Rachael prepared to explain but Miss. Davison didn’t seem to expect an answer. “I arrived at Corbin in the early sixties but the building hadn’t changed, not really, since the turn of the century. My first headship. I didn’t quite know what to expect. There was one large room with a curtain down the middle. The infants sat on one side of it and the juniors on the other. There were fifteen of each when I arrived and I’ve never taught a bigger bunch of monsters. They’d been without a head for a term and allowed to run wild. The place was heated, if that’s the appropriate word, by a coke boiler in one corner, which bellowed out smoke and sulphur fumes. And on my first morning a family of bats fell out of the roof and onto my desk. The boys threw them at the girls. The girls screamed. I thought I’d come to a madhouse.” She smiled and Rachael thought she’d enjoyed every minute.
“Was Miss. Noble teaching with you then?” Edie asked.
“No,” Miss. Davison said sharply. “That was later. Why do you want to know?”
“We are actually very interested in Miss. Noble.”
Quite suddenly her friendliness turned to hostility.
“So that’s what this is about. You’re not here about the school at all. What are you? Reporters? Why can’t you leave the poor woman alone after all this time. Out you go. My friend lives next door. If you don’t leave quickly I’ll get him to throw you out.”
Rachael was horrified at the prospect of being forcibly ejected by an elderly widower. She didn’t understand the change of mood, wondered for a moment if the woman was mad.
“Bella’s dead. Miss. Davison,” she said. “I was a friend of hers. I’m still a friend of her husband’s. I found your name in some of her papers. We thought you’d want to know.”
Since they had arrived there’d been conversation. Now suddenly the place seemed very quiet. It was an unusual room for an older woman, uncluttered, decorated in strong warm colours. No television but an expensive CD player and on a desk a personal computer. Glass doors led to a small garden bordered by a honey-coloured stone wall. One of the glass doors was slightly open and they heard the hum of traffic, children shouting.
“Playtime,” Miss. Davison said. “Here, at least, we’ve saved the village school.” Then, “I didn’t know Bella was dead. But how would I? We lost touch years ago.”
“I put a notice in the Gazette about the funeral.”
“I don’t suppose many came,” Miss. Davison said. “I’d have been there if I’d known. But I don’t read the Gazette. It’s drivel, isn’t it?
And I find myself looking out for news of the children I’ve taught which somehow seems pathetic. As if I’ve never moved on.” She looked at Rachael. “Was Bella ill for long? I wish I’d visited. I should have made more effort to find out what happened to her.”
“Bella wasn’t ill,” Edie said. “She committed suicide.”
“No!” They could see now how she must have been as a teacher. Firm, decisive, unwilling to put up with nonsense despite the gentle manner and the trilling voice. “I don’t believe it. Not now. It was all forgotten.
Then I could have believed it. Understood. But now she’d have no reason.”
“I can assure you that it was suicide,” Edie insisted triumphantly.
This was her trump card. “My daughter found the body.”
Rachael squirmed. “That’s why we’re here,” she said. “We need to know why. I was close to Bella but she never spoke about the past. I hoped you might be able to help me come to terms with it.” God, she thought. I sound just like my mother.
Alicia remained suspicious. “You didn’t know anything about the court case?”
“Nothing.”
“It was in all the papers. You live in Kimmerston, don’t you?”
“Like you,” Edie announced, ”ve never bothered much with the local press.” Alicia looked at them with continued suspicion. “Bella was convicted of manslaughter. She killed her father.” Still watching Rachael’s face, she added more gently, “So you really didn’t know?”
“I had no idea.”
Bella, why didn’t you tell me? Rachael cried to herself. I feel such a fool.
“Bella came to me straight from college. She was enthusiastic, energetic, full of ideas. The infant teacher before her was elderly, close to retirement. She was little more than a child minder She read stories, let the children play, sang songs, but as for teaching… ‘.
she shrugged. “I tried to suggest new ways of working but she refused to listen.
“Then Bella came and everything changed. I started to like my work again. We bounced ideas off each other.
We achieved more in the two years she was there than I’ve done in any other school. I thought she was enjoying it too.” “She used your name,” Rachael said. “That’s what she called herself before she married Bella Davison. Some sort of tribute, do you think?”
“I think I let her down. Then and later.”
“What happened?”
“Her father was a local businessman, a butcher. He owned a couple of shops and a slaughter house. Wealthy in local terms. Used to getting his own way.”
“And a councillor,” Rachael said.
“Oh yes, a councillor. Alderman Noble. He had fingers in lots of pies.” She paused. “Forgive me. I might be a spinster but you mustn’t think I dislike men in general. Alderman Noble I disliked intensely, though I never met him.
“Bella left home to go to college and said it was the best thing she’d ever done. There was a younger son who was sucked into the business and the same was expected of her. She was supposed to work in the office, to put on an apron and help out in the shop when they were busy. But Bella refused. She’d always wanted to teach.
“Then her mother died and suddenly she was expected to give up everything, her career and her new friends, to go home and care for him. He bullied her into it.”
“Was he ill?”
“He was fat and idle,” Miss. Davison retorted. “I suppose that’s one form of illness.”
“Why did she do it?” Rachael asked. “She was independent. She’d left home once. She didn’t need his approval.”
“Things were different then.”
“No,” Edie said. “Not that different.”
“He was a bully. At first I think he convinced her that he was dying.
Then he convinced her that she was fit for nothing better than running around after him. I met her six weeks before she killed him and I hardly recognized her. I told her that I’d find her work, that she could pay someone to care for him, but she’d lost all her energy and her confidence. She said she’d never be able to tell him. She couldn’t face the row. She’d always been frightened of him. Now perhaps we’d think she’d been abused. Then it wasn’t so unusual.” She spoke bitterly. “A natural respect for one’s elders. Something to be admired. It might have been the sixties but we didn’t see much of rebellious youth in Kimmerston.
“She was charged with murder. She admitted killing him. She hit him on the back of the head with a bronze statue a monument apparently to one of his prize bulls. She said it was the nearest thing to hand but it seemed appropriate. He’d come to look very like one of his beasts.
Then she phoned for the police and waited for them to turn up. She was found guilty of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility. A period of insanity, her barrister said, caused by the stress of caring for a sick man. Though she was the sanest woman I’ve ever met. She was sent to a special hospital in the south, then came back to St. Nicholas’, the big psychiatric hospital near the coast, to prepare for her release.”
“Did you ever visit her?”
“I couldn’t face it. Isn’t that a terrible thing to say? It wasn’t Bella I couldn’t face but all those other poor people. I suppose I was afraid. She wrote to me when she was first transferred to St. Nick’s.