Ann Cleeves - Murder in My Backyard

He drove through the affluent suburbs of the town towards the river. The houses here were older, mock-Tudor mansions with long, sloping gardens and high walls to ensure privacy. Here the children would not be allowed into the street to play. Diana’s sister lived in one of these houses, close to the Otterbridge Lawn Tennis Club, and even approaching the area made him uneasy. He was reminded of awkward, tedious evenings of conversation when his main objective was to say as little as possible and Diana, as bored as he was, became increasingly more outrageous. Diana had always laughed at his discomfort. She had told him to relax and be himself. She loved him, she had said. Her family would, too, if he allowed them to get to know him. Besides, they were too boring to bother about. He did not have her confidence and had never found it that easy.

Ramsay drove onto the gravel drive and waited in the car for a moment, collecting his thoughts, deciding the most important questions to ask. When he walked towards the front door, he saw Stella Laidlaw staring at him from an upstairs window. She must have recognised him, but even after he had rung the doorbell and stood back onto the drive to wait, she did not move. Their eyes met and she stared at him with horror.

When at last she came to open the door, it might have been a different woman. She was smiling, gay, almost flirtatious, but managed just to miss the right tone. She asked him to sit by the fire, suggested that she make him coffee with an insistence that was embarrassing. She was trying too hard to make a good impression.

“Now, Inspector,” she said. “How can I help you?” But as she spoke, she glanced at the small gilt clock on the mantelpiece, and he thought that despite her hospitality she wanted him gone as soon as possible.

“You will have heard that Charlie Elliot was murdered,” he said.

“Yes,” she said, and giggled nervously. “And we all blamed poor Charlie for Alice Parry’s murder. You must feel rather foolish, Inspector, to have allowed another tragedy to occur.”

Ramsay ignored the comment and continued. “We must assume that there was some connection between both murders,” he said. “So I’m talking again to everyone who was in Brinkbonnie on Saturday night. How well did you know Charlie Elliot?”

“Not at all,” she said. “ I’m not even sure that I ever met him, though I go to Kerr’s garage for petrol sometimes and he might have served me there.”

“But you knew of him?”

“Oh,” she said. “I knew of him. Staying with Alice was like taking part in a soap opera. We had to listen to the story of everyone who lived in the village. Over and over again. Charlie Elliot was infatuated with Maggie Kerr and had dropped out of the army when he found out she’d separated from her husband. Then he and Tom Kerr had a fight and Tom punched him on the nose. That was a real scandal because Tom’s a pillar of the church and it was supposed to be a deadly secret, though most of the village must have heard about it in the end. According to Alice, he felt so guilty that he didn’t feel able to sack Charlie from the job in the garage although he was being such a pain in the arse and making Maggie’s life hell. It was quite romantic, but very tedious.”

“Did Alice have any idea how the situation between Elliot and Maggie could be resolved?” Ramsay asked.

“Endless ideas,” Stella said. “All totally impractical and rather interfering. She wasn’t the saint the others have made her out to be, you know, just a nosy old woman. She even talked at one time of having Maggie and the boys to stay as lodgers at the Tower, though goodness knows what damage that would have done.”

“Did she ever talk to Charlie about Maggie?”

“Probably, though she never said. She wouldn’t have told me, anyway. She’d know I’d not approve. Charlie would have told her to mind her own bloody business. And quite right, too.”

Again, as she finished talking, she glanced at the clock. Ramsay paused and changed the subject of the conversation. “I must ask you some questions about yesterday morning,” he said. “ Charlie Elliot was killed between five and six-thirty. I have to know where everyone involved in Mrs. Parry’s case was at that time. It’s a matter of elimination. I’m sure you understand.”

“I don’t know where James was,” she said. “Asleep, I presume. We slept in separate rooms on Monday night. He was very sweet about it but said I was so restless I kept him awake. I was in rather a state on Tuesday morning – I have trouble sometimes with my nerves and it was a bad day. He was there when I woke up.”

“Were you in your room all night?” Ramsay asked.

“No,” she said. “ If you must know, I find it so damned hard to sleep I got up in the early hours and went for a drive. I thought the speed might relax me and help me sleep. It usually does.”

“But it didn’t work?”

“No,” she said. “ It didn’t work.”

“What time did you go out and when did you get back?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “And I don’t know where I went, either. I just drove.”

“Do you and your husband each have a car?” Ramsay asked.

She nodded.

“And you took your car?”

“Yes, of course. It was parked outside the house. James keeps his in the garage.”

“So you didn’t notice whether your husband’s car was there or not when you left the house?”

“Of course it was there. Why wouldn’t it be there? What would James be doing driving round in the middle of the night?”

“But you didn’t see it?” Ramsay asked.

“No,” she agreed. “ I didn’t see it.”

“Do you have any social contact with your husband’s colleagues?” Ramsay asked.

“As little as possible,” she said.

“You don’t get on with them?”

“Oh,” she said. “ I get on with them. I get on with most people. But when they’re all together they just talk about work and I find that tiresome. James is almost obsessive about the Express. I tell him he should delegate more and that he cares more about the bloody paper than he does about me, but it doesn’t make any difference. It still takes up all his time.”

“Does James discuss his staff with you?”

“He discusses everything with me,” she said angrily, but he doubted if she stopped thinking about herself long enough to listen.

“There’s a young reporter,” he said. “ Mary Raven. We’d like to talk to her, but she’s proving a little elusive. You have no idea where she might be?”

Stella smiled and seemed pleased with herself. There was little indication that she was jealous of the woman or that she resented her.

“No,” she said. “I don’t know where she is. She’s got something of a reputation, you know. She drinks a lot and I’m afraid she might be a bit promiscuous. James can be rather pompous and doesn’t like it. I tell him it does him good to have someone young in the place. It stops him getting boring.”

She looked at the clock again and this time Ramsay had no excuse to stay. He felt frustrated. He felt he had achieved nothing from the interview. He knew that Stella had been performing for him and that he could trust nothing she had said. At the door she stood with the same fixed smile on her face and waited until he had driven into the street. Then she shut the door behind her.

Just after Ramsay had turned into the road, he had to stop at a pedestrian crossing to allow an elderly lady across the road. It was only because of the delay that he saw Max Laidlaw’s car drive through the gates and park outside the Laidlaws’ house. The inspector turned into a side street so that he had a view of the front of the house. He saw Max knock on the door and Stella answer it. She was obviously furious and in her anger she was very tall, very regal. She took something from Max’s hand and there was an exchange, possibly, thought Ramsay, an argument. Max turned and strode back to his car. He reversed it into the street at great speed; almost causing an accident, then drove off without noticing Ramsay’s car at all. Stella Laidlaw stood in the doorway watching the incident with a degree of satisfaction, posed as if for a photograph, framed by the buds of forsythia that grew on either side of it. Then she disappeared back into the house.