Who Saw Him Die?

by Sheila Radley

  ‘Were they your father’s?’

  ‘My grandfather’s. Father didn’t shoot, but Grandpapa was a keen shot. I can remember seeing him lovingly cleaning his guns long after he was physically incapable of going out with them.’

  ‘They haven’t been used for a long time, then?’

  ‘No. Grandpapa tried to interest Cuthbert in shooting at an early age, but my brother was a very gentle boy. He hated – as I did – to see rabbits bowled over and birds brought thumping down from the air.’

  ‘My own feelings, exactly,’ said Hilary. ‘There’s quite enough death about already, without any of us contributing to it voluntarily.’ She gave the older woman an encouraging smile. ‘Is that the key to your brother’s room?’

  Eunice Bell’s spots of high colour had returned. She said nothing, but led the way through a studded green baize door that had once separated the kitchen and servants’quarters from the rest of the house.

  The dimly lit passage they entered had a clinging, frowsty smell, partly attributable to the rising damp that moistened the cracked floor tiles and tide-marked the walls. At the far end was a stout back door. An old wooden tea-trolley stood beside the door of the last room on the left. On the top shelf of the trolley was an empty tray; on the bottom shelf, a lidded basket labelled with the name of an Ipswich laundry.

  ‘It was Cuthbert’s choice’, said Eunice Bell defensively, ‘to move into what used to be the cook-housekeeper’s room. When my mother died, almost twenty years ago, my brother and I rearranged our lives. I have my own self-contained rooms on the first floor. Cuthbert wanted to be down here, on the ground floor of the tower, so that he could come and go as he pleased through the back door. Our paths rarely crossed.

  ‘I cooked a meal for both of us each evening and left his food on this trolley, together with his pocket money for the next day. Cuthbert usually remembered to put out his dirty dishes for my daily woman to collect. She would have cleaned his room, of course, but he preferred to keep it locked. He was responsible for changing his own sheets and his personal linen. He didn’t do it very often, I’m afraid, but I couldn’t supervise him without invading his privacy. And that was something neither of us wanted.’

  ‘I understand,’ said Hilary. ‘Have you looked round his room since his death? Have you moved anything?’

  Eunice Bell allowed one corner of her mouth to twitch in distaste. ‘I opened the door on the day after he was killed,’ she said. ‘One of your uniformed colleagues returned Cuthbert’s possessions to me. There was a little money, his briefcase, and the key to this room. As I say, I opened the door. But I closed it again rapidly – and I really would recommend you not to go in.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Miss Bell. I’ve been a policewoman for a long time. I shan’t be shocked, I promise you.’

  Eunice Bell unlocked the door in silence. She opened it just wide enough to enable her to reach in and switch on the electric light, then turned and walked away. Hilary pushed the door wide open.

  She had seen and smelled worse living quarters: druggies’squats in Yarchester, vagrants’dossers, the six-bedroomed house that a wealthy eccentric shared with forty-eight cats. Clanger Bell’s room, harshly illuminated by a single electric bulb, was less filthy than any of those, though the bed looked as if it hadn’t been made for a decade or more, and soiled clothes lay about in ripe heaps.

  Even so, Sergeant Lloyd was shaken. What got to her was not the appearance of the room, nor the foreground smell, so much as the atmosphere. As soon as she stepped inside, she felt enclosed in such a mesh of wretchedness, of frustration, of grief and bitterness and despair, that she backed out again, overwhelmed.

  It wouldn’t be impossible, she reflected as she swallowed hard and quickly closed the door, for her to search Clanger’s room on her own, if she had to. But just at the moment she saw no good reason why she should.

  The back door was open. Eunice Bell had made a point of letting a blast of cold fresh air into the passage. She stood outside in the gathering November darkness with her back to the house, her head held high, but breathing rather more deeply than usual.

  Hilary joined her. ‘I see what you mean,’ she said quietly. ‘But what are you going to do? The room will have to be cleared before you can put the house up for sale.’

