by Ann Cleeves
‘Bella came to me straight from college. She was enthusiastic, energetic, full of ideas. The infant teacher before her was elderly, close to retirement. She was little more than a childminder. She read stories, let the children play, sang songs, but as for teaching. . .’ she shrugged. ‘I tried to suggest new ways of working but she refused to listen.
‘Then Bella came and everything changed. I started to like my work again. We bounced ideas off each other. We achieved more in the two years she was there than I’ve done in any other school. I thought she was enjoying it too.’
‘She used your name,’ Rachael said. ‘That’s what she called herself before she married – Bella Davison. Some sort of tribute, do you think?’
‘I think I let her down. Then and later.’
‘What happened?’
‘Her father was a local businessman, a butcher. He owned a couple of shops and a slaughter house. Wealthy in local terms. Used to getting his own way.’
‘And a councillor,’ Rachael said.
‘Oh yes, a councillor. Alderman Noble. He had fingers in lots of pies.’ She paused. ‘Forgive me. I might be a spinster but you mustn’t think I dislike men in general. Alderman Noble I disliked intensely, though I never met him.
‘Bella left home to go to college and said it was the best thing she’d ever done. There was a younger son who was sucked into the business and the same was expected of her. She was supposed to work in the office, to put on an apron and help out in the shop when they were busy. But Bella refused. She’d always wanted to teach.
‘Then her mother died and suddenly she was expected to give up everything, her career and her new friends, to go home and care for him. He bullied her into it.’
‘Was he ill?’
‘He was fat and idle,’ Miss Davison retorted. ‘I suppose that’s one form of illness.’
‘Why did she do it?’ Rachael asked. ‘She was independent. She’d left home once. She didn’t need his approval.’
‘Things were different then.’
‘No,’ Edie said. ‘Not that different.’
‘He was a bully. At first I think he convinced her that he was dying. Then he convinced her that she was fit for nothing better than running around after him. I met her six weeks before she killed him and I hardly recognized her. I told her that I’d find her work, that she could pay someone to care for him, but she’d lost all her energy and her confidence. She said she’d never be able to tell him. She couldn’t face the row. She’d always been frightened of him. Now perhaps we’d think she’d been abused. Then it wasn’t so unusual.’ She spoke bitterly. ‘A natural respect for one’s elders. Something to be admired. It might have been the sixties but we didn’t see much of rebellious youth in Kimmerston.
‘She was charged with murder. She admitted killing him. She hit him on the back of the head with a bronze statue – a monument apparently to one of his prize bulls. She said it was the nearest thing to hand but it seemed appropriate. He’d come to look very like one of his beasts. Then she phoned for the police and waited for them to turn up. She was found guilty of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility. A period of insanity, her barrister said, caused by the stress of caring for a sick man. Though she was the sanest woman I’ve ever met. She was sent to a special hospital in the south, then came back to St Nicholas’, the big psychiatric hospital near the coast, to prepare for her release.’
‘Did you ever visit her?’
‘I couldn’t face it. Isn’t that a terrible thing to say? It wasn’t Bella I couldn’t face but all those other poor people. I suppose I was afraid. She wrote to me when she was first transferred to St Nick’s. She didn’t ask me to visit but I’m sure that was what she wanted. Why else would she write? I let her down again. I’m not quite sure what I expected. Some nightmare image of bedlam perhaps. Howling lunatics and chains and straitjackets. I knew rationally it wouldn’t be like that but still, I couldn’t bring myself to go. I did write to her but it wasn’t a warm letter. Not very encouraging. I’m not surprised she didn’t get in touch when she was released.’
She stopped abruptly. A bell rang in the distance. In the school yard playtime was over. ‘You said she was married. Was she happy?’
‘Very,’ Rachael answered. ‘She must have met Dougie soon after she left hospital. He employed her to look after his elderly mother.’
‘Is that what she worked as? Some sort of care assistant? After the way she’d felt about looking after her father?’
