While two uniformed police constables rigged up emergency lighting in the musty, disused cellar under the tower of the Town Hall, Sergeant Lloyd glanced round with the aid of her torch. It looked a sinister place in the wavering light, looming with a mysterious ironmongery of wheels and pistons and pipes and pulleys and chains. Almost, she thought without thinking, like a medieval torture chamber …
She screwed up her eyes for a few moments as the lights came glaring on, then got to work. Miss Bell had explained that the machinery included not only the steam-driven pump, but a hand-operated well-cover hoist. The well in the cellar floor was secured by a heavy cast iron cover. A ring was attached to the cover, and a chain to the ring. The chain went up and over a pulley suspended from a girder, down to another pulley, and so to a winding drum. It was clear from the dust and rust on the machinery that the hoist had not been used for many years.
The schoolboy’s cap, growing mould in places but still identifiable in design, was caught fast by the chains on the drum. When it was released, its fabric was found to be so heavily indented and rust-marked by the pressure of the chains that it had without doubt been there ever since the hoist was last used. In the lining of the cap was a linen tape with the machine-embroidered name C. R.F.BELL.
Two constables oiled the winding gear and hoisted the cover from the well. An unidentifiable, ancient smell rose from it.
Sergeant Lloyd had expected the well to be deep. She had been prepared to ask the fire brigade for a ladder; if necessary to call in a police frogman to search the water. She had certainly expected to have to wait a long time for something – anything – to be found.
But for once, there was no need for the detective to hang about.
The brick-walled well was deep: the powerful lights caught a glint of water a very long way down. But just six feet below the top, crossing from wall to wall, was an iron girder. And slumped over it was what looked like a small bundle of tattered sacking, with something stick-like dangling from either end.
It seemed that it was eight-year-old Terry Gotts who had been doing the hanging about, for the past thirty-five years.
Chapter Twenty Nine
Although it was nearly midnight when Sergeant Lloyd left the Town Hall, she went straight back to the office. Her mind was too active for sleep.
She would have liked someone to talk to, but the other members of the CID had gone home. When Chief Inspector Tait appeared, just as she was making herself a pot of coffee, she greeted him with pleasure.
‘Hallo! Have you just got back from London?’
‘No, I’ve been round at the Quantrills’since ten.’ He sounded dispirited; his racing trilby had lost its dashing forward tilt. ‘I saw these lights on my way back to my hotel, and hoped you’d be here.’
‘How’s Peter?’
‘Still in intensive care – but at least his condition’s stable.’
‘Thank God for that. Would you like some coffee?’
‘Please.’ He parked his hat and scarf and Burberry. ‘I’ve been drinking whisky with Doug, and I need to clear my head.’
‘How’s he?’
‘Rough. He can’t talk to his wife, and he’s overwhelmed by guilt-feelings about his relationship with Peter. He seems to hold himself responsible for the boy’s accident.’
‘Poor Douglas. And poor Molly.’ Hilary shook her head over them, then poured the coffee. ‘Well – how did you get on with Austin Napier?’
‘Don’t ask.’ Tait sat down, uncharacteristically slumped. ‘Particularly if you’re going to tell me that you solved Jack Goodrum’s murder while I was away …’
‘I only wish I had.’
‘Thank God you didn’t, or I’d have looked a complete wally.’ He gulped his coffee. ‘Austin Napier’s a nutter!’ he burst out.
‘I rather suspected he might be,’ said Hilary. It seemed unkind to score off the downcast Chief Inspector by pointing out that she’d told him so before he went.
‘I was hoping’, Tait continued, ‘to crack Napier’s alibi about staying with his sister in Hampshire last weekend. But his brother-in-law happens to be a fellow barrister, who confirms his story. And when I suggested to Napier that Goodrum’s murderer hadn’t necessarily fired the shotgun himself, he cross-examined me about whether we’d found the weapon. When I had to admit that we hadn’t – yet – he had the arrogance to say that I had no grounds for questioning him. But all the time he was referring to his ex-wife as his wife, and denying the validity of her divorce! And he’s a barrister, a Queen’s Counsel, for heaven’s sake! He ought to be disbarred.’
