by Cleeves, Ann
Now Walter Tanner felt as old and shabby as the furniture. A small, dumpy man with thinning grey hair and a sad moustache, he was dressed in the same suit as he had always worn to the shop, before he retired and sold up. He was pleased he had changed from his slippers into black shoes. He felt vaguely that it would be disrespectful to mourn Dorothea in carpet slippers.
‘You won’t mind if I smoke,’ he said, stuttering over the last word. He felt in his trouser pocket and brought out a packet of cigarettes and a box of matches.
‘This has all been a terrible shock.’
‘Yes,’ Ramsay said. ‘ Of course. It must have been.’
‘When I saw the car, you see, I didn’t know she was dead. I thought she had called for a visit …’ His voice tailed off. He held the cigarette lightly between his fingertips as if to show them that he was not a regular smoker, as if it were almost medicinal.
‘Was it usual for Mrs Cassidy to visit you without prior arrangement?’ Ramsay asked.
‘Oh, Dorothea never made appointments to see me,’ he said. ‘She turned up out of the blue when she felt like it.’ He realised, too late, how bad-tempered that sounded and added: ‘It was always a pleasure to see her, of course. Always a great pleasure.’
‘What is your position at St Mary’s?’ Ramsay asked.
‘I’m church warden,’ the man said. ‘And secretary of the parochial church council.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Ramsay said, ‘I thought Major Walker was church warden.’
‘He is. There are two of us. It’s a lot of work, you know. More work than people realise. Major Walker lives out of the town and has a number of other commitments. They rely on me for day-to-day management.’
He spoke with resentment and Ramsay thought it must be a long-standing grievance. The Major, confident and articulate, would attract the attention and have the power, while Walter Tanner did all the work.
‘Yes,’ Ramsay said slowly, ‘ I see, Mr Tanner. What exactly was the nature of your relationship with Mrs Cassidy?’ He found it impossible to imagine that Dorothea would have chosen to come to this gloomy house to speak to this nondescript little man. Tanner looked up sharply and inhaled frantically on the cigarette.
‘Relationship?’ he said. ‘What do you mean?’
‘You say that Mrs Cassidy called to see you occasionally,’ Ramsay said. ‘Why did she do that?’
To make my life a misery, Tanner wanted to answer, but he paused and considered.
‘She was young and enthusiastic,’ he said. ‘She had a lot of new ideas. I think she wore Edward out with them and then she would come to me.’
‘Did she expect you to help her?’
‘No,’ Tanner said. ‘Not in any practical way. I think she just wanted my blessing.’
‘Did she get it?’
Tanner paused. He felt it impossible to explain to the policeman the ambiguity of his contact with Dorothea, his inability to stop her in full flow, his constant lack of courage and conviction in front of her.
‘No,’ he said at last, trying to sound firm. ‘I’m afraid I considered most of her schemes were unworkable and badly thought out. And she seemed to hold none of our traditions sacred.’
‘Was there antagonism between you about this?’ Ramsay asked. ‘Did she come here to make a fuss?’ He was still trying to discover what had drawn Dorothea to the man.
‘No,’ Tanner said. ‘Of course not. We talked. That’s all.’
Ramsay decided to approach the subject from a different angle.
‘It must have been rather a shock when Mr Cassidy suddenly announced that he was intending to marry.’
‘Yes,’ Tanner said. ‘When he came to Otterbridge he was a young widower. There were rumours later of course, linking his name to some of the unattached ladies in the parish, but nothing came of it. It was a great surprise when he turned up suddenly with Dorothea.’
‘What do you mean?’ Ramsay asked. ‘You must have known beforehand that he intended to marry.’
‘No. Nobody knew. He took his annual holiday in the summer and when he came back he was a married man. I understand they had only known each other for three months. He said that Dorothea wanted a quiet wedding, with just close family. No one from the parish was invited.’
‘I suppose his son must have known …’ Ramsay said.
‘Oh, the boy was there,’ Tanner said dismissively.
‘Why do you suppose the vicar acted in such a hurry?’
