Who Saw Him Die? (29 page)

Forgetting her own strictures, Hilary joined him for a moment at the open door. Nothing in Clanger's dreadful room appeared to have been moved since her afternoon visit, but the nauseating mingled smell of dirt and despair had now been swamped by the reek of petrol. The soiled bedding was sodden with fuel; and on it, at the intended centre of the conflagration, lay a double-barrelled shotgun.

‘We'd like you to come to the station with us, please, Miss Bell.'

She was sitting behind the wheel of her Rover, watching impassively as Chief Inspector Tait, looking pleased with himself, carried the shotgun out of her house. ‘May I drive my own car?' she asked.

‘Sorry, no.' Hilary opened the door. ‘The car will have to stay where it is for the time being – we're very much afraid of sparking off an explosion.'

Miss Bell alighted with dignity. ‘It was foolhardy of you to go into that room,' she remarked as they walked together down the drive.

‘That was Chief Inspector Tait.
I
wouldn't have done it, and neither would Chief Inspector Quantrill. It's your bad luck that Mr Tait is more single-minded than either of us.'

‘My bad luck?'

‘Yes, if the shotgun was used to kill Jack Goodrum. Whoever fired it made the mistake of not picking up the ejected cartridge case, you see. The experts will be able to tell whether or not it came from that gun.'

Eunice Bell drew an audible breath, but said nothing. They reached the gateway. Tait was sitting in his car, with the door open, using the radio. Hilary went to open the rear door, but Miss Bell put out a detaining hand, almost – but not quite – touching her.

‘I would like to talk to you, Miss Lloyd,' she said urgently. ‘In private. On a personal matter. May we stay out here?'

They walked back a few paces. Eunice Bell halted under a pollarded lime tree, where she was shadowed from the street lights on Victoria Road. ‘I wouldn't have wanted Chief Inspector Quantrill to hear this,' she said, ‘and I have no intention of saying it in front of that bumptious young man. Only one other living person knows what I'm going to tell you: Mrs Gotts.'

‘Terry's mother?'

‘Yes. Our former cook-housekeeper.'

‘I thought you seemed concerned,' said Hilary, ‘after we'd found the child's body, when I said that I'd be going to talk to Mrs Gotts tomorrow. Did you think she might tell me your secret?'

‘That possibility bothered me, at the time. But now the circumstances have changed, I no longer mind
your
knowing, Miss Lloyd. It's the thought of general publicity, and gossip in Breckham Market and Saintsbury, that I abhor. To avoid that, I would even be prepared to go to the length of admitting that I shot Jack Goodrum.'

Hilary blinked with surprise, but managed to express nothing but mild interest. ‘And did you?'

‘I could deny it, of course. But tell me: if I were to deny it, how deeply would you dig? How far back into my private life would you investigate?'

‘As deeply as necessary, Miss Bell. As far back as we needed to go.'

‘And what you found would be brought out in open court?'

‘If it were relevant, yes.'

Eunice Bell stood with her shoulders braced, her head high. ‘But if I were to plead guilty?'

‘We should still investigate. People have been known', said Hilary, ‘to confess to murders they didn't commit.'

‘But perhaps you wouldn't investigate quite so thoroughly? Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that you were able without much difficulty to prove my guilt: would you then be prepared to accept, without looking for any other motive, that I killed Jack Goodrum to avenge the murder of my brother?'

Astonished by the proposition, Hilary gave the only possible answer: ‘I can't make any deals with you, Miss Bell. I can't make promises.'

‘I understand that. But I want
you
to understand that I cherish my privacy. Whatever is going to be said in Suffolk about my conduct last Saturday evening, I want there to be no gossip about my past. I didn't tell you the truth, you see, when you first visited me to discuss Cuthbert's death. I mentioned that my father had once thrashed Jack Goodrum, and that I didn't know why. But I did know.

‘I was nineteen and I had recently been kissed for the first time, by one of my cousins. I liked him, and it was a pleasant experience. And I
did
know Jack Goodrum, though I told you I didn't. I spent several evenings, that summer, sitting on the wall at the bottom of the garden, talking to him. He was only sixteen, but as big as a man, and I knew that he admired me. And I thought he looked rather like my cousin, from a distance.

