Ann Cleeves - Murder in My Backyard

“Has Stella been ill?”

“She had nervous trouble,” Judy said. “She was very depressed after Carolyn was born. Not just the normal baby blues a lot of mothers experience, but a real psychosis. She went to hospital for a while. She seemed well enough when she first came out, but she still has bouts of depression. She’s not very easy to live with. James never complains-he seems to adore her whatever she does. On bad days she can be rude and aggressive, and he has to go round apologising and explaining for her. I feel rather sorry for him. There doesn’t seem to be a lot that anyone can do.”

“James has never asked Max to treat her?”

“No, of course not. It’s not something Max is specially qualified in. James would be more likely to consult a specialist.”

There was a pause. Judy Laidlaw poured out tea, then hunted in a cupboard for biscuits. Ramsay waited until she was sitting down again.

“Yesterday afternoon your husband delivered a prescription to Mrs. Laidlaw. It was made out for a course of tranquilisers. Have you any explanation for his doing that?”

She shook her head. All the crying had dulled her, left her with a headache. She could not think clearly.

“I know Stella’s doctor doesn’t like her taking tranquilisers,” she said. “ I think she may have become dependent on them when she first came out of hospital. The dangers of dependence weren’t so well documented then. She’s complained to me sometimes that they’re the only things that help. She asked me if there was any equivalent she could buy over the counter. Of course, there isn’t.”

“So Max might have given Mrs. Laidlaw the prescription to help her, because he felt sorry for her?”

“No,” she said sharply. “ He wouldn’t do that. He’s a good doctor. He knows the rules. I can’t imagine why he would prescribe for her unless…” Her voice dropped.

“Unless?” he prompted.

“Unless she had put him under some sort of pressure. Max is weak. In some situations he might be prepared to take the easy way out.”

“And what might Mrs. Laidlaw be using to put pressure on your husband?”

“I don’t know!” she cried, and he realised he had pressed her too far, too quickly. “I just don’t know.”

“Perhaps,” he said gently, more the doctor himself now than the policeman, “perhaps we have come back again to Max’s affair.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Judy said. “ Stella wasn’t capable of loving anyone. I’ve explained already. She certainly wasn’t capable of writing that letter.”

“But perhaps,” he said more gently, still reassuring her with his voice, telling her that he knew how hard all this was for her, “perhaps she knew who did write it.”

“Blackmail!” Judy said. “You think Stella was blackmailing him about his lover.”

“Is that possible?”

The speed and certainty of her answer surprised him. “Yes,” Judy said. “She’s a bitch. I’d believe anything of her.”

She thought then that he was through, but he stayed on, pouring more tea for himself and for her, so that she knew his questions had not finished and she must brace herself again for another shock, more unpleasantness.

“You know who it is,” she said suddenly, as if the thing would be easier to bear if it were she who took the initiative. “ You know whom he’s been having an affair with.”

“I’ve an idea,” he said. “ I’ve no certainty.”

“Well,” she demanded. “ Tell me!”

“There’s a young reporter on the Express ,” he said, “called Mary Raven. She spoke to Alice Parry on the afternoon of her death. It’s possible, don’t you think, that she might have confided in the old lady about her love affair with Mrs. Parry’s nephew. Especially if the affair was at an end, going badly. Then Mrs. Parry asked to speak to Max in private. Don’t you think she might have been telling him to sort himself out, to come to a decision one way or another, that he wasn’t being fair to either of you? All evening Mary Raven waited in the churchyard outside the Tower. Don’t you think she was waiting for her secret lover, hoping that he would leave his wife, and then there would be no need to keep him secret anymore?”

“I know Mary,” Judy said, almost to herself. “ She comes here sometimes. I like her.” Then she turned to Ramsay, her voice hoarse and shrill with distress. “ What are you saying?” she asked. “Are you saying that Max and Mary did murder Alice? To stop their secret coming out? That’s no reason. I wouldn’t have made a scene about the affair. We would have sorted something out. Tell me! What do you think happened?”

“I don’t know,” Ramsay said, aware that she needed the definite answer he was unable to give. “Perhaps nothing happened. Perhaps Max stayed in the Tower watching television and eventually Mary went away. We know she can’t have killed Mrs. Parry herself. She was at a party in Newcastle when the murder was committed. Did Max tell you anything about what happened that night when you’d gone to bed?”

“No,” she said. She looked sadly at Ramsay. “I’ve told you. He won’t tell me anything at all.”

She turned to the policeman, suddenly angry and upset. “ Max didn’t kill Alice,” she cried. “I know he wouldn’t do anything like that. But I’ll tell you something you should know. Do you know why Stella Laidlaw was taken into hospital, finally, after Carolyn was born? Because the health visitor turned up at the house one day and found her standing over the cot with a bread knife! If you ask James, he’ll have to tell you. Or her doctor. If you’re looking for a culprit, why don’t you talk to her?”

But later, when Ramsay tried to telephone James at the Express office, Marjory told him that James was out all day. She was so skilled at protecting her boss that he could not tell whether she was telling the truth or not.

Brinkbonnie was quiet, its people shocked and in mourning. There had been tragedies in the village before-many years before a young boy, the son of a fisherman, had been swept from the beach by a freak wave and, more recently, the teacher’s wife had been killed in a car crash on the Otterbridge Road-but on those occasions the grief was shared. People came together to remember the dead and fight off the sense of their own mortality. After the murders of Alice Parry and Charlie Elliot, that was impossible. There was nothing left to hold people together and households turned in on themselves, sometimes regarding members of their own family with doubt and mistrust. They spoke of Alice Parry and Charlie Elliot as little as possible and regarded the press and the police, who insisted on prying with questions, with equal hostility. Only the very old men, who saw the death of people younger than themselves as some sort of victory, continued to go to the pub and talk about the case with a grim humour.

On the farm on the hill Robert Grey worked as normal until the late afternoon, when he, too, went to the pub and got thoroughly drunk. At home he seemed preoccupied by some secret trouble of his own and he hardly talked to his wife and son. Ian was still at home from school and watched his father with curiosity, as if expecting some sudden, unpredictable outburst. He would have liked to go up to his father and offer him comfort, support, one man to another, but he knew that might offend his mother and he loved her too much for that. So Ian sat in the kitchen and watched his father across the farmyard.

Celia Grey was in the kitchen making bread. She stood at the table pushing and tearing at the dough while the smell of yeast filled the house. Ian was reminded of his grandmother, who had lived with them for as long as he could remember, but who had recently died. When he was younger, the old lady had baked every week. It occurred to Ian then that for generations women who looked like his mother had stood in the kitchen running the farm. In the only sense that mattered, the farm belonged to her. His father’s name, scratched on the five-bar gate, was only a gesture of possession and independence. When the bread came out of the oven and Celia Grey knocked it out of the tins, it was, as he knew it would be, perfect. She was incapable of doing anything badly. She moved the kettle onto the hot part of the range.