Death of a Teacher (23 page)

Jed had handled the situation well, Ro thought. He had explained that a Canadian visitor to Pelliter had been identified as a Mr Richard Rudder. Did Kevin know if the man was any relation to his sister’s husband? John Rudder had become agitated and attempted to talk, but Kevin had calmed him.

‘It’s all right, old chap. I’ll tell them. John hasn’t had much contact with his family for a long time so he’s understandably upset that you’re asking. John’s mother died when he was a boy. John’s from Newcastle, though Rudder is a Cheshire name, I think. Is that true old man?’

John had spluttered and bobbed his head.

‘Yes, I thought it was,’ Kevin had said. ‘But I don’t know anything about any other Rudders around here. There’s really no reason for any Rudder to 
come and see us, at least not to our knowledge. Liz and John certainly weren’t expecting anyone, or she’d have told me.’

‘Could this have been an unexpected enquiry? To do with family history?’ Ro suggested.

‘Hardly! Maybe there are other Rudders in Cumbria,’ Kevin suggested. ‘Have you thought of checking churchyards, registers, that sort of thing?’

‘Thanks. We’ll move on to that,’ Jed said in a neutral voice. This was proving to be a dead end. Literally.

Kevin smiled and shrugged. ‘I’ll ask Liz when she comes home, in case it’s something I’ve missed. She knows everyone in Pelliter, and who their
grandparents
were.
And
what they’re up to now!’

Including attacking people with hammers through windows, Ro thought. But Kevin probably knew nothing about that. He was a very different person from his sister, she thought. She had only met Liz Rudder once, but she could see a physical resemblance in their small but muscular build, which wasn’t replicated in their manner. Kevin was much more approachable.

He smiled. ‘I’ll ask her to call you tomorrow. She may well be able to come up with something.’

He had actually looked rather eager, as if he wanted to dredge up a Canadian connection just to help them. But then John Rudder had lashed out with his arm in an arbitrary jerk, and knocked over the lamp which had been giving out a soft light in the corner, despite the evening sunshine still coming through the window. The disturbance had seemed a signal for them to go.

In the car, Ro said: ‘Funny how they had the light on in the living-room, with the sun streaming through the windows.’

‘Yes. But maybe John’s stroke affected his eyes. Talking of which, how are the plans for Ben’s operation?’

‘Oh, going well. He’s scheduled to have it after they break up from school. It’s a risk of course.’ She tailed off. Suddenly the outlook seemed less
promising
, as the sun went down and grey dusk turned everything into a shadow.

Jed had reached the turn-off for Burnside. He said ‘Look, don’t be too upset, Ro. Police work is like this all the time. It’s only on the telly you get instant results.’

‘Shall we still ask the Canadian police to check on Rudder’s address in Toronto?’

‘Yep. It’ll take time, but if Rudder’s gone missing he could well be the dead guy. If that’s the case you’ll have been really helpful.’

‘But we’ll never know why he came here, and what really happened, so what’s the point? Thanks for encouraging me, Jed. But I feel it’s been a dead duck. I’ll leave this stuff to the real police in future.’

‘Goodnight, Ro. Don’t worry. Sleep well.’ But she knew she wouldn’t. 

It was just after nine o’clock when Ro went in. Ben was perfectly happy on the computer, and still delighted with himself for being so independent that morning. Mrs Carruthers exchanged pleasantries and left. Ben settled into another game, though on school nights he was supposed to be in bed by ten. Ro was too tired to argue. But she was restless, too. Something was nagging in her mind.

She wasn’t hungry. She seemed to have spent most of the afternoon snacking in the canteen. And there had been more coffee and biscuits at the Rudders’. Kevin had been very co-operative and friendly. But he hadn’t been able to help. Then again, how much would he know anyway? He was only Liz’s brother. He wasn’t a Rudder himself.

