by Frank Smith
‘It will be much the same for me,’ he said. ‘There’s no point in sitting around the house all by myself on Christmas Day when someone with a wife and kids could be enjoying the holiday. Even Mrs Wentworth, my daily housekeeper, will be away, so I might as well work.’
Andrea put a hand on his arm. ‘You’re a sweet man, Neil Paget,’ she said softly. ‘Not at all the surly policeman I first thought you were.’
He forced a smile as he covered her hand with his own. ‘You’re not so bad yourself. Dr McMillan,’ he said. The light from a distant street lamp was reflected in her eyes, and he longed to touch her face.
Andrea sensed the change in him; saw what was in his eyes, and she panicked. No! He mustn’t. Not now. Especially not now. In the split second it took for the thoughts to enter her mind, she withdrew her hand and glanced down at her watch.
‘I’m on early shift again, tomorrow,’ she said as naturally as she could, but she could hear the quaver in her voice. ‘I had such a lovely time this evening, Neil, but I’d better get some sleep or I’ll be nodding off on rounds tomorrow.’
She opened the door. ‘No, don’t get out,’ she said as he began to open his own door. ‘It’s only a few steps.’ She leaned over and brushed his cheek with her lips, then slipped out of the car. ‘Thanks again for a lovely time. I’ll ring you as soon as I know how things will be after the holidays. And in case I don’t see you before, merry Christmas.’
‘We might manage a quick drink around Christmas Eve,’ he called after her. ‘I’ll ring you.’
She seemed to hesitate in mid-stride, then went on. ‘Yes,’ she called back. ‘That would be nice, Neil. Good-night.’
He watched as Andrea ran up the steps and opened the door. She turned and waved, then disappeared inside. The faint smell of her perfume lingered, and for a brief moment he was tempted to follow her. But no. He’d have to buzz her on the intercom; make up some excuse or other...He sighed. It was no good. Besides, it was late and she had said she was on the early shift at the hospital.
He leaned his head against the head-rest and let out a long breath. What had he said? He went over every word in his mind. It didn’t make sense. One minute they were just chatting as people do at the end of a pleasant evening, then...
She must have sensed the change in him. That was the only explanation. He groaned aloud. ‘I told you not to spoil it,’ he growled beneath his breath. ‘You’re a fool, Paget. No. You’re a damned fool!’
He started the car and made a sweeping U-turn in the middle of the deserted street.
From the darkened window of the flat two floors above the street, Andrea McMillan watched him go. She wished she could relive those last few seconds in the car. As the car turned the corner and disappeared from view, she pulled down the blind and snapped on the light beside the bed. For a long moment she stood there, looking down at the gilt-framed picture that stood alone on the bedside table.
She sat down on the bed. No, she thought wearily, that would have only made things more complicated than they were. Besides, she reminded herself, Neil Paget was a policeman, and a policeman was the last thing she needed in her life right now.
3
Thursday, 24 December
‘Good-night, Monica.’
Jane Wolsey closed the door and shook her head in a puzzled fashion as she made her way to her own room at the end of the upper hall. She hoped Monica wasn’t going to be ill again. That would put the cap on it for Christmas. But the girl was too bright-eyed, too flushed, and far too excited. Something had happened at the party; Jane was sure of it, but Monica had insisted it was nothing.
‘It was the wine, Miss Wolsey, that’s all,’ she’d said, adopting her most contrite expression. ‘I know I shouldn’t have had it, but I didn’t think a little bit would hurt. And everyone else was having such fun. I’m sorry, but I shall be fine in the morning, honestly. Miss Wolsey, you’ll see.’
I should have gone with her, Jane thought guiltily, then brushed the thought aside. She had not been invited, and she could hardly insist on chaperoning a seventeen-year-old. Monica had only herself to blame. She knew very well what alcohol could do to her. She’d been told often enough. It was a good job Sally had been there to bring her back to the school. What a state the girl had been in. Shivering, flushed, over-excited - thank God Crowther hadn’t seen her before they got her up to her room and into bed.
