Ann Cleeves - A Lesson in Dying

Miss Hunt had answered his questions readily enough. She admitted to having been blackmailed, but then refused to give Ramsay her daughter’s name and address.

‘I can find it out,’ he said, with a spasm of desperation and spite.

‘I can’t stop you doing that,’ she said, cool and haughty, ‘though I don’t imagine it’s as easy as you think. She changed her name of course when she was adopted and when she married, and she’s moved several times. Even if you find her it’s not important. I’ll know that I’ve not betrayed her.’

Ramsay had set a constable to trace the daughter but without much urgency or hope of success. There had not yet been a result. Miss Hunt had been paying blackmail to Medburn for years. After that time it surely must have become a habit, a minor irritation and hardly a motive for murder. Besides, if she were to be believed she no longer had any reason to pay.

Out in the corridor Miss Hunt caught his eye and walked away. Matthew Carpenter stood up suddenly and began to clean the blackboard. The rubber was dusty and chalk was smeared across the blackboard, despite the young man’s vigorous, almost frantic, actions. Ramsay watched with a growing joy. Carpenter was frightened. He knew he had to act carefully now. It was vital to show that the teacher had access to Heminevrin. He could not take Carpenter in on suspicion for questioning without that proof. He had done that to Kitty Medburn and his superiors would need evidence before they would allow it to happen again. They were too sensitive to criticism by the press.

‘You live above a chemist’s shop, don’t you?’ he asked.

Matthew looked round quickly and the blackboard rubber banged to the floor.

‘Yes,’ he said as he bent to pick it up.

‘Is there any way into it from your flat?’

‘No. I’ve got a separate entrance.’

‘So there’s no way you could get into the shop if it’s closed?’

‘Oh yes,’ Matthew said. ‘The pharmacist rented the flat to me on the condition that I keep an eye on the shop. It’s been broken into a couple of times and sometimes the burglar alarm goes off by mistake. I’ve got a spare key.’

He seemed unaware that he was making any dramatic revelation and Ramsay’s conviction that he was the murderer was shaken by Carpenter’s frankness. The policeman felt he needed time for reflection. He was too involved in the case. He had spent too much time in the grey terraced streets of the village and the school on the hill. The seaside walk along the promenade with Patty Atkins seemed to have happened a long time ago.

While he was interviewing Matthew Carpenter, Ramsay saw Patty hovering in the playground and the children pulling at her coat, trying to persuade her to go. He thought at first she was waiting for her father, then remembered he had asked her to speak to Hannah Wilcox. He was so convinced that the answer to the murders lay in the school that he was sure she would have little information of value. He was touched, though, by the effort she had made. He remembered the walk along the seafront with pleasure, because it had been a break from the depression of Heppleburn and because she had not criticized him. He was so used to being alone on this case that her company had been comforting. As soon as the interview with Matthew was over he rushed out to see her, but she had gone. He stood in the empty playground in the dusk, feeling he had been deserted.

Because she felt that the information from Hannah Wilcox was so important, Patty left a message for Ramsay at Otterbridge police station. The policeman there was unpleasantly insistent that she should talk to him rather than to his superior, but she refused. She had the impression that he was sneering at Ramsay. She felt she owed a loyalty to Ramsay and besides, although she would not admit it to herself, she knew his response to her message would provide an excuse for them to meet.

They did meet, but almost by chance, the next day at lunch-time in the main street of the village. He still had not returned her call and she had been restless all morning. Perhaps she went to the post office in the hope of seeing him. She stood in the street and looked at the advertisements in the window. Mrs Mount was advertising for a care assistant to work in the nursing home. Angela must have told her already that she would not help there. Then she turned round and he was standing on the pavement beside her, apparently in a dream.

‘I tried to see you,’ she said. ‘There’s something I think you should know. Have you time to talk to me now?’

‘Of course!’ The preoccupation disappeared and the flattering manner returned as if at the flick of a switch. He can’t help it, she thought.

‘Can we get something to eat at the Northumberland Arms?’ he asked. ‘We can have lunch together and you can talk to me then.’

It’ll be all round the village in an hour, she thought, that I’ve been to the pub with the good-looking policeman. She wondered briefly what her husband would think, but she nodded and followed him into the lounge bar. Jim would understand. She chose a table in a corner, furthest away from the bar, under a poster of last year’s leek show. Ramsay would not want to be overheard. They ate beef sandwiches and drank lager while she told him about Hannah’s discovery that Paul Wilcox too had been threatened by blackmail, that Wilcox had been in the school house on the night of the bonfire and that someone else had been there too.

Ramsay listened with great care. ‘He didn’t give her any idea who that was?’

Patty shook her head.

‘So Angela Brayshaw was involved with Wilcox too,’ Ramsay said. He was thinking aloud. ‘She gets around, that woman, doesn’t she? A regular little gold-digger. Your father saw them together but I couldn’t see them as a couple.’ He looked at Patty. ‘Tell me a bit more about her.’ He was asking out of interest. He was still committed to the theory that Matthew Carpenter was involved with both murders.

‘I don’t know her very well,’ Patty said, ‘although her family have always lived in the village. Her dad died when she was young and apparently her mum used the insurance money to send her to a private school in Jesmond. Mrs Mount, her mother, was always a snob. She runs that private nursing home in the big house on the way to Morpeth and Angela helped there in the school holidays. She was never allowed out to parties or discos with us. Her mam thought we’d lead her astray. She had dreams of Angela going away to college, I think, but she didn’t do very well at school. I remember talking to her once on the top of the bus into Newcastle when we were both sixteen. She wanted to work in a smart hairdresser’s and do day release at the tech but Mrs Mount wouldn’t have it. Too common for her only daughter. In the end Angela worked in the nursing home too.’

‘I see,’ he said, almost to himself. ‘ So she would have learned to lift there. She would have had to lift the old people into bed. Even though she’s tiny she’s quite strong.’

‘You think she killed Harold Medburn for his money?’ She was beyond caring now who had killed the headmaster. She just wanted the thing cleared up. ‘There were all those rumours that she owed a lot to her mother and was having to work at the nursing home to pay it back. She always hated it there. She won’t need to do that now.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t think that. But it’s important to keep an open mind. Has she got a car?’

Patty nodded. ‘ Her mother bought it for her when she was separated. It’s a Mini.’

‘Go on,’ he said. ‘She started work at the nursing home. What happened then?’

‘She married David Brayshaw,’ Patty said. ‘ I never met him but everyone said he was far too nice for her.’ Then, realizing how bitchy she must sound she added: ‘Of course she was very pretty.’