Who Saw Him Die? (27 page)

‘I do indeed,' said Eunice Bell. ‘But this time I believe I have it. When you go into the pumping cellar, you'll find what I think is my brother's school cap, caught fast in the machinery. It had a distinctive design, a gold hoop on a blue ground. You'll be able to identify it because I sewed name tapes on all his school clothes.'

‘Your brother's
school
cap? I thought you said that when Terry disappeared, Cuthbert was seventeen?'

The corner of Miss Bell's mouth twitched a little. ‘It was before your time, Miss Lloyd. Things were different, then. My brother had only just left his boarding school, and he was accustomed to wearing his cap. My father insisted on it, even in the holidays. He said it marked Cuthbert out as the son of a gentleman.'

‘I see … Did you know at the time that your brother had lost his cap?'

‘Yes, though it seems that he lied about where. It was a very hot August weekend, as I remember –

‘Cuthbert came to me in a panic on the Saturday evening, saying that he'd lost his cap at the fair on Castle Meadow. He was never allowed to go to the travelling fairs. He'd told me that morning that he intended to go there with Jack Goodrum, even though he knew he'd get a thrashing if Father found out. Next day, we heard that Terry Gotts was missing. I felt cross with Cuthbert because he seemed more concerned about the loss of his cap than about the missing child.'

‘Did the police interview your brother about Terry?' asked Hilary.

They interviewed us all. The Gotts family lived not far from us, and everyone in the area was questioned. Mrs Gotts gave Terry much more independence than we were ever allowed, and she'd sent him off from home on the Saturday afternoon with sixpence to spend at the fair. He had been seen there with other children of his own age, so there was nothing to connect him with Cuthbert.'

‘But what did your brother say, when the police questioned him?'

‘He said he was at home all day in the garden, with me. That was where he was supposed to be. And it would have been a matter of pride with our parents to confirm that their son had been doing what he was told.'

‘Didn't you suspect anything, though? When you heard next day that Terry Gotts was missing, didn't it occur to you that your brother might know something about him?'

‘Not at all.'

Eunice Bell paused. Then she added: ‘You see, Miss Lloyd, it was in many ways a more innocent age than this. Rightly or wrongly, young people were kept in ignorance. At nineteen, I was so naïve that the very worst fate I could imagine for Terry Gotts was that he had fallen into the river and been swept away.'

‘I see,' said Hilary; though in fact she found it incomprehensible. ‘But you weren't all
that
naïve, were you, Miss Bell? If you supported your brother's story that he was with you in the garden, then you must have lied to the police.'

‘Certainly.' Eunice Bell looked the sergeant full in the face and gave a near approximation to a smile. ‘I might have been innocent of physical matters, but I was used to lying on my brother's behalf. I thought of it simply as protecting him. And I did it gladly, because at that time I still loved him.'

While two uniformed police constables rigged up emergency lighting in the musty, disused cellar under the tower of the Town Hall, Sergeant Lloyd glanced round with the aid of her torch. It looked a sinister place in the wavering light, looming with a mysterious ironmongery of wheels and pistons and pipes and pulleys and chains. Almost, she thought without thinking, like a medieval torture chamber …

She screwed up her eyes for a few moments as the lights came glaring on, then got to work. Miss Bell had explained that the machinery included not only the steam-driven pump, but a hand-operated well-cover hoist. The well in the cellar floor was secured by a heavy cast iron cover. A ring was attached to the cover, and a chain to the ring. The chain went up and over a pulley suspended from a girder, down to another pulley, and so to a winding drum. It was clear from the dust and rust on the machinery that the hoist had not been used for many years.

The schoolboy's cap, growing mould in places but still identifiable in design, was caught fast by the chains on the drum. When it was released, its fabric was found to be so heavily indented and rust-marked by the pressure of the chains that it had without doubt been there ever since the hoist was last used. In the lining of the cap was a linen tape with the machine-embroidered name C. R.F.BELL.

Two constables oiled the winding gear and hoisted the cover from the well. An unidentifiable, ancient smell rose from it.

