The Crow Trap (26 page)

The next day they saw little of Vera Stanhope and still the cloud was so low that there was no point trying to go out to count. By the evening Rachael thought that another day trapped in Baikie’s would drive her mad and she agreed to Edie’s suggestion that the following morning they should visit Alicia Davison, retired headmistress of the school where once, according to the papers left at Black Law, Bella had been a teacher. Edie disappeared into Black Law to make phone calls.

“I don’t like leaving you,” Rachael said to Anne, ‘ with the police still around.”

“That’s all right. I want to go into Kimmerston anyway to see a friend.”

A man, Rachael supposed, though the next morning when they set off at almost the same time there was no sign of it. No make-up or perfume.

No smart clothes stashed into a rucksack to be changed into later.

Overnight the weather had changed. There was still a haze over the moor but it was warm and still. Edie had managed to contact Alicia by phone and was pleased with herself. “I said we were researching local history. Alicia assumed it was about Corbin School. Apparently it was closed in the mid seventies. She got a bigger headship and went on to make quite a name for herself.” She was driving and paused while she concentrated on passing a tractor.

“She sat on an advisory panel on primary education and was considered quite an expert on rural schools. She published a book on it. She never left the classroom though. I suppose she’s one of those sad old spinsters who can only make relationships with small kids.”

Rachael was tempted to ask what had happened to sisterly solidarity.

Edie too was a spinster who’d taught for most of her life. But she kept quiet. It was a relief to be away from Baikie’s and she couldn’t face a row.

When Miss. Davison let them into her house it was clear she was far from sad. She was tiny, very quick and bright. Neither did she give an impression of age. She wore a grey velour tracksuit and new white training shoes and had just returned, she said, from her weekly yoga session in the village hall. Her new enthusiasm was tai chi but she liked to keep up her yoga too. As one got older it was good to keep supple.

She lived in a small development of smart new bungalows on the edge of a tidy village close to the Al.

She led them through the house rather apologetically. “When I retired I dreamed of a stone cottage and a large garden but I saw that it wouldn’t be practical. I’ve too many other interests. This suits me very well. We’re all of a certain age here in Swinhoe Close. Mostly couples of course, but they seem not to mind including me. And there’s one widower who’s very chivalrous.” She spoke quickly with sharp, staccato phrases which came out like the repeated rhythm of bird song.

“Do sit down. We’ll have the coffee presently, shall we? You don’t want to talk about me. You’re here to find out about the school. It’ll be an interesting project. I suppose you live in Corbin. You didn’t say.”

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.

She didn’t ask me to visit but I’m sure that was what she wanted. Why else would she write? I let her down again. I’m not quite sure what I expected. Some nightmare image of bedlam perhaps. Howling lunatics and chains and straitjackets. I knew rationally it wouldn’t be like that but still, I couldn’t bring myself to go. I did write to her but it wasn’t a warm letter. Not very encouraging. I’m not surprised she didn’t get in touch when she was released.”

She stopped abruptly. A bell rang in the distance. In the school yard playtime was over. “You said she was married. Was she happy?”

“Very,” Rachael answered. “She must have met Dougie soon after she left hospital. He employed her to look after his elderly mother.”

“Is that what she worked as? Some sort of care assistant? After the way she’d felt about looking after her father?”

“I don’t suppose she had much choice,” Edie said dryly. “There’d hardly be a queue of schools waiting to take her on as a teacher. She had no friends or family to turn to. What else did she know?”

“Anyway, it worked out well.” Rachael thought Edie was being too hard on Miss. Davison. She understood her reluctance to get involved.

“Dougie was a farmer. She loved the hills, loved him. A few years ago he had a stroke but that didn’t make any difference to the way she felt about him.” “What happened then?” Miss. Davison demanded.

“What do you mean?”

“Something must have happened. Why else would she kill herself?” “I don’t know,” Rachael said. “That was why we arranged to see you. I needed a reason. We were close friends.” “Yet she never told you about the conviction.”

“Nothing.” “Would she have told her husband?”

“Probably not.” If Bella hadn’t felt able to confide in her, Rachael thought, she wouldn’t have told anyone else.

“So perhaps the past came back to haunt her. Or someone from it.”

At first Rachael didn’t understand what she meant and it was Edie who said, “She was threatened with exposure, you mean?” She considered the idea. “She’d created a new identity. Perhaps she’d even come to believe it. Then she met someone who recognized her. Someone who threatened to tell Dougie; even worse, to tell the authorities. She’d killed one elderly dependent man. Could they take the chance of allowing her to look after another? She couldn’t face the questions, the publicity.” Edie looked at Rachael. “It’s certainly one explanation.”

Rachael agreed that it was. But Bella had been a fighter. She still believed there was more to her suicide than that. And if Bella had this secret in her life, perhaps there had been others.

Chapter Thirty-Three.

As Anne drove to Kimmerston she told herself she was being a bloody fool. At this of all times, she should keep her distance from Godfrey Waugh. The relationship was complicated enough, and now, if Godfrey were to become a suspect in the murder investigation … She had never been into Godfrey’s office. His secretary wouldn’t recognize her and it occurred to Anne that she could breeze in and demand to see him.