Who Saw Him Die? (7 page)

Quantrill held the gate for his sergeant to walk through. Hilary took a closer look at Tower House, gloomy behind the last few damp yellow leaves on the branches of the trees beside the drive. ‘It's such a depressing place,' she said. ‘No wonder poor Clanger Bell lost his wits. Is there anything eccentric about his sister, do you know?'

‘Nothing I've ever heard mentioned. This allegation of murder sounds so far-fetched, though, that I'm wondering whether the shock of her brother's death, on top of the strain of looking after him for so many years, has tipped her off balance. Who dealt with the accident, by the way?'

‘PC Powell, sir.'

‘Hmm. Tim Powell's a bright lad. If there was anything suspicious about that accident, he'd have spotted it. On the other hand, he hasn't yet developed into what you might call a sympathetic listener – and that may be all Miss Bell really needs. Let's be patient and hear what she has to say, and with a bit of luck we'll be able to talk her out of the idea that her brother was murdered.'

Eunice Bell, stiff and uncommunicative, led her visitors through the chill gloom of the hall to the equally unwelcoming drawing room, heavy with Victorian furniture and the cold silence of disuse. As the two detectives followed her into the room she took her stand beside the empty marble fireplace and looked severely at the Chief Inspector.

‘Quantrill,' she said. Her voice was as strong and spiny as the evergreen foliage of the monkey puzzle tree that blocked most of the light from the north-facing window. ‘Do I know your wife?'

Chief Inspector Quantrill was aware that he spoke with a slow Suffolk accent, and he was not normally well disposed to witnesses who addressed him as though he were one of several applicants for the post of jobbing gardener. But having decided that this enquiry could best be cleared up by kindness, he answered her peaceably. ‘Quite probably. My wife works as a receptionist at the health centre, and I believe she helps with the Red Cross medical loan service.'

Miss Bell ducked her head in what was clearly intended to be a gracious nod. ‘Ah yes. I thought I'd heard the name in that connection. As well as in connection with Breckham Market CID, of course. But I don't believe –' she turned, stiff-necked, to look hard at Hilary Lloyd ‘– that I've heard
your
name mentioned before.'

‘Probably not.' Hilary, suspecting that Eunice Bell's formidable manner was a protective façade, answered her with a pleasant smile. She too liked to keep her private life private, but she achieved it by being apparently outgoing, doing so much lively talking that people could spend hours in her company without realising that she was giving away nothing about herself at all. Miss Bell's method of keeping people at bay was no doubt extremely effective but it did run the risk, Hilary thought, of needlessly putting their backs up.

‘But I would like to say,' the sergeant went on sincerely, after explaining that she had come to Breckham Market only the previous year, ‘how saddened my colleagues and I were by your brother's death.'

‘Thank you.' Eunice Bell ducked her head in acknowledgement. ‘Superintendent Roydon was kind enough to say much the same thing. I'm well aware that my brother was often a nuisance. As I told Mr Roydon, I very much appreciate the kindness and forbearance shown to Cuthbert by the police. However –' she directed her penetrating, dark-eyed gaze back to the Chief Inspector ‘– I am not at all satisfied with the investigation into the circumstances of his death.'

‘So Mr Roydon tells me,' said Quantrill in a soothing tone. ‘May we sit down while we talk about it?'

‘Please do.'

Quantrill remained on his feet until after both women had seated themselves. They were so very different, he thought, watching them: Eunice Bell sitting ramrod-straight on a hard chair, severe in navy blue; and Hilary, almost as thin, almost as straight-backed, but gracefully at ease and looking very attractive in a dusky pink suède jacket that, come to think of it, he didn't remember having seen before …

But he could see similarities between the women, too. They were both independent, strong-minded, self-contained. And considering that he had spent eighteen months working with Hilary but was no closer to her now than when he started, he foresaw little chance of finding out much about Eunice Bell during the course of the next ten minutes.

There was one thing he could tell about her, though. In whatever way she had been affected by her brother's death, Miss Bell had not been knocked off balance by it. During the course of twenty-five years of detective work, Quantrill had interviewed thousands of witnesses; he was accustomed to talking to people who were under extreme emotional or mental stress. He could recognise the rigidity of fear, the sweat and shake of nervous tension, the inward stare of the mentally disturbed, the gleam in the eye of the obsessed.

