Everyone in Breckham Market associated the name Quantrill with the police, and there was no doubt that Peter must have taken a lot of stick on account of it. A copper’s son was bound to feel that he had to prove himself to his mates, and Peter had gone out of his way to do so. When he was fifteen he had appeared, to the shame of his parents, before a juvenile court on a charge of causing malicious damage to the church hall where the youth club met. A fine way for a chief inspector’s son to behave … and God knew, now, what the wretched boy got up to in the wasteland of his spare time.
Quantrill was very worried about his son, though he tried not to let his wife know it. She doted so uncritically on Peter that there was no point in attempting to discuss him with her. Besides, knowing what he did about the darker side of life, Quantrill had always made a point of trying not to alarm Molly. It had seemed best to let her issue the necessary parental cautions about road safety, and later about smoking and alcohol, while he took secretively upon himself the tightrope tasks of warning the children against strangers without making them afraid of people, and forbidding them to experiment with drugs without arousing their curiosity.
Well, at least none of his three had been molested, thank God. And the two girls had grown up thoroughly wholesome. But Peter …
After his court appearance, the boy had become sullen and uncommunicative. The magistrates had given him a conditional discharge, and Quantrill had tried to impress upon his son the need to change his friends and to take up a healthy sport or hobby. Peter had certainly kept out of any further public mischief, but the nature of his current activities was a mystery to his parents. He treated the house as a hotel, and – apart from the occasions when his father hollered at him to answer when he was spoken to – withdrew from any participation in family life.
Naturally, Quantrill had begun to fear the worst. He had searched Peter’s room and found neither smell nor sign of drugs or solvents – but if the boy was using them he would know better than to do so at home. Whenever he could get within reach of his son Quantrill peered suspiciously for tell-tale physical signs, but the only result of this policy was that Peter now kept out of his father’s way as much as possible.
This morning’s incident, when he had chased the boy upstairs to demand an apology from him, was in fact the first direct communication that they had had for months. Irritated as he had been at the time, Quantrill had begun on reflection to take heart from the episode. For a few moments Peter had looked and sounded like the cheerful young rascal of old. He’d been quite funny about Jennifer’s weedy husband Nigel … probably right, too … If only Molly hadn’t been there, looking embarrassed, they could have had a father-and-son laugh about it. Still, if it meant that Peter was beginning to come out of his self-imposed exile, that was something to be thankful for.
Quantrill felt almost light-hearted, until he recalled his son’s cheeky punch-line. Grandad … What a humiliation to have to come to terms with! And there, as he drove along Victoria Road towards Tower House, was Hilary Lloyd waiting for him in her car … She was just thirty-one, only eighteen years younger than he was, but she would be bound to think of him as irretrievably middle-aged, once she knew.
Once she knew. Quantrill’s spirits began to lift again. Hilary didn’t know, yet; almost certainly wouldn’t, for some time. For the next few weeks, or months, he still had some credibility as a youngish man – so why not try to make the most of it?
He accelerated towards her, indulging in a moment’s fantasy until he heard – faint but clear, and coming unmistakably from the direction of Benidorm Avenue – the voice of common sense telling him not to go making a silly fool of himself.
Quantrill brought his Maestro smartly to a halt at the kerb, nose to nose with Sergeant Lloyd’s Metro. He got out of his car as athletically as possible, and went to speak to her through her open window.
‘’Morning, Hilary!’ And then, because he hadn’t seen her for several days, and because she looked in some way different, he added impulsively, ‘How are you?’
‘Peeved,’ said Sergeant Lloyd. She spoke pleasantly enough, but the smile he had hoped for – the rare whole-hearted smile that lit up her strong-boned face in a way that invariably dazzled him – failed to appear. ‘This allegation of murder sounds a time-waster, but I’d have liked to handle it myself. There was no need for you to give up your rest day to come and take charge.’
‘Not my idea,’ Quantrill assured her hastily. ‘And it’s certainly no reflection on you, Hilary. Apparently Miss Bell went over all our heads to the Super – and you know how he jumps when he’s spoken to by anyone who’s likely to be acquainted with the Chief Constable. I suppose he promised her that he’d put his senior CID officer on to the inquiry, so here I am whether I like it or not.’
