‘Get that house to house on Lantern Street started, concentrating on the earlier times. And go through these reports, see if there’s anything interesting.’
‘Right, sir. Don’t worry, I’ll cope. See you later.’
On the way to Town Road Thanet sternly resisted the temptation to consider the implications of Mallard’s news. It was a question of priorities. He would have ample time, later, to think about Jethro Pritchard. For the moment it was Mrs Pritchard he wanted to concentrate on, and he spent the short journey clarifying in his own mind precisely which points he wished to raise with her, and in which order. He only hoped that she had not taken advantage of her husband’s absence and gone out.
But he was in luck. Although there was at first no answer to his knock, he thought he saw movement behind the net curtains in the front room, and tried again. A moment later Mrs Pritchard opened the door.
‘Good morning, Mrs Pritchard. You said I could come and talk to you if I needed your help.’
She hesitated, then stood back. ‘Come in.’
She led him into the bleak little sitting room, untying her apron as she went. She laid it over the back of a chair and sat down, folding her hands in her lap. Her meek, waiting stillness, her black dress and the severity of her hair-style combined to give her the simple dignity of Quaker women in the late seventeenth century.
Thanet seated himself opposite her. ‘This has been a terrible week for you.’
His sympathy at once brought tears to her eyes, but she blinked them impatiently away, compressed her lips. ‘My mother’s funeral has been put off until Tuesday.’
Thanet nodded.
‘What … what about Charity?’
‘I’m afraid there’ll have to be an inquest first.’
‘Oh.’
She hadn’t realised, he could tell from her stricken, resigned look.
‘When will that be?’
‘On Monday … Mrs Pritchard, I came to see you because, although I know that this must all be incredibly painful for you, I feel that as Charity’s mother you can help me in a way no one else can.’
‘How do you mean?’ It was barely more than a whisper.
‘First of all, there’s something I must tell you, something which I know will distress you. It will have to be made public at the inquest and that is why I wanted to see you first, to tell you myself. So that you will be prepared.’
She was rigid in her chair, bracing herself against what was coming.
‘When she died, your daughter had just had an abortion.’
Thanet watched with pity as her eyes snapped shut, as if to repudiate this glimpse of a too-harsh reality. He could only guess at the powerful and confused emotions she must be experiencing, but of one thing he was certain: they were all painful.
Suddenly she opened her eyes again. ‘You don’t mean … Are you saying that she wasn’t … killed, after all, that she died because of … what she’d had done to her?’
‘Oh, no. No, I’m sorry if I misled you. But if it’s any comfort at all, I can tell you that she didn’t suffer. She died instantly.’
Mrs Pritchard flinched.
‘But you must see that because of the abortion, however unlikely it might have seemed to you and your husband, Charity must have been …’ How could he tactfully put it? ‘… on intimate terms with a man.’
She ducked her head to hide her embarrassment. ‘Yes, I can see that,’ she whispered. Then she looked up and said in a kind of gasp, as if the protest were being forced out of her, ‘But I just don’t see how she could have. I mean … she would never have had the opportunity.’
‘Nevertheless …’
For a long moment they sat in silence as the indisputable implications of the word sank in.
‘Yes,’ she said at last, with a sigh. ‘You’re right, of course. Nevertheless, she must have.’
Again she was silent, thinking, and Thanet waited patiently. Finally she said, ‘I’m sorry, Inspector, it’s no good. I can’t think of anyone. She just didn’t know any men, not … privately, so to speak. Not to my knowledge, anyway. She must have …’ She shook her head in sad disbelief. ‘She must have been deceiving us for some time.’
‘I know. And you must believe me when I say I’m sorry to cause you additional distress at a time like this.’
For the first time she smiled, if that brief, joyless upturning of the corners of her mouth could be called a smile. ‘You’re very kind, Inspector. Not a bit like what I imagined a policeman to be.’
