Murder in My Backyard Read online

  “I’m sorry,” the receptionist said, hardly looking up. Dr. Laidlaw’s taken a few days off for his aunt’s funeral.”

  When the inspector arrived at the Laidlaws’ house, he thought at first that no-one was there. It was a sunny, breezy day and he had expected children in the garden, washing on the line, but the house was quiet and in shadow. He was about to give up and turn away when Judy Laidlaw came to the door.

  “Inspector!” she said. His presence frightened her. “ What is it? Come in.”

  “I was looking for your husband,” Ramsay said. Then, in an attempt to put her at ease: “It’s very quiet here today. Has he taken the children out?”

  “No,” she said. “ The children are with a friend for the morning. Max is out, I’m afraid.”

  She led him automatically down the bare wooden stairs to the basement kitchen.

  “Could you tell me when he’ll be back?” Ramsay asked. “It’s quite important.”

  She hesitated, turning away from him so he could not see her face. “ No,” she said quietly. “I don’t know where he is. We had an argument yesterday at lunchtime and I’ve not seen him since.”

  Then she turned back to face him and he saw she was crying, her body heaving with frightened, silent sobs. “I’m so worried about him,” she said. “ I think something dreadful has happened to him. It’s not like him to stay out all night without telling me.”

  Ramsay stood awkwardly, not sure what to do, how to comfort her. He would have liked to put his arm around her but was frightened the gesture would be misinterpreted. She seemed so desperate for affection.

  “Shall I make some tea?” he said. “Then you can tell me all about it. Or perhaps you’d prefer me to leave you alone. I could come back later with a policewoman.”

  “No,” she said. Her eyes were raw from crying and he realised she must have been sobbing all night. “ Don’t go! Don’t leave me alone! I’ll make the tea.”

  “There’ve been no accidents, you know,” he said, trying to reassure her. “ Nothing serious. I would have heard about anything like that.”

  “Oh, well,” she said, trying to smile. “I’m just being silly. He’ll come back, I expect, when he’s stopped being angry. It was my fault for asking all those questions. When you’re on your own, you imagine all sorts of dreadful things.”

  “Yes,” he said. “I suppose you do. What questions were you asking?”

  “It was about Alice,” she said. “She and Max had a private conversation on the night of her death. I wanted to know what it was about.”

  “And he wouldn’t tell you?”

  She shook her head. “ It upset him. He said it showed I didn’t trust him. He accused me of thinking he killed her. But it wasn’t that.”

  “Can you tell me what you thought the conversation between Alice and your husband was about? I don’t want to upset you, and I’ll treat it as confidential unless it’s important, but it might help me find out who did kill her.”

  “It wasn’t Max,” she said, the hysteria returning. “He wouldn’t have done a thing like that.”

  “Tell me now,” Ramsay said firmly. “Why do you think Mrs. Parry wanted to talk to Max?”

  “I think she’d found out that Max was having an affair,” Judy said quickly. She was blushing.

  “And was he? Having an affair?”

  “I think so. I didn’t want to believe it at first. I found a letter in his jacket pocket once. It was beautiful, very tender, very loving, very lyrical. I’ve never written anything like that to him. I suppose I’ve always taken our relationship for granted. He told me it was from a patient, an elderly, neurotic patient who was infatuated with him. All of the doctors in the practise had received love letters at one time or another from her, he said. Now it was his turn.”

  “And you believed him?”

  “Because I wanted to.”

  “Was the letter signed?”

  She shook her head. “It didn’t even start ‘Dear Max,’” she said. “It was set out more like a poem.”

  “Did you recognise the handwriting?”

  She shook her head again.

  “Could it have been written by Stella Laidlaw?” he asked. It was an explanation for the scene he had witnessed yesterday, which he could not ignore.

  “Stella!” She seemed astonished. “No, of course not. Stella wouldn’t write love letters to Max. She has hardly enough warmth to give to her husband and daughter. She wouldn’t have any affection left over for a lover.”

  “You’re certain the handwriting wasn’t hers?”

  “No,” she said. “I couldn’t say that. It never occurred to me that it could be Stella. I was in a state when I found it. I made a big scene. I didn’t look at it very rationally. Why do you think it might have been written by Stella?”

  “Dr. Laidlaw went to her house yesterday afternoon,” Ramsay said. “Have you any idea why he should go to visit her?”