‘So I decided to invite him over the wall and allow him to kiss me. But he wasn't like my cousin at all. He
smelled
. And when I told him so, and tried to push him away, he raped me.'

‘Was that why your father thrashed him?' asked Hilary.

‘Yes: thrashed him and threatened him and ordered his grandfather the butcher to send him back home to Ipswich. Not that I had told my parents. I was much too frightened of them. I knew that I should be punished … as though the rape hadn't been punishment enough …

‘But Cuthbert had seen what happened and he told Mrs Gotts, though he wouldn't say who the culprit was until my father beat the information out of him. I had begged Mrs Gotts not to tell my mother. But Terry had disappeared only the previous week, and she had too many worries of her own, poor woman, to keep my secret.'

‘Did your father report the rape to the police?' said Hilary.

‘There was no question of that. My parents would never allow any scandal to touch the family. So throughout my life I have been able to keep at least my
reputation
intact. And I don't want to lose it now.'

‘But would it so desperately matter if local people knew about the incident, after all these years?'

It was, Hilary realised almost immediately, an impertinent question. Rape, however traumatic for the victim, might raise no eyebrows in the present social climate, but it must have caused a woman such as Eunice Bell a continuing agony of shame. The older woman's hissingly swift reaction left the sergeant in no doubt about that.

‘It matters to
me
, Miss Lloyd.'

Then, almost to herself, she added: ‘But I didn't contemplate killing Jack Goodrum for it, when he first came strutting back to Breckham Market as a self-made man. He was beneath my contempt. It was his killing of Cuthbert that angered me into action. All I wanted at the time, though, was for him to be tried and punished. Just think, Miss Lloyd: had you been more efficient when you first investigated my brother's murder, I would have had no need to kill Jack Goodrum at all …'

It was a fair gibe; a justifiable return, Hilary acknowledged, for her own tactlessness. ‘But you said that your brother's death
wasn't
your motive.'

‘That is so. What finally determined me was that I happened to see Jack, shortly after Cuthbert's funeral, having lunch at the Angel in Saintsbury with his new wife. She was not at all the type of woman one would expect to marry such an oaf. Her first husband was a barrister, you know.

‘We exchanged a word in the cloakroom, and she was charming. Well bred, well mannered, well dressed – a gentlewoman. And throughout lunch, Jack was aping the gentleman! I was astonished by the gallantry he was putting on.

‘And the dreadful thing was that she was in love with him! Oh yes, she was completely taken in – I could see it, Miss Lloyd, and I was appalled. How could I allow her, a woman of my own kind, to go on loving and trusting a man I knew to be a rapist and a murderer? I had to do something to stop it. I couldn't let their relationship continue, for her own sake. And I know she'll thank me for it, when she hears the truth about the kind of man she married …'

A traffic patrol car arrived in Victoria Road, its powerful blue light punching holes in the night sky, and Chief Inspector Tait went to brief the driver about the Tower House fire hazard. Hilary guided Eunice Bell into the back of Tait's car. The older woman's outburst had left her trembling with cold and emotion, but when the sergeant took off her own coat and attempted to put it round her, Miss Bell rejected it.

Regaining her composure, she looked at her watch. Then she said, in her normal stiff voice: ‘Is it too much to hope that you will respect my confidences, Miss Lloyd?'

‘I can make no promise,' repeated Hilary. ‘But I don't think that particular motive is likely to come to light during our investigations. And as it happens,' she added, ‘Chief Inspector Tait isn't looking for any motive other than your brother's death. He seems to be satisfied that your desire for revenge would have been quite strong enough.'

‘Does he indeed? Then he's obviously a more estimable young man than I had supposed,' said Eunice Bell drily.

The estimable young man came hurrying over to his car. ‘Let's get out of the way before the fire engine comes,' he said, driving off down Victoria Road. ‘I shall be glad to be clear of that Tower House time bomb –'

There was a sudden
wumph
behind them. The car windows rattled. Tait did an emergency stop. They all looked back, and saw orange tongues of flame licking out of the blown windows of the Italianate tower of Eunice Bell's house.

‘What set
that
off?' fumed the Chief Inspector.

