Death and the Maiden

by Sheila Radley

  ‘Very tasty, Mrs Godbold. Just what we needed, thank you.’

  ‘My pleasure, Mr Quantrill, I’m sure. I hope your—’ She saw her husband’s scowl and abandoned her attempt at conversation, but retained her dignity. ‘I hope you’ll let me know if there’s anything else you want.’

  ‘Very good of your wife,’ said Quantrill as the door shut behind her, firmly putting down the apologies that Godbold looked as though he might be about to make on her behalf. ‘We appreciate this.’

  Sergeant Tait, making a cautious first acquaintance with a drink concocted from bottled essence of coffee with chicory, hot water, two spoonsful of white sugar and a dash of evaporated milk, declined to comment.

  ‘Now then,’ Quantrill went on, ‘the thing is, Charlie, that we think—’ he caught Tait’s sharp blue gaze ‘—Sergeant Tait thinks, and I’m bound to say I agree with him, that it’s possible that someone was with Mary when she died.’

  He explained Tait’s theory about the missing shoes. ‘Was she a girl who liked to go barefoot, do you know?’

  Godbold shook his head, bemused. He had a stubble of greying hair, and without his uniform cap he looked a much older man. He had been distressed to find that the dead girl was someone he knew, and by the melancholy duty of breaking the news to her parents, and he felt depressed and weary. He swallowed his wife’s coffee, but what he really needed was a large whisky.

  ‘Not that I’ve ever seen or heard,’ he answered huskily. ‘But then, like I told Sergeant Tait, now I’m in the van I’m not as close in touch with people as I’d like to be.’

  ‘I know. Tell us what you can about the girl, though, Charlie—the more we can get from you, the less we’ll have to ask her parents. You’ve known her a long time?’

  Godbold smiled with sad reminiscence. ‘Since she was a toddler, ever since I’ve lived in Ashthorpe. A really nice girl, she was—called out “Hallo Mr Godbold” whenever she saw me. Pretty, too. Helped her father in the shop, always a pleasant word for everybody … clever, though, she was going to university after harvest. Cambridge and all, same as her brother would have gone to a couple of years ago. Only Mary wasn’t going to one of the everyday colleges, she was going to King’s, where they do the Christmas carols. A famous place. It was a real achievement for her to be going there. Not that she put on any airs about it, though, she was serving in the shop when I called in for cigarettes at the beginning of the week: “Hallo Mr Godbold,” she said, “here you are.” She knew what I’d come for, you see, and the brand I smoke.’ He shook his head uncomprehendingly. ‘Oh, it’s a tragedy, it really is. Just as she’d got the world at her feet, as you might say …’

  Tait, who had a Sussex degree, looked unwillingly impressed at the mention of Cambridge. And the girl had been attractive, he hadn’t failed to notice that. For the first time he began to think of her as a person, rather than as an interesting corpse.

  ‘A terrible waste,’ he agreed. He pushed aside the cup of warm, pungent glue. ‘Tell me, is her brother dead too? You said that he “would have gone” to Cambridge.’

  Godbold lit a fresh cigarette from the butt of the old one, and relaxed a little. ‘Blast, no, Derek’s not dead!’ He raised a half-hearted chuckle. ‘No, Derek’s a married man—case of having to be, of course. He was clever too, but not a patch on Mary in a lot of ways. A lazy young devil, never lifted a finger to help in the shop. His mother doted on him, though, you know what mothers are with boys—’

  Quantrill knew.

  ‘Anyway,’ went on Godbold, ‘seems Master Derek had been carrying on with a local girl on the quiet. Then she found she was pregnant, so that was the end of Cambridge for him.’

  Tait made a strangled, incredulous noise. Godbold looked to the chief inspector for support.

  ‘Well, he had to see her right, didn’t he? Had to be man enough to take the responsibility. And with a family to keep, he had to get a job. I mean, he’d had his fun …’

  ‘Quite,’ agreed Quantrill. He too had been brought up in a village which maintained a relentless communal belief in the duty of lying on the bed you had made, however uncomfortable.

  ‘What’s his job?’ Tait demanded.

  Godbold gave his answer to the chief inspector. ‘Oh, he was lucky. There’s been a fair bit of redundancy in Breckham, as you know, sir. Jobs haven’t been easy to come by in the last year or two. But his wife’s uncle managed to get him fixed up at the chicken factory, down at the old railway station here in Ashthorpe.’

