Death and the Maiden (25 page)

‘But that was because of the flowers and the long dress, wasn't it?'

‘Yes, superficially. But Ophelia was a victim too. She was a beautiful innocent who fell in love with the wrong man and positively invited him to humiliate and destroy her.'

Quantrill's eyebrows jumped. ‘Did she? And what you're suggesting is that Mary Gedge hadn't yet met her particular Hamlet?'

Jean Bloomfield took a deep breath, and spoke with slow deliberation. ‘I'm sure she hadn't. Mary was very lucky. She died without ever meeting disappointment or unhappiness, let alone being destroyed by it.'

Quantrill nodded, appreciating the point she had made. And then, suddenly, his practicality reasserted itself: ‘She met a violent end at the age of eighteen,' he pointed out bluntly, getting to his feet. ‘There's no luck in that.'

Jean Bloomfield blinked as though he had snapped his fingers in her face. ‘But—but you said that her death wasn't violent,' she protested.

The chief inspector looked at his watch and moved into the hall. ‘I was talking about degrees of violence,' he said. ‘However murder is done, the taking away of someone else's life is still an act of violence, isn't it?'

She followed him and stood fiddling with her wedding ring. ‘I see what you mean, of course.' She looked up, and he could see nothing but desolation in her eyes. ‘The fact is, I suppose, that someone whose husband was killed in the way mine was, has a different understanding of violent death. You see, when two aircraft meet head-on at a combined speed approaching a thousand miles an hour, there isn't much left of the pilots.'

Chief Inspector Quantrill was anxious to go, but Douglas Quantrill took his hand from the worn brass doorknob. ‘They couldn't have known anything about the crash,' he said gently.

‘That's true. But … can you imagine what it's like to know that the body of the man you love has been blown to fragments? The most they ever found was a flying glove, in a field half a mile away. It had part of a thumb in it, but they couldn't tell whose.'

There was nothing that Quantrill could say. He found that he was holding her hand, and he gripped it to try to stop it trembling while she spoke.

‘The really terrible thing was the charade of the military funeral. I expect you did your national service, so you know about their funerals.'

Quantrill didn't. There hadn't been much call for military funerals at the training camp where he'd been stationed. The body of the boy he'd known who had committed suicide, had been sent home for burial. He said nothing, but pressed her hand.

‘I've never been able to talk about this to anyone else,' she said. Her eyes were remote, her voice quick, unemotional. ‘As you know, in the RAF they have this inflexible rule about putting bodies in coffins immediately, and screwing them down. I knew why they did this. Philip had a friend who was killed flying, and he told me then. But the other pilot's wife didn't know, she didn't realise—she was only nineteen, they'd been married just three months, and she wanted to take a last look at her husband. And of course no one had the heart to tell her that there wasn't a body, that the coffins contained just sandbags and a few fragments of unidentifiable flesh. But still the RAF went through this grotesque ceremonial of a full military funeral, with best caps lying on the coffins, the station band playing, the flag at half-mast, a firing party, and a bugler sounding the last post over the sandbags as they were lowered into the graves …' She released her hand, and looked at him. ‘That's violent death, Douglas,' she said. ‘In comparison with that—'

He put his hands on her trembling shoulders, and felt a moment's surprise at their muscularity, until he remembered that she was a tennis player. ‘Yes,' he agreed gently.

She gave a shaky half-smile. ‘You can see why I took so long to get over my husband's death,' she said. ‘People were very kind, of course, but none of them really understood. I've always remembered a letter from a senior officer we knew. He quoted to me what Lord Edward Cecil said, when he heard that his only son had fallen in battle in the First World War: “It is a splendid thing to leave life so clean and bright as that.” It would have been a wonderfully comforting epitaph, if only I'd known as little as the other pilot's wife; if only Philip had left life whole, if he hadn't been blown apart …'

She made an effort to compose herself. ‘But the Gedges would find it a suitable epitaph for Mary, don't you think? I must tell them—later, of course, when they've buried her and come to terms with their grief.'

Quantrill remembered his duty. He pressed her shoulders, trying to convey his love and reassurance. ‘I must go,' he said. ‘I'm sorry to leave you, but I must. I'll see you again, though. Goodbye, Jean.'