‘I don’t know. Perhaps he was afraid Dorothea would change her mind. Of course there was a great deal of speculation about the secrecy and the haste. The whole affair rather damaged his reputation.’
‘Yet you would say that generally he’s a popular man?’
‘Yes,’ Tanner said, grudgingly. ‘Generally. When he first came to the parish he had some outlandish ideas but over the years we mellowed him.’
Throughout Ramsay’s conversation with Tanner, Hunter had remained standing. Now he began to move restlessly around. He felt trapped by the stuffy room and all these words. Why didn’t Ramsay get to the point? He could bear it no more.
‘When did you last see Mrs Cassidy?’ he asked abruptly, and the question so startled Tanner that he answered without realising the implication of the reply.
‘Yesterday lunchtime,’ he said. ‘ But not to speak to.’
‘She didn’t come here?’
‘Oh no,’ he said. ‘It was on the Ridgeway Estate. She was coming out of one of the houses there as I was walking past. I don’t think she even saw me.’ He waited breathlessly for them to ask what he was doing on the Ridgeway Estate, but the question did not come.
‘Did she have her car with her then?’
‘Yes,’ Tanner said. ‘She was obviously in a hurry. She almost ran out of the house and drove away.’
Hunter walked to the window and stared moodily out at the car, still parked on the drive. A colleague stood on the pavement, protecting it from the contaminating touches of passers-by, waiting for the forensic team. Hunter would have preferred to be outside in the sunshine.
‘Do you know the name of the street?’ Ramsay asked. ‘It might be important.’
Tanner thought. All he could remember was an overwhelming relief that Dorothea had not seen him. ‘ It was one of those streets named after Victorian novelists,’ he said at last. ‘Eliot perhaps, or Hardy.’ Then, in a panic he added, ‘I went there to visit one of our congregation who’s been poorly.’ With the lie he almost felt faint.
‘Could you give us a brief account of your movements yesterday afternoon?’ Ramsay said.
‘I got a bus from the Ridgeway back to town,’ Tanner said. ‘ I went into the supermarket to do some shopping then walked home through the park. There was a brass band playing as part of the festival and I stopped to listen. It was rather pleasant. I spent the rest of the afternoon and the evening in the house.’
Ramsay had a sudden vision of his own life, after retirement. Would he also spend his days in such a drab, friendless way, with only the occasional excitement of a brass band concert in the park?
‘Would you have noticed if the car was here when you went to bed last night?’ he asked quietly.
Tanner stammered. ‘I don’t know. Probably not. I drew the curtains at about ten. It wasn’t here then. I was watching the television.’
‘But you would have heard the sound of the engine,’ Hunter said. ‘The drive’s just outside the window. You would have seen the headlights even through the curtains.’
‘Perhaps,’ Tanner said unhappily.
‘What time did you go to bed?’
‘At about eleven,’ Tanner said. He wondered if he should tell them that he had been watching boxing on the television. He thought the detail might make his story more credible but he was worried about what they would think of his taste in viewing. Dorothea had caught him watching a replay of a world title fight one afternoon and had said it was barbaric.
‘You weren’t disturbed at all in th
e night? No voices, unusual sounds?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘But my bedroom’s at the back of the house. I wouldn’t have heard anything going on in the street.’
‘Do any of your neighbours keep late hours, work shifts? It would be very helpful to find someone who saw the car arrive.’
Tanner shook his head. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I don’t know. Armstrong House is next door. I suppose most of the residents there would go to bed rather early but the warden might have been awake. I don’t have a lot of contact with the rest of the street.’
Ramsay stood up then and held out his hand to Tanner. The old man took it uncertainly. If there had just been the two of them, he thought, just he and the inspector, it might have been easier to explain. But the presence of the sergeant, so young and fit, so uncompromising, so like Dorothea in many ways, made it impossible. He walked with the policemen to the front door and saw them out of the house, then returned to the living room to watch them, peering like a prying old woman round the grey net curtains.
