Who Saw Him Die?

by Sheila Radley

‘And what can we do for you, Chief Inspector?’ he enquired genially.

  ‘Just a private word, if you please, Mr Goodrum.’

  Jack’s fingers tightened. ‘Has something happened?’ he demanded, his voice suddenly hoarse. ‘You’re not bringing us bad news, are you?’

  ‘Oh no,’ Felicity sensed his alarm and her compost-soiled hands flew up towards her open mouth as if to stifle her gasp of horror. ‘It isn’t Matthew, is it? Don’t say he’s –?’

  ‘It’s all right, Mrs Goodrum,’ said the sergeant quickly. She gave a reassuring smile. ‘We’re only making routine enquiries. Matthew’s your son, I imagine?’

  ‘Yes –’ Felicity relaxed. She laughed with relief as Jack gave her shoulder an affectionate pat before taking his hand away. ‘This is Matthew’s first term at boarding school so I can’t be sure what he’s up to. He’s nearly seventeen, and I believe he’s learning to ride a motor bike. I had visions of him borrowing a machine and crashing it …’

  ‘It’s a worrying age,’ agreed the Chief Inspector. ‘My own boy’s at day school, but I’ve no idea what he gets up to either. As Sergeant Lloyd says, though, we’ve come solely to ask for Mr Goodrum’s help with a routine enquiry.’

  Felicity dusted her hands together and gave the detective a parting smile. ‘I must go and see about lunch, anyway,’ she said. But as she began to move her husband put a detaining hand on her arm.

  ‘I’d rather you stayed, my dear.’ He turned to the detectives. ‘There’s nothing you can ask me that I wouldn’t want my wife to know about,’ he asserted with a proud jut of his Desperate Dan chin. ‘Our’s isn’t the poor sort of marriage where husband and wife have secrets from each other.’

  The Chief Inspector looked discomfited. He opened his mouth to say something, but evidently thought better of it. Felicity, standing serenely beside her honest Jack, felt quite sorry for the man. ‘Do sit down,’ she suggested.

  The conservatory was furnished, among the camellias, with bamboo chairs. Jack had – inevitably – wanted to buy brand new ones. He didn’t like to provide his wife with what he called disparagingly ‘second-hand rubbish’. But Felicity, who knew how old buildings should be furnished, had ferreted about in junk shops and saleyards and had triumphantly acquired some relics of the Imperial East: sagging, somewhat battered, but indubitably the real thing.

  She had made the old chairs comfortable with chintz-covered cushions, but this had done little to muffle their tendency to creak. As the Chief Inspector’s chair protested under his weight, Felicity saw him cast a glance of embarrassment at his woman colleague. Sergeant Lloyd, who wore a diamond eternity ring, gave no sign that she had noticed the creaking; not so much out of tact, Felicity guessed, as out of a studied determination to take no personal interest in her senior officer.

  Oh dear, Felicity thought with gentle amusement. She was a kind woman, and certainly not a smug one, but she couldn’t help rejoicing in the confidence that her newly acquired happiness had given her. She suspected that the Chief Inspector was a partner in what Jack had tactlessly dismissed as a poor sort of marriage, and that he was hankering after his unattainable sergeant. Poor Chief Inspector Quantrill …

  She gave Jack a fond look, and prepared to smile kindly at their visitor. As she did so, she realised that in the last few seconds there had been a subtle change in the atmosphere. There was now a hint of chill. The Chief Inspector was no longer a figure of pity but a massive and intrusive presence. He sat perfectly still in his chair and his eyes were still, too; they were the hard green of little apples, and they were staring straight at Jack.

  ‘What we’ve come to do, Mr Goodrum,’ he said in his measured Suffolk voice, ‘is to tie up the loose ends in the matter of Cuthbert Bell’s death.’

  This time, Jack’s was the chair that creaked. Felicity looked at her husband. His chin was jutting and he was staring back at the Chief Inspector, but his voice was completely calm as he said, ‘I thought that’d all been dealt with at the inquest.‘

  ‘So did I. But some information has come to light that doesn’t match what we thought we knew. We took you for a newcomer to Breckham Market, you see.’

  ‘That’s right. So I am. We came to live here in October.’ Jack turned for confirmation to his wife. ‘What was the exact date, my dear?’

