‘No,’ he said. ‘ We’ve brought in Mr Corkhill to help us with our inquiries but it’s unlikely that he’ll be charged.’
He realised he was hiding behind the jargon. He did not know how to respond to her distress.
‘Then who was it?’ she cried again.
‘We don’t know,’ he said. ‘ Not yet.’ He had never felt so inadequate.
‘Will you be coming to talk to Theresa today?’ she said. ‘Will I see you there?’
‘I won’t be there until later,’ he said. ‘I know you’re very busy. Perhaps you won’t have the time to wait.’
‘Don’t worry, I’ll wait. I think I should be there when you talk to Theresa. Besides…’
Her voice trailed off and yet he was left with the sense that a promise had been made, that the possibility of contact between them had been established, and he was as excited as a boy.
The next phone call was made to the Walkers. His determination that he should start again at the beginning made the Cassidys an obvious target of investigation. When the phone rang Dolly was picking raspberries, stooping under the nets which were supposed to stop the birds taking the fruit, and she heard the bell through the open kitchen door. It took some time for her to disentangle herself from the net and she expected the phone to stop before she reached it but it continued with a persistence that frightened her. When she picked up the receiver her hand was shaking.
‘Yes?’ she said. ‘Hello?’ She expected it to be her husband.
‘Mrs Walker,’ Ramsay said. ‘I wonder if I might speak to Edward Cassidy.’
She felt defensive, as if he had accused her of neglecting her duty.
‘He’s not here,’ she said and felt herself blushing. ‘He insisted on going home. We tried to persuade him but he wasn’t himself at all.’
‘Patrick then? It is rather urgent.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Patrick’s not here either. We were rather worried about him. He went off in such a state. Actually my husband’s out looking for him.’ Then she stopped abruptly, feeling strangely disloyal.
Ramsay probed gently for precise times – when exactly had Patrick left them? What time did they leave the vicar in Otterbridge?
She sensed that something was wrong and became flustered and evasive. She was no good about time, she said. Ramsay would have to talk to her husband. But when the Major returned from his unsuccessful attempt to find Patrick Cassidy, he persuaded her that it was dangerous to lie and that the police had their own methods to get to the truth. He thought it might be safer to distance themselves from the Cassidys.
Chapter Thirteen
Ramsay was tempted to leave Joss Corkhill to be interviewed by someone else. It seemed now that the man was only on the periphery of the investigation, an incidental distraction. Let Hilary Masters sort out the Stringer family’s problems. Yet Joss had had a reason to seek out Dorothea Cassidy on the afternoon of her death. And Ramsay was curious to meet the man who had brought such apparent joy to Theresa Stringer’s life and who had betrayed her trust so completely. Later Ramsay was glad that he had taken the time to talk to Corkhill. For the conversation gave him the first glimmer of a real motive.
After the hours of waiting Corkhill was sober and looked ill and drained like all alcoholics needing a drink. He was perfectly at home in the interview room. He sat with his elbows on the table and his head in his hands, his eyes shut, and though he must have heard Ramsay come into the room he did not move. He was a slight man with dark, curly hair and the inspector could see why Theresa might have found him attractive. He had cultivated the image of the travelling man. He was dressed in a striped collarless shirt, the sort students had worn when Ramsay was young, and a grey waistcoat. Round his neck was tied a red cotton scarf. In the interview he was almost entirely self-centred, yet occasionally there were bursts of wit and self-mockery. When he had had a drink or two Ramsay could see that he would be good company, lively, funny, but wanting always to be the centre of attention.
He opened his eyes, though still he did not look at Ramsay. He spoke with a thick Merseyside accent.
‘What have you done with my dog?’ he said. ‘ That’s a valuable animal. I’ll not have her ill-treated. She might be sick already, poisoned. She took a good bite out of that pig’s leg.’
Ramsay said nothing. It was as if Corkhill had not spoken. He sat at the table and arranged papers in front of him, a fussy civil servant, then switched on the tape-recorder to begin the interview.
‘We have a problem, Mr Corkhill,’ he said in his polite, civil servant’s voice, ‘and we think you may be able to help us. Perhaps you would be kind enough to answer a few questions.’
Corkhill looked up. ‘What is this all about?’ he said.
‘Come now, Mr Corkhill,’ Ramsay said, ‘I’m sure you know. I would have thought that the news of Mrs Cassidy’s murder must have reached the Ridgeway by now. A major talking-point, I should have thought, the murder of a vicar’s wife in a town like Otterbridge.’
Corkhill shrugged. ‘ Nothing to do with me, pal.’
‘But you did know Mrs Cassidy?’ Ramsay persisted.
‘So did most of Otterbridge,’ Corkhill said. ‘She had her nose into everything.’
‘But recently I understand you came under her special attention.’
Corkhill refused to answer directly. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘ this is intimidation. Why pick on me? I know you haven’t locked away the old boy who had her car on his drive. I saw him today.’
‘Do you know Mr Tanner?’
Corkhill smiled, aware that his ploy to distract Ramsay had succeeded.
‘I’ve met him a few times,’ he said airily. He paused for dramatic effect. ‘Usually in the bookies on the Ridgeway. He’s a regular there. Always loses. Didn’t you know? Not much of a detective are you? I saw him there today.’
Ramsay wrote a brief note but did not give Corkhill the satisfaction of a direct response.
‘To return to Mrs Cassidy,’ he said. ‘You didn’t like her very much did you, Mr Corkhill? She interfered in your private life and I suspect that you rather resented it.’
‘Not at first,’ Corkhill said. ‘At first I thought she was all right. On our side.’
‘But later you came to resent her?’ Ramsay persisted.
Corkhill was finding it increasingly difficult to maintain the pose of flippancy. He needed a drink, and the soft, insinuating questions had begun to irritate him. His uncertainty made him want to lash out.
‘She was an interfering cow!’ he said. ‘Theresa and me had everything arranged. We were going to work together, a team, like the real gypsies. Then Mrs bloody Cassidy stuck her nose in and spoilt it. You don’t know what she was like…’
‘No,’ Ramsay said. ‘Well… perhaps you had better tell me. Did you meet her at Miss Stringer’s house?’
‘There was no way of bloody avoiding it once she took on the lad,’ Corkhill said. ‘I thought she understood me. She’d travelled herself. We talked. Then she found a few bruises on the kid and everything changed. She came to the house, all high and mighty, laying down the law. “I think this is a family problem, don’t you? And you’re part of the family, Mr Corkhill.”’ He spoke in a falsetto parody of a woman’s voice. ‘She was so bloody sure of herself,’ he went on. ‘And so bloody sure that she knew what was best for us all.’
‘It’s a responsibility taking on a woman with two kids,’ Ramsay said. ‘How did you get on with Clive?’
Corkhill shrugged. ‘ He’s all right,’ he said. ‘ Not very bright but then brains don’t run in the family.’
‘What about Beverley?’ Ramsay asked. ‘Is she a backward child?’
‘No,’ Corkhill said grudgingly. ‘She’s got more about her than her brother.’
‘That must have been very difficult,’ Ramsay said. ‘I understand that bright children are often demanding.’