The Sleeping and the Dead

‘It would give another slant on Crispin keeping Theo away from his stepmother. Perhaps she was threatening to harm him even then. Much easier to blame the boy than take responsibility for her own negligence.’

‘It’s a possibility…’

‘But you don’t think it’s likely.’ Eddie finished his beer and grinned. ‘It’s OK. You don’t have to humour me. I’m not a kid. I’m…’ he paused. ‘What’s that technique they always use on the team-building courses? Brainstorming.’

‘I’m not dismissing any ideas. It’s just that Stella did take responsibility for Emily’s death as soon as I asked her about it. And she’d almost forgotten about Theo. I don’t think she’d have been able to do that if she’d killed him.’

‘Did you ask her about the Gillespie girl?’

‘Yes.’

On the way out. He’d stood on the doorstep looking across the garden to the wide sweep of the bay, with the lighthouse at one end and the mouth of the Tyne at the other, then turned back to her as if the question had just come to him: ‘Does the name Melanie Gillespie mean anything to you?’

She’d stood with her arms clasped across her chest as if she were cold. A breeze was coming off the sea and her cardigan was thin, but Porteous still felt warm. Then she’d giggled. ‘What’s this, Inspector? A sort of quiz?’ Then she’d gone into the flat shutting the door behind her without answering the question.

The sun was so low now that it shone up at them through the long window of the barn and they were dazzled. They turned away and sat down. Porteous offered Eddie another beer but he shook his head and for the first time Porteous saw how excited he was. It had been a struggle to contain himself in the conversation about Stella Randle.

‘What is it, Eddie? What have you got for me?’

‘I went to see Jack Westcott. You remember, he was the history teacher in the high school. Just retired.’

Porteous nodded.

‘I turned up before opening time this morning. Caught him when he was completely sober. We went for a walk in the park. His wife’s the house-proud sort. You could tell she was glad to have him out from under her feet. He was glad of the company, I think. He’ll miss those kids.’

Porteous nodded again, thought Eddie would get to the point in his own time.

‘I just wanted to get him talking. Claire Wright hasn’t found any teacher who moved from Cranford to the school on the coast, but I thought there might be some informal connections – specialist music teachers, drama festival, sport. That sort of thing.’

‘Anything?’

‘Not that Theo was involved in. So I asked about the other kids in the school. It occurred to me that Melanie’s mother and father would be about the same age as Theo if he’d lived. But Westcott couldn’t remember a Richard Gillespie or an Eleanor of any description, so I could kiss goodbye to that theory.’

‘Worth checking though. And it’s possible that Richard Gillespie was at Theo’s boarding school.’

‘Aye. From what I’ve seen of him on TV he’s got the air of a public-school boy about him… I’d pretty much given up hope of anything useful when Jack said he’d been digging around at home and he’d found some more photos of the Macbeth production. Would I like to see them? Most likely an excuse so he wouldn’t have to face that dragon of a wife on his own, but I thought he might have a sharper photo of the boy we could give to the press, so I went along with him.’

Porteous was finding it difficult to give the story his full attention. He didn’t mind Eddie Stout being here as much as he’d expected, but the evening sun was making him drowsy.

Eddie continued. ‘You’d have thought he was a schoolboy himself, the way he spoke to his wife. He took me upstairs to a sort of den where he hides away from her. There were cardboard boxes full of snaps. There must have been pictures in there of every school play in the past thirty years, but he’d sorted out the ones he thought were relevant.’

‘Anything of Theo we could use for the media?’

‘No. Jack must have had the shakes even then. None of them were brilliant. But amongst them I found this.’ Carefully, holding the picture by the edges with his fingertips, Eddie handed it over. It was a black and white photo of the audience, taken probably from the side of the stage just before the show was about to start. Parents clutched hand-printed programmes on their knees and chatted to their neighbours. There was no indication that they’d been aware of the photographer. Eddie pointed to a couple in the front row.

‘Those are the Brices.’

They looked ordinary, elderly. They could have been anyone’s grandparents. Stephen wore a hand-knitted sweater over corduroy trousers. Sylvia had made more of an effort about dressing up and had a high-necked blouse over a long black skirt. There was a brooch at the neck. They were holding hands.

‘Interesting,’ Porteous said. He always found it helpful to put a face to names. But he couldn’t quite understand Eddie’s excitement. It was hardly worth a trek into the country at tea time.