Ro mooched down to the kitchen and impulsively picked up the local phone directory from its place on the kitchen shelf. She looked up the name Rudder. Only one entry for the area was listed, John Rudder, High Pelliter, as Jed had thought. The phone number leapt out of the page at Ro. Would it do any harm to call Liz Rudder now, when she would be back from her Spanish class? Tomorrow Liz would be at school all day and doubtless Ro would be patrolling the streets of Norbridge looking for litter louts and stray dogs. It wasn’t late. Ro punched in the number.

‘Hi,’ she said. ‘Mrs Rudder? I’m sorry to bother you. It’s Ro Watson, PCSO. I’m sure your brother will have mentioned that we called to see you this evening.’

‘Yes, he did.’ Liz Rudder’s voice sounded like a high-pitched version of Kevin’s. ‘What is it now? I’ve only just got in from my evening class and it’s rather late.’

‘It’s about a man who was visiting Pelliter. A Mr Richard Rudder.’

‘But I thought Kevin told you everything. This Richard Rudder is nothing to do with us. Rudder is not an uncommon name.’

‘I realize that. But Richard Rudder was a Canadian and they’re often very interested in genealogy. Family history.’

‘I know what genealogy is,’ Liz Rudder said in a prickly voice. ‘But I can assure you, as my brother did, that the likelihood of anyone coming to Pelliter to seek out John for family history reasons is virtually nil. John cannot communicate with people. And he’s had no contact with his family since we married. They weren’t the sort of people with whom we associated.’

‘And there are no other Rudders you know of?’

Liz Rudder was getting crosser now. ‘Look, my brother has been very helpful to you tonight, and you have already upset my husband. I came home to find he had knocked over the lamp in the living-room and scattered his 
belongings everywhere. It’s very inconvenient. My husband has night
blindness
on top of everything else and he relies on that light at twilight.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘You should be. We’ve really been quite disturbed by your call. I cannot think of any way in which we can help you and I’d be grateful if you’d let us get some peace this evening. In fact, I may well have a word with the proper police tomorrow about this.’

‘I’m so sorry, Mrs Rudder. Please forgive me. It was just a follow-up call and it will save any trouble in the morning.’

‘But enough’s enough. I’ve now got a mess to clean up in my lounge. Good night.’

‘Good night, Mrs Rudder. And thank you.’

Ro went thoughtfully back upstairs to the living-room. Ben was still playing on the computer.

‘Budge over,’ she said. ‘I want to use this now.’ She nudged him with her hips so that eventually he had to relinquish the seat.

‘Mum, this isn’t fair.’

‘Yes it is. Go to bed. There’s something I want to look up.’

Ben made irritated noises but he left her to it. She heard him bumping up the stairs. Ro wasn’t sure why she was doing it, but something about John Rudder and the twilight had intrigued her. She clicked on to Google and entered ‘night blindness’.

L
iz Rudder had put the phone down on Ro Watson. She was feeling distinctly out of sorts. She sat in her lounge with a nightcap glass of Rioja. John had been more animated after the visit from the police; his skin had looked pink and healthier. He’d only been grunting at her, but she didn’t like the fact that he seemed to have livened up. She’d been hoping he was in decline.

She hadn’t even enjoyed her Spanish class as much as usual. And her
interview
with Ray Findley after school had been quite disturbing. Clearly Father Peter Hodgson had failed to derail the head teacher. Liz held her hand out to the phone to call Brenda Hodgson for a good old moan, but it was a reflex action. Brenda was dead. For a moment Liz almost felt sorry.

But what about Callie? Callie was still onside. What had happened there? Callie had said that she was going to have a face-to-face meeting with Ray Findley that evening. Surely the head teacher would be a bit less chipper, now that Callie had given him her ultimatum in person?