Jane sighed heavily. It was understandable, she supposed. Monica Shaw had little enough to be happy about this Christmas, and she’d so looked forward to the party at the stables. It had been the one bright spot in what would otherwise have been a dreary holiday for her.
Christmas Eve, and she was spending it here at Thornton Hill; the only girl left in the school over Christmas. Jane found it hard enough herself, and she was used to it. What must it be like for a girl like Monica?
Damn that woman anyway.
Jane Wolsey opened the door of her room and went inside. In school parlance it was the housemistress’s ‘private quarters’. Anywhere else it would have been called a bed-sit. As sixth form housemistress she was entitled to larger, separate quarters, but she had given up that privilege years ago in favour of the much-needed extension to the library. The room was small but comfortable - a bit cramped when she had the girls in, but she didn’t mind that. At least up here she was close to them. It was like having your family around you. Her family; the only real family she had ever known.
It was too early for bed. Perhaps a cup of tea and a bit of television if there was anything decent on. Her mind went back to Monica Shaw as she filled the kettle at the sink. Or rather to Monica’s mother, Julia.
Two days before end of term, she’d rung up. Couldn’t possibly get home from Brussels in time for Christmas - the European Community conference, you know. And I’d be so worried if I thought Monica was at home in that big house all by herself, especially over Christmas. Jane had not been privy to the conversation, but she could imagine how it had gone.
And she could imagine the head’s reaction. Yes, Mrs Shaw. No, Mrs Shaw. Of course I understand perfectly, Mrs Shaw. No, of course not, Mrs Shaw. It won’t be any trouble at all. We’d be delighted to have Monica stay with us over Christmas. A gift for her from you? Of course we’ll arrange it. Did you have anything in particular in mind? No? Well, I’m sure her house-mistress, Miss Wolsey, will know exactly what to get her. Yes, something personal of course.
Julia Shaw was a Thornton Hill ‘Old Girl’, and one whom Crowther loved to talk about. ‘She’ll be Prime Minister one day, you mark my words. You should be very proud of your mother, Monica. We here at Thornton Hill are very proud of her. Pity you aren’t more like her.’
God, but Crowther could be thick sometimes. Couldn’t she see what she was doing to the girl? Monica was not like her mother and never would be, and thank heaven for that at least. Julia Shaw was a self-centred, hard-driving career woman, plain and simple. She should never have had children at all. Monica was an embarrassment to her, and she didn’t even bother to hide the fact. Conference indeed! Who ever heard of a European conference continuing over Christmas? The woman simply didn’t want to be bothered with the girl.
Jane Wolsey sighed again as she made the tea and sat down before the television set. Monica’s gift - from her mother - was there beside the TV, all wrapped and waiting to be opened in the morning. Jane eyed it apprehensively. She hoped Monica would like it.
Even more fervently, she hoped the girl would be all right. She was sure there was something Monica wasn’t telling her. Perhaps she should ring Sally. She glanced at the clock. It was a bit late to ring now. Sally would have to be up early in the morning. Still, she’d like to know...
Friday, 25 December
The clock in the tower above the chapel struck the hour of one, its tone muted by the falling snow. Thick, wet flakes stuck to the trees, weighing down the branches until some of them touched the ground, and snow-capped bushes looked like giant mushrooms.
&nbs
p; But the girl who stumbled blindly up the path leading to the back door of Braden Hall saw none of this, oblivious even to the tracks she’d left behind. The door stuck again as it always did in winter, and she had to put her shoulder to it before it opened. She stumbled inside and pushed the door shut, wheezing as she fought for breath, blood pounding in her ears like storm-tossed waves crashing against the shore. She wanted desperately to rest, but there was something she must do. The sound inside her head grew louder; engulfed her...
She was in her room, leaning against the door, panting hard. Her head ached abominably and she wanted to be sick. She doubled over, arms wrapped tightly around herself and the object she was carrying, holding back the shakes she knew must come, and biting back the urge to scream.
Jumbled thoughts hammered inside her head as she staggered to the bed and flung herself face down. Her small, sharp teeth bit deeply into the pillow as tremors racked her body. Her shoulders heaved convulsively, yet she made no sound as she waited for the storm to pass.