Ramsay stood on the drive and looked down the street. Tanner’s garden was enclosed by a privet hedge but the car must still be visible from one of the upstairs windows of Armstrong House. Perhaps some elderly insomniac had seen it driven there. The old people’s flats were new, brick-built and stood on a corner between the narrow street where Tanner lived and a much busier road. Previously the site had housed an old nursing home, which had closed down suddenly with the death of the owner and been allowed to become derelict before it was bought by the charitable organisation. Then it was demolished completely and the flats were built.
It seemed strange to Ramsay that Dorothea’s car had been found so close to the place where she had missed an appointment. Had she made it to Armstrong House after all? But that made Aunt Annie and her friends suspects in a murder inquiry and what possible motive could they have?
Hunter was directing his attention to the car, taking care not to touch anything. He took special interest in the back which, because it was an estate, was exposed to view.
‘There’s a rug there,’ he said. ‘Do we know if that was here, in the car already?’
Ramsay shrugged.
‘The keys are still in the ignition,’ Hunter said. He wanted to bring the inspector back to the concrete detail of the investigation. Nowadays crimes were solved by scientists, not by detectives asking endless questions and staring up at the sky. ‘No sign of the diary or the handbag but they might be in the dash.’
But still Ramsay looked down the street vaguely as if somewhere behind the mock-Tudor gables and stained-glass porches he would find inspiration.
‘How far is it to Prior’s Park from here?’ he asked suddenly.
Hunter looked up from the car. ‘The little entrance is just at the end of the street,’ he said. ‘It’s only a couple of minutes’ walk away.’
‘Why here?’ Ramsay demanded. ‘Why leave her car here? In the drive of someone who was known to her? Does that mean the murderer knew them both?’
That too, he thought, must be more than coincidence.
‘Do you think the old boy had anything to do with it?’ Hunter asked. The policeman turned towards the house and caught Tanner’s eye as he was looking out at them. Shamefacedly he let the net curtains drop and moved away from the window.
‘No,’ Ramsay said. ‘ Probably not. If he’d murdered Dorothea Cassidy the last thing he’d do would be to bring her car here.’
He felt suddenly that the solution to the case lay with Dorothea Cassidy herself. This wasn’t a random attack on a pretty young woman in a park. It was more complicated, more purposeful than that. He felt that in the discussion with Walter Tanner he had lost the clear image of the woman he had seen in the photographs. Tanner had disliked her and been frightened by her enthusiasm. Through his eyes the picture of Dorothea Cassidy had been distorted. In the vicarage Ramsay had felt that he had known her and he wanted to recapture that intimacy. Unconsciously he echoed the reactions of the boy who had found the body: What’s wrong with me, he thought, that I’m attracted to a dead woman?
‘Stay here,’ he said quietly to Hunter. ‘Wait until they come for the car then organise a door-to-door of the street. I’m going to Armstrong House. They’re a nebby lot. They might have seen something.’
Annie Ramsay lived in Armstrong House and Annie Ramsay had known Dorothea well.
Chapter Five
Clive Stringer carried the big television from the common room at Armstrong House to the repair van outside. The van’s driver watched the feat of strength with amazement. He was standing on the pavement.
‘Eh,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t shift it. You’re a strong lad.’ He was a kind man and sensed that Clive Stringer received few compliments. The boy stared at him with distrust, his mouth open as if he had never got the hang of breathing through his nose. They were standing at the main entrance to the flats by the busy road and there was a lot of traffic noise.
‘What are you doing working here, then?’ the driver asked. It was more pleasant outside than in his stuffy workshop and the boy’s unnatural strength fascinated him. ‘Odd-job man, is it?’
‘I was sent here,’ Clive Stringer said. ‘Community service for stealing cars.’
His voice was jerky and excitable and the driver felt a shudder of revulsion. He’s one of those, he thought. Mental. His lift doesn’t go all the way to the top. The boy came closer to him and reached out to touch his arm. Still smiling and nodding, the man quickly climbed into his van. He drove away without saying anything more and Clive was left standing awkwardly in front of the flats, stammering, as if he had something important to say if only the man had waited long enough to listen.