Now it was his turn to be embarrassed and he brushed the compliment aside by hurrying on. ‘So what I want you to do is talk to me about Charity, tell me what she was like, as a person. I think that somewhere along the line things must have gone badly wrong for her somehow, and I feel that if I can understand why, it would help me in investigating her death.’
‘I don’t see how.’
‘It’s difficult to explain, precisely. But I always find that the more I understand about the … victim, of such a crime, the clearer things become.’
‘I’m not sure, anyway, after what we’ve just been saying, that I knew her as well as I thought I did.’
‘I can see that. All the same, she lived in this house with you all her life. I really would be grateful if you would just talk to me about her. Say anything you like.’
At last Mrs Pritchard relaxed a little. She sat back in her chair and gazed at the fireplace with the blank, unseeing gaze of someone focusing on a mental image. ‘There’s not much to tell, really. As I said before, she was quiet, considerate, used to help me with the chores … I never had to chase her, to get on with her homework or do her piano practice.’ Mrs Pritchard’s eyes flickered briefly in the direction of the piano.
It was shut, Thanet noticed, and the music had been put away, out of sight.
Mrs Pritchard lifted her hands helplessly. ‘I just don’t know what to say. She never gave any trouble.’
This was the opportunity Thanet had been waiting for and he tried not to appear over-eager as he said, ‘Never?’
Mrs Pritchard gave a puzzled frown. ‘What do you mean?’ But she avoided his eye, he noticed.
‘Well, I understood that when Charity was around seven or eight, she used to be quite a handful at school.’
She was staring at him, remembering, and plainly wishing that the conversation had not taken this particular turn. ‘How did you know that?’
He shrugged. ‘We pick up all sorts of snippets of information during the course of an investigation such as this. One of the people I talked to was Miss Foskett.’
She was silent, waiting, clearly apprehensive.
‘I understand that you and your husband went to see her, at her request, to see if anything could be done.’
Still she said nothing.
‘Miss Foskett said that after that interview, Charity was away from school for a week, and that when she came back, she was a different child …’
Mrs Pritchard’s eyes slid away from his questioning gaze. ‘It’s all such a long time ago,’ she murmured evasively.
Thanet was sure that the whole episode was indelibly etched upon her memory. He also saw that she was now faced with a dilemma: she wanted to be co-operative, help him as much as she could, but she didn’t want to be disloyal to her husband. Her next words confirmed this.
‘My husband is a man of very strong religious faith, Inspector.’
‘I know.’
‘He … he sees it as his duty to try to stamp out evil wherever he may come across it.’
Thanet inclined his head.
‘Even when it is in his own daughter.’ Her voice was no more than a murmur.
‘I suppose,’ said Thanet encouragingly, ‘he sees any kind of unruly behaviour as the work of the devil.’
She looked up, eagerly. ‘You do understand. That’s right. That’s exactly what he does feel.’
‘And you agree with him?’
‘Of course.’ But her voice lacked co
nviction. ‘Well … to a large extent, yes.’
‘But not, perhaps, when it came to trying to discipline Charity.’
‘She was so small,’ Mrs Pritchard cried, her sudden passion shocking in its intensity. ‘She didn’t understand. How could she? Oh, she’d been very naughty, I know that, but …’
‘So what did he do?’
Mrs Pritchard moved her feet restlessly as if she would like to get up and run away. Thanet regretted having to press her, but he felt that this incident, so far back in the past, might have been of profound significance in Charity’s life, had perhaps shaped and directed her future behaviour to such an extent that it could even have been partly responsible for her death. But it was possible that he had misinterpreted the whole affair and if so, he had to know.
‘He punished her, I presume?’ he said, as gently as possible.
Mrs Pritchard pressed her lips together, looking away.
‘Did he beat her?’ said Thanet, even more softly.
The muscles in her jaw worked and still she refused to look at him.
‘Locked her up in her bedroom perhaps? Fed her on bread and water? Told her she’d stay up there for ever if she didn’t learn to behave herself …?’
