Death and the Maiden (14 page)

There was very little that Liz Whilton could tell him. She had just returned from a visit to her grandmother, and had not seen Mary since the beginning of the holidays; as far as she knew, Mary had not seen Dale Kenward since they parted; as far as she knew, Mary had no other boy-friend.

‘But I live on a farm at Lillington, you see, I always get out of touch during the holidays. I think that was why Mrs Bloomfield came to break the news to me this afternoon. She knew that I was Mary's friend, and she didn't want me to read about the accident in the local paper. And she made me go straight with her to Breckham Market to play tennis, to take my mind off it. Very nice of her, really, because she didn't get back from France until this morning. She crossed on the night boat and drove up from Southampton, so she must be awfully tired. I don't think she wanted to play tennis at all, really, it was just for my sake.'

Quantrill stepped forward. ‘Mrs Bloomfield
is
very kind,' he agreed. He smiled at the girl, trying to raise her spirits again: ‘And so you beat her at tennis, I imagine?'

‘Well, only because she was so tired, and out of practice. She used to play awfully well when we were at the grammar school, considering how old she is. She didn't run much, of course, but then she didn't need to—she had this tremendous first serve, and even Sally and Mary couldn't often beat her. Today was just a fluke—I'm useless, really.'

She gave a deprecating shrug, smiled at Tait and nibbled at a wandering strand of dark hair with engagingly gap-fronted teeth. Her brown eyes were huge and soft, thickly lashed. Tait decided to give her the benefit of the doubt about the sniffs, grinned and took out his notebook. ‘I don't believe that for a minute! Well, then, if I could just have your name and address, in case I want to get in touch with you again—'

The girl gave them eagerly: ‘And the number's Ashthorpe five eight six.'

Jean Bloomfield, who had come quietly from the house on to the terrace, caught Quantrill's eye and smiled. Instinctively, he straightened his shoulders and pulled in his stomach.

There had been little enough time for her to change, but she looked immaculate in white trousers and a coffee-coloured silk shirt, with her hair swept up into a knot. She had put on a touch of eye shadow and lip gloss, and Quantrill felt dizzy with the thought that it might be for his benefit. He strode to her side.

She nodded towards Tait and the girl, who were laughing and talking together. ‘Your sergeant has done more for young Liz's morale in five minutes than I achieved in an exhausting afternoon,' she said ruefully. ‘I wish I'd known you were bringing him. He'd be a great success at school, if you could spare him to come and talk to the seniors—as you once did, if you remember? Though of course I'm not now able to issue such invitations. I'd need to get the headmaster's permission first.'

She said it lightly, but there was an unmistakable undertow of bitterness.

‘We've been to see Mr Denning this afternoon,' said Quantrill, trying to convey in his tone his disapproval of the man.

She gave a dry smile. ‘That was very—proper—of you,' she said, giving the word a slightly mocking emphasis, ‘to call on the headmaster before you came to see me, I mean. He sets great store by protocol. Well—' she dismissed the subject diplomatically: ‘Liz,' she called, ‘would you be a dear and make us all some tea? The kitchen's the first door on the right—perhaps Mr Tait wouldn't mind helping you?'

They went indoors, Liz Whilton with alacrity, Tait with an amused flick of one eyebrow as he passed the chief inspector. Jean Bloomfield apologised for the transparent manoeuvring.

‘I wanted to ask you about Mary's death.' She tore a leaf from a lilac bush and shredded it restlessly as she spoke. ‘I heard about it in the village, when I went out to do some shopping just after I got back from holiday. Everyone had heard that it was an accident, but there was a certain amount of innuendo—oh, you know what villages are like.' She looked up at him, her eyes dark with fatigue. ‘Was it really an accident? Had she been attacked? I'm sorry to ask you, but when a girl is found dead …'

‘I know. I understand how you feel.' Quantrill longed to be able to touch her, to convey his sympathy in something other than clumsy words. The white cones of lilac blossom were still tight but their scent was sufficient to tug at his senses, making concentration difficult. ‘Mary wasn't assaulted, so please don't distress yourself on that account. So far as we know at present it was an accident, just as you heard. All the same, we're puzzled about her death. I don't know whether you know the river at Ashthorpe bridge, but it's very shallow—not an easy place to drown, even if she did fall in. So we wondered if perhaps she'd been to a party and had been drinking. Do you think that's likely?'

