When Ramsay returned to the room Tanner was standing up, smoking a cigarette. He looked at Ramsay hopefully, seeing him as an ally, someone to rescue him from the bullying Hunter. Ramsay took a seat, waited until Tanner had stubbed out the cigarette, then spoke quietly.
‘When did Mrs Cassidy find out about your gambling?’ he asked.
Walter stared at him, his mouth slightly open. He clearly thought the man must be some sort of magician. He was too shocked to deny it.
‘Well?’ Ramsay persisted gently. ‘It was a recent discovery, wasn’t it?’
This was a guess but he imagined that Dorothea would never allow a situation she considered unsatisfactory to go on indefinitely. She would use all her energy to do something about it.
Walter Tanner nodded.
‘How did she find out?’
‘She’d been visiting a family on the Ridgeway,’ Walter said unhappily. ‘She saw me going into the bookies.’ The exhilaration which had sustained him through the interview with Hunter had left him.
‘What did she do?’ Ramsay asked.
Tanner paused, trying to find the words, stammering over them and when he spoke Ramsay was surprised by the power of them.
‘She tormented me,’ he said. ‘She was so certain… so morally superior… so horribly kind.’ And so beautiful, he thought. A vicar’s wife had no right to be so beautiful.
‘What did she expect you to do?’
‘To stop, of course. She seemed to think that it would be easy. “I really don’t see the problem,” she said. “ You don’t need that sort of thing. Not you, Walter. Not with your faith.”’
‘But it wasn’t that easy?’
‘It was impossible,’ he said. ‘ I knew she was right and I tried to give it up but it was like a terrible addiction.’ He paused again and ran his tongue over his lips. ‘ Then she thought I should make the whole thing public. She said I needed the support and encouragement of the whole congregation. If it remained a secret I’d never stop.’
‘Did she threaten to tell the others?’ Ramsay asked.
‘No,’ Walter said. ‘To be fair, she never did that. But she was always here, putting pressure on me. “ Why don’t you tell them at the PCC meeting?” she would say, and then throughout the meeting she would be there, staring at me, waiting for me to speak. She didn’t see that her interference just made things worse. It made me realise what a mess I’d made of my life. I couldn’t stand it.’
‘When was Mrs Cassidy last here?’ Ramsay asked.
‘On Saturday morning. She came to ask me to Sunday afternoon tea.’
‘But you didn’t go, did you?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘ I couldn’t face it.’
‘Did you kill her?’
‘No,’ he said, with a strange, comic dignity. ‘I wouldn’t have killed her.’
There was a pause, the sound of footsteps on the stairs, the slam of the front door. The house was suddenly quiet.
‘Has anyone else got a key to your house?’ Ramsay asked. ‘The lock wasn’t forced.’
Then after some thought, Walter answered. ‘No. When my mother was ill a woman came in to look after her. She had a spare key. I don’t think we ever got it back.’
‘How do you explain the fact that the door was open?’
‘I don’t know. I suppose I forgot to lock it when I went out. I was upset.’
‘Tell me about Clive Stringer,’ Ramsay said. ‘ Why did you dislike him so much?’
‘I didn’t dislike him,’ Walter said. ‘Not really. It was what he represented.’
‘What was that?’
‘I suppose,’ Walter said slowly, ‘he represented all the changes Dorothea had made in the church. He made me uncomfortable.’
‘You have no idea what he was doing here this afternoon?’
‘None,’ Tanner said. ‘If Dorothea had been alive I would have suspected her of sending him. She had some silly idea that we might be friends. But of course that’s impossible.’
‘Yes,’ Ramsay said. ‘ That’s impossible.’ He felt a sudden deep sympathy for this sad little man. The violation of his privacy by the murderer was a crime in itself.
From outside, a long way off and distorted by amplification, came the sound of rock music. The carnival parade was about to start. Ramsay realised it was already evening. On the Ridgeway Estate Hilary Masters was waiting with Theresa Stringer to speak to him. It was too hot, too complicated and he longed for a moment to escape to his cottage in Heppleburn, where there would be a breeze up the valley from the sea, and complete silence. He stood up.
‘Are you going?’ Walter Tanner said in a panic. Perhaps he was afraid that he would be left again to Gordon Hunter.
‘Yes,’ Ramsay said. ‘We’ll both go now and leave you in peace. Someone will be back later to take a statement.’
On the doorstep he paused. Hunter was waiting by the front gate, angry that his opinion had been disregarded, fuming. Ramsay wanted to say something to Tanner to show him that he thought well of him. What right had Dorothea to judge him so harshly? He knew what it was like to be lonely, unpopular, frustrated.
‘Mrs Cassidy must have cared about you,’ he said, ‘to have shown so much interest.’
But the thought seemed to give Tanner no consolation. ‘ She cared too much about everyone,’ he said. ‘ That was the problem.’
He stood in the porch and watched the men walk down the street towards their cars.
Beside the cars the men paused. Ramsay could sense Hunter’s hostility but had neither the patience nor the skill to deal with it. Perhaps the tension, the edge of competition made them more effective, he thought, but life would have been more comfortable if they could have got on.
‘What do you want me to do now?’ Hunter asked.
‘Go back to the station and co-ordinate the team working the fair,’ Ramsay said. ‘We’ll need photos of Dorothea and Imogen. That was the last time Dorothea was seen. You could see if you can get hold of the Buchan girl too. If she was working this morning she should be free now. The hospital will have an address and phone number for her. She might know where Patrick Cassidy is.’
Hunter nodded reluctantly. It made sense.
‘I’m going to the Ridgeway,’ Ramsay said, ‘to talk to the boy’s mother. Miss Masters from the social services is with her.’
He added the last sentence as an afterthought, dropping it in as if it had no significance, but Hunter was not fooled. He smirked, imagining the interest he could stir up in the canteen. Ramsay and the Snow Queen he would say, his voice full of innuendo. They’d make a good team. The thought cheered him up and he drove away.
It took Hunter longer than he had expected to find out where Imogen lived. There was no Buchan in the phone book. Her parents, fearing malicious calls from kids at school, were ex-directory. When he phoned the vicarage, thinking that someone there would surely know where to find her, the vicar was vague and unhelpful. Patrick had still not come home he’d said. He feared another dreadful tragedy. Hunter listened to his ravings for a while then replaced the receiver while he was still in mid-stream. The hospital was suspicious. By now all the administrative staff had gone home and the ward sister was unwilling to take the responsibility of passing on personal information over the phone. He persuaded her in the end by allowing her to call him back, after she had checked his credentials with the station. When at last he had the information he needed he dialled the number but there was no reply.