by R. N. Morris
The soldier with his feet up stirred promisingly. ‘Make it a quid.’
‘Very well.’ Quinn handed over the money. The soldier took it with a nod, then sprang up with sudden energy to heave his kit bag on to the luggage rack.
When he sat down again, he no longer seemed sleepy, nor threatening. ‘You a copper then?’
‘Yes.’
‘Thought so.’
‘What gave it away?’
‘That coat, ain’t it. None but coppers wears coats like that.’
Quinn’s hand went up to remove a bowler hat that was no longer there. He remembered the wreckage that Coddington had made of it and ran his hand instead through his hair.
‘You CID?’
‘Yes, as it happens.’
‘Thought so.’ The soldier nodded eagerly to his companions, soliciting respect.
Quinn settled back into his seat. It was going to be a long journey.
The soldier wanted to know all about the case Quinn was working on. He seemed to be under the illusion that he could help him crack it.
‘I regret I’m not at liberty to reveal the details of an ongoing investigation.’
The man seemed to take offence at this. ‘Suit yourself,’ he said huffily, before retreating into a resentful sulk. Before long, his head nodded forward heavily. Soon after that, he was snoring.
Quinn had telephoned ahead. There would be a police car waiting to pick him up at the station. And the military police at the garrison had been briefed. This shouldn’t take any longer than it needed to. But as he had predicted, even without the soldier’s tedious quizzing, the journey dragged. The train seemed to put in at every station along the way. More than once it clanked and groaned to a standstill in what appeared to be the middle of nowhere, the darkness pressing in all around, as if they were being held in the grip of an infinite night.
Each time, it was just as Quinn had given up all hope of ever moving again that the train would jolt into life again, like a slumbering soldier shaken from his sleep.
At last they drew into Colchester.
He was quick off the train, faster than the soldiers, who seemed reluctant to tear themselves away from the transient sanctuary of the compartment. Quinn had got the sense of how time for men at war is parcelled out into blocks in which they are safe, if bored, and blocks in which they might die. Who wouldn’t be reluctant to leave a period of safety?
Quinn spotted the local detective sent to meet him. There might have been something in what the soldier had said, after all. He wasn’t wearing an ulster – instead a belted raincoat – but he had the look of a copper all the same.
‘Chief Inspector Quinn, I presume? I’m DS McKenzie from Colchester CID.’
Quinn shook McKenzie’s hand. ‘Pleased to meet you.’
Thankfully, McKenzie was a taciturn individual, singularly devoid of curiosity. He seemed inconvenienced rather than impressed by the arrival of a famous detective from Scotland Yard. He gave the impression that he had better things to do than act as Quinn’s taxi driver.
Quinn looked out of the window of the car as they drove, peering through the darkness to try to form some impression of the town. But as in London, the street lights had been either switched off or obscured. If anything, it was darker here than London. The streets were certainly more deserted.
McKenzie drove slowly, as if he feared they might drop off a precipice at any moment. Quinn was half-hypnotized by the beams of the car’s headlights, which seemed to form the way ahead just a second before it was needed.
‘We have your man in here.’ Captain Darcy cut an impressive figure in his crisp uniform and scarlet-topped cap. Just to look at him made Quinn want to say the word impeccable. His posture was as upright as a flagpole. His moustache was as precisely clipped as his vowels. Everything about him was an example to the men. He would talk a lot about standards, Quinn imagined, about the importance of maintaining them. All that had made him a willing ally in Quinn’s plans. Darcy looked back as he led the way through the guardroom. In that brief glance, Quinn felt himself assessed, not critically, not dismissively, just interestedly; it was almost as if the MP had never seen a civilian policeman in close quarters before.
‘Did you say anything to him about why you have detained him?’
‘I thought it better not to.’
Quinn nodded approvingly. Surprise was always a useful advantage.
‘Do you want me in there with you?’
‘That won’t be necessary.’
‘I should introduce you, at least. Impress upon him the importance of cooperating.’
‘There is no need for introductions. We know each other well enough already.’