  ‘I know, and I can’t face doing it myself. Still less am I prepared to ask my cleaner – or anyone in Breckham Market – to do the job for me. Pride again, you see, Miss Lloyd. So I’ve decided to keep the room locked until after the contents of the house have been auctioned. Then I’ll send in a professional firm of cleaners from Ipswich or Yarchester. They can drag everything outside and burn it, and then fumigate the place.’

  ‘Is there nothing of value among your brother’s possessions?’

  ‘If there is, I don’t want it.’

  Hilary nodded. Then she said, ‘What drove him to such despair, Miss Bell? What made him withdraw from life in this way?’

  ‘Heredity,’ said Eunice Bell drily. ‘And now, if you’ve seen what you want to see –?’

  ‘But I haven’t. Look – you mentioned his briefcase. He always carried it with him, didn’t he? The station sergeant said it was stuffed with old newspapers, but I would like to search it while I’m here. There’s a possibility that it may contain something significant.’

  ‘I very much doubt it. Old newspapers, yes; Cuthbert worked in a London merchant bank for a few years when he was a young man, and he liked to make a display of reading and understanding the financial news. But search the briefcase by all means, Miss Lloyd.’ A ghost of a smile flickered over Eunice Bell’s face. ‘You’ll find it just inside his door, to the right – where I dropped it before I retreated.’

  At Miss Bell’s suggestion, Hilary spread out the contents of the case on the mahogany dining-room table, now partially dismantled for the sale. There was nothing in the briefcase except brittle old newspapers, chiefly the Financial Times. The dates seemed to be in no particular sequence; no topic was marked or followed through; nothing had been torn out. The papers were between four and twenty years old.

  One of the oldest was a copy of the local newspaper, folded at an inside page. The main item of news on the page concerned the search for a missing ten-year-old. He had disappeared a fortnight earlier from his home village near Yarchester after setting out to visit a travelling fair, and no trace of him had so far been found.

  On the same page was a feature about four other children who had disappeared from the county without trace. One of them, Terry Gotts aged eight, was a Breckham Market boy. He had disappeared some fifteen years before the date of that particular edition of the paper; and by coincidence, also after setting out from home to visit a travelling fair.

  The feature included photographs of all the missing children, with their names printed underneath. But young Terry Gotts’ photograph had been deliberately damaged. Someone had taken a ball-point pen, and had scored the photograph with lines that obliterated the boy’s features; scored them so fiercely that the point of the pen had made holes in the paper.

  Chapter Twenty Eight

  ‘Does the name Terry Gotts mean anything to you, Miss Bell?’

  Eunice Bell had come down from her quarters carrying a small tray on which was a cup of black China tea. She paused, tray in hand, to consider the question.

  ‘I know an elderly Mrs Gotts who has a number of adult children, but I don’t recall a Terry among them.’ She put the tray on the table. ‘I’m afraid I have no lemon to offer you.’

  ‘It’s good of you to give me tea at all, in the middle of your packing.’ Hilary re-folded the newspaper so that the feature on missing children was hidden. ‘This particular Terry disappeared at the age of eight, on an August day thirty-five years ago. There’s a mention of the incident in one of these newspapers.’

  ‘Oh – then yes, I do remember. Mrs Gotts was our daily cook-housekeeper at the time. Terry was her youngest child. My mother wouldn’t allow her to bring him int
o the house during the school holidays, but he sometimes played in the back yard. His disappearance was a great tragedy for her.’

  Sergeant Lloyd searched her own memory. ‘I’ve never heard any of my colleagues refer to a missing Breckham Market boy of that name – but then, it was such a long time ago. There’ll still be a file on the case, but it’s probably been moved to county headquarters. As far as you know, Miss Bell, has anything ever come to light?’

  ‘No,’ said Eunice Bell. She stood with her hands folded in front of her, her attitude not defensive but severely matter-of-fact. ‘I was fond of Mrs Gotts, when I was a girl. She wasn’t with us for more than two years at most, but she was good to me. I’ve kept in touch with her each Christmas, and I should have heard if there had been any news of her son.’

  ‘And what about your brother? Was he a friend of Terry Gotts?’

  ‘Hardly, Miss Lloyd. For one thing, there was a considerable age difference.’

