Death and the Maiden (29 page)

‘Have you arrested her, sir?'

‘Not yet.' Quantrill stood in his office, staring out of the window. The sun, setting red in a thick evening haze, looked like nothing so much as a giant fluorescent lolly of the kind sucked by his son's favourite New York television detective. He turned back to Tait. ‘She's with Patsy Hopkins, writing out a statement.'

‘Was it jealousy? Of a middle-aged woman for a young one?'

The chief inspector was too weary to try to explain. ‘A lot more complicated than that. But I've no doubt she'll put it clearly in her statement. She's good with words.'

Tait felt mystified, excluded. ‘Sir, what about Joy Dawson? Do you think Mrs B. killed her?'

‘Joy Dawson?' Quantrill rounded on his sergeant, incensed. ‘Of course not! Good God, what kind of person do you think Mrs Bloomfield is?'

Tait was affronted. ‘I beg your pardon, sir,' he said stiffly. ‘But then, I haven't the advantage of being a personal friend of the murderer.'

As soon as he spoke the words, Tait knew the enormity of them. The old man was in a bad way, there was no doubt about that: shattered. It was indefensible to make capital out of it.

The sergeant stood to attention. ‘Sir,' he said, genuinely contrite, ‘I apologise. I shouldn't have said that.'

The flash of anger faded from Quantrill's eyes. He nodded dully. ‘And I shouldn't have jumped on you,' he said. ‘Of course you're right to bear Joy in mind, and to consider every possibility.'

He looked at the photograph of the missing girl that stood on his desk, and tried to shake off his depression. A newly promoted chief inspector had no business not to be positive; a good detective had to keep on trying.

‘Not that we've any reason to believe that Joy is dead,' he said briskly. ‘A good many girls run away from home, wanting to cut loose. It takes months, years even, for them to face up to going back, but some of them do. And did you hear about the girl who went missing from the other side of the county seven years ago, and was traced last January?

‘There's an even chance that Joy has been one of the lucky ones, and is alive and well somewhere. Take a good look at her file on Monday, will you? I'd be glad of your opinion—you may well spot something that I've missed. Oh, and will you make the formal arrest in the Mary Gedge case?'

‘Me, sir?' Sergeant Tait boggled at the prospect of being credited with the arrest of a murderer in his first week in the division. ‘Oh, but that seems hardly fair—'

‘I'd consider it a favour, Martin. I'd like to get away. It's my day off tomorrow, and I want to take my boy fishing—if nothing else turns up between now and then, of course. If it does, you'll know where to find me.'

Chief Inspector Quantrill brushed a few stray blades of grass from his suit, and went home to his wife.

First published in 1978 by Hamilton

This edition published 2012 by Bello an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR Basingstoke and Oxford Associated companies throughout the world

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Copyright © Sheila Radley, 1978

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