Body of a Girl

by Michael Gilbert

  It was a girl.

  She said, “I wanted to have a word with you.”

  Chapter Twelve

  “Rocket,” said Detective Prothero.

  There was a slip of paper on the table in the C.I.D. room.

  “What is it?” said Mercer.

  “It’s an official reprimand. A stately raspberry.”

  The note said, “Would C.I.D. personnel who remove books or documents from Superintendent Clark’s room kindly have the courtesy to replace them after use.”

  Mercer read it and tore it into sixteen pieces which he deposited in the ashtray. He said, “He must be hard up for something to do.”

  “What’s it all about, anyway?”

  “I borrowed an old ‘O’ book last night from his room.”

  “Doesn’t seem enough to start a riot,” agreed Prothero. “Mind you, if the boys in blue can get in a niggle at you, they will. You want to watch it when they start sending you notices calling you ‘personnel’. Last station I was in, the station sergeant was nuts about personnel. ‘Would C.I.D. personnel kindly wipe their shoes when coming into the canteen.’ Shoes you see. That’s what really got him down. They had to wear boots.”

  Mercer wasn’t listening. He was trying to decipher a scrawl which Sergeant Gwilliam had left for him. He gave up trying, and pushed it across to Prothero, who said, “I know about that. George Hopkins from The Chough, rang up just before Taffy went off duty. He wants to see someone.”

  “About what?”

  “He didn’t say. Except it was something to do with Sweetie.”

  “Don’t tell me,” said Mercer. “I can guess. For the last two years Sweetie has been serving drinks in the saloon bar, and no one’s recognised her.”

  “I don’t think that can be right,” said Prothero. “The woman who hands round drinks in the saloon bar is married to the head waiter in the snack bar. She’s got a black moustache too.”

  “Exactly. She was disguised.”

  He found the landlord of The Chough polishing glasses. George Hopkins had been an international water-polo player and still looked like a muscular sea lion. He said, “It’s what we’ve all been reading in the papers about that skeleton, Inspector. The one you thought might be the Hedges girl, only it wasn’t. Would you care for a drink?”

  “It’s a bit early for beer.”

  “Make it a gin and peppermint and I might join you. It’s settling to the stomach after breakfast. Like I was saying. Young Sweetie Hedges. I take it you’re still interested in her, by the way?”

  “Very much so.”

  “Well, I was talking to the wife, and it came to our minds that we might have been some of the last people to see her. They were saying March 12th two years ago was the last time anyone saw her. Right?”

  “As far as we know.”

  “That would be a Wednesday. She was in here that evening, just after we opened. She came into the private bar, and she stayed almost an hour.”

  “How on earth would you remember a thing like that?”

  “I didn’t remember it. My wife did, and when she mentioned it, I said the same thing to her. I said, how would you remember a thing like that? Cheers.”

  “Cheers,” said Mercer.

  The hand in which the landlord held his glass was large, and rounded with muscle. A hand and wrist that could flick a heavy water-polo ball the length of a swimming bath. A hand that could very easily choke the life out of a girl.

  Mercer said, “All right. I’ll buy it. Tell me how you did remember it.”

  “Two ways. Because the second Wednesday in March is always stocktaking day. The checker from the brewery comes down and goes through everything. And I’m always in a bloody bad temper by the end of it. Like I was that evening. Sweetie said something, and I snapped her head off. Then she looked so miserable, I was sorry for her, and like I said, I stopped for the best part of an hour talking to her. And that’s the other thing that made me sure it was a Wednesday. It’s only on early closing day we’d be as empty as that. Any other night I’d have been too busy to stop and talk.”

  “I see,” said Mercer. It sounded plausible. “I suppose you can’t remember what she talked about.”

  “Have a heart, Inspector. It was two years ago. But I’ll tell you one thing. I think she had a date to meet someone.”

  “I see.” Mercer tried to keep his voice level. If you showed you were too interested, a witness would often make things up to keep you happy. So take it steady. He said, “What made you think that?”

