He never usually minded her gossip. It was a change to have someone else to talk to. But that afternoon it was all about the murder and the fuss Jack Robson was making in the village.
‘But what can he possibly know about it?’ Paul had demanded, and realized at once that he must sound too aggressive.
‘He says he knows more than the police,’ Mrs Irving replied. ‘He’s a canny man, Councillor Robson.’
‘What nonsense.’
But as he thought about it Paul Wilcox thought that perhaps Jack Robson did know more than the police. After all he worked in the school. He would have access to Medburn’s office, perhaps even to the headmaster’s desk. There was no knowing what he might have overheard. The thought obsessed him and he could not stop brooding on it. When she came home that evening Hannah could tell that he was upset, and was sympathetic.
‘It’ll be delayed shock,’ she said. ‘You worked with Mr Medburn. You were close to him. It’s natural that you should feel like this.’
He wanted to tell her that her sympathy was misguided, that he did not deserve it, but he was too weak and frightened.
By Tuesday morning he was determined to find out how much Jack Robson knew. He could not bear the anxiety of this uncertainty. He tried to talk to Patty in the playground, but she seemed to know nothing, so when the school bell went and the playground was empty of parents and children he went to look for the caretaker.
He found Jack Robson in his room. He realized that Jack had seen him coming and was expecting him. He had left Lizzie strapped in her buggy in the playground, with a bag of sweeties to keep her quiet.
‘Come in, man,’ Jack Robson said when he tapped on the door. ‘What can I do for you?’
Wilcox did not know what to say. He stood on the threshold and his mind went blank. He started to stammer some excuse but Jack interrupted him.
‘You’ll have come about Harold Medburn,’ he said.
Wilcox was the last person Jack had expected to see. Surely his set were beyond Medburn’s power. He came from the south, he was wealthy, the chairman of the Parents’ Association. If anything Medburn should have been in awe of him. Yet here he stood, gawping like a goldfish. Jack looked at him with interest.
‘You’ll have come about Harold Medburn,’ he repeated, then taking pity on the man he added: ‘I expect you want to know why I’m so interested in the case.’
‘Yes,’ Wilcox said gratefully, ‘that’s right.’ He composed himself. ‘We must think about the reputation of the school,’ he said. ‘We don’t want any more adverse publicity than is strictly necessary. You’re a governor, you’ll understand that.’
‘And we don’t want an innocent woman to go to gaol,’ Jack said quickly.
There was a pause.
‘Do you think Kitty Medburn is innocent?’ Wilcox asked.
‘Aye.’
‘What makes you think that?’
‘What makes you so interested?’
‘I’ve told you,’ Wilcox blustered. ‘I’m concerned about the school. We want the thing over quickly.’
‘Kitty Medburn is a friend of mine,’ Jack said. ‘I don’t think she could have killed him.’
Is that all? Wilcox thought, overwhelmed with relief. He doesn’t know about the letters, he has no evidence at all. He’s just a romantic fool.
Jack Robson recognized the relief and wished he had not given so much away.
‘Can I ask you some questions?’ he said. ‘As you’re here.’
‘Of course.’ There was nothing to be frightened of now.
‘You used to come to the school quite often,’ Jack said. ‘ What did you and Medburn have to talk about?’
‘Oh,’ Wilcox said. ‘General matters concerning the school. Mr Medburn was interested in getting feedback from the parents.’
That, Jack thought, was a fantasy. Medburn hadn’t given a shit what the parents thought.
But Wilcox was continuing: ‘ If you’re looking for another suspect for Mr Medburn’s murder, perhaps you should talk to young Matthew Carpenter. Did you know that the headmaster was determined to get rid of him? Mr Medburn was going to try to persuade him to resign and if that didn’t work he was going to sack him. The headmaster asked me what the parents thought of Mr Carpenter’s teaching.’
‘That’s why you came to the school last week?’
‘That, and to discuss the final arrangements for the Hallowe’en party with Miss Hunt.’
He stood up and held out his hand to Jack. He saw with satisfaction that it was steady and unshaking.
‘I’ll have to go now,’ he said, ‘ my daughter’s waiting outside.’
In the playground he took a deep breath. It was unfortunate, he thought, that he should have shifted suspicion onto young Matthew Carpenter, but he must think of his own safety. He thought he had handled things rather well. It was only later in the day that his anxiety about the letters returned and he decided that something had to be done about them.
Jack Robson watched Wilcox from the window. The information about Matthew Carpenter had been interesting, but he thought he had learned more about Wilcox himself. The man was frightened. In the school hall the children began to sing ‘All things bright and beautiful’.
The vicarage was big and ugly and had seen better days. It had been built a hundred years before at the same time as the church to serve the expanding community, though few of the men who worked in the pit worshipped there. They went every Sunday to the Methodist chapel in the village. In the churchyard were the graves of men who had lost their lives in the colliery accidents, and by drowning, and of women who had died in childbirth. Only recently, it seemed, had it become common to die of old age.
Patty walked past the tombstones on her way to the house. Brown chrysanthemums, covered in frost, lay on her mother’s grave. She wondered, briefly, where Medburn would be buried. Here, she presumed, as he was such a pillar of the church. It was a high, exposed place. The trees around the church were bent and some were bare, stripped of their leaves by the wind the previous day. As she walked along the icy path to the vicarage she noticed that there were blackbirds everywhere and that the clear air was full of their song.
She saw the vicar through his study window before she rang the bell. He was running the pages of the parish magazine off a primitive printing machine. His fingers were stained with blue ink and he turned the handle with great ferocity. He was red and flushed although there seemed to be no heating in the vicarage. Before becoming a clergyman he had been in the merchant navy, though now he seemed too thin, too quiet, too academic for a sailor. He looked to Patty no older than when he had come to Heppleburn ten years before. He was probably in his mid-forties. His arrival at the church from the south of England had coincided with a period of religious enthusiasm in her life. Perhaps he had been the cause of it. She had attended regularly, had even, for one disastrous winter, been in the choir. Like all her interests it had passed and now she only came to church when the children had some special Sunday school activity and for the Midnight Communion of Christmas Eve.
Peter Mansfield, the vicar, seemed to feel a personal responsibility for her disaffection. He seemed to regard each attendance as a possible rebirth of faith, would speak to her specially as she left the church, saying that he hoped to see her again soon. Each time he was disappointed. Now, when he let her into the draughty hall he greeted her with great affection and she felt a fraud as if she were there on false pretences.