Dead And Buried

Seventeen

Sir James Proud picked up the newspapers from the doorstep of the little house in Anglesey Drive. The Sunday Post was wrapped round a copy of the Sunday Mail: he guessed that the old man had read these all his life. He rang the bell and waited, glancing at the front page of the Post as he did so. The banner headline told of an atrocity in the Middle East, but below and to the left, a face stared out at him, one of those staring-eyed E-fit things that, it seemed to him, hardly ever produced a positive identification. He read the story below, and realised that it had been issued by his own force, in connection with a murder the day before.

‘We are pursuing several lines of enquiry,’ said Detective Sergeant Ray Wilding, ‘but we are particularly keen to trace this man, last seen yesterday morning in the vicinity of Evesham Street and Great Junction Street. He is known to have sustained a bad injury to his right hand, which would certainly require medical treatment. We are appealing to him to contact the police so that he can be eliminated from our investigation. If you know this man, please contact our hotline.’

‘Never seen him before in my life,’ the chief constable muttered, as he looked at the gaunt, ageless face and the grey wool hat. ‘But I’ll bet we’ve had a few calls by now.’ He knew also that most of them would be wild geese thrown up by well-meaning citizens, that a few would come from pranksters, and that others would be malicious. There was someone out there, undoubtedly, with a grey woolly hat and a badly injured hand, but he was unlikely to be traced by an approximate likeness in a newspaper.

He was still looking at the page when the big green door creaked open. ‘Good morning, young Proud,’ the old man greeted him. He was dressed from another era, but immaculately, in grey flannels and a smoking jacket, and he had carpet slippers on his feet. His thick white hair had a Brylcreem shine and he was freshly shaved. Proud wondered if he had made a special effort for him, then thought back to his school days and recalled that the rector was always turned out like a new pin.

‘Good morning to you, Mr Goddard.’ He held out the newspapers.

‘Ah, they’ve arrived at last,’ the throw-back said, checking his watch as he took them. ‘Eleven thirty: not good enough. I must have a word with the newsagent.’ He stood aside. ‘Come in, come in. It’s too cold a morning to be standing out there.’

Proud allowed himself to be ushered into a well-lit hallway, then through a living room into a sun-bathed conservatory. The previous weekend’s snow had cleared, but a crisp frost sat on the grass outside like a lambskin carpet.

‘Were you reading about our local sensation?’ Goddard asked, waving the Post in the air before tossing it, and the Mail, on to a table on which a pot of tea and two cups sat waiting.

‘The murder? Did that happen near here?’

‘Swansea Street runs parallel to this one. If you go to the end of the garden and look along the vennel you’ll see one of your caravan things. Damn nuisance, actually; it prevented me from getting my bicycle out this morning. Have them move it, will you, James?’ He smiled, revealing teeth that were too white to be anything but false. ‘Sorry, I’m forgetting myself: that should have been Sir James.’

‘Only my wife and my secretary call me that, Mr Goddard. It’s James, as always.’

‘Now that you’re no longer a pupil, you’d better call me Russell.’

‘It wouldn’t sound right, sir. You’re still the rector to me, and to everyone else who was at Edinburgh Academy in your time.’

‘In that case, you’d better pour the tea, like you used to in my study when we had our regular chats in your year as head boy. Did you know that there were people who said that I appointed you because you were the Lord Provost’s son?’

‘I heard the whispers, yes,’ Proud admitted, as he picked up the tea-pot.

‘All rubbish: I couldn’t stand your father. No, I chose you in spite of that fact, because you were good at everything you did, if excellent at nothing, and because you commanded the confidence of every pupil in the school and most of the masters. Time proved me right too. You’re still head boy, aren’t you?’

‘I suppose I am in a way. My present establishment is coeducational, though. I expect that there will be a head girl one of these days.’

The old rector looked genuinely shocked. ‘Surely not! I know we live in an age of change, but that would be taking political correctness just a little too far.’ His voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. ‘My late wife would have crucified me, had she heard me saying something like that. She’d be happy otherwise, though; it looks as if we’re going to have a woman as First Minister.’

