would happen if he had asked when they became close.
‘Well, yes,’ Mrs Mitchell said, blushing slightly. ‘It would have been about the middle of December. Jude, my husband, was away a lot around then, working at York Minster.’
‘Quite so,’ said Powerscourt. ‘I’m not concerned with the nature of your relationship with the bursar, Mrs Mitchell, but I would like to know about Mr Gill’s state of mind in the weeks before he died.’
‘It’s so strange hearing you call him Mr Gill,’ she said. ‘He was always Roddy to me.’
‘What did the vicar say about the manner of his death, may I ask?’
She gazed into the fire. Outside on the window sill an angry robin was staring at them, as if it blamed them for the snow. ‘He told me Roddy had been murdered,’ she said finally, ‘by a person or persons unknown, as he put it. What a terrible phrase. So impersonal.’
Powerscourt supposed the information must have reached the vicar via the headmaster.
‘Well, I’m afraid he was, murdered, I mean. That’s why it’s important we know about his state of mind.’ Powerscourt was speaking as gently as he knew how. He suspected Mrs Mitchell might burst into tears at any minute and he would have to leave. ‘One of his colleagues told me he was worried about something in the last weeks,’ he went on.
‘I couldn’t say,’ she said ‘All the time I knew him he was a very calm person. He was like a sailing ship that never had to adjust the sails, if you know what I mean. Things might change around him but he stayed the same, calm and quiet and matter-of-fact.’
‘Just what you would expect from somebody who trained as an accountant,’ said Powerscourt. ‘But you didn’t notice any changes in the weeks before he died?’
Mrs Mitchell looked into the fire once more. ‘I don’t know,’ she said at last. ‘He didn’t tell me. And I hadn’t been seeing as much of Roddy as I used to, these last three or four months. He was so busy on the history of the relations between the Silkworkers and the school and trying to work out if the changes were going to help Allison’s or not. But I do remember him saying that the past never leaves you alone, never.’
Powerscourt wondered about the missing years in the filing system on the shelves of Gill’s room. ‘Did he talk to you about his earlier life at all, about growing up, being a young man, that sort of thing?’
‘No, he didn’t, Lord Powerscourt. Oh dear, you must think I’m a terrible witness, unable to answer so many of your questions. He never talked to me about any previous women in his time either. It was as if,’ she paused for a moment, ‘as if I was the first woman in his life. That’s how it seemed to me at the time, anyway. Thinking about it now, I’m sure I wasn’t the first one, not by a long chalk. But I’m not complaining. I can’t make a fuss about the times when I didn’t know him.’
‘How very sensible,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Did he ever tell you if he had been married before? Before he knew you, I mean?’
‘No he didn’t, he didn’t tell me. He could have been married fifty times for all I knew about it.’
‘Forgive me, Mrs Mitchell, I suspect you may have had this thought yourself since you heard of his death. Do you think some relationship in his past may have had something to do with his murder?’
‘Some jealous husband, do you mean, who had just learnt about an earlier affair, risen out of the past like the avenging angel? I have wondered about that, Lord Powerscourt, of course I have. Yet again I don’t have an answer for you.’
Powerscourt thought she was on the brink of tears. ‘You have been very honest with me, Mrs Mitchell, and I am grateful. I doubt if many people could have been as frank in your circumstances. One last question, if I could, and then I’ll leave you alone. How would you describe Roderick Gill, Mrs Mitchell? What was his character?’
‘My Roddy?’ She smiled across at him. ‘Well, he was calm. He was gentle. He was the same on a Thursday as he was on the Monday. I don’t think you could say that about many people. Like many men concerned with money, so the bank manager told me when Jude and I were in danger of falling into debt, he was very good with other people’s money and no good at all with his own. He was always complaining about being about to run out of cash, his salary for that month all gone and so forth. He was very generous to me, always buying me presents. He was always careful only to come when the children would be out or at school, in case they said something to their father.’ She paused. ‘I don’t think that’s all there was to him,’ she said sadly. ‘He wasn’t eloquent, he wasn’t funny, but he was very gentle and very kind.’
She stopped once more and Powerscourt felt she was very close to tears now.
‘Thank you so much,’ he said, rising out of his chair by the other side of the fire. ‘I’ve taken up enough of your time. You’ve been most helpful. Could I just ask, if you think of anything else that might help, please get in touch. The school will know where to find me.’
Hilda Mitchell showed him to the door. ‘Even if I do,’ she said very softly, ‘think of something, I mean, it’s not going to bring him back. Nothing’s going to bring him back now, is it, Lord Powerscourt? I shall never see Roddy again.’
4
It was the largest force Inspector Fletcher had ever commanded. It wasn’t a regiment or a battalion or even a company. His unit this January morning, he thought, remembering the books on military history he loved as a boy, was somewhere between a squad and a platoon. Apart from himself and his sergeant, he had eighteen men on parade outside the Jesus Hospital in Marlow. Three police stations in Maidenhead had been denuded of some of their officers to provide the manpower. Manoeuvres were to start shortly after eight o’clock when the last silkman had left his quarters and reported for breakfast in the dining hall.
As the clock above the little tower reached eight o’clock, the sergeant, on duty by the dining hall, waved an unobtrusive arm to his superior officer. The old men were all sitting down. The eighteen policemen marched into the almshouse. Each one had been assigned a particular room and the sergeant had one of his own. All had been briefed half an hour before at a specially convened assembly in the Maidenhead police station. They were searching, the Inspector informed them, for the murder weapon which had cut the dead man’s throat, and the strange instrument which might have made the marks on his chest. Inspector Fletcher had wondered long and hard about whether he should tell his little force about the stigmata, as he now referred to them. Eventually he decided that he had no choice. If his men didn’t know what they were looking for, how could they possibly find it? He swore the police constables to secrecy on this matter, assuring them that whoever mentioned a word about it, even to their own families, would have all his holiday entitlement cancelled for the foreseeable future. And they were also looking for papers, any private papers they could find. These, he told them, might be letters from family or friends, papers relating to their previous lives, wills, any memorabilia that might say where they had been and what they had done in earlier times. Each officer had a folder with the number of the room he was assigned to inscribed in large black letters. Inspector Fletcher had had enough of the confused memories of the over-seventies. Evidence, hard evidence was what he needed.
The old men were having a treat this morning. Fried eggs and bacon happened to be on the menu, a rare combination. This always improved morale. As they tucked into their portions, sauce bottles at the ready, the policemen slipped into their rooms and began the search. They pulled open the drawers, they checked the small cupboards, they emptied the pockets of any jackets left on a hanger, they knocked on the walls in the quest for hidden compartments and they checked underneath the threadbare carpets for any loose floorboards that might mask a treasure trove of hidden weaponry. They shook any books they could find to see if any documents were being concealed in the pages. They inspected the pictures on the walls and any photographs they could find, just as the Inspector had told them, taking the pictures out of the frames to see what might be lurking behind. They checked the stairs that led to the upper floors. Some of the folders filled up quickly. Others were less profitable, with only a couple of items being removed.
The Inspector reckoned that the time required to eat breakfast, even with the luxury of fried eggs and bacon, might not be enough for his purpose. The chaplain, also the curate of St Michael and All Angels in Marlow, had been pressed into the police service for the day. All the old men were to make their way to the chapel immediately after breakfast. Going back to their rooms was not allowed. They were to attend a special service for the feast day of St Thomas Aquinas which fell on the following day. The curate had preached on this subject before, having made a special study of the late St Thomas Aquinas and his theology at university. He was to preach until the sergeant