‘I don’t suppose she had much choice,’ Edie said dryly. There’d hardly be a queue of schools waiting to take her on as a teacher. She had no friends or family to turn to. What else did she know?’
‘Anyway, it worked out well.’ Rachael thought Edie was being too hard on Miss Davison. She understood her reluctance to get involved. ‘Dougie was a farmer. She loved the hills, loved him. A few years ago he had a stroke but that didn’t make any difference to the way she felt about him.’
‘What happened then?’ Miss Davison demanded.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Something must have happened. Why else would she kill herself?’
‘I don’t know,’ Rachael said. ‘That was why we arranged to see you. I needed a reason. We were close friends.’
‘Yet she never told you about the conviction.’
‘Nothing.’
‘Would she have told her husband?’
‘Probably not.’ If Bella hadn’t felt able to confide in her, Rachael thought, she wouldn’t have told anyone else.
‘So perhaps the past came back to haunt her. Or someone from it.’
At first Rachael didn’t understand what she meant and it was Edie who said, ‘She was threatened with exposure, you mean?’ She considered the idea. ‘She’d created a new identity. Perhaps she’d even come to believe it. Then she met someone who recognized her. Someone who threatened to tell Dougie; even worse, to tell the authorities. She’d killed one elderly dependent man. Could they take the chance of allowing her to look after another? She couldn’t face the questions, the publicity.’ Edie looked at Rachael. ‘It’s certainly one explanation.’
Rachael agreed that it was. But Bella had been a fighter. She still believed there was more to her suicide than that. And if Bella had this secret in her life, perhaps there had been others.
Chapter Thirty-Three
As Anne drove to Kimmerston she told herself she was being a bloody fool. At this of all times, she should keep her distance from Godfrey Waugh. The relationship was complicated enough, and now, if Godfrey were to become a suspect in the murder investigation . . .
She had never been into Godfrey’s office. His secretary wouldn’t recognize her and it occurred to Anne that she could breeze in and demand to see him. Today, though, she wouldn’t have the nerve to carry it off.
These thoughts, and others, had kept her awake for most of the night and when she parked by his office she still wasn’t sure what she would do.
It was mid morning. The mist had cleared and it was already very hot. Godfrey had his offices in a functional concrete block which had been built in the 1970s, close to the river on the outskirts of the town, an attempt by the council to attract employment. Anne waited, and watched the cormorants standing on the staithes in the river.
At twelve o’clock a stream of women came out of the building to eat their sandwiches by the river. The Borders Building Society had their headquarters there and the women wore identical navy skirts and patterned polyester blouses. They lay on the grass and pulled up their skirts as far as was decent to expose their legs to the sun.
Still Anne waited. She had parked so she could watch the main entrance, and though the car was like a greenhouse she didn’t go outside to sit with the others on the grass. Here she felt hidden. She hadn’t committed herself to anything. She could still pull back from confronting him, from saying, ‘Tell me, Godfrey, what did happen out there on the hill between you and Grace Fulwell?’
; Then he was there, standing on the step just outside the big swing doors as if the bright sunlight was a surprise. He walked, head bowed, hands clasped behind his back, along the road towards the town centre. She slid out of the car and followed, not stopping even to lock the door. He would be going into Kimmerston to buy lunch. There would be a café or sandwich shop which he used regularly. She would go in after him, as if by chance, and she’d say, ‘I didn’t know you came here too.’
Instead he stopped before he reached the shopping area. In the angle formed by two main streets was the parish church, St Bartholomew’s. The churchyard was separated from the roads by low stone walls and where they met at the corner was a wooden lych-gate; sheltered by its wooden roof was a drift of pink confetti. Godfrey went through the gate, scuffing the confetti with his feet.
Even then Anne assumed he was looking for food because that was still in her mind. The church at Langholme occasionally held open house, provided soup, bread and cheese and sent the proceeds to a third world charity. She thought something like that was happening here, though there were no posters inviting passers-by to lunch and nobody else was about. The sun and the chase down the noisy road had confused her.