  ‘The fifth,’ said Felicity mechanically. Jack seemed completely unworried, but that did nothing to lessen her unease. She had noticed that the sergeant’s eyes had stilled and that they too were now focused on her husband.

  ‘October 5th – yes, that date was mentioned in the report,’ agreed the Chief Inspector. ‘What wasn’t mentioned, either at your interview after the incident or at the inquest, was that you were no stranger to the town when you arrived. I understand that your grandparents owned a butcher’s shop just off Victoria Road, and that you often came to stay with them when you were a boy.’

  For a second Jack looked taken aback. Then he burst out laughing. ‘Why, blast, you’re going back a year or two! So they did … So I did! There’s no secret about it. I daresay a few of the old ‘uns in the town can remember me delivering their meat … But that was all of thirty-five years ago! I haven’t been near the place since I was sixteen.’

  ‘Why not?’ asked Sergeant Lloyd quickly.

  ‘Because I grew up and went out to work,’ said Jack, his voice civilly matter-of-fact. ‘I got a job near home, in Ipswich. Then m’grandad died, Grandma came to live with us, and there wasn’t any reason for me to come back to Breckham. There wasn’t any reason, either, for me to tell the Coroner that I used to come here in the school holidays thirty-five to forty years ago! That had nothing at all to do with the inquest.’

  ‘Except that the man you knocked over with your Range Rover was not in fact a stranger to you, Mr Goodrum,’ said the Chief Inspector. ‘You used to know Cuthbert Bell quite well, I believe, when you were boys together?’

  Jack had told Felicity all about his grandparents and their butcher’s shop. She enjoyed his stories of his early life, and of the mischief he used to get up to. She knew there was no secret about his long-ago acquaintance with Breckham Market, and she agreed with his contention that the fact was irrelevant to the inquest. But she hadn’t, until now, heard that he used to know the man he had accidentally killed. The revelation made her draw in her breath so sharply that both detectives immediately looked at her, hard.

  ‘Oh Jack – and you didn’t tell me!’ she said reproachfully. ‘That must have made the accident even more distressing for you.’

  He took her hand. His own was big and warm and comforting. ‘That’s exactly why I didn’t tell you, my dear. You were upset enough over the accident as it was. Not that I realised who the man was at the time, o’course.’

  He looked straight at the detectives. ‘Clanger, that was what everybody called the man who walked into my Range Rover,’ he explained. ‘Just Clanger, the town drunk. I’d seen him wandering round, but I had no reason to connect him with the boy who used to follow me about all those years ago. No reason at all. As soon as I heard his real name, after the accident, I thought I recognised it. But even then, it was some time before I could call him to mind. It wasn’t as though we’d ever been friends – he’d just followed me like a lost dog. Mind you, young Cuthbert always was an odd ’un. ‘S not surprising, come to think of it, that he ended up as a drunk – not with the parents he’d got, poor little perisher …’

  ‘You knew his parents, then, Mr Goodrum?’ said the sergeant.

  Jack laughed. Still holding his wife’s hand, to their mutual comfort, he said, ‘Only to deliver meat to – and then I didn’t see them, o’course. Tradesmen went round the back in those days, and were dealt with by the servants. But I heard my grandparents talk about Mr and Mrs Bell, and how cold and distant they were with their children.’

  ‘So you never actually met Cuthbert’s father?’ asked the Chief Inspector. Though he spoke casually, Felicity couldn’t fail to notice that he was watching ev
ery movement of her husband’s face.

  But Jack was completely relaxed. ‘Met him? Why yes – I got a good hiding from him, once! I can’t say that I actually knew him, but I certainly felt the weight of his leather strap …’

  ‘What for?’ asked Sergeant Lloyd. ‘What had you done?’

  Jack scratched his thick hair with his free hand. ‘Hanged if I know, after all these years – but no doubt I deserved it! I was a young terror, always getting into trouble and having my ear clipped for it. My poor grandma used to take the sole of an old shoe to my backside when she couldn’t put up with my tricks any longer. I remember the time when –’

  ‘I’d rather you tried to remember the time when Mr Bell thrashed you,’ interrupted the Chief Inspector. ‘My information is that he punished you severely – and that it was Cuthbert who’d told on you.’

