Puppet for a Corpse

by Dorothy Simpson

  ‘Neither of us is on the phone.’

  ‘I see. Go on.’

  According to Mrs Hodges, Charity had taken the disappointment calmly and after spending a few minutes with her friend, had left. Knowing that the Pritchards would never have allowed Charity to travel alone and that the Holiday Home in any case insisted that girls under eighteen should travel in pairs, Mrs Hodges had assumed that Charity had returned home.

  ‘But she didn’t?’

  ‘Not as far as we know.’ Pritchard took an immaculately folded clean white handkerchief from his pocket and mopped at the sheen of sweat on his forehead.

  ‘Why don’t you take your jacket off, Mr Pritchard? It’s like an oven in here.’

  Pritchard shook his head, a sharp, involuntary movement, as if the idea offended him.

  As well it might, Thanet thought. The man was so stiff, unbending, that it was difficult to imagine him ever relaxing in shirt sleeves.

  Pritchard put the handkerchief back into his pocket.

  ‘Soon after I got to work that morning, at about half past nine, I suppose, I had a phone call from my wife’s sister in Birmingham. My mother-in-law had had a severe heart attack during the night and her condition was critical. I spoke to my employer and he told me to take the rest of the day off.’

  Pritchard, who worked as storeman in a wholesale stationery firm, had gone home to break the news of her mother’s illness to his wife. By the time they had packed and given their next-door neighbour the Birmingham address where they could be contacted in case of emergency, it was too late for them to catch the same London train as the girls and they decided to leave a note on the kitchen table for Charity, in case she arrived back before they did. She had her own key and would be able to let herself in. They had expected that one or both of them would be back in time for her return this evening, but after lingering on over the weekend the old lady had died this morning and, wanting to stay on for the funeral, Mr Pritchard had rung the Holiday Home to inform Charity of her grandmother’s death and to suggest that she stay at Veronica’s house for a day or two, until her parents returned home.

  It had been a shock to learn that neither Charity nor Veronica had turned up, Mrs Hodges having rung the Home from a phone-box on Friday morning to tell the Principal of Veronica’s illness.

  ‘Was your daughter mentioned?’

  ‘Only in passing, apparently. It was taken for granted that she wouldn’t be going. As I said, they’re very strict about girls travelling in pairs. When you book, the parents have to sign a form, saying they won’t allow their daughters to travel alone. Mrs Hodges rang them quite early in the morning, and at that point even my wife and I didn’t know we were going to be called away.’

  ‘Didn’t you think to let Mrs Hodges know, when you decided to go to Birmingham to see your mother-in-law?’

  Pritchard dropped his face into his hands, and groaned. ‘If only I had. Looking back now, it was irresponsible—wickedly irresponsible, not to have been in touch with her before leaving. But it was all such a rush—so much to do, so many things to think of … We did leave a note next door, of course, I told you … And then we knew that Mrs Hodges was here in Sturrenden in case of emergency … But you’re right, of course you are. We should have thought …’

  ‘Or if Mrs Hodges had let you know that Veronica was ill …’

  Pritchard’s shoulders stiffened. ‘That’s right.’ He raised his head and stared at Thanet, eyes glittering. ‘She should have, shouldn’t she? If she had, Charity would simply have come with us, and we wouldn’t be in this position now.’

  Thanet was sorry he’d made the suggestion. Wanting to alleviate Pritchard’s sense of guilt by showing him that the responsibility had not been his alone, he had merely succeeded in giving the man a grievance which could distract him from the task in hand.

  ‘We mustn’t digress,’ he said firmly. ‘Can we go back to this morning, and your phone call to the Home, from Birmingham? When the Principal told you that neither of the girls had been able to go because of Veronica’s illness, what did you think had happened to Charity?’

  ‘I assumed she’d gone home and found our note. We thought that, knowing how worried her mother would be about her grandmother, she’d hesitated to add to the burden by telling her that the holiday arrangements had fallen through.’

  ‘So at that stage you weren’t really too worried?’

  ‘Well, we were very upset to think she’d been alone in the house all over the weekend, of course. She is only fifteen, after all …’

  ‘So what did you decide to do?’

