Murder in My Backyard Read online

  “Blackmail?”

  “I don’t know,” Ramsay said. “ If so, she’s putting herself in a lot of danger.”

  “I’ve been thinking blackmail might have been the motive for the Elliot murder,” Hunter said tentatively. “If Charlie saw something on Saturday night and worked out who killed Alice Parry, it might have occurred to him that he could put the information to his advantage. It would explain how the murderer found him in the barn on the hill. Perhaps they arranged to meet there.”

  Ramsay considered the idea carefully. “Why didn’t he tell us? That way he could clear himself.”

  Hunter shrugged. “Perhaps he thought we wouldn’t believe him. Perhaps he thought he could turn his knowledge to profit.”

  “Yes,” Ramsay said. “ It’s possible. Dangerous. But I can see Charlie Elliot as a man who would enjoy taking risks. We’ve only his father’s word that he stayed in after eleven. He could easily have gone out again and seen Alice Parry on her way home from the pub.”

  “Did you inform Fred Elliot of his son’s death?” Hunter asked.

  Ramsay shook his head. “ I got the village policeman to do it,” he said. “They’ve been friends for years. It seemed better.” He stood up. “We’ll go and see Fred now. Get it over with. Then I want a word with Maggie Kerr.”

  On the way to the post office Ramsay was tempted to send Hunter immediately to wait for Mary Raven. It was not only that he was afraid of missing Mary, but he was irritated by the other man’s presence. He would have preferred to work alone. Hunter chatted about the conflicts and power struggles within the Otterbridge police station, turning the trivial gossip that comes out of any workplace into high drama. Ramsay wanted to concentrate.

  The kitchen behind the post office was much as it had been when Ramsay had last visited. There was washing airing in front of the stove and clean pans on the table. Fred Elliot was tidily dressed, with black shoes immaculately polished. Yet there seemed to be no connection between the postmaster and the physical world around him. In his grief he had become clumsy, and when Ramsay walked into the room, he seemed at first not to recognise who was there. The village policeman had opened the door and sat quietly in one corner while they talked. It seemed to Ramsay that he had been crying. Brinkbonnie was a close village.

  “Oh,” Elliot said. “ It’s you.”

  “I’m sorry,” Ramsay said, “ about everything that’s happened.”

  “He didn’t do it,” Elliot said. “ He wouldn’t have murdered Alice Parry. You’ll have to believe that now.”

  Ramsay did not answer directly. “When did you last see Charlie?” he asked.

  “You know that,” Elliot said defiantly. “ You were here.”

  “Didn’t he ask to meet you? Before he went up the hill. Didn’t he ask you to bring food and a sleeping bag? He had no-one else to ask.”

  There was a silence and the old man struggled for control. “ I met him late yesterday evening,” he said. “By the Otterbridge by-pass. I took everything he wanted.”

  “Did he telephone here to arrange the meeting?” Ramsay asked. “What exactly did he say?”

  “Not much. He didn’t have much change for the phone. He’d just made another phone call, he said, and used all his ten p’s. He wouldn’t wait for me to phone him back.”

  “Who else did he phone?” Ramsay asked. “Did he say?”

  The old man shook his head. “I presumed it was Maggie Kerr,” he said. “She was always on his mind.”

  “And when you met him by the Otterbridge by-pass,” Ramsay said, “did he tell you where he was going?”

  Elliot shook his head again. “He was waiting for me when I arrived,” he said. “I was afraid you’d have me followed, so I drove miles out of my way round the lanes before I got there. I tried to persuade him to come back with me, to give himself up. I said you’d believe him, but he was too frightened. And he was wild, excited. There was nothing I could say that would persuade him. He just took the bag and drove away on that motorbike, laughing.”

  “Tell me what was in the bag,” Ramsay said. “In detail.”

  Elliot began to list the equipment he had provided. “ There was a knife,” he said. “Not a bread knife. I’ve only one of those and I couldn’t spare it. But there was a big, old kitchen knife at the back of the drawer. I gave him that.”

