‘Which led to the Hills being built?’
‘Though not without a fight. We got Charlie elected to the Town Council, and from there he could take on the Council itself, challenge them on housing policy.’
‘And they agreed to pay for all this construction work, taking up the whole streetplan?’
‘Charlie was clever: he challenged them on economic grounds, asking how the town’s businesses could expand when there was nowhere for new workers to live?’ The man gave a hollow laugh, ‘Of course, we couldn’t know then that in a manufacturing regard the town was already at its peak.
‘And then of course there were the conservationists: people from nice areas, who didn’t want the buildings torn down.’
‘Why wouldn’t they?’
‘Because the Coalville Road was historic, they said, pre-dated the Industrial Revolution, they said, had some of the oldest buildings in the town. Well, Charlie said to them, if they cared so much then why didn’t they spend more money looking after these building and the people in them.’
‘When was all this?’
‘Oh, it went on for years, Inspector, with campaigns on both sides. We had Labour MPs taking our case to Parliament; while they had a famous writer from London writing impassioned articles, he even claiming one of the houses had been rented by William Ruskin! Well, who could argue with that?’ Campbell Leigh fell back into his car seat laughing.
‘Sorry,’ he eventually said, ‘but I recall those times with joy, Inspector; and I recall my friend with Joy.’ He composed himself. ‘You want to know the year? The vote was passed by the Town Council in Nineteen Seventy-four; Her Highness Princess Anne opened the first part of the new estate in Nineteen Seventy-eight, as evidenced by our plaque you’ll see in daylight; and I am proud to say I’ve lived here since the first flats were finished.’
‘Seventy-four? So what swung it?’
‘Well, she left the Council didn’t she?’
‘Who left?’
‘Well, your Stella Dunbar, or Councillor Mrs Stella Mars as she was then, she who’d been so opposed.’
Grey did a double-take: Mars had been muted as Stella’s name as some point in her life.
‘You say my Stella Dunbar, so you know we’re investigating her death too?’
‘Yes, I saw it in the evening paper. I was going to go to the Cedars in the morning and offer my condolences.’
‘So you knew she lived there?’
‘I saw her when I first went to visit Charlie there. “So this is who is helping you?” I asked him. I was incredulous — of course we knew someone was doing this for him, as he couldn’t have afforded to move there alone; but her, of all people.’
‘You were surprised because they’d been opposed on the Town Council?’
‘They weren’t just opposed, Inspector, not just Councillors arguing rival points: these pair were implacable. They blocked and counter-blocked every move the other tried to make for years. In Charlie’s eyes Councillor Mrs Mars was delaying the very evolution of his town, harming its working people’s quality of life; while to her Mr Prove, sir as she called him — I can still hear her as if on the floor and I up in the Stranger’s Gallery — Mr Prove, sir was the man who wished no less than to tear out her town’s very heart and history.’
Grey was agog at just how much there was to learn here,
‘There’s so much I need to ask you, Mr Leigh; but I’m mindful of the hour. I don’t want to keep you up any longer, if…’
‘Please, Inspector, at my age I get by on four hour’s sleep — like Margaret Thatcher.’ Again his laughter filled the car. ‘And I will help you,’ he said suddenly serious, ‘if it means I don’t sleep for a week.’
‘Why did Stella leave the council in Seventy-four?’
At this the man’s face stiffened in way Grey could not at first read,
‘You understand, it was always going to have to be that way. Neither one of them would have ever backed down, one would always have to break.’
‘Break?’
‘It was an unpleasant business, and I can only repeat the rumours we all heard at the time.’
‘Please, I need to hear everything.’
He shook his head at the thought of them, ‘There was talk of her marriage breaking down; of her standing in the street with her clothes being thrown out at her; of her son in tears, not being picked up from school one day, and she not being seen by the others mothers at the gate ever again.’
‘Who was her husband?’
‘I couldn’t claim to know much of him, only that he was an older man, a sailor I heard, or was it a soldier?’
‘Do you know his name, where they married, where they lived?’
But the man just shook his head, ‘I knew her in the Council Chamber — outside of there she was a mystery to me. In fact, we used to wonder where such a woman came from. I used to think we’d never defeat her.’
‘So she had support among the other Councillors?’
‘They were terrified of her, those respectable men with their pipes and War records, passing the gold chains around once a year, everyone given a go at Mayor. They knew how things ought to be run — this was hardly the era yet of community action. Then suddenly, here were Stella and Charlie, these two young, young people telling — simply instructing — them in their opposite ways of how things were going to be — and the rest hadn’t a clue of where to go. The Council would be deadlocked, till one of them broke.’
‘And it was Stella.’
Again that unreadable look, that Grey began to see as shame, ‘I remember the night it was read out that she’d resigned. We’d been waiting so long; we forced the vote through that session. The first diggers came within the year.’
‘Did you hear any more of her after?’
‘I confess, no.’
‘Yet stories were circulating…’
‘And we did nothing. I admit, we did nothing. We got our vote through, we were very busy then. People do drop out of public life.’
‘But not so notably.’
‘Am I proud of not looking her up, checking if things were bad for her? Probably not. But she’d fought us tooth and nail.’
‘In the political sphere, not the public.’
‘You didn’t know her in a fury, didn’t have those eyes bear down on you.’
No, thought Grey, but he was beginning to get an idea of what it might have felt like from the people he’d been talking to those last few hours.
‘A strong woman in politics can paralyse weak men. We all saw that a few years after.’
‘And then the shock of seeing her all those years later, at Charlie’s new flat.’
‘It was a shock, I didn’t even know she still lived in area.’
‘She hadn’t for a while before coming to the Cedars. She was paying Charlie’s way there.’
‘I guessed as much.’
‘How did it go?’
‘She walked in as we were talking — he always kept an open door. “Mrs Mars,” I said, as polite as you like.’
‘“I don’t go by that name anymore,” she replied. She said no more to me. I think she asked to borrow a book, and that was that.’
‘You didn’t see her again?’
‘I didn’t go there so often, after those early times.’
‘So what did you make of it all?’
‘He did tell me she’d been kind to him, though he’d gone so placid by then that you couldn’t always tell what he meant.’
Grey pondered. ‘Well, thank you, you’ve taken our knowledge of Stella back a good few years.’
‘And what of your knowledge of Charlie?’
‘We’ve only just learnt that there was anything we needed to know of him beyond what linked to Stella.’
‘Did you know him?’
‘No; and I’m afraid events caught up with me before I’d had a chance to speak to him yesterday.’
‘Did you know of Eunice?’
‘I know of her — the Superintendent is reviewing her file as we speak.’
‘You weren’t on the case?’
‘I moved around a few divisions before I settled here.’
‘It was a Scottish lad who done for her, Oscar Skellet — I won’t forget that name. He was a friend of a friend from Glasgow who Charlie agreed to put up when he came this way looking for work. That was the kind of thing he did.’