  ‘How old would your brother have been when Terry disappeared?’

  ‘That was the year I was nineteen … so Cuthbert would have been seventeen.’

  Hilary stood up and walked across the room, frowning in thought. ‘Despite the age difference, wouldn’t Cuthbert have known Terry? If the boy played in the back yard during the holidays, mightn’t your brother have met him and spoken to him?’

  ‘Quite probably. Yes, he did – he used to be amused by the child’s antics.’

  ‘And did Terry ever follow Cuthbert? You told us, when I came here with Mr Quantrill, that Cuthbert used to follow Jack Goodrum about like a puppy. Mightn’t Terry have followed Cuthbert – or both of them – in the same way?’

  It was Eunice Bell’s turn to frown. ‘I don’t understand the significance of your question, Miss Lloyd.’

  Hilary said nothing. She unfolded the newspaper, revealing the mutilated photograph of Terry Gotts, and placed it flat on the table.

  Miss Bell picked up the newspaper so that she could hold it in focus under the wall light. As soon as she saw the deliberate obliteration of the child’s features, and realised what it might imply, she drew an audible breath. All trace of colour seemed to drain from her bony face.

  ‘Oh God …’ she said. Her voice was distressed.

  ‘Do you know something about this, Miss Bell?’ said Sergeant Lloyd. ‘Something about Terry Gotts’disappearance?’

  ‘No.’ Eunice Bell closed the newspaper decisively, and placed it on the table. ‘I knew nothing at the time, and I know nothing now. But having seen this, I think I can guess where his body is.’

  ‘Where’s that?’

  ‘At the Town Hall. You’ll need to bring some men, and some strong lights. And probably an oil can.’

  As Hilary drove her through the lighted streets of the town, Eunice Bell began her explanation with an account of the system that her great-grandfather had devised for supplying water to the Town Hall.

  It was only within her lifetime, she said, that mains water had been laid on in Breckham Market. When the Town Hall was built, a well had been sunk in the cellar immediately below the Italianate campanile, which – far from being a delusion of grandeur, or even housing bells – was in fact a water tower. A steam-operated pump had drawn water up from the well and into the tank in the tower.

  ‘When he went on to build this house,’ Eunice Bell continued, ‘my great-grandfather used the same system on a smaller scale, with a hand pump. My father employed a full-time gardener when I was a child, and the man spent one whole day each week pumping up the water to fill the tank.’

  ‘And where’s the connection with your brother?’ asked Sergeant Lloyd.

  ‘Cuthbert was fascinated by the system. He would stand for hours watching our gardener pumping. And Grandpapa sometimes took us with him on tours of inspection of the Town Hall. Cuthbert’s greatest treat was always to be allowed to go down the cellar and watch the machinery at work.’

  ‘So your brother would have known his way round the building?’

  ‘He would have known how to reach the cellar – and without going through the main doors.

  ‘We were never allowed to go to the Town Hall after Grandpapa died, when I was nine. The town was provided with mains water at about that time, and Cuthbert was terribly anxious to know whether the Town Hall pumping machinery would remain there. He was still talking, years later, about the possibility of getting in to find out by sneaking into the yard at the back of the building and sliding down the coal chute.’

  ‘And was the machinery still there?’ Sergeant Lloyd stopped her Metro in the market place, just outside the Town Hall. She turned in her seat to look at Eunice Bell. ‘Is it still there – and is that why we need an oil can?’

  ‘Yes, the machinery’s there.’ Miss Bell, her face grimly white under the street lights, stared straight ahead. ‘I saw it last Thursday. I had to go to the Town Hall to make arrangements for paying the rates on Tower House, now that I’m leaving. I happened to meet the Chief Executive, who knows my family connection with the building, and he suggested that I might like a final look round. No one seemed to know about the old pumping cellar. They couldn’t at first find the keys, but they let me in eventually.

  ‘What I noticed there didn’t seem significant at the time. But when you showed me the newspaper photograph, I realised that Cuthbert might have tried to show off by taking Jack Goodrum to the cellar. And that Terry Gotts might have followed them. And that the older boys might have harmed the child.’

