Death and the Maiden (18 page)

‘I don't see how you can possibly say that,' Quantrill objected, ‘not after only two terms!'

‘But it's true,' she said bleakly. ‘I've been put in charge of the middle school, and it's all so different. I can't communicate with most of the children. They aren't even local, most of them, they've been brought from London to live on the new estates. They've been uprooted, disoriented, and they feel anonymous and unwanted. They hate the town, and they hate school because what we try to teach seems irrelevant. Nearly a quarter of them find reading difficult, and so they're bored and idle and aggressive and destructive. I used to be a good academic teacher, but I seem to have nothing to offer these children at all. I'm as confused as they are … and I've another eighteen years of it before I retire. Oh God, another eighteen years of Breckham Market middle school—and to think that I was once a high-flyer, an Oxford scholar with a brilliant future …'

So that was the trouble, thought Quantrill: that accounted for Denning's snide remark about his deputy's lack of ability. Well, no wonder she was finding it difficult to adjust, poor girl! Bad enough to have to try to teach a large number of children as noisily unenthusiastic about school as his own Peter, let alone the ones who could hardly read. And let alone the ones—by no means the ex-Londoners exclusively—who had been known to the police since junior school, who stole and lied and vandalised the town and terrorised the housing estates. No wonder Jean felt that her career had turned to failure. No wonder her nerves were raw.

He made what he hoped were understanding and consolatory noises, but she hardly seemed to hear. She sat with one elbow on the table, her chin propped on her hand. Her blue eyelids were lowered, and the lighting was so kind that the sweep of her dark lashes hid the lines and hollows under her eyes. She looked for a moment younger, more remote.

‘I was thinking,' she said softly, almost to herself, ‘of my husband. Life can turn out to be such a cheat and a disappointment for high-flyers, and that's what Philip was, literally. He was an RAF pilot, a member of the crack acrobatic team. He was killed twenty years ago, when he and another pilot collided while they were rehearsing their display.'

Quantrill had not known the occasion of her husband's death. He murmured conventionally, inadequately.

‘It was terrible, of course,' she said, ‘but twenty years is a long time … What finally consoled me was the thought that my sorrow was merely for myself—there was no need for me to grieve on Philip's behalf because he died doing exactly what he wanted to do. He'd had a brilliant RAF career and he loved flying, lived for it. But military flying is strictly for young men; he knew that, and dreaded the thought of being grounded. If he'd lived, he would be forty-five now. About your age?'

Quantrill nodded.

She smiled at him. ‘But not, like you, forging ahead in his career. He'd never have made senior rank, he was too much of a rebel. No, if he'd lived, Philip would by now have been either bored and frustrated in a minor RAF desk job, or bored and disillusioned as some kind of civilian sales representative. Or quite possibly unemployed and unemployable.' She took a cigarette. ‘One of the friends of Rupert Brooke, the poet who died in the First World War, said that it was just as well that he died young, because he was magnificently unprepared for the long littleness of life. That was Philip, too.'

He watched her thin cheeks hollow further as she accepted the light he offered. ‘It must have taken a very long time for you to get over the shock,' he said.

She considered the matter objectively, from a distance of twenty years. ‘It was the
violence
of his death that was so hard to come to terms with. But my other consolation has always been that our marriage was wonderfully happy. We'd been married less than a year, and we were still very much in love. We never had time to take each other for granted. I can look back now on our marriage as a time of perfect happiness—and that could never have lasted, not with that degree of intensity. Philip had his share of vanity, and he would probably have tried to compensate for the disappointments of being middle-aged and grounded by running after girls. But as it is, he died young and happy. That's enviable, when you come to think of it, isn't it?' She touched the thick paperback that she had been reading. ‘Do you know Dorothy Parker?'

No connection with Shakespeare, even he knew that. He admitted his ignorance of the name.

‘She was an American writer,' Jean Bloomfield explained. ‘She was young and rich and brilliant and famous in the nineteen twenties and thirties. She welcomed the idea of dying young—she hated the thought of middle and old age. She said that people ought to be one of two things, young or dead.'

