Ann Cleeves - A Day in the Death of Dorothea Cassidy

It was nine o’clock and the sun was low in the sky, orange, diffused on the edges by thin cloud. At last Emily Bowman’s room was in shadow. She felt comfortable for the first time that day. She sat in the same chair by the window and tried, as she had every evening for the past two weeks, to compose a letter to leave behind after her suicide. All around her the building was quiet. Most of the other residents had gathered in the rooms overlooking the main street to watch the parade. At teatime Annie Ramsay had turned up with scones you could break a tooth on and had tried to persuade her to go too.

‘Come on, pet,’ she had said. ‘We’ve all had a shock but there’s no point brooding. H’away now, we’d like your company.’

Would they still want my company, Emily Bowman thought, if they knew what I’d done?

She had eaten a scone to please her visitor and then claimed fatigue. Annie had scampered away to get ready. Reggie Younger had invited her into his flat, she said. She’d always had a soft spot for Reggie and you had a good view from there. Especially from the bedroom.

Emily Bowman had been aware of the parade passing along the busy street but had taken little notice. Still the right words for her letter would not come. She wanted to justify the decision, persuade the reader, for she had been unable to persuade Dorothea, that she was doing the right thing. And, she thought, though the letter would probably be found by the warden or by Annie Ramsay, it was to Dorothea that she would be writing it. She wanted to make it clear that she was not a coward. It was not the pain which frightened her. It was the inconclusive tedium. To spend the rest of one’s days waiting, aimless, seemed wickedly inefficient. Her only sense in all the waiting – for the ambulance, in the hospital corridor – was that she was in the way.

She watched Ramsay park his car in Armstrong Street. She recognised him from the weekly consultations. The parade had moved on and the streets were deserted. She wondered for a moment if Annie would welcome the visit. She had planned, Emily knew, to spend all evening with Reggie Younger. When Ramsay knocked at her door she did not ask him in, but directed him down the corridor to where he might find his aunt.

‘No, no,’ he said. ‘I’d like to talk to you.’

He stood in the doorway, grave, still, and she was reminded for a moment of a young priest she had known when she was a girl and whom she had dreamed, for a while, of marrying. The memory of the old excitement surprised her. She had never felt that way about her husband.

‘Well,’ she said, hiding her confusion with brusqueness, ‘you’d better come in.’

He sat opposite her, and in the shadow she could hardly make out the expression on his face.

‘Mrs Bowman,’ he said, ‘I’ve come to find out why you have lied to the police.’

For a moment she thought of making a fight of it, of denying everything. There was no way he could find out now what had happened between her and Dorothea. Then he looked up, so the light caught his face and she saw that he was really interested in her, in a way that the doctors and the nurses with their professional understanding had never been. It occurred to her that if she talked to him she would not have to write the letter after all.

‘You did lie, Mrs Bowman, didn’t you, about the time Mrs Cassidy left you yesterday afternoon? She came into your room and spent at least half an hour with you. We have a witness who can confirm that.’

We had a witness, he thought, and held his breath to see if she swallowed it.

‘Yes, Inspector, I’m afraid that I lied.’ The last of the light left the room and she got up awkwardly to switch on a tall standard lamp with a heavy fringed shade which stood in one corner.

‘Why did you do that?’

‘Because I wanted the conversation between Dorothea and me to remain confidential.’

She looked at him with something of her old defiance.

‘You do see,’ he said gently, ‘that now that’s impossible?’

‘It doesn’t seem important any more,’ she said.

‘Dorothea came into your flat when she brought you back from the hospital?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘She was in a hurry but I asked her to come. There was something I wanted to discuss with her.’

‘Would you tell me what that was?’

She stared at him, her hands knotted on the bony lap. She wanted to believe that he would understand.

‘It was a question of morality,’ she said. He did not reply and waited for her to continue. Why did he have so much more patience with Emily Bowman, he wondered, than he did for Theresa Stringer?

‘I was considering taking my own life,’ she said quickly. ‘I wanted her views.’

She was pleased to see that she had not shocked him and that he felt no inclination to laugh. He considered her words carefully.

‘You must have known,’ he said gently, ‘what Mrs Cassidy’s position would be.’

Emily Bowman paused. I admired her, she thought. I expected too much of her. She wanted to explain.

‘I hadn’t expected,’ she said slowly, ‘ that she would be so… rigid.’

Emily remembered Dorothea’s horror when, stumbling, she had tried to explain her intentions, her motives: ‘You can’t even think of it,’ Dorothea had said. ‘ You know it’s quite wrong.’

Ramsay waited for Emily to continue. Again she was reminded of the young priest. She wanted to be honest with him.

‘I had always thought her sympathetic,’ Emily Bowman said. ‘Open to new ideas. We had considered her rather progressive. Her reaction came as a shock. She spoke, even, about the devil. It wasn’t very helpful.’

It had been horrible, she thought. Dorothea’s certainty, her energy, her impersonal pity had been demeaning. It had reduced Emily to an example in a theological argument.

‘Did you kill her?’ Ramsay asked.

Emily moved in her chair.

‘I just wanted to stop her talking,’ she said. ‘She would go on about the sanctity of life. There was a bread knife on the table – she’d had no lunch and I made her a sandwich. I picked up the knife and turned towards her. She didn’t realise. She was very trusting. She kept on talking, telling me all the things I didn’t want to hear, too good for me to bear. You’re young and you wouldn’t understand. I meant to kill her. What right did she have to stand there preaching? How could she know?’

‘What happened?’ Ramsay asked.

‘I missed,’ she said simply. ‘I meant to kill her and I missed. I didn’t even have the strength for that.’

‘But you cut her wrist,’ he said. ‘Didn’t you?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘And there was, I suppose, some satisfaction in that. There was a lot of blood. And at least she was quiet for a while.’

‘She must have been very shocked,’ he said, smiling.

‘No, not very. I don’t think anything shocked her. And she was too busy, I think, trying to save my soul.’

‘Well,’ he said. ‘She must have convinced you.’

‘Because I’m still alive, Inspector?’ She seemed to find the idea amusing. ‘Perhaps you’re right. Perhaps she was more persuasive than I like to admit. Or perhaps I’m less brave than I thought I was.’

She sat back in the chair, preoccupied with her own thoughts. Ramsay thought she was a formidable woman. He hoped she was telling the truth now. If she was lying it would be impossible to tell.

‘What time did Mrs Cassidy leave here?’ he asked.

‘At about quarter past four. Your aunt appeared almost immediately afterwards. The game of bingo in the common room had just finished – that usually ends at quarter past I think.’

‘Wasn’t Dorothea worried about leaving you alone?’