  “Would you recognise it again?” Ramsay asked. No knife had been found in the barn during the detailed examination. But it seemed that Elliot might have provided the means used to murder his son.

  “I expect so,” the old man said, unaware of the implication of the questions. “We’ve had it for years.”

  There was another silence and Ramsay could sense Hunter’s impatience. He wanted to be out on the streets, knocking on doors, making things happen. He hated this waiting. But Ramsay could tell that Elliot had something else to say and that he wanted to say it in his own words.

  At last the old man spoke. “ There’s something you don’t know,” Elliot said. “ I didn’t tell you. On Saturday night Charlie came in at eleven like he said, but he went out again. I heard the door slam while I was in bed. He wasn’t gone long, not long enough to kill her, a quarter of an hour at the most.”

  Later Ramsay was to see this admission of Fred Elliot’s as a turning point in the case. Everything else developed from it. Now Ramsay nodded sympathetically. There was no recrimination because Elliot had not told them before, though Hunter might have made threats about wasting police time.

  “Where did he go?” he asked.

  “Just out on the green,” Elliot said. “ I looked out of my window and saw him. He walked over towards the Castle.” He paused. “I suppose he was waiting for Maggie Kerr.”

  “Did he meet Maggie?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t wait to see. I’d lost all patience with him. But I’ve told you he wasn’t gone long. Just a quarter of an hour.”

  “And he didn’t say anything the next day?”

  “No,” Elliot said. “ Neither of us mentioned it.”

  Hunter, unable to sit any longer, got up and walked to the kitchen window. There was nothing to see and he turned back to face the room.

  “Mr. Elliot,” he said. “ What were you doing between five and half-past six this morning?”

  Ramsay knew that the question had to be asked, but he thought Hunter brutal. He would have done it differently. But Elliot was so confused by unhappiness that he was not offended. He did not even ask why the question had been put to him.

  “I was here,” he said simply. “ Putting up the papers for the delivery boys. The van from Newcastle comes at six and the first boy at half-past. There’s never enough time.” He shook his head, then repeated, as if it were a statement of profound belief, “There’s never enough time.”

  Out in the street Hunter stamped his feet. “What did you make of all that then?” he asked.

  Ramsay shrugged. “If Charlie Elliot was out on the green late on Saturday night or early Sunday morning, it adds weight to your theory that he was blackmailing Alice Parry’s murderer,” he said. “He might have seen something.”

  Then, just when Hunter was wondering if he would be able to claim the credit for making a breakthrough in the case, Ramsay added: “But it’s still too early to be certain of anything at this stage. If Charlie did go back to the pub to walk Maggie Kerr home on Saturday night, why didn’t she mention it to us?” He was talking almost to himself, and Hunter did not bother to reply.

  Someone had put a bunch of daffodils on the pavement outside the post office. It was a form of apology. No-one believed that Charlie had murdered Alice.

  In the house behind the garage the Kerrs were finishing a meal. As the policemen approached they heard Maggie shouting at one of the boys that it was rude to leave the table without asking to be excused. The snapping ill temper seemed out of character and her voice was strained. Olive Kerr let the policemen into the house. As she opened the door to them she realised she was still weari
ng a pinafore and took it off, apologising.

  “We’re not ourselves today,” she said.

  When Maggie saw Ramsay and Hunter, she turned on the boys again. “Go on and run the bath,” she said. “ You’re big enough to do it yourselves now.” Then, when she thought they were about to argue: “You can use some of my bubble bath. It’s on the bathroom shelf.” They leapt away up the stairs, whooping with glee.

  Olive took the half-empty plates into the kitchen, and when she came back they were still standing, staring at each other. At the head of the table, his head bowed so that the bald patch gleamed in the electric light, stood Tom Kerr.

  “I expect you’ve come about Charlie Elliot,” she said. “We heard this afternoon. It’s a terrible thing to have happened.”

  “Sit down,” Olive Kerr said, and obediently they all sat around the dining table like delegates at some conference, or, Ramsay thought, very aware of Tom Kerr, like members of a church committee. He almost expected the man to suggest that they pray. It wouldn’t do any harm, Ramsay thought. They didn’t have much else to go on.