‘There are precedents for that too.’

‘Thirty-three of them to be exact, starting with Mrs Bandaranaike in Ceylon. Did you know that when she assumed office for the third time she was appointed by her daughter, Mrs Kumaratunga, who was president at the time?’

‘No, I did not.’

Mr Goddard’s eyes twinkled. ‘In that case you won’t know either that both Mr Bandaranaike and Mr Kumaratunga were assassinated: risky business, being married to a female politician. This de Marco woman doesn’t have a husband, does she?’

‘I don’t believe so. I’ve met her on several occasions and I’ve never heard her speak of one.’

‘In that case, aspiring suitors should bear the Bandaranaike women in mind.’ The old man sipped his tea. ‘Sorry: you probably don’t remember this, but history was my main subject. However, James, you haven’t come here for a lesson, have you?’

‘I’m always willing to learn, sir, but no, I haven’t.’

‘Have you come to ask me what I knew of the murder victim, then?’

‘Did you know him?’

‘I have made his acquaintance on a few occasions over the years. I found him to be an unpleasant man, surly, no manners at all. I canvassed him for the Conservatives at the last general election. He was abusive. Quite unnecessary: there’s no reason at all why politics can’t be conducted in a civilised manner. Indeed, they must be. The world in which we live now is full of examples of the evil that can come about when that principle is forgotten.’

‘Did he have a wife?’

‘He did when he moved here twenty years ago, but she left him as soon as their son had finished school. Heriot’s,’ he added.

‘Did he upset anyone else around here?’

‘He was the sort of man who would upset anyone, but mostly he ignored his neighbours and we ignored him.’

‘Have you been interviewed by my officers, Mr Goddard?’

‘No, I haven’t, although I did see some of them in the street this morning.’

Proud looked at his old headmaster. ‘I should know this, but how long have you been retired?’

‘Thirty-three years, James.’

‘Which makes you?’

‘Ninety-three.’

‘My goodness. How’s your memory?’

‘What did I just tell you about woman Prime Ministers?’

Proud laughed. ‘Point taken: in that case, here’s the real reason for my visit. I want to ask you about Claude Bothwell.’

‘You mean Adolf?’

‘The staff called him Adolf too?’

‘What else would you call a German teacher with such a damn silly wee moustache? What do you want to know about him?’

‘As much as you can tell me. It’s not him I’m trying to trace, but a woman with whom he was said to be carrying on, a teacher in the junior school, Miss Annabelle Gentle.’

The old man’s thin eyebrows rose. ‘He was, was he?’ he murmured. ‘There was conjecture about that at the time, after they both left.’

‘You didn’t know about it?’

‘Not for a fact. How did this come to your attention?’

‘Through Miss Gentle’s daughter; she’s trying to trace her.’

‘I don’t know if I’ll be much help to the woman.’

‘I don’t know either, but you’re the best lead I have. Can you tell me about the circumstances of their leaving?’

‘It was abrupt; that’s the best I can say about it. You’ll remember yourself, I’m sure, that Bothwell was supposed to be taking your German class that year. Well, he didn’t turn up, damn him. There was no formal resignation, no notice was given or served.’

‘Did you contact him?’

‘I tried to. The school secretary phoned his house to see what was up, but she got no reply. She called several times, with the same result. Eventually I went to see him. The place was deserted: he and his wife had gone. One of the neighbours saw me on the doorstep and told me that they’d left a few weeks before. He’d seen Bothwell loading suitcases into his car, and assumed that they were off on holiday, but they never came back.’

‘They left their house, and all their belongings?’

‘They didn’t have any. The house was rented: I found that out when the landlord’s solicitor rang me at the school looking for him.’

‘What about Miss Gentle?’

