‘Yes.’ Cassidy moved a gold wedding ring on his finger. ‘ Sarah, my first wife, died fifteen years ago after a long illness, cancer. Patrick was four then. It was such a blessing to have him with me. We became close and I thought that from then on it would be just the two of us. Then I met Dorothea. I had never thought that happiness like that would be possible for me again. I lost my heart and all my senses.’
He looked at Ramsay apologetically as if in the circumstances he should be excused such hyperbole.
‘What did your son make of your marriage?’
‘Patrick?’ Again Cassidy seemed surprised, as if he had been so wrapped up in his relationship with Dorothea that he had hardly considered his son. ‘He was pleased for me. By then he was quite independent, you know. He came to admire her tremendously.’
Ramsay paused. He knew that Hunter would have structured the interview quite differently, going immediately for the facts, demanding information about her movements, her friends, but he had decided that Dorothea Cassidy was an unusual woman and he wanted to know more about her.
‘Where did you meet your wife?’ Ramsay asked. ‘Was she a member of your congregation?’
‘No,’ Cassidy said. ‘She was the cousin of one of my college friends. I met her quite by chance when I went to Cornwall to visit him for a weekend.’
Even in his grief his excitement at the meeting was obvious.
‘She was working then for a Christian aid agency and had just come back from a spell overseas… You can’t know what it was like.’
He turned in his seat and opened the photograph album he had found earlier.
‘Look,’ he said. ‘This is how I first saw her. I took this photograph in Cornwall.’ Ramsay stood up and moved over to the desk. Cassidy pointed to a picture of Dorothea on a beach. She was sitting on a large boulder, her head thrown back, laughing into the camera. The wind blew her hair away from her face.
‘It was early March,’ Cassidy said. ‘One of those breezy, sunny days. The three of us went for a walk…’
He continued to turn the pages and Ramsay saw Dorothea at their wedding, stately and elegant in white, then at the Sunday school picnic in Prior’s Park, surrounded by children, then in the vicarage garden with Patrick on one side of her and a pale blonde girl on the other, her arms around them both.
‘That’s Patrick’s girlfriend, Imogen,’ Cassidy said. ‘ It was his last birthday. Dorothea cooked a meal for us all…’
The images suddenly seemed too painful for Cassidy and he shut the album abruptly. Ramsay returned to his seat. He said nothing. He felt that Cassidy wanted to talk about his wife and if he waited the words would come.
‘Dorothea was so enthusiastic!’ the priest said at last. ‘Even in the photographs that shines through. I felt I had only been half alive for years, that I’d wasted all the time before I knew her. I still can’t believe that she agreed to marry me. I wrote to ask her, you know, as soon as I’d come home after that weekend. I couldn’t sleep until I heard back from her. I don’t know why she agreed. She said she had read my books and had admired me for years, but she was much younger than me. It was a wonderfully impulsive thing to do. I’m not surprised by her death, you know. Not after the first shock. It was all too good to last.’
There was another silence.
‘What about the parish?’ Ramsay asked. ‘How did the church react to your new wife? Your marriage must have come as something of a shock.’
‘They loved her,’ Cassidy said quickly. ‘Everyone loved Dorothea.’
‘In my experience,’ Ramsay said, ‘ change is never universally welcomed.’
Surprisingly Cassidy smiled. ‘ Of course you’re right,’ he said. ‘St Mary’s has always been considered conservative and some of the elderly parishioners found it hard to adjust to a new situation. When I was first ordained I had the reputation, through my books, of being something of a rebel, but over the years I’ve learned the value of compromise and tolerance. Dorothea had strong views and always found compromise difficult.’
‘So she ruffled a few feathers?’
‘I suppose so,’ Cassidy said. ‘Not deliberately, of course. She never set out to shock. I don’t think she even realised the reaction she provoked.’
‘That must have put you in a difficult position,’ Ramsay said.
‘Perhaps. I don’t like unpleasantness, bad feeling. It seems unnecessary. Occasionally I thought I should have supported her more strongly but I didn’t want to offend. Some of the church council had a misleading impression of our relationship. They saw me, I gather, as a hen-pecked husband who had been bullied to accept new ideas.’
‘Was that true?’ Ramsay asked. ‘Were you in sympathy with your wife’s views?’
‘Oh, yes. Completely. All the same I could understand the distress that change can bring to people who hold very traditional opinions.’
So you sat on the fence, Ramsay thought. He had known senior police officers like the clergyman. They took all the credit when things were going well but denied responsibility at the first whiff of criticism.
‘Perhaps you could explain the changes which were specifically objected to,’ he said. ‘It’s hard for an outsider to understand.’
‘Oh,’ Cassidy said, ‘there was nothing specific, you know. It was more a difference in attitude, in perspective.’
Ramsay decided then that he would have to learn the substance of any disagreement between Dorothea and the elderly parishioners from someone else and that it was time to change the direction of the questions.
‘When did you last see your wife?’ he asked.
‘Yesterday morning,’ Cassidy said. ‘The three of us had breakfast together.’
‘Was it unusual for your wife to be out all day?’
‘Not on a Thursday. She had trained to be a social worker and Thursday was her day for voluntary work. Sometimes she managed to get home for lunch but not that often. I didn’t really expect her back yesterday.’
‘Did you know that she had planned to give a talk to the old people at Armstrong House in the evening?’
‘I don’t know. I suppose so. I mean I expect she told me but I don’t quite remember. She was so disorganised, you know, always brimming with new projects. Thursday was her day you see. I didn’t interfere. Quite often she arrived home late in the evening after a meeting; sometimes she went out with her friends for a meal. She said that it was important for her to have one day when she felt she really achieved something. It wasn’t always easy to organise but I could understand why she needed it…’
He tailed off and sat again with his head in his hands. Ramsay said nothing and as the silence grew he could sense Cassidy’s discomfort. The man had loved his wife but he wanted Ramsay to understand that living with her had not always been easy.
‘Sarah was very much a traditional vicar’s wife,’ he said. ‘She ran the Mothers’ Union, saw to the flowers. You know the sort of thing. Dorothea had other gifts.’ There was self-pity in his voice. He made it clear that Dorothea’s gifts had been to him a mixed blessing. ‘She was very concerned that we should attract young people into the church and was convinced that we should make the worship more accessible to them. A lot of her energy was focused in that direction. She started a youth club, for example, and organised the crèche during family communion. But she had so many enthusiasms that she was still unfulfilled. She needed her Thursdays.’
‘Yes,’ Ramsay said, ‘I see.’ But what did she get up to? he wanted to say. What did she do on Thursdays that so fulfilled her? Instead he said: ‘Did she work with any one organisation? The social services department? Probation?’
Cassidy shook his head. ‘Nothing like that,’ he said. ‘ Though she worked very closely with both of them. She saw herself as a catalyst, setting up new projects, encouraging other people to help themselves.’