‘What’s all this then, Ron?’ demanded Douglas Quantrill jovially.
‘Well … You know how it is. Thought you were supposed to be at the show yourself?’
Quantrill, who knew only too well how it was, pointed out that there were no good conduct marks to be won for actually watching the performance. He bought Ron Timms a beer and outlined his own tactics. His colleague congratulated him on his policemanly aptitude for low cunning, and bought him the other half.
And that was where they were, drinking companionably, when an urgent message for Detective Chief Inspector Quantrill was received at the Town Hall. When it eventually reached him – but not before the performance had been interrupted, to Molly’s chagrin, twice – he pushed aside his mug and hurried out into the November night.
Somebody in Breckham Market had been blasted with a shotgun.
Chapter Sixteen
Felicity Goodrum was another middle-aged resident of Breckham Market who had happy memories of the music of My Fair Lady. Years ago, before her marriage to Austin Napier, she could have danced to it all night.
And so when she first heard that the musical was going to be performed in Breckham Market, she had wanted to see it. She had almost said to Jack, impulsively, ‘Oh, do let’s go!’
Had she done so he would have bought tickets straightaway, of course. Dear Jack – he was practically tone deaf, and he’d never been to a theatre in his life, and the performance would almost certainly have mystified and bored him; but he would have gone with her and pretended pleasure simply for the sake of pleasing her. And that was why Felicity had eventually decided not to mention it.
She knew, without consulting him, that at this stage in their marriage he wouldn’t dream of letting her go out for an evening unescorted. Nor would he consider leaving her at home alone. Though he had been gallant throughout their courtship, she had assumed that once they were married he would want to revert to some of his old habits; but when she had told him that he must feel free to spend an evening on his own occasionally – to go off to a pub, if that was what he wanted – he had declared that he preferred to stay with her. Pubs, Jack had said pityingly, stretching out his legs at his fireside like a contented dog, were for men who had nothing to go home for …
And now, of course, after the burglary that had occurred while they were out the previous Saturday, the Goodrums had an additional reason for staying at home.
What had been stolen was not significant: it was the disgusting mess that had appalled them both. Felicity had been badly shocked by it. Jack had at first been furiously angry, but then he had simmered down and tried – obviously for his wife’s sake – to brush it off. The damage hadn’t been directed at them personally, he insisted. He’d heard that was the way some wild young amateur burglars carried on, fouling their victims’property just for the hell of it. It didn’t mean anything. Of course Felicity was upset – but she had no need to worry about it. Lightning never struck the same place twice!
Felicity was not reassured. She remembered all too well what Jack had told the police about the resentment some Breckham Market people might feel because of his new wealth. But if her husband was trying to prevent her from worrying, the least she could do was to keep her fears to herself.
She had spent a busy week replacing soft furnishings and bedding, and obsessively cleaning the house. Jack had tried to take the burden from her and her two-mornings-a-week domestic help by bringing in a team of professional cleaners, but even so Felicity could not convince herself that all traces of defilement had been removed. She felt that the house was still smeared. She felt that their privacy had been invaded, that an attempt had been made to violate their marriage.
She also felt closer to and fonder of Jack than ever. As long as she was in his company, she knew she was safe. And she was as glad as he was to spend their evenings at home – after all, it was still a wondrous novelty to be in a domestic atmosphere where there was none of the stress of her first marriage. With her second husband there was no tension, no fear of violence; nothing but trust and contentment.
Jack got up from his armchair, put another log on the fire, and sat
down again without taking his eyes from the television screen for
more than a few seconds. ‘Shot!’ he crowed, as his favourite snooker player potted a difficult red and brought the cue-ball back for the black. Then he turned to his wife. ‘You’re sure you wouldn’t rather be watching something else, dear?’ he asked considerately.