  ‘As there was no way of getting in touch with Charity, we thought I’d better come straight home and go up to Birmingham for the day on Friday, for the funeral.’

  ‘You didn’t think of contacting Charity through us?’

  ‘Through you?’ Pritchard looked at Thanet as though he had suggested communicating through a creature from an alien planet.

  ‘Well, we do often help members of the public out, in that sort of situation.’

  Pritchard shook his head. ‘It would never have occurred to me.’

  ‘So you came back to Sturrenden and went home, expecting to find Charity there.’

  ‘Yes.’ Pritchard wiped his forehead again, then transferred the handkerchief from his right hand to his left and began to pluck agitatedly at one corner with long, bony fingers. No doubt he was reliving the shock he had experienced upon finding the house empty.

  ‘Was there any sign that she had been there at any time over the weekend?’

  ‘No. The house was exactly as we’d left it, so far as I could see.’

  ‘No indication that she’d eaten, drunk anything?’

  Pritchard put his hand up to his head, began to massage one temple. ‘No … I don’t know … I didn’t think to look in the larder.’

  ‘Or in the fridge?’

  ‘We haven’t got a refrigerator.’ Then, wearily, as if explaining something he had attempted to explain many times before, ‘We of the Children live very simply, Inspector, in a way which you would no doubt find incomprehensible.’

  ‘The Children?’

  ‘The Children of Jerusalem.’ Even now, in the midst of his anxiety over his daughter, the dark eyes suddenly burned with religious fervour. ‘The true Church of God. We believe …’

  From what Thanet had seen of the man he guessed that once Pritchard was side-tracked on to the question of religion he would be as difficult to stop as a runaway steamroller. Quickly, he intervened. ‘I see.’ He remembered what Lineham had told him. ‘So that was when you decided to go and see if she’d spent the weekend with the Hodges?’

  Pritchard blinked. It was as if a switch had been clicked off in his head and there was a pause before he said, ‘Yes.’

  ‘You said just now that before Charity left the Hodges’ on Friday morning she spent a few minutes alone with Veronica. Did she give Veronica any hint of what she was going to do now that their holiday was cancelled?’

  ‘I don’t think she could have, or Mrs Hodges would have mentioned it. In any case, at that point Charity didn’t know that we were going to be away. Otherwise she’d have told Mrs Hodges, I’m sure, and Mrs Hodges would probably have suggested she stay there for the weekend.’

  ‘You didn’t actually speak to Veronica herself?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘I came here. I told you, I panicked.’

  ‘Understandably, I think.’

  Pritchard frowned. ‘As I said, we must trust in God at all times, Inspector. I have to believe that He is watching over her.’

  Despite his words Pritchard gave Thanet a beseeching look and Thanet sensed his desperate need for reassurance. But what reassurance could he possibly give?

  ‘Can you think of any other friends with whom Charity might have spent the weekend?’

  ‘She didn’t have any other friends.’

  Thanet bit back the questions which rushed into h
is mind concerning the girl’s classmates, clubs, leisure activities. Time for all that later, when it was certain that they were necessary.

  Pritchard dropped his head into his hands and groaned. ‘I just can’t think where she might be.’

  Thanet stood up and Pritchard raised his head as the chair scraped the floor. His face was bone-white, the skin stretched taut, his eyes tormented.

  ‘What are you going to do, Inspector?’

  ‘First we’ll go to your house, to check that she really hasn’t been back at all over the weekend. Then we’ll go and talk to Veronica. After that, well, we’ll see.’

  As they ushered Pritchard down the stairs and into the car Thanet fervently hoped that after that they wouldn’t be launching into a full-scale murder hunt.

  2

  It took them only ten minutes or so to reach Town Road, where the Pritchards lived; had it not been for the one-way system they could have done it in five. Sturrenden lies deep in the Kent countryside. It is a busy market town of some 45,000 inhabitants, the centre of a complex web of country lanes and scattered villages. The new traffic system has alleviated daytime congestion of the town centre, but older inhabitants still find it infuriating. Thanet’s attitude was ambivalent: the policeman in him appreciated its benefits but the private citizen resented having to take twice as long to reach his destination, especially on occasions like tonight, when the streets were deserted and he was in a hurry.

