesday night, when Judy was asleep, he tried to phone Mary again, but although it was almost midnight there was still no reply, and he imagined her with another man, in terrible danger, arrested by the police.

The next day, Wednesday, his helplessness turned to aggression. From his weakness and his lack of power, which was illustrated by Stella’s ability to use him, grew a violent anger that acted like a drug. It stopped him from thinking clearly and prevented him from considering the options that had seemed to provide a way out earlier in the week. He wanted revenge for the sleepless nights of worry, the disruption to his family life, even for his own sense of guilt. Someone had to pay.

The first person to pay had been Judy. At her insistence, he had returned home for lunch and at first it was pleasant. The kitchen door into the garden was open and the twins were playing happily outside. The children’s voices and the birdsong and the mild spring sunshine relaxed him and he thought his worry had been unnecessary. He would help Stella once more, he thought, just once more, then it would all be over. But Judy began again to question him about his conversation with Alice on the evening of her death and he lost his temper.

“It’s none of your business,” he shouted. “None of your bloody business.”

The twins stopped their game and stared through the open door, fascinated by his anger. Judy cried and there was a humiliating scene as she put her arms around him, dripping tears all over his face.

“Please, Max,” she said. “I don’t care what you’ve done. I can handle anything. But I can’t take this silence. I want you to trust me.”

Then he turned on her. “You think I killed Alice,” he shouted. “Don’t you? How can I trust you when you think me capable of that? What about Charlie Elliot? Do you think I murdered him, too?”

“I don’t know,” she cried. “I really don’t know. I want to know where you were on Tuesday morning. I got up to see to the twins and you weren’t there. What am I supposed to think?”

“I’m a doctor,” he yelled. “I get called out in the middle of the night. You should be used to that by now.”

Then he left the house, only half hearing the voice behind him calling him to come back, begging him to talk to her. He was pleased that he was hurting her.

He had one house call to do, and to his surprise he completed it calmly and efficiently. It was only as he drove to the other side of Otterbridge that the sense of imminent violence returned and grew. He drove automatically because he knew the road well, and when he arrived at the Laidlaws’ house, it was with surprise, because he could not remember how he got there. He walked across the gravel, past the pool of crocuses, purple against the green of the lawn, and thumped on the door with his fist.

Stella opened the door immediately and he did not realise at first how angry she was. She looked quite cool and elegant, dressed in primrose yellow—a linen skirt and a fine woollen cardigan buttoned to her neck. Playing the part of the country lady again, he thought bitterly. If only her posh friends knew.

“Max!” she said, but her surprise was an affectation. She had been waiting for him for two days. She added, tight-lipped: “I was expecting you this morning. Or yesterday.”

Yet despite her temper she was beginning to relax and grow more confident. He was here now and the agony of waiting was over.

“I had a surgery this morning,” he said. Her imperious performance had put him off his stride. He knew he sounded defensive. “ I’m a doctor with real patients. I’ve more important things to do than run after you.”

“But, Max,” she said, “I am a real patient. A private patient.”

She looked at him greedily, but the well-bred voice did not change. “Have you brought my prescription? How kind!”

Her delicate fingers, as fine as claws, reached out for the envelope Max was holding.

“Thank you,” she said. “ How much do I owe you?”

It was as if he were a tradesman. He tried to show his disgust.

“I wouldn’t take your money,” he said.

She shrugged. “ Well,” she said. “ That’s very generous.”

With the envelope in her hand, her tension and ill temper had disappeared. She had lost the edge of desperation in her voice and could tease him. She smiled. “ Don’t look so cross, Max,” she said. “I won’t be bothering you again. Not for a while.”

“You won’t be bothering me again at all,” Max said. “You can do what you like. You’ll get nothing more out of me.”

“Max,” she said. “Darling. Don’t be so petulant. We’ve always been such good friends. You help me and I’ll help you.”

“Not anymore!” He was shouting. “ I don’t need your help. I can look after myself.”

He was aware suddenly that he sounded childish, just like Peter in a temper, and he fell silent. She looked at him triumphantly, pleased because she had roused him to temper, aware of her power. She reached out and, with one long finger, stroked his cheek from the corner of his eye to his chin. He flushed and for a moment she thought she had provoked him too far and he would hit her. She waited, still smiling because such a reaction would have been a kind of victory, but, horrified, he turned quickly and walked down the drive. He drove away, the need for violence unfulfilled.

Stella watched Max storm away. Poor Max, she thought. He had always been so weak. Hardly a man at all!

She went back into the living room and looked at the pretty little clock on the mantelpiece. It was half-past four. Her mind was very clear, emptied of everything except a determination to get her own way and her plans to achieve it. Carolyn had a violin lesson after school but would be home soon. Stella went into the kitchen and left a note for her daughter. She was in a hurry. She wanted to get into town and back before James returned from work.

On the way out of the house there was a moment of indecision, of self-disgust. After all James has done for you, she thought. You go behind his back and behave like this. But even as she paused on the doorstep, she knew that however disappointed James might be in her, he would never desert her. His admiration gave her the freedom to do as she pleased. This secrecy acted in the same way as the drugs Max had prescribed—it gave her confidence and power—but she was not afraid of what James would do if he found out. She would have liked to be the sort of wife he wanted, but the need for self-preservation was stronger and she hurried out of the house without looking back.

In the town the shops were beginning to close. Not far from home, Stella’s attention was caught briefly by the clothes in an expensive dress shop. She turned her head to look at a model in the window but moved on, hardly faltering. Ramsay thought at first that she was heading for the
Express
office. She walked through the abbey ruins and along the riverbank to the town centre. The breeze that blew over the water detached a strand of hair from the clip at the back of her head, but she fixed it without stopping. She came to the market square, which was now quite empty apart from a pile of trestles and tarpaulins in one corner, and even over the cobbles she maintained her pace. By the time she came to Front Street she was almost running with her black handbag held firmly under her arm and the slim black shoes tapping on the pavement. The other people in the street moved to let her pass, then stared after her, at the slender ankles under the expensive coat. She seemed preoccupied and did not thank them for allowing her to move without interruption.