“Who are you?” he demanded. He wore an open-necked shirt and held a glass in his hand, but there was nothing relaxed about him.
“Mr. Henshaw,” Ramsay said. “ I’m sorry to disturb you. Perhaps I could come in for a while?” He showed the man his identity card. Henshaw studied it carefully, then stood aside.
“What do you want?” Henshaw said, not rudely, but making it clear he was not afraid of any policeman. “Someone came this morning to take a statement.”
“A few questions,” Ramsay said easily, carefully wiping his shoes on a mat just inside the door. A strip of transparent plastic matting led up the long hall. Mrs. Henshaw was obviously a house-proud woman and it would not do to antagonise her.
Without speaking, Henshaw led him through to the living room. Ramsay had expected Mrs. Henshaw to be there, but the room was empty. All of the large pieces of furniture had been pushed to the edge of the room against the walls, and the expanse of carpet, brightly patterned in swirling blues and greens, was broken only by several small coffee tables. At the time Ramsay thought the room had been arranged that way to accommodate the people the Henshaws were expecting, but when he visited again the room was just the same. It gave Ramsay the sense of a public building rather than a private home. It might have been the lounge of a smart, rather tasteless hotel.
The whole house was very hot. Along the wall was a stone fireplace and there was a gas fire, which simulated real flames. On the walls were several prints, chosen, it seemed, because their subjects were blue and green rather than because the Henshaws found them attractive. It was the sort of room Diana would have hated.
Again Ramsay was aware that he would have to conduct the interview with care. The fact that Henshaw owned the land behind his cottage coloured his attitude to the man. It was hard to remain objective.
“It’s my wife’s birthday,” Henshaw said suddenly. “We’re expecting guests. I’m going to have another drink. Would you like one?”
Ramsay shook his head. “This won’t take long,” he said. “The policeman who came this morning told you that Alice Parry was murdered last light.”
“Aye,” Henshaw said, then added reluctantly, “They’ll miss her in the village.”
He might have said more, but they were interrupted by Mrs. Henshaw, who stood for a moment in the doorway to be admired. Ramsay guessed she must have disappeared when she heard the doorbell to put on makeup, because her face had a waxy, coloured glow. She wore a suit in blue silk with a bow at the neck and frills at the sleeves, and her fat, fleshy feet were squeezed into high-heeled blue shoes. She smiled kindly and walked forward, arms outstretched.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t think we’ve met. You must be one of Colin’s friends.”
She had been told, Ramsay thought, to be on her best behaviour.
“No, no, woman,” Henshaw said impatiently. “ He’s a policeman. He’s here to talk about Mrs. Parry. Though God knows what it’s got to do with us.”
To Ramsay’s surprise Rosemary Henshaw’s eyes filled with tears. Her emotion contrasted sharply with Henshaw’s apparent indifference, and he wondered what significance that might have. She would be the sort, he thought, to cry easily.
“Poor soul,” she said. “ Such a shock to her family.” And she seemed genuinely concerned by her neighbour’s death.
“Did you know her well, Mrs. Henshaw?” Ramsay asked. Perhaps the women had been close friends and the awkwardness of the building dispute with her husband had come between them.
“No,” she said. “Not well. But she was kind. When we first came to the village, she made us welcome. She took me to the WI. Not all the old families were so friendly. It’s hard to settle in a new place, especially if you have no children.”
“Yes,” he said. “ It must be.”
Yet her sentimentality made him uneasy, and throughout the interview he treated her carefully, afraid of upsetting her again.
“Mrs. Parry came to see you last night,” Ramsay said. “You were the last people we know of who saw her alive.”
He looked at them, expecting some response, but there was none.
“She sold you some land,” Ramsay said. “ She came to see you to offer to buy it back.”
“Yes,” Henshaw said. “ She sold me some land.”
“Did you accept her offer to buy back the land?”
“No,” he said. “ Of course not.”
“Did you argue about it?”
“I never argue,” Henshaw said. “I explained to her the facts of business. I’ve already got prospective buyers for some of the houses. I’ve spent thousands drawing up the plans and putting them before the council. I couldn’t sell it now.”
“Is it true that Mrs. Parry only sold the land to you on the understanding that the houses you built would be small and inexpensive and available to local families?”
“No,” Henshaw said firmly. “That was a misunderstanding. I never gave any such commitment. Even Mrs. Parry accepted she’d been mistaken by the end of the evening.”
“Are you sure?” Ramsay asked. “ There was a protest meeting in the village yesterday afternoon and Mrs. Parry was very angry.”
“She was angry when she got here,” Rosemary Henshaw said. “She was quite rude. I didn’t want to let her in.”
Ramsay looked directly at Henshaw. “What did you say to persuade her that she’d been mistaken about the houses?” he asked.
“There was nothing in writing,” Henshaw said. “She was an old lady. Old ladies get muddled. Besides, it suited her purpose, didn’t it, to let the village think I’d cheated her. Let me be the bad guy. I’m used to it. That way she’d get her money and they’d all still love her.”
“Can you prove that’s the way it happened?”
“No,” Henshaw said. “ I told you, there was nothing in writing.”
“I see.” Ramsay stood up and walked towards the window. The room was so stuffy that he felt he would fall asleep. He did not know what to make of the builder who stood before the gas fire with such confident certainty. “What time did Mrs. Parry leave here?”
“Quarter to eleven,” Henshaw said.
“Are you sure?”
“I looked at the clock,” Henshaw said. “ I knew it was late. I offered to drive her home, but she said she’d rather walk.”
“Did you go out after she went?”
“No,” Henshaw said shortly. “ I’ve told you. It was late. We went to bed.”
There was a silence. Ramsay felt he was getting nowhere with the builder. Henshaw would have an answer whatever question was asked. Ramsay felt tired and incompetent. Hunter, he thought, would have bullied something out of him.
Rosemary Henshaw let Ramsay out of the house. Her husband, unmoved, stayed in the living room and barely looked up to say goodbye. In contrast she was too friendly to the policeman, almost gushing: “ Do let us know if there’s anything we can do to help. Call at any time.”
Then he was gone. She watched him walk down the drive until the only sign of him was the sound of his shoes on the frosty gravel. She realised how cold she was and shut the door.
She was a plump woman, always had been. Built like a dairymaid, Colin had said when they first met. He was a city boy from the west end of Newcastle and he liked to think of her as a country girl, though there was nothing romantic about her childhood.
“We’ll live in the country one day,” he had said when they first moved into their flat in town. He had talked a lot about what he wanted in those days and she had thought he was just dreaming. Now, wanting things had become a habit and he seemed unable to stop.
After seeing Ramsay out, Rosemary Henshaw paused in the hall before an ornate gilt-framed mirror and absent-mindedly studied her reflection. She wanted to confront Colin about the policeman’s visit, but she had left the important things to him for so long that she did not know how to begin. He would accuse her of making a scene, as he did sometimes when she asked tentatively where he had been when he stayed out all night. She knew he had other women and had stopped asking. She did not want to cause a scene. She wanted to offer Colin her help, but even that seemed an impudent thing to do because he was so far above her in intelligence and understanding. She wanted, above all things, to know what was going on.