She said nothing, but tried to smile. He bent his head and kissed her gently on the cheek. It tasted salt.

Sergeant Tait, with Weston's statement in his hands, was waiting impatiently for the chief inspector's return. Quantrill read through the document and drummed his fingers loudly on his desk.

‘And I suppose,' he said, heavily sarcastic, ‘that the boy's right-handed, and that he's known as Dick?'

‘Yes; but Dickie, according to Pc Godbold, sir.'

Quantrill snorted. All he needed to complicate the case was another right-handed man who fancied Mary Gedge, whose name began with a D, and who had no alibi at all for the early hours of the first of May.

The policemen went to the interview room. Weston stirred uneasily in his chair as they went in, as though offering to get to his feet. Quantrill sat at the table opposite the boy, and looked him over.

Weston lowered long eyelashes. His big grimy hands were awkwardly laced together on the table in front of him, and he stared at them fixedly.

‘Have you had a cup of tea?' Quantrill asked.

The boy looked up, surprised. ‘Yes, thanks,' he mumbled.

‘Right. So you're an old friend of Mary Gedge?'

‘Well … not really a friend. We just knew each other.'

‘But well enough for you to offer her a lift to Breckham, and for her to accept?'

‘She hadn't any transport. She was glad of a lift sometimes.'

‘Sometimes? How often was that?'

‘About once a week, in the school holidays.'

‘Once a
week
—and yet you weren't really a friend?' Quantrill raised his heavy eyebrows. ‘I'd say you must have known Mary pretty well.'

The boy shrugged. ‘We'd always known each other,' he muttered, ‘ever since we were kids. We didn't go
out
together—I provided her with transport, that's all.'

‘And what did you get out of it?' asked Tait from the doorway.

The boy looked up at him. ‘Being with her,' he said simply.

‘Were you in love with Mary?' asked Quantrill.

‘Yes.'

The chief inspector stared at him silently for a few minutes. Then he said, ‘We've been talking to Mary's family and school friends, Dickie, and the strange thing is that no one has mentioned your name. You were in love with Mary, you often gave her lifts to Breckham, but no one seems to know that you were one of her friends. How do you account for that?'

The boy cracked a big raw knuckle. ‘That was the way I wanted it to be,' he said. ‘I didn't want anyone to know. That was why I always picked her up and dropped her on the Heygate, by her caravan.'

‘Why on earth didn't you want anyone to know?' demanded Tait. ‘I'd have thought you'd be proud for everyone to know that you were one of Mary's friends.'

Weston gave him a bleak look. ‘You wouldn't understand,' he said.

‘But I would,' said Quantrill. ‘It's village life,' he explained to Tait. ‘Once a boy and girl are known to be friendly, the gossip starts. The couple are teased and tormented, and this puts pressures on the relationship. They're either hustled into marriage, or pushed apart. So the longer you can keep it secret, the better chance you have of making up your own minds about whether or not it's real love. That's it, isn't it, Dickie?'

Weston nodded half-heartedly. ‘Yes—except that I'd made up my mind months ago. Years. Only I knew that Mary didn't love me, so it was hopeless.'

‘How did you know that she didn't love you? Did you ask her?'

‘No!' Weston pushed his thick fair hair out of his eyes with a dirty paw. ‘Of course I didn't! If I'd said anything about love, I'd have frightened her off. She thought of me just as an acquaintance, and that was better than nothing, so I kept it that way.'

‘How can you be sure you'd have frightened her off?' asked Quantrill.

Slowly, reluctantly, the boy spread out his hands on the table.

‘Take a look,' he said.

They were not, Quantrill acknowledged, the kind of hands that he'd like any boy-friend of Alison or Jennifer to have; but then, he was reluctant to think of any man's hand on either of his daughters. As for the ingrained dirt on Weston's, well, that was honestly acquired. Quantrills had always worked with their hands, until he had broken the hitherto inescapable family tradition by joining the force.

‘They're hard-working hands,' he said kindly.

Weston looked at them mournfully. ‘They're hideous,' he said.

‘Do you think I don't know that? How could I ever touch a girl like Mary with hands like these?'

