Ann Cleeves - Murder in My Backyard

“No,” Ramsay said. The last thing he wanted was Jack Robson frightening off Henshaw before they had proof. “We have to be discreet, you know, and it’s a police matter now. But you can help all the same.”

“How?” Robson asked. “Just tell me, man. I’ll do anything I can.”

“I’ll need a list of names,” Ramsay said. “ Members of residents’ associations or community groups living in areas where Henshaw’s recently won a planning appeal. The activists you were talking about. The people who do all the work. Can you do that?”

Robson was disappointed. He had expected something more exciting. He wanted a challenge.

“Aye,” he said. “ I can do that for you. I can think of someone now who led the group in Wytham before those houses went up. Her name’s Jane Massie. She’s involved in everything that goes on in Wytham. I’ll write down the address for you. She lives in that big house opposite the new estate. You can have a longer list later if you need it.”

Ramsay nodded gravely. He stood on the front step and watched Robson walk quickly down the road on his way to work in the school.

In the kitchen Ramsay emptied the teapot and rinsed the mugs. He preferred to have things tidy to return home to. He was determined in his new home not to descend into bachelor squalor. As he tidied the room, he was testing Robson’s theory against the facts. It might work, he thought. It might just work. But who would Henshaw have approached in Brinkbonnie to influence the opposition? Charlie Elliot? Fred Elliot? Tom Kerr? All were prominent members of the Save Brinkbonnie group and possible candidates. He felt he needed to spend more time in Brinkbonnie, listening to the gossip, getting a feel for the place, before he could make a sensible judgement.

But that would have to wait. The most immediate concern was to talk to Max Laidlaw. Ramsay thought that the doctor would be less able to stand up to questioning than Mary Raven. He was weak and indecisive. Besides, the police had the illegal prescription given to Stella, and faced with that evidence he might be persuaded to admit his relationship with Mary. An affair with one of the practise’s patients would provide another motive for murder, Ramsay thought, if Alice Parry had found out about it, and as he was always telling Hunter, it was important to keep his options open.

Ramsay drove to the Health Centre in Otterbridge, thinking that it might be more tactful to talk to the doctor there than at home. He waited patiently behind an old woman whose joints were swollen with arthritis while she collected a repeat prescription, then asked to see Dr. Laidlaw.

“I’m sorry,” the receptionist said, hardly looking up. Dr. Laidlaw’s taken a few days off for his aunt’s funeral.”

When the inspector arrived at the Laidlaws’ house, he thought at first that no-one was there. It was a sunny, breezy day and he had expected children in the garden, washing on the line, but the house was quiet and in shadow. He was about to give up and turn away when Judy Laidlaw came to the door.

“Inspector!” she said. His presence frightened her. “ What is it? Come in.”

“I was looking for your husband,” Ramsay said. Then, in an attempt to put her at ease: “It’s very quiet here today. Has he taken the children out?”

“No,” she said. “ The children are with a friend for the morning. Max is out, I’m afraid.”

She led him automatically down the bare wooden stairs to the basement kitchen.

“Could you tell me when he’ll be back?” Ramsay asked. “It’s quite important.”

She hesitated, turning away from him so he could not see her face. “ No,” she said quietly. “I don’t know where he is. We had an argument yesterday at lunchtime and I’ve not seen him since.”

Then she turned back to face him and he saw she was crying, her body heaving with frightened, silent sobs. “I’m so worried about him,” she said. “ I think something dreadful has happened to him. It’s not like him to stay out all night without telling me.”

Ramsay stood awkwardly, not sure what to do, how to comfort her. He would have liked to put his arm around her but was frightened the gesture would be misinterpreted. She seemed so desperate for affection.

“Shall I make some tea?” he said. “Then you can tell me all about it. Or perhaps you’d prefer me to leave you alone. I could come back later with a policewoman.”

“No,” she said. Her eyes were raw from crying and he realised she must have been sobbing all night. “ Don’t go! Don’t leave me alone! I’ll make the tea.”

“There’ve been no accidents, you know,” he said, trying to reassure her. “ Nothing serious. I would have heard about anything like that.”

“Oh, well,” she said, trying to smile. “I’m just being silly. He’ll come back, I expect, when he’s stopped being angry. It was my fault for asking all those questions. When you’re on your own, you imagine all sorts of dreadful things.”

“Yes,” he said. “I suppose you do. What questions were you asking?”

“It was about Alice,” she said. “She and Max had a private conversation on the night of her death. I wanted to know what it was about.”

“And he wouldn’t tell you?”

She shook her head. “ It upset him. He said it showed I didn’t trust him. He accused me of thinking he killed her. But it wasn’t that.”

“Can you tell me what you thought the conversation between Alice and your husband was about? I don’t want to upset you, and I’ll treat it as confidential unless it’s important, but it might help me find out who did kill her.”

“It wasn’t Max,” she said, the hysteria returning. “He wouldn’t have done a thing like that.”

“Tell me now,” Ramsay said firmly. “Why do you think Mrs. Parry wanted to talk to Max?”

“I think she’d found out that Max was having an affair,” Judy said quickly. She was blushing.

“And was he? Having an affair?”

“I think so. I didn’t want to believe it at first. I found a letter in his jacket pocket once. It was beautiful, very tender, very loving, very lyrical. I’ve never written anything like that to him. I suppose I’ve always taken our relationship for granted. He told me it was from a patient, an elderly, neurotic patient who was infatuated with him. All of the doctors in the practise had received love letters at one time or another from her, he said. Now it was his turn.”

“And you believed him?”

“Because I wanted to.”

“Was the letter signed?”

She shook her head. “It didn’t even start ‘Dear Max,’” she said. “It was set out more like a poem.”

“Did you recognise the handwriting?”

She shook her head again.

“Could it have been written by Stella Laidlaw?” he asked. It was an explanation for the scene he had witnessed yesterday, which he could not ignore.

“Stella!” She seemed astonished. “No, of course not. Stella wouldn’t write love letters to Max. She has hardly enough warmth to give to her husband and daughter. She wouldn’t have any affection left over for a lover.”

“You’re certain the handwriting wasn’t hers?”

“No,” she said. “I couldn’t say that. It never occurred to me that it could be Stella. I was in a state when I found it. I made a big scene. I didn’t look at it very rationally. Why do you think it might have been written by Stella?”

“Dr. Laidlaw went to her house yesterday afternoon,” Ramsay said. “Have you any idea why he should go to visit her?”

“No,” Judy said. “None at all. He always seemed to dislike her.”

“She wasn’t a patient of your husband?”

“No,” Judy said. “Of course not. James and Stella have their own doctor with a practise on that side of town. He’s much more their type, a friend of James’s. They went to school together.”