Death and the Maiden (15 page)

Chief Inspector Quantrill was instantly alert: ‘Ophelia who?' he demanded.

Quantrill drove back to Breckham Market in a temper, so blinded by humiliation that afterwards he remembered nothing of the first part of the journey.

It was so bloody unfair. How was he to know who Ophelia was? He'd never had the educational advantages that Tait and the girl and Jean Bloomfield had enjoyed. Jean had been wonderfully tactful, offering more tea and changing the subject and emphasising his status by referring to him as a chief inspector, but there had been no mistaking Tait's derisive twitch and the girl's crow of laughter. ‘Ophelia Shakespeare, I suppose,' she'd spluttered hysterically, ‘or else Mrs Hamlet-to-be,' and Quantrill had been so hot with embarrassment that he couldn't get out of the house quickly enough.

What would Jean Bloomfield, with her Oxford education and her handsome aircrew officer husband, dead or not, think of him now?

It wasn't that he was completely ignorant. If the wretched girl had mentioned
Hamlet
in the first place, he'd have known where he was. Douglas Quantrill had a great respect for education, and every intention of making up for his lack of it as soon as he had the time. To this end he had joined a book club, and was now the possessor of a series of handsomely bound classics that he had never realised he could buy much more cheaply in paperback. He proposed to read them all, Shakespeare and Dickens and
War and Peace
and a confusion of Lawrences and Brontës, just as soon as he retired; and meanwhile, he drew them reverently from his bookcase when he remembered them, and flipped through a few of the pages. He wasn't so much of a fool that he didn't know that Shakespeare had written
Hamlet
, but he couldn't be expected to know all the characters in the play.

He smarted under the injustice of it all. Just because he'd attended nothing but a Suffolk village elementary school, where one harrassed teacher had had to cope with thirty children whose ages ranged from five to fourteen, he'd been handicapped educationally from the start. Just because, from the age of fourteen, he'd had to earn his living, he had had no time to make up for the deficiencies of the old system by educating himself. Just because …

But Quantrill was a reasonable man, with a limited capacity for self-deception. As the angry mist cleared from in front of his eyes, and he wiped the sweat of humiliation from his forehead and guiltily reduced his excessive speed, he acknowledged that his resentment was entirely retrospective. He'd hated school, and had longed to leave. He'd heard that the parents of children who won a place at the local grammar school had to undertake to keep them there until they were sixteen; young Douglas had been so alarmed at this prospect of elongated boredom that when he took the examination he deliberately made no effort to get his sums right. His sole ambition, at the age of eleven, had been to work at the village garage and eventually become a driver with the local bus company, like his father.

He'd learned his respect for education far too late. He realised now that he could have done all the reading in the world while he was in the RAF, if he'd bothered. Heaven knew there'd been time enough, between bouts of kitting-out each week's new arrivals. If only he'd had the sense, when he'd skived off into his den at the back of the clothing stores, leaving Ac McClusky at the counter to act as a primitive early warning system, to read the complete works of Shakespeare instead of
Reveille
…

Sergeant Tait, sitting quietly beside him, let out a silent breath of relief as the chief inspector calmed down and began to drive with due care and attention. Far from deriding Quantrill, the sergeant felt a strong professional sympathy with him. Tait himself had read social science and his acquaintance with Shakespeare was limited to school set books which hadn't, in his time, included
Hamlet
. Certainly he'd heard of Ophelia, and had a sketchy knowledge of her fate; but only a pre-war fictional amateur detective would think of a corpse in Shakespearean terms, and Tait was contemptuous of fictional amateurs. He was interested in facts, not literary allusions. In Quantrill's place he might well have said the same thing.

He glanced at the chief inspector's glum, set profile. Mrs Bloomfield wasn't at all bad, either—no wonder the old man was put out. Of course, as far as Tait himself was concerned, she was too old. Women a little older than himself, who knew what it was all about and didn't get emotional, yes; but as soon as the firmness began to go from under their chins and the lines deepened on either side of their mouths, he lost interest. But Mrs Bloomfield had obviously been stunning in her day, and had kept herself trim. Tait could see that to a man of her own age or older, she would still be extremely attractive.

