Who Saw Him Die? by Sheila Radley Page A

and take charge.’
    â€˜Not my idea,’ Quantrill assured her hastily. ‘And it’s certainly no reflection on you, Hilary. Apparently Miss Bell went over all our heads to the Super – and you know how he jumps when he’s spoken to by anyone who’s likely to be acquainted with the Chief Constable. I suppose he promised her that he’d put his senior CID officer on to the inquiry, so here I am whether I like it or not.’
    Liking it – or at least this part of it – he opened her car door. Reassured by his explanation, Hilary Lloyd gave him a workaday smile of thanks and got out. As she stood up – tallish, gracefully straight-backed, but regrettably thin for his taste – he widened his eyes and stared at her. The difference in her appearance that he had noticed while she was still in her car was now fully revealed.
    â€˜You’ve had your hair cut!’ he accused her.
    This time she laughed. ‘I don’t deny it. Though I can’t imagine which section of what act you’re proposing to charge me under.’
    â€˜No, no, I’m not objecting!’ He continued to stare, fascinated by the change in her appearance. She had previously worn her dark hair with a sideswept fringe that was obviously designed to hide a scar on her forehead. But the scar – the result of an attack made on her when she was a uniformed policewoman by a Yarchester villain wielding a broken bottle – had always been impossible to conceal. The lower end of it, just missing the inner side of her left eye, puckered her eyebrow in what appeared from a distance to be a permanent frown.
    But the irregular line of the scar above her nose had now faded and she had, it seemed, stopped trying to hide it. Her hair was now smoother, brushed well clear of her forehead, shaped more closely to her head. Quantrill thought he might approve, once he had a chance to get used to it.
    â€˜No, I’m not complaining at all,’ he assured her. ‘It looks –’
    â€˜It looks a monstrosity of a house, doesn’t it?’ Hilary said, turning his attention firmly to the place they had come to visit. ‘So this is where Clanger Bell lived … It’s like a scaled-down version of the Town Hall – almost as big, twice as ornate, and probably even more uncomfortable.’
    Quantrill pulled himself together and gave his attention to his job. For the first time ever, he took a good look at Tower House. Whenever he had driven past it along Victoria Road he had seen nothing but the stiffly aggressive monkey puzzle tree in the front garden, and the foreign-looking shallow-roofed tower – as Hilary said, a smaller version of the Town Hall’s – rising behind it.
    Now, from the iron-gated entrance to the drive, he could see that she was right about the rest of the house. It was every bit as narrow-windowed and uncosy as the Town Hall, but whereas the public building had been constructed in good plain local grey brick, Tower House was built in yellow brick decorated with bands and lozenges of red and blue. There was nothing about the house that was typical of Suffolk; nothing that fitted in with the rest of Breckham Market. But then, the same could have been said of poor old Clanger.
    â€˜The Bell family were builders, so I’ve heard,’ he said. ‘One of them was responsible for building the Town Hall in the middle of the last century. Then he became Mayor, and proceeded to show off by building himself a new house in the same style, but with more elaborate brickwork. Mind you, they’ve always been a very public-spirited family by all accounts, doing a lot of voluntary work in the town. I daresay Miss Bell would have been a town councillor and a magistrate, and taken her own turn as Mayor, if it hadn’t been for her brother.’
    â€˜Are you acquainted with her?’ asked Hilary.
    â€˜Only by sight. My wife does some Red Cross work,