“You can’t think I had anything to do with your aunt’s murder?” she said. His reaction to learning she had been seen in the churchyard frightened her. “ I liked her. I wouldn’t have done anything to hurt her.”
“No,” he said flatly. “ I know you had nothing to do with that.” He reached out and stroked her face and neck, just under her ear where he knew she liked it. She could not respond to the caress and turned away.
“Look,” she said. “This business has made me feel really uptight. Why don’t we open some wine?”
“I don’t know,” he said, tempted. “I don’t think I should stay. Judy will be expecting me home. She’s worried about the kids. Peter found the body…”
“Oh, fine,” she said, suddenly angry. “You were feeling guilty because you put me in such a bloody awkward position on Saturday night, so you bring me flowers and think everything’s hunky-dory. Now you can go back to your wife and children and forget about me again.”
“It’s not like that,” he said. “Really.”
“It seemed like that on Saturday,” she said, “while I was waiting for you.”
“I’ll phone you tonight,” he said, “ when Judy’s in bed. Will you be in?”
“Yes,” she said. “ Of course I’ll be in. Where the hell am I likely to go?”
But she allowed him to put his arms around her and kiss her, and it was only after he had gone and she was arranging the flowers haphazardly in water that she felt she had been deceived.
When James arrived home he found Stella calmer, returned almost to her normal self, though he could tell by her restlessness that she was still under considerable stress. She seemed to find it impossible to sit still. She had lit a fire in the living room and made him stand in front of it to thaw out, while she brought him whisky and slippers.
“You’re losing all the heat into the garden,” he said, nodding towards the window. “Why don’t you draw the curtains?”
But she refused. The ice in the moonlight was so beautiful, she said, and lasted such a short time. They should make the most of it.
“Where’s Carolyn?” he asked.
“In her bedroom, watching television.”
“You should be more careful what you say in front of her,” he said. “You hurt her at lunchtime.”
“Nonsense,” Stella said. “ She didn’t say anything. She’s a tough little lady.”
“No,” he said. “ She’s not as tough as she makes out. She keeps all her feelings bottled up and that’s dangerous. We expect too much of her.”
He was genuinely worried about Carolyn. Since the weekend she had not mentioned Alice and he found her silence unhealthy, even if it was easier for him than tears or difficult questions. He wondered if he had gone too far in talking about the girl. Stella usually reacted to any implied criticism of her ability as a mother with tears. But now she seemed strong enough to cope with anything.
“I expect you’re right,” she said. “ She’s so grown up now. I forget sometimes how young she is.”
Ramsay went to speak to the Laidlaws that night without any clear idea of what he hoped to achieve. He had nothing to ask them that would not wait until the following day. He was grasping for some shred of evidence that would move the investigation forward. From his car he contacted the communications centre. There was still no news of Charlie Elliot. He admitted to himself later that he also went because he had been so affected by the warmth of Max and Judy’s home. He needed evidence that marriage was not always as happy as theirs seemed to be, that he was not really missing out on anything of value. Perhaps he hoped to find that evidence in the elegant house in Otterbridge. There was also an element of needing to propitiate James Laidlaw, of what Hunter would call “sucking up to the press.”
When he first entered the tall Georgian house behind the abbey, it seemed to Ramsay that he would be disappointed. He was met with an image of domestic contentment. Stella was curled up in a large armchair in front of the fire reading a book and the little girl was playing with a jigsaw on the floor. James opened the door to him and showed Ramsay into the room, taking obvious pleasure in his family. Yet throughout the conversation Ramsay felt uneasy. Stella talked too much and too quickly, and this was odd in comparison with her silence of the previous day. James watched her protectively. He answered Ramsay’s questions quickly, before Stella could come in, as if he were afraid of her making a fool of herself. More disturbing to Ramsay was the child, who watched him with an intense and unblinking stare, motivated, he thought, either by hatred or fear.
“Will you have a drink, Inspector?” Stella asked. “ It’s so cold. You must have a drink.”
Ramsay said he would have a small one to keep out the cold. Stella returned to her chair with a drink for herself, and as she talked she twisted the stem of her glass between her fingers.
“This is all so upsetting,” she said. “ You can’t imagine how upset we are.”
Ramsay made no reply.
“How can we help you, Inspector?” James said.
“Just a few questions,” Ramsay said. “And I wanted to keep you in touch with what’s been going on. I’ve just come from your brother’s house.”
He paused, expecting some questions about how Max and Judy were, but James said nothing.
“They seem upset, too,” Ramsay said. “ I understand Judy and Mrs. Parry were very close. They shared a lot of interests.”
But again, if he hoped to provoke a response from the Laidlaws, he was disappointed. Stella seemed about to speak, but James looked at her and she remained silent.
“I’ve been trying to get in touch with Mary Raven, your reporter,” Ramsay said. “She wasn’t at home yesterday. Do you know where she is? I phoned the paper earlier, but no-one had seen her.”
“She was working in the magistrates court this morning,” James said. “I usually cover it, but Alice’s death made me forget all about it. She’ll be in the office tomorrow, I expect, if you want to talk to her, though I’m not sure if she’ll be able to help you.”
That came as something of a relief to Ramsay. One disappearing witness was quite enough.
“We have a little more information about Mrs. Parry,” he said. “She left Henshaw’s quite safely and arrived home at midnight.”
“We were both in bed by midnight,” Stella said quickly. “Weren’t we, darling? I was fast asleep. I always sleep so much better at Brinkbonnie than I do here.”
“I was certainly in bed,” James said, “though I was probably still reading then.”
“You didn’t hear anything?”
“Nothing.”
“Where was your room?”
“In the northwest corner of the Tower.”
“So you would have had a view of the churchyard and the drive?”
“I suppose so. Yes. But I didn’t look out.”
“What about you, Mrs. Laidlaw? Did you see anyone around the Tower or in the churchyard?”
She smiled a wide, feline smile. “No,” she said. “I didn’t see anything.” She almost purred with satisfaction, stretched, and settled again into the chair.
“Surely the most important thing,” James said, brusque and businesslike, “is to find out who wrote that anonymous letter.”
“Oh,” Ramsay said. “We know that. It was Charlie Elliot.”
“He’s your man then.”
“Perhaps. We need to talk to him certainly.”
“You mean you’ve let him go!”
Ramsay felt a familiar irritation. “It’s important, you know, to keep an open mind,” he said mildly.
“All the same, there’ll be some serious questions about how this investigation’s been handled!”
There was the sound then of a car pulling up on the drive outside the house and the front doorbell rang. James seemed frustrated to be disturbed in the middle of his indignation. He shut the door behind him as he went out, but from the sitting room they heard raised voices, angry words. For a moment the other voice was vaguely familiar to Ramsay, but it subsided almost immediately and the impression was lost. The front door was opened and slammed shut and then the car drove away.