Ann Cleeves - A Lesson in Dying

‘Patty,’ he said. ‘What is it?’

‘Paul Wilcox is dead,’ she said. ‘ I found his body. By the side of the lane that leads to the coast past the old mill.’

She was aware of the sudden silence, of the carefully controlled disbelief.

‘Was it a road accident?’ Jim asked and she realized that he at least believed her. That had never occurred to her and she felt a spasm of relief. ‘Perhaps it was,’ she said. ‘Perhaps it was a hit and run accident. He was in the ditch.’

Then Ramsay was sitting beside her on the settee, asking her questions. In his gentle, intimate voice he probed through her panic, demanded her attention. Where exactly was the body? Had she told anyone else about it? Did she pass anyone on the road? Was there perhaps a car that she recognized?

She answered as calmly as she could, because she knew that was what he wanted and she wanted to please him. Then he was gone and she burst into tears. Upstairs the children were shouting and splashing in the bath and the sound of their laughter echoed around the house.

The news of Paul Wilcox’s death did nothing to diminish Jack Robson’s good humour. If anything it made him more excited. If it were murder, he said, there would be no reason to keep Kitty Medburn in custody. The police would have to release her immediately. There couldn’t after all be two murderers in a village the size of Heppleburn.

His lack of sensitivity increased Patty’s feeling of unreality. It was out of character. Her father seemed a different sort of man. He’s obsessed by that woman, she thought. Perhaps she’s a witch after all and she’s cast a spell on him. Then she remembered what the vicar had said about the friendship being founded on fantasy. He’s turned her into a saint, she thought, or an angel. He’s going to be disappointed when he realizes she’s an ordinary woman, like me. She’s not a witch. But she’s not an angel either.

Eventually, to their relief, Jack fell asleep, almost in mid-sentence. The incident in the school house and the excitement of his meeting with Kitty Medburn had exhausted him. Patty and Jim waited in silence for Ramsay’s return.

It was nine o’clock when the policeman finally knocked at the door. The house was quiet. The children were in bed and Jack was still sleeping. Jim sat beside her and felt awkward because there was nothing to do to help. She would not talk to him. She felt that by an effort of will she could arrange the facts so that Paul Wilcox had not been killed after all. She could persuade herself that she had made a mistake. She had seen not Paul Wilcox but a bundle of rags that had been dumped in the ditch. And if he were dead, it might be possible to convince herself that there had been an accident. He had been knocked down by a frightened driver on the grey, badly lit road. She heard the knock at the door but was so tense with the strain of these thoughts that she could not move. Jim let Ramsay into the house and the policeman walked straight into the living room as if he were a family friend.

‘I can’t stay long,’ he said in a low voice. He seemed eager not to wake Jack. ‘As you can imagine there’s a lot to do.’

‘So it was Paul Wilcox?’ Patty said. She had known all along that it was.

Ramsay nodded.

‘Was there anything I should have done?’ Patty said. ‘ Perhaps I should have tried to revive him. But I thought perhaps I shouldn’t touch him.’

And I couldn’t have done it, she thought. I couldn’t have got any closer to him. I would have been ill.

‘No,’ Ramsay said firmly. ‘There was nothing you could have done.’

He began to leave the room when suddenly Jack woke up with a start, like a character in a badly written situation comedy. It was so like comic acting that Patty wondered if he had been asleep at all.

‘What’s going on?’ he said. ‘What happened?’

‘Paul Wilcox is dead,’ she said.

‘You told me that earlier,’ he said. ‘But how did he die? Was it a car accident? Or was he murdered?’

‘Mr Wilcox was murdered,’ Ramsay said reluctantly. She thought he was embarrassed as if there was something he had failed to tell them. ‘It’s too early to be certain, but it seems that he was strangled.’

‘There you are!’ Jack struggled out of his chair. He had lost all trace of fatigue. ‘You’ll have to let Kitty go now.’ He was already planning her return home. He would get champagne, the real stuff. He had never in his life drunk champagne.

Ramsay was silent for a moment, as if considering how much to say.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘It’s too late for that.’

‘What do you mean?’ Jack was puzzled. ‘You know that she can’t have killed Paul Wilcox so it’s obvious that Kitty isn’t the murderer.’

‘Oh yes,’ Ramsay said. ‘That’s obvious now. I don’t believe Mrs Medburn killed her husband.’

‘Well!’ Jack was beginning to get angry. ‘When are you going to let her go?’

‘I’m sorry,’ Ramsay repeated. ‘ I’ve got some terrible news for you.’ He hesitated. ‘Mrs Medburn’s dead. She committed suicide this afternoon. She hanged herself.’

‘Why?’ Jack cried. ‘I told her I’d get her out. Why didn’t she trust me?’

He turned on Ramsay. ‘You killed her. If you’d let her go earlier she’d still be alive.’

‘No,’ Ramsay said. ‘ She was never frightened of captivity.’

‘Then what was going on? What were they doing to her in that place?’

‘Nothing.’ Ramsay spoke gently. ‘She left a note for you. Perhaps you’ll understand then. She was afraid, I think, of being released.’

After Kitty Medburn’s suicide Ramsay, according to his colleagues lost all sense of proportion. He spent all day and most of the night in Heppleburn and if he slept at all it was in the chair in his office.

‘It’s the divorce,’ Hunter said. ‘It’s finally caught up with him. That and guilt because the old lady killed herself.’

Hunter, who had always wanted an inspector’s salary, watched Ramsay’s slow disintegration with satisfaction, and took as little part as possible in the inquiry. So Ramsay ran the investigation almost alone and made up his own rules as he went along. He felt he had nothing to lose.

Monday, the day after the second murder, Angela Brayshaw received the letter for which she had been waiting. It had been posted on the preceding Thursday and had been unaccountably delayed in the post. If it had arrived on time, she thought, she would have been saved a troublesome and unpleasant weekend. The letter was from Harold Medburn’s solicitors and informed her that she was the sole beneficiary of his estate. She wondered briefly how her mother would take the news.

Jim had offered to stay at home with Patty. She was touched by his concern but sent him to work. She preferred to be alone. Besides, she felt that only the normal domestic routine would prevent her from dissolving into panic. There was nothing to prevent her following the usual pattern. Jack had insisted on going home the night before. They were worried about him – he seemed so blank and withdrawn – and they had not wanted to let him go, but Patty could understand that he needed to be alone and it was a relief to have him out of the house. So she tried to put the horror of the day before from her mind. Surprisingly she had dreamed not about Paul Wilcox, but about Ramsay. In normal times she might have been concerned by this obsession with a stranger, by the dreams, the excitement. She always considered herself happily married and avoided contacts which might make her dissatisfied with Jim. Now, with her security shattered anything seemed possible and she clung to the image of Ramsay, as if he alone could make her happy again. From the beginning she had been attracted by him. It seemed now he was the only man strong enough to set her world to rights.