  ‘Good God,’ said Tait.

  Quantrill turned on him sharply. ‘What’s the matter with you?’

  ‘Well for heaven’s sake …! Poor devil, being expected to give up university and go to work in a chicken factory, just because—’

  ‘Just because!’ Quantrill fumed. ‘Where’s your sense of decency, boy? What about the poor girl—she’s the one to be sorry for, isn’t she? Talk about selfish young bachelors …’

  The two older men, both fathers of nubile daughters, looked belligerently at Sergeant Tait. It occurred to him that he had undoubtedly been lucky never to have lived in a small and righteous community, and he prudently said no more.

  ‘Mind you,’ added Godbold fairly, ‘I don’t know as many Ashthorpe folk would have blamed Derek if he hadn’t married Julie. I mean, there’s plenty as don’t get married these days. The girls don’t seem to expect it, they can always get social security. And Derek wasn’t Julie’s first, everybody knows that, whatever her mother liked to make out. Trouble was, Derek’s mother’s very—’ Godbold lowered his voice, as though he were speaking of some shameful disorder ‘—religious. Very strict chapel. She was the one who insisted on the marriage, and I hear she hasn’t spoken to Derek since.’

  ‘There was a family upset, then?’ Quantrill commented.

  ‘A real bust-up. And Mary got involved too. She was properly upset when her brother got married, and that put her on bad terms with him and her mother an’all. A shame, because she was very close to her brother before that. He’s been living at his mother-in-law’s ever since, and I doubt if Mary ever goes—ever went round to see him. Not that you could blame her. They’re a slummocking family, the Pulfers, always have been.’

  ‘So Mary wasn’t happy at home?’ asked Quantrill uneasily. He hoped very much, for the sake of the girl’s family, that there would be no evidence to suggest suicide.

  ‘Ah, I wouldn’t say that, sir.’ Godbold, knowing the family, was even more anxious that Mary’s death should prove to be a simple accident. ‘The row was eighteen months ago, and she’d have got over it by now. And she’d always been a happy girl. I don’t know that she was ever close to her mother—Mrs Gedge was always very strict with her, very unbending. But Mary and her Dad got along well. If you’d seen them working and laughing together in the shop, like I saw them only a couple of days ago, you’d know she was happy enough at home.’

  Quantrill felt relieved. He loved his own two daughters very much, and had felt bereft when they left Breckham Market to live in London. The fact that Alison, the younger, sent him a personal weekly letter was a heartwarming source of pride. He tried to imagine Mary Gedge’s father’s desolation, and was ashamed to feel instead a sense of thankfulness that his own daughters were alive.

  Tait asked the constable for Derek Gedge’s address, and wrote it in his notebook. ‘Did Mary have any other relatives in the village? Well then, can you tell us who her friends were?’

  Godbold brushed a grey caterpillar of cigarette ash from the front of his tunic. ‘To be honest, I can’t tell you about her friends. I’m not in the village enough to know who Mary went about with. But I reckon most of her friends would be the ones she’d made at school, in Breckham.’

  ‘A boy-friend?’

  ‘Not an Ashthorpe one, not to my knowledge.’

  ‘How did she travel to school?’ Tait asked.

  ‘There’s a special bus that goes round the villages. My own boy travels on it.’

  Quan
trill forced a genial smile. ‘Ah, Trevor. How’s he doing?’

  Trevor Godbold, having passed the eleven plus, had gone to Breckham Market boys’grammar school, to his parents’manifest pride. Quantrill had congratulated them wholeheartedly. Both his daughters had gone to the girls’ grammar school, and he was confident that his son, three years younger than Trevor, would take the examination in his stride. It had been difficult to conceal his chagrin when Peter was, in the humiliating official phraseology, selected for education at the Alderman Thirkettle secondary modern school.

  Since then—in pursuit of an equality that, however much he might approve of it in theory, Quantrill would not have welcomed in practice when his daughters were at the grammar school—the Breckham Market secondary schools had been put under one head and re-labelled comprehensive. Peter had settled into the new system cheerfully enough, and Quantrill’s pride was soothed. But he had never been able to rid himself, whenever he met Pc Godbold, of the feeling that he had to take an exaggerated interest in the progress of Godbold junior in order not to be thought resentful of his ability.