‘Quite sure.’ Felicity, her neat gold-rimmed reading glasses half-way down her nose, was embroidering a cushion cover in petit point while glancing every now and then at the screen. ‘I’m really beginning to enjoy snooker now you’ve explained it to me. Bet he tries to put that second red on the left into the middle pocket …’
The player did, and Felicity felt as pleased as though she’d made the pot herself. ‘I think you should buy that snooker table you were talking about,’ she added. ‘We’ve got plenty of room for it, goodness knows, and it’ll give you a lot of interest. Besides, I’d rather like to have a go, too.’
‘Good girl! I’ll order it, then. If we can get the table set up in time for the Christmas holidays, it’ll be fun for young Matthew as well. Oh, shot! Did you see that, sweetheart –?’
Felicity hadn’t seen it. What had made her look up from her embroidery was a sound she thought she heard from outside the house. And ever since the burglary, strange sounds had worried her.
‘Did you hear anything, Jack?’
He turned down the volume of sound by remote-control and cocked his head, listening. ‘Where from?’
‘The conservatory, I thought –’
Both listening, they heard the crash of breaking glass.
‘Bloody hell!’ Jack leapt to his feet, shouting. He made for the glassed door that led directly to the conservatory, unlocked it and wrenched it open. Switching on the soft lighting, he illuminated the cast iron columns, the budding camellia trees, the bamboo furniture and the chintz ‘Indian Tree’cushions with their stylised birds perched on stylised branches.
There were shadows in the convervatory, but none of them was dense enough to conceal an intruder. Nothing moved except a wraith of November mist that insinuated itself through a broken pane of glass and wavered across a spotlight’s beam. On the tiled floor, surrounded by shattered glass, lay a sizeable chunk of rockery stone.
‘Bloody hell –’ Jack repeated.
Felicity had followed him. ‘What’s happening? What is it?’ she said anxiously.
‘I dunno. Somebody fooling about, probably – you get back inside, my dear, I’ll handle this.’
Jack strode masterfully through the conservatory. Felicity, too anxious to think of obeying him, stood hovering. He unbolted and flung open the garden door. Standing with his back to the light, he bellowed into the gathering mist.
‘Who’s there? What the hell do you think you’re doing?’
Felicity Goodrum watched as the reply came roaring at her husband out of the darkness, and blew away his head.
Chapter Seventeen
From the extent of the wounds in the dead man’s head and the diameter of spread of the pellets in his neck and shoulders, a forensic expert estimated that the shotgun had been fired at a range of not more than eight yards.
The incidental damage caused by the shot was extensive. Some pellets had bypassed their target and cut a swathe through the camellias. Some had shredded the bamboo furniture. Some, having ricocheted off the cast-iron pillars of the conservatory, had smashed glass. Mrs Goodrum, who had been standing in the doorway that led into the house, had sustained cuts from flying glass and flesh wounds from stray pellets.
She had also been hit by debris from her husband’s skull. Fragments of scalp and flesh and bone and brain had been blown all over the conservatory. The budding camellia trees that had escaped destruction appeared to have burst into unusually early crimson blossom.
Splattered with blo
od, not all of it her own, Felicity Goodrum had turned and ran. Too shocked to use the telephone, or to close the front door of The Mount behind her, she had staggered down the drive moaning, her arms outstretched in a plea for help.
She was incapable of thought. The fact that there was a gunman out there in the dark garden, and that he might be waiting to kill her, never entered her mind. What she feared – what she was running from – was the scene in the conservatory … Her husband lying on his back on the tiled floor, with blood gurgling out of what remained of his head. The horror that dripped from the camellias.
In the dank grey first light of Sunday November 23rd, a team of policemen began searching the walled garden of the Goodrums’ Georgian house.
Chief Inspector Quantrill, on the advice of the forensic expert, established the approximate spot where the gunman must have been standing. It was on a slope, slightly above and directly overlooking the garden door of the conservatory. The slope had been made into a rockery, brightened at this time of the year by winter-flowering ericas, and the gunman had stood on a partly paved, partly gravelled path that traversed the rockery. His probable firing position was marked by some scuffed gravel, but the daylight failed to reveal any identifiable footprints, either there or elsewhere.
