Peter Robinson - A Dedicated Man

He glanced at Penny, who looked down into her beer.

‘So,’ Banks went on after a deep breath, ‘one sunny day Penny’s out with Steadman looking at the Roman excavations in Fortford say, and Michael’s languishing in the garden reading “Ode to a Nightingale” or something. His parents are out shopping in Leeds or York and won’t be back till it’s time to prepare the evening meal. Emma Steadman is moping around the place staying out of the sun, and probably feeling bored and neglected. I’m making this up, by the way. Ramsden didn’t give me a blow by blow account. Anyway, Emma seduces young Michael. Not so difficult when you consider his age and his obsession with sex. Surely it’s every schoolboy’s fantasy – the experienced older woman. To Emma, he must have seemed like a younger more vital version of her husband. Perhaps he wrote poetry for her. He was certainly gawky and shy, and she gave him his first sexual experience.

‘Most people probably thought of Emma Steadman as a married woman going quickly to seed, but Michael made her feel wanted, and then she began to see definite advantages in not being thought particularly attractive. That way, nobody would think of her as the type to be having an affair.’

Banks stopped to drink some more lager, pleased to see that he hadn’t lost his audience. ‘The affair went on over the years,’ he continued. ‘There were gaps and breaks, of course, but Ramsden told us they often got together in London when Emma went down for a weekend’s “shopping”, or when she went to “Norwich” to “visit her family”. I don’t think her husband paid her a great deal of attention, he was far too busy poring over ruins.

‘Anyway, Emma developed a powerful hold over Michael. As his first lover, she had a natural advantage. She taught him all he knew. And he was still shy in company and found it hard to meet girls his own age. But why bother? Emma was there and she gave him all he needed, far more than the inexperienced girls of his own age group could have given him. And, in turn, he made her feel young, sexy and powerful. They fed off each other, I suppose.

‘Over the years, Emma developed two distinct personalities. Now I’m not suggesting for a moment that she’s mentally ill – there’s nothing at all clinically wrong with her – all her actions were deliberate, willed, calculated. But she had one face for the world and another for Ramsden. If you think about it, it wasn’t that difficult for her to change her appearance. She only had to do it to please Ramsden, and he was strongly under her influence anyway. Visiting him in London would have been no problem, of course. But even after she moved to Gratly and he moved to York, it was simple enough. She could easily do herself up a bit in the car on the way to see him – a little make-up, a hairbrush. She could even change her clothes after she arrived, if she wanted. With Harold gone, it was even easier. Her neighbour told me there’s a door from the kitchen right into the garage, and it’s a lonely road over the moors to Ramsden’s place. But it wasn’t just looks, it was attitude, too. With Ramsden she felt her sexual power, something that was more or less turned off the rest of the time.

‘As time went by, everything she expected to happen, happened. Steadman threw himself more and more into his work, and she found herself, except for Ramsden, increasingly isolated. Why did she stay with her husband? I’m only guessing here, but I can think of two good reasons. First of all security, and secondly the promise of the inheritance, the possibility that things might improve when they became rich. And what happens? The money comes through all right, but nothing changes. In fact, things get worse. And here I can sympathize with her, to some extent. She’s a woman with dreams – travel, excitement, wealth, a social life – but all that happens is her husband buys the Ramsden house and she ends up even more bored and cut off while he spends the money on historical research. A dedicated man. Even though I can’t condone what she did to him, I can understand why she was driven to it. Steadman wasn’t exactly sensitive to her needs, emotional or material. He was selfish and mean. There they were, rich as bloody Croesus, and he spends his time drinking in the Bridge and his money on his work. I’m sure Emma Steadman would have preferred the country club. In fact she was little more than a prisoner, and the only person her husband was really close to was Penny again.’

‘That’s not quite true,’ Penny said. ‘He was close to Michael. He liked him.’

‘Yes,’ Banks agreed. ‘But that was much more of a working relationship. Michael was of use to him. I think they were colleagues, or partners, rather than friends. Don’t forget, Michael killed him.’

‘She made him.’

‘Yes, but he did it.’

A waiter came out and they ordered another round.

‘Go on,’ Penny urged him after the drinks arrived.

‘Michael Ramsden is ambitious but he’s weak. He’s not good with people. He shared Steadman’s interests, yes, but he wasn’t obsessed – a word that offended one of Steadman’s colleagues, but apt, I think. Also, Ramsden resented Harold Steadman, and this really had nothing to do with you, Penny, even if he did feel jealous all those years ago. No, he resented Steadman in the way many of us come to detest people we first set up as examples, models, call them what you will. He hated always playing second fiddle – the publisher, the assistant – never the creative one, the leader, although he was busy working on a novel himself. Emma must have played on this, I think, dwelling on her husband’s bad points when she was with Ramsden, playing on Michael’s growing resentment towards his mentor. Soon he began to recognize Steadman’s meanness and his lack of consideration for anybody with interests other than his own. I think too that he was always, deep down, irritated at the way Harold could communicate so easily with Penny, how fond they were of one another. Anyway, this animosity grew and grew over the years, fuelled by sexual desire for Emma, and finally there came a chance to get rich, to take it all.

‘Emma Steadman used Ramsden, manipulated him without a doubt. But that doesn’t absolve him from blame. Slowly, she introduced the idea of murder to him, helped him over his initial resistance and nervousness. She did this partly by playing on his existing feelings about her husband, and partly through sex. Denial, satisfaction. More denial, greater satisfaction than he’d ever had before. That’s what he told me, anyway. He’s not a fool; he knew what was happening and he went along with it. Together, they killed Harold Steadman.

‘Naturally, as Emma stood to inherit, she’d be the first suspect so she had to be sure of an airtight alibi, which she had. Also, Ramsden seemed to have neither motive nor opportunity, no matter how I went at him, until the connection with Emma finally came into focus. There were also a number of other possibilities I had to pursue.’

Both Barker and Penny looked at him reprovingly as he said this.

‘Yes,’ he went on, acknowledging them. ‘You two. Hackett, for a while. Barnes. Even the major and Robert Kirk, fleetingly. Believe me, I blame myself for not arriving at the answer before Sally Lumb had to die, too, but I couldn’t see the truth for the gossip, or the past for the present.’

‘Why did Sally have to die?’ Barker asked. ‘Surely she couldn’t have been a threat? What could she have known?’

‘Sally was older than her years in many ways,’ Banks replied. ‘She misread the situation. But I’ll get back to her a bit later. On the Saturday that Steadman was killed, Ramsden drove close to Gratly. He parked his car in one of those derelict old barns on the minor road just east of the Steadman house, the one Emma always used to get to York. Remember, Ramsden had been brought up in Gratly; he knew every twist and dip in the dale.’