Death and the Maiden (11 page)

Denning darted in ahead of them, stopping abruptly to wipe his shoes on the mat with an exaggerated care that Quantrill interpreted as a hint and passed on to Tait, who chose to ignore it.

‘Quantrill,' said Denning. His voice was crisp, authoritative. ‘I know the name.'

‘My son's at your school,' said Quantrill, without any expectation that the head of a school of nearly a thousand pupils would be personally acquainted with any particular thirteen-year-old; it was simply the name that people remembered.

‘Ah yes.' Denning nodded rapidly, stroking his whiskers. He had a carefully groomed luxuriant brown growth on either side of his jaw, compensating for the prematurely bald swathe on either side of his crown. ‘Yes, now, let me think. Yes, Quantrill—a good lad, you must be pleased with his progress.'

The chief inspector was not deceived. He could understand that a headmaster faced by a succession of importunate parents might well be tempted to deal, like an astrologer, in bland generalities. But Quantrill had not come in his rôle of parent, and he found the headmaster's glib response distasteful.

But then, he acknowledged, he was not predisposed to like the man. It had been assumed in the town that when the three secondary schools were amalgamated, the headship was likely to go to the head of either the boys'or the girls'grammar school. Quantrill had been a discreetly ardent supporter of Mrs Bloomfield. She had held her appointment for five years, was well-qualified, liked and respected in the town. It had seemed to him—and to most of the other parents he knew—a matter of natural justice that Mrs Bloomfield should be appointed in preference to Mr Denning, who was a newcomer to the area, no better qualified, slightly younger, and had been headmaster of the boys'school for only a year.

Quantrill still felt aggrieved about the man's appointment; less, now, for the sake of the school, which seemed to be settling down tolerably well, than on Mrs Bloomfield's behalf.

‘Come into my study,' Denning said. It was a command rather than an invitation.

He led them into what must have been designed as the dining-room of the house; Mere Road executive houses were not, like the managerial type overlooking the golf course, in the separate study bracket. It had been made into a masculine room, dark-toned, well-ordered, furnished with PVC leatherlook armchairs and a polished desk considerably larger than Quantrill's own.

Denning stood with his hands clasped behind his back and looked hard at Quantrill, while he rose and fell impatiently on the balls of his feet.

‘Well, Chief Inspector?'

He made no suggestion that they should sit down, and Quantrill's dislike increased. He studied the whiskers, deciding that they were less an expression of a naturally flamboyant personality than a consciously contrived feature, like the Cotswold stone cladding on the front of the house. But if Denning's conservative style of dress ruled out natural flamboyance, there was no doubt about the man's nervous energy; he fizzed with it.

‘I'm afraid,' said Quantrill quickly, before Denning's impatience could boil over, ‘that we have some bad news about one of your pupils.'

A car slowed outside. Denning hurried to the side window and craned to see it. The car picked up speed. He turned back and sat at his desk, motioning his visitors to sit down.

‘Mary Gedge?' he asked, grooming his whiskers rapidly with small fingers. ‘Ah, I thought that might be the reason for your visit., Yes, I heard about her accident. My deputy, Mrs Bloomfield, lives in the same village, and she very properly rang me as soon as she heard the news. She thought that there might be some press enquiries. In fact I had a local reporter here just before you came.'

He stood up abruptly, glaring out of the window again as a passing ice-cream van gave a quick burst of Oranges and Lemons. ‘Mary's death,' he went on, as smoothly as though he were repeating a prepared statement, ‘is a great shock, of course. A tragedy. I am deeply grieved, as I know the rest of the school will be.'

‘You knew her well, Mr Denning?' Quantrill asked.

‘Not socially, Chief Inspector.' His right hand went instinctively to the broad wedding ring he wore, twisting and turning it. ‘But in school, yes, of course. Mary was one of my most outstanding students.'

‘She was at Mrs Bloomfield's school until last summer,' Quantrill pointed out, irritated by the ‘my'and unprepared to let the girl's new headmaster attempt to hog all the credit. ‘My daughters were at that school too—Mrs Bloomfield is an excellent teacher.'