The man was seated on the far side of a plain wooden table that was set perfectly square in the middle of the room. He sat beneath a bare electric light bulb that hung on a twisted cord. Colour flooded his face as Quinn came in. ‘You!’
‘Where is she, Hargreaves? Where’s Mary?’
Corporal Hargreaves shifted warily in his seat. Quinn supposed that ordinarily Hargreaves would be reckoned a handsome man. He certainly carried himself like one. But now, something ugly revealed itself in his face. His eyes grew cold and cynical. His mouth spasmed into a sneer. ‘You tried it on with my wife. Now you’ve come after my mistress.’
‘I hope for your sake that you have not made her your mistress.’
‘What if I have? It’s not against the law.’
‘Abduction. Rape. These are things that are against the law. Quite seriously so.’
‘She came voluntarily. She’s not a child, you know. Even though her silly mother treats her like one. She knows her own mind. I sent her the money and she came willingly. Like a shot. She wanted to be with me.’
‘Her mother is out of her mind with worry.’
‘Mothers … are generally tiresome creatures.’
‘I have come to take her back.’
‘You’re welcome to her. Good riddance is what I say. It didn’t turn out to be such a lark as I had hoped. She spends all the time crying when I am with her. And when I am not too, I shouldn’t wonder. Where’s the fun in that?’
‘Where are you keeping her?’
‘She’s at the George in Colchester. I booked her in under the name Smith. Mrs Smith. Listen Quinn, if you’re going to take her back, I ought to be compensated, you know. I paid out good money in this enterprise. There was the train fare, the hotel, not to mention all the stupid little things I had to buy her to shut her up. She came here with nothing, you know. Hadn’t even packed a bag. Stupid bitch.’
Quinn lurched forward and grabbed the table, intending to hurl it out of the way so that he could get at Hargreaves. He discovered that it was fixed to the floor, as were all the chairs.
‘Keep your hair on, old man. You know how it is. You of all people. It’s not like you never let your feelings get the better of you.’
‘I haven’t raped anyone.’
‘Oh, stop using that word. I didn’t rape Mary, I tell you. She wanted it. It’s not my fault if she spent all the time afterwards crying. The silly girl.’
‘I shall make a report to Captain Darcy. What action he takes will be up to him.’
‘Oh, he won’t do anything. Old Darcy’s all right. Once you get past the prim and proper exterior. All the chaps have mistresses, you know. The officers are the worst.’
‘What about Mrs Hargreaves?’
‘Cissy doesn’t need to know about this, does she? I mean, what she doesn’t know can’t hurt her?’
‘How on earth do you think you can keep it from her?’
‘You owe me one, Quinn, after the liberties you took coming on to my Cissy that time. I’ll let you off all that if you do the decent thing here. We’re men of the world, after all, aren’t we?’
‘Decent? You don’t know the meaning of the word.’
‘Oh, don’t get on your high horse with me. You haven’t got a leg to stand on. You may not have succeeded, but you tried
your damnedest to steal a wife away from her husband. You’re guilty of attempted adultery.’ Hargreaves smiled unpleasantly. He was evidently pleased with his choice of phrase. ‘I’d say that hardly qualifies as decent behaviour.’
‘We have nothing more to discuss here.’
Quinn turned his back on Hargreaves and strode towards the door.
FIFTY-THREE
Quinn left it until the next day to call at the George. He spent the night at Captain Darcy’s residence, on a camp bed in the captain’s living room. Darcy drove him into town himself, through a pleasant misty morning in which the smell of woodsmoke hung. The mist cleared as they drove, and a crisp sunlight glinted on Captain Darcy’s brass buttons. His impeccable demeanour had been cranked up into a carapace of enraged perfection in response to Quinn’s report of Corporal Hargreaves’ transgressions.
The George was an old coaching inn on the High Street, licensed to Mrs Gertrude Triscott, as the sign over the door notified him. A wrought-iron balcony decked with flower baskets straddled the facade beneath the first floor windows. It was hard to imagine a more English scene.