  Jack made no direct reply. He went completely quiet for a moment, and then turned to his wife. ‘I tell you what it is, Felicity,’ he said in a conversational tone. ‘The CID has come here imagining that I recognised the town drunk, and deliberately ran him over so as to get my own back for something that happened thirty-five years ago.’ He looked challengingly at their visitors. ‘That’s it, isn’it? That’s what all this is about?’

  Felicity was horrified. Jack was right, of course – the police were suspicious, that was what accounted for the unease she had felt during their questioning. But what they were imagining was preposterous, and she told them so.

  The Chief Inspector’s chair creaked uncomfortably. His sergeant was already on her feet and he stood too, still trying to maintain that his enquiries were merely routine. Felicity turned disdainfully away. She expected Jack to show the detectives the door, but to her surprise he seemed to have taken no offence.

  ‘Now hold you hard, my dear,’ he told her. ‘The police have their job to do, and being suspicious is part of it. I’ve been glad of CID help more than once, over break-ins and thefts from my business, and I reckon an honest man’s a fool if he won’t co-operate with ’em. They have to act on information they receive – but what they’ve heard this time is just not true. What it sounds like is malicious gossip.’

  ‘We might have been misled,’ admitted the Chief Inspector. ‘Well, I’m sorry to have troubled you – and Mrs Goodrum.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ said Jack graciously, leading them to the garden door. ‘Y’know, I half expected that something like this might happen when I came to live in Breckham Market. I daresay some of the customers who knew me as a butcher’s boy resent the fact that I’ve got on in the world, and want to take me down a peg or two.’

  ‘You’ve certainly set yourself up in fine style here,’ said the detective bluntly. ‘Tell me, Mr Goodrum – as one Suffolk man to another – how did you manage to do so well?’

  ‘Hard work, bor,’ Jack said promptly, and with feeling. ‘Twenty-five years o’bloody hard work.’

  ‘That’s what I’ve put in, with precious little to show for it,’ complained the Chief Inspector. ‘I reckon you must have had a rare lot o’luck, too.’

  Jack’s broad back was turned to Felicity. She couldn’t see his expression but she heard his warm, confident chuckle. ‘That I have! I’ve been lucky all m’life. That’s what they’ve always called me – Lucky Jack.’

  Chapter Eleven

  ‘You do realise, Matthew, that this new school of yours has no standing at all? Saxted College –’ Austin Napier’s elegantly penetrating voice put a sneer on the name ‘– is, at best, second rate. Its academic record is of no consequence, and I am not satisfied with the standard of education you’re receiving here. It may be adequate for the offspring of the local minor gentry, but not for my son.’

  Matthew cast an anguished glance round the panelled dining room of the Crown. The hotel, the oldest in the small market town of Saxted, obviously served as a meeting place for the local minor gentry. A dozen of them – middle-aged, well-weathered, broad-based, tweed-clad – were tucking into soup, braised oxtail and steamed ginger pudding. They all knew each other, and had been conversing from table to table in loud, cheerful voices; but the London barrister’s ringing condemnation stopped them in mid-sentence.

  As they turned to stare at his father, immaculate in grey-striped trousers and black jacket, Matthew cringed. He wished – as did most people in the witness box when faced by Austin Napier QC – that he could sink into the floor and disappear. But his father, accustomed to being the centre of attention in crowded courtrooms, continued his piercing cross-examination.

  ‘And are you seriously asking me to believe, Matthew, that despite the school’s inadequacy you want to remain here?’

  The boy pushed a piece of bread roll into his mouth. ‘Yes, I do,’ he mumbled.

  ‘Then perhaps you will be good enough, when you have finished chewing, to tell me why?’

  ‘I – I like it here.’

  Austin Napier’s nostrils flared with scorn. He was a distinguished-looking man, high-browed, fine-boned, impressively bespectacled, with greying hair brushed back above his ears. His lips were well-shaped, but they turned down haughtily at each corner. Matthew watched them apprehensively, dreading what might emerge from them.