But she followed him in, expecting to find bosomy ladies in flowery aprons, stalls set out at the back of the church with a tea urn and thick white china cups. The buzz of parish gossip. Instead there was silence.
She had hesitated for a moment in the deep shadow of the porch. It was cool there. In the corners more confetti had been blown. A big wedding had apparently taken place the weekend before. Then she pushed open the studded door. Sunlight streamed through the stained glass above the altar, down the aisle into her eyes. The church was still decorated by the wedding flowers – huge white and gold blooms on each window in crystal vases, and the crystal reflected the coloured light too.
At first she stood, embarrassed, thinking that she’d interrupted a service and that people were staring at her as they’d all stared at Vera Stanhope when she crashed into the crem chapel in the middle of Bella’s funeral. Then her eyes adjusted to the light. She saw that she and Godfrey were the only people in the building and Godfrey hadn’t even noticed her coming in.
He was sitting near the front of the church in a pew close to the aisle but he didn’t seem to be praying. They had never discussed religion. She wondered if perhaps that was an explanation for his jumpiness, his change of moods towards her – he had moral qualms about adultery. But now he looked more like someone waiting for a bus than facing a spiritual crisis. He glanced nervously at his watch. Perhaps he had arranged to meet someone but then surely he would have turned occasionally to check the door and still he hadn’t seen her. Even when she walked down the aisle towards him and her shoes must have made a sound on the stone floor he kept his eyes firmly fixed on the front of the church.
She slipped into the pew behind him and said conversationally, ‘I never took you for the religious type, Godfrey.’
‘Anne.’ He spoke before turning to face her and when he did, she couldn’t tell whether or not he was pleased to see her.
‘Or perhaps you’ve got something to confess.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Four days,’ she said lightly. ‘And you’ve not been in touch. Don’t tell me. Let me guess. You’ve been busy.’
He didn’t reply.
‘Why did you rush off like that when you’d been on the hill?’ She couldn’t keep up this jokey tone any longer. ‘Why didn’t you come into Baikie’s to say goodbye?’
‘I was upset,’ he said at last.
‘What about? Being caught with your pants down? Or had something else happened to upset you?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I need to know what happened on the hill that afternoon.’
He twisted his watch face so he could see it. The strap was loose. This was a nervous gesture she hadn’t noticed before. That and his continued silence got under her skin so she shouted, ‘For Christ’s sake, I’m asking you if you killed Grace Fulwell!’
She sensed her voice fill the church, become muffled by echo in its corners, in the high boat-shaped roof.
‘No,’ he said. ‘Of course I didn’t kill her.’ There was a trace of irritation in his voice which reassured her more than the words.
‘Have the police been to see you yet?’ she asked.
‘Why would they?’
‘Because of the quarry. They think Grace might have been killed because she’d discovered something which would stop the development going ahead.’
‘God, who dreamed up that theory?’
‘The inspector in charge, a woman called Stanhope.’
‘You told her it was ridiculous?’
‘I haven’t told her anything.’ She spoke slowly, giving the words extra weight.
He looked up from his watch. ‘So she doesn’t know I was there that day?’
‘No.’
‘I wasn’t sure what to do. There’ve been television appeals asking people to come forward, anyone who was near Black Law. I was going to go. I could say I was doing a site visit. Then I thought if you hadn’t told them I was there it might look strange. I suppose I could say I didn’t go into the house. I could say I went straight onto the hill. What do you think?’
‘For Christ’s sake, Godfrey, I’m not your mother.’
‘No, no, I’m sorry.’
‘Did you see Grace?’
‘Only in the distance. She walked too fast for me to catch her up.’
‘Did you see anyone else?’
‘No.’ She thought she had sensed a slight hesitation, then decided she had imagined it. His panic was making her rattled too.
