Ann Cleeves - A Lesson in Dying

‘I don’t have any problem,’ he said. He was confused by her attitude. Previously he had always found her so helpful and understanding. Perhaps the power of running the school has gone to her head, he thought.

‘It’s about Mr Medburn,’ he said. ‘I think you know more about him than you’ve told the police.’

Without a word she stood aside and let him in.

She took him into the kitchen and he chose a chair with his back to the sea. He felt safer that way. She must have been shopping because there was a cardboard box waiting to be unpacked on the table. She thought he might at least have waited to be invited to sit down and she remained standing, looking down at him, to make the point. He felt her hostility and realized that her privacy was important to her. Perhaps after all it would have been better to talk to her at school.

‘Have you seen the newspapers?’ he asked.

She nodded. ‘Poor Kitty Medburn,’ she said. ‘They’re making her out to be some kind of monster.’

He felt in his pocket for the comforting packet of cigarettes, but realized it would not do to light one.

‘I don’t think she killed Medburn,’ he said. ‘She wasn’t that sort of coward.’

Irene Hunt raised her eyebrows. ‘I think we would all have been capable of killing Harold Medburn,’ she said.

‘Was he blackmailing you?’

There, he thought, and I meant to be tactful.

She did not answer directly. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said coldly. ‘I don’t understand what business this is of yours.’

‘Kitty Medburn’s a friend,’ he said. ‘I’m going to prove that she’s innocent.’

He thought for a moment that she was going to laugh. After all, who could blame her? He was a school caretaker, a retired miner with no education or skill. But she did not laugh. She turned away from him and filled a kettle with water.

‘Wouldn’t it be better to leave it to the police?’ she asked.

‘The police think Kitty killed him.’

Her back was still turned to him. She spooned tea into a pot.

‘Was he blackmailing you?’ Jack asked more gently.

‘Yes,’ she said. She sat slowly in a chair by the table. Her face was blank with thought.

‘There was a woman who came to the church looking for you,’ he said. ‘Did that have something to do with it?’

She looked up suddenly, surprised, impressed perhaps that he had found out so much. She nodded.

‘That was my daughter,’ she said. ‘My illegitimate daughter. She was born while I was still very young. I was seventeen. My parents persuaded me to place her for adoption. Then an act was passed which allowed adopted children to trace their natural mothers. Anne came to Heppleburn to look for me. She went to the church. I suppose she thought she could go there with confidence. And she met Harold Medburn.’

‘Would it have been so dreadful,’ Jack asked, ‘if people knew that you had an illegitimate child?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘Of course not. Not at that time. It would have been awkward and unpleasant but not so dreadful. I could have dealt with that. But he wasn’t threatening me. He was threatening that he would tell Anne’s family. Her husband hadn’t wanted her to look for me. I’m not sure why. Perhaps he thought I must be a wicked woman who would bring depravity and destruction into his happy home. She had come to Heppleburn against his wishes and without his knowledge. The marriage wasn’t a happy one but she was determined to sustain it because of the children. She confided all this to Harold Medburn on her first visit to the church. He told me that he would inform her husband that she had found me unless I paid him.’ She looked seriously at Jack. ‘I had betrayed my daughter once,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t do it again.’

‘And you’ve been paying him ever since?’

She nodded, and gave a sad, unnatural laugh. ‘Do you know what’s so ironic?’ she said. ‘ There would have been no need to pay him any more. She had decided to separate from her husband. Her children have grown up so she doesn’t feel the need to pretend any longer. I’d decided that I’d made my last payment and then he died. I missed the satisfaction of telling him he wouldn’t get more money from me.’

He knew she would want no sympathy.

‘Can I speak to your daughter?’ he asked.

‘No,’ she said. ‘ I’ll not have her involved in this. You’ll have to trust that what I’ve told you is true.’

Jack tried to remember when Miss Hunt had first come to the school. The village had been more isolated then and he thought it must have been a big event, the arrival of an attractive young woman. He could not picture her, but could remember the gossip that surrounded her, the excitement she had generated. She had spoken differently from them. In post-war austerity her clothes had been expensive, the envy of all the local women.

‘You aren’t local,’ he said. ‘ You didn’t come from the north-east.’

‘No,’ she said bitterly. ‘ My parents banished me from the civilized world.’

‘Who was the father of your child?’

He realized at once that he had made a mistake. She was white with anger. ‘ That’s an impertinance!’ she cried. He was a child again, reprimanded for a rudeness he had never intended. ‘The father of my child has no relevance to this. He would never be mixed up with anything so sordid.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean to upset you.’ He longed to take a cigarette from the packet in his coat pocket, but was afraid of provoking her to more anger. He saw then that she had begun to cry.

‘I loved him,’ she said. ‘There hasn’t been a day for forty years when I’ve not thought about him.’

How sad, he thought, how pathetic to be so obsessed with the past.

‘Then you’ll understand,’ he said, ‘ why I need to help Kitty.’

‘Yes,’ she said softly. ‘I suppose I understand.’

She stood up briskly and dried her eyes on a large white handkerchief. She brought a teapot and two mugs to the table. The admission that they had something important in common encouraged him. He took it for granted now that she would help him. She unpacked the brown cardboard box of shopping until she found a fruit cake. She cut two slices and handed one to him on a brown earthenware plate.

‘When I first came to Heppleburn I tried to make friends with Kitty Medburn,’ she said. ‘Harold was assistant master at the school then and we were a similar age. But she seemed suspicious of me. She made it clear that I wasn’t welcome in their home. I found it hurtful. Everything here was so strange and I felt completely alone.’

‘That would have been Harold,’ he said. ‘Kitty wouldn’t have meant to be unkind.’

‘Perhaps.’

He wanted to make the most of her new cooperation and refused to be distracted by her memories.

‘Did you go into Medburn’s room on Saturday afternoon?’ he asked.

She thought. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I needed more Sello-tape to put up the decorations. He always kept a hoard in his desk.’

‘Did you see the gown there?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘The police have asked me that and I can’t remember.’

‘Did you notice if anyone else went into the office?’

She shook her head. ‘How was he killed?’ she asked suddenly. ‘I don’t understand what happened.’

He shrugged. ‘I don’t know,’ he said helplessly.

‘Why don’t you ask Ramsay?’

‘I don’t like to.’

‘That’s ridiculous!’ she said, turning into a teacher again. ‘You won’t get Kitty free with that attitude.’

‘I don’t think I’m very good at this,’ he said. ‘ Perhaps I should leave it to the police after all.’

‘Don’t give up,’ she said. She felt sorry for him. She had never realized before how sensitive he was. He had been a little man in a brown overall who mended the school’s central heating. But she could not believe that his investigation would produce a result.