But Eunice Bell showed none of these signs. Her stiff posture was clearly a long-established habit, an indication of nothing more than reserve and fastidious self-control. She sat with a practised composure, her hands and feet neatly placed, calmly motionless. And he knew that – much as he would like to discount what she was about to say to him, on the grounds of emotional imbalance – he was obliged to accept the fact that he was dealing with a rational woman.

‘Why
now
, Miss Bell? This is what puzzles us. Police Constable Powell came to see you after Mr Bell's death, but you made no reference to murder then. In fact you told the constable that your only surprise was that your brother hadn't been run over years ago. All the evidence pointed to accidental death, and that was the Coroner's verdict. So why are you now suggesting murder?'

Eunice Bell looked at him from under dark, level eyebrows. ‘I expressed no surprise at the time, Mr. Quantrill, because I was well aware of my brother's habits. It was stupid and wrong of him to make a practice of crossing the road quite deliberately in the path of oncoming vehicles. Unfortunately, I could do or say nothing to stop him. He was a menace to local drivers, and I'm only thankful that he wasn't the cause of anyone else's injury or death.'

‘We're all thankful for that,' said Quantrill bluntly. ‘But –'

‘I didn't at first realise that Cuthbert had been murdered,' Miss Bell continued, ignoring the interruption, ‘because I decided long ago that when the inevitable collision occurred, I would prefer not to know the identity of the driver. I thought it would be unjust of me to hold anyone other than Cuthbert himself responsible for his death. And so I didn't read the local newspaper report of what happened, and I didn't attend the inquest.

‘But for some reason – curiosity, I suppose – I
did
read the report of the inquest in yesterday's newspaper. And when I saw the name of the driver, and realised who he was, I knew that he must have lied about himself at the inquest. And because he had gone to the length of lying – or at least of deliberately misleading the police and the Coroner – I now believe that he drove at my brother with the intention of killing him.'

‘Now hold you hard,' said Chief Inspector Quantrill, making the Suffolk idiom sound magisterial. ‘This driver –'

‘John Reuben Goodrum,' supplied Sergeant Lloyd, consulting her notebook. ‘Known as Jack Goodrum.'

‘Ah. Right, then, Miss Bell: do I understand that you're personally acquainted with this Jack Goodrum?'

‘No, Mr Quantrill, I am not. But despite the impression he gave at the inquest, Goodrum is no stranger to Breckham Market. And he would have known full well who Cuthbert was.'

Quantrill looked to Sergeant Lloyd for information. She flicked through her notes again. ‘Until a month ago, Mr Goodrum had always lived and worked in the Ipswich area. He bought The Mount in April, but wasn't able to take up residence before October 5th. The Coroner saw that fact as significant. He said that Mr Bell had undoubtedly survived so long because his habits were well known – all the local drivers slowed right down when they saw him.

‘But Mr Goodrum, as a newcomer to the town, didn't know Mr Bell and couldn't be expected to keep an eye open for him. That was why the Coroner found that no blame for the accident could attach to Mr Goodrum.'

‘So I read, in the newspaper report,' said Eunice Bell drily. ‘But Goodrum spent several weeks of each year in Breckham Market when he was a boy. He got to know Cuthbert well. What's more, he had good reason to harbour a grudge against my brother. And that's why I believe that when Goodrum returned to the town and learned that the man who wandered the streets was Cuthbert, he seized the opportunity to take his revenge.'

Miss Bell presented the story in crisp detail. When she and her brother were in their early teens, there had been a butcher's shop just off Victoria Road, on a site now occupied by the Shell filling station. The butcher, who had supplied meat to the Bell household, was a man named Reuben Goodrum. Reuben had a grandson, Jack, who came up from the Ipswich area every summer during the school holidays to help in the shop and with the deliveries.

Reuben Goodrum owned a piece of grazing land which adjoined the far end of the grounds of Tower House. The Bell children were forbidden to play outside their own garden, or to mix with the local children; but Cuthbert had always liked to sit on the high garden wall watching the animals in the butcher's field, and in doing so he had struck up a summer acquaintance with the butcher's grandson. Cuthbert was a year older than Jack Goodrum, but smaller and weaker, and he had soon come to hero-worship the bigger boy.