  Sergeant Lloyd got out of the car and glanced round the market place. The patrol car support she had radioed for had not yet arrived. It was 6.45 p.m. The administrative staff who worked at the Town Hall would have long since gone home, and though the front steps and the windows of the antechamber were lighted, there was little sign of activity in the building. Outside, the market day rubbish of cabbage leaves and squashed oranges had been cleared away. The town centre would have been quiet, if it were not for the bikers gathered on their favourite pitch just opposite the chippy, revving their machines.

  Hilary gave a moment’s thought to the Quantrill family. As she had so recently seen young Peter fall from a bike, and knew how critically ill he was, it seemed at best irrelevant, at worst prurient, that she should now be picking away at the details of a thirty-five-year-old incident that had not necessarily resulted in a death at all.

  But then, as Martin Tait had meant to say to her (though he’d put it more arrogantly), the best thing Douglas Quantrill’s colleagues could do for him was to get on with the job.

  ‘Your theory sounds sadly probable, Miss Bell,’ she said, rejoining the older woman in the car. ‘It would certainly help to account for your brother’s disturbed behaviour, wouldn’t it? And it would also account for Jack Goodrum’s anxiety to get Cuthbert out of the way. But you know how finicky we are about having evidence …’

  ‘I do indeed,’ said Eunice Bell. ‘But this time I believe I have it. When you go into the pumping cellar, you’ll find what I think is my brother’s school cap, caught fast in the machinery. It had a distinctive design, a gold hoop on a blue ground. You’ll be able to identify it because I sewed name tapes on all his school clothes.’

  ‘Your brother’s school cap? I thought you said that when Terry disappeared, Cuthbert was seventeen?’

  The corner of Miss Bell’s mouth twitched a little. ‘It was before your time, Miss Lloyd. Things were different, then. My brother had only just left his boarding school, and he was accustomed to wearing his cap. My father insisted on it, even in the holidays. He said it marked Cuthbert out as the son of a gentleman.’

  ‘I see … Did you know at the time that your brother had lost his cap?’

  ‘Yes, though it seems that he lied about where. It was a very hot August weekend, as I remember –

  ‘Cuthbert came to me in a panic on the Saturday evening, saying that he’d lost his cap at the fair on Castle Meadow. He was never allowed to go to the travelling fairs. He’d told me that morning t
hat he intended to go there with Jack Goodrum, even though he knew he’d get a thrashing if Father found out. Next day, we heard that Terry Gotts was missing. I felt cross with Cuthbert because he seemed more concerned about the loss of his cap than about the missing child.’

  ‘Did the police interview your brother about Terry?’ asked Hilary.

  They interviewed us all. The Gotts family lived not far from us, and everyone in the area was questioned. Mrs Gotts gave Terry much more independence than we were ever allowed, and she’d sent him off from home on the Saturday afternoon with sixpence to spend at the fair. He had been seen there with other children of his own age, so there was nothing to connect him with Cuthbert.’

  ‘But what did your brother say, when the police questioned him?’

  ‘He said he was at home all day in the garden, with me. That was where he was supposed to be. And it would have been a matter of pride with our parents to confirm that their son had been doing what he was told.’

  ‘Didn’t you suspect anything, though? When you heard next day that Terry Gotts was missing, didn’t it occur to you that your brother might know something about him?’

  ‘Not at all.’

  Eunice Bell paused. Then she added: ‘You see, Miss Lloyd, it was in many ways a more innocent age than this. Rightly or wrongly, young people were kept in ignorance. At nineteen, I was so naïve that the very worst fate I could imagine for Terry Gotts was that he had fallen into the river and been swept away.’

  ‘I see,’ said Hilary; though in fact she found it incomprehensible. ‘But you weren’t all that naïve, were you, Miss Bell? If you supported your brother’s story that he was with you in the garden, then you must have lied to the police.’

  ‘Certainly.’ Eunice Bell looked the sergeant full in the face and gave a near approximation to a smile. ‘I might have been innocent of physical matters, but I was used to lying on my brother’s behalf. I thought of it simply as protecting him. And I did it gladly, because at that time I still loved him.’