‘There doesn’t seem much point then.’
‘But my car was parked in your yard. I drove down the track. Anyone might have seen it. What will the police think if someone else reports it before I do?’
‘How should I fucking know!’
He looked as shocked as if she had hit him. He had never liked her swearing. Memories of the other times calmed her a bit.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘But it is your decision, you know, it has to be!’
‘I’ve been worried about it.’
‘So have I.’
‘I mean how would it look?’
Keep your cool, girl, she thought. ‘You mean if Barbara found out that you’d been sneaking away for illicit picnics in the hills?’
‘No,’ he said impatiently. ‘Not that. The press hasn’t got hold of the quarry angle yet but it’s only time. You can image the headlines. Conservationist killed on site of proposed new development. The planning process is slow enough. I need this project to go ahead.’ He paused. ‘If only I could be sure the police won’t find out.’
‘Well, I’ve told no one. Grace can’t. I suppose there’s an outside chance that the murderer saw you but he’s hardly likely to go blabbing to the police that he was on the hill. So unless you’ve told anyone, how will Inspector Stanhope ever know?’
There was a moment’s silence and she added, ‘You haven’t talked to anyone, have you, Godfrey?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Of course not.’
She looked at him closely but didn’t push it.
‘So?’ she asked. ‘What are you doing here anyway?’
‘It’s quiet. I come here sometimes when I need to get out of the office.’
‘Not religious then? No hang-ups about adultery? I wondered.’
‘No hang-ups at all about you.’
He stood up, straightened his tie, looked again at his watch. ‘I suppose I should get back.’
‘Should I slip out through the vestry door so we’re not seen together?’
He smiled. ‘I don’t think there’s any need for that.’
But outside the church, standing in the shadow of the lych-gate, he hesitated. ‘I suppose you’re parked in town.’
‘No. By your office. I was waiting for you. How else could I know you were here?’
‘Why the hell not?’
‘Neville Furness is in today.’
‘So?’
‘I told you he saw us coming out of the restaurant together. I can’t afford talk at this stage.’
A sudden thought occurred to her. ‘You didn’t tell him about coming out to Baikie’s on the afternoon Grace died?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Of course not.’ But Anne didn’t believe him. He’d felt the need to confide in someone and Neville was his right-hand man, his guru, if Barbara was to be believed. ‘You walk on,’ he continued. ‘I’ll follow in a few minutes.’
‘I thought you were in a hurry to get back to the office.’ She felt like a spurned adolescent, ridiculous, desperate. She put her hands on his shoulders. ‘When will I see you again?’
He disentangled himself gently. ‘I don’t think that would be wise.’
Her head spun in disbelief. ‘What do you mean? For fuck’s sake, not very long ago you were talking about marriage.’
‘Nothing’s changed,’ he said earnestly. ‘Not in the way I feel about you.’
‘But?’
‘Until they’ve caught this murderer, until things are more settled, perhaps we shouldn’t meet.’ The words came out in a rush, and when he saw her face he added, ‘For your sake, Annie. I don’t want you implicated.’
She turned and started off down the street. She couldn’t bear to break down and plead with him. But after a moment she stopped and shouted back, ‘Tell me, Godfrey, is that you talking or Neville Furness?’
He didn’t answer and she continued to walk away, expecting him to follow, to catch hold of her, or at least to call after her. When there was no response, hating herself for being so spineless, she stopped again. He wasn’t even looking at her. He had gone back through the lych-gate and through the gap she saw him standing in the churchyard and staring down at one of the graves where a bunch of white lilies had been laid.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Vera Stanhope kept the women in Baikie’s informed about the progress of the investigation in a way Rachael couldn’t believe was usual in a murder inquiry. At first she was grateful for the stream of information. She was reassured by the bulky form of Vera, sitting in Constance’s old chair, legs wide apart, hands cupped around a mug of coffee, talking. If the inspector didn’t trust them she wouldn’t pass on all these details, would she?