A Day in the Death of Dorothea Cassidy (6 page)

‘I don’t see how I can help you,’ he had said. ‘Church wardens have no real power, you know. Edward is the vicar. You should discuss your ideas with him.’

‘Ah Edward,’ she had said, softening. ‘Of course he’s sympathetic but he’s too frightened of causing offence. He says the congregation is elderly and easily shocked. I’ve told him that we need a new congregation. If we had
your
support it would give Edward confidence. We both have so much respect, you know, for your opinions.’

Then she began to discuss with great clarity and knowledge an article he had written in the church magazine so he became seduced by her interest and learning, and when she went he was never sure how things were between them. Perhaps she thinks I approve, he thought, and he would go to church the next week with some trepidation, expecting to find the dance group already active, or electric guitars, or a black gospel singer performing from the pulpit.

His first impulse when he saw Dorothea Cassidy’s car was to pretend that he was out. Today he had more reason than usual to be afraid of her. With some shame he quickly drew the living-room curtains back together and stood in the stuffy half light waiting for her to ring the doorbell. The waiting and the silence made his heart pound. He began to sweat. This isn’t fair, he cried to himself. At my age I should be left in peace. What is the woman playing at? He crept into the kitchen in case she had gone to the back of the house but there was no sign of her there. All the time he listened for the engine to start and the car to drive away. After ten minutes he decided that the tension of waiting was worse than facing her so suddenly he threw open the door and called with all the courage he could muster.

‘Dorothea! Where are you? Come in, my dear.’

But there was no reply and he was left feeling foolish and resentful, talking to himself like that in full view of everyone in the street. In the garden of Armstrong House next door, Clive Stringer, the teenage boy who worked there, stared at him, his mouth wide open, so he looked more gormless than ever. His presence confused Walter Tanner. He distrusted the boy and never knew what to say to him, but if Dorothea was around he did not want her to catch him being impolite. He stood on the doorstep uncertainly and swore under his breath. Where was the woman?

One of the domestic staff was standing on a kitchen stool, half-heartedly polishing the windows of Armstrong House. Walter Tanner went to the boundary hedge and called to her. The woman clambered down carefully and approached him.

‘Have you seen Mrs Cassidy?’ he asked. ‘ Her car’s here but there’s no sign of her.’

Then to his amazement she backed away from him and began to cry, mopping her eyes with the hem of her overall.

‘Man,’ she said, ‘haven’t you heard? Mrs Cassidy’s dead.’

When Ramsay and Hunter arrived at Walter Tanner’s house he was eating his breakfast with a single man’s economy of effort. The same plate was used for his egg and toast and he stirred his tea with the handle of his knife. He had never married. He had thought, when he was a fervent young man, that he would join the priesthood and none of the women he had met then had seemed possible vicar’s wives. He had drifted into the family business prompted by some sense of obligation, expecting it only to be a temporary measure. When his mother’s health improved, when they could afford more reliable staff, he would leave, but neither condition was ever met and he suddenly found that he was too old either to train to be a priest or to marry.

The sound of the doorbell startled him and he piled the mug and the plate with its half-eaten food on to the draining board. Then he opened the door to the detectives, fumbling with the catch in his haste to let them in. He took them into the living room and had to open the curtains again. He shivered as he remembered with horror his attempt to hide from a dead woman. He felt terribly guilty, as if in desiring her absence he had been responsible for her death.

‘Sit down,’ he said. ‘Sit down.’ Then he watched them looking around the room and saw it through their eyes – the furniture large and shabby, much of it remaining from when his parents had moved to the house in the thirties. The Tanners had been respected in the town then, they had mixed on almost equal terms with the gentry who came to the grand shop in Front Street. He had been a child and his mother had sent him to elocution lessons, insisting that if he grew up with a ‘ common’ accent he would be no use to her in the shop. While his school friends went to the Sunday school in the Methodist chapel his mother took him to matins at St Mary’s. You get, she’d said, a better class of congregation there.

Now Walter Tanner felt as old and shabby as the furniture. A small, dumpy man with thinning grey hair and a sad moustache, he was dressed in the same suit as he had always worn to the shop, before he retired and sold up. He was pleased he had changed from his slippers into black shoes. He felt vaguely that it would be disrespectful to mourn Dorothea in carpet slippers.