  “It was the weather. It was one of those sort of days in March when one moment the sun’s out, and the next moment, someone’s pulling the plug, and down it comes. Real rain, by the bucket. She was wearing one of those very light Macintoshes. Things you can screw up and put in your pocket. They’re convenient to carry round, but they won’t keep out heavy rain. You know the sort of thing I mean?”

  Mercer nodded.

  “Well, once or twice she looked at her watch and looked out of the door, as if she was wondering whether she’d chance it, and I thought, she’s got a date, but she doesn’t want to arrive looking like a wet hen. As soon as it did stop, she pushed off quick, as if she’d been keeping someone waiting, and she knew he wouldn’t be best pleased.”

  “What was the colour of the Macintosh?”

  Mr. Hopkins screwed up his eyes to assist thought. Then he said, “Dark. It might have been red.”

  “Had she got her handbag with her?”

  “I suppose so. She was paying for her own drinks. Brandy and ginger ale.”

  “You didn’t feel so sorry for her you stood her the drinks?”

  “Not as sorry as that. Buying drinks for customers is a mug’s game. I don’t mean you,” he added hastily as Mercer felt in his pocket for some money. “You’re here on official business. Call back whenever you like.”

  The Church of St. John the Evangelist stood almost opposite the point where Cray Avenue joined the High Street. On the very rare occasion that he lay awake at night Mercer could hear the hour being chimed on its old-fashioned belfry clock. The rectory was behind the church. Father Philip Walcot opened the door himself, and led the way down a tiled passage into his study at the back.

  Father Philip was small and unpretentious and homely. He looked like anything but a clergyman. He reminded Mercer of one of Beatrix Potter’s friendly animals. A grey squirrel? The likeness was enhanced by a certain nimbleness of movement and a pair of bright and inquisitive eyes.

  “It’s about Mavis Hedges.”

  “Mavis who?”

  “Old Sowthistle Hedges’s daughter.”

  “Oh, you mean Sweetie. Was her name Mavis? No one ever called her that.”

  “That’s what her birth certificate called her. Mavis Paula.”

  “I’m surprised that Hedges bothered to register her birth. Well, now, Inspector. How can I be of assistance to you?”

  “The last time the girl was seen was on March 12th, two years ago. She came into town some time in the late afternoon. It was a Wednesday and early closing day, so she couldn’t have come for the shopping. One or two people have mentioned that they thought she came to see you.”

  “So she did, Inspector. So she did.”

  Mercer waited.

  “She was a member of my congregation. Not a religious girl in the conventional sense of the word. But very simple and sincere in some ways.”

  Mercer said, “Would you be prepared to tell me what she talked to you about?”

  “I’m not sure,” said Father Philip.

  There was something else there, besides unpretentious friendliness. There was authority.

  “Tell me, Inspector. The body you found on Westhaugh Island. There was a theory that it was Sweetie. But now it’s thought to be someone else. Is that right?”

  “The medical evidence proved quite conclusively that it couldn’t be Sweetie. She would have been barely eighteen at the time of her death. This was a woman in her middle or late twent
ies.”

  “Is Sweetie dead?”

  “I can’t prove it. But I’m quite sure of it. And I think I know how she died. She went over the weir, from a point near the northern bank.”

  “How can you possibly know that?”

  “Her handbag was washed up on Westhaugh Island. According to a young lady, who happened to have a boating accident at the same spot, that is what would be likely to happen to any floatable object which went over the weir. The bag was washed into an old water-rat burrow and got silted over. That’s what first made us think the body was hers.”

  “When you say that she went over the weir, do you imply that it was an accident? Or are you saying that she was pushed?”

  “It could have been an accident. It was an evening of sudden violent rain. The planking would have been very slippery.

  “But it might have been deliberate.”

  “Yes.”

  “And it is your honest opinion that if I tell you what she said to me that afternoon it will help you to arrive at the truth?”