Liking it – or at least this part of it – he opened her car door. Reassured by his explanation, Hilary Lloyd gave him a workaday smile of thanks and got out. As she stood up – tallish, gracefully straight-backed, but regrettably thin for his taste – he widened his eyes and stared at her. The difference in her appearance that he had noticed while she was still in her car was now fully revealed.
‘You’ve had your hair cut!’ he accused her.
This time she laughed. ‘I don’t deny it. Though I can’t imagine which section of what act you’re proposing to charge me under.’
‘No, no, I’m not objecting!’ He continued to stare, fascinated by the change in her appearance. She had previously worn her dark hair with a sideswept fringe that was obviously designed to hide a scar on her forehead. But the scar – the result of an attack made on her when she was a uniformed policewoman by a Yarchester villain wielding a broken bottle – had always been impossible to conceal. The lower end of it, just missing the inner side of her left eye, puckered her eyebrow in what appeared from a distance to be a permanent frown.
But the irregular line of the scar above her nose had now faded and she had, it seemed, stopped trying to hide it. Her hair was now smoother, brushed well clear of her forehead, shaped more closely to her head. Quantrill thought he might approve, once he had a chance to get used to it.
‘No, I’m not complaining at all,’ he assured her. ‘It looks –’
‘It looks a monstrosity of a house, doesn’t it?’ Hilary said, turning his attention firmly to the place they had come to visit. ‘So this is where Clanger Bell lived … It’s like a scaled-down version of the Town Hall – almost as big, twice as ornate, and probably even more uncomfortable.’
Quantrill pulled himself together and gave his attention to his job. For the first time ever, he took a good look at Tower House. Whenever he had driven past it along Victoria Road he had seen nothing but the stiffly aggressive monkey puzzle tree in the front garden, and the foreign-looking shallow-roofed tower – as Hilary said, a smaller version of the Town Hall’s – rising behind it.
Now, from the iron-gated entrance to the drive, he could see that she was right about the rest of the house. It was every bit as narrow-windowed and uncosy as the Town Hall, but whereas the public building had been constructed in good plain local grey brick, Tower House was built in yellow brick decorated with bands and lozenges of red and blue. There was nothing about the house that was typical of Suffolk; nothing that fitted in with the rest of Breckham Market. But then, the same could have been said of poor old Clanger.
‘The Bell family were builders, so I’ve heard,’ he said. ‘One of them was responsible for building the Town Hall in the middle of the last century. Then he became Mayor, and proceeded to show off by building himself a new house in the same style, but with more elaborate brickwork. Mind you, they’ve always been a very public-spirited family by all accounts, doing a lot of voluntary work in the town. I daresay Miss Bell would have been a town councillor and a magistrate, and taken her own turn as Mayor, if it hadn’t been for her brother.’
‘Are you acquainted with her?’ asked Hilary.
‘Only by sight. My wife does some Red Cross work,
lending out walking frames and wheelchairs, and she knows her to say good morning to. Miss Bell’s one of the top Red Cross people in the county, though, and Molly finds her a bit awe-inspiring. But then, I believe Eunice Bell’s like that. It was typical of her to make a direct approach to the Super about her brother’s accident. We’ll probably find that she thinks she’s summoned us to an interview with her.’
Quantrill held the gate for his sergeant to walk through. Hilary took a closer look at Tower House, gloomy behind the last few damp yellow leaves on the branches of the trees beside the drive. ‘It’s such a depressing place,’ she said. ‘No wonder poor Clanger Bell lost his wits. Is there anything eccentric about his sister, do you know?’
‘Nothing I’ve ever heard mentioned. This allegation of murder sounds so far-fetched, though, that I’m wondering whether the shock of her brother’s death, on top of the strain of looking after him for so many years, has tipped her off balance. Who dealt with the accident, by the way?’
‘PC Powell, sir.’