‘He must have known the layout of the garden,’ said Quantrill, pausing on his way back to the house to survey the rockery from the paved terrace outside the conservatory. ‘He’d picked his spot in advance, there’s no doubt about that. If he hadn’t, he couldn’t have made his way there in the dark without first treading on a flowerbed and providing us with a footprint. So we’re after somebody who’s been here before – though not necessarily by invitation.’
‘I suppose you mean last week’s burglar,’ accepted Sergeant Lloyd. She turned away from the garden and went back – though not by way of the conservatory – to the room they were temporarily using as an office. She felt unusually despondent: it was vexing enough that she had failed as yet to catch the burglar, without having on her conscience the possibility that he had used the stolen gun to commit murder. And whatever Jack Goodrum’s past crimes – himself a murderer, even? – Hilary was saddened that his death had put an end to what had so evidently been a happy middle-aged marriage.
‘No need to jump to the conclusion that Goodrum was killed with his own gun,’ Quantrill protested as he followed her. ‘Good grief, there’re enough shotguns in Suffolk to provide one for every third household in the county – and that’s only the legally owned ones! If the fellow who stole the gun last week had wanted to kill Jack Goodrum with it, he could have hung about and done it later that evening. Couldn’t he?’
‘Not if he was doing the burglary – getting hold of the gun – on behalf of somebody else …’
Quantrill had never before seen Hilary so downcast. She was tired, of course; they’d both been working at the murder scene until the early hours, and had returned after only a brief snatch of sleep. And then, too, she must have been distressed – though she’d been too professional to do more than close her eyes tightly for a few moments and gulp – by the sights and smells in the conservatory. Longing but knowing better than to offer her a shoulder to lean on, he wondered for a moment whether he could get away with some minor physical contact, like putting a sympathetic hand on hers. But he decided not to risk it.
‘Look,’ he said vigorously, instead: ‘Jack Goodrum’s stolen gun was a 12-bore, we know that. But there’s a wide variation in shotgun calibre: four-ten, 28, 20, 16 – even 10 and 8, as well as 12. So the chances are that he was shot with a gun of a different bore, anyway. And if the searchers can find the spent cartridge case, that’ll prove it.’
Some minutes later, a message came from the garden that the cartridge case had indeed been found. It was an Eley GP 12-bore.
‘Proves nothing!’ asserted Quantrill briskly. They had just been informed that the mobile police canteen had arrived at The Mount, and he was looking forward to biting into a bacon roll. ‘Unless we can recover Goodrum’s stolen shotgun and send it to the forensic lab for a test firing, a cartridge case proves nothing either way.’
‘It begins to look significant, though, doesn’t it?’ Hilary had been making use of the Goodrum’s downstairs cloakroom to rinse the persistent abattoir-taste of the conservatory out of her mouth, and now she was beginning to feel more detached and positive. A mug of coffee – even canteen coffee – and a couple of Anadin, and she’d be back to normal.
‘The shotgun was stolen on Saturday 15th,’ she went on. ‘And we know now that the burglary took place just after enquiries had been made in the town about where Jack Goodrum lived.’
Information had started to come in as soon as the news of the murder had percolated through Breckham Market the previous evening. Jack Goodrum had not been a customer of any of the town’s pubs, but as a rich newcomer he was known by name and sight by many more people than he knew. When one of the barmaids at the Coney and Thistle heard about the murder, she had told the landlord – who had immediately telephoned the police – that a stranger who had called in for a drink during the previous week had asked where he could find Mr Goodrum.
A second report had just come in. A detective making enquiries in Mount Street had called at the home of the owner of the principal newsagent’s shop. The newsagent had seen and heard nothing suspicious in Mount Street on the evening of the murder; but he remembered that a stranger who had made a token purchase in his shop the previous week had asked if he delivered newspapers to Jack Goodrum, and at what address.
According to the descriptions, the stranger in the pub had been a bit of a punk, with one gold ear-stud, and the stranger in the shop had been middle-aged, bespectacled and well-spoken. The middle-aged man had made his enquiry during the afternoon of Wednesday 12th, the punk at lunch time on Saturday 15th.