Not so smart when it comes to keeping it in your trousers, are you, Ray, Liz thought. She knew Ray had been deeply ashamed of his dalliance with Callie in the Crossed Foxes car-park. Liz had watched him avoid Callie
afterwards
at school. He had obviously been relieved when Callie had gone off on maternity leave. But that had made Liz think. Liz knew that Callie’s husband had already absconded a good few weeks before that crucial Christmas party, because she had suggested that Callie ask John for some financial advice! So someone other than the disappearing Mr McFadden had to be Jonty’s father.

Liz remembered that Callie had been rather nervous of her when she came back to school to show off her baby boy, but Liz had cooed over the buggy like everyone else. Then, when the others had gone, Liz had said, as if it were just coincidental, ‘You know, the baby’s got rather a clever look, hasn’t he? A bit like Mr Findley!’ 

She had watched the light and the relief dawn on Callie’s face.

‘Don’t worry.’ Liz had leant forward. ‘Your secret is safe with me. By the way, have you heard about these new teaching assistant posts? Why don’t you apply?’

From then on, Callie had been Liz’s secret weapon. With Callie as a teaching assistant and Brenda under her thumb, Liz’s position at St Mungo’s had been unassailable, culminating in the new deputy headship. The collapse of Sheila Findley had helped, of course. And with luck, and some effort from Callie, things would stay that way until John died. Liz just wished he would hurry up and go.

The phone rang out again, its trill bouncing around the room.

‘Hello?’

‘Ah, Mrs Rudder. Or, Liz, if I may be so bold.’ The fruity voice of Peter Hodgson boomed in her ear.

Good heavens, Liz thought. He sounded a little bit tiddly. ‘Father Peter. I gather you spoke to Ray Findley today about the concert?’ And a fat lot of good it did, she thought.

‘I most certainly did, but he was hardly sympathetic, I am sorry to say. I will though make my feelings known to Neil Clifford and to the bishop if necessary. But I don’t want to alienate the local clergy if what we really want is for St Trallen’s Chapel to be re-consecrated as a memorial to dear Brenda.’

‘Is that what we want?’ Liz said sharply.

‘Didn’t we both agree?’ I don’t remember agreeing anything of the sort, Liz thought. But Peter Hodgson was in full inebriated flow.

‘And, dear lady, we agree on so much! I must say I thoroughly enjoyed your outstanding hospitality on Monday evening. I wondered if you might consider joining me for lunch this coming Sunday?’

Liz had a vision of Peter Hodgson stuffing his fat face with roast meat at the Crossed Foxes Carvery – and grimaced. He had been about as useful to her as a chocolate teapot.

‘But I have to look after my husband, as you know….’

‘Ah, of course.’ Peter Hodgson’s voice grew even more enthusiastic. ‘So, if I may be so bold, why don’t I come and see you at your home for Sunday lunch? I could bring a bottle of sherry and perhaps contribute a dessert? Those delicious little profiteroles, for example.’

Liz felt nauseous. Frankly, Peter Hodgson was actually rather gross – and politically he had been worse than useless to her. His intervention with Ray Findley had gone nowhere: in fact, it had caused her greater embarrassment. He was just a nuisance.

‘Are you propositioning me,’ she snapped, ‘while my husband is in a
wheelchair
?’ 

‘That’s an outrageous suggestion! I was merely suggesting a pleasant social encounter. I can’t believe you could interpret my invitation in this way.’

‘What invitation?’ Liz Rudder was yapping. ‘You invited yourself. Now if you don’t mind, it’s late. And next time you call a woman at ten o’clock at night, I suggest you don’t go at the sherry first.’

Liz slammed down the phone. The conversation had left her seething but stimulated. She gulped her own drink, and then banged Callie’s number into the phone.

‘Callie? Liz Rudder here. How did you get on with Ray this evening? … What?’ She listened in growing anger as Callie described Ray Findley’s
treatment
of her at the pub.

