Ann Cleeves - A Day in the Death of Dorothea Cassidy

‘No. None at all. Apart from his antipathy to the boy, Walter was a private man. He didn’t invite many people to his home.’

‘I had understood Dorothea was a regular visitor.’

‘Oh yes,’ Cassidy said, with a sad smile. ‘Dorothea often went to see Walter. She had great faith in her powers of persuasion. She was convinced that eventually she would get him to agree with her ideas. But she was never invited.’

Ramsay paused. He wanted to ask Cassidy about Tanner’s gambling but was afraid that he might refuse to answer direct personal questions about one of his congregation. One of his men had been to the bookmaker’s on the Ridgeway. They knew that Tanner had gambled heavily and lost a substantial sum of money over several years. Ramsay did not know how well the man had managed to keep the habit hidden.

‘Is it possible your wife wanted to see Mr Tanner about something quite different?’ Ramsay asked. ‘If she thought he had a problem she would offer to help, wouldn’t she?’

‘I suppose so, yes,’ Cassidy said. Then, genuinely curious: ‘But what problem could Walter have?’

Ramsay hesitated again, but this was a murder investigation and he needed information quickly.

‘He bets,’ he said. ‘Very heavily. He’s lost at least five thousand pounds since it all began four years ago.’

‘Yes,’ Cassidy said. ‘ I see. That would explain a lot.’

‘You never suspected that he had a problem?’

‘I knew that he was lonely and isolated. I hadn’t realised he had turned to gambling. The poor man must have been under a terrible strain. It reflects very badly on the whole congregation. We should have done more to help.’

‘Did Mrs Cassidy know, do you think?’

‘I’m not sure,’ Cassidy said. ‘Perhaps.’

‘But she never discussed the matter with you?’

‘Oh, she wouldn’t do that. Not without asking Walter first. She had a great concern about confidentiality.’

He spoke with pride and Ramsay thought suddenly that he had lost sight of the great affection Cassidy had felt for his wife. She had caused him inconvenience and embarrassment but the passion which had made him run away and marry her, as if they were eloping teenagers, had remained to the end. And it suddenly struck Ramsay that if he forgot the power of that central relationship, he would lose the focus of the whole investigation.

‘If Mrs Cassidy had discovered that Mr Tanner was gambling regularly, what would she have done?’ Ramsay asked.

‘She would have talked to him,’ Cassidy said with certainty. ‘She would have gone to him and offered support, help.’

And Tanner would have hated that, Ramsay thought. Nothing could be worse than being confronted by a young woman so flawless and innocent, reminding him by comparison of his own weakness.

Cassidy got up suddenly and walked to the window, imagining for an instant the sound of a car on the drive, but he was disappointed and turned back to the room.

‘I wish Patrick would come,’ he said. ‘ I don’t know where he could be.’

‘Perhaps he’s with his girlfriend,’ Ramsay said. ‘You showed me a photograph earlier. Did you say her name was Imogen?’

‘I don’t think he’s with Imogen,’ the vicar said. ‘ She was here earlier looking for him.’

‘Is she at the university too?’ Ramsay asked.

‘No, no,’ Cassidy said impatiently. ‘She’s a nurse in the general hospital.’

‘How did Imogen and Mrs Cassidy get on?’

‘I don’t know. Well enough. Patrick didn’t bring her here very often. You know what young people are like.’

‘Would your wife have had any urgent reason to speak to her yesterday?’

‘No. Of course not. What is this all about?’

But Ramsay only shook his head, as if he were making polite conversation to pass the time until Patrick returned.

‘Have you had any other visitors today?’ he asked. ‘Since the Walkers brought you back to the vicarage?’

Cassidy shook his head.

‘And you’ve been here all the time?’

‘Of course!’ The clergyman was almost shouting. ‘I’ve been waiting for Patrick.’

There was a pause and the church clock struck six.

‘I’m afraid I must ask you some more questions about your movements yesterday,’ Ramsay said gently. ‘Just to confirm your story. There’s been a minor discrepancy. Probably nothing important.’

Cassidy stared at him blankly.

‘You say that you left here at about quarter past five. Patrick said that he arrived home soon after. He just missed you, he said. We have a witness who states she saw Mrs Cassidy’s car in the drive at half past five. She saw Patrick and Mrs Cassidy having tea together in the kitchen. They were rather strained, she thought. Patrick never told us about that meeting. Can you think of any reason for his wanting to keep it a secret?’

‘No,’ Cassidy said. ‘How should I know? You’ll have to ask him.’

‘We will ask him,’ Ramsay murmured. The sun, lower than it had been in the morning, now shone directly through the window, making the room breathlessly hot. Ramsay was thinking that he should leave. He imagined Hunter at Tanner’s house, fuming, waiting for more instructions, for some idea of what was going on. He could send somebody else to the house to wait with Cassidy for Patrick’s return. But just as he was about to go the vicar, oppressed it seemed by the heat and the silence and the tension of waiting for his son, began to talk.

‘I think Dorothea must have been disappointed in me,’ he said. ‘Before we married she only really knew me from my books and they were written a long time ago. It is rather easy to stand up for one’s principles in print. I think she must have been disappointed in the coward she had actually married.’

‘And Dorothea?’ Ramsay asked. ‘Did she have principles?’

The vicar sat forward in his chair. ‘I rather think,’ he said, ‘ that she had too many.’

Walter Tanner sat in the dusty living room and stared with increasing hostility at Gordon Hunter. Although the policeman had arrived more than an hour before, he had only just begun to give Tanner his full attention. At the start it had been noise and self-important bustle, with Hunter standing in the hall directing a stream of strangers upstairs. There were still police cars outside and a small crowd of the less inhibited neighbours gathered to watch. From the landing came men’s loud voices and someone was whistling. For a moment Tanner felt something of the excitement and exhilaration that came to him when he was gambling. In the betting shop there was noise, a breathless sense of risk and the feeling that in the minutes of watching the horses on the television in the corner of the shop he was really living. This is a gamble, he thought, as somebody else came to open the door and stamped up the stairs without waiting for an invitation. How much I tell the police, how I play the situation, it’s all a gamble. Then he looked at Hunter’s face and thought that, as in the bookmaker’s, the punter was always destined to lose.

‘You can’t expect me to believe that this is all coincidence,’ Hunter said. He was standing, leaning against a solid bookcase with one shoulder. He knew that this was his big chance for promotion and he was convinced Tanner was a murderer. I’ll show Ramsay that you don’t have to have been to the Grammar to get results! he thought. ‘A murdered woman’s car and now the boy’s body,’ he said. ‘It’s about time you started telling us what it’s all about. Where were you this afternoon?’

Tanner took a deep breath. This was it. He was under starter’s orders.

‘I was on the Ridgeway Estate,’ he said.