Hilary commiserated briskly, and poured him another cup of coffee. ‘Then where do you suggest we go from here?’
‘That depends what you found out while I was away. What have you been doing?’
She told him.
‘It will be some time before the body in the well can be positively identified, of course, but apparently it’s the right sex and age so there’s not much doubt that it’s Terry Gotts. The pathologist isn’t too hopeful that he can establish the cause of death, after all these years. He found that the boy’s hands had been tied together with string, and we discovered a penknife on the floor with a piece of the same string caught in the clasp. The initials JRG were scratched on the handle of the penknife, so it looks as though John Reuben Goodrum was involved with Cuthbert Bell in whatever went on there.’
Tait grimaced. ‘Two adolescents, and one eight-year-old … They could have been up to anything. Not that the older boys would necessarily have meant the child any harm, let alone intended to kill him – but whatever happened, Goodrum and Bell were left sharing a very dark secret. And that explains a lot.’
The Chief Inspector leaned back in his chair and stretched his arms. ‘Well, congratulations, Hilary love,’ he concluded. ‘You’ve done a good job. I can’t think why you haven’t been promoted yet –’
‘Thank you, sir,’ said Sergeant Lloyd wryly. ‘But I still haven’t found out who killed Jack Goodrum. I’d hoped that if we could discover why he wanted Clanger Bell out of the way, we’d get a lead on his own murderer – but that hasn’t happened …’
Revived, himself again, Tait took advantage of Hilary’s preoccupation to put his feet – ankles elegantly crossed – on her desk. ‘Are you still quite sure it couldn’t have been Clanger’s sister?’
‘No,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘No, I’m not sure about Miss Bell at all. While I was at the Town Hall I checked her alibi for Saturday evening, and it’s a good one. I’m suspicious of it, but so far I haven’t found a way of testing it.’
‘Wasn’t it Doug Quantrill himself who provided her with the alibi?’ asked Tait. ‘Didn’t he meet her at some local function?’
‘Yes, at the Amateur Operatic performance of My Fair Lady. But he’s a fine one to offer anybody an alibi for that particular evening! Oh, he went to the Town Hall – but he had no intention of staying to watch the show. He simply established his presence, then sneaked off to the Coney. And knowing he did that, I’ve begun to wonder whether Eunice Bell mightn’t have done the same thing: established her presence, then sneaked out to murder Jack Goodrum.’
‘And did she? Sneak out, I mean?’
‘She could’ve. It’s whether she actually did that I can’t discover.’
Hilary explained that the Town Hall doorkeeper knew Miss Bell by sight; the Chief Executive had introduced him to her the previous Thursday, saying that she was the builder’s great-granddaughter. On the Saturday evening, Miss Bell had spoken to the doorkeeper on her way into the Town Hall for My Fair Lady, and had wished him goodnight on the way out.
‘He’s quite sure that she didn’t leave during the course of the show,’ Hilary said, ‘and he seems reliable. He doesn’t know Chief Inspector Quantrill, but he remembers that a man of Douglas’s description went out just as the show started.’
‘But that’s only the front entrance,’ said Tait. ‘What about the other doors?’
‘All
locked, according to the doorkeeper – except of course the two emergency exits. But to reach one of them, Miss Bell would have had to go through the backstage area; and to reach the other she’d have had to go past the room where the interval refreshments were being prepared and served. There would have been people about all the time – and they’d have been members of the Operatic Society, so a non-member would have been noticed. I don’t think she could have risked it.’
‘I’ll agree with you about the emergency exits,’ Tait conceded. ‘But I think you’re putting far too much reliance on the word of the doorkeeper. How can you possibly be sure that he was watching the front doors throughout the entire evening? Didn ‘t you try to find out –’
‘I haven’t finished,’ said Hilary. She suddenly became aware of him: ‘And please take your unsightly feet off my desk.’
‘I only put them there to annoy you,’ said Tait provocatively. ‘Hasn’t Doug ever told you that you look more attractive when you’re annoyed?’ But he grounded his feet. ‘All right, sorry. Go on.’