  “I can’t answer the question until I know what she did say. It might turn out to be quite irrelevant.”

  “A Jesuitical answer,” said Father Philip. “If it is irrelevant will you promise to forget about it?”

  “Policemen aren’t good at forgetting things. But I’ll do my best.”

  “If you’re to make any sense of what she said to me, you’ll have to understand the sort of girl she was. You’ve seen her home?”

  “Yes,” said Mercer. “I’ve seen her home, and I’ve met her father.”

  “If you had been forced to live in that place, as the only alternative to an institution, what would you have done?”

  “Got out of it damned quick.”

  “You’re thinking of yourself as a boy. Boys have strength and skills to sell, even if they’re totally uneducated. In the same position, all a girl has to sell is herself. But she wasn’t wanton. She was doing it quite deliberately.”

  “For money.”

  “Oh, yes. For as much money as she could get. All of which she spent on herself. Buying proper clothes, eating proper food; keeping herself clean.” The priest picked up Mercer’s crooked smile, and said, “When we preach that cleanliness is next to Godliness I think it’s just that sort of external neatness which is meant. And it must have been very difficult, in the conditions she was living in. But she did it, because she kept her eye steadily on her main objective. Which was to find a husband. Not necessarily a very rich man, but someone with enough money, and the power that money brings, to rescue her from the pit into which fate had thrown her.”

  “And she had found him,” said Mercer softly.

  “Yes. She had found him. And because she wanted to marry him, and she thought that he genuinely wanted to marry her, she had refused to have sexual intercourse with him. You can imagine the result.”

  “Very easily.”

  “A girl who had sold her body to men she did not love, was refusing it to someone she did love. And it must have seemed to the man that she was using the refusal as a weapon. A piece of blackmail, if you like.”

  “Wasn’t she?”

  “Not entirely. She was a very odd girl, Inspector. Have you noticed something? Usually, when a girl carries on in the way she did, the men who have enjoyed her favours despise her. Loathe her, perhaps. Did you find any of that?”

  Mercer shook his head. “I hadn’t thought about it,” he said. “But you’re quite right. They were good friends to her.”

  “Loving, not loathing. ‘The bleak wind of March made her tremble and shiver. But not the dark arch or the black flowing river.’ “

  “That sounds like poetry.”

  “Thomas Hood. ‘The Bridge of Sighs’. A bit old-fashioned for modern taste, Inspector. But you should read it. It might give you ideas. ‘Mad from life’s history, glad to death’s mystery swift to be hurled. Anywhere, anywhere out of the world.’ “

  “Do you mean she might have committed suicide?”

  “It seems to me to be a possibility. She was going to meet him that evening. Did you know that?”

  “Yes. I knew that she also had quite a few drinks to set her up for the meeting.”

  “The man would have a car. He would drive her out on the quiet road, along the north bank of the river. He would know that she had been drinking. No doubt he had been drinking himself. What would happen?”

  “There’d be no holding him,” said Mercer. “He’d try to rape her.”

  “Then she realises that he is just the same as any other man. That he had no intention of marrying her. She jumps out. Stumbles down the path onto the weir. Perhaps the man is coming after her. It is pitch dark. The planks are slippery. What does that make it? Accident, suicide, or murder?”

  “That’s for the lawyers,” said Mercer. “Tell me, Father, who was the man?”

  “If I knew, I wouldn’t tell you,” said Father Philip. “But I don’t. She never mentioned his name.”

  On the way back to the station Mercer bought an early edition of the evening paper from the one-legged paper seller under the railway arch. ‘Death Island’ had been replaced on the front page by ‘Balance of Payments’, but it was still there, on the turn-over news page, and reading it Mercer had an uncomfortable feeling that the storm centre was still ahead. It was clear that Sowthistle had been talking. The ominous words ‘allegations of brutality’ were beginning to appear like harbingers of the storm.