He glanced again at Quantrill. The old man had let himself go round the middle, but he must have been handsome enough when he was young. Whether Mrs Bloomfield wanted the chief inspector as much as Quantrill wanted her, though, was another matter; she liked him, obviously, but from what Tait had seen of their relationship—and he had kept it under close but unobtrusive observation—the affair was principally in the chief inspector's mind, poor old devil. Wife trouble, Tait diagnosed, with the callous relish of an unmarried twenty-four year old who is convinced that no girl will ever catch him.

For his part, Quantrill was determined to put Jean Bloomfield out of his thoughts. He had made a fool of himself in front of her, and that was it; he could never hope to reinstate himself now, and the sooner he concentrated the whole of his attention on his job, the sooner he would forget her.

Except that she hadn't forgotten him, in four years. ‘Mr Quantrill,' she'd said, smiling at him, ‘how good to see you.' And then he'd gone and said, like the oaf that he was, ‘Ophelia who?'

Quantrill twisted savagely at the air intake on the dashboard, directing a jet of cold air full on his face. ‘Sergeant Tait,' he said sharply, ‘there are just two things I want you to do about Mary Gedge's death. First, get a patrol man to watch the Kenward house for the boy's return. If Dale admits to having seen Mary within the past forty-eight hours, I want to interview him. Secondly, keep in touch with the hospital and get the gist of the pathologist's report to me as soon as possible. Apart from that, you're to spend no more time investigating this fatality. Is that clear? There'll be more than enough work waiting for you in your office, and for me in mine.'

‘Sir,' agreed Tait. But he had in his pocket the notebook that contained the names and addresses of Mary Gedge's Breckham Market friends, and on duty or off, he intended to follow them up. If the chief inspector was satisfied that this death was accidental, Tait wasn't. And no deaths on this patch were going to be left unexplained while he was divisional CID sergeant.

Quantrill worked at his desk for an hour without once thinking of Jean Bloomfield or of Mary Gedge. Soon after seven o'clock, with an evening's paperwork in front of him, he rang for a cup of coffee and a sandwich.

It was brought by a pink and white complexioned probationary constable, who was so hideously embarrassed by a pair of squeaky boots that Quantrill felt obliged to address him kindly.

‘Thank you very much,' he said as the constable, breathing heavily, set the snack down on his desk. ‘Bedford, isn't it?'

Pc Bedford sprang to instant attention, with a thump and a creak at ground level. ‘Sir!' he said, the pink rushing upwards to displace the white from his forehead.

Quantrill sat back in his chair, scratching his jaw thoughtfully. ‘Busy at the moment, Bedford?'

The constable gulped, trying to decide the most politic answer. Eventually he said, ‘Plenty to do, sir. But if you need anything done urgently, I could postpone the other things.'

‘Good. If I remember rightly, you're an educated man, aren't you? A levels and so on?'

Pc Bedford looked apprehensive. He was proud of his A levels, but the chief inspector's question made him suddenly aware of the gaps in his knowledge. He was afraid that he was about to be asked something totally unfair, like the name of the French prime minister or the coefficient of the expansion of brass. ‘Economics, Geography and English Literature, sir,' he admitted warily.

‘English, good. You know
Hamlet
, then?'

Bedford would have shuffled his feet, if it weren't for the boots; it was far worse to be asked about something he once knew and had forgotten. And what on earth did the DCI want with
Hamlet?
Still, the constable had discovered that senior officers were alarmingly unpredictable and Sergeant Lamb, his mentor, had given him an invaluable piece of advice: humour them.

‘I haven't read
Hamlet
since O levels, sir,' he apologised. ‘I don't remember it all that well—but I could fetch you a Shakespeare from the library if you like, they stay open till eight tonight.'

Quantrill looked at him with approval. ‘Good! Right then, nip round to the library and give my compliments to Mr Bradshaw. We only need the book for half an hour but give him a signature for it, we don't want him to think that we're taking advantage of being next door.'

