Peter Robinson - A Dedicated Man

‘Must have been Lawrence’s influence.’

Penny’s lips twitched in a brief smile. She put her hand to her forehead and swept back her hair. ‘Maybe.’

‘And Mrs Steadman?’

‘As I said, she didn’t like the sun. Sometimes she’d come if we went in the car and sit under a makeshift parasol by the side of the road while we had a picnic like characters from a Jane Austen novel. But she wasn’t really interested in the Romans or folk traditions, either. Maybe it wasn’t the best of marriages, I don’t know. Lord knows, they didn’t have much in common. But they put up with it, and I don’t think they treated each other unkindly. Harry shouldn’t have married, really. He was far too dedicated to his work. Mostly I just remember him and me tramping over the moors and naming wild flowers.’

Steadman must have been in his early thirties then, Banks calculated, and Penny was sixteen. That wasn’t such an age difference to make attraction impossible. Quite the contrary: he was exactly the age a girl of sixteen might be attracted to, and Steadman had certainly been handsome, in a scholarly kind of way, right up to the end.

‘Didn’t you have a crush on Harry?’ he asked. ‘Surely it would have been perfectly natural?’

‘Perhaps. But the main thing – the thing you don’t seem able to understand – is that Harry really wasn’t like that. He wasn’t sexy, I suppose. More like an uncle. I know it must be hard for you to believe, but it’s true.’

If I don’t believe it, Banks thought, it’s not for want of people trying to convince me. ‘Don’t you think Michael might have seen the relationship differently?’ he suggested. ‘A threat, perhaps. An older, more experienced man. Might that not have been why he seemed strange?’

‘I can’t say I ever thought of it that way,’ Penny answered.

Banks wasn’t sure whether he believed her or not; she lied and evaded issues so often he was becoming more and more convinced that she was an actress as well as a singer.

‘It’s possible though, isn’t it?’

She nodded. ‘I guess so. But he never said anything to me. You’d think he would have, wouldn’t you?’

‘You didn’t argue? Michael never said anything about you going off with Harry? He didn’t always insist on accompanying you?’

Penny shook her head at each question.

‘He was very shy and awkward,’ she said. ‘It was very difficult for him to express himself emotionally. If he did think anything, he kept it to himself and suffered in silence.’

Banks sipped his pint of Theakston’s, brooding on how best to put his next question. Penny offered him another Silk Cut.

‘If I read you right, Inspector,’ she said, ‘you seem to be implying that Michael Ramsden might have killed Harry.’

‘Am I?’

‘Come on! Why all the questions about him being jealous?’

Banks said nothing.

‘They became great friends, you know,’ Penny went on. ‘When Michael graduated and got interested in local history, he helped Harry a lot. He even persuaded his firm to publish Harry’s books. It was more than just a publisher-author relationship.’

‘That’s what I was wondering,’ Banks cut in, seizing his opportunity. ‘Is there any possibility of a homosexual relationship between them? I know it sounds odd, but think about it.’

Unlike Barker, Penny took the question seriously before concluding that she doubted it very much. ‘This had better not be a trick,’ she said. ‘I hope you’re not trying to trap me into admitting intimate knowledge of Harry’s sexual preferences.’

Banks laughed. ‘I’m not half as devious as you make out.’

Her eyes narrowed sharply. ‘I’ll bet. Anyway,’ she went on, ‘I really can’t help you. You’d think you’d know all about a friend you’ve known for years, but it’s just not so. Harry could have been gay, for all I know. Michael, on the other hand, seemed very much like a normal adolescent, but there’s no reason why he couldn’t have been bi. Who can tell these days?’

And she was right. Banks had known a sergeant on the Metropolitan force for six years – a married man with two children – before finding out at the inquest into his suicide that he had been homosexual.

‘You still seem to be saying Michael did it,’ she said. ‘In fact, you’re hounding all of us – his friends. Why? Why pick on us? What about his enemies? Couldn’t it have been somebody just passing through who killed Harry?’

Banks shook his head. ‘Contrary to popular belief,’ he said, ‘very few murders happen that way. I think the myth of the wandering vagrant killer was invented by the aristocracy to keep suspicion away from their own doorsteps. Most often people are killed by family or friends, and motives are usually money, sex, revenge or the need to cover up damaging facts. In Harold Steadman’s case, we found no evidence of robbery and we’ve had no luck so far in digging up an enemy from his past. Believe me, Ms Cartwright, we dig deep. We’ve been checking the alibis of anyone outside his immediate circle who might have had even the remotest reason for killing him. Really, not many people walk around the country bashing others on the head for no reason. So far, statistics and evidence point to someone closer to home. According to his friends, though, he was too damn perfect to have an enemy, so where am I supposed to look? Obviously Mr Steadman was a far more complicated man than most people have admitted, and his network of relationships wasn’t a simple one either. His murder wasn’t a spur of the moment job, or at least the killer was frightened or coldblooded enough to throw us off the scent by moving the body.’

‘And you’re not going to stop pestering us until you know who it is?’

‘No.’

‘Are you close?’

‘I can’t see it if I am, but detection doesn’t work like that, anyway. It’s not a matter of getting closer like a zoom lens, but of getting enough bits and pieces to transform chaos into a recognizable pattern.’

‘And you never know when you have enough?’

‘Yes. But you can’t predict when that moment will come. It could be in the next ten seconds or the next ten years. You don’t know what the pattern will look like when it’s there, so you might not even recognize it at first. But, soon enough, you’ll know you’ve got a design and not just a filing cabinet full of odds and sods.’

‘What about money as a motive?’ Penny asked. ‘Harry was very well off.’

‘He didn’t leave a will, which was foolish of him. Naturally, it all goes to Mrs Steadman. It would have been more convenient for us if he’d left it all to the National Trust and we could have pulled in the first nutty conservationist we could find, but life isn’t as easy as fiction. Motive and opportunity just don’t seem to go together in this case.’

‘Well, that’s your problem, isn’t it?’

‘Yes. Have I explained why I’m pestering you so much now?’

‘Very clearly, thank you,’ Penny said, giving him a mock bow.

‘You don’t see Michael much these days?’

‘No, not often. Occasionally in the Bridge. He was always especially awkward with me after we split up, though. You’re not suggesting that Michael is still in love with me, are you? Let me get this right. He thought Harry and I were having an affair all those years ago and backed off. But all the time he’s been holding a grudge. He worked his way into Harry’s confidence over the years just looking for an opportunity to do away with him, and finally took his revenge. Am I right?’

Banks laughed, but it sounded hollow. Perhaps Ramsden did have sufficient motive, but he would have been hard-pushed to make an opportunity. First of all, he could hardly come to Helmthorpe and hang around in the car park all evening waiting, even if he was certain Steadman would be going there. And if Steadman had gone to York, how did his car get back to Helmthorpe? Ramsden could hardly have driven two cars, and he would have needed his own to get home. There were certainly no buses at that time of night, and he would not have risked arranging for a taxi.