Sergeant Lloyd had expected the well to be deep. She had been prepared to ask the fire brigade for a ladder; if necessary to call in a police frogman to search the water. She had certainly expected to have to wait a long time for something – anything – to be found.

But for once, there was no need for the detective to hang about.

The brick-walled well
was
deep: the powerful lights caught a glint of water a very long way down. But just six feet below the top, crossing from wall to wall, was an iron girder. And slumped over it was what looked like a small bundle of tattered sacking, with something stick-like dangling from either end.

It seemed that it was eight-year-old Terry Gotts who had been doing the hanging about, for the past thirty-five years.

Although it was nearly midnight when Sergeant Lloyd left the Town Hall, she went straight back to the office. Her mind was too active for sleep.

She would have liked someone to talk to, but the other members of the CID had gone home. When Chief Inspector Tait appeared, just as she was making herself a pot of coffee, she greeted him with pleasure.

‘Hallo! Have you just got back from London?'

‘No, I've been round at the Quantrills'since ten.' He sounded dispirited; his racing trilby had lost its dashing forward tilt. ‘I saw these lights on my way back to my hotel, and hoped you'd be here.'

‘How's Peter?'

‘Still in intensive care – but at least his condition's stable.'

‘Thank God for that. Would you like some coffee?'

‘Please.' He parked his hat and scarf and Burberry. ‘I've been drinking whisky with Doug, and I need to clear my head.'

‘How's
he
?'

‘Rough. He can't talk to his wife, and he's overwhelmed by guilt-feelings about his relationship with Peter. He seems to hold himself responsible for the boy's accident.'

‘Poor Douglas. And poor Molly.' Hilary shook her head over them, then poured the coffee. ‘Well – how did you get on with Austin Napier?'

‘Don't ask.' Tait sat down, uncharacteristically slumped. ‘Particularly if you're going to tell me that you solved Jack Goodrum's murder while I was away …'

‘I only wish I had.'

‘Thank God you didn't, or I'd have looked a complete wally.' He gulped his coffee. ‘Austin Napier's a nutter!' he burst out.

‘I rather suspected he might be,' said Hilary. It seemed unkind to score off the downcast Chief Inspector by pointing out that she'd told him so before he went.

‘I was hoping', Tait continued, ‘to crack Napier's alibi about staying with his sister in Hampshire last weekend. But his brother-in-law happens to be a fellow barrister, who confirms his story. And when I suggested to Napier that Goodrum's murderer hadn't necessarily fired the shotgun himself, he cross-examined me about whether we'd found the weapon. When I had to admit that we hadn't – yet – he had the arrogance to say that I had no grounds for questioning him. But all the time he was referring to his ex-wife as his wife, and denying the validity of her divorce! And he's a
barrister
, a Queen's Counsel, for heaven's sake! He ought to be disbarred.'

Hilary commiserated briskly, and poured him another cup of coffee. ‘Then where do you suggest we go from here?'

‘That depends what you found out while I was away. What have you been doing?'

She told him.

‘It will be some time before the body in the well can be positively identified, of course, but apparently it's the right sex and age so there's not much doubt that it's Terry Gotts. The pathologist isn't too hopeful that he can establish the cause of death, after all these years. He found that the boy's hands had been tied together with string, and we discovered a penknife on the floor with a piece of the same string caught in the clasp. The initials JRG were scratched on the handle of the penknife, so it looks as though John Reuben Goodrum was involved with Cuthbert Bell in whatever went on there.'

Tait grimaced. ‘Two adolescents, and one eight-year-old … They could have been up to anything. Not that the older boys would necessarily have meant the child any harm, let alone intended to kill him – but whatever happened, Goodrum and Bell were left sharing a very dark secret. And that explains a lot.'

The Chief Inspector leaned back in his chair and stretched his arms. ‘Well, congratulations, Hilary love,' he concluded. ‘You've done a good job. I can't think why you haven't been promoted yet –'

‘Thank you, sir,' said Sergeant Lloyd wryly. ‘But I still haven't found out who killed Jack Goodrum. I'd hoped that if we could discover why he wanted Clanger Bell out of the way, we'd get a lead on his own murderer – but that hasn't happened …'

Revived, himself again, Tait took advantage of Hilary's preoccupation to put his feet – ankles elegantly crossed – on her desk. ‘Are you still quite sure it couldn't have been Clanger's sister?'