Slowly, painfully, she pulled herself up and propped her back against the wall. She remained like that for a long time, eyes closed, teeth clenched, and breathing hard. When, at last, she did open her eyes, it was to stare sadly around the room as if seeing it for the first time - or perhaps the last. Her eyes fell on the mirror, and her lips parted in a mirthless smile.
She wanted to cry but the tears refused to come.
4
‘Her name is Monica Shaw, sir.’ The uniformed constable spoke softly as if afraid of waking the girl on the bed. ‘Her house-mistress, a Miss Jane Wolsey, found her like this first thing this morning. Said she was bringing her a Christmas present from her mother.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘What a thing to have happen at Christmas. She was only seventeen.’
Why should its being Christmas make a difference?
The thought passed fleetingly as Paget looked down upon the huddled form so small and still amid the tangled bedclothes. Surely the death of anyone so young was a tragedy at any time of year.
Long, dark hair all but covered the girl’s face, and a slim white arm stuck out incongruously above her head. The arm was cold and stiff to his touch, rigor well advanced. Carefully, so as not to disturb the body, he pulled the bedclothes away and was surprised to see that the girl was fully dressed except for shoes. Her hair fell away to reveal a small, pinched, chalk-white face, and Paget felt the all too familiar cold, hard knot forming in the pit of his stomach. He felt the muscles convulse and he swallowed hard. He had never become used to this part of the job, and he knew, no matter how often he had to face it, he never would. He lowered the bedclothes gently.
Seventeen, Maitland had said. She looked to be about twelve!
The bedside lamp was on, its rays pale and feeble, competing as they were with the probing light of a wintry sun. But it was what lay on the table that drew Paget’s attention: a plastic syringe. Paget bent closer to examine it. There was a small, dark stain on the tip of the needle. Blood, most likely, dried and crusted. He sniffed, but if there was any odour he could not detect it.
‘She was diabetic,’ Maitland offered. ‘Miss Wolsey told me. She said that would be her insulin.’
‘I see.’ Paget’s tone was non-committal. ‘And you say Miss Wolsey rang for the ambulance? Surely she must have realized that the girl was dead?’
‘She said she thought the girl had gone into some sort of coma, sir. She said her first thought was to get her to hospital.’
‘And it was the ambulance men who called us?’
‘That’s right, sir. When they saw how things were, they rang us straightaway. Said they’d seen enough suicides in their time to know when to leave things alone. I have statements from them, but I had to let them go because they had another emergency call just after I arrived.’
Suicide. They were probably right. Christmas was always a bad time for those who were alone, the depressed, and the chronically ill. He remembered his own first Christmas alone after Jill died, and how he’d felt himself. Not suicidal, exactly, but he could understand the frame of mind that might lead to such a measure.
The sound of muted voices came from the corridor, and a tall, thin, gloomy-looking man appeared in the doorway. He looked half asleep, but his hooded eyes missed nothing as they swept the room.
‘You certainly know how to pick ‘em. I’ll say that for you, Paget,’ he greeted the chief inspector. ‘I suppose you do know what day this is? Or didn’t they use to have Christmas up in London?’ He sniffed loudly, whether from the cold or in disgust was impossible to tell.
‘Damned nearly went into the ditch a couple of times on the way over,’ he went on. ‘The road’s a sheet of ice.’ He rubbed his hands together as if they were cold, but Paget had come to recognize the gesture. Charlie was about to get down to business. ‘What is it this time?’ His eyes went to the night table. ‘Drugs?’
‘Hard to say, Charlie,’ Paget said. ‘I’m hoping you and Starkie can tell me.’ Inspector Charlie Dobbs was in charge of the Scene-of-Crime forensic team, and Dr Reginald Starkie was the Home Office pathologist.
‘Speak of the devil,’ said Charlie as a short, plump, bald-headed man appeared beside him. ‘Merry Christmas, Reg.’ The pathologist glowered as he paused to catch his breath after climbing the stairs. ‘Sounds like you could do with losing a bit off that spare tyre,’ Charlie observed. He patted the man’s ample belly none too gently. ‘No Christmas pud for you today, my lad.’
