Death and the Maiden

by Sheila Radley

  It was with an eye to the American tourist market, as well as to the rapid growth of the town, that the old White Hart had been bought by a big hotel combine. The inn had been modernised, considerably extended and re-named the Rights of Man; not in defiance of the proposition of the equality of the sexes but in commemoration of Thomas Paine, the advocate of American independence, whose ancestral connection with the town was a further encouragement to tourism.

  Quantrill crossed the courtyard, by-passed the genuinely Tudor room that was so dark and low-ceilinged that it had been furnished with strip lighting and a juke box, named the Prior’s Cellar and relegated to the use of the local lads, and entered the modern Tudor Buttery. Here, in the ferroconcrete new extension that had been built on the site of the stables, no expense had been spared to create a more comfortable sixteenth century. The walls of the spacious room were rough-plastered in white; steel girders, sited well above head height, had been covered with a laminate resembling ancient wooden beams. Each wall had a purely decorative row of latticed casements, lit softly from behind to display green whorls of imitation bottle glass. The hum of the air conditioning was as discreet as the perpetual musak.

  Quantrill was not enthusiastic about the way the old White Hart had been tarted up, but he was a practical man. The Tudor Buttery served grills at any time from nine in the morning until ten at night, and he regarded the place with gratitude if not affection.

  Tonight, he thought, he was going to indulge himself. He reached for the menu. A steak, that was what he would have, a good thick steak with all the trimmings, and hang the expense. After all, it had been a frustrating day, both professionally and personally: he was still no nearer to knowing whether Mary Gedge had died in suspicious circumstances; and as for Jean Bloomfield …

  He shrugged irritably and set about trying to assuage desire with food. The menu was a new one since his last visit. Quantrill studied it and flinched. He was learning to live with inflation, but this was ridiculous; a steak meal would set him back over three quid.

  It was out of the question, of course, for a man who had no expense account. He couldn’t even begin to justify it, not with the mortgage and the rates and the electricity bill and the rental of the colour television set that Molly was dependent on because he was out so much. He sighed, and settled as usual for bacon, eggs and chips—French fries, in the intercontinental jargon of the Rights—and a pint of their burp-inducing bitter.

  While he ate, he concentrated his thoughts on a series of warehouse break-ins; he had reached the apple pie and coffee stage before he saw Jean Bloomfield, alone at a table for two. She must have been there for at least ten minutes, because a meal was on the table in front of her. But she was reading a book and, though she held a fork, hardly eating.

  Quantrill felt all the physical symptoms that are associated with both love and indigestion, and invariably put the newly-in-love off their food: his chest tightened, his throat thickened. His heart began to thump. Oh God, had she seen him, gorging himself on chips and swilling beer? If she hadn’t despised him before, this would be all that she needed. He pushed aside the remains of his pie and blotted the grease from his lips with a paper napkin. He felt hot, his stomach grossly distended, while she looked cool and remote behind the reading glasses that she wore.

  She was dressed in a long skirt of some dark material, with a long-sleeved high-collared white blouse that emphasised her sunburn. Quantrill looked at her covertly, covetously. Oh, she was beautiful, even though there was nothing but gravity and weariness in her face.

  He looked away from her and tried to will himself into invisibility. Presently he risked another glance from under his eyebrows. She was still reading, but now she had taken off her glasses.

  Quantrill sat up, emboldened. Molly wore reading glasses too, and disliked being seen wearing them in public. He had always thought this an irritating piece of feminine vanity; but when the woman he was in love with took off her glasses in his presence, he found it wholly endearing.

  He was insufficiently arrogant to be convinced of the significance of her action, but it gave him hope. If Jean had seen him, and minded that he should see her in her glasses, then it couldn’t be true that she despised him. He stood up, squared his shoulders, drew in his stomach as far as he could, picked up his coffee cup and walked across to her table.

  ‘Good evening, Mrs Bloomfield,’ he said boldly.

  Molly, in similar circumstances, would have been coy: would have feigned surprise, started theatrically, blushed, flapped, said ‘Well, fancy seeing you, I had no idea you were here.’ But Jean Bloomfield gave him a sweet, sad smile that made his heart do a handstand. ‘I hoped you’d come and join me, Mr Quantrill,’ she said. ‘Do sit down, please.’

  Her voice was as beautiful as ever, but slightly slurred. The omelette on the plate in front of her was hardly touched, the side salad not even disarranged, but the large carafe of white wine was half empty. She was not drunk, certainly, but she must by now be on her third glass; and that quantity, on an empty stomach after a long and distressing day, was bound to affect her.

  Quantrill rummaged through his vocabulary for a word that would describe her condition, rejecting the vigorously vulgar masculinities and finally emerging with an expression favoured by his sister-in-law, a silly woman who, on her mercifully infrequent visits, got the giggles as soon as he uncorked the sweet sherry. Yes, that was it: Jean Bloomfield was gently sloshed.

  And why not? he demanded of himself fiercely. He disliked women who drank anything more than a social glass before or with meals, because he’d seen too many pitifully drunken women. Molly, he was glad to recall, had eventually learned that she had a weak head, and stayed on bitter lemon. But if, on this occasion, Jean Bloomfield had chosen to get gently sloshed, he had nothing but love and sympathy for her.