  The constable beamed modestly. ‘He’s doing well, thank you, sir. Taking O levels this summer. Would you like to see him, by the way? He’s at home now, just had his dinner. He could very likely tell you who Mary’s friends were.’

  ‘Good idea,’ said Quantrill heartily. ‘I’d like a chance to meet the boy.’

  Godbold left the room. Quantrill got up and peered at a large-scale map of the district, trying to ignore an altercation that was taking place elsewhere in the house; it sounded as though young Godbold was as reluctant to meet the chief inspector as Quantrill was to meet him.

  When the boy entered the room it was fast, as though he had been propelled. His father stood close, blocking the door, breathing hard.

  Trevor was an awkward sixteen: legs too long for his body, hands and feet clumsy, nose and ears too big for his face, voice creaky, eyes sullen.

  ‘Hallo Trevor, nice to meet you again.’ Quantrill thrust out a genial hand but the boy shied away from the overdone greeting and Quantrill found himself flapping his hand, instead, towards his sergeant. ‘This is Detective Sergeant Tait.’

  ‘Hi,’ said Tait pleasantly, hoping to God that he had been less unprespossessing at that age.

  Trevor looked at him contemptuously. ‘Seems the house is overrun with the fuzz, then,’ he commented.

  Tait compressed his lips and turned away, ignoring him. Quantrill fumbled in his pocket for a cigar and made a business of lighting it while Pc Godbold scolded his son in a stage whisper: ‘Trevor! Behave yourself! Mr Quantrill often asks after you—the least you can do is to be civil. And Mr Tait’s been to university and police college, so don’t you be cheeky to him. Stand up straight, boy,’ he entreated, ‘and just try to answer a few questions.’

  Trevor lounged lower against the wall, his hands stuck as far as possible in the pockets of his jeans. ‘Questions about what?’ he asked suspiciously. Then: ‘Oh yeah, don’t tell me. Mary Gedge is dead. I didn’t do it, honest.’

  Quantrill snatched the cigar out of his mouth, took two strides and stood over the boy. ‘Do what?’ He asked it quietly, but with such intensity of eyes and voice that Trevor straightened, his face reddening.

  His father caught at his arm. ‘What didn’t you do?’ he whispered hoarsely, suddenly afraid.

  Trevor wriggled. ‘Why, nothing … nothing at all … honest.’ He gave a placatory laugh. ‘Look, it was only a joke—I didn’t mean anything by it. I just know she’s dead, that’s all. I heard it in the village. She fell in the river and drowned, that’s all I know.’

  ‘Are you sure, Trevor?’

  The boy looked up at the chief inspector, moistened his lips and answered with evident sincerity: ‘Yes sir.’

  Quantrill turned away, tense with anger. Pc Godbold followed him, still trembling from his moment of anxiety. ‘I’m sorry, sir, he’s a good boy, really he is, it’s just a difficult phase he’s going through, you know how it is at that age …’

  Trevor made for the door, muttering something about a job he had promised to do for his mother, but Tait reached it first and slammed his hand against it.

  ‘Not just yet, Trevor,’ he said, fixing the boy with a look that stilled him instantly. ‘I need to ask some questions. I’d hoped to do it informally, but if you’re determined to make things difficult for yourself you’ll find me very co-operative. I’ll be happy to take you to the station, and keep you there until I can get some straight answers from you. Is that what you want? Is that what you’d like me to tell your mother I’m going to do?’

  Trevor flicked a horrified glance in the direction of the kitchen. ‘No sir,’ he gulped.

  Tait took out his notebook again. It was a useful part of the policeman act; time someone sorted out the wretched boy.

  ‘What’s your full name?’ he snapped. He wrote it down slowly. ‘And when did you last see Mary Gedge?’

  ‘Er—er—’ The boy was nervous, thinking hard in a desperate effort to be exact. ‘When I went to the shop for Mum—Wednesday, I think.’ His voice shrilled. ‘No—no it wasn’t, Mr Tait, it was Tuesday. Tuesday afternoon.’

  ‘And have you seen her—even caught a glimpse of her—since then?’

  ‘No sir!’ He looked as though he might begin to cry. Tait eased the pressure.

  ‘All right, Trevor. Now as far as we know, Mary’s death was purely an accident. But the coroner will want to know how the accident happened, so we have to try to piece together the events that led up to her death. That means talking to her family and friends, and since you go to the same school it would be a help if you can tell us who her friends were.’