Quantrill looked surreptitiously at his watch, wondering how much longer it would be before the post-mortem result on Mary Gedge came through. ‘In my job,' he said heavily, ‘I see far too many people who are both.'

‘Yes—yes, I imagine you do. Can you tell me, is there any news of the girl who disappeared a few months ago, Joy Dawson? I know her headmistress, and she tells me how disturbed and distressed everyone at her school is. Is there any hope?'

‘Hope of what, after this time?' asked Quantrill glumly. ‘That instead of being brutally murdered, she was picked up and taken to London, and that she's now on drugs and the game? We've simply no idea—and it's the not knowing that's the worst thing of all for the parents. You'll think that this is a terrible thing for me to say, but when I heard that a girl had been found drowned but otherwise unharmed at Ashthorpe, I really hoped that it would be Joy Dawson.'

‘I know exactly what you mean. Death—as long as it isn't violent—is preferable to disappearance. At least Mary Gedge's parents have the consolation of knowing that she hadn't been molested. At least they can bury her body. It won't lessen their immediate sorrow, of course, but after the burial and the mourning they'll gradually be able to come to terms with their grief, in a way that Joy Dawson's poor parents never can. And I think that in time the Gedges will be glad that they can remember their daughter as being always young and happy … just as I can remember Philip …'

Her eyes had softened, and her smile of reminiscence was so unexpectedly tranquil that the chief inspector felt a rush of envy. Not of the dead pilot; as Jean had said, twenty years is a long time, and Quantrill did not imagine that fidelity to his memory would keep her—had, for all he knew, kept her—from taking a lover if she wanted one. But he envied her acquaintance with perfect happiness.

They were silent for a few moments. ‘Why are you looking so sad?' she asked gently. ‘You've no need to. You have a family, and a very successful career. You're a lucky man.'

He was tempted to confide in her, to tell her about his marriage; to explain that, gratifying as it was, success in his career seemed to be merely a consolation prize for the absence of personal happiness. What a wonderful wife Jean would make, he thought. Not just in bed—he had no proof of that, of course, but no doubts either—but as a lifetime companion, an intimate friend whose idea of conversation was not confined to comments about the neighbours and complaints about the cost of living. He lit a cigar that he didn't want, to dull the edge of fantasy.

‘We've undergone an interesting reversal of rôles since we first met, haven't we?' she went on lightly. ‘I was then the headmistress of a grammar school, you were a detective sergeant. Now you're the head of Breckham Market CID, and I'm just the deputy head of a botched-up comprehensive.'

He stopped feeling sorry for himself. Jean Bloomfield's sense of personal failure was, with reason, far greater than his own. She was the one who deserved sympathy. ‘I still don't know why you didn't get the appointment,' he said.

‘Oh, it was only to be expected. I knew perfectly well that the education authority was too patriarchal to appoint a woman as head of the empire it was creating. I should have had more sense than to apply for the job. But I did, and it hurt to be rejected.'

‘Yes,' said Quantrill slowly. One of her hands rested on the table a few inches from his own; now, if ever, was the moment to take it. He knew how much he wanted her. He was aware of a contraction and intensification of his vision, a shortening of his breath. ‘It always hurts to be rejected,' he said, choosing his words with difficulty. ‘I dislike applying for things—things I would very much value—for just that reason.'

Her eyes met his, and read the significance of his words. Patches of crimson began to appear on her cheeks and her neck. Her lips parted slightly.

The air about them seemed to have stilled and thickened. Quantrill felt that they were alone, enclosed in a capsule of privacy. He could see nothing but her eyes, her mouth.

He placed his cigar on the ashtray in slow motion, taking the exaggerated care of a man who had been drinking. He remembered her phrase; was this, he wondered, what it felt like to be high on happiness?

She spoke softly, breathily. ‘Is that why you suddenly stopped coming to see me, four years ago?'

‘You knew how I felt?'

‘I guessed.'

‘You didn't try to make it any easier for me, though.'

‘How could I?'

He was suddenly bitter, thinking of the lost years. ‘Because you were a headmistress, and I was only a sergeant?'

‘No! Because you were married—'

‘My wife had left me, remember?'

