Ann Cleeves: Murder in My Backyard

“You could run a story about it in the Express .”

“Everyone knows you’re my aunt. How seriously would that be taken?”

“You wouldn’t have to comment,” Alice raged. “Let me put my point of view and let the builder give his. The reader can make up his own mind who’s right.”

“You’re too late,” James said, so irritated that he lost his usual politeness. “The planning procedure’s over. The decision has been taken.”

“The council could appeal,” Alice insisted stubbornly. “ If they felt public opinion was against the development, they’d appeal against the planning inspector’s decision.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s no good. We carried the story when the plans first went before the council. I’m not going to do it again.”

“Then why did you send a reporter to the action meeting this afternoon?” Alice demanded. “What was Mary Raven doing here?”

The name seemed to shock James, and for the first time he seemed uneasy.

“She came to the house after the meeting,” Alice continued. “ I found her a very pleasant woman, very committed. We had a long conversation. She was most sympathetic.”

James shrugged. “She’s young,” he said. “No sense of proportion, no objectivity. She belongs to all those conservation groups. I’ve told her before that the Express isn’t just a vehicle for her own propaganda.”

“You don’t understand!” For the first time they realised how upset Alice was. They were afraid she would cry. “ You don’t understand how important this is to me!”

There was a silence.

“Alice,” Judy said at last. “What is this all about?”

The older woman got up suddenly and left the room. When she returned, she was carrying something that a child might have made at school, a collage of newspaper and magazine cuttings on a pink card. She set it on the table and they read the words, made up of letters from different sizes of prints and different sorts of typefaces.

“If you kill this village,” it read, “we’ll kill you.”

“You’re not taking this seriously,” James cried. “ Really. It’s just some crank.”

“I don’t take the threat seriously,” Alice said. “Of course I don’t. But I take the sense of outrage seriously. This afternoon at the protest meeting I was accused of hypocrisy, of caring more about money than about the people who live in Brinkbonnie. But it’s not true. This development is part of the greed and materialism that will ruin our countryside if we let it…” She paused dramatically, and Judy was reminded that Alice had made exactly the same speech at the county meeting of the WI with the tune of “Jerusalem” playing behind her. Judy pictured her aunt on the stage, articulate and ferocious, and remembered the cheers and applause that had followed her words.

But today there was no applause and Alice continued more quietly. “I love it here,” she said. “When Anthony and I moved into the Tower, we were strangers, but people made us feel that we belonged. When he was ill, the house was always full of flowers-gifts from our friends. And when he died, there was always someone to talk to. The Tower and my friends in Brinkbonnie mean more to me, perhaps even more than my family. Now I feel I’ve betrayed them and I’m not going to let it happen.” She looked directly at James. “ The Tower will be yours one day,” she told him. “Perhaps you should think that you have some responsibility for Brinkbonnie, too. Otherwise I might have to consider leaving the house to someone who’s prepared to take the responsibility more seriously.”

There was silence. The threat seemed so out of character that they could hardly believe they were understanding her properly. They stared at James.

“That’s blackmail,” he said at last. He spoke very quietly. “ I don’t give in to blackmail.”

“Think about it,” she said. “I told you that I was going to fight this development. I’m prepared to use everything I can to stop it.”

She got up suddenly, went to a sideboard, and poured herself a drink. She brought the bottle of Scotch and some glasses back to the table. When she spoke again, they were reminded of the old Alice, of cheerful, eccentric good humour.

“I expect you all think I’m very silly,” she said. “And I really don’t want to offend anyone. But it’s so important to me. You do understand, don’t you, how important it is?” She looked around the table, inviting their sympathy, some response of support, but they were all too shocked to answer. “Have a drink!” she said. “It’s St. David’s night. Anthony always got drunk on St. David’s night. Don’t you remember that time when it snowed and he insisted we all go sledging by moonlight?”

Then they joined in the conversation, glad to hide their awkwardness with the familiar words, but the stories soon trailed away and they were left again with silence. Stella stood up first. Throughout the discussion she had been blankly unresponsive, as if she had not even been listening to what was going on.

“I’ll just go and check on Carolyn,” she said. “Make sure she’s asleep.”

She spoke with a jerky abruptness, which did nothing to relieve the tension, and they were glad when Alice stood up, too.

“Come on, Max,” she said. “ I want a word with you. Come into the kitchen and help me with these dishes.”

When the others offered halfheartedly to help, she turned them away. “ No, no,” she said. “ I’m not going to do it all. Just tidy it up for Olive to see to in the morning. Besides, I want a private word with Max.”

Carolyn had fallen asleep almost immediately, but Stella stayed in her bedroom, staring at the child without attempting to touch her. There was nothing to do. Carolyn scarcely moved in her sleep and the sheets and blankets were still firmly tucked around her. All of her clothes were neatly folded on the chair. But Stella did not feel ready yet to return downstairs. The confrontation between James and his aunt had disturbed her. She did not know what to make of it. More important, she was not sure yet how it would affect her. She had always seen the Tower as part of her future. As the old panic and insecurity returned, she felt that they all ought to be more considerate towards her. Didn’t they know that stress was bad for her and that the sort of hostility they had both expressed was likely to make her ill again? She decided to wait in the bedroom until James realised she was missing. That way she would avoid the unpleasantness of any further argument and it might frighten him into realising that he should treat her more carefully. She needed the reassurance that he still worried about her.

She knelt on the floor by the long window and looked out into the garden. She could hear the movement of the big yew trees in the churchyard beyond the wall. Occasionally the wind blew the clouds away from the moon and the garden was lit. Otherwise all she could see were a street light beyond the churchyard, where there was a gate onto the village green, and occasional headlights as cars moved slowly down the Otterbridge Road towards the sea.

It took her a while to realise that there was a woman in the churchyard, walking backwards and forwards along the path from the green to the small wrought-iron gate in the wall that marked the boundary with the Tower garden. Stella saw the woman first in a brief flash of moonlight, a small figure, half hidden by the gravestones, with long hair that streamed behind her in the wind. She saw her again when the woman paused under the street light, but she was then too far away for her to see the details of her face or her clothes, though something about the way she stood and walked seemed familiar. The church clock struck ten and the woman looked up at it, as if she could hardly believe the time. Then she moved away from the light to begin pacing once again up and down the path between the Tower and the green. Stella could not see her clearly after that but was aware of a movement in the moonlight, a shadow blown, it seemed, by the breeze between the white marble stones.