‘You won’t mind if I smoke,’ he said, stuttering over the last word. He felt in his trouser pocket and brought out a packet of cigarettes and a box of matches.

‘This has all been a terrible shock.’

‘Yes,’ Ramsay said. ‘ Of course. It must have been.’

‘When I saw the car, you see, I didn’t know she was dead. I thought she had called for a visit …’ His voice tailed off. He held the cigarette lightly between his fingertips as if to show them that he was not a regular smoker, as if it were almost medicinal.

‘Was it usual for Mrs Cassidy to visit you without prior arrangement?’ Ramsay asked.

‘Oh, Dorothea never made appointments to see me,’ he said. ‘She turned up out of the blue when she felt like it.’ He realised, too late, how bad-tempered that sounded and added: ‘It was always a pleasure to see her, of course. Always a great pleasure.’

‘What is your position at St Mary’s?’ Ramsay asked.

‘I’m church warden,’ the man said. ‘And secretary of the parochial church council.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Ramsay said, ‘I thought Major Walker was church warden.’

‘He is. There are two of us. It’s a lot of work, you know. More work than people realise. Major Walker lives out of the town and has a number of other commitments. They rely on me for day-to-day management.’

He spoke with resentment and Ramsay thought it must be a long-standing grievance. The Major, confident and articulate, would attract the attention and have the power, while Walter Tanner did all the work.

‘Yes,’ Ramsay said slowly, ‘ I see, Mr Tanner. What exactly was the nature of your relationship with Mrs Cassidy?’ He found it impossible to imagine that Dorothea would have chosen to come to this gloomy house to speak to this nondescript little man. Tanner looked up sharply and inhaled frantically on the cigarette.

‘Relationship?’ he said. ‘What do you mean?’

‘You say that Mrs Cassidy called to see you occasionally,’ Ramsay said. ‘Why did she do that?’

To make my life a misery, Tanner wanted to answer, but he paused and considered.

‘She was young and enthusiastic,’ he said. ‘She had a lot of new ideas. I think she wore Edward out with them and then she would come to me.’

‘Did she expect you to help her?’

‘No,’ Tanner said. ‘Not in any practical way. I think she just wanted my blessing.’

‘Did she get it?’

Tanner paused. He felt it impossible to explain to the policeman the ambiguity of his contact with Dorothea, his inability to stop her in full flow, his constant lack of courage and conviction in front of her.

‘No,’ he said at last, trying to sound firm. ‘I’m afraid I considered most of her schemes were unworkable and badly thought out. And she seemed to hold none of our traditions sacred.’

‘Was there antagonism between you about this?’ Ramsay asked. ‘Did she come here to make a fuss?’ He was still trying to discover what had drawn Dorothea to the man.

‘No,’ Tanner said. ‘Of course not. We talked. That’s all.’

Ramsay decided to approach the subject from a different angle.

‘It must have been rather a shock when Mr Cassidy suddenly announced that he was intending to marry.’

‘Yes,’ Tanner said. ‘When he came to Otterbridge he was a young widower. There were rumours later of course, linking his name to some of the unattached ladies in the parish, but nothing came of it. It was a great surprise when he turned up suddenly with Dorothea.’

‘What do you mean?’ Ramsay asked. ‘You must have known beforehand that he intended to marry.’

‘No. Nobody knew. He took his annual holiday in the summer and when he came back he was a married man. I understand they had only known each other for three months. He said that Dorothea wanted a quiet wedding, with just close family. No one from the parish was invited.’

‘I suppose his son must have known …’ Ramsay said.

‘Oh, the boy was there,’ Tanner said dismissively.

‘Why do you suppose the vicar acted in such a hurry?’

‘I don’t know. Perhaps he was afraid Dorothea would change her mind. Of course there was a great deal of speculation about the secrecy and the haste. The whole affair rather damaged his reputation.’

‘Yet you would say that generally he’s a popular man?’

‘Yes,’ Tanner said, grudgingly. ‘Generally. When he first came to the parish he had some outlandish ideas but over the years we mellowed him.’