‘Callie, that is quite dreadful. You must expose this man for the cheat and cheapskate he is. It’s too late to talk now. You need to think about what to do. Should we meet tomorrow after school? … What? … You’re going to Faye Armistead’s? Well, after that then. I’ll make arrangements with you tomorrow.’

She slapped the phone down.

Ro had a bad night. As ever, sleeping was one of her problems.

When she finally woke from drowsing on Thursday morning, she lay in bed wondering why it all felt so different. The excitement had gone. The urge to bounce out to the police station was exhausted. Anyway, she couldn’t dash off and leave Ben again. Once was fine, but he still needed a lot of help. She had noticed that his bedroom, always untidy, was even more of a tip because she hadn’t been able to go around after him on Wednesday morning.

‘This room looks like the recycling dump!’ she had yelled at him, a little unfairly.

‘I’m going to be teenager in a few months!’ Ben had yelled back. ‘That’s what teenagers are like. I’m just like everyone else, Mum.’

His words had silenced her. It was a daunting thought. Sex and drugs and rock’n roll. The concept made her think of Jed Jackson, who was just the opposite. But if Jed was so judgemental about the things that made other young people tick, what rocked his boat? Self-righteousness? Religious fervour?

But then, she thought, there were plenty of fierce, moral young men about. It was just that you expected them to be in the Taliban, not Norbridge Police Station.

You are way out of order, she told herself. Something was causing these melodramatic thoughts. She got out of bed and opened the curtains. Across the valley, thick grey clouds looped over the fells like oily ropes and she heard the wind ripping through the woods on the other side of the burn. The 
weather had worsened. It was odd, as if the blustery wind was coming from the east, off the fells, when she had been so used to the spring breeze coming from the sea. This was a drier, colder, more biting wind, like winter all over again. She shuddered.

The radio alarm clock came on with the local news. There had been a development in the Marsh Murder investigation after the reconstruction. The police had received a tip-off from the public after the event the CID had held the previous evening. They were looking for two young cyclists, a girl and boy, seen in the vicinity the night Brenda had died.

I didn’t know about that new information, Ro thought. So much for being police support. She and Jed had been out of the station,
chez
Rudder, and had missed the developments that really mattered. I’ve been out of my depth trying to solve anything, Ro thought. I’m a PCSO and it’s a fine job. I’m not a detective. Being a PCSO is what I do well and the other stuff is for a different kind of person.

Uncharacteristically, she scuttled back into bed and pulled up the covers for another ten minutes. Outside, the wind dribbled among the tree tops.

At The Briars everyone was getting ready for the day ahead when the local radio bulletin cut through the breakfast clutter with an item which made them all stop. A breakthrough in the Marsh Murder investigation. Jake held his toast and marmalade halfway to his mouth, and Robert stopped drinking his tea.

‘I often wonder what makes people suddenly come forward with this
information
,’ Suzy said. ‘I mean, they talk about people’s memories being jogged, but half the time people make stuff up which they think they remember.’

‘But someone must have seen something,’ Jake said reasonably. ‘I mean, six o’clock on a Saturday night in Pelliter is hardly midnight at the oasis, is it?’

‘What do you know about oases?’ Suzy said playfully.

‘Not much now,’ Jake said. ‘But there’s always my gap year.’

Suzy stopped dead, even more stunned by this, than by the news. ‘Gap year? You mean before going to university? Some half-baked battening on to the Third World? Or indulgent backpacking round the fleshpots of the Far East, pretending to broaden the mind?’

‘That’s right,’ said Jake, grinning and biting into his toast again.

Suzy and Robert started talking at once and Jake pointedly ignored them, gathering his books and laptop, DVDs and sports kit. No one noticed that Molly was pale and quiet, sitting waiting on the stairs in the hall. Her fingers and thumbs were going over her phone keys like a musical instrument. She was texting Becky.

‘U heard news on Radio C?’ she asked anxiously. 

Later, at St Mungo’s, Miss MacDonald was teaching Year Six. She was taking a break from tests and scholarships, and trying some old-fashioned personal inspiration.