‘The fact that two men wanted to find Jack Goodrum doesn’t mean that either of them intended to rob him, let alone murder him,’ said Quantrill. ‘There could be a perfectly legitimate reason for their enquiries. The older man might well be an inspector from the Inland Revenue, or the VAT-man, chasing Goodrum for unpaid taxes and catching up with him at last. If either one of them had come here intending villainy, he’d hardly have taken the risk of advertising his presence by asking where to find his victim.’
He paused, rubbing his chin. ‘All the same,’ he added, ‘bearing in mind that the shotgun was stolen that same Saturday evening, –’
‘– we’ve got a useful lead on the burglary, at least,’ concurred Hilary. ‘And since it’s possible that Jack was murdered by his own gun, we need to set up a search for the partial punk with the ear-stud.’
Chapter Eighteen
The detectives’more immediate concern was to interview the dead man’s wife.
Felicity Goodrum had been found, staggering distraught and bleeding out of the gates of The Mount, at approximately 8.25 the previous evening. Mount Street was usually very quiet at that time in the winter, but fortunately for her some near neighbours were returning home after a visit to Ipswich, and had picked her up in the headlights of their car.
They had immediately helped her into their house and called the police. Too shocked to give any coherent information, Felicity had been taken by ambulance to Yarchester Hospital. There, a number of shotgun pellets were removed from her arms and upper body, and fragments of glass from her face; her wounds were dressed, and she had fallen into a merciful, sedated sleep.
Detective Chief Inspector Quantrill and Sergeant Lloyd arrived at the hospital shortly before ten on Sunday morning. Hilary, who had begun her working life by qualifying as a nurse, went in search of the ward sister.
The sister, busy and warm, clearly regretted the detectives’ intrusion. ‘Mrs Goodrum? Physically, her condition’s satisfactory. She’ll be fit for discharge in a couple of days. But she’s had a shattering ordeal, you know. I suppose you couldn’t leave her in peace for a bit longer?’
‘I only wish we could
,’ said Sergeant Lloyd.
Mrs Goodrum had been put into a private room. As the sister led the way there, she said, ‘You’ll find her son with her. A nice boy, and obviously fond of his mother, but the situation’s more than he can handle.’ She paused. ‘It wasn’t his own father who was killed, I take it?’
‘No – his new stepfather.’
‘Ah, that accounts for his lack of emotion. Pity, in a way, that he wasn’t fond of his stepfather. Better for him, of course. But it’d help his mother if they could grieve together, and it’d give her an incentive to keep going for the boy’s sake … Well, there you are, m’dear – second door on the right, please don’t stay too long, and I hope you soon catch the bastard who fired the gun.’
PC Barry Brown, a porky young constable from the Yarchester division who was officially on duty outside Mrs Goodrum’s room but in fact loitering by the nurses’station and doing his best to waste their time, got a whiff of CID as soon as he saw the plain-clothes couple and hurried to intercept them.
‘Mrs Goodrum’s son arrived about half an hour ago, sir,’ he reported to the Chief Inspector. ‘One of the masters drove him over from his school. The hospital notified the headmaster last night, but they agreed there was no point in telling the boy and bringing him here until this morning.’
‘Fair enough,’ said Quantrill. ‘Has anyone else wanted to see Mrs Goodrum?’
‘No, sir. But her parents are expected from Northamptonshire later today.’
‘Thank goodness for that,’ said Hilary. She knocked and went in, followed at a discreet distance by the Chief Inspector.
A tall adolescent sat beside the bed, with his back to the door. He stood up and moved to the window as the sergeant went in, but she gave the whole of her attention to Mrs Goodrum. Felicity, huddled in a hospital dressing gown, was sitting up on the bed, propped against a pillow. With her prematurely grey hair and grief-ravaged face, she could have been mistaken for the boy’s grandmother.
Who Saw Him Die? Page 12
