“Dad,” she said. “What’s the matter? Mam’s worried about you. She saw the vicar leave half an hour ago.”
She squeezed past and sat beside him on the polished pew. It was Lent and the church was bare. Maggie wished her father would stand up and walk out into the fresh air. Churches made her uncomfortable.
“I don’t know what to do,” Tom Kerr said. “ I’ve been foolish. I’m in terrible trouble and I don’t know what to do to put it right.”
“Tell me,” she said. “Perhaps I can help.”
“No,” he said sharply. “This is my business. No-one else must get involved. I’ll have to sort it out for myself.”
“It’s my fault, isn’t it?” she cried. “It’s something to do with Charlie. What have you done?”
He turned to face her and the warm light from the stained glass reflected on his spectacles so that she could not see his eyes.
“You’ll have to leave it to me,” he said. “ Now go away. I want to be on my own to think.”
She left him, trying to tell herself that he was a stubborn man with too many principles. His imagined crimes would be trivial compared with the things she could dream up. But she remembered his terrifying and merciless temper and her anxiety grew.
When Ramsay arrived in Brinkbonnie at midday, he went to the garage first. If Henshaw were blackmailing or threatening one of the leaders of the village, Ramsay thought, Tom Kerr would know. He seemed to have assumed responsibility for the place’s moral welfare. The workshop was unlocked and Ramsay went inside, but it was empty, and when he knocked at the door of the house, there was no reply. He walked on past the row of cottages and crossed the road towards the pub. In the Tower field the surveyors were back, sitting close to the hedge to eat their sandwiches so that they could not be easily seen from the street.
In the Castle Hotel Maggie Kerr was behind the bar and the same old men sat staring at their beer and the dominoes board. There Ramsay made himself popular. He bought them all drinks and sat down with them and encouraged them to gossip. There must be scandal in a village like this, he said. There must be secrets, skeletons in cupboards. The old men chuckled and said he was right. “Man, you could write a book about the things that go on in this village.” But their scandals had happened years before. They talked about the American soldiers based in Otterbridge and children born out of wedlock during the war. They talked of family fueds and grievances stored for twenty years. None of it helped Ramsay at all, and he was about to leave when they started talking about Robert and Celia Grey. Again they began their story many years before. It had all started with the old lady, they said, Celia’s mother. She was the cause of all their problems, sitting in the corner of the kitchen like a poisonous old spider, giving out her orders. No wonder Celia went a bit wild when the old cow died.
“Wild?” Ramsay said. “ I wouldn’t call Celia Grey wild.”
“No,” they said. “Well, strong-willed then. She knows what she wants and nothing will stop her getting it.”
“Tell me about it,” Ramsay said, buying more drinks, hoping for details.
The old men accepted the drinks but became coy when he pressed them to be more specific about the Greys’ problems. They were happier talking about the past.
Ramsay became impatient and left the pub for the post office. Under the watchful eye of Elliot’s sister, he talked to the postmaster.
“Mr. Elliot,” he said carefully. “ When you first got involved with the Save Brinkbonnie campaign, did Henshaw ever approach you with money to stop your objections?”
Elliot looked up at him in wonder. “No,” he said. “ Even Henshaw knows me well enough to realise I’d not be taken in by anything like that.”
That was true, Ramsay thought. Fred Elliot was the last person Henshaw would approach to sabotage the Campaign. He was too obviously incorruptible.
“What about Charlie?” Ramsay asked. “ Did Henshaw put any pressure on Charlie?”
But at the name of his son Fred Elliot went to pieces. He began to cry and his sister stood between them, holding her apron wide as if she were protecting a child from a dangerous animal. She made strange shooing noises.
“Go away,” she said. “Can’t you see he’s no use to you? Leave him to grieve in peace.”
So Ramsay went back onto the street to continue his search for information.
In the churchyard preparations were beginning for Alice Parry’s funeral. An old man leaned on a spade, pressing it against the turf as if testing to see how hard a job he would have in digging the grave. He seemed daunted by the task because he laid the spade on the grass and began to walk away towards the back of the church.
“Excuse me!” Ramsay shouted, and the old man turned slowly to stare at him. “ Have you seen Mr. Kerr?”
The gravedigger looked at him, giving no sign that he had heard the question.
“You must know Mr. Kerr,” Ramsay said. “ He’s the choirmaster.”
“No,” the old man said. “I’ve not seen him today.” He walked off.
On the church porch, emerging at last to go back to the garage to work, Tom Kerr heard the exchange. He leaned against the closed door and waited until he heard the policeman move on before he scuttled home across the green, but he knew it would be impossible to hide from Ramsay for ever.
Ramsay moved up the Otterbridge Road towards the Henshaws’ bungalow. It was likely, he thought, that Colin Henshaw would be out during the day. Perhaps Rosemary Henshaw would speak to him more freely if he saw her alone. He turned into the drive and was relieved to see that the garage was empty. The Renault was parked on the gravel, but Henshaw’s Rover had gone.
Rosemary Henshaw looked more comfortable, more approachable than when Ramsay had last seen her. She still wore makeup, but she was not so shiny or impenetrable as she had been that Sunday night. She was dressed in a pale green jogging suit that was stretched across her stomach. Ramsay thought he had disturbed her in the middle of her lunch. When she opened the door, she was brushing crumbs from the front of her sweatshirt.
“Yes?” she said. Then: “ You’re the policeman, aren’t you. You were here the other night.”
Ramsay smiled at her. “You were kind enough to tell me to drop in if I thought you could help,” he said.
Hunter isn’t the only one who can turn on the charm, he thought. But Hunter’s so much better at it than I am.
“Of course,” she said. She seemed pleased to have the company. “Come into the kitchen. I was just having a sandwich. Perhaps you’d like something.”
“You’re not expecting your husband?” Ramsay said.
She giggled as if the questions were a proposition. “He’s always busy,” she said. “He’s working on different developments all over the country. I never know where he’s working, but he lets me know if he’s going to be back early and he’s said nothing today.”
She took him through the house, which was as glossy and dust-free as her face, to the kitchen, which seemed full of electrical gadgets. There was a portable television on a work top and an earnest young woman with a shrill Scottish accent gave consumer advice. Rosemary Henshaw switched it off.
“What would you like to eat?” she asked. “ I could pop something from the freezer into the microwave. It wouldn’t take a minute. Or a sandwich. I could do you a sandwich.”
Ramsay said that a sandwich would be very nice. She sliced a stottie deftly and began to fill it with ham and tomato.
“What time did your husband go out this morning?” Ramsay asked.
“I don’t know,” she said, giggling again. “ He was gone when I got up. I’m dreadful in the mornings. He sees himself out.”
“What about Tuesday morning?” Ramsay asked. “ Did he go out early then?”