Mrs Bloomfield shook her head. ‘Definitely not. Lager and cider are the fashion at the moment, but most of the girls just sip their drinks—half a pint lasts them for hours. It would be completely out of character for Mary to drink anything stronger.'

‘That's the impression I got. And I'm sorry to have to ask you these things, but have you any suspicion that Mary or any of her friends might possibly have been experimenting with drugs?'

She hesitated for a full minute before answering. Her shoulders had straightened when Quantrill reassured her, but now they drooped again. She looked dejected, almost defeated.

‘I would dearly like to be able to say that nothing of that kind goes on among our pupils; but how can any of us be sure? I hope not—God, I hope not. But all I can say in truth is that I don't know.' She bit her lower lip, frowning, and then said slowly, ‘But as far as Mary herself is concerned, and her immediate friends, I do feel confident that they wouldn't be interested in drugs. I'm sure—absolutely sure—that Mary would have been neither drunk nor drugged when she fell in the river.'

Her tone was so vehement that Quantrill felt that he had been accused of bad taste. ‘I'm sorry I had to ask,' he repeated. ‘It's just that we have to consider every possibility …'

She relaxed, and smiled. ‘Yes of course—I understand. When someone dies suddenly, you have to investigate. You have to do your job, I realise that. But why are we standing here? Come indoors.'

The original separate dining- and drawing-rooms of the villa had been converted to one through room, connected by an arched opening. It was an elegant room, with a plain dark grey carpet and soft terra-cotta walls, the furniture a careful selection of Victoriana. The chairs, upholstered in fabric a shade darker than the wallpaper, had as Quantrill discovered been designed to accommodate voluminous skirts and prosperous Victorian behinds, and were remarkably roomy and comfortable.

He settled, watching Jean Bloomfield as she opened the windows to freshen the air that had staled during her absence. Understandably, a layer of dust had accumulated on the small table beside his chair, and on the silver-framed photograph that stood there.

Quantrill looked at the photograph. It showed the head and shoulders of a good-looking young RAF officer, with a pilot's brevet above his tunic pocket. Jean Bloomfield's husband had, he knew, been killed in a flying accident.

Quantrill himself had served in the RAF, but he had no illusion that his experiences gave him any common ground with the widow of an aircrew officer. He had performed his two years'compulsory national service at the beginning of the nineteen-fifties as a reluctant storekeeper on the permanent staff of a recruits'training station. His contribution to the defence of his country had been confined to issuing stiff hairy uniforms to bewildered recruits, and the highest rank he had attained had been that of senior aircraftsman. Jean Bloomfield would never have looked at him, then.

Sergeant Tait carried in a tray of tea. Quantrill noticed that, as she poured it, Jean Bloomfield's hands were shaking—understandably, he thought, with protective yearning. She must be emotionally as well as physically worn out: the long journey, the distressing news of Mary Gedge's death, an afternoon's tennis … and now she had to give a coppers'tea party. No wonder the strain showed.

But despite her tenseness, she was beautiful. It would be impossible for any man not to admire her appearance and her voice, but Quantrill's admiration was not confined to superficialities. He was captivated by her modesty, her kindness to the dead girl's friend, her sympathetic understanding; by the honest uncertainty she had shown when they talked of the drug problem, in contrast with Denning's self-centred denial; and by the loyalty she had demonstrated in refusing to criticise the headmaster despite her justifiable resentment of him.

‘Has Liz been able to answer your questions, Mr Tait?' she asked.

‘Oh yes, she's been most helpful.' Tait grinned at the girl who coloured and laughed, momentarily forgetting the reason for his presence. ‘Liz has given me the addresses of several friends Mary might have gone to visit in Breckham Market last night. It's a great pity that Sally Leggett is away, though.'

‘Sally knew Mary better than anyone,' Liz confirmed, downcast again. ‘She knew ages before I did that Mary had finished with Dale.'

