The School of English Murder (3 page)

Amiss lit his cigarette. ‘I was asking where you were at school.’

‘If I tell you, you must promise to keep it a secret — even from the Superintendent.’

Amiss looked narrowly at his host. ‘Not Eton or Harrow?’

‘Fraid so. Eton actually. But I’d never live it down in the canteen, so for Christ’s sake…’

Amiss began to laugh. ‘Oh, Ellis, don’t tell me you’re seriously upper class. It’s not going to be Lord Pooley of the Yard, is it? I know the old jokes are the best, but really…’

Pooley looked hurt. ‘I’m not even an honourable. And thank God I’ve got two older brothers between me and a title. Fortunately my old man is a peer of the utmost obscurity — a decent old stick but the original backwoodsman. He hasn’t attended the House of Lords for more than ten years so no one’s ever heard of him.’

‘And what does he make of your chosen career?’

‘He’s coming to terms, like the rest of the family. They were always at me to be a barrister, which I’d have been hopeless at. There were mixed feelings about my going into the Civil Service. Mother was relieved it was respectable; Father talked about bloody pen pushers.’

‘What made you decide to leave?’

‘No good at it. I didn’t give a toss about policy and I hated drafting all those boring briefing papers. Besides, I was too imaginative and not clever enough. What I enjoy doing is sticking my nose into other people’s business and finding out why they’re doing what they’re doing. So now I can do that more or less legitimately.’

‘But how can you survive in the middle of all those thickos? Not to speak of all the yessiring and nosiring and sorryfornot goingbytherulebooksiring?’

‘I went to public school. Remember? I don’t suffer from the egalitarianism and intellectual snobbery of you grammar school lot. And besides it takes the upper classes to understand that pecking order is not related to talent.’

‘How did you know I went to grammar school? Oh, sorry. You noticed the slight stoop that came from carrying a heavy satchel.’

‘Actually your C.V. is on file at the Yard. Now come into the kitchen, help me make dinner and bring me up to date.’

‘You know what I think?’ asked Pooley half an hour later over the pâté. ‘I think you’ve made a really dumb decision. Whether you know it or not, you’re a natural civil servant. You should go back. You know perfectly well they’d welcome you with open arms.’

‘I’m sick of people telling me that.’

‘Sorry, Robert. I know I don’t really know you well enough to presume like this, but I’m going to anyway. What the devil are you doing working as a postman and barman?’

‘Trying to raise enough to live and to visit Rachel occasionally. She hasn’t been able to get away from Paris for weeks.’

‘Now you’re being obtuse. You know what I mean. By your own admission you haven’t come across any real jobs you want. Why in God’s name don’t you go back where they’ll appreciate your intelligence and integrity?’ Pooley cleared their plates and served up the pasta. He left it to Amiss to break the silence.

‘I have a reason now.’

Pooley looked at him encouragingly.

‘I didn’t really at first. It was simple obstinacy. I’ve been close to giving in. There’ve been a few overtures from old bosses in the Department.’

He paused to attempt to stuff his fork-and-spoonful of spaghetti into his mouth. Half fell back on his plate, splattering his sweater with bolognaise sauce.

‘Damn. That’s a Jim Milton trick.’

‘Yes. I’ve noticed the Super is a bit clumsy,’ remarked Pooley as he mopped Amiss down.

‘Don’t you even
think
of him by his first name?’

‘Can’t afford to. He’s my lifeline. Without him I’d never have had a break. I’ve no intention of jeopardising anything by any undue familiarity. The canteen culture’s red hot on favouritism. So the more the Super talks to me informally, the more I treat him like a Field Marshal. Anyway back to you.’

‘I’ve had a lot of time to think over the past few weeks, especially on my early morning postal round. And a lot of my thinking was about the Service. Then last week I read Peter Hennessy’s book on Whitehall.’

He took another forkful of salad and appeared to fall into a reverie.

‘And?’

‘Oh, sorry, Ellis. I spend so much time alone at the moment that I forgot I wasn’t talking to myself.