Mrs Triscott herself, a typical example of the hotel landlady, sensible and stout in equal degree, greeted him with an arched eyebrow and a defensive lean backwards when he showed her his warrant card. ‘I believe you have a Mrs Smith staying here?’
She showed him up to Mary’s room. He noticed that she limped as she climbed the stairs, favouring her right leg to take her weight. The detail in itself was insignificant, although the fact that Quinn focused on it, to the point almost of fixation, betrayed his nervousness. He ought to have been thinking about what he would say to Mary.
They came to a door on the second storey and Mrs Triscott nodded. Quinn knocked. There was no reply. ‘Mary? It’s Mr Quinn. Silas. I have come to take you home.’
He strained to listen. Something stirred inside the room. A floorboard creaked. A moment later, the key turned in the lock and the door began to open.
Mary Ibbott threw herself into his arms, hiding her face against his chest, burying into him blindly, like a cat into a bed of catnip. He held the quaking of her sobs close to him, absorbing her tears, her shame, her misery and the gentle, convulsive buffets of her forehead.
They travelled back to London in a mid-morning train that was thankfully almost empty. Quinn had telephoned Mrs Ibbott from the hotel, handing the earpiece to Mary for tearful confirmation that he had really found her.
Now they sat opposite one another in a compartment they had to themselves. She avoided looking at him, keeping her gaze fixed on the passing landscape. Her pale face was reflected in the window.
From time to time Quinn saw her lips move as she murmured to herself. Either she was working out what she would say to her mother, or she was rehashing conversations she had had with her lover. Admonishing him, perhaps, for his cruelty and heartlessness.
He did not press her for answers to any questions beyond the one he had already asked her. ‘Did he rape you?’
At that, she had burst into tears, closed her eyes and lowered her head, shaking out a denial.
Quinn might have suspected that she was lying, but without her cooperation, there was little he could do.
He did not press her for details of how Hargreaves had persuaded her to come to Colchester, or what passed between them while she was there, or why she didn’t write to her mother to let her know that she was alive.
Nor did he tell her about Timberley’s death.
He wondered whether this was cowardice on his part. He was afraid of the emotion it would undoubtedly unleash. But also, he could not imagine a way to break the news that did not involve some cruelty or even sadism on his part. He suspected that if he were to tell her, his motive would be to punish her.
It would be better coming from her mother, he decided.
As the train pulled into Liverpool Street Station, Quinn could see that the platform was already crowded with soldiers waiting to take it back to Colchester, commuters in the infernal business of war.
He was surprised that Mary wanted to take his arm as they walked along the platform. An embarrassed reserve had come over her after the spontaneous embrace of their initial reunion. But now her need for his support was greater than any other consideration. She pulled him to her. The presence of soldiers, and in such great numbers, seemed to have something to do with it.
Quinn patted her hand and held his head high.
As they neared the ticket barrier, he was surprised to hear his name called out. ‘Inspector Quinn!’ Adam Cardew, in the khaki uniform of a private in the infantry, came running with a faltering step towards them. ‘I thought it was you.’
‘Adam?’ Quinn looked the young man up and down inquisitively.
‘Yes. I did it.’ There was a beat before Adam went on: ‘I signed up. I … well, I didn’t tell them about my gammy leg. Dosed myself up with aspirin before the medical and pushed on through. No one was any the wiser. Now I’m in, so there’s nothing they can do.’
‘Why?’
‘Why not? There’s a war on, isn’t there?’
‘What about your mother? She is alone now, now that your father …’
‘She will go to live with her sister.’
‘It’s terribly sad. For her. For you.’
‘Don’t worry about me. I have every intention of taking a bullet to the head as soon as I am out there. I have positively made up my mind to make it happen.’
‘Good God! Why?’
‘Because it’s what I deserve.’
‘Why do you say that?’
Adam Cardew hesitated. He seemed to notice Mary for the first time. ‘I say, don’t I know you?’
Mary averted her gaze sharply, looking down at the ground in embarrassment. She seemed unable to answer Adam’s question.
‘This is Mary,’ said Quinn.