‘But you were still the father of two of my pupils. And yes, I was their headmistress …' She shook her head regretfully. ‘It really wouldn't have been possible, would it?'

Greatly daring, he put his hand over hers. ‘But you did want it?'

Her hand was trembling again. ‘Yes.'

His fingers closed on hers. His heart hammered loud in his ears. ‘Well, then? Now that you're no longer in charge of my daughters—'

She shook her head again. ‘Now it's
your
status that we have to consider. You've a good career ahead, and potential superintendents can't afford to indulge in extra-marital affairs.'

‘To hell with my career!' he announced. He clasped her hand recklessly, delighting in the strong responsive pressure of her fingers; making the most of this moment because he knew that he didn't mean what he said.

She was right, of course. An affair was out of the question for him now: it would smash up his family and his career, both. ‘We could be discreet,' he insisted, knowing perfectly well that in Breckham Market a discreet affair was impossible.

She smiled at him affectionately, relaxing her clasp. ‘Holding hands in the Tudor Buttery at the Rights isn't the best way of exercising discretion,' she pointed out. ‘To begin with, the waitress on the next table is the sister of one of my pupils. And the assistant manager's heading towards us, and it looks as though he knows you.'

The capsule that had been enclosing them dissolved. ‘Blast!' said Quantrill despondently. He felt her hand slip unobtrusively out of his grasp.

‘Excuse me, Chief Inspector.' The assistant manager, dark suited and silver tied, young and keen and professionally deferential, bent towards him. ‘A gentleman would like to speak to you urgently, sir.'

Quantrill glanced towards the glass doors that led to the foyer. Sergeant Tait was hovering outside them, his eyes diplomatically averted.

‘'Scuse me,' Quantrill muttered. He left the table and strode to the doorway, conscious that Jean Bloomfield was watching him. ‘Well?' he demanded belligerently.

Tait beckoned him away from the door. ‘I've got the pathologist's report on Mary Gedge, sir.'

The chief inspector's emotions subsided as though he'd jumped into cold water. He came up gasping, but clear-headed: ‘And?'

The sergeant began a catalogue: ‘Cause of death, asphyxia due to drowning. No trace of alcohol or of drugs, no sexual interference at all, no external injury, no concussion. But—'

He paused, ostensibly for breath. Quantrill thought it was for effect. ‘Get on with it.'

Tait contrived to sound casual, but there was triumph in his eyes. ‘The only indication of injury, sir, is a cluster of small bruises in the deep tissues at the nape of the neck. According to the pathologist, they're consistent with considerable pressure applied by the thumb and fingers of someone's right hand.'

‘You mean her head was held under water?'

‘Yes sir. She was murdered.'

Chief Inspector Quantrill's face was impassive. ‘Right. We'll start with house-to-house enquiries in Ashthorpe. Get the mobile information room over there, and have it parked outside the police house.'

‘I've already asked for it to stand by, sir, and an enquiry team is being formed.'

‘Good. You set up the Ashthorpe end, then. I'll be along in half an hour to do the briefing. And then I want the boyfriend—what's his name, Kenward—brought to the station for questioning.'

‘Yes, sir. And the brother? He's got motive enough.'

‘Jealousy? Agreed.'

The sergeant turned to go, but Quantrill called him back. ‘Sergeant Tait!'

‘Sir?'

There was no doubt that Tait found satisfaction in his work. His eyes had a controlled excitement; he was vibrant.

‘Well done,' said Quantrill, straight-faced. ‘You were the one who was suspicious about this death, and you were right.'

‘Thank you, sir,' said Tait, without false modesty.

Quantrill surveyed him with distaste. ‘All right, then, get on with it. Find out who murdered the poor girl. But stop looking so bloody
pleased
about it.'

The drive with Jean Bloomfield to Ashthorpe was faster and far less pleasurable than Quantrill had fantasised. She sat beside him in silence, while he concentrated on what he was going to say at the briefing. It was not until they neared Ashthorpe and he slowed for the bridge that she said, ‘Am I allowed to ask whether there's some new development concerning Mary's death?'