‘The point is’, she resumed, ‘that Eunice Bell knows the building inside out. When she went there last Thursday, the doorkeeper took her down to the cellars, unlocked the one she wanted to see, and left her for a few minutes to look round on her own. That would have given her an opportunity to check the second exit from the cellars. It happens to lead out to the yard at the back of the Town Hall.’
‘Oh ho.’ Tait sat up.
‘There’s a narrow passage under the tower, linking the cellars,’ Hilary went on. ‘At the far end of the passage, an iron spiral staircase goes up to a small door. The door isn’t locked. There are heavy bolts top and bottom, but I could draw them without too much difficulty. So Eunice Bell could perfectly easily have got out of the Town Hall without being seen, shot Jack Goodrum, and returned in time for the end of the performance. And it seems significant that whoever last used that cellar exit must have been wearing gloves, because we haven’t been able to take any prints from either the door or the spiral staircase.’
Chief Inspector Tait was sitting forward, alert and thinking hard.
‘Yes … But where would she have left the shotgun while she was in the Town Hall?’
‘I don’t see why she couldn’t have left it concealed in her car. She could have picked the car up, driven from the town centre to Mount Street, and parked somewhere near The Mount while she did the job. It’s a quiet residential area, with a lot of trees that reduce the effectiveness of the street lights – and there’s Hobart’s Lane, just at the back of The Mount, which has no lighting at all. I don’t think anyone who wanted to kill Jack Goodrum would have had too much difficulty in getting a shotgun to and from his garden without being seen.’
‘And how would Miss Bell have got hold of a gun?’
‘No problem. Her grandfather’s shotguns were kept in a cabinet at Tower House until last Thursday, when they were removed to be sold. I didn’t notice the cabinet, when we went to see her after Clanger’s death, but the DCI did. He thought there were four guns in it – but the auctioneer tells me there were only three. It’s possible that Douglas was mistaken, of course. He didn’t get a close look, and he could have been misled by the four-gun cabinet. But it’s also possible that Eunice Bell retained the fourth gun.’
‘If she did – and if she used it on Goodrum – what do you think she’d have done with it afterwards?’
‘I can’t imagine.’ It was tomorrow already, and Hilary felt tiredness creeping up on her. ‘I don’t think Miss Bell would have hidden it on her property because she’s selling Tower House and there’d be too much risk of the new owner finding it.’ She suppressed a yawn. ‘She’s probably taken it miles away and thrown it into a river somewhere, or into the sea. Off the Orwell Bridge, perhaps? Or the end of Yarmouth pier?’
‘Now you’re being frivolous,’ said Tait severely. ‘And I don’t agree with you. I think it’s possible that Miss Bell might have got rid of the shotgun immediately after the murder, by dumping it locally. I’ll have this stretch of the river, and the mere, searched as soon as it’s light.
‘Alternatively,’ he went on, rising to his feet and prowling about the room, thinking, ‘she may be keeping the shotgun concealed among her possessions, with the intention of disposing of it after she’s left Breckham Market.’ He turned abruptly to face Hilary. ‘Didn’t you say that when you called on her this afternoon she’d just sent off a load of furniture?’
Sergeant Lloyd drew a sharp breath, then groaned, vexed with herself. She had spent the last few hours suspecting Eunice Bell, without considering the possible significance of the removal van she had seen outside Tower House.
‘Yes,’ she admitted. ‘I even saw a large packing case being loaded … But if by any chance the gun is in store with her furniture, at least it’ll keep,’ she added more positively. ‘And for the record, I had no reason at the time to disbelieve Miss Bell’s alibi.’
‘But you knew that she had shotguns in the house,’ Tait pointed out. ‘And you knew she had a very strong motive for killing Goodrum. Eunice Bell should have been your number one suspect!’
‘Well, she wasn’t. And I don’t agree that she had a strong motive. Yes, she’s a proud woman. She told us, after Goodrum had been exonerated from blame for her brother’s death, that she felt a deep sense of injustice. But she didn’t grieve for Cuthbert. She said she felt nothing but relief that he was dead. And I can’t believe that just when she’d at last gained her freedom, she would have risked it by planning and carrying out a murder for his sake. It wasn’t as if she felt any personal animosity towards Jack Goodrum. She didn’t even know the man.’
‘Then why are you suspecting her?’