‘One could hardly call it friendship,' reflected Eunice Bell. ‘I imagine that Goodrum merely tolerated my brother. The association had to be kept secret from our parents, of course, but Cuthbert was always talking to me about the boy: it was
Jack Jack Jack
all the time. My brother must have followed him about like a puppy – and of course that meant going out of the garden, and no doubt getting into all kinds of mischief.'

‘You say,
no doubt
, Miss Bell,' commented Quantrill. ‘You didn't know what they actually got up to, then?'

‘No, and I didn't wish to. I was older than Cuthbert and I felt responsible for him. I knew there would be trouble enough if our parents found out that he was roaming about with the butcher's boy, regardless of what the two of them were doing. But even in those days,' she added wryly, ‘I had very little control over my brother.'

The unauthorised holiday relationship between Cuthbert Bell and Jack Goodrum had continued until Cuthbert was about seventeen. Then, at last, it had been discovered by his father. Something had been done that enraged Mr Bell; he had summoned his son to his study in the tower, demanding to know the identity of the culprit; and Cuthbert, terrified by his father's threat to beat him, had revealed that Jack was to blame.

‘And what was the incident?' asked Sergeant Lloyd. ‘What had been done to enrage your father?'

‘The subject was never discussed with me,' said Eunice Bell. ‘All Cuthbert would tell me was what had happened to his friend. My father was a magistrate, but that hadn't stopped him from taking the law into his own hands and thrashing Jack Goodrum. We none of us ever saw the boy again.

‘And this is my point: my late father was a quick-tempered, violent man. A thrashing from him would be something that any culprit would remember for the rest of his life. It is my belief that Jack Goodrum
has
remembered it, and that when Cuthbert crossed his path he quite deliberately ran him down.'

Both detectives sat back in their chairs. They looked sceptical.

‘It's a very interesting story, Miss Bell,' said Sergeant Lloyd, ‘but –'

‘But where's your evidence?' said Chief Inspector Quantrill.

Eunice Bell looked stiffly from one to the other. ‘I beg your pardon?'

‘Evidence,' repeated the Chief Inspector patiently. ‘You've put forward a theory that sounds plausible, Miss Bell. But what we must have, if we're to pursue it, is good hard evidence that will stand up in a court of law. There's already been an investigation into your brother's death, and all the available evidence points to an accident. So if you want the case reopened, you'll have to provide us with more than a theory to work on.'

Eunice Bell stood up, looking – for the first time – disconcerted. ‘I have no “hard evidence”, as you call it, to give you. I had imagined that
you
would search for evidence, once you had grounds for suspicion. I thought that was how detectives worked. Am I mistaken?'

Quantrill too got to his feet. ‘Well, no,' he said apologetically. ‘You're not mistaken, Miss Bell – but that applies only when an unexplained or a suspicious death has occurred. In this case there's no mystery at all. And there are three eye-witnesses who say that the driver of the vehicle had no chance of avoiding your brother.'

‘Yes – these eye-witnesses!' Eunice Bell turned abruptly towards Sergeant Lloyd and her notebook. ‘I thought they were suspicious, when I read about them. Three seems too many. And they were looking in exactly the same direction far too conveniently for my liking. How can you be sure that Goodrum didn't bribe them to give evidence in his favour?'

‘Three old-established residents of Breckham Market?' said Hilary Lloyd reproachfully, getting up in her turn. ‘Two of them pensioners, all of them thoroughly respectable …?'

Miss Bell hesitated for a moment, then ducked her head in acknowledgement. ‘Had I realised that,' she said stiffly, ‘I would never have made such an allegation. I withdraw it, of course.'

Quantrill gave a ruminative nod. ‘It seems to me,' he said, practising kindness, ‘that you'd have done better to attend the inquest, Miss Bell. You're upset by your brother's death, of course. But if you'd gone to the inquest and seen how thoroughly the matter was dealt with, I'm sure it would have set your mind at rest. As it is, you're probably imagining –'