“What do you mean?”
“Didn’t you usually wait until Maggie had finished work?”
Charlie looked at Ramsay with deep hostility. “That’s none of your business.”
“I’m sorry,” Ramsay said. “ I’m afraid it is. Usually you waited until Maggie finished work and followed her home. What made that night different?”
“I don’t know,” Charlie muttered. “Perhaps I realised she wasn’t worth it. I’d had a lot to drink.”
Ramsay said nothing, waiting for Charlie to expand his explanation.
“Look!” Charlie cried. “Perhaps I’d come to my senses, realised I couldn’t carry on like that. I’d decided to leave the village. I’m going to look for work in the south.”
Ramsay nodded his understanding but gave no indication of whether he believed Charlie. He continued impassively: “ What time did you get home?”
“About eleven o’clock, I suppose.”
Ramsay turned to Elliot, who was stirring tea in the pot. “Is that right?”
Elliot hesitated, then nodded. “Aye,” he said. “ I always wait up for him. I know it’s daft.”
Ramsay returned his attention to Charlie. “ Did you see Mrs. Parry on your way home?”
“No.” Charlie had recovered some of his composure and was showing off. “I didn’t see her, but then I’d had eight pints of Scotch. I might not have noticed.”
Ramsay stared out of the misted window. “ So you can’t remember what you did,” he said. “You were drunk.”
“I can remember fine.”
“Did you stop on the way?”
“No,” Charlie said. “Why should I stop? It was cold.”
“Did you meet anyone in the street?” He spoke in a flat, courteous civil-servant’s voice.
“No.” Charlie was sneering. “Most of Brinkbonnie’s in bed by ten o’clock. It was dead quiet.”
Then his triumph at remembering despite the alcoholic haze overcame his resentment of the policeman. For the first time he contributed freely to the conversation. “ There was a girl! In the churchyard. I saw her when I came out of the Castle.”
“Who was it?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t recognise her. She was all right. Young, you know.”
Ramsay gave no sign that the information was of any importance to him. He turned back to the window. “Did you speak to her?” he asked.
“I might have shouted to her,” Charlie said. “ Something about it being a cold night.”
“Did she answer?”
“No, snooty cow. She walked through the gravestones towards the Tower. She looked like a bloody ghost.”
“Did she go through the gate into the Tower garden?”
“I didn’t see. I wanted to get home. I needed to piss.”
“What did the woman look like?”
Charlie shrugged. “It was hard to tell in that light,” he said. “Small, dark. I think she had long hair.”
“And what was she wearing?”
“How should I know? She was on the other side of the wall. I couldn’t see much more than her head.”
“You are sure,” Ramsay said slowly, “that there was a woman? This isn’t a game to annoy the police.”
“Oh,” said Charlie. “Think what you like.” He swore under his breath.
Ramsay ignored him. “ Did you notice a car near the green?” he asked. “ One not usually parked there?”
“No,” Charlie said. “ I didn’t notice anything.” But he spoke too quickly to have considered the matter and it seemed that the childish resentment had returned. “ Look!” he said. “How much longer are you going to keep me here? I’ll lose my job.”
“You’re free to go at any time,” Ramsay said. “We know where to find you.”
He rubbed a clear patch in the condensation on the window and looked out into the yard. Charlie Elliot went to a cupboard in the corner and pulled out a jacket. They watched while he laced shoes and fastened buttons and then Ramsay saw him go out into the yard. Fred Elliot was standing helplessly in the middle of the room with a teapot in his hand. “ I’ve made this now,” he said. “Do you want some?”
“No,” Ramsay said. “ I expect you want to open the post office.”
“Yes,” Elliot said. He seemed miserable and lost. “I suppose I should.” He seemed afraid to be left on his own. “ There’s no hurry.”
“Is it just a post office or is it a shop, too?”
“Yes,” Elliot said. “ It’s a newsagent. We sell magazines, stationery, confectionery. The post office counter is at the back. It’s a canny little business. Especially in the summer.”
“Where do you keep the stock you don’t sell?”
“What do you mean?”
“There must be out-of-date newspapers, magazines. You can’t keep them on the shelves. What do you do with them?”
“I save them,” Elliot said proudly. “Then sell them to a wastepaper merchant. For charity. I give the money to the hospital where my wife died. I can show you it if you like.” He had no suspicion, it seemed, of Ramsay’s motive for asking. Still in his slippers, he led the policeman across the yard to a large, well-built shed in one corner.
The collection of wastepaper had become a hobby, it seemed, almost an obsession. “I collect the neighbours’ papers as well,” he said. “And the church helps. It’s surprising how it mounts up. You can make pounds.” He unbolted the shed door and switched on a light. Inside, against one wall, in neatly stacked and wrapped bundles, were piles of newspapers. Ramsay could imagine Elliot in there, escaping from his rude and unpredictable son, soothing his nerves by counting the papers and calculating their worth. In comparison to the general tidiness, the floor was a mess of paper scraps, as if a child had been playing at cutting out. There was a pair of round-ended scissors and a tube of glue. Elliot stood, betrayed and horrified, realising for the first time what the questions had been leading up to.
“I take it,” Ramsay said, “that these have nothing to do with you.”
Elliot shook his head.
“You do realise that we’ll have to take these pieces of newspaper to compare with the print on the anonymous letter to Mrs. Parry?”
“Yes,” Elliot said. He looked at Ramsay desperately. “ He might have sent the letter,” he pleaded, “but that doesn’t mean that he killed her.”
“No,” Ramsay said gently. “ It doesn’t mean that he killed her.”
“What will you do with him now?”
“I’ll talk to him,” Ramsay said. “Probably take him to the police station and ask him some questions. You mustn’t worry too much. He can see a solicitor.”
“He wouldn’t have killed her,” Elliot said, as if he were trying to convince himself. “He wouldn’t have killed her.”
Ramsay left him in the shed, surrounded by his beloved wastepaper, standing by the open door and looking out at the whirlwind of sand funnelled by the wind into the yard.
Out in the street little had changed. An old woman stood on the pavement patiently waiting for the post office to open. Two detective constables moved slowly along the terrace on the other side of the green, knocking on doors, asking questions. In the garage workshop Tom Kerr stood before the open bonnet of a car. Ramsay stood by the open door and looked in.
Kerr straightened slowly. “ Inspector Ramsay,” he said. “How can I help you? Olive’s in the house.” He looked slightly ridiculous in his boiler suit still wearing the heavy-framed glasses. He would be more at home, Ramsay thought, in his choirmaster’s cassock.
“I’d like to speak to Charlie Elliot,” Ramsay said.
“Aye,” Kerr said with a trace of anger. “You and me both.”
He wiped his hands on a cloth and moved to the front of the garage to meet Ramsay. “ He’s not here,” he said. “He came in from his dinner about half an hour ago. We had a car with a timing problem and he said he’d take it up the road to see what was wrong. He’s not back yet. It doesn’t take a ten-mile drive to check a timing problem.”
“Where do you think he’s gone?”