‘And a merry Christmas to you, too, Charlie!’ Starkie wheezed as he pushed past. ‘Got nothing better to do on Christmas Day, then, have we, Paget?’
Paget ignored the jibe. ‘Thanks for coming out so promptly,’ he said. After all, it was a hell of a way to spend Christmas.
Starkie grunted and set his bag aside. He broke the seal on a packet of latex gloves and began to pull them on. ‘I was supposed to be reading the lesson this morning,’ he grumbled to no one in particular. ‘Something to do with peace and goodwill and not being called out to look at dead bodies on Christmas Day.’ He sighed heavily. ‘Ah, well, let’s take a look, then.’ He made a note of the time and bent to his task.
Paget moved aside to allow Starkie room to do his job, and looked around the room. It was a dreary little place. What had once been a larger dormitory had been made over into smaller, separate rooms that were little more than cubicles. Private to be sure, but small and cramped and barely adequate for one person.
It was sparsely furnished. There were two chairs; one straight-backed with a padded seat; the other an old-fashioned leather armchair that had seen much better days. A portable radio, together with earphones, lay on the floor beside the chair. Along one wall, parallel to the bed, was a cupboard whose upper shelves and hangers contained the bulk of the girl’s clothing, including two complete school uniforms. The lower shelf was a jumble of undergarments, some soiled and waiting to be washed by the look of them, piled on top of several pairs of shoes. Beside the cupboard was a desk-cum-dressing-table made of pressed wood, and mounted on the wall above it was a mirror. A strip of Sellotape was stuck to the glass as if something had been taped there recently and taken down again, but whatever it was, it was not in evidence now.
The dresser top was strewn with jars and bottles containing creams and sprays, a brush, a comb, hair grips, a lipstick holder, a box of tissues, and a hand-held hair-drier with its flex writhing like a snake through everything.
And there was glass. Tiny shards glinting in the light. Paget looked around but could see nothing broken. Neither was there anything in the wastepaper basket except some cotton wool wadded into a ball.
The cupboard and dresser were painted white - or had been many years ago. Now the surfaces were scuffed and scarred and yellowing with age. School books almost filled a shelf beside the dresser, but mixed in with them were several well-thumbed paperbacks, all of them romances, judging by their titles.
There were no pictures. No photographs. No posters; nothing even stuck on
the inside of the cupboard doors. And yet there was ample evidence that there had been in the past. The distant past. Dried bits of Sellotape, hard and brittle to the touch, still clung determinedly to the paint, and yet Monica Shaw had put up no pictures of her own, and he wondered why.
And lastly there was the bed. Small, narrow, utilitarian, little more than a cot, really, but adequate, he supposed, for a young girl. Sadly, he shook his head. Not much of a place to be spending Christmas, he thought. Why was she here? Why wasn’t she at home?
As he was about to leave the room, he stopped to examine a coat that lay in a crumpled heap on the floor at the foot of the bed. It was a heavy winter coat, and an expensive one. Blue, teal blue, if he wasn’t mistaken. And a pair of winter boots lay some distance away, apparently kicked off and left where they fell. They lay in a small puddle of water that had begun to dry at the edges on the wooden floor. He felt the coat. It, too, was quite damp, and he made a mental note to find out exactly when it had stopped snowing.
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Jane, do try to pull yourself together.’ Samantha Crowther paced back and forth before the gas fire in the housemistress’s room, back and forth, back and forth until Jane Wolsey wanted to scream.
It was all very well for Crowther; she hadn’t been close to Monica. Not the way she had. For that matter, thought Jane ungraciously, she doubted whether Crowther had ever been close to anyone in her life. All she ever thought about was the school and its reputation; never mind the people. She kept going on and on about how difficult this could make things for the school. What would the other parents think? How would they react? What about the board? And what was she going to say to Monica’s mother? - if she could ever get hold of her. All of the government offices were closed for Christmas, of course, and there seemed to be no way of finding out exactly where Julia Shaw was.