Quantrill looked up. ‘Did you touch her?' he asked. ‘Did you try to touch her?'

‘No! No of course I didn't! That would have finished me with her, wouldn't it?'

The chief inspector leaned his arms across the table. ‘Someone finished Mary,' he said quietly. ‘Someone, for some reason, put one of his hands on the back of Mary's neck and held her head under water.'

Tears began to gather in the boy's eyes. ‘But it wasn't me! How could it have been me, when I loved her?'

Quantrill caught at Weston's right wrist, turning it so that the hand pointed upward—rough, red and black, thick-fingered. ‘How do you know your hands are hideous, Dickie?' he asked softly. ‘Did Mary tell you so? Did she shudder over your hands? Did she—
laugh
at you because of them?'

‘What do you think, Harry?' asked Quantrill.

‘I think he's a strong possibility, sir, despite his denials.'

‘I agree. It would certainly fit in with what young Kenward said about Mary—she was “unaware”, he said, and Mrs Bloomfield confirmed it. Mary was fond of her friends, and she trusted them. She probably had no idea that Weston was in love with her, and it must have been slow torture to him to be with her.'

‘He had the opportunity, too,' said Tait. ‘Perhaps he took her to his own home, since his parents were out. Or perhaps he dropped her by her caravan, as he said; perhaps she'd told him she intended to get up early to gather flowers and so he took her down to the river next morning.'

Quantrill rubbed his jaw. ‘I can't apply for a warrant,' he said, ‘we haven't enough to go on. But take the boy back home, and ask him to show you the clothes he was wearing yesterday morning. And take a man with you to search his car—you never know what might turn up, a dead buttercup or a bit of river weed … Only we mustn't let ourselves be misled by the appearance of Weston's hands, any more than by the violence of Derek Gedge's job.'

‘Ah. I saw Gedge again this morning, sir,' said Tait, ‘and I'm inclined to think that he really does know nothing about his sister's death.'

Quantrill shrugged. ‘You were the one who was so keen to pin it on him. Frankly, I'm beginning to think that it might have been an older man. I had a very interesting conversation with Mrs Bloomfield. She thinks that Mary was the type of innocent girl who unconsciously invites corruption—a born victim, that was how she described the girl. I think I'll have another talk with Denning. Perhaps Mary mentioned to
him
that she was going to gather flowers; he could perfectly well have driven over early on Friday morning.'

Tait frowned thoughtfully. ‘Interesting theory, about the born victim … Why Denning rather than Miller, though, sir? I'd say that Miller knew the girl a good deal better than Denning did—he taught Drama, and she loved acting.
And
he was heard to offer Mary a lift on the evening before her death.'

‘Not Miller,' said Quantrill decisively. ‘Mrs Bloomfield referred to him as Mike, and it's the men whose names begin with D that we're interested in: if not one of the youngsters, Derek or Dale or Dickie, then conceivably Denning.' He suddenly remembered that the sergeant did not know about Mary Gedge's calendar. ‘Look, Harry,' he said, spreading it out on the desk. ‘The first solid bit of information we've come across so far. Her writing's so tiny that it's easy to miss, but that's definitely a capital D in the square for the first of May.'

Tait bent over the calendar, then picked it up and carried it to the window. He glanced across at Quantrill. ‘Eyesight getting a bit unreliable, sir?' he asked kindly.

Quantrill scowled, and joined him. ‘Why—?'

Tait pointed. ‘Not just D, sir. “Dusty”.'

It was small and faint, but unmistakable. ‘Terrible light, in that caravan,' Quantrill grumbled. ‘Well … Dusty …' He snapped his fingers. ‘Didn't Mr Gedge say that Dusty was one of Mary's friends? Did you make a note?'

‘Of course.' Tait found the page in his book. ‘Yes, that's it: Sally and Liz and Miggy are all girl-friends; Dale we know; Dusty we don't … yet.'

‘It doesn't necessarily signify the murderer,' Quantrill pointed out cautiously. ‘Still, it's the first real lead we've got, Harry—'

Tait could bear it no longer. ‘Do you mind, sir? My name's Martin, not Harry.'

The chief inspector looked surprised. He had no intention of addressing the sergeant by his first name, until he had made up his mind whether to like him.