A Dedicated Man Page 25

  ‘That summer was beautiful, just like this one.’ Banks paused to look around at the other drinkers with their jackets and cardigans hung on the backs of chairs. ‘How often can you do this in England?’ he asked, sipping chilled lager. ‘Especially in Yorkshire. Anyway, Penny and Michael were the pride of the village – two bright kids with their whole lives ahead of them. Michael was a lean serious romantic young fellow, and if he imagined he was losing Penny to an older wiser man, then he still had a steady diet of Keats and Shelley to keep him nicely melancholy. Penny here simply enjoyed Steadman’s company, as she’s told me often enough. They had a lot in common, and there were no amorous inclinations on either side. Or if there were, they were well repressed.’

  He glanced at Penny, who looked down into her beer.

  ‘So,’ Banks went on after a deep breath, ‘one sunny day Penny’s out with Steadman looking at the Roman excavations in Fortford say, and Michael’s languishing in the garden reading “Ode to a Nightingale” or something. His parents are out shopping in Leeds or York and won’t be back till it’s time to prepare the evening meal. Emma Steadman is moping around the place staying out of the sun, and probably feeling bored and neglected. I’m making this up, by the way. Ramsden didn’t give me a blow by blow account. Anyway, Emma seduces young Michael. Not so difficult when you consider his age and his obsession with sex. Surely it’s every schoolboy’s fantasy – the experienced older woman. To Emma, he must have seemed like a younger more vital version of her husband. Perhaps he wrote poetry for her. He was certainly gawky and shy, and she gave him his first sexual experience.

  ‘Most people probably thought of Emma Steadman as a married woman going quickly to seed, but Michael made her feel wanted, and then she began to see definite advantages in not being thought particularly attractive. That way, nobody would think of her as the type to be having an affair.’

  Banks stopped to drink some more lager, pleased to see that he hadn’t lost his audience. ‘The affair went on over the years,’ he continued. ‘There were gaps and breaks, of course, but Ramsden told us they often got together in London when Emma went down for a weekend’s “shopping”, or when she went to “Norwich” to “visit her family”. I don’t think her husband paid her a great deal of attention, he was far too busy poring over ruins.

  ‘Anyway, Emma developed a powerful hold over Michael. As his first lover, she had a natural advantage. She taught him all he knew. And he was still shy in company and found it hard to meet girls his own age. But why bother? Emma was there and she gave him all he needed, far more than the inexperienced girls of his own age group could have given him. And, in turn, he made her feel young, sexy and powerful. They fed off each other, I suppose.

  ‘Over the years, Emma developed two distinct personalities. Now I’m not suggesting for a moment that she’s mentally ill – there’s nothing at all clinically wrong with her – all her actions were deliberate, willed, calculated. But she had one face for the world and another for Ramsden. If you think about it, it wasn’t that difficult for her to change her appearance. She only had to do it to please Ramsden, and he was strongly under her influence anyway. Visiting him in London would have been no problem, of course. But even after she moved to Gratly and he moved to York, it was simple enough. She could easily do herself up a bit in the car on the way to see him – a little make-up, a hairbrush. She could even change her clothes after she arrived, if she wanted. With Harold gone, it was even easier. Her neighbour told me there’s a door from the kitchen right into the garage, and it’s a lonely road over the moors to Ramsden’s place. But it wasn’t just looks, it was attitude, too. With Ramsden she felt her sexual power, something that was more or less turned off the rest of the time.

  ‘As time went by, everything she expected to happen, happened. Steadman threw himself more and more into his work, and she found herself, except for Ramsden, increasingly isolated. Why did she stay with her husband? I’m only guessing here, but I can think of two good reasons. First of all security, and secondly the promise of the inheritance, the possibility that things might improve when they became rich. And what happens? The money comes through all right, but nothing changes. In fact, things get worse. And here I can sympathize with her, to some extent. She’s a woman with dreams – travel, excitement, wealth, a social life – but all that happens is her husband buys the Ramsden house and she ends up even more bored and cut off while he spends the money on historical research. A dedicated man. Even though I can’t condone what she did to him, I can understand why she was driven to it. Steadman wasn’t exactly sensitive to her needs, emotional or material. He was selfish and mean. There they were, rich as bloody Croesus, and he spends his time drinking in the Bridge and his money on his work. I’m sure Emma Steadman would have preferred the country club. In fact she was little more than a prisoner, and the only person her husband was really close to was Penny again.’