  He was gruff and protective, trying to persuade her to eat something when she admitted that she had returned empty-handed from her midday shopping expedition in the village on hearing of Mary’s death. She declared that she was not hungry, but accepted his suggestion of coffee. Her hands shook as she took a cigarette from her packet; Quantrill flicked his lighter and held it out to her, wishing that he dared take her hands in his own and stop their trembling.

  But at least he had a professional excuse for being masterly, for insisting on driving her home: ‘I’m a police officer, remember—you’re not allowed to refuse! Let me have your keys and I’ll get someone to take your own car over to Ashthorpe first thing tomorrow.’

  She hesitated, then surrendered her keys into his large, outstretched palm. He felt a surge of excitement, and glimpsed a fantasy in which he was already with her in her sitting-room, already holding her hands; but he controlled it with black, unsweetened coffee. Business first, pleasure—he hoped—later.

  ‘If you don’t mind talking about Mary,’ he said, ‘there is something that I’d like to ask you. Do you happen to know whether she kept a diary—a personal diary of her thoughts, I mean?’

  Jean Bloomfield sipped at her coffee before speaking slowly and carefully, obviously aware that the wine had affected her sibilants. ‘I’m sure that Mary didn’t keep a diary. We were discussing famous diarists in school last term—some of the class admitted keeping diaries, but Mary said she wouldn’t dream of it. She said she hated the idea of anyone reading her private thoughts after she was—’

  She left the final word abruptly unspoken. Her eyes were brilliant with unshed tears and wine, and Quantrill made a business of lighting a cigar to give her time to recover. ‘The thing is,’ he said, his eyes on the flame, ‘that we’ve been able to find very little personal information about Mary. And her death bothers me because I’ve been reading some of her school work and she seems to have had an obsession about dying young. Not that there’s any evidence to suggest suicide—’

  Jean Bloomfield stubbed out her half-smoked cigarette emphatically. ‘I’m quite sure it wouldn’t have been suicide! And I really don’t think
you need to worry about her taste in poetry—a good many poets have celebrated the idea of dying young, and some of them did just that, so their work has a particular appeal for people of Mary’s age. It was something else we happened to be discussing in school last term. Mary was certainly interested, but that doesn’t for a moment mean that she would deliberately go out and drown herself. I’m sure it must have been an accident.’

  ‘We all hope that. But this Ophelia business—’ he evaded her eyes, but went on doggedly ‘—I followed up the reference, and one of our young constables saw the point right away. He suggested that Mary might have been acting out the part of Ophelia, by herself, and that she might have climbed a willow tree and fallen in from there. Is it at all likely that she would have been play-acting, do you think?’

  Jean Bloomfield looked up with interest, a new cigarette wavering in her hand. ‘Why, yes—she loved acting. Mike Miller will tell you that—he teaches Drama, and Mary was the lead in a play he produced last term. And she did Hamlet at O level, so she might quite well think of Ophelia when she was gathering flowers, and act out the part. There’s another thing, too—’

  She absently picked up her glass and drank some more wine. The brightness of her eyes was almost feverish, and Quantrill remembered the message that Miller had asked him to take: ‘Tell Jean I hope she feels better for her holiday.’ Obviously she hadn’t been well, and today had done her no good at all, poor girl. Not that he had any intention of passing on the message, least of all the bit about Miller’s love, blast him.

  ‘Do you mind, Mr Quantrill,’ she went on diffidently, ‘if I put forward another speculation about Mary?’

  He minded nothing but her formality. She knew his first name, he was certain of it. He wanted her to call him by it so that he could call her Jean. The use of his surname was a reminder that the barrier between them had not been dismantled.

  ‘What I’m wondering,’ she said, careful with her speech again, ‘is whether Mary might have … might have allowed herself to drown without deliberately intending to take her life. Rather as Ophelia did.’

  Quantrill frowned. ‘My young constable suggested something of the sort, but that kind of accidental death in such a shallow river would only be possible if she were incapable of realising what was happening and saving herself. And you told me that you were quite sure—’

  ‘Sure that she wouldn’t have been either drinking or taking drugs, yes! But it’s perfectly possible to be high—to be in such a state of elation that you temporarily lose your judgement—without any artificial stimulants.’

  ‘Oh yes?’ said Quantrill doubtfully.

  ‘Yes, of course! Oh, don’t look so disbelieving—you see, I know that Mary wouldn’t think of drinking too much or taking drugs because she was naturally happy. Not merry-and-laughing or jolly, but serenely happy. Particularly so recently, because everything had gone right for her—she found life wonderful. And you can be just as high on happiness as on alcohol.’

  ‘I’ll take your word for it,’ Quantrill said sceptically. ‘But surely what you’re saying is that Mary had everything to live for. If she was that happy the last thing she’d want to do would be to die.’

  His words seemed to surprise Jean Bloomfield to such an extent that the trembling of her hand on the stem of her wineglass slowed almost to a stop. ‘Oh no—perfect happiness is every bit as good a reason for seeking death as despair is!’ she insisted. ‘Better! No—not for seeking death; but for accepting it.’