‘She certainly brought Mary along very well, I agree. I have heard a number of reports of what a good teacher she used to be.'

‘“Used to be?”' demanded Quantrill.

Denning gave a deprecating shrug: ‘One doesn't, of course, wish to criticise a colleague's work, but frankly I've seen remarkably little of the great teaching ability that I'd been told Mrs Bloomfield possessed. I realise that her failure to get the headship of the comprehensive must have been a great disappointment to her, but it was not unexpected. She has considerable responsibility as my deputy, and I would have thought that this was ample recompense. But possibly she feels inhibited by the presence of male colleagues—she'd have done better, I think, to move to another small girls'school. She seems to find it difficult to adjust to the new circumstances—but then, perhaps, her age …'

Quantrill fumed in silence. Mrs Bloomfield was in her early forties, about the same age as his own wife, who would indignantly repudiate any suggestion that there was reason to make allowance for her on that account.

Denning saw the chief inspector's indignant look. ‘As for Mary Gedge,' he went on quickly, ‘she was handicapped in the way common to all girls in single-sex education. I could see the girl's academic potential as soon as I met her, but her mind lacked that—' he smiled confidently at the policemen, assuming a male consensus as he gestured with his right hand, bringing his fingertips close together ‘—that
edge
. You know? I think that my extra tuition—the contact with a masculine mind—made a great deal of difference to her. After all, it was at my school that she gained her Cambridge entrance. That will still stand to the credit of the school, despite her death.'

Quantrill stared at him, bemused. He had heard his daughters talk about male chauvinist pigs, and had been confident that they exaggerated. Now it seemed that he had met one.

But Tait was not bemused. ‘You gave Mary extra tuition, sir?'

Denning stroked his whiskers. ‘Oh yes, on a number of occasions.'

‘
Private
tuition, sir?' enquired Tait.

Denning froze. The hairless areas of his face went white. His whiskers bristled.

‘Yes, Sergeant,' he said, chipping each word out of ice. ‘Private tuition.
During
the autumn term, in my office at school, and
during
school hours. And not only to Mary Gedge, but to three other Oxbridge candidates. Do I make myself clear?'

‘Perfectly, thank you,' said Tait equably.

Denning turned his attention to Quantrill. The chief inspector had by now realised the function of the whiskers: they could make an angry man of otherwise insignificant appearance seem formidable. No wonder his son held the headmaster in awe.

‘Let me tell you, Chief Inspector,' said Denning, ‘exactly what I told the newspaper reporter. Mary Gedge left my school at the start of the Easter holidays, two weeks ago. Her
death
has no connection with my school at all. I'm obliged to you for coming to break the news to me, but if that's all—?'

Quantrill had no wish to prolong the interview. He asked, stiffly, for permission to approach the school secretary for the addresses of Mary's friends, and stood up. Denning bounced out of his chair and darted to open the door, clearly glad that his visitors were going.

‘You'll find my secretary at the school until five o'clock. I'll let her know what you want, and tell her to give you every co-operation. Er—my wife is away at the moment, I'm afraid, otherwise I might have offered you tea.' He gestured vaguely towards the end of the hall, as though the kitchen regions were located behind a green baize door which he himself never penetrated.

‘That's quite all right, thank you,' said Quantrill, one hand on the front door. ‘Oh, one other thing. We've had some instances in the town of young people being found in possession of drugs—usually amphetamines, but sometimes cannabis in one form or another. You'll have read the cases in the local paper, no doubt. I know that you would report it to us if any drug taking or pushing came to your knowledge, but it's a very big school and you can't know all your pupils. Do you think it's at all possible that any of the seniors
might
be involved?'

Denning's whiskers reinforced his fierce answer. ‘Not in
my
school, Chief Inspector.'

Quantrill gave him a long, thoughtful look. ‘No, of course not … Thank you for sparing so much of your time.'

As he opened the door, an orange mini turned on to the drive. Denning almost pushed the policemen out of the way as he hurried from the house and tried to wave the mini on towards the two-car garage, but the woman driver stopped and smiled enquiringly up at Quantrill and Tait from the open window as they edged past.