Throughout Ramsay’s conversation with Tanner, Hunter had remained standing. Now he began to move restlessly around. He felt trapped by the stuffy room and all these words. Why didn’t Ramsay get to the point? He could bear it no more.

‘When did you last see Mrs Cassidy?’ he asked abruptly, and the question so startled Tanner that he answered without realising the implication of the reply.

‘Yesterday lunchtime,’ he said. ‘ But not to speak to.’

‘She didn’t come here?’

‘Oh no,’ he said. ‘It was on the Ridgeway Estate. She was coming out of one of the houses there as I was walking past. I don’t think she even saw me.’ He waited breathlessly for them to ask what he was doing on the Ridgeway Estate, but the question did not come.

‘Did she have her car with her then?’

‘Yes,’ Tanner said. ‘She was obviously in a hurry. She almost ran out of the house and drove away.’

Hunter walked to the window and stared moodily out at the car, still parked on the drive. A colleague stood on the pavement, protecting it from the contaminating touches of passers-by, waiting for the forensic team. Hunter would have preferred to be outside in the sunshine.

‘Do you know the name of the street?’ Ramsay asked. ‘It might be important.’

Tanner thought. All he could remember was an overwhelming relief that Dorothea had not seen him. ‘ It was one of those streets named after Victorian novelists,’ he said at last. ‘Eliot perhaps, or Hardy.’ Then, in a panic he added, ‘I went there to visit one of our congregation who’s been poorly.’ With the lie he almost felt faint.

‘Could you give us a brief account of your movements yesterday afternoon?’ Ramsay said.

‘I got a bus from the Ridgeway back to town,’ Tanner said. ‘ I went into the supermarket to do some shopping then walked home through the park. There was a brass band playing as part of the festival and I stopped to listen. It was rather pleasant. I spent the rest of the afternoon and the evening in the house.’

Ramsay had a sudden vision of his own life, after retirement. Would he also spend his days in such a drab, friendless way, with only the occasional excitement of a brass band concert in the park?

‘Would you have noticed if the car was here when you went to bed last night?’ he asked quietly.

Tanner stammered. ‘I don’t know. Probably not. I drew the curtains at about ten. It wasn’t here then. I was watching the television.’

‘But you would have heard the sound of the engine,’ Hunter said. ‘The drive’s just outside the window. You would have seen the headlights even through the curtains.’

‘Perhaps,’ Tanner said unhappily.

‘What time did you go to bed?’

‘At about eleven,’ Tanner said. He wondered if he should tell them that he had been watching boxing on the television. He thought the detail might make his story more credible but he was worried about what they would think of his taste in viewing. Dorothea had caught him watching a replay of a world title fight one afternoon and had said it was barbaric.

‘You weren’t disturbed at all in the night? No voices, unusual sounds?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘But my bedroom’s at the back of the house. I wouldn’t have heard anything going on in the street.’

‘Do any of your neighbours keep late hours, work shifts? It would be very helpful to find someone who saw the car arrive.’

Tanner shook his head. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I don’t know. Armstrong House is next door. I suppose most of the residents there would go to bed rather early but the warden might have been awake. I don’t have a lot of contact with the rest of the street.’

Ramsay stood up then and held out his hand to Tanner. The old man took it uncertainly. If there had just been the two of them, he thought, just he and the inspector, it might have been easier to explain. But the presence of the sergeant, so young and fit, so uncompromising, so like Dorothea in many ways, made it impossible. He walked with the policemen to the front door and saw them out of the house, then returned to the living room to watch them, peering like a prying old woman round the grey net curtains.

Ramsay stood on the drive and looked down the street. Tanner’s garden was enclosed by a privet hedge but the car must still be visible from one of the upstairs windows of Armstrong House. Perhaps some elderly insomniac had seen it driven there. The old people’s flats were new, brick-built and stood on a corner between the narrow street where Tanner lived and a much busier road. Previously the site had housed an old nursing home, which had closed down suddenly with the death of the owner and been allowed to become derelict before it was bought by the charitable organisation. Then it was demolished completely and the flats were built.

It seemed strange to Ramsay that Dorothea’s car had been found so close to the place where she had missed an appointment. Had she made it to Armstrong House after all? But that made Aunt Annie and her friends suspects in a murder inquiry and what possible motive could they have?