‘Hmm. Tim Powell’s a bright lad. If there was anything suspicious about that accident, he’d have spotted it. On the other hand, he hasn’t yet developed into what you might call a sympathetic listener – and that may be all Miss Bell really needs. Let’s be patient and hear what she has to say, and with a bit of luck we’ll be able to talk her out of the idea that her brother was murdered.’
Chapter Seven
Eunice Bell, stiff and uncommunicative, led her visitors through the chill gloom of the hall to the equally unwelcoming drawing room, heavy with Victorian furniture and the cold silence of disuse. As the two detectives followed her into the room she took her stand beside the empty marble fireplace and looked severely at the Chief Inspector.
‘Quantrill,’ she said. Her voice was as strong and spiny as the evergreen foliage of the monkey puzzle tree that blocked most of the light from the north-facing window. ‘Do I know your wife?’
Chief Inspector Quantrill was aware that he spoke with a slow Suffolk accent, and he was not normally well disposed to witnesses who addressed him as though he were one of several applicants for the post of jobbing gardener. But having decided that this enquiry could best be cleared up by kindness, he answered her peaceably. ‘Quite probably. My wife works as a receptionist at the health centre, and I believe she helps with the Red Cross medical loan service.’
Miss Bell ducked her head in what was clearly intended to be a gracious nod. ‘Ah yes. I thought I’d heard the name in that connection. As well as in connection with Breckham Market CID, of course. But I don’t believe –’ she turned, stiff-necked, to look hard at Hilary Lloyd ‘– that I’ve heard your name mentioned before.’
‘Probably not.’ Hilary, suspecting that Eunice Bell’s formidable manner was a protective façade, answered her with a pleasant smile. She too liked to keep her private life private, but she achieved it by being apparently outgoing, doing so much lively talking that people could spend hours in her company without realising that she was giving away nothing about herself at all. Miss Bell’s method of keeping people at bay was no doubt extremely effective but it did run the risk, Hilary thought, of needlessly putting their backs up.
‘But I would like to say,’ the sergeant went on sincerely, after explaining that she had come to Breckham Market only the previous year, ‘how saddened my colleagues and I were by your brother’s death.’
‘Thank you.’ Eunice Bell ducked her head in acknowledgement. ‘Superintendent Roydon was kind enough to say much the same thing. I’m well aware that my brother was often a nuisance. As I told Mr Roydon, I very much appreciate the kindness and forbearance shown to Cuthbert by the police. However –’ she directed her penetrating, dark-eyed gaze back to the Chief Inspector ‘– I am not at all satisfied with the investigation into the circumstances of his death.’
‘So Mr Roydon tells me,’ said Quantrill in a soothing tone. ‘May we sit down while we talk about it?’
‘Please do.’
Quantrill remained on his feet until after both women had seated themselves. They were so very different, he thought, watching them: Eunice Bell sitting ramrod-straight on a hard chair, severe in navy blue; and Hilary, almost as thin, almost as straight-backed, but gracefully at ease and looking very attractive in a dusky pink suède jacket that, come to think of it, he didn’t remember having seen before …
But he could see similarities between the women, too. They were both independent, strong-minded, self-contained. And considering that he had spent eighteen months working with Hilary but was no closer to her now than when he started, he foresaw little chance of finding out much about Eunice Bell during the course of the next ten minutes.
There was one thing he could tell about her, though. In whatever way she had been affected by her brother’s death, Miss Bell had not been knocked off balance by it. During the course of twenty-five years of detective work, Quantrill had interviewed thousands of witnesses; he was accustomed to talking to people who were under extreme emotional or mental stress. He could recognise the rigidity of fear, the sweat and shake of nervous tension, the inward stare of the mentally disturbed, the gleam in the eye of the obsessed.
But Eunice Bell showed none of these signs. Her stiff posture was clearly a long-established habit, an indication of nothing more than reserve and fastidious self-control. She sat with a practised composure, her hands and feet neatly placed, calmly motionless. And he knew that – much as he would like to discount what she was about to say to him, on the grounds of emotional imbalance – he was obliged to accept the fact that he was dealing with a rational woman.