  ‘That’s not quite true,’ Penny said. ‘He was close to Michael. He liked him.’

  ‘Yes,’ Banks agreed. ‘But that was much more of a working relationship. Michael was of use to him. I think they were colleagues, or partners, rather than friends. Don’t forget, Michael killed him.’

  ‘She made him.’

  ‘Yes, but he did it.’

  A waiter came out and they ordered another round.

  ‘Go on,’ Penny urged him after the drinks arrived.

  ‘Michael Ramsden is ambitious but he’s weak. He’s not good with people. He shared Steadman’s interests, yes, but he wasn’t obsessed – a word that offended one of Steadman’s colleagues, but apt, I think. Also, Ramsden resented Harold Steadman, and this really had nothing to do with you, Penny, even if he did feel jealous all those years ago. No, he resented Steadman in the way many of us come to detest people we first set up as examples, models, call them what you will. He hated always playing second fiddle – the publisher, the assistant – never the creative one, the leader, although he was busy working on a novel himself. Emma must have played on this, I think, dwelling on her husband’s bad points when she was with Ramsden, playing on Michael’s growing resentment towards his mentor. Soon he began to recognize Steadman’s meanness and his lack of consideration for anybody with interests other than his own. I think too that he was always, deep down, irritated at the way Harold could communicate so easily with Penny, how fond they were of one another. Anyway, this animosity grew and grew over the years, fuelled by sexual desire for Emma, and finally there came a chance to get rich, to take it all.

  ‘Emma Steadman used Ramsden, manipulated him without a doubt. But that doesn’t absolve him from blame. Slowly, she introduced the idea of murder to him, helped him over his initial resistance and nervousness. She did this partly by playing on his existing feelings about her husband, and partly through sex. Denial, satisfaction. More denial, greater satisfaction than he’d ever had before. That’s what he told me, anyway. He’s not a fool; he knew what was happening and he went along with it. Together, they killed Harold Steadman.

  ‘Naturally, as Emma stood to inherit, she’d be the first suspect so she had to be sure of an airtight alibi, which she had. Also, Ramsden seemed to have neither motive nor opportunity, no matter how I went at him, until the connection with Emma finally came into focus. There were also a number of other possibilities I had to pursue.’

  Both Barker and Penny looked at him reprovingly as he said this.

  ‘Yes,’ he went on, acknowledging them. ‘You two. Hackett, for a while. Barnes. Even the major and Robert Kirk, fleetingly. Believe me, I blame myself for not arriving at the answer before Sally Lumb had to die, too, but I couldn’t see the truth for the gossip, or the past for the present.’

  ‘Why did Sally have to die?’ Barker asked. ‘Surely she couldn’t have been a threat? What could she have known?’

  ‘Sally was older than her years in many ways,’ Banks replied. ‘She misread the situation. But I’ll get back to her a bit later. On the Saturday that Steadman was killed,
Ramsden drove close to Gratly. He parked his car in one of those derelict old barns on the minor road just east of the Steadman house, the one Emma always used to get to York. Remember, Ramsden had been brought up in Gratly; he knew every twist and dip in the dale.’

  ‘But how did he get back?’ Penny asked. ‘It’s an impossibly long walk, and the only bus to Eastvale goes early in the morning.’

  ‘Easy,’ Banks answered. ‘He wouldn’t have taken the bus anyway; too many people might have noticed him. Emma Steadman drove him back. She picked him up on the road at a prearranged time – a fairly isolated spot so there’d be no chance of their being seen. Then she dropped him off at the end of his lane and went shopping in York. We’ve checked on that now, and her neighbour remembers it because Emma brought back some material she’d asked for. There was nothing unusual in all that. Emma Steadman often spent afternoons shopping in York. After all, she was a lady of leisure. They just had to be careful not to be seen. And even if they had been, Ramsden looked enough like Steadman from a distance through a car window, so nobody would have thought twice about seeing them.’

