Ann Cleeves - A Day in the Death of Dorothea Cassidy

‘Not too worried,’ Emily said. She smiled. ‘She had enormous faith, you know. Besides, I promised her I wouldn’t take all my pills last night. It was the only way to get rid of her.’

‘Did she come to see you later?’

‘No,’ Emily said. ‘I was surprised. She said she would come, either before her talk to the Residents’ Association or afterwards. When she didn’t come I thought she’d given up on me. It was quite a relief.’

‘Did Dorothea tell you where she intended to go after leaving here yesterday afternoon?’

‘I’m not sure. She said so much I found it rather exhausting.’

‘Please,’ he said. ‘ Do try to remember.’

She looked up at him. ‘Of course. Don’t misunderstand me, Inspector. Despite what I said, I liked Dorothea Cassidy and admired her conviction. I was jealous of it. I’m not deliberately trying to obstruct your investigation.’

He stood up and moved towards her to look out of the window. The curtains of Walter Tanner’s front room were drawn against the prying eyes of the neighbours. A uniformed policeman stood outside.

‘She was going to see Clive Stringer’s mother,’ Emily Bowman said suddenly. ‘We saw Clive leave the building and walk towards the bus stop over there and Dorothea said, “Poor Clive, I don’t know how he’s going to react to it all.’”

‘Did she explain what she meant?’

‘No.’

‘You have heard,’ Ramsay said, ‘ that Clive Stringer was killed this afternoon?’

She would not meet his eyes. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’d heard.’

‘Were you here all afternoon? Did you see him?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘ I noticed he’d gone missing when your sergeant gave me the lift to the hospital. I should have said something then, but it was always happening. He frequently wandered off.’

‘And later this afternoon?’ he persisted. ‘ Did you see anything then?’

She shook her head.

‘I was in this chair,’ she said, ‘but I was asleep. The treatment always makes me tired.’

‘You knew them both,’ he said. ‘You must have some ideas. Tell me about them.’

Of all the people he had talked to that day he thought she saw the situation most clearly. At first she was suspicious. She thought he was flattering her, then she saw the ghost of her old lover and she began to speak. She wanted to show him how perceptive she was, how clever.

‘Dorothea was a fanatic,’ she said. ‘I didn’t realise to what extent until she came here yesterday. She was ruled by her conscience, by principle. I suppose I should find that admirable but it didn’t make her easy to get on with. Principles are all very well but you shouldn’t let them get out of hand. She thought compromise was wicked.’

Ramsay said nothing. Was this leading anywhere or was it Emily’s response to being lectured the day before?

‘She would have had more sense if she’d had a family of her own,’ she said. ‘She could never have children. She tried to accept it but it wasn’t easy for her. I was late having a family and I know what it was like – watching your friends with babies, holding them, feeling jealous every time you saw a woman in a maternity smock in the street. It affected her. If she had had children perhaps she wouldn’t have felt the need to look after the rest of us so much.’

‘Did she treat you all like children?’

She nodded. ‘She thought she knew what was best for us.’

‘And Clive?’ he asked. ‘Where did he fit in?’

‘He was a ready-made son. Dependent, simple as a five-year-old, desperate for affection. What more could she want? We thought she was being so kind, so generous. But it wasn’t good for the lad. He already had a mother. It was a dangerous way to carry on. It confused him.’

‘What are you saying?’ he said. ‘Do you know who killed them?’

She shook her head, disappointed, because he could not understand that she only wanted to explain how things were.

‘She had another ready-made son,’ he said. ‘The stepson Patrick. Did she try to mother him too?’

‘She tried,’ Emily said, ‘but the last thing he wanted was mothering.’ Ramsay looked at her.

‘She was an attractive woman,’ she said. ‘She charmed them all. She couldn’t help it. She probably enjoyed it. We all like a bit of flattery.’

‘But Patrick Cassidy has a girlfriend.’

‘That makes no difference.’ She spoke sharply because he was questioning her judgement. ‘I saw the way he looked at her. The vicar saw it too but his head’s so deep in the sand he wouldn’t do anything about it. It wasn’t healthy the three of them living there.’

Ramsay remembered the brooding, unhappy poems in Patrick’s room and thought they must have been written for Dorothea, not Imogen.

‘I see,’ he said. And he felt he knew Dorothea Cassidy for the first time. She had charmed him too, even in death.

They sat in silence. Outside it was almost dark. He stared blankly out of the window and he saw the case, as if he had come to it freshly, with a new perspective. He thought of Joss Corkhill’s evidence and of something Walter Tanner had said. He thought of Clive’s divided loyalties and his obsession with time. He knew, then, who had killed Dorothea Cassidy.

Now he was left with the problem of what to do with Emily Bowman. He could hardly ask her to promise, as Dorothea had done, not to kill herself. Emily Bowman seemed to guess what he was thinking.

‘Don’t worry, Inspector,’ she said. ‘The moment’s past. I won’t do anything melodramatic. At least not tonight.’

He paused. The last thing he wanted was to offend her. ‘Does this treatment, which causes the discomfort, go on indefinitely?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘Thank God. Only two more weeks.’

‘It might be better,’ he said, ‘to postpone a decision until then.’

‘So it might,’ she said and smiled at him.

‘Would you like company?’ he said.

She smiled again. ‘Yes. Send Annie in to see me. She can make me some of her dreadful tea and talk about the men in her life.’

Outside it seemed hotter, more humid. When he swung open the double-glazed door from Armstrong House to the street it was quite noisy too. From across the river there was traditional fairground music and a siren which blew every time one of the rides reached a climax of speed. Occasionally a woman’s scream tore through the background sound. By now the carnival parade would be over, the floats drawn up on Abbey Meadow in a circle like a Wild West wagon train. The participants would be dispersing to the fair and the pubs. Soon the whole senseless performance would be over for another year.

Ramsay sat in the car and spoke urgently into the radio to Hunter. They would need a search warrant, he said. They might have some trouble getting a conviction without Dorothea’s diary and handbag, and he thought he knew where they might be found. Only then did he tell Hunter who they were looking for. He gave the sergeant no time for questions.

‘Bring them in,’ he said. ‘I have to speak to them both.’

He left his car where it was, in Armstrong Street, close to Walter Tanner’s front door. Perhaps I should speak to him, he thought. Check the details first. But he knew by now how desperate the murderer had become and that there was no time. It would be impossible to park in the centre of Otterbridge. This was as close as he could hope to get, so he walked down the quiet street towards the small gate which led to the park.

The policeman on duty there seemed surprised to see him, but recognised him and let him through without a word. There was no one else about. The respectable elderly residents had their curtains drawn against the noise and everyone else would be in town. The festival gave a legitimate excuse for them to drink too much, for rowdy exhibitionism. They would tell each other that it was tradition.