Jean Bloomfield carried his empty mug to the coffee percolator. ‘It was done by a stranger, presumably? I mean, everyone who knew Mary liked her—she hadn’t an enemy in the world.’
‘We’re still making enquiries,’ said Quantrill, professionally evasive. ‘One of our handicaps is that we don’t seem to know a great deal about the girl’s private life, which is why I wanted to talk to you. Tell me, did you know that Dale Kenward wanted to marry her?’
‘To marry?’ She stared at him, amazed. ‘Well, well … I had no idea, but come to think of it I’m not surprised. Dale Kenward is an extremely nice young man. If he was in love—and he was, that was obvious—then I’m sure he’d think in terms of marriage. Have you met him?’
‘Yes,’ said Quantrill.
She heard officialdom in his voice. ‘Oh, no,’ she said, appalled. ‘Surely you don’t imagine that Dale would have killed her? He’s not one of your suspects, is he?’
‘He’s been helping us with our enquiries,’ Quantrill agreed.
She ground her cigarette into the ashtray. ‘Then I’m sure you’re wrong,’ she protested vehemently. ‘I’m sorry, I realise I oughtn’t to interfere, but I do know Dale. I get very little chance of sixth-form teaching now, there’s always some middle school crisis when I’m timetabled for a senior class, but I did teach both Dale and Mary on several occasions last term and the term before. He genuinely loved Mary. The fact that he wanted to marry her is surely proof of that. Their love affair was touchingly serious. So many of them at that age are simply experimenting with sex—they think they’ve invented it, and they have to make sure that it works. But with Dale and Mary it was different, and I think you’re wrong to imagine that he would harm her in any way.’
Quantrill accepted her reproof philosophically. ‘But I’ve heard from several sources that they had quarrelled,’ he said. ‘I understand that although he wanted to become engaged, Mary didn’t.’
Jean Bloomfield reached for another cigarette. ‘Yes, well—I can believe it. Mary loved Dale, anyone could see that; but she wasn’t actually in love with him, as he was with her.’ She got up and walked restlessly to the window. ‘Being in love,’ she explained, ‘is exclusive. Loving isn’t, and Mary had a great capacity for affection. She loved her family and she loved her friends. If she was in love at all, it was with the idea of going to Cambridge—so it’s understandable that she didn’t want to become engaged.’
‘That’s what I told young Kenward. But he explained that he wanted to protect her from older men. He described her as being “unaware”. Would you agree with that?’
She returned to the table and took her own mug to the percolator, although it was still half full of coffee. ‘Yes,’ she said after a moment’s thought. ‘I know exactly what he meant, and I think that he was right to be afraid for Mary. You never saw her alive, I suppose?’
‘She was very attractive, I believe,’ said Quantrill.
‘Yes. But it was a particular kind of attractiveness that some blonde girls have—a kind of radiant innocence. I don’t mean the innocence of ignorance, but of simplicity—guilelessness. Yes, Dale was right: Mary was tremendously unaware. She trusted people indiscriminately. When she finally fell in love, she would have given herself totally, without reserve—and, I’m afraid, almost inevitably to the wrong man. Mary was a born victim.’
‘A born victim?’
‘Yes. Have you ever seen any of the old Marilyn Monroe films on television? She had a different personality, of course, but she radiated this same kind of virgin innocence that Mary Gedge had. Unfortunately, it’s an aura that attracts the kind of man who—consciously or not—enjoys corrupting the innocent. Poor Marilyn Monroe was destroyed in early middle age. And obviously Dale could see the danger for Mary.’
Quantrill floundered. ‘Wait a minute! Are you trying to tell me that someone—another man—was trying to corrupt Mary?’
‘Oh no!’ She spoke urgently, impatiently, trying to make him understand. ‘Don’t you see, that’s the whole point. Mary had always lived a very quiet life, and so far she was completely unscathed. But she’d have been preyed on as soon as she set foot in Cambridge, there isn’t much doubt about that. She was looking forward to it so happily and innocently, imagining that it was all going to be wonderful, but heaven knows what would have been in store for her in the way of disillusion and heartbreak. No wonder Dale was worried for her, poor boy. But that doesn’t for one moment mean—’
The telephone rang. She went to the hall to answer it and was back almost immediately, looking half-amused, half-embarrassed.
‘It’s for you, Douglas. Sergeant Tait.’
Chapter Twenty
‘How the devil did Tait know I was here?’ grumbled Quantrill when he returned from the telephone. He had tried to bark at the sergeant, but had been so much elated that Jean Bloomfield had at last called him Douglas that he had failed to put up a convincing performance.
She stubbed out her cigarette. ‘Oh, he was very discreet,’ she said lightly. ‘Had-I-by-any-chance-happened-to-see-you-passing …? And in the circumstances, I didn’t think you’d want me to deny it. He’s called you away, I imagine?’
‘Yes, but he can wait. The chance to stand back and think about a case while someone else does the legwork is one of the perks of being a chief inspector, and I intend to make the most of it. What were you saying about Dale Kenward?’
‘That I’m certain that he wouldn’t have killed Mary. He loved her, and he recognised and respected her innocence. That boy deserves to be given a medal for his restraint, not to be questioned about her death.’
‘And you don’t think she knew any other—older—men?’
‘Not to my knowledge. If you’re thinking of the school staff, I don’t believe that any of them knew her socially.’ She got up and emptied her cold coffee into the sink. ‘Anyway, why does it have to be someone who knew Mary? Isn’t it often a stranger who sees a girl alone and kills her?’
‘Too often—but not in this case, there was too little violence for that,’ Quantrill explained. ‘But tell me, would other people—besides Dale Kenward and yourself, I mean—have thought of Mary as a potential victim?’
Jean Bloomfield toyed with her packet of cigarettes, obviously trying to resist the temptation to take another. ‘High-flyers are always vulnerable,’ she said slowly. ‘Anyone who teaches knows that. In the nature of things, high-flyers are bound to peak early. Sometimes they go on from university to a brilliant career, and then falter in middle age. Sometimes they’re in their element at university, but fail to find a satisfactory career. And sometimes they reach their peak at eighteen. There are always a few who never live up to their early promise when they reach university, for one reason or another: they find the work completely different, they’re homesick, they make the wrong friends, they become emotionally disturbed.’
‘And you think that would have happened to Mary Gedge?’
‘I think it was a possibility, particularly in view of her innocence. But I doubt if any of us had consciously formulated the idea of her as a victim—I didn’t, until Liz Whilton mentioned Ophelia.’
‘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.’
Je
an 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 o
f 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.’
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