‘No,' she said thoughtfully. ‘No, I'm not sure about Miss Bell at all. While I was at the Town Hall I checked her alibi for Saturday evening, and it's a good one. I'm suspicious of it, but so far I haven't found a way of testing it.'

‘Wasn't it Doug Quantrill himself who provided her with the alibi?' asked Tait. ‘Didn't he meet her at some local function?'

‘Yes, at the Amateur Operatic performance of
My Fair Lady
. But he's a fine one to offer anybody an alibi for that particular evening! Oh, he went to the Town Hall – but he had no intention of staying to watch the show. He simply established his presence, then sneaked off to the Coney. And knowing he did that, I've begun to wonder whether Eunice Bell mightn't have done the same thing: established her presence, then sneaked out to murder Jack Goodrum.'

‘And did she? Sneak out, I mean?'

‘She could've. It's whether she actually did that I can't discover.'

Hilary explained that the Town Hall doorkeeper knew Miss Bell by sight; the Chief Executive had introduced him to her the previous Thursday, saying that she was the builder's great-granddaughter. On the Saturday evening, Miss Bell had spoken to the doorkeeper on her way into the Town Hall for
My Fair Lady
, and had wished him goodnight on the way out.

‘He's quite sure that she didn't leave during the course of the show,' Hilary said, ‘and he seems reliable. He doesn't know Chief Inspector Quantrill, but he remembers that a man of Douglas's description went out just as the show started.'

‘But that's only the front entrance,' said Tait. ‘What about the other doors?'

‘All locked, according to the doorkeeper – except of course the two emergency exits. But to reach one of them, Miss Bell would have had to go through the backstage area; and to reach the other she'd have had to go past the room where the interval refreshments were being prepared and served. There would have been people about all the time – and they'd have been members of the Operatic Society, so a non-member would have been noticed. I don't think she could have risked it.'

‘I'll agree with you about the emergency exits,' Tait conceded. ‘But I think you're putting far too much reliance on the word of the doorkeeper. How can you possibly be sure that he was watching the front doors throughout the entire evening? Didn ‘t you try to find out –'

‘I haven't
finished
,' said Hilary. She suddenly became aware of him: ‘And please take your unsightly feet off my desk.'

‘I only put them there to annoy you,' said Tait provocatively. ‘Hasn't Doug ever told you that you look more attractive when you're annoyed?' But he grounded his feet. ‘All right, sorry. Go on.'

‘The point is', she resumed, ‘that Eunice Bell knows the building inside out. When she went there last Thursday, the doorkeeper took her down to the cellars, unlocked the one she wanted to see, and left her for a few minutes to look round on her own. That would have given her an opportunity to check the second exit from the cellars. It happens to lead out to the yard at the back of the Town Hall.'

‘Oh ho.' Tait sat up.

‘There's a narrow passage under the tower, linking the cellars,' Hilary went on. ‘At the far end of the passage, an iron spiral staircase goes up to a small door. The door isn't locked. There are heavy bolts top and bottom, but I could draw them without too much difficulty. So Eunice Bell could perfectly easily have got out of the Town Hall without being seen, shot Jack Goodrum, and returned in time for the end of the performance. And it seems significant that whoever last used that cellar exit must have been wearing gloves, because we haven't been able to take any prints from either the door or the spiral staircase.'

Chief Inspector Tait was sitting forward, alert and thinking hard.

‘Yes … But where would she have left the shotgun while she was in the Town Hall?'

‘I don't see why she couldn't have left it concealed in her car. She could have picked the car up, driven from the town centre to Mount Street, and parked somewhere near The Mount while she did the job. It's a quiet residential area, with a lot of trees that reduce the effectiveness of the street lights – and there's Hobart's Lane, just at the back of The Mount, which has no lighting at all. I don't think anyone who wanted to kill Jack Goodrum would have had too much difficulty in getting a shotgun to and from his garden without being seen.'