‘There was a lot in there about the kind of person who becomes a civil servant, essentially the safety first type who wants security. And the point was made that even those who come in thinking they don’t fit into a stereotype almost inevitably do by the time they reach the top. He quoted an observer’s description of the process as “the velvet drainpipe”. You stuff your young élite up it and out they come at the top uninfected by any outside influences.’

‘So?’ asked Pooley encouragingly.

‘So I don’t want that to happen to me and I’m the kind of malleable person to whom it might. I’ve been horrified at how badly I coped with the real world in the first few weeks of unemployment, culminating in that scene I made in the Social Security office. My God! There I was surrounded by poor bastards at the bottom of the heap who have to put up with whatever’s dished out to them, and I throw a tantrum because I feel patronised.’

‘Do you mean you’ll never go back?’

‘No. In fact I’m beginning to think I’ll ask to have this year counted as leave of absence and review things at the end of it.’

‘And you’ll do what with it?’

‘The most attractive thing would be to stay in Paris with Rachel during her last few months there. But I won’t. I’ll probably spend my time in a variety of jobs learning how the other three-quarters live.’

‘You don’t feel you did that last year on secondment to BCC?’

‘No. That had little to do with real life, and anyway I was in a negative frame of mind throughout.’

Pooley looked at him eagerly.

‘So you’re about ready to move on to something new?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘I’ve got just the job for you,’ said Pooley.

4

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‘Let me give you the background first.’

Pooley picked up the coffee tray and led the way back to the living-room.

‘Coffee?’

‘Please.’

‘Help yourself to milk and sugar. Brandy?’

‘You’re trying to soften me up, Ellis. Yes, please. I prefer this approach to the rubber truncheon. And besides tomorrow’s Sunday. God bless whoever abolished the Sunday post.’

Pooley poured brandy into two glasses and thoughtfully put the bottle beside his guest. Amiss grinned at him, made an expansive gesture with his cigarette and said, ‘Carry on. And make it interesting. I want a story of love and hate, greed and retribution, death by moonlight and the downfall of a beautiful woman.’

‘I’ll lend you a Dornford Yates to take home with you.
My
story begins with an accident in a language laboratory in a Knightsbridge English school.’

‘I might have known. At least it wasn’t in the lavatory.’

‘Robert, do you think you could keep the interruptions to a minimum. Otherwise we’ll be here all night.’

‘Sorry, sorry. Fire ahead.’

‘About two months ago, there was a 999 call from the Knightsbridge School of English. One of the teachers, Walter Armstrong — known as Wally and please don’t make the obvious joke — had been electrocuted. He was dead on arrival in hospital.

‘Central Area CID were called in and concluded it was probably an accident. It looked as though Armstrong — in the process of trying to fix a fault in the equipment — had reversed a couple of leads. He was alone in the school at the time of the accident, and so never had a chance.’

‘Why was he alone?’

‘It was eight in the morning and no one had arrived.’

‘Did he fancy himself as an electrician?’

‘Slightly. Although the principal couldn’t understand why he was bothering. He thought he’d told him a proper electrician was coming at nine.’

‘Odd.’

‘Yes. But then one of his colleagues said it wasn’t out of character for him to try to fix it first; apparently he enjoyed showing off his technical knowledge.

‘In any case, there seemed no motive. He was an amicably divorced man with grown-up children, and he seemed to do no more harm than occasionally get on his colleagues’ nerves. He was a bit of a fusser.’

‘Inquest?’

‘Accident.’

‘So where do you come in?’

‘I used to work in Central Area CID before being transferred to the Major Investigation Reserve at the Yard. And I had a drink last week with a DC from there who was unhappy about the verdict.’

‘Because?’

‘Because he thought no one in his right mind would be tampering with the thing between the mains and the step-down transformer. And if the principal was right, it was extraordinary of Armstrong to come in early just to outsmart the electrician.’

‘Didn’t those points come up at the inquest?’

‘No. Because my friend’s superiors thought, he was making something out of nothing. And he’s too junior to press a point like that successfully.’

‘Is that it?’

