“We have to be very careful.”
“Of course.” She sat back in her chair, crossed her legs and rested her hands on her lap. Banks noticed the thin gold wedding band. “How can I help you?” she asked.
“I’m not really sure. In cases like this it helps to find out as much as you can about the child. What was Gemma like?”
Peggy Graham pursed her lips. “Well, that’s a hard one. Gemma’s a very quiet child. She always seems a bit withdrawn.”
“In what way?”
“Just … quiet. Oh, she’s bright, very bright. She’s an excellent reader, and I think, given the opportunity, she could be very creative. That’s one of hers on the wall.”
Banks walked over to the crayon sketch Peggy had pointed at. It showed a girl with pigtails standing beside a tree on a carpet of grass under a bright sun. The leaves were individually defined in bright green, and the grass was dotted with yellow flowers—buttercups, perhaps, or dandelions. The girl, a stick-figure, just stood there with her arms stretched out. Banks found something disturbing about it, and he realized that the girl’s round face had
no features. He went back to his chair.
“Very good,” he said. “Did you ever get the feeling that there was something bothering her?”
“She always seems … well, preoccupied.” Peggy gave a nervous laugh. “I call her Wednesday’s child. You know, ‘Wednesday’s child is full of woe.’ She seemed woeful. Of course, I tried to talk to her, but she never said much. Mostly she was attentive in class. Once or twice I noticed she was weeping, just quietly, to herself.”
“What did you do?”
“I didn’t want to embarrass her in front of the others. I asked her afterwards what was wrong, but she wouldn’t say. Gemma’s always been a very secretive child. What goes on in that imagination of hers I’ve no idea. Half the time she seems to be in another world.”
“A better one?”
Peggy Graham twisted her ring. “I don’t know. I like to think so.”
“What was your impression?”
“I think she was lonely and she felt unloved.”
Her first use of the past tense in reference to Gemma wasn’t lost on Banks. “Lonely? Didn’t she have any friends?”
“Oh yes. She was quite popular here, even though she was quiet. Don’t get the wrong impression. She liked playing games with the other girls. Sometimes she seemed quite gay—oops, I shouldn’t have said that, should I, now they’ve censored it from all the Noddy books—cheerful, I suppose. It’s just that she was moody. She had these woeful, silent moods when you just couldn’t reach her. Sometimes they’d last for days.”
“And you don’t know why?”
“I can only guess. And you mustn’t tell anyone I said this. I think it was her home life.”
“What about it?”
“I think she was neglected. I don’t mean she wasn’t well fed or clothed, or abused in any way. Though she did look a bit … well, shabby … sometimes. You know, she was wearing the same dress and socks day after day. And sometimes I just felt like picking her up and dumping her in a bath. It wasn’t that she smelled or anything. She was just a bit grubby. 1 don’t think her parents spent enough time with her, encouraging her, that sort of thing. I think that was the root of her loneliness. It happens a lot, and there isn’t much you can do about it. A supportive home environment is perhaps even more important than school for a child’s development, but we can’t be parents as well as teachers, can we? And we can’t tell parents how to bring up their children.”
“You mentioned abuse,” Banks said. “Did you ever notice any signs of physical abuse?”
“Oh, no. I couldn’t … I mean, if I had I would certainly have reported it. We did have a case here a year or so ago. It was dreadful, just dreadful what some parents can sink to.”
“But you saw no signs with Gemma? No bruises, cuts, anything like that?”
“No. Well, there was one time. About a week or so ago, I think it was. It was quite warm, like now. Gemma was wearing a short-sleeved dress and I noticed a bruise on her upper arm, the left one, I think. Naturally, I asked her about it, but she said she’d got it playing games.”
“Did you believe her?”
“Yes. I had no reason to doubt her word.”
“So you didn’t report it?”
“No. I mean, one wouldn’t want to be alarmist. Not after that business with the Cleveland social workers and everything. Look, maybe I should have done something. Lord knows, if I’m in any way responsible… . But if you brought in the authorities every time a child had a
bruise there’d be no time for anything else, would there?”
“It’s all right,” Banks said. “Nobody’s blaming you. Everybody’s a bit sensitive about things like that these days. I picked up plenty of bruises when I was a lad, believe me, and my mum and dad wouldn’t have appreciated being accused of abusing me. And I got a good hiding when I deserved it, too.”
Peggy smiled at him over her glasses. “As I said,” she went on, “Gemma’s explanation seemed perfectly reasonable to me. Children can play pretty rough sometimes. They’re a lot more resilient than we give them credit for.”
“Was that the only mark you ever saw on her?”
“Oh, yes. I mean, if it had been a regular occurrence I’d have said something for certain. We do have to keep an eye open for these things.”