  Quantrill shook his head in disbelief. She leaned across the table and put her hand on his sleeve, and he realised that she was holding herself as taut as a trampoline. The wine glittered in her eyes but her voice was low and affectionate, anxiously willing him to understand and agree.

  ‘But it’s true—at least I’ve found it so. There were times when I was a young woman—not many, but all the more memorable—when life was so rich that I knew it could never be better. And I thought to myself then, in those moments, that it would be no hardship at all to drift away quietly into death at the very height of my happiness. Oh, surely you must—at least once—have experienced that kind of happiness too?’

  ‘No,’ said Chief Inspector Quantrill. ‘I haven’t.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  Her false brilliance faded. She looked suddenly older, infinitely weary. ‘I’m sorry,’ she murmured uncertainly, taking her hand from his arm. She tried on a smile, but it was a lop-sided fit: ‘I admit that it’s been a good many years since I was as happy as that.’

  Quantrill was disturbed by her look of desolation. ‘Would you like to go home now?’ he asked, lasciviousness forgotten.

  She shook her head. ‘I’d rather stay a little longer, if you’re not in a hurry. I’ll be glad of your company. No point in going home yet—I don’t sleep well.’

  ‘Have you been ill?’

  ‘Oh, nothing physical. It’s been a particularly difficult winter, that’s all. The spring term’s always a long hard haul, and the change to the comprehensive system made it seem worse.’ She took another cigarette. ‘Tell me, how are Jennifer and Alison?’

  Quantrill told her in proud detail, and then hesitated before adding, ‘I’ve never really thanked you for being so helpful and kind to them when we were … in difficulties.’

  ‘If I was a help in any way, I’m glad. They were at such a critical stage in their education, and I admired you for undertaking to look after them single-handed so that they could stay on at school.’

  Quantrill shrugged away three months of domestic confusion and remorse: ‘Well, the girls were very good. We muddled through.’ He looked at her with a big shy smile. ‘It was an ordeal, I can tell you, going to see you at the grammar school to try to explain what had happened and to ask for leniency for the girls. I didn’t expect the sympathy you gave me as well, though. After all, if a marriage gets to the stage where a wife leaves her husband and takes the youngest child home to her mother, it has to be the husband’s fault. I was afraid that you’d think I’d been beating her, or running after other women.’

  ‘But we’d already met, don’t forget. I’d listened to the talk you gave to the seniors, and so I knew that you were a kind and honest man.’

  Quantrill drew hard on his cigar and mumbled a disclaimer. ‘I was a very inconsiderate husband, I realise that—working all hours, never on time for meals, hardly ever taking her out … She’d tried for years to get me to resign from the force, and threatened often enough to leave me if I didn’t. Not that I ever thought she would. It really shook me when she did.’

  ‘But she did come back—and you’re still a policeman.’

  ‘Oh yes, we compromised somehow. I can’t do much about the odd hours I work, but Alison makes sure that at least I don’t forget birthdays and wedding anniversaries any more. And of course the extra rank helps a lot—and not just financially. It seems that it’s a good deal less humiliating when your absent husband’s a chief inspector than it was when he was only a sergeant.’

  He could hear the bitterness in his voice, and was ashamed of it. ‘But at least we’re a family again,’ he added quickly. ‘That’s the main thing.’

  ‘I envy you that,’ she admitted. She gave him a sombre smile. ‘And not only that. I was delighted to read about your rapid promotion—sergeant to chief inspector in four years!’

  Quantrill tried not to glow at her approval. ‘Oh, that’s the way it often happens in the force, nothing for years and then a quick shove up the ladder in your forties. It’s because of our early retirement system.’

  One corner of her mouth twisted downwards. ‘If only we had that in my profession! It’s all very fine to be brilliant at the beginning of one’s career, but it’s very hard to adjust to the fact that the majority of one’s working life is going to be spent going downhill. For you, though, the prospects are excellent, aren’t they? What comes next, superintendent? Then chief superintendent?’

  ‘Hold hard,’ Quantrill protested modestly. ‘
I probably sha’n’t get any further than this. I’m just an old-fashioned uneducated copper, one of the original Pc Plods. It’s the clever ones who’ll get top rank in future. Young Tait, now—he’s been to university and police college, he’ll be a chief super by the time he’s thirty. He’s a high-flyer if ever I saw one.’

  ‘Yes, I can believe it. And obviously he’s lucky, to have chosen a career in which high-flyers don’t lose their status and become failures in early middle age—’

  Her voice, as well as her hands, had begun to tremble, and Quantrill was indignant on her behalf. ‘You ought to have been made head of the comprehensive,’ he said warmly. ‘Everybody I know thought so, I can tell you.’

  She shook her head, unconsoled. ‘It’s not just that. I was an enthusiast for the comprehensive principle, you see. I thought it wrong that the great majority of children should be regarded as second-class citizens and offered less than the best. I wanted to use my skill and experience to give all the Breckham Market children the benefits of the kind of education we used to give the grammar school girls. And I’ve failed completely.’

  ‘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 …’