  ‘Whether or not you like the school has nothing to do with the matter,’ his father pronounced. Matthew sat tense, anticipating the exposure of his mediocre academic progress; that, he had supposed, was the reason for this unwelcome visit. To his surprise, his father merely added, ‘But perhaps you’ve been influenced by someone from this locality? Did your – ah –’

  The barrister paused, not because he was ever at a loss for words, but for effect. ‘The man your mother is at present cohabiting with,’ he continued disdainfully. ‘I suppose he was at school here?’

  Matthew doubted it. Jack Goodrum was obviously totally uneducated. But much as he despised the man, Matthew wasn’t going to give his father the satisfaction of knowing what a slob his mother had married.

  ‘I s’pose so,’ he agreed.

  Austin Napier gave a shrug. ‘Then he must be a local man. No one outside Suffolk has ever heard of Saxted College – as you would discover if you were foolish enough to remain here. But that,’ he added, lowering his voice to a hiss and leaning across the table to fix his son with pale eyes that were magnified by his spectacle lenses, ‘is something I refuse to allow. I insist that you and your mother return to me in Highgate.’

  To Matthew’s relief, their meal arrived. He had asked for steak. His father had ordered it for both of them, specifying that it must be rare. The comfortable local waitress, accustomed to serving hungry schoolboys who were out for a treat with their parents, gave Matthew a grandmotherly smile and the lion’s share of the chipped potatoes.

  ‘There you are, dear,’ she said. ‘Enjoy your lunch!’

  His throat was constricted. He couldn’t eat. But to continue the conversation was impossible.

  Matthew knew that his father, although a brilliant criminal prosecutor, was off his rocker when it came to the subject of his own marriage. The High Court judge who had awarded his mother a divorce on the grounds of her husband’s unreasonable behaviour had said that, as a husband, Austin Napier was unbalanced in behaviour and thought. The details of the hearing had been gleefully reported in all the newspapers, and Matthew knew them by heart.

  ‘Did you hear what I said?’ his father persisted.

  Matthew rendered himself speechless by forking chips into his mouth. Head down, he began to saw at his steak. He hated it rare. The oozing redness of the meat revolted him. But he needed something to occupy himself with, something other than his father to give his attention to.

  ‘Look at me, Matthew!’

  Austin Napier had always commanded instant obedience. The boy glanced up, unwillingly, and was alarmed by what he saw. His father’s forehead was gouged by a heavy vertical frown, his eyes were glittering, his lips were savagely downcurved.

  ‘Your mother and I,’ the barrister said in a low,
tight voice, ‘are still married in the eyes of God. Marriage is indissoluble, from the moment the vows are uttered until one of us draws a final breath.’

  Unable to swallow, Matthew tongued a mouthful of chewed potato into one cheek. ‘Mother’s divorced from you,’ he mumbled. ‘She’s remarried. We don’t have to do what you say any more.’

  ‘You ignorant boy!’ Austin Napier, who had just placed a forkful of blood-red meat into his mouth, sneered at his son. ‘Haven’t you read your prayer book? Haven’t you studied the Solemnisation of Matrimony? Those whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder. Can anything be plainer than that?’

  The barrister leaned forward, his eyes seeming to bore into his son’s. ‘Your mother and I are still one flesh,’ he hissed. Matthew watched, fascinated and horrified as a dribble of bloody juice emerged from one corner of his father’s mouth and trickled down the side of his chin. ‘Whatever she may say, she knows this as well as I do. We are still one flesh. Do you understand me, Matthew?’

  ‘Yes, father …’

  Having made his point, and subdued his son’s feeble attempt at rebellion, Austin Napier seemed to recover his composure. Relaxing into a forced geniality he allowed Matthew to abandon his meat course. The boy said that he had to get back to school, but his father insisted on ordering chocolate profiteroles for him, brandy for himself and coffee for them both.

  ‘When did you last see your mother?’ he enquired conversationally as he lit a cigar.

  ‘At half-term,’ said Matthew. ‘She’s very well,’ he added, unasked. He would have liked to take a poke at his father by saying that his mother was also very happy, but he didn’t believe it to be true.

  ‘And the man she’s living with – what did you say his name was?’

  ‘Jack Goodrum.’

  As soon as Matthew said it, he realised that he hadn’t mentioned it before. He had been careful not to do so because he knew perfectly well that his mother didn’t want her former husband to know either her new name or her whereabouts. Any necessary communication between her and Austin Napier was carried out through her solicitor.