  ‘What about that night?’ Penny asked. ‘After Harry had the row with my father?’

  ‘That’s another thing hindsight tells me I should have known,’ Banks answered. ‘There was only one place Steadman would have gone after the argument, and that’s exactly where he intended to go in the first place, to Ramsden’s. Remember he was a dedicated man, and you, Penny, were the only person he allowed to make emotional inroads into his valuable time. So he did exactly what he intended; he drove to York. And Ramsden killed him.

  ‘It was all planned in advance, perhaps even rehearsed. Ramsden already had plastic sheeting on the floor because he was painting his living room. He hit Steadman from behind with a hammer, wrapped his body in the sheet, bundled it in the boot of Steadman’s own car, drove it up near Crow Scar and buried it. He couldn’t bury him in the plastic because that might have given too much away, but he told us where he buried it and we’ve dug it up.’

  Penny put her head in her hands and Barker put his arms around her.

  ‘I’m sorry, Penny,’ Banks said. ‘I know it sounds brutal, but it was.’

  Penny nodded and took a sip of her drink, then reached for a cigarette. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘It’s not your fault. I’m sorry to be such a crybaby. It’s just the shock. Please go on.’

  ‘It was well after midnight and the village was deserted. He put Steadman’s car back in the car park, cut through the graveyard and over the beck, then drove his own car home to York. All he had to worry about was getting stopped on the way, but the road he chose made that most unlikely. As I said, the whole thing was carefully planned to throw all suspicion away from Ramsden and Emma Steadman, who had the best motive. It even helped them that Steadman’s car was a beige Sierra. They’re quite common around here. I looked in the car park myself yesterday and saw three of them. And there are others that look much the same, especially in dim light – Allegros, for example. Of course there were minor risks, but there was a hell of a lot at stake. It was worth it.’

  ‘What about Sally then?’ Sandra asked. ‘How does she fit into it?’

  ‘She wasn’t part of the plan at all,’ Banks said. ‘She was just one of the innocent bystanders whose memory got jogged too much for her own good. Like Penny here.’

  ‘There but for the grace of God,’ Penny muttered.

  ‘Too true,’ Banks agreed. ‘Whatever you believe, Emma would have convinced Ramsden it was necessary to get rid of you. She’d probably have had to do it herself, but he wouldn’t have stopped her. He was too far gone.’

  ‘You said he seemed almost glad when you arrived,’ Penny said.

  ‘Yes, in a way. It was the end; he was free. I really think he was relieved. Anyway, according to Ramsden, Sally said she saw him and Emma together in Leeds. They were very careful; they’d never think of going out in York or Eastvale, but Leeds seemed safe enough. None of Steadman’s old colleagues would have recognized Emma, and she knew the kind of places they went to, the places to avoid. Sally was there with her boyfriend. I’ve talked to him again and he said they did go to Leeds once when he borrowed a friend’s car, and Sally pulled him out of a pub, Whitelock’s, pretty sharpish when she spotted someone she knew. But she didn’t realize who it was at the time. She was more concerned with Ramsden not seeing her than about who he was with. I suspect she and Kevin went to quite a few pubs. Sally certainly looked old enough to pass for eighteen, but she was under age, so she couldn’t afford to get caught.

  ‘Now, most people would have just thought that Michael Ramsden had got himself a good-looking girlfriend, and I’m sure that’s what Sally believed until events in Helmthorpe made her start re-examining little things like that. She was perceptive and imaginative. But it wasn’t until I’d managed to link Emma and Ramsden that I knew how Sally fitted in at all. One thing I noticed when I saw her was that she seemed very skilled with make-up for a girl of her age, and she was interested in acting, the theatre. She had seen Ramsden in Leeds with an attractive woman, forgotten about it, then seen the image again when her mind was on the Steadman business – maybe at the funeral, when she had plenty of time to examine what everyone was wearing and how they looked. I was there too, and I noticed how she seemed to be scrutinizing us all, though it didn’t mean anything to me at the time. However it happened, she remembered, and she became convinced it was Emma, carefully made up, she had seen with Ramsden. So Sally phoned her.