  Town Road was a long, narrow street of yellow-brick Victorian terraced houses with square-bayed windows upstairs and down. Cars were tightly packed along the kerbs on both sides of the road and Lineham was forced to park some little distance away from number 32.

  All along the street light spilled into narrow front gardens from uncurtained windows, but the Pritchards’ house was in darkness and Thanet and Lineham had to wait for a few moments while Pritchard fumbled with his keys. They followed him into a narrow passage and he switched on the light, an unshaded low-wattage bulb whose sickly glare revealed worn linoleum and bare walls.

  ‘You take upstairs,’ Thanet murmured, and Lineham obediently moved towards the staircase at the far end of the passage.

  Thanet asked to see the kitchen first and looked around him with disbelief. How many kitchens like this still existed? he asked himself. It was as though he had stepped back fifty years. Mrs Pritchard still cooked at an old kitchen range. The fire was out and there was a reek of stale soot. A battered aluminium kettle stood on the hob above the side oven. There was a shallow stone sink with a single tap, an upturned white enamelled bowl inverted on the wooden draining board, a narow wooden table, its top bleached ivory with much scrubbing and a storage cupboard beside it, painted brown. There was a rag rug on the floor in front of the hearth and a wooden armchair into which Pritchard subsided with a groan.

  ‘Go ahead, Inspector. Do whatever it is you want to do.’

  It certainly didn’t look as though Charity had been back here, Thanet thought as he checked. The sink, the bowl, the dishcloth and tea-towels were bone-dry, the cast-iron range stone-cold. The larder was as spotlessly clean as the kitchen, despite the faint, sour smell of stale cheese. There was no bread, no butter, no milk. They had taken all three with them, said Pritchard, when they left for Birmingham. Thanet guessed that it would have seemed sinful to throw good food away.

  Pritchard seemed to have sunk into a kind of stupor and Thanet went alone to take a quick look at the front room. People’s homes, Thanet believed, were highly revealing. A man’s sitting room is an expression of his personality—his choice of colour and patterns, his furniture, his objets d’art, his books, his records, all are evidence not only of his tastes but of his attitudes and habits.

  What he saw here appalled him. Apart from a three-piece suite upholstered in slippery brown rexine and a heavy upright piano standing against one wall, the room was bare of furniture. The only ornament was a wooden clock placed dead in the centre of the mantelpiece, the only concession to comfort a small beige rug in front of the empty Victorian basket grate, the only wall decoration a religious text in a narrow black frame. Thou, God, Seest Me, it proclaimed in curly black letters on a white ground.

  Thanet shivered. It was as if he had been vouchsafed a glimpse of the poverty of Pritchard’s soul, of the barren rigidity of his outlook. What could Charity be like, he wondered, raised in an atmosphere such as this. Yet there was a piano. He crossed to glance at the neat stack of sheet music on top. The Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music, he read. Grade VII (Advanced). So Charity at least had music to enrich her bleak existence.

  He heard Lineham coming down the stairs and went out into the hall to meet him.

  ‘Anything up there?’

  ‘Nothing. No sign of a suitcase in her room. Everything neat and tidy.’ Lineham grimaced. ‘The whole place gives me the creeps.’

  ‘I know what you mean. What about the bathroom?’

  Lineham raised a quizzical eyebrow. ‘What bathroom?’

  ‘No bathroom … Can’t say I’m surprised, after what I’ve seen down here.’

  ‘Nothing downstairs either?’

  ‘No trace of her. We’d better get over to the Hodges’. I’ll just have a word with Pritchard first.’

  In the kitchen Pritchard was just as Thanet had left him, motionless in the armchair, hands on knees, head bowed, staring at the floor.

  ‘We’re just going over to see Mrs Hodges now, Mr Pritchard, and then we’ll come back here. Are you all right?’

  Pritchard raised dazed eyes and Thanet could see the effort the man made to concentrate on what Thanet was saying.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Thanet repeated.

  ‘Yes. Yes, I’m fine, thank you.’

