Cooper and Fry Crime Fiction Series Books 1-3: Black Dog, Dancing With the Virgins, Blood on the Tongue

‘He doesn’t vary?’

‘Regular.’

‘And on Saturday night?’

‘The same. Six o’clock. He sits down for his meal when he comes back. He says it gives him an appetite.’

Cooper nodded, waiting while Gwen poured his tea. Her legs below the hem of her dress looked painfully swollen, and the lower sleeves of her blue cardigan were stuffed with bits of tissue, ready for the next onset of tears.

‘Did your husband mention seeing anybody when he was out that night?’

‘Do you mean the Mount girl?’

‘Not necessarily. Anybody.’

‘No,’ said Gwen. ‘He never said anything like that.’ She paused for a moment, and offered Cooper a biscuit. ‘You don’t know Harry very well, do you?’

‘No, I’ve only met him briefly.’

‘Well, you see, he wouldn’t say if he had, anyway. He’s like that.’

‘He wouldn’t tell you if he met somebody while he was walking the dog?’

‘No, he wouldn’t see any reason to.’

‘But since then? Since he’s known that Laura Vernon was killed down there? If he remembered seeing somebody, might he not mention it?’

‘Not to me,’ said Gwen simply.

‘I see. Did your husband go out again later, Mrs Dickinson? After his meal?’

‘He usually goes down to the Drover,’ she said.

‘And that night, did he go out as usual?’

‘Yes, I’m sure.’

‘What time would that be?’

‘I can’t remember,’ said Gwen.

‘After seven o’clock?’

‘Oh yes, he wouldn’t have finished his tea before that.’

‘After eight o’clock then?’

‘I can’t really say. It might have been.’

Cooper heard the aggressive tone in his own voice and hesitated, seeing Gwen begin to tremble. He felt sorry for her and didn’t want to increase her distress. She was only one of those innocent people who got caught up in something they didn’t understand. He thought of his own mother, for whom things had got too much. He didn’t want to be even partly responsible for pushing someone else towards the edge.

‘Just a few more questions, Mrs Dickinson, then I’ll leave you in peace. I know it must be difficult for you.’

‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘Those other men frightened me, but I don’t mind if it’s you.’

He smiled, touched by the old woman’s faith, but not sure whether he could live up to it.

‘I wonder whether Mr Dickinson would have taken his dog with him when he went out the second time? When he went to the pub?’

‘Jess? Oh yes, he doesn’t go anywhere without her.’ Gwen took a deep breath. ‘Are they saying he met the Mount girl down there?’

He was surprised at the question, and wondered why it had come into Gwen Dickinson’s mind. He deliberately avoided an answer.

‘You keep calling her the Mount girl, Mrs Dickinson. But her name’s Vernon.’

‘Yes, I know that. The Mount is where she lives, isn’t it?’

She nodded her head towards the window. But all that could be seen was the garden, the edge of the trees, and the sunlit hillside beyond.

‘Do you know Mr and Mrs Vernon, then?’

‘They’re comers-in.’

‘Is that yes or no?’

Gwen threw out her hands. Cooper knew the meaning of that gesture. It indicated that you could never really know comers-in, not in the proper sense. You might say hello to them in the street or in the shop, let them buy you a drink at the pub, or even share a pew with them at St Edwin’s these days. But you wouldn’t ever know them – not like you knew the people who had always lived in the village, whose parents and grandparents and great-grandparents you knew, and whose grandparents had known your great-grandparents. Many of them might well have been first or second cousins to each other. Those were the people you knew.

‘We were never introduced,’ said Gwen. ‘They weren’t known round here. Not really.’ She peered anxiously at him to be sure he understood.

‘Of course.’

Yes, you only really knew people when you knew everything about them. You needed to know it all – from the exact moment they had been conceived in the long grass at the back of the village hall to the first word they had spoken, and the contents of their fifth-form school reports. You needed to know what size of shoes they wore, how much money they owed the credit card company, when their last bout of chickenpox had been, and which foot had the ingrowing toenail. You had to know who their first sexual encounter had been with, what brand of condom they had used, and whether the experience had been satisfactory. Now that was knowing somebody.

‘But I have seen them,’ admitted Gwen. ‘The Mount lot.’

‘What about the girl? Laura?’

‘She never went to school in the village – she was already too old when they came. She didn’t even go to the big school in Edendale. Private, she was. That place out at Wardworth, what do they call it?’

‘High Carrs.’

‘That’s right. They always took her out by car every morning and back in the afternoon. At weekends they were always away out somewhere, shopping in Sheffield and the like. Riding lessons and I don’t know what. She never had anything to do with any of the other girls in the village, nor any of the boys either, though plenty would have liked to know her better, I don’t doubt. They kept her shut up in that place, or well away from here. So she was never really part of the village then, was she? Not her, nor that brother of hers either. They couldn’t be, not like that.’

‘And how well do you think your husband knew Laura?’

Gwen flared up suddenly, her lip lifting to reveal her false teeth in something that was almost a snarl. Cooper bit off too large a piece of biscuit and nearly choked.

‘Are you sure you’ve been listening?’