‘Who has heard of
The Darling Buds of May
? Anyone? It was a television series years ago, based on a famous book by a novelist, H.E. Bates. Look out of the window. See how cold it’s gone. The wind is shaking the blossom out of the trees, isn’t it? Yet at the beginning of this week it was all warm and summery and lovely. This is the beginning of May and May is a changeable month. One minute it’s summer and the next it’s not. The title of the book is actually a quote from Shakespeare. Who was William Shakespeare?’

‘Was he a Viking?’ shouted Toby Armistead.

‘No,’ Alison said. ‘He wasn’t a Viking. But he is our greatest playwright ever. He died in 1616, that’s nearly four hundred years ago. He wrote poems too, called sonnets. One went like this.
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day
? And it has the line in it
Rough winds shall shake the darling buds of May
.’

Jonty McFadden made a loud farting noise at the back of the class.

‘Not that sort of rough wind,’ Alison said sharply. ‘Let me read you the sonnet.’ It would be hard to get this class to concentrate for fourteen lines but she would give it a go. It went reasonably well except for Jonty making rude noises and obscene gestures and whispering at the back. But as Alison read, she looked up and noticed that, for once, Becky Dixon wasn’t listening. She was staring out of the window, an expression of anxiety on her face. Across the aisle Molly Spencer was white and distracted too. What is bothering them? Alison thought.

‘Becky, you weren’t concentrating, were you?’ she said.

‘Miss, she’s upset ’cos she’s lost her phone,’ Lily Smith said.

‘Is that true, Becky?’

‘Yes, Miss MacDonald.’

‘I’m sure we’ll find it. I’ll help you look at playtime. In the meantime, what was that poem about?’ Becky looked even colder than the rest of the class. She was wearing her bulky pea jacket, the collar turned up and pockets bulging.

Becky turned from the window with an agonized look.

‘It’s about dying young and being remembered,’ she said.

Alison thought, I hadn’t seen it quite like that. But Becky’s right.

Liz Rudder found the day dragged. She was dealing with arithmetic in the same way she had done for years and she was as bored as the children.

But she was also angry. She had woken up slightly hung over, still furious about Ray Findley, disgusted about Peter Hodgson, and affected by the grey, 
depressing weather. It certainly wasn’t like Spain. How many more years of this would she have to stand before John did the decent thing and died?

And added to all that, she had the oddest sensation that Callie McFadden had been avoiding her. When Liz had arrived at school that morning, bustling in from the car-park, she had seen the edge of Callie’s flared patchwork skirt whirling out of the door. At lunchtime, Callie had come into the staff-room as usual, but she had been summoned to see Mr Findley and had disappeared. Liz had eaten her neat packed lunch at the staff-room table, and made conversation with the Year Four supply teacher before making a tour of the playground. Usually Callie would disappear down the road for a quick smoke at lunchtime, and Liz would find her in the playground on the way back, which would give them a chance to chat. But Callie did not reappear from Mr Findley’s room until the lunch break was nearly over. She had a more flexible timetable than Liz and was dashing off, her skirt and shapeless brown cardigan flapping in the nasty sniping wind, when Liz managed to intercept her.

‘Has Findley caved in?’ Liz snapped.

‘Not exactly. I don’t know what he’s doing.’ Callie’s little eyes flickered in unusual nervousness.

‘So why did he want to see you this lunchtime?’

‘He’s told me Alison MacDonald is holding a special class tomorrow for the Dodsworth exam, and Jonty should go. He’s repeated that I’ve got to decide whether I want him to do a DNA test to see if Jonty is his son.’

Liz frowned. There was something about this which didn’t make sense. ‘What do you mean,
if
?’ she said, but Callie was scurrying away, already lighting up. ‘Callie!’ Liz called in her most imperious voice. But the wind snatched the words away and Callie disappeared around the corner.