  ‘I’d like you to stay here in case Charity comes home while we’re gone. But there’s something I want you to do, while you’re waiting.’

  ‘Yes?’ A spark of interest, now.

  ‘I’d like you to write down the names of all the people with whom Charity could conceivably have spent the weekend. Family, friends, acquaintances, school friends, church members, anyone at all who is even a remote possibility. Could you do that?’

  Pritchard pressed thumb and forefinger into his eyes. ‘Yes. Of course.’

  ‘Have you pencil and paper?’ Thanet wanted Pritchard launched on the task before they left.

  ‘Pencil and paper,’ Pritchard repeated, looking vaguely around. ‘Let me see.’ He heaved himself out of the chair. ‘Yes. In the table drawer. Here we are.’

  They left him to it.

  ‘Doesn’t look too bright, does it, sir?’ said Lineham when they were in the car.

  Thanet shrugged. The interview with Pritchard had alleviated some of his earlier anxiety. ‘We can’t tell, yet. It’s quite possible that after finding out that Veronica couldn’t go to Dorset with her, Charity went home, found the note, thought I’m not spending the weekend in this dump by myself—and who could blame her?—and decided to throw herself on the mercy of one of her school friends.’

  ‘Why not go back to the Hodges’ and ask if she could stay there?’

  ‘I don’t know. Perhaps she didn’t like to ask, if Veronica was ill. Anyway, the point is, if she did spend the weekend with a friend, she wouldn’t have felt it necessary to come back until this evening because she knew that her parents wouldn’t be expecting her until then anyway. So she might well yet turn up safe and sound.’

  ‘True.’

  They slowed down to allow an ambulance to overtake them.

  ‘How’s Louise?’ said Thanet, his memory jogged.

  Lineham’s wife was soon due to produce their first child.

  ‘Oh, fine, thanks. The heat’s getting her down at the moment, of course, and she’ll be glad now when it’s all over.’

  ‘How much longer is it?’

  Lineham sighed. ‘Another four weeks.’

  Thanet grinned. ‘Cheer up, Mike. The first time’s the worst. After that it gets easier every time.�
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  ‘Some consolation at this stage!’ Lineham swung the steering wheel. ‘Ah, here we are. Lantern Street.’

  More terraced cottages, but smaller and older this time, many of them boarded up or in disrepair. It looked as though the landlord had decided that the site was worth more than the rents.

  Number 8, however, presented a brave face to the world. Groups of scarlet tulips glowed like clustered rubies in the dusk and the brass door-knocker shone with much polishing.

  The woman who answered the door was short and plump, with fluffy fair hair.

  ‘Mrs Hodges?’ Thanet introduced himself. ‘It’s about Charity Pritchard.’

  ‘Oh? What’s the matter? What’s wrong?’

  ‘I thought you knew. She seems to have disappeared. Mr Pritchard told me he’d been here earlier this evening, that you hadn’t seen her since Friday morning.’

  ‘Oh yes, but she’s been here herself since then. In fact, she only left about a quarter of an hour ago. She should be home any minute.’

  ‘I see. Did she say where she’d been?’

  ‘Staying with a friend, she said. I told her her dad had been round and she looked a bit upset—well she would, wouldn’t she? I expect she’ll be for it when she gets home.’

  Had he imagined that there had been a hint of satisfaction in her voice?

  ‘So,’ said Lineham as they returned to the car. ‘You were right. All a storm in a teacup.’

  ‘Looks like it.’

  ‘All that hassle for nothing,’ Lineham grumbled.

  ‘Let’s just be thankful that it’s turned out the way it has.’

  They drove back to Town Street in silence.

  Pritchard opened the door to their knock almost at once, as if he had been waiting in the hall and stood back wordlessly for them to enter. In the wan light his face was the colour of old parchment. Clearly, Charity wasn’t home yet.

  ‘It’s all right, Mr Pritchard,’ Thanet said gently, touching him reassuringly on the arm. ‘Charity is safe.’

  ‘She’s all right?’ Pritchard closed his eyes, swayed slightly and put one hand against the wall for support. ‘I thought … I was afraid …’