  “How can we help you, Inspector?” Tom Kerr asked, and the normal quiet voice broke into Ramsay’s fantasy and startled him.

  “I need to ask your daughter some questions,” Ramsay said. “ If you feel you have any information to help us find out who killed Charlie Elliot, I’d like to hear from you and Mrs. Kerr, too. But I’m here to speak to Maggie.”

  “Would you like us to leave you alone with her?” Tom Kerr asked, but Ramsay shook his head. Something about Kerr’s still, almost fanatical presence concentrated the mind. He turned to Maggie.

  “What time did you get home on Saturday night?” he asked. “I spoke to the regulars at the pub, but you didn’t tell me what time you got back.”

  “It was late,” she said. “Gone one o’clock.”

  “Did you see Charlie Elliot as you came back from the Castle?”

  “No,” she said. “He’d left the pub much earlier. I think I told you. It was a relief.”

  “We know he arrived home at about eleven,” Ramsay said. “But his father tells us that he went out again later. Fred presumes that he’d gone back over the green to walk you home.”

  “No,” she said. “ Really. I didn’t see him.”

  “Did you see anyone else?”

  “No,” she said. “Not until I was almost home. Then I saw my father.”

  Tom Kerr looked up. “It was so late that I was beginning to worry about her,” he said. “I’d gone out to see if I could see her coming. I could see that she had just left the pub, so I waited for her. I didn’t see anyone else, either.”

  “You knew we were looking for witnesses who had been out on Saturday night,” Ramsay said. “ Why didn’t you come forward before?”

  “I wasn’t out,” Kerr said. “Not strictly speaking. I was only several yards from the front of the garage. And I’ve told you. I saw nothing.”

  “When I saw Dad waiting, I began to run,” Maggie said. “ It was very cold, although he was so wrapped up you’d have thought he was out on an Arctic expedition. I didn’t see anything.”

  “Did you notice if there was a light on in Fred Elliot’s cottage?” Ramsay asked.

  She shook her head. “I was just so glad not to see Charlie,” she said. “I didn’t see anything else.”

  There was a silence.

  “Did Charlie Elliot try to get in touch with you after he left Brinkbonnie on Monday afternoon?” Ramsay asked.

  “No,” she said. “Of course not.”

  “We know he made a phone call on Monday night,” Ramsay said. “It wasn’t to you?”

  “No,” she cried. “And anyway I wasn’t here on Monday night. I was working.”

  Ramsay turned to Olive and Kerr.

  “Was there a phone call here on Monday night?” he asked. “Perhaps from someone who did not answer when you picked up the receiver?”

  But they shook their heads. “We were here all evening,” Olive Kerr said, “and the only call was for Tom from the vicar.”

  Then Ramsay began to share Hunter’s impatience. This talk wasn’t getting them anywhere, just leading them round in circles. He should have trusted his original instinct and concentrated on getting Mary Raven to talk to them. He knew that if he could persuade her to tell them why she was in the churchyard, at least some of the confusion would disappear. So they left the Kerrs in a hurry, almost rudely, refusing offers of tea and food, and they drove to Otterbridge. But when they arrived at Mary Raven’s flat, it was dark and empty and the other tenants claimed not to have seen her all day. The policemen waited in the car for hours, with Hunter ranting about search warrants and, if that was impossible to arrange, breaking down the door and feigning a burglary. By midnight Ramsay was so desperate that he thought he might give in to this folly and knew it was time to go home.

  Chapter Seventeen

  On Wednesday morning Stella Laidlaw had still not seen Max. She had expected him to arrive the day before and had been prepared for him from early morning, as expectant and smartly dressed as a lover. She imagined that every car that approached the drive belonged to him, and by late afternoon she was in a frenzy of anxiety in case James came home from work before Max arrived. At four o’clock she phoned the surgery, but the receptionist said Dr. Laidlaw was out on an urgent call. Stella did not believe her and shouted and made a scene. Then she phoned Max at home, but Judy answered and Stella put the phone down without saying anything. There was a temptation to spite Max by telling Judy all she suspected, but secrecy, Stella knew, was her greatest source of power.

