She left before the shops shut. There was no hurry because Claire was going to a friend’s for tea, but Angela thought it was time to face her mother. She had parked on the quayside and sat in the car, watching the lights come on over the Tyne Bridge, thinking what she would say. The London train moved slowly across the river towards the station. She had already told her mother that she would not be working at Burnside because Medburn had left her enough money to repay the debt. She knew that she would receive a great deal. Beside his savings there was a house in Tynemouth he had bought years before in preparation for his retirement. But she had given her mother no details. She had not explained why Medburn had left her the money. Everyone else in Heppleburn knew and her mother would have heard the gossip by now. It was time to put her point of view. She drove over the cobbles through the darkening streets along the quay, past the multi-coloured brickwork of the Byker wall and along the coast towards Heppleburn.
Angela had guessed her mother might be angry about the rumours circulating in the village about herself and Medburn, but she had never seen the woman in such a state. For as long as Angela could remember, Mrs Mount had been composed and stately. There had been a few seemly tears at her husband’s funeral, the occasional outburst or irritation when one of the staff at Burnside had not followed her instructions precisely, but throughout these her control had remained intact. Now she was almost unrecognizable. She did not shout or cry, but the impression of strength and power had gone. She was vulnerable, small, weak. The whole place seemed to be in disorder. Usually tea had been served and cleared away by five o’clock, but when Angela arrived the residents were still at the table. There were remnants of the meal on plates in front of them sandwich crusts, half-eaten pieces of scone, the plain biscuits which no one had chosen – like the debris after a children’s tea party.
An old man was shouting that he needed the toilet and the staff were too harassed to go to his assistance. Angela took his arm and helped him. Surprisingly, because she knew now that this was done voluntarily, she felt no resentment at being required to help. When he was back in his chair she went to find her mother.
Mrs Mount was in her room, sitting behind her desk, and she looked tired. Angela had never seen her anything but fresh, brisk and efficient. The exhaustion made her seem more human and Angela realized suddenly how much she must have been hurt by her daughter’s refusal to work with her.
‘You must have had a busy day,’ Angela said.
Mrs Mount looked up.
‘What are you doing here?’ she said. ‘Haven’t you caused trouble enough?’
‘I’m sorry,’ Angela said. ‘I know there’ll be gossip. But it’ll soon be over and they’ll find something else to stick their nebby noses in.’
‘I’ve worked hard for this place,’ Mrs Mount said. ‘You think it was easy.’
‘No,’ Angela said. ‘I never thought that.’ But it had seemed easy for Mrs Mount who swept through the place with her smile and her dignity, seeming not to notice the loneliness, humiliation, or smell of her residents.
‘I knew what I wanted,’ Mrs Mount continued, ‘ and I did what I had to do to get it.’ She looked at her daughter. ‘Just like you and Medburn.’ It was the only time the man was mentioned throughout the conversation.
‘Why don’t you sell the place and retire?’ Angela asked. ‘You’d get a good price for it.’ But she could not imagine her mother powerless, with only herself to organize, having to cook her own meals and make her own bed. She brought me up to be spoiled and waited on too, Angela thought. For the whole of my childhood I was told I was special. Well, I am special now. The sudden insight chilled her.
‘How can I retire until I know what’s going to happen?’ The woman turned on her in anger.
‘What do you mean?’
‘There was a woman here this afternoon. She’d pretended to come about a job as care assistant, but she was here asking questions. She said you’d sent her.’
‘What was her name?’
‘Atkins.’
Angela was shocked. She supposed she should have expected it, but she had never thought Patty would have the application to see the thing through.
‘She’s Jack Robson’s daughter,’ she said. ‘You know, he’s the old man who always claimed that Kitty Medburn was innocent of the murder. She was helping him find out about it. I never sent her here.’
‘She knew too much,’ Mrs Mount said. ‘She was asking about the Heminevrin. What if Kitty Medburn talked to Robson before she died?’ She looked with desperation at her daughter. ‘ You’ll have to do something about them. I can’t have either of them talking to the police.’
Throughout the day Jack Robson had begun to emerge from the cocoon of numb sadness which had protected him from his grief. The exhaustion and apathy which had kept him in his armchair for days disappeared suddenly, as if he had recovered from a serious illness. He cooked and ate a large meal and enjoyed it, tasting every mouthful.
The memory of Kitty in the prison and the school house was sharp and painful, but he was no longer overwhelmed by it. Like the image of Kitty as a girl, skipping in the school playground, he saw the recent past as a piece of fiction, read and passionately reacted to, but in the end unreal. His infatuation for her seemed like an illness too, a fever. He wondered how it could ever have happened. All that was left was a sense of guilt and responsibility, and Jack had too strong an instinct for survival, too little imagination to be devastated by that. He was more at home with action and as he took control of his life again, he wondered what he should do.
What would Joan say? he thought and that too was an indication that things were returning to normal, because since his wife’s death he had asked the question many times. He could almost hear her speaking: ‘ Get off your backside, Jack Robson! It’s no good moping around the house. You’ve work to do.’
What work? he thought. Hadn’t he caused enough damage with his meddling? Yet he longed for the sense of purpose which the original investigation had given him. The excitement, the questions, the exhilaration of discovery were addictive. He wanted to see a result. He wanted to go to Ramsay and see the policeman’s face when he told him the name of the murderer. Although that was still a long way off Jack felt that he might know who had killed Medburn. Almost unconsciously, as he sat in his stupor of mourning, he had been worrying at the problem of the headmaster’s death and had developed a theory so unlikely, so bizarre, that it seemed like a feverish nightmare. Yet it answered all the questions. He wondered now what he should do to prove it, and his wife’s words came to him again: ‘Jack Robson. Get off your backside!’
On an impulse he got out of his chair and made a telephone call to the coach station in Newcastle. He found out that there was an evening coach to the south. He returned to his chair and thought for a few minutes.
There was the same feeling of health and vitality that had come to him earlier. His head was full of ideas and plans. He went upstairs and packed the small suitcase he had bought for Joan to take to hospital when she was first ill. He was ready. Only then did it occur to him that his daughter might be worried if he suddenly disappeared. He was too excited to tell her. She would think he was mad to rush off into the night with nowhere to stay, and would stop him going. He felt he was coming out of a period of insanity but it would be hard to explain that to her. In the end he wrote to Patty. His note said very little. He needed time to think, he said. He would go away for a few days. She wasn’t to worry. He did not tell her his destination. Perhaps he wanted to create a mystery of his disappearance, to make himself important. He gave his neighbour’s son a pound coin to deliver the letter the next morning on his way to school.