Pc Bedford was puzzled. ‘Wouldn't it be simpler if I used one of my borrower's cards, sir?'

The chief inspector, who had never learned the library habit, glowered. ‘Be off with you! Use your initiative, boy!'

Pc Bedford fled at a rapid squeak.

Quantrill took a gulp of coffee, looked at his watch and then put a call through to his home. He was relieved when the telephone was answered not by his wife but by Peter, who gave their number clearly just as his father had taught him.

‘Hallo Peter.'

‘Hi Dad.'

‘Your mother in?'

‘She's just changing. The Higginses are coming, worse luck—that means I'll miss Kojak.'

‘The Higginses—oh lord, I'd forgotten! Well, it's no good, I just can't make it.'

‘Mum'll be mad.'

‘Again …' Quantrill heard the boy's answering chuckle, and then a distant raised voice and the muffling of the receiver as Peter called a reply.

‘She says what is it
this
time?' Peter reported. He tried to sound blasé, but Quantrill knew that he had taken to reading the local paper and had developed too great an interest for a thirteen-year-old in the more sordid cases that his father had to handle.

‘Oh, mostly routine. Too much work and too few men to do it.'

‘Who'd be a chief inspector?' sympathised Peter, who was secretly proud of his father's new eminence.

‘Who'd be a chief inspector's wife, you mean,' amended Quantrill, slapping on a fresh piece of wallpaper in an attempt to hide some of the cracks from the boy. ‘Listen,' he added quickly, anxious to conclude the conversation before his wife reached the telephone, ‘don't let on that I forgot about the Higginses, there's a good chap. They understand that my time's not my own. Just tell your mother that I'm sorry, but I'll be late. I've no idea when, so she's not to wait up. Okay?'

‘Ten-four, Captain,' confirmed Peter, using the jargon of the New York cops he watched on television. ‘Hey, Dad, any chance of my having a portable telly for my birthday, so that I can watch it in my room without disturbing anybody? Just a very small one? A miniature? Please?'

‘No chance,' said his father firmly.

Quantrill was unenthusiastically eating a cheese sandwich when Pc Bedford returned. The constable offered a thick volume, but the sandwich gave Quantrill an excellent excuse to wave it away.

‘You know your way round it better than I do. Read me what it says about Ophelia's death, will you?'

Pc Bedford, who hoped in time to transfer to the CID, had already been doing a little detective work on his own account. He had discovered from Sergeant Lamb what the chief inspector had been working on during the day, and had guessed why he had been sent for a copy of
Hamlet
. Bedford was most impressed to learn that the DCI was a literary man.

He blushed. ‘Excuse me, sir,' he said diffidently, ‘but do you mind if I ask whether you're thinking of the girl who was drowned at Ashthorpe?'

Quantrill paused in the act of lighting a small cigar. ‘Did you know her?'

‘No sir, I'm new to Breckham Market. But I've heard how the body was found, in a long dress with flowers scattered round her, and it
does
sound a lot like Shakespeare. I imagine that your theory is that she'd been gathering flowers and then, remembering Ophelia, acted out the part and took it too far. Is that how you see it, sir?'

Quantrill coughed as the smoke went the wrong way. Taking this for confirmation, Bedford riffled quickly through the pages. ‘Yes, there's this touching scene where Ophelia offers her flowers to the courtiers; “There's fennel for you, and columbines; there's rue for you; and here's some for me.” And she sings very sadly. Well, the girl might have acted the scene and then climbed a willow tree, just as Ophelia did. That's in Gertrude's speech, Act Four Scene Seven. Would you like me to read the relevant bits, just to refresh your memory, sir?'

‘Do,' said Quantrill hoarsely.

Bedford cleared his throat. He had never thought, when he joined the force, that he would find himself standing in a DCI's office reading Shakespeare; as the recruiting advertisements had promised, it seemed that a police constable's life really was full of variety. He selected some lines and started to read:

‘There is a willow grows aslant a brook,
That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream;
There with fantastic garlands did she come,
Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies and long purples …
There, on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds
Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke
—'