Ramsay knew Henshaw was trying to distract him, to stop him from following up the questions about Saturday night, but he was interested all the same.
“Which reporter?” he asked, though he knew the answer already.
“Raven,” Henshaw said. “They call her Mary Raven.”
Of course, Ramsay thought. It always comes back to her.
She was the vital link between all of the major suspects in the case.
“If she gets in touch with you again,” Ramsay said, “ will you let me know?”
Henshaw nodded. He had recovered his composure and Ramsay allowed him to turn and walk away to the surveyors, then went back to the Castle to collect his car.
Chapter Sixteen
When it was dark, Hunter and Ramsay met in the police house. Outside was a glass-faced notice board with the faded photograph of a child who had been missing for five years and would look quite different now, even if she was still alive, and a poster about car theft. Every rural police house seemed to have the same notice board and to be built to the same design.
Ramsay had been to Otterbridge to face the anxieties of his superintendent.
“So you were right about Charlie Elliot,” the man had said. “Well, well. You know I always trust your judgement.”
“Elliot could still have murdered Alice Parry,” Ramsay had said impatiently. His superior seemed incapable of logical thought and chose his theories according to convenience and what would provide maximum publicity.
“Do you think so?” The superintendent had seemed surprised. “Well, as I said, I’m prepared to trust your judgement on that. Just keep me posted, Steve. The door’s always open, you know.”
“We’ll need a press release,” Ramsay had said. “ I’ve just been given a provisional time of death for Charlie Elliot as between five and six-thirty this morning. We’ll need anyone who was out in Brinkbonnie to come forward.”
“Of course, Steve.” The man had relaxed. “You can leave that to me.”
Hunter had just come back from the hill. He was flushed from the afternoon in the open air and full of good humour. Even the discovery that Ramsay had proof that Mary Raven had been in Brinkbonnie on the night of Mrs. Parry’s murder could not suppress him.
“Why was she lying then?” he asked. “She can’t have anything to do with the murder. I told you. She was at the party in Newcastle before midnight”
“I don’t know,” Ramsay said. He felt that he still knew very little. “ Perhaps she knows who killed Mrs. Parry and she’s trying to protect him. Perhaps she has reasons of her own. Did you find out anything else from the student in Newcastle?”
“Yes.” Hunter was grinning. “Mary has a boyfriend.” Ramsay looked at him sharply. “Who?”
“She won’t tell them. It’s all a big secret.”
“But they’re her friends. They must know something about him.”
“I don’t think so.” Hunter was eating a Mars bar. He screwed the wrapper into a ball and threw it towards a waste-basket in the corner of the room. “It seems that Mary’s a bit of a loner. She goes to their parties and gets drunk with them, but she doesn’t talk to them much.”
“Is the boyfriend married?” Ramsay asked.
“The girl thought so.”
“Perhaps she was waiting for him in the churchyard,” Ramsay said. “But why Brinkbonnie? Because he lives here?”
“Or perhaps he was staying at the Tower,” Hunter said. “It could be Max Laidlaw or James.”
“We’ll go to her flat later this evening, when she’s likely to be in,” Ramsay said. “ She’s approached Henshaw, too, and worried him. I’d like to know what that’s about.”
“Blackmail?”
“I don’t know,” Ramsay said. “ If so, she’s putting herself in a lot of danger.”
“I’ve been thinking blackmail might have been the motive for the Elliot murder,” Hunter said tentatively. “If Charlie saw something on Saturday night and worked out who killed Alice Parry, it might have occurred to him that he could put the information to his advantage. It would explain how the murderer found him in the barn on the hill. Perhaps they arranged to meet there.”
Ramsay considered the idea carefully. “Why didn’t he tell us? That way he could clear himself.”
Hunter shrugged. “Perhaps he thought we wouldn’t believe him. Perhaps he thought he could turn his knowledge to profit.”
“Yes,” Ramsay said. “ It’s possible. Dangerous. But I can see Charlie Elliot as a man who would enjoy taking risks. We’ve only his father’s word that he stayed in after eleven. He could easily have gone out again and seen Alice Parry on her way home from the pub.”
“Did you inform Fred Elliot of his son’s death?” Hunter asked.
Ramsay shook his head. “ I got the village policeman to do it,” he said. “They’ve been friends for years. It seemed better.” He stood up. “We’ll go and see Fred now. Get it over with. Then I want a word with Maggie Kerr.”
On the way to the post office Ramsay was tempted to send Hunter immediately to wait for Mary Raven. It was not only that he was afraid of missing Mary, but he was irritated by the other man’s presence. He would have preferred to work alone. Hunter chatted about the conflicts and power struggles within the Otterbridge police station, turning the trivial gossip that comes out of any workplace into high drama. Ramsay wanted to concentrate.
The kitchen behind the post office was much as it had been when Ramsay had last visited. There was washing airing in front of the stove and clean pans on the table. Fred Elliot was tidily dressed, with black shoes immaculately polished. Yet there seemed to be no connection between the postmaster and the physical world around him. In his grief he had become clumsy, and when Ramsay walked into the room, he seemed at first not to recognise who was there. The village policeman had opened the door and sat quietly in one corner while they talked. It seemed to Ramsay that he had been crying. Brinkbonnie was a close village.
“Oh,” Elliot said. “ It’s you.”
“I’m sorry,” Ramsay said, “ about everything that’s happened.”
“He didn’t do it,” Elliot said. “ He wouldn’t have murdered Alice Parry. You’ll have to believe that now.”
Ramsay did not answer directly. “When did you last see Charlie?” he asked.
“You know that,” Elliot said defiantly. “ You were here.”
“Didn’t he ask to meet you? Before he went up the hill. Didn’t he ask you to bring food and a sleeping bag? He had no-one else to ask.”
There was a silence and the old man struggled for control. “ I met him late yesterday evening,” he said. “By the Otterbridge by-pass. I took everything he wanted.”
“Did he telephone here to arrange the meeting?” Ramsay asked. “What exactly did he say?”
“Not much. He didn’t have much change for the phone. He’d just made another phone call, he said, and used all his ten p’s. He wouldn’t wait for me to phone him back.”
“Who else did he phone?” Ramsay asked. “Did he say?”
The old man shook his head. “I presumed it was Maggie Kerr,” he said. “She was always on his mind.”
“And when you met him by the Otterbridge by-pass,” Ramsay said, “did he tell you where he was going?”
Elliot shook his head again. “He was waiting for me when I arrived,” he said. “I was afraid you’d have me followed, so I drove miles out of my way round the lanes before I got there. I tried to persuade him to come back with me, to give himself up. I said you’d believe him, but he was too frightened. And he was wild, excited. There was nothing I could say that would persuade him. He just took the bag and drove away on that motorbike, laughing.”