‘Could we get in touch with Sally, Mrs Bloomfield?' Tait asked.

‘I doubt it—she went to the United States with her brother, and I believe they intended to spend the first two or three weeks on a camping tour.' She turned to Quantrill. ‘You're trying to check Mary's movements last night, is that it?'

‘Yes. Someone gave her a lift into the town and someone brought her back, but we've no idea who or when. So anything that either of you can tell us about Mary's friends, her character or her habits would help us. Anything at all.'

Liz Whilton shrugged helplessly, having already given Tait her all in the way of information and her telephone number as further encouragement. Mrs Bloomfield lit a cigarette, inhaling deeply. She looked puzzled.

‘But why last night?' she asked. ‘What I heard in the village was that Mary drowned early this morning, while she was out gathering flowers for May Day.'

‘The time of death hasn't yet been established,' Tait explained. ‘The gathering-flowers-for-May-morning bit is Pc Godbold's private theory.'

‘Were there no flowers, then?'

‘Oh, a meadowful of them,' said Tait cheerfully, ‘and buttercups floating all over the river. But it does seem more likely that she would have been out last night rather than early this morning.'

‘And in fact we know she was out last night,' said Quantrill, ‘but because she slept in a caravan instead of in the house, we don't know whether she ever returned home.'

‘Yes, I see.' Jean Bloomfield got up to fetch an ashtray from the table near Quantrill. She saw that his cup was empty, and raised an eyebrow. He nodded gratefully, and pretended not to notice that it rattled in the saucer as she carried it away. ‘All the same,' she said, ‘whatever Mary was doing last night, I don't see why you should want to dismiss Pc Godbold's theory. It made perfect sense to me.'

‘It did?' Quantrill got up to collect his refilled cup from the tray and so save her the embarrassment of lifting it. For a moment his fingers touched hers. She gave him a grave smile that sent him back to his chair elated, remembering that he was now neither a pimply senior aircraftsman nor a dejected detective sergeant.

‘Of course. I know that Mary liked going for walks alone, and this countryside's now such an agricultural factory that the river meadow is about the only place in Ashthorpe where one
can
walk without damaging crops. It seems to me quite likely that she woke early and decided to celebrate May morning by going out to gather flowers. After all, it's an old country custom—or at least it was when I was a village child in Suffolk. At Oxford we used to gather flowers after we'd been on the river at dawn to listen to the choristers on Magdalen tower, and I've no doubt the tradition continues. I'm sure that May Day still has a rural significance that's lost on the international socialists.'

Quantrill recalled his own schooldays, and the humiliation of being made to dance round a maypole with a sissy ribbon in his hand; but the little girls had loved the flowers and the fuss. ‘I don't know whether they have May Day celebrations at Ashthorpe school,' he said, ‘but I know they still do in a lot of villages round about.'

‘They used to have a May Queen here in Ashthorpe until a few years ago,' confirmed Liz Whilton. ‘I remember, because we didn't at Lillington, and we were really envious.'

‘Will, then—isn't it reasonable to suppose that Mary went out early to gather flowers?' asked Jean Bloomfield. ‘Perhaps in a moment of nostalgia for her childhood?'

‘Maybe. But not in a long dress,' objected Quantrill, ‘particularly after it had been raining. She was seen last night in a long dress, and that's how she was found this morning.'

Liz looked suddenly stricken. ‘Oh—that would have been her Laura Ashley dress,' she said reverently.

‘There's no reason why she couldn't have put it on this morning as well,' Mrs Bloomfield pointed out. ‘I agree that it would be more romantic than practical to wear a long dress in long grass, but gathering flowers on May morning
is
more romantic than practical. In fact, you know—' she stubbed out her cigarette with sudden vigour as her theory strengthened ‘—that may well be why she fell in the river! The hem of her dress would become heavy with damp and mud. It would get in the way. She might well have tripped on the river bank—'

‘
Hey!
' Liz Whilton was sitting bolt upright, flushed, her eyes glistening with A level intelligence and tears. ‘That must have been how she came to drown. Don't you see—the long skirt and the flowers … Mary must have drowned in just the same way as Ophelia did!'