‘I did,' said Eunice Bell. ‘I left a timing device in my brother's room. How else could I have fired the building without risking my own life?'

‘But why didn't you tell us it was there?' protested Hilary. ‘Once we'd found the shotgun, it was absolutely pointless for you to burn Tower House.'

‘Do you think so?' Eunice Bell turned away from the spectacle and settled back in her corner, upright, self-contained, and yet unusually relaxed. Her face, illuminated by the lights of the approaching fire engine, had a rare look of complete satisfaction.

Chief Inspector Quantrill had been on leave for two weeks.

During the second week, after his son had been declared out of danger, he had sent occasional messages to the office. One message had congratulated the members of Breckham Market CID – and of course Chief Inspector Tait, who had returned to the Saintsbury division, mission accomplished – on having made an arrest in the Jack Goodrum murder case. Another had congratulated Sergeant Lloyd, personally, on having solved the thirty-five-year-old disappearance of Terry Gotts. A third, in the form of a personal note to Hilary Lloyd, was a pressing invitation to call at number 5 Benidorm Avenue early on the Sunday evening immediately before Quantrill was due to return to work.

Although Hilary had met Molly Quantrill once or twice, she had never before been invited to their house. What bothered her about the invitation was that she knew, through the Martin Tait – Alison Quantrill grapevine, that Molly was expected to spend that Sunday in Yarchester with Alison, visiting Peter in hospital. This meant that, in the evening, Douglas would be at home alone.

Hilary was concerned for him, and even more for Molly. Their marriage had obviously been unsatisfactory for a long time, and although their son's near-fatal accident might have had the effect of drawing them closer together, Martin had said only the previous week that Douglas was having a particularly bad time because he couldn't talk to his wife. And the last thing Hilary wanted was to play any part in the irretrievable breakdown of their marriage.

She thought up several good excuses for declining the invitation. But on the other hand, she was still one of his closest colleagues, still very much his friend – and what kind of friend would refuse to help fill a worried father's lonely evening? She decided to go. But she also decided that if Douglas were to give one hopeful hint of any future development in their personal relationship, she would write an immediate application for the transfer to Saintsbury that Martin Tait had suggested.

On a wet evening in early December, Hilary presented herself warily at the Quantrill's door. It was opened by a Douglas who looked thinner and older than the man who had been pursuing her before his son's accident; his eyes were darkly underhung with evidence of sleeplessness, the lines on his face were much more deeply scored.

He gave her a slightly shamefaced greeting, avoiding her eye. Then, taking her coat and dripping umbrella, he added rather too loudly and brightly – and greatly to her relief – ‘We're very glad you could come, aren't we my dear?'

His wife emerged from the sitting-room. Molly's anxiety over Peter had clearly made her turn for comfort to food. She had put on all the weight her husband had lost, and more. Hilary recalled her as a small, healthily plump woman with ample evidence of the prettiness she must have had in her youth, but now she seemed ungainly. He cheeks were pastry-pale and her eyes still had the staring appearance of residual shock.

‘How's Peter, Mrs Quantrill?' Hilary asked immediately.

‘Comfortable now, thank you. At least, as comfortable as he can be with both legs in plaster, and all those weights and pulleys …' Molly's voice rose, its stability threatened by lurking tears.

‘He's a lot better than he
was
, anyway,' said Quantrill thankfully. He followed the women into the living-room, and uncorked a bottle of sherry that stood in solitary state on the sideboard in the dining area. Hilary, sitting in an armchair that must have been bought for its appearance as part of a suite rather than for its comfort, saw with private dismay how unsuitable the cramped modern house and its obviously feminine choice of furnishings was for a man of Douglas's size and character. How could Molly expect him to be happy in such a pastel-coloured room, with toning framed prints on the walls and an imitation-log electric fire in the imitation hearth?

‘In fact,' Douglas continued, taking a stand in front of the fire and seeming more at home now that he had an engraved pewter beer mug in his fist, though he still couldn't look at Hilary, ‘Peter's so much better that we thought we ought to give him a change from family company. His mates have been asking after him, and as they can't go to Yarchester except at weekends, we decided to let them do the visiting today. They're good lads, and he'll be glad to see them. He needs a bit of cheering up.'