The Body in the Library (Miss Marple 3)
“Yes,” said Harper, “that does seem to settle it.”
A decent, kindly man, he felt slightly sick. First Ruby Keene and now this child, Pamela Reeves.
He said to himself, as he had said before:
“What’s come to Glenshire?”
His next move was first to ring up his own Chief Constable, and afterwards to get in touch with Colonel Melchett. The disappearance of Pamela Reeves had taken place in Radfordshire though her body had been found in Glenshire.
The next task set him was not a pleasant one. He had to break the news to Pamela Reeves’s father and mother….
II
Superintendent Harper looked up consideringly at the façade of Braeside as he rang the front door bell.
Neat little villa, nice garden of about an acre and a half. The sort of place that had been built fairly freely all over the countryside in the last twenty years. Retired Army men, retired Civil Servants—that type. Nice decent folk; the worst you could say of them was that they might be a bit dull. Spent as much money as they could afford on their children’s education. Not the kind of people you associated with tragedy. And now tragedy had come to them. He sighed.
He was shown at once into a lounge where a stiff man with a grey moustache and a woman whose eyes were red with weeping both sprang up. Mrs. Reeves cried out eagerly:
“You have some news of Pamela?”
Then she shrank back, as though the Superintendent’s commiserating glance had been a blow.
Harper said:
“I’m afraid you must prepare yourself for bad news.”
“Pamela—” faltered the woman.
Major Reeves said sharply:
“Something’s happened—to the child?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Do you mean she’s dead?”
Mrs. Reeves burst out:
“Oh no, no,” and broke into a storm of weeping. Major Reeves put his arm round his wife and drew her to him. His lips trembled but he looked inquiringly at Harper, who bent his head.
“An accident?”
“Not exactly, Major Reeves. She was found in a burnt-out car which had been abandoned in a quarry.”
“In a car? In a quarry?”
His astonishment was evident.
Mrs. Reeves broke down altogether and sank down on the sofa, sobbing violently.
Superintendent Harper said:
“If you’d like me to wait a few minutes?”
Major Reeves said sharply:
“What does this mean? Foul play?”
“That’s what it looks like, sir. That’s why I’d like to ask you some questions if it isn’t too trying for you.”
“No, no, you’re quite right. No time must be lost if what you suggest is true. But I can’t believe it. Who would want to harm a child like Pamela?”
Harper said stolidly:
“You’ve already reported to your local police the circumstances of your daughter’s disappearance. She left here to attend a Guides rally and you expected her home for supper. That is right?”
“Yes.”
“She was to return by bus?”
“Yes.”
“I understand that, according to the story of her fellow Guides, when the rally was over Pamela said she was going into Danemouth to Woolworth’s, and would catch a later bus home. That strikes you as quite a normal proceeding?”
“Oh yes, Pamela was very fond of going to Woolworth’s. She often went into Danemouth to shop. The bus goes from the main road, only about a quarter of a mile from here.”
“And she had no other plans, so far as you know?”
“None.”
“She was not meeting anybody in Danemouth?”
“No, I’m sure she wasn’t. She would have mentioned it if so. We expected her back for supper. That’s why, when it got so late and she hadn’t turned up, we rang up the police. It wasn’t like her not to come home.”
“Your daughter had no undesirable friends—that is, friends that you didn’t approve of?”
“No, there was never any trouble of that kind.”
Mrs. Reeves said tearfully:
“Pam was just a child. She was very young for her age. She liked games and all that. She wasn’t precocious in any way.”
“Do you know a Mr. George Bartlett who is staying at the Majestic Hotel in Danemouth?”
Major Reeves stared.
“Never heard of him.”
“You don’t think your daughter knew him?”
“I’m quite sure she didn’t.”
He added sharply: “How does he come into it?”
“He’s the owner of the Minoan 14 car in which your daughter’s body was found.”
Mrs. Reeves cried: “But then he must—”
Harper said quickly:
“He reported his car missing early today. It was in the courtyard of the Majestic Hotel at lunch time yesterday. Anybody might have taken the car.”
“But didn’t someone see who took it?”
The Superintendent shook his head.
“Dozens of cars going in and out all day. And a Minoan 14 is one of the commonest makes.”
Mrs. Reeves cried:
“But aren’t you doing something? Aren’t you trying to find the—the devil who did this? My little girl—oh, my little girl! She wasn’t burnt alive, was she? Oh, Pam, Pam …!”
“She didn’t suffer, Mrs. Reeves. I assure you she was already dead when the car was set alight.”
Reeves asked stiffly:
“How was she killed?”
Harper gave him a significant glance.
“We don’t know. The fire had destroyed all evidence of that kind.”
He turned to the distraught woman on the sofa.
?
?Believe me, Mrs. Reeves, we’re doing everything we can. It’s a matter of checking up. Sooner or later we shall find someone who saw your daughter in Danemouth yesterday, and saw whom she was with. It all takes time, you know. We shall have dozens, hundreds of reports coming in about a Girl Guide who was seen here, there, and everywhere. It’s a matter of selection and of patience—but we shall find out the truth in the end, never you fear.”
Mrs. Reeves asked:
“Where—where is she? Can I go to her?”
Again Superintendent Harper caught the husband’s eye. He said:
“The medical officer is attending to all that. I’d suggest that your husband comes with me now and attends to all the formalities. In the meantime, try and recollect anything Pamela may have said—something, perhaps, that you didn’t pay attention to at the time but which might throw some light upon things. You know what I mean—just some chance word or phrase. That’s the best way you can help us.”
As the two men went towards the door, Reeves said, pointing to a photograph:
“There she is.”
Harper looked at it attentively. It was a hockey group. Reeves pointed out Pamela in the centre of the team.
“A nice kid,” Harper thought, as he looked at the earnest face of the pigtailed girl.
His mouth set in a grim line as he thought of the charred body in the car.
He vowed to himself that the murder of Pamela Reeves should not remain one of Glenshire’s unsolved mysteries.
Ruby Keene, so he admitted privately, might have asked for what was coming to her, but Pamela Reeves was quite another story. A nice kid, if he ever saw one. He’d not rest until he’d hunted down the man or woman who’d killed her.
Eleven
A day or two later Colonel Melchett and Superintendent Harper looked at each other across the former’s big desk. Harper had come over to Much Benham for a consultation.
Melchett said gloomily:
“Well, we know where we are—or rather where we aren’t!”
“Where we aren’t expresses it better, sir.”
“We’ve got two deaths to take into account,” said Melchett. “Two murders. Ruby Keene and the child Pamela Reeves. Not much to identify her by, poor kid, but enough. That shoe that escaped burning has been identified positively as hers by her father, and there’s this button from her Girl Guide uniform. A fiendish business, Superintendent.”