‘Why now, Miss Bell? This is what puzzles us. Police Constable Powell came to see you after Mr Bell’s death, but you made no reference to murder then. In fact you told the constable that your only surprise was that your brother hadn’t been run over years ago. All the evidence pointed to accidental death, and that was the Coroner’s verdict. So why are you now suggesting murder?’
Eunice Bell looked at him from under dark, level eyebrows. ‘I expressed no surprise at the time, Mr. Quantrill, because I was well aware of my brother’s habits. It was stupid and wrong of him to make a practice of crossing the road quite deliberately in the path of oncoming vehicles. Unfortunately, I could do or say nothing to stop him. He was a menace to local drivers, and I’m only thankful that he wasn’t the cause of anyone else’s injury or death.’
‘We’re all thankful for that,’ said Quantrill bluntly. ‘But –’
‘I didn’t at first realise that Cuthbert had been murdered,’ Miss Bell continued, ignoring the interruption, ‘because I decided long ago that when the inevitable collision occurred, I would prefer not to know the identity of the driver. I thought it would be unjust of me to hold anyone other than Cuthbert himself responsible for his death. And so I didn’t read the local newspaper report of what happened, and I didn’t attend the inquest.
‘But for some reason – curiosity, I suppose – I did read the report of the inquest in yesterday’s newspaper. And when I saw the name of the driver, and realised who he was, I knew that he must have lied about himself at the inquest. And because he had gone to the length of lying – or at least of deliberately misleading the police and the Coroner – I now believe that he drove at my brother with the intention of killing him.’
‘Now hold you hard,’ said Chief Inspector Quantrill, making the Suffolk idiom sound magisterial. ‘This driver –’
‘John Reuben Goodrum,’ supplied Sergeant Lloyd, consulting her notebook. ‘Known as Jack Goodrum.’
‘Ah. Right, then, Miss Bell: do I understand that you’re personally acquainted with this Jack Goodrum?’
‘No, Mr Quantrill, I am not. But despite the impression he gave at the inquest, Goodrum is no stranger to Breckham Market. And he would have known full well who Cuthbert was.’
Quantrill looked to Sergeant Lloyd for information. She flicked through her notes again. ‘Until a month ago, Mr Goodrum had always lived and worke
d in the Ipswich area. He bought The Mount in April, but wasn’t able to take up residence before October 5th. The Coroner saw that fact as significant. He said that Mr Bell had undoubtedly survived so long because his habits were well known – all the local drivers slowed right down when they saw him.
‘But Mr Goodrum, as a newcomer to the town, didn’t know Mr Bell and couldn’t be expected to keep an eye open for him. That was why the Coroner found that no blame for the accident could attach to Mr Goodrum.’
‘So I read, in the newspaper report,’ said Eunice Bell drily. ‘But Goodrum spent several weeks of each year in Breckham Market when he was a boy. He got to know Cuthbert well. What’s more, he had good reason to harbour a grudge against my brother. And that’s why I believe that when Goodrum returned to the town and learned that the man who wandered the streets was Cuthbert, he seized the opportunity to take his revenge.’
Miss Bell presented the story in crisp detail. When she and her brother were in their early teens, there had been a butcher’s shop just off Victoria Road, on a site now occupied by the Shell filling station. The butcher, who had supplied meat to the Bell household, was a man named Reuben Goodrum. Reuben had a grandson, Jack, who came up from the Ipswich area every summer during the school holidays to help in the shop and with the deliveries.
Reuben Goodrum owned a piece of grazing land which adjoined the far end of the grounds of Tower House. The Bell children were forbidden to play outside their own garden, or to mix with the local children; but Cuthbert had always liked to sit on the high garden wall watching the animals in the butcher’s field, and in doing so he had struck up a summer acquaintance with the butcher’s grandson. Cuthbert was a year older than Jack Goodrum, but smaller and weaker, and he had soon come to hero-worship the bigger boy.
Who Saw Him Die? Page 5
