Death and the Maiden by Sheila Radley Read Free Book Online

a simple accident. ‘The row was eighteen months ago, and she’d have got over it by now. And she’d always been a happy girl. I don’t know that she was ever close to her mother—Mrs Gedge was always very strict with her, very unbending. But Mary and her Dad got along well. If you’d seen them working and laughing together in the shop, like I saw them only a couple of days ago, you’d know she was happy enough at home.’
    Quantrill felt relieved. He loved his own two daughters very much, and had felt bereft when they left Breckham Market to live in London. The fact that Alison, the younger, sent him a personal weekly letter was a heartwarming source of pride. He tried to imagine Mary Gedge’s father’s desolation, and was ashamed to feel instead a sense of thankfulness that his own daughters were alive.
    Tait asked the constable for Derek Gedge’s address, and wrote it in his notebook. ‘Did Mary have any other relatives in the village? Well then, can you tell us who her friends were?’
    Godbold brushed a grey caterpillar of cigarette ash from the front of his tunic. ‘To be honest, I can’t tell you about her friends. I’m not in the village enough to know who Mary went about with. But I reckon most of her friends would be the ones she’d made at school, in Breckham.’
    â€˜A boy-friend?’
    â€˜Not an Ashthorpe one, not to my knowledge.’
    â€˜How did she travel to school?’ Tait asked.
    â€˜There’s a special bus that goes round the villages. My own boy travels on it.’
    Quantrill forced a genial smile. ‘Ah, Trevor. How’s he doing?’
    Trevor Godbold, having passed the eleven plus, had gone to Breckham Market boys’grammar school, to his parents’manifest pride. Quantrill had congratulated them wholeheartedly. Both his daughters had gone to the girls’ grammar school, and he was confident that his son, three years younger than Trevor, would take the examination in his stride. It had been difficult to conceal his chagrin when Peter was, in the humiliating official phraseology, selected for education at the Alderman Thirkettle secondary modern school.
    Since then—in pursuit of an equality that, however much he might approve of it in theory, Quantrill would not have welcomed in practice when his daughters were at the grammar school—the Breckham Market secondary schools had been put under one head and re-labelled comprehensive. Peter had settled into the new system cheerfully enough, and Quantrill’s pride was soothed. But he had never been able to rid himself, whenever he met Pc Godbold, of the feeling that he had to take an exaggerated interest in the progress of Godbold junior in order not to be thought resentful of his ability.
    The constable beamed modestly. ‘He’s doing well, thank you, sir. Taking O levels this summer. Would you like to see him, by the way? He’s at home now, just had his dinner. He could very likely tell you who Mary’s friends were.’
    â€˜Good idea,’ said Quantrill heartily. ‘I’d like a chance to meet the boy.’
    Godbold left the room. Quantrill got up and peered at a large-scale map of the district, trying to ignore an altercation that was taking place elsewhere in the house; it sounded as though young Godbold was as reluctant to meet the chief inspector as Quantrill was to meet him.
    When the boy entered the room it was fast, as though he had been propelled. His father stood close, blocking the door, breathing hard.
    Trevor was an awkward sixteen: legs too long for his body, hands and feet clumsy, nose and ears too big for his face, voice creaky, eyes sullen.
    â€˜Hallo Trevor, nice to meet you again.’ Quantrill thrust out a genial hand but the boy shied away from the overdone greeting and Quantrill found himself flapping his hand, instead, towards his sergeant. ‘This is Detective Sergeant