  “No,” Judy said. “None at all. He always seemed to dislike her.”

  “She wasn’t a patient of your husband?”

  “No,” Judy said. “Of course not. James and Stella have their own doctor with a practise on that side of town. He’s much more their type, a friend of James’s. They went to school together.”

  “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.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  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.

  “Go and fetch your father,” she said. “ Tell him I’m making some tea.”

  He nodded, pulled on Wellingtons, and went outside.

  Robert Grey was in the far end of the tractor shed, in the shadow. He stood quite still, with his back to the boy.

  “Dad,” Ian said. “Mum said you’re to come in for tea.”

  The farmer turned quickly. He was holding a wide screwdriver that looked like a knife.

  “No,” he said. “I’ll not come in. I’ll just finish this, then I’ll be out of her way.”

  “Dad,” Ian said. “ What are you going to do? Things can’t go on like this.”

  The farmer moved towards him, the screwdriver still in his hand.

  “No,” he said slowly. “ Things can’t go on like this.”

  He threw the screwdriver onto a grubby workbench and walked out across the yard towards the village.

  Since Charlie Elliot’s death the post office had been closed, and one of the major talking points in the pub among the old men was their inability to collect their pensions.

  “Of course old Fred has had a bad time,” they grumbled, “ but it’s about time he started thinking about other folk.”

  Even the news that a relief postmistress would be sent out from Otterbridge the following week did nothing to console them. It wouldn’t be the same, they said. Nothing in the village would be the same.

  Fred Elliot would not talk to anybody except his widowed sister who had come down from Berwick to look after him and to her he spoke only in monosyllables. He could not explain to her his sense of responsibility, but he went over it again and again in his mind. He knew it was all his fault. If he had told the policeman about Charlie leaving the house again on Saturday night, his son might still be alive.

  “I only did what I thought best,” he repeated to his sister, who clucked about him not listening, not understanding.

  “Of course you did, pet,” she said. “Of course you did.”

  Sometimes when his sister was busy, he would escape to the shed in the backyard to count and tidy the piles of waste-paper, which he intended to sell to provide funds for the hospital where his wife had died. That gave him some comfort, but his sister always found him there and dragged him back to the fire as if he were a naughty child.

  “It won’t do you any good,” she said, “brooding on your own out there.” She sat him in his favourite armchair and made him tea and pretended not to notice that he was crying.

  In the house behind the garage Maggie sometimes found the tension almost unbearable. Work was no relief with the old men gloatingly reconstructing the crimes as they slurped their beer. Often, when the boys came home from schoo
l, she ran away with them and the dogs to the beach. There they would chase together into the wind, shouting to each other, laughing, trying to forget the solemn silence in the house, the sound of Olive crying to herself in her bedroom when she thought no-one was listening. The boys made death-defying leaps from the highest dunes to the beach and ran along the water’s edge until the water splashed over their Wellingtons.

  Despite the secret sobbing, Maggie was more concerned about her father than her mother. It was natural that her mother should be upset. She and Alice Parry had been friends. But in a week her father seemed to have aged so that she hardly recognised him. He had always been the stern one, the one to insist on discipline when the boys misbehaved at table, to supervise their schoolwork. Now he was hardly aware of their presence. The boys sensed it and stole unusual privileges—late television, sweets before meals, rudeness to their mother—but still they failed to provoke him to any reaction.

  On Friday morning, almost a week after Alice Parry’s death, Tom Kerr had arranged to meet the vicar in the church to discuss the music for Easter. Kerr was also sacristan and he felt a major responsibility for preparing the church for the festival, but throughout the conversation his mind wandered and he saw the priest looking at him strangely.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “This terrible business has upset me. I can’t concentrate on anything.”

  “No,” the vicar said. “ Of course.”

  Let me talk to you, Kerr wanted to say. I need help. But the moment was lost and the vicar looked at his watch and then hurried away to a mothers’ union meeting in the neighbouring parish. Kerr lingered in the church.

  Maggie found him there, sitting on one of the pews close to the aisle, not praying but staring at the light coming through the stained-glass window above the altar.

  “Dad,” she said. “What’s the matter? Mam’s worried about you. She saw the vicar leave half an hour ago.”

  She squeezed past and sat beside him on the polished pew. It was Lent and the church was bare. Maggie wished her father would stand up and walk out into the fresh air. Churches made her uncomfortable.