Mrs Pritchard was shaking her head now as if the movement could shut out his words. Her body was stiff with tension and Thanet hated himself for having to do this. All the same he found himself persisting, almost savagely.
‘Said she’d burn in hell, no doubt, if she didn’t promise to …’
Mrs Pritchard clapped her hands over her ears and fell back in her chair.
‘Don’t!’ she cried. She sucked in air as if she were suffocating and then expelled it in a long, slow sigh. Her hands fell away from her ears. ‘I can’t bear it,’ she said.
What price kindness now? thought Thanet grimly, shaken by his own inhumanity. He felt thoroughly ashamed and asked himself what right he had to deplore the way her husband browbeat her if he himself then proceeded to behave in exactly the same way. Once again, he asked himself if there was some quality in the woman herself which called forth this sort of response in men. And had Charity’s revolt against her father’s strictures partly been the result of a determination not to become like the mother whose lack of spirit she had come to despise?
So, how should he proceed? Should he leave it, or should he persist? Was his duty to the dead or to the living? Loyalty and obedience to her husband were obviously deeply engrained in Mrs Pritchard’s emotional make-up. What right had he, Thanet, to attempt to break down anyone’s moral code? If he were to continue, succeed in overcoming Mrs Pritchard’s resistance, how would it affect her relationship with her husband? Would powerful feelings of guilt cause her even more, unnecessary suffering, or would she perhaps find it a liberating experience, the first step out of the state of resigned submission in which she had lived all her married life?
He had to risk it, he decided. If, after all these years, Mrs Pritchard still found even the memory of the experience so traumatic, how much more powerfully must Charity have been affected.
But from now on there would be no more bullying. He loathed browbeating witnesses such as this. Already, in the last half an hour, his self-respect had suffered, his image of himself become tarnished, and these things were important to him, he had to hold on to them to be able to feel right about his life, his work.
It would have to be persuasion, then.
‘Look,’ he said gently, ‘I know how you’re feeling, believe me. I can see that the memory is painful to you and that you are constrained by loyalty to your husband. All right, I accept that. I won’t push you any further. But I can assure you that I wouldn’t be pressing you like this if I didn’t feel that it really is important for me to know.’
This, he decided, was as far as he was prepared to go. If she still refused, then that was that, he would have to desist.
He waited, and the silence stretched out, on and on. At last he made up his mind that he would give her just ten more seconds. He began to count silently. One, two, three …
He had reached nine when she spoke.
‘All right, I’ll tell you.’ Her voice was barely audible.
She leant forward in her chair and clasped her hands in her lap, staring down at them as if they could give her strength for the ordeal. Then, taking a deep breath she began to talk in a halting monotone.
When Charity had got home from school that day, Pritchard was waiting for her. He told her to go straight up to her room, where earlier he had spent some time making his preparations. Mrs Pritchard had had no idea what those preparations were, she only knew she had dreaded Charity’s return more than she had dreaded anything in her life before.
Pritchard went upstairs behind the little girl and shut the bedroom door behind them. Mrs Pritchard, terrified, had crept half-way up the stairs to listen, ready to flee at a second’s notice. She knew that her husband would have been furious to think that she was eavesdropping. A few moments later Charity began to whimper.
Mrs Pritchard looked up. ‘But he didn’t lay a finger on her, I swear it. I’d been so afraid he would lose his temper, but he didn’t. In some ways it might have been better if he had. At least it would have been over and done with, then.’
A few moments later Charity began crying out, ‘No, Daddy, no, no, no,’ over and over again.
Mrs Pritchard’s hands were twisting, squeezing, kneading. ‘I couldn’t think what he was doing to her. I still hadn’t heard him say a single word. And then, a few minutes later, I heard him coming to the door, and I ran downstairs, as quietly as I could.’
Thanet was imagining it all: the crying child; Mrs Pritchard on the stairs, hand pressed against her mouth, ears straining; the heavy thud of Pritchard’s footsteps crossing the room and Mrs Pritchard’s silent flight to the kitchen.