  When James came in from work on Tuesday night, he found Stella more tense than he could remember. She was sobbing and shaking. She wished she was dead, she said. She wished it was all over for her, too. James tried to comfort her. He felt exhausted himself, but he put her to bed like a child and sat with her until she finally slept. In the morning the crisis seemed to be over and her confidence restored. She woke quite normally. He tried to insist on staying with her, or on fetching the doctor to be with her, but she sent him to work. She was at her most charming, apologising for making so much fuss the night before. She was so much trouble to him, she said. She did not know how he put up with her.

  Carolyn watched her mother’s performance with a new, dull detachment. In the past, scenes like these would have upset her dreadfully. She would have hidden in her bedroom, her head under the blankets, trying to persuade herself that nothing out of the ordinary was happening. Now the hysteria hardly touched her. She wondered why she had ever considered her mother’s moods of such importance.

  She watched the weeping woman with curiosity, as if her mother were a strange child throwing a tantrum in the street. James and Stella were so wrapped up in each other that they did not notice the change in Carolyn. They did not realise that she had hardly slept for nights and that she had eaten little. When she made her way to school, she stumbled with tiredness.

  James was relieved to leave the house, but all day he was thinking about Stella, remembering how she had been before Carolyn was born, wondering if she would ever be like that again. Wednesday was the day before publication, the busiest time for the Express, but he could not forget her.

  When Ramsay came to the office in Otterbridge, it was late morning and James Laidlaw was holding an editorial meeting. His door was open on to the large, open-plan office to allow the cigarette smoke to escape and he was working through the list of news lines supplied by his reporters to decide which items should go on the front page.

  “It’ll be the Charlie Elliot murder, will it?” A large, elderly reporter with a peculiar crew-cut sat on the opposite side of the desk. He was looking at black and white photographs of the Tower, Charlie Elliot in army uniform, and Brinkbonnie village, squinting at them, trying to judge which picture had the most impact. “We’ll need to cover the Alice Parry story, too. It’s obviously related. I know the Journal’s done that in detail over several days, but we ca
n run our own angle.”

  “Yes,” James Laidlaw said. Worry about Stella made him preoccupied, rather aloof. Even his aunt’s death could not touch him. “What have we got so far?”

  “A look at the facts as we know them, with details of Charlie Elliot’s last movements and a map of the area. An interview with the father, Fred Elliot. You know the idea: ‘ I was convinced my son was never capable of murder.’ I thought we might include a background piece on the planning issue. Something about the high feelings raised by new developments in small communities.”

  James looked up. “ I’m not sure that would be relevant anymore,” he said. “ Not after Charlie Elliot’s death. It looks more like the work of a lunatic now.”

  “We’ll hold the planning piece for another week then,” the reporter said. “We’ll concentrate on the murders.”

  “What have we got from the police?” James asked. “ Not much. They’re giving nothing away.”

  “There’s nothing here from Mary Raven. What’s she been doing this week?”

  The reporter shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. He had little time for Mary. He thought she was unreliable and disrespectful. “She said she was working on a special feature. I assumed she had your approval. She was in last night, but I’ve not seen her since.”

  “No,” James said slowly. “She hasn’t talked to me about any feature.” There was a pause. “When she comes in again, tell her I want to speak to her.”

  He looked through the open door and across the large office and saw Ramsay standing at reception.

  “Well,” he said to the reporters. “We’re organised now. That’s all then.”

  Ramsay had climbed the narrow stairs and was standing with the receptionist.

  “I was hoping to speak to Miss Raven,” he said. “ Is she here?”

  Before the receptionist could answer, James Laidlaw had crossed the large office.

  “Inspector!” he said. “ Did you want to talk to me? Is there any news?”

  “No,” Ramsay said. “ No news. Is Miss Raven here?”

  “I’m afraid not,” James said. “It seems that she’s not been at work this morning. Perhaps she’s ill. Have you heard from her, Marjory?”