“Tell me,” he said. “ How did it work?”
“Well,” she said, tantalising him, the perfect performer. “Of course I don’t know all the details…”
“But it’s your story, Mary. You know how it worked.”
“Oh, yes,” she said. “ I know how it worked. James Laidlaw, the great investigative journalist, threatened to put people out of business if they didn’t pay him lots of money. That’s how it worked.”
“How could he do that, Mary? I need to know.”
“He snooped,” she said. “He was a bloody good reporter. He followed leads, listened to rumours. He found out all the things that people wanted to hide. And if they were clean as the driven snow, he started the rumours himself.”
“What about evidence?” Ramsay asked. “ You’ll need evidence for your story.”
“There are some people willing to talk,” Mary said. “ There’s May Smith in the cottage hospital. She’ll talk to you.”
“May Smith?” Ramsay said, although Hunter had been visiting her only hours before. “Who’s she, Mary?”
“She’s an old lady. She was a resident in the White Gates old people’s home. She liked it there. She was happy. But the place had to close because James ran a campaign about it in the Express. Relatives of the old folks who lived there took them away because they thought everything you read in the papers is true.”
“Why did he run the campaign, Mary?”
“Because the matron refused to pay him protection money.”
“Why didn’t she go to the police?”
“Would you have believed her?” Mary demanded. “After all the publicity there’s been about the ill treatment of old people in nursing homes? Or would you have thought she was making the whole thing up to protect her business?”
“Perhaps,” Ramsay said. “But we would have looked into the complaint.”
“And you would have found nothing!” she said. “ No witnesses, nothing. None of the other old people’s homes in the area would admit to paying up in case the same thing happened to them. James Laidlaw was a powerful man, and married to a Rutherford. They were frightened of him. They thought he was worth a fortune.”
She paused again, went to the window, and looked down on the street.
“Someone did tell the police what James was doing,” she said. “Joe West, the county councillor. Do you remember him? But you were too busy investigating the allegations of fraud James was making in the Express to take any notice.”
Ramsay thought. He remembered Joe West, though he had not dealt with the investigation personally, and he could recall no connection in the case with the Express. It was something about fraudulent expense claims for his council work. And he had had his house painted, Ramsay remembered, by council workmen using materials paid for by Northumberland County. In the end they had decided not to prosecute. How many other councillors, after all, could claim total honesty if there was a major investigation? Joe West had resigned and they had considered the matter at an end.
“What happened to him?” Ramsay asked.
“He’s great,” she said. “Really amazing. It’s the best thing that ever happened to him. He’s running a project for the homeless in Newcastle down by the river. But he hates James Laidlaw. He’ll talk to you and you should go to see the centre.”
It wasn’t only the wealthy businessmen and powerful councillors in the area who had been blackmailed by Laidlaw, Ramsay thought. It must have become almost a habit. He had made the same threat to Tom Kerr about his brawl in the street with Charlie Elliot. Ramsay remembered his conversation with the choirmaster in the dimly lit room earlier that evening.
“I could never have gone into the church again,” Tom Kerr had cried. “Not with a story like that splashed all over the paper. How could people have any respect for me?”
“So what did you do?” Ramsay had asked.
“What do you think I did? I paid him and I’ve been paying him ever since.”
Ramsay drew his thoughts back to the office and to the woman who sat with him.
“Now, Mary,” he said. “What has all this to do with Alice Parry?”
“Don’t you know?” she cried, immensely pleased because she thought she still had the power to surprise him.
“Do you mean you really haven’t guessed?”
He did not answer directly. He had never enjoyed lying.
“It’s your story,” he said again. I want you to tell it, I want to know what Alice Parry said to you on the afternoon of her death.”
“Oh, that,” she said. “That’s almost irrelevant.”
“All the same,” he said. “ For completeness. Out of interest. I want to know.”
“We talked about Max,” she said. “We were having an affair.”
“Yes,” he said gently. He did not want to hurt her. He paused. “Did you realise Stella Laidlaw was blackmailing him about it?”
She looked up sharply. “ No,” she said. “I hadn’t realised even that she knew about us. She must have guessed. Blackmail must run in the family.”
“Do you know where Max is?” he asked. “We need to find him to tell him what’s happened. Besides, his wife is very worried about him.”
“No,” she said. “ I haven’t seen him since the night you took me in for questioning.” She grinned briefly. “He was there in the flat when the policeman came to fetch me.”
She paused. “He’ll be hiding,” she said. “Poor Max.”
“You must have thought the note arranging to meet you at Brinkbonnie was from Max,” he said. “And you went to meet him.”
“Yes,” she said. “It looked like Max’s writing. James must be an expert in forgery, too.”
She looked up at him. “ How could James know about Max and me. I suppose he guessed.”
“Apparently,” Ramsay said, “ when he realised you suspected him of blackmail, he searched your desk at work. There was an old letter from Max. It was rather explicit. It even mentioned where you met.”
She sat, deflated and very sad, so he felt sorry for her. To cheer her up, he said, pleading: “Tell me the rest of it then. Tell my why James Laidlaw murdered Alice Parry.”
She brightened immediately. “Henshaw had bought James off,” she said. “You must have worked that out.”
Ramsay remained impassive. He did not want to disappoint her and spoil her story. But he had worked it out. After the discussion with Tom Kerr, the explanation was inevitable. Henshaw hadn’t bribed community activists as Jack Robson had thought, he hadn’t needed to. Any village event is considered entirely unimportant until it is reported in the local newspaper. The story gives it credibility. With James Laidlaw in his pocket Henshaw could dictate the image the public received of his development. And of the developer, Ramsay thought, remembering the picture in the Express of Henshaw surrounded by adoring toddlers. Then he remembered the evening he had gone to the Laidlaws’ house and the interview being interrupted by an angry visitor. He realised now that the visitor was Colin Henshaw, furious because he thought James Laidlaw would break their deal.
Mary seemed encouraged by Ramsay’s silence and continued: “Henshaw wouldn’t talk to me, but I think he started paying James after the first editorial about the Brinkbonnie development. He had lots of other plans waiting to be approved by the planning department and he wouldn’t want bad publicity at that stage.”
“Tell me Mary,” he said, “ exactly what you think happened.” He said it to humour her because she needed to feel clever and in control after the assault on the sand dunes. James Laidlaw had already admitted the whole thing to Hunter. But he said it, too, because she was lively and funny and he did not want the conversation to end.
“Mrs. Parry felt guilty about selling her land to Henshaw,” Mary said, “and after I’d spoken to her that afternoon she decided to try to buy the field back. Of course Henshaw refused to sell. There must have been an argument and Henshaw told Mrs. Parry about James. You can imagine him, can’t you, blurting it out in the middle of the row: “You won’t get any support, you know, from that nephew of yours. I’m paying him off. You’ve no chance without the publicity of getting the support for your campaign.” Then Mrs. Parry not wanting to believe it but seeing in the end that it was probably true. Poor Mrs. Parry. How upset she must have been.”