Clive walked furtively around the flats towards the back entrance. From there he could see Dorothea Cassidy’s car and he stood, staring at it, waiting for something to happen. When Walter Tanner emerged on the doorstep, calling out for Dorothea, he felt a desire to giggle but he controlled himself. He thought that anyway there wasn’t much to laugh about.
Clive knew he was in trouble. For as long as he could remember he had been in the sort of trouble that came from not understanding what was expected of him, from being different and awkward. It had been a vague unease, an awareness of unsuspected perils, that he had learned to cope with. But this was different. He knew quite definitely that he had done something wrong and that there was not one person he could talk to who had the power to put it right.
I’ll have to tell someone, he thought, as he moved guiltily from the pavement into the cool of the building, but there was no one to confide in. His mother would not know what to do. He had tried relying on her and she had always let him down. Besides, now she could think of nothing else but the baby. Joss, his mother’s boyfriend, was friendly enough when he was sober, but Clive never knew what to make of him, knew only that he could not be trusted. Those in authority over him – his probation officer, his social worker, the warden of Armstrong House – all had the power to put him in prison. They had made that quite clear on a number of occasions. This is your last chance, lad, they had said. Screw this up and you’ll be away. For a long time. They had frightened him with their descriptions of the youth custody establishment and he knew they were all on the same side as the police. There had been times of crisis before, but then he had turned to Dorothea Cassidy, seeking her out in the vicarage, lurking in the street until she came out. Now he knew that was impossible and Dorothea Cassidy would never help him again.
Emily Bowman sat by the window of her flat and looked out with irritation at Clive Stringer. What was the boy doing, loitering on the pavement with that vacant look on his face? Really, they paid enough rent for the flats in Armstrong House to be entitled to staff with at least a modicum of intelligence. She sat back on the chair and felt the sting of burned skin on her shoulder as it touched the cushion. Her irritation was the result of her tiredness and the late arrival of the ambulance. Clive Stringer had his uses and he had always been an
easy target for her annoyance.
Emily Bowman was tempted for a moment to ring for the warden to ask if there was any news of the ambulance but she knew it would be futile. There would be no news. She would have liked some tea, weak and fragrant with a sugary biscuit, but had no energy to get up and make her way to the kitchen. She looked around the room with a detached and calculating eye. Her furniture was solid, of good quality. She had chosen it herself. Her husband had been a decent man, but had a taste for the vulgar and she had allowed him to take no decisions about the house. She moved in the chair and tried to make herself more comfortable as she dreamed of the old life, before Arthur died. They had lived in a bungalow in the best part of town. Arthur had never been promoted in the bank as she had hoped he might be, but he had given her security, a certain position. She had been chair of the Townswomen’s Guild for three years before she moved to Armstrong House. She closed her eyes and dozed, listening all the time for the ambulance, becoming slowly and more uncomfortably aware that she needed the lavatory.
I was strong then, she thought. Independent. Just like Dorothea Cassidy. I never thought it would come to this.
For five weeks Emily Bowman had spent every weekday morning in this state of anxious anticipation. By Fridays she was exhausted. First there was the wait for the ambulance which was supposed to arrive at nine and was always late. Eventually it would come and the warden would help her outside, grasping her arm and patting her hand as if she needed reassurance when all she wanted was for the ordeal to be over. Then there was the bumpy and interminable drive round country lanes and suburban side streets while other patients were collected, the traffic jams at the lights on the Town Moor, the painfully slow crawl past badly parked cars in the hospital complex.
The arrival of the ambulance at the Radiotherapy Centre at Newcastle General Hospital was only the beginning of the waiting. As soon as she got to the centre she would go as fast as she could to the ladies’ cloakroom to remove the undergarments of which the radiographers disapproved so strongly. ‘Wear loose clothes, Mrs Bowman,’ they would say. ‘You’ll be much more comfy without a bra. Look at the state of your skin. Have you used the powder regularly?’ Mrs Bowman did not tell them that the smell of the talcum powder they had given her to put on the affected area made her feel sick, or that she would never consider going without a bra, so the daily deception became necessary.