Denning joined them, looking embarrassed. ‘Ah, there you are, my dear. These gentlemen are just going. Er—Mr Quantrill, my wife.'

The chief inspector sent Tait out to his car to initiate a call to the school secretary, while he murmured politely to Mrs Denning. To his surprise she scrambled out of the car to talk to him. She was her husband's age, small and dark and intense and breathy. A travelling case lay on the passenger seat of the car.

‘Mr Quantrill?' she gabbled. ‘
The
Mr Quantrill—the chief inspector? I read about your promotion. Congratulations!'

Quantrill took the hand she thrust at him and returned a modification of her smile. He was susceptible, but wary, scenting a marital dispute. Denning's whiskers were making furious ‘Where the hell have you
been
?' signals but his wife was deliberately ignoring him, chatting with brittle effusiveness in an obvious attempt to postpone her interview with her husband.

Denning took her arm and tried to draw her away. Her eyes darkened. His grip must have been hurting her, but she managed not to flinch. ‘Are you here on business, Mr Quantrill?' she asked. ‘There's nothing wrong, I hope?'

‘Nothing at all,' said Denning briskly. ‘Come into the house, Sonia, I'll put your car away later. Good afternoon, Chief Inspector.'

Quantrill turned to go; other people's marital problems were an unnecessary reminder of his own. But Tait, who had returned and summarised the scene, wanted to discover whether it was anything more than anger at her apparent lateness that made Denning so anxious to get his wife away from their company.

‘A very sad business, Mrs Denning,' he said, ignoring her husband. ‘One of the girls who left school at Easter has just died. We came to let your husband know. One of the senior girls, you might perhaps have met her—Mary Gedge.'

The effect on Mrs Denning was more than he had bargained for. She went white. Her hand went up to her mouth. ‘
Mary
… dead?'

‘An accident,' said her husband quickly. ‘She fell into the river at home, at Ashthorpe, and was drowned.'

Mrs Denning leaned against the car for support. ‘Oh, what a tragedy! Such a pleasant girl, I liked her so much. We both did, didn't we, Alan? But it's incredible that she should be dead … I mean, she was here, alive and well, only yesterday evening. I met her at the gate, just as I was going out. She was bringing one of your books back, wasn't she, Alan?'

There was a pause. Denning found the policemen's eyes on him. He nodded.

‘Can you tell us what time this was, Mrs Denning?'

She looked from her husband's set face to Quantrill's stern eyebrows, and knew that something was wrong. ‘Er—half-past eight?' she said uncertainly. ‘That would be about it, wouldn't it, Alan?'

‘It didn't occur to him that it was relevant, my foot!' snorted Quantrill. The policemen were leaving the Dennings'house for the second time that afternoon. ‘He was scared stiff—not necessarily because he knows any more than he told us, but because he doesn't want to harm his public image. The man's a pig if ever I met one— I'm sorry for poor Mrs Bloomfield, I can't imagine how she puts up with working as his deputy. As for Mrs Denning, I don't blame her walking out on him—even if it was only for one night. Pity she rushed off before seeing the girl go, though.'

‘Well, at least we've established that Mary was in Breckham last night, and wearing the dress she was found in. And according to Mrs Denning, Mary said she'd been given a lift to Breckham by a friend.'

‘But we don't know who, any more than we know what she proposed to do for the remainder of the evening, or how she was going to get back home.'

Tait clipped his seat belt. ‘Assuming, of course, that Denning was telling the truth and Mary
did
leave here alone at about a quarter to nine.'

‘We've no reason to suppose that he's not telling the truth, even though he
is
a pompous, self-centred bastard,' said Quantrill fairly. He pointed the nose of his car in the direction of the police station, scenting a cup of tea, but the radio began to burble information about Mary Gedge's school friends: Sally Leggett had gone to the United States for the summer; Dale Kenward lived at number three, Priory Gardens.

Quantrill pulled a face. ‘Oh, one of
Councillor
Kenward's boys, is he?' He turned the car in another direction. ‘The posh end of the town, then.'

‘I didn't know there was one.'