Healers by Ann Cleeves

by Heather. Frustrated. Demanding. She knew that Charles should have a key but it was quite in character, if the key wasn’t immediately at hand, to inconvenience her rather than look for it. The doorbell rang again, more insistently.
    Sod you, Charles, she thought, still drowsy, stumbling from her chair.
    She opened the door, not bothering to attach the chain which Charles had insisted on having fitted. Behind her, in the background, came the noise of the television news. A man’s voice talked of the renewal of the Bosnian Peace Talks. But Val did not hear what he said. The door was pushed open from the outside against her. The babbling television voice hid the sound of her struggles and the muffled screams as the life was squeezed from her.
    Chapter Ten
    There was nothing at first to connect Val McDougal with Ernie Bowles. They had both been strangled, but the methods used had been altogether different. Bowles had been killed manually. The marks of the fingers on his neck had been quite obvious. Val had been strangled by a piece of thin nylon rope, twisted into a noose. It had been left behind at the scene of the crime but it would be of little assistance in tracing the murderer. It had been cut from a ball which had been left outside on the McDougal’s patio -Val had been tying climbing roses on to a trellis there. All this indicated was that the murderer had not come prepared.
    Then what could the victims have in common? They were perhaps of a similar age but there was no indication that they had ever met. Their backgrounds and education would suggest that they led quite different lives. They had lived fifty miles apart and Ernie seldom strayed beyond Mittingford. James McDougal, who might have thrown some light on this, was in a small group on a two-day survival trek through the fells and had not even been informed of his mother’s death.
    Charles McDougal had been of so little help that at first he was suspected of killing his wife.
    When he was questioned he lied about where he had been all evening. At a university meeting, he told the duty detective who came out early on Tuesday morning, all bleary-eyed from being woken from sleep. A university meeting which had dragged on. Then, when he realized that the detective did not believe him, that he was actually in danger of being arrested, he changed his story and suddenly became very helpful. He said he was sorry to have been so foolish. Shock did strange things to people. The notion that he might have appeared foolish seemed to distress him more than the death of his wife and he made a great effort then to be calm and efficient. He gave the detective Heather’s name and address. She was woken just as it was getting light and confirmed his story. She said that Charles had been with her all evening. Until one in the morning, when he had gone home to find the front door still ajar and his wife’s body slumped at the bottom of the stairs.
    “I thought she’d fallen,” he said to the policeman who was taking the statement. “I thought it was a terrible accident.”
    Later that day Ramsay came to ask him about possible connections with Ernie Bowies.
    “I’m sorry,” Charles said. “I’ve never heard the name before. I suppose he could have been one of her mature students.”
    That seemed unlikely from the beginning and when they checked they found out that Ernie had left school at fourteen and had had no education of any sort since.
    “Did your wife have any reason to go to Mittingford?” Ramsay asked.
    Charles shook his head. “We used to go there when the boys were young. For family picnics, you know. To walk along the river. But we haven’t been there recently. Probably not for years.”
    “Did anything unusual happen over the weekend?” Ramsay asked.
    “Not really. She went out on Saturday night. Usually we spent that together.”
    “Where did she go?” It occurred to Ramsay that Val could have been a witness to the Bowles murder. Perhaps that was