‘Simply because I discovered this evening that she could have done it. But unless we can disprove some aspect of her alibi, we’ve got nothing against her. We’d never get a search warrant on the basis of that motive.’
‘I wouldn’t try,’ said Tait. He put on his Burberry. ‘And I’m not going to argue with you about motive at this time of night! Let’s get some sleep. Tomorrow, you can start finding out whether in fact there had been a fourth shotgun in the cabinet at Tower House.’
‘Shouldn’t be difficult,’ the sergeant said, half to herself. She flipped through her notebook. ‘Yes, Eunice Bell talked about someone who did the cleaning for her –’
‘Not tonight,’ said the Chief Inspector, reaching across the desk and plucking the notebook from her hands. ‘You’ve done a good job today, Hilary, and I’m very glad to have you working with me again. Now go home, woman.’
He put his hat on his head, tipping it racily forward, and took her coat from its wire hanger on the side of a filing cabinet.
‘Yes, all right, I’m going,’ she said, pushing back her chair. ‘But only because I intended to, anyway.’ She slid her arms into the sleeves of the coat as he held it for her. ‘Thanks. I’ll talk to the Operatic Society ticket sellers, too,’ she went on, ‘and find out if they noticed where Eunice Bell was sitting for My Fair Lady …’
Tait sighed. He put an arm across her shoulders and steered her firmly towards the door. ‘Come on, my fair lady,’ he said with affectionate exasperation.
‘Martin!’ Hilary stopped abruptly and whirled to face him, her tiredness gone. ‘That’s it – that’s how we can test Eunice Bell’s alibi. It’s so simple that we can do it right away, even before we know about the gun. All we have to ask her is whether she enjoyed the show.’
Chapter Thirty
Sergeant Lloyd had guessed that Miss Bell would still be up, despite the fact that it was well after midnight. What she had not anticipated was that the lights outside Tower House would be on, the front door would be open, letting out more light from the hall, and Eunice Bell would be loading suitcases into her car.
Tait stopped his own car in the gateway, blocking it. Hilary followed him as he walked up the shadowed drive between the bare pollarded lime trees. Behind the limes rose the sp
iny monkey puzzle tree; above and beyond that loomed the dark outline of the Italianate tower from which the house derived its name.
The detectives had almost reached the house before Miss Bell noticed them. Dressed for travelling in a navy loden coat, she was about to lift a final suitcase into the boot of her staid elderly Rover. She glared at the intruders.
‘This is a private residence,’ she said, her breath rising like a dragon’s in the cold clear night air. ‘Is that your car in my gateway? Remove it at once, young man, or I shall call the police.’
Hilary stepped forward, apologised for the lateness of their coming, and introduced the Chief Inspector. Eunice Bell ignored him.
‘This is not a convenient time for a visit, Miss Lloyd. As you see, I’ve decided to leave Breckham Market immediately. I have a room reserved at the Angel at Saintsbury. You can get in touch with me there.’
‘Why the hurry to go?’ asked Tait. But before she could reply, or disdain to reply, he sniffed the air. ‘I can smell petrol,’ he said.
‘No doubt. I had my car filled this evening, and the careless youth let the tank overflow.’
‘May we come inside the house and talk to you, Miss Bell?’ asked Hilary. ‘There’s something we do urgently need to clear up before you leave.’
‘About my brother and Terry Gotts? The child has been dead for thirty-five years. Surely your questions can wait.’
‘It’s not about Terry Gotts. It’s about your grandfather’s shotguns. May we come in?’
Eunice Bell made no comment. She led them as far as the lighted portico, but then closed the front door to prevent them going any further. ‘There’s no point in going in,’ she said. Her face looked unnaturally white, her eye-sockets darkly hollowed – but so did all their faces, under the harsh overhead light. ‘The furnishings have all been dismantled.’
Tait’s long nose twitched again. ‘I can still smell petrol.’
Miss Bell raised her left hand, and sniffed the back of it fastidiously. ‘No, not petrol,’ she told Hilary. ‘I decided that I couldn’t leave my brother’s room as it was, with people coming for the sale, so I’ve just been fumigating it. I seem to have sprayed some of the stuff on my hands.’
Who Saw Him Die? Page 21