‘Mary? Yes! I do remember you, I’m sure. Didn’t you used to go to … My God, he never did anything to you, did he? My father?’
Mary frowned in confusion and shook her head rapidly, still not meeting Adam’s gaze.
‘Is it because of what your father did? Is that why you said what you said? About deserving …’ Quinn hesitated tactfully.
‘A bullet to the head.’
‘You’re not responsible for your father’s actions. You do not share in his guilt.’
‘No. You’re wrong. I knew. I saw. I saw what he did to her. Made her do. And I did nothing.’
Quinn breathed deeply, filling his lungs as if he feared the air was running out.
‘Until it was too late. And by then there was nothing I could do for her, except …’ Adam narrowed his eyes, as if to hold on to a vision that was fading before his eyes. ‘She was … tormented. You don’t understand. She could never have any peace. Never. Because of what he had done to her. She knew that. She was broken, damaged. That’s why she was like she was. Why she tried to make everyone hate her. She tried to make me hate her. She said those things to make me hate her. Such terrible things. I just wanted her to stop saying such hateful things. I …’ Adam broke off, a look approaching panic in his eyes. ‘I tried to make her understand. But she wouldn’t listen. I tried to explain. That I knew. I knew everything. I had seen them, you see. And I couldn’t hate her. I had no right to hate her. She was my sister and I had let her down. It was all my fault. How could I hate her?’
Tears welled and broke to trickle down his face.
‘I couldn’t let her make me hate her.’ Adam stared into Quinn’s eyes, willing him to understand. ‘I had to stop her.’
‘I’m not sure I understand you.’ Quinn had not been wholly attending to what Adam had said. He was anxious to get Mary back to her mother. But also, he was aware that he did not want to understand what Adam Cardew appeared to be saying. A door seemed to be opening; it would be far more convenient if it remained closed.
He was aware of a strange reluctance to probe. And yet despite it, he could not prevent a questio
n from rising to his lips. ‘How did you know where to find her?’
‘It was our place. The place we used to go when we were children. Before … before he corrupted her. Before he spoiled everything. I thought if there was one place where she might be, where she would run to, it would be there. It was a place of innocence and happiness for us.’
‘And she was dead when you found her?’ He needed to hear Adam confirm this. And if he did, it would be enough for him.
Adam’s head dipped sharply, his eyes skittering away from Quinn’s. It could have been the confirmation Quinn was looking for, a terse, silent nod given because emotion had robbed the boy of words. Or it could have meant something else entirely.
Quinn chose to accept the first, easier, lazier interpretation. But still, he could not suppress one further question. ‘Tell me, why do you think your father put the feather in her mouth?’
‘Did he?’
‘Who else? If he was her killer …’
‘If he was.’
‘You don’t think it was your father who killed Eve?’
Adam ignored the question. ‘Perhaps the feather is a little strange. But I think I understand why … why he would put it there. I think it was a gift. A kind of gift for her. He was giving her back something pure. He saw the feather as a symbol of purity. He was giving her back her purity. Restoring her to purity. The feather, I think, must have seemed … pure to him. It must have reminded him of an angel’s wings. Perhaps he hoped the feather would intercede on her behalf with God? It may not make much sense to you, but his mind, I think, must have been in some … derangement at the time. But if it had been me, I think that’s what would have gone through my mind. That’s why I would have done it.’
Another question began to form in Quinn’s mind, but his solicitude for Mary prevented him from attending to it. But something else contributed to his strange reluctance to ask or even form the question. He knew that once it had been asked, it would be impossible to take it back. And if he could not take it back, he would have to follow it through to its natural conclusion.
‘I’m going to war, sir. Have to get myself trained up first. But eventually, I’ll take my place. And then, well, I don’t imagine it will be that hard to get myself killed. I just have to stand up straight. They have snipers out there, I am told, who are picking off those of our men who are so careless as to let their heads show above the trenches. And so, I’ll die a hero. Or a bloody fool. But not what I am. I don’t care about any of that, of course. It’s for my mother, you understand. I want to give her this. It’s one way I can make amends. Will you let me go?’