  The boy shook his head cautiously. ‘We’re all split up. There are three parts of the school, you see. The sixth formers are in what used to be the boys’grammar school, the first year are next door in the old girls’ grammar. I’m in the middle school, and we’re across town in the old Alderman T. We all go to the sixth form part for science and they come to ours for drama, but I didn’t often see Mary.’

  ‘What about friends in the village, then? You all go to school on the same bus. Who did Mary sit with?’

  Trevor shrugged. ‘No one special. Anyway, she didn’t go on the bus all that often. Most days she got a lift.’

  Quantrill had been listening, his back to the boy. Now he turned: ‘Who with?’

  Young Godbold had recovered from his fright. His voice was back in its lower register, his eyes were sullen again. But he elected to reply to Sergeant Tait rather than to Chief Inspector Quantrill. ‘Sometimes Miller, sometimes Ma Bloomfield.’

  ‘They’re both teachers at the comprehensive, sir,’ explained Godbold. ‘They both live in Ashthorpe. Mr Miller teaches English and Drama, doesn’t he, Trevor? He lives at the Old Bakery. Mrs Bloomfield is the deputy headmistress. She lives in one of the houses on the edge of the green.’

  Quantrill knew Mrs Bloomfield. He could have told Tait her exact address, even though he had never been there, but he left it to the constable. ‘Did they give lifts to anyone else?’ he asked the boy.

  ‘No. Well, Mary was older than anyone else from Ashthorpe. Anyway, the rest of us would rather go by bus, we see enough of teachers when we’re in school.’

  ‘I understand,’ said Quantrill. ‘Well, that’s been a help, Trevor, thank you. We’d simply like to talk to the people who knew Mary, you see.’

  Trevor looked up. ‘Hey, she wasn’t—?’ he said excitedly, but immediately he dowsed the gleam in his eye. ‘Nothing. Doesn’t matter.’

  Quantrill glared at him. ‘She wasn’t sexually assaulted, if that’s what you mean.’ He turned away angrily.

  Pc Godbold was shocked, and quick in his son’s defence. ‘I’m sure Trevor didn’t mean that, sir, it would never have occurred to him—’

  Tait stretched out an arm and drew the boy aside. Since he’d been the one to raise the subject … ‘Nice looking girl, Mary, wasn’t she?
’ he asked, man to man.

  Trevor’s enthusiastic nod disproved his father’s evident hope that burgeoning sexuality might somehow manage to miss a generation.

  ‘And she was one of the seniors, so most of the boys must have noticed her?’

  Trevor’s guard was up. ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Did they talk about her?’

  Trevor shook his head decisively. ‘She wasn’t like that.’ He glanced cautiously towards his father and added, ‘Not like some of’em … Anyway, Dale Kenward kept everyone else away from her. He’s one of the seniors, over six foot tall, and he once knocked another boy down for saying that he fancied her.’

  ‘Some of the other boys were interested in her, then?’

  Trevor gave a throaty chuckle: ‘Who wasn’t?’

  Pc Godbold, pushing forward to listen, appealed anxiously to the chief inspector. ‘Sir, it’s not right! The boy’s barely sixteen—’

  His son shrugged, sullen again. ‘Oh well, she’s dead anyway. Too bad. Can I go now?’

  Quantrill nodded, tight-lipped. Godbold jerked his head at his son. The boy escaped, wrenching the door open and banging it behind him.

  ‘Time we moved.’ The chief inspector clapped a friendly hand on the constable’s shoulder. ‘They grow up before we can turn round, Charlie, don’t they? Anyway, it’s been a help talking to the boy. Sergeant Tait and I are going to see the parents now, and I’d be glad if you’ll go down to the river. I’ve sent for a man in waders to search it. Get him to take a look in the muck that’s dammed against the upstream arch of the bridge, will you? Remember, if it was an accident—and if Mary was alone, as you think she was—we need to find those missing shoes.’

  Chapter Five

  The name Manchester House was lettered boldly above the Victorian double-front of the shop in the village street: Manchester House, R. J. Gedge, Draper and Family Grocer. The door blind was pulled down, and a notice said Closed Even for the Sale of Esso Blue, but through the windows they could see a figure in a brown dustcoat working alone at the counter.