‘I didn’t have much to do with that. I left it in the hands of Bessie Stone, head of the junior school. I barely remember the girl, to tell you the truth. I had very little contact with her. She absented herself in the same way that Bothwell did, on the same day.’

‘Did you call on her, or did Miss Stone?’

‘No, Bessie phoned her on the morning she failed to appear, thinking she was sick. As I recall, one of her house-mates answered. Apparently Miss Gentle had gone up north on holiday at the beginning of July, or so she’d led them to believe, but hadn’t come back. She hadn’t given up her room, but they were thinking about letting it.’

‘How did you deal with the matter?’

‘Peremptorily: Bessie gave her until the end of the week to return, then sent her notice of dismissal by recorded delivery.’

‘Where?’

‘At her flat,’ said Mr Goddard. ‘That was the only address we had for her. I gave Claude an extra week’s grace, and then I did the same with him.’

‘Did you ever hear from either of them again?’

‘There was a phone call, I believe, from the girl’s family, looking for her. The secretary told them that she was no longer with us.’

‘What about Bothwell?’

‘Nothing. I thought that someone might get in touch if he applied for a job somewhere else, but nobody ever did.’

‘And you didn’t link the two departures?’

‘Not really. As I said there was conjecture, but it was staff-room talk, that was all, laughter about our Adolf being a bit of a wide boy. There had been no talk about them at all when they were both on the staff, no rumours. These things happen; people behave badly. To me, it was an unfortunate coincidence, but now you tell me they were carrying on after all. Where does that information come from, young James?’

‘From Miss Gentle’s sister. She says that Annabelle told them, the Easter before all this happened, that she and Bothwell were engaged.’

‘Indeed? Mrs Bothwell would have had something to say about that, I’d have thought.’

‘Did you ever meet her?’

‘Of course, and so did you. She gave you a pot at the school sports, as I recall.’

‘Thank you, I thought that’s who she was.’

‘What do you remember about her?’

Proud’s smile had an edge of guilt about it. ‘Quite a bit, actually: I was sixteen then and beginning to notice such things. Tall, dark hair, striking, well built. “Tits like racing airships” was Bertie Stenton’s description, as I recall. We were more impressed by Adolf after we saw her.’

‘Young Stenton always had a way with words,’ the old rector remarked. ‘He still does now he’s on the Bench, from what I read in the Scotsman whenever he sentences some poor miscreant. Mrs Bothwell was Spanish. Her name was Montserrat, like the soprano; Montserrat Rivera Jiminez, the daughter of an hotelier. I know all that because I asked her to send me her curriculum vitae: she’d been a teacher too, of English. I thought about employing her in the modern-languages department but she’d have had to upgrade her qualification. She told me that she and Bothwell met in Girona, when he was on holiday one summer, trying to learn Catalan.’

‘Was that her home town?’

‘No, she told me that she was from a place called Torroella de Montgri.’

‘I know it. My deputy has a property not far away. My wife and I go there quite regularly.’

‘The place was very different in those days, though; it was Franco’s time. Mrs Bothwell told me that she was happy to leave Spain because of him. Perhaps they’re still there.’

‘What age would they be now?’

‘The Bothwells? Mid-seventies; he was thirty-six when he left, and she was a couple of years younger. Miss Gentle? I can’t say for sure.’

‘She’d be seventy.’

Mr Goddard refilled his cup and topped up Proud’s. ‘What’s the daughter’s story?’ he asked.

‘Adopted.’

‘I hope she knows what she’s letting herself in for, assuming that you find Miss Gentle, which I doubt you will.’

‘Is there nothing else you can recall about Bothwell? Did he have any particular friends on the staff?’

‘He didn’t have any particular friends at all, from what I could see. That said, I can think of two places you might ask. There’s the pensions people: if he’s still alive he may be claiming one. Then there’s the SSTA.’

‘What?’

‘The Scottish Secondary Teachers’ Association: Adolf was a staunch member. That did nothing to enhance his popularity in the Academy, I can tell you. Other than that, young James, I can’t be of any more help to you.’