  ‘That was where she went wrong. Emma Steadman told Ramsden later that Sally had gone on about Wuthering Heights on the phone, and about how she thought Ramsden had killed Harold Steadman so he could marry Emma just to get his hands on the house and money. Sally was convinced that Ramsden would murder Emma too, after he had married her. She seemed to think the Ramsdens had gone down in the world and that Michael must resent Steadman tremendously for buying the house from his family and taking over. She suggested a secret meeting to discuss things and see if they could find a way to deal with the situation. She thought that, together, they could solve the case and make the police look silly. Emma was terrified of anything that could link her with Ramsden, so she killed the girl.’

  ‘Emma killed Sally Lumb?’ Penny repeated numbly.

  ‘Yes. Up by the packhorse bridge on Friday night. She hid the body under the bridge – the water was low then – and piled stones on it.’

  ‘But why on earth did Sally meet her like that?’ Barker asked. ‘She must have known it might be dangerous.’

  ‘Not at all. As far as Sally was concerned, she was simply warning Emma, saving her life. Besides, even if she did have second thoughts, ask Penny. She was about to do much the same thing, and she never seriously considered that Ramsden would harm her.’

  ‘But that was different,’ Penny argued. ‘I’d known Michael all my life. I knew he wouldn’t hurt me, even if what I thought was true.’

  ‘Somebody would have hurt you,’ Banks replied. ‘You wouldn’t find much comfort in being right about Ramsden while Emma was killing you. It wouldn’t matter then, would it?’

  ‘Only to the police, I suppose.’

  ‘You’re wrong about that,’ Banks said, leaning forward and looking straight into her eyes. ‘It matters to everyone except the corpse. Murder is the one crime that can’t be put right. It upsets the balance. The dead can’t be restored like stolen property; death doesn’t heal like physical or emotional scars left by assault or rape. It’s final. The end. Sally Lumb made a mistake and she died for it.’

  ‘She was reading the wrong book,’ Barker said. ‘And misreading it, at that. She should have been reading Madame Bovary. That’s about a woman who considers murdering her husband.’

  Banks hadn’t read Madame Bovary but made a mental note to do so as soon as possible. When the waiter reappeared, Banks and Penny were the only ones to order more drinks.

  Banks lit another cigarette. ‘Ramsden got really scared
after Emma killed Sally,’ he said. ‘But life went on and no thunderbolts from heaven struck him down. Then Penny started to figure things out. You know the rest.’

  Penny shivered and draped her shawl over her shoulders.

  ‘Emma Steadman was far more powerful than any of us had imagined,’ Banks said. ‘She also had a solid alibi for her husband’s murder. There was no way she could have done that, and though I flirted with the idea that she might have paid someone, it didn’t seem likely. Sergeant Hatchley was right – she wouldn’t have known how to contact a hired killer. Besides, if she had, it would have meant someone else to fear, someone who knew about her and what she’d done. Ramsden was ideal; Emma could control him, and he stood to gain too. Sally knew that Mrs Steadman couldn’t have carried the body up Tavistock’s field – another reason not to fear her – but she didn’t know that Ramsden seemed to have a perfect alibi. I certainly didn’t tell her, and I don’t think anyone else did.

  ‘I was thinking about all the wrong combinations,’ he said to Penny. ‘You and Steadman, you and Ramsden, you and Barker here. For a while I even wondered whether Ramsden and Steadman were homosexually involved. Like everyone else, I was taken in by Emma Steadman’s outer drabness. I just couldn’t picture her as a woman of passion and power. I didn’t even try. But she had the most dangerous combination of all, a passionate and calculating nature.’

  ‘What did make you think of her?’ asked Barker. ‘I’d never have got it in a million years.’

  ‘That’s because you only write books,’ Banks joked, ‘while I do the real work.’

  ‘Touché. But really? I’m curious.’