  He found a note on his desk summoning him to Clark’s room. There was a man with him, and Mercer recognised him, although this was the first time they had met face to face. It was Detective Superintendent Wakefield, in charge of the C.I.D. of ‘Q,’ Division. He had a nose like the prow of a ship, prematurely white hair and a reputation as a disciplinarian.

  He said, “You seem to have been stirring things up down here, Mercer.”

  “I’m afraid so, sir.”

  “You know what we say about publicity. The only time we like it is when it comes from the judge, after the prisoner’s been sentenced. Before that, it’s usually nothing but a pain in the arse.”

  “I couldn’t agree more.”

  “Did you rough this man up?”

  “Nobody touched him. I had Detective Massey with me, making notes. And I kept the door open. There were people going past, and coming in and out the whole time. And I persuaded Hedges to take a bath that evening and took the opportunity of getting the police surgeon to give him the once-over. All he found was flea-bites.”

  “I’m glad you had that much sense.”

  He looked at Clark who said, with a suggestion of anger in his voice, “I didn’t know about that.”

  Wakefield grunted and opened his briefcase. It was crammed with papers and it took him some time to find what he wanted. Then he said, “I’ve got a report you were asking for. On the Hexagon Garage in Baswell Street. The local boys have had it under observation for some time, on and off. Thought to be handling stolen cars. Nothing proved yet.”

  Mercer was skimming through the report, reading between the lines of the cautious police shorthand. “They mention a man called Pugh. One of the mechanics who works there. Thought to be a hanger-on of the Crows. Would the fact that he works there be the reason they think the place is bent?”

  “One of them.”

  “Could they get a snap of him?”

  “If you can give me a good reason for wanting it.”

  “I think he may be a man who called himself Taylor when he was down here, some years ago.”

  “What was he doing in a nice place like Stoneferry?”

  “If it’s the man I think it was, he was sent down here with the object of ruining a garage proprietor called Prior. He took a job at his place, made a deliberate mess of it, landed him with a lawsuit, and scarpered.”

  Clark said, “I think you’re building sandcastles. The whole thing could easily have been an accident. Where’s the proof of a plot?”

  “No proof,” sa
id Mercer. “Just a coincidence. Prior wasn’t the only garage owner down here to be driven out of business. The same thing happened to Murray. In his case it was a hot car which was found in his workshop. I see from the records that we got an anonymous tip-off about it.”

  Wakefield was watching the two men closely. He seemed less interested in what they were saying than in the evident hostility sparking between them. He said, “Give me details of that car. If we can pin it and Taylor to the Hexagon Garage, and the Hexagon Garage to the Crows, you might have something. But I’m not quite sure what. A crow’s nest, or a mare’s nest?”

  When he had gone, Clark said to Mercer, “I think we should get on a lot better with a little more co-operation. I know the C.I.D. likes to work on its own, but you’re not a private army. We happen to be part of the same organizsation. I’d be obliged if you’d remember it.” Mercer said nothing.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Mercer followed Mr. Brattle out along the cat-way which spanned the weir. There was a light handrail on the downstream side. Under his feet the river slid sedately through the half-open sluices in a blue-black arch.

  “Not a lot of water going through now,” shouted Mr. Brattle. “January and February. That’s when they open up and let her rip.”

  “It would still be pretty high in March.”

  “High enough. Specially if we got any snow.”

  “The bleak wind of March made her tremble and shiver. But not the dark arch or the black flowing river.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I said, it’s quite a river.”

  “So it is,” said Mr. Brattle, with the pride of proprietorship in his voice. “So it is. Five years ago it flooded up to the main road. Washed away twelve caravans. And I’ll tell you a funny thing about that. Old Birnie who keeps the caravan site had a donkey and it was drowned. Third day, when the water went down a bit, Birnie and me, we put our waders on, and went to look at him. Do you know what we found?”

  Mercer shook his head. What could they have found? The donkey transformed into a mermaid? A rope of diamonds round his hairy neck?