‘He opened the door of the bedroom and called me. “Hannah?” he said. “Come up. I want you to hear this.”’
Thanet swallowed. His mouth was dry, his heart-beat accelerated. He had longed to know what had happened to Charity to change her so, but now that he was about to find out he feared the knowing.
Mrs Pritchard’s eyes were screwed up against the pain of the memory and her next words emerged jerkily as if forced out against her will. ‘He had … he’d tied her up. He’d attached ropes to the four corners of the bed and padded them around her wrists and ankles. She was … she was spreadeagled. She looked so … so helpless, and I shall never forget the look she gave me. It was so full of … terror, and entreaty. She didn’t speak—I don’t think she could. She just lay there … “Take a good look,” my husband said, “because it’s the last time you’ll set eyes on her until she’s seen the error of her ways. And as for you, my girl,” he said to Charity, “there you’ll stay until the Devil comes out of you.” Then he pushed me out of the room and locked the door behind me, put the key in his pocket.’
Mrs Pritchard pressed her fingers against her trembling mouth, then, doggedly, she went on. ‘He just left her there, day after day … He fed her, of course, or tried to … bread and water, that’s all … but she wouldn’t take them, spat them out. He said this was a sign that the Devil was still strong in her … But the worst thing was … he didn’t untie her, not once, not even to go to the toilet. He just let her lie there in her own filth … She must have hated that, she was always such a clean little girl.’
Mrs Pritchard’s control was slipping now and she bit her lip, took another deep breath. ‘In the end, one day while he was out, I went up to the landing and called through the door. “Charity, listen,” I said. “You’ve got to say you’re sorry, do you hear me? Even if you’re not sorry, pretend you are, or you’ll be locked in there for ever. Tell Daddy you’ll behave yourself in future … Please, darling, do it for me, do it for Mummy …”’
Now, at last, the tears which she had held in check brimmed over as she relived the scene outside her daughter’s door. She fumbled blindly for the apron she had folded
over the back of her chair and Thanet realised that she was seeking a handkerchief. Silently he took one from his pocket and pressed it into her groping hand. Then he rose, crossed to the window and stood looking out, giving her a chance to regain her self-control.
Her story had shocked and revolted him. In his work he had come across many instances of child abuse, cruelty and neglect, and the worst, for him, were always the ones in which ‘punishment’ was inflicted in cold blood. Pritchard’s calculated approach, the prolonged nature of Charity’s suffering, filled him with anger and a compassion which extended only in part to Charity’s mother, for had she not stood by and let it happen?
And yet … what did he understand of a woman like Mrs Pritchard, conditioned as she was, no doubt, by the rules of her sect to obey her husband and live cut off from society in this soul-destroying atmosphere? The Pritchards and their like inhabited a strange, harsh landscape as alien to him as a primitive tribal culture. What right had he to judge or to apportion blame?
Mrs Pritchard was calmer now, drying her eyes and blowing her nose.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Your handkerchief … I’ll wash it.’
Thanet smiled at her. ‘Don’t worry about it.’
‘Inspector …’ She hesitated. ‘These last few days I’ve wondered … Perhaps I’m being punished for what I did. But she was so little and I was so afraid she was going to … just waste away. Do you think I was wrong, to tell her to deceive him like that?’
‘What nonsense! You behaved as any mother would, in the circumstances.’
But even as he spoke the thought slid insidiously into his mind: had Charity’s mother, in an attempt to save her daughter, unwittingly set her on the path of deception which had led, ultimately, to her death?
Mrs Pritchard was shaking her head. ‘I didn’t know what else to do. I’ve thought and thought about it and I just don’t know what else I could have done. I couldn’t leave it to go on indefinitely, could I?’
Once again, Thanet gave her the reassurance she needed. Besides, it was true that she didn’t seem to have had any alternative; loyalty would have prevented her from reporting him to the police and open defiance would have been unthinkable.
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