Ann Cleeves - A Lesson in Dying

‘I’d never kill myself. I’m no coward.’

‘No,’ she said, ‘but if they find your body that’s what they’ll think. The bottle of Heminevrin’s still nearly full. I’m stronger than you and I’ve got a gun. I’ll take you to your home and eventually someone will find your body there. Poor Jack, they’ll say, her death turned his mind. He was crazy with love.’

‘I’m not crazy,’ he said before he could stop himself.

‘Are you suggesting that I am?’ she spat at him. ‘Because I was looking after the only person I had the opportunity of loving?’

‘That’s not true,’ he said. ‘You had plenty of opportunity, a fine young woman like you. Perhaps you were crazy even then, brooding about that man who got you in trouble.’

He had provoked her too far. She stood up and pointed the gun towards him. Suddenly there was a knock at the door. She swung round, confused and bewildered as if the noise had emptied her mind of all thought.

‘Keep away!’ she shouted. ‘ Keep away or I’ll kill him.’

There was another knock. She prowled towards the window and looked out but the porch light was off and there was nothing to see. Jack sat quietly, unmoving.

‘Who is it?’ she shouted. ‘Who’s there?’

The unknown person knocked on the door again. The noise and the lack of response seemed to irritate her. She edged towards the door.

Suddenly there was the sound of breaking glass as the back door into the kitchen was broken. The room seemed full of policemen. Ramsay was there and Irene Hunt had collapsed on the floor, an old and ugly woman, her face wrinkled and running with tears.

‘She must be mad,’ Jack said. He felt he had to make an excuse for her. He hoped they would treat her gently.

‘She would have killed you,’ the policeman said. ‘You’d better come home. I promised Patty I’d get you back safely.’

As they walked up the lane to where the cars had been parked out of earshot of the bungalow, Jack found that the fog was lifting in patches and he could see stars above his head.

Patty’s small living room seemed full of people. Ramsay was there, quite at home in Jim’s chair, his legs stretched out in front of the fire. Hannah Wilcox had turned up on the doorstep without warning. She had heard about Jack’s disappearance, she said, and wondered if she could do anything, to help. This unexpected gesture of friendship and support pleased Patty almost more than the safe arrival of her father. She pulled Hannah in and persuaded her to stay, although she said it was a family affair and they would want to be left alone. Now Hannah sat on the floor in a corner, trying unsuccessfully to be inconspicuous, because whenever she spoke or moved she demanded attention. Jim, solid and relieved, wished the visitors would go away so life could return to normal. He drank beer and handed a can to Jack, and after some hesitation to Ramsay. Now he would never have to see the policeman again he was prepared to be friendly. The room was very hot. Patty remembered what Hannah had said about shock making you feel cold and had turned the heating on full.

‘How did you find me then?’ Jack asked. He was more relaxed than anyone.

‘It was Inspector Ramsay,’ Patty said. Jim recognized the admiration in her voice and seemed to shrink.

‘It was easy enough to find out which coach you took,’ Ramsay said. ‘That was routine police work. Matthew Carpenter had told me that he came from there. The local police sent someone round to interview his mother. She said you’d been to see her and admitted that she’d phoned Miss Hunt. She didn’t know Miss Hunt was involved with the murders, of course. She just thought you were going to make trouble for her, as Medburn had done. Then it was obvious to go to the bungalow. When we saw your suitcase in her car, we knew you must be inside.’

‘She threatened to kill me,’ Jack said. ‘She was going to make it look like suicide.’ It sounded very impressive. He thought everyone would make a fuss of him for months.

Hannah Wilcox cleared her throat to speak and they all looked at her. There was a brief silence except for the muffled sound of next door’s television. ‘Did she kill Paul?’ she asked. ‘I need to know.’

‘Yes,’ Ramsay said. ‘Because he’d seen her at the school house.’

‘But I thought she had an alibi. She was with Matthew Carpenter.’

‘That was clever,’ Ramsay said. ‘Matthew realized he was under suspicion and he was frightened. Miss Hunt told him she was prepared to protect him and persuaded him to lie to me. “Tell them I got to your house an hour earlier than I actually did,” she said. “I know you’re not a murderer. I’ll back up anything that you say.” And in persuading him, of course, she provided an alibi for herself.’

Hannah lit a cigarette and passed the packet to Jack. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘At least now I know what happened.’

‘Poor Matthew,’ Patty said. ‘He’ll be shattered. Did he have no idea that she was his grandmother?’

‘No, why should he? He thought she was a kind teacher, close to retirement, who’d taken him under her wing.’

‘I was convinced that Angela Brayshaw was the murderer,’ Patty said. She was ashamed she had been so wrong. ‘It seems ridiculous now but her mother behaved so peculiarly when I went to Burnside.’

‘We’ve found out what all that was about,’ Ramsay said. Jack felt he was being patronizing to Patty. He had been no closer to finding the truth than her after all. ‘Mrs Mount was only too pleased to talk when she realized she was suspected of murder. Apparently she used to make all the residents of Burnside take Heminevrin at night, even those for whom it hadn’t been prescribed. I suppose it made life easier for her, but it’s against the law. Kitty Medburn found out what was going on there and she was shocked. She told Mrs Mount the home would have to change its way of operating or she’d tell the police. When you went for the interview and began asking questions about the drug, Mrs Mount thought Kitty had told Jack what she’d been up to. No wonder she overreacted.’

‘I misjudged Angela,’ Patty said. ‘How dreadful to think someone capable of murder!’ She would have to go to see Angela, she thought, and explain. ‘But I never imagined it was Miss Hunt.’

‘She had been twisted and bitter inside for forty years,’ Jack said, ‘without giving any sign of it at all. She told me Matthew was the only person she’d had a chance to love since her parents sent her away. Matthew was like her bairn and her man all together. She couldn’t keep that sort of pretence!’

‘What was her daughter like?’

‘Dark and pretty like Miss Hunt was twenty years ago. She’s unhappy too. She seemed to me to brood too much on the past.’

And isn’t that just what I’ve been doing, he thought, pretending that I was a young man again, and could change decisions made years ago?

‘How did you know that Matthew was Miss Hunt’s grandson?’ Ramsay asked. ‘Did she say something at school?’

Jack shook his head. ‘ I knew Carpenter’s home address,’ he said, ‘because occasionally he used to bring letters to school for me to post for him. Then on the night of the bonfire, just before I was hit on the head, I found a scrap of paper on Medburn’s desk. It had Irene Hunt’s name on it, but an address in the Midlands. Medburn must have written it when Anne Carpenter came to Heppleburn to find her mother. The address seemed familiar but I didn’t realize until later where I’d seen it before.’

‘You should have told me,’ Ramsay said.

‘Aye. Perhaps I should.’

The visitors left together – Ramsay offered to drive Hannah Wilcox home and as he helped her into the car Patty felt an ache of jealousy. She remembered the fast drive to Whitley Bay with him. That would be out of the question now. She would have to live by the old rules again. She and Jack were standing on the doorstep to see the guests off. Ramsay left Hannah in the car and returned to speak to them.