‘Not quite. Last week the principal was attacked on the way home and escaped serious injury or death only by chance. He was wheeling his bike in the dark up the alleyway behind his house when someone came up from behind and began to hit him unmercifully about the head. He had two strokes of luck. The first that he was wearing his Russian fur hat fastened under his chin and that dulled the blows. The second was that a neighbour with a bag of garbage happened to emerge from a back garden at the crucial moment, causing the attacker to run away.’

‘A small point. But what the devil was he doing wearing a fur hat in May?’

The wind really gets to you around Hyde Park Corner and Nurse is susceptible to ear infections.’

‘Nurse?’

‘Yes. Ned Nurse.’

‘Ned Nurse?’

‘Ned Nurse. Shall I go on or do you want to make a joke?’

‘Go on.’

‘There was no sign of the assailant and no apparent motive for the attack.’

‘Hmm.’

‘Quite.’

‘And another thing. It’s sheer chance that my pal got to know about this incident. Nurse got away very lightly and the local coppers in North-West Area would’ve had no reason to pass the information on to Central CID. It was Nurse himself who mentioned it when he called in at Central to deal with a bit of paperwork.’

‘Suspicious,’ observed Amiss, who was losing interest rapidly.

Pooley got up and began to lope up and down the long Persian rug in the middle of his room. From his supine position Amiss noted the pent-up energy in his long thin body. ‘Take up a postal round, Ellis, and you’ll begin to appreciate immobility.’ Pooley paid no attention. He was rapt in contemplation and periodically he ran his hands through his reddish-fair hair.

Amiss’s mind drifted off on to thoughts of Rachel. He was pulled back to reality when Pooley sat beside him and gazed at him earnestly. ‘You’ve guessed what I want you to do, haven’t you?’

‘Oh, sorry, Ellis. I’m afraid I was thinking of something else.’ Amiss tried to concentrate. Illumination suddenly dawned.

‘Jesus, you’re not going to try to get me to take a job in this poxy school, are you?’

Pooley nodded anxiously. ‘It’s the only way, Robert. I’m convinced there’s something peculiar going on there and the only thing to do is to plant a spy in the camp.’

The effrontery of the suggestion almost took Amiss’s breath away. ‘Why me?’ he asked faintly.

‘There’s no one else,’ Pooley pointed out. ‘The Wally Armstrong case is closed as far as the police are concerned and the Nurse attack is just another statistic in North-West Area. Nothing else can be done officially, even supposing anyone wanted to.’

‘Who would I be doing this for?’

‘Well, I suppose me,’ said Pooley in some embarrassment. ‘I’m the one who wants to pursue it. I did have a word with the Super about it on the quiet when he looked in last week and he told me he hadn’t heard what I said. He also said it might be an interesting distraction for you but that he wouldn’t like you killed.’

‘Kind of him. Why should I do it for you anyway?’

‘Because I’m pursuing it for the sake of the common good,’ said Pooley with spirit. ‘Trying to find out if someone’s been murdered and someone else is in danger is hardly vulgar curiosity. Besides, you’re an old hand at this kind of thing now. And you’d be better off in a language school than in a shop or in whatever masochistic line of work you’ve been intending to try next.’

Amiss realised that the sheer preposterousness of the idea carried some attraction.

‘I’m thinking, I’m thinking,’ he said, pouring out some more brandy.

Pooley had the sense to stay quiet. Then light broke through Amiss’s slightly fuddled brain.

‘What are we talking about anyway? How the hell could I get a job there even if there was one. I’ve neither experience nor qualifications.’

Pooley looked at him with some asperity. ‘What sort of an idiot do you take me for, Robert? Of course there’s a job. It’s been advertised in the local job centre this week and there’s also a notice outside the school saying there’s a vacancy. Apparently there’s a very high turnover there, and from what my friend had picked up, at least a couple of the teachers are novices. Someone presentable with a degree would stand an excellent chance.’

‘What would be my cover story?’

‘Straightforward, though I’d say you left the Civil Service because you were unhappy with its political direction. Old Nurse is a bit of a romantic lefty and he absolutely abominates Ma Thatcher. I’m sure you can work out the rest of your pitch without any help from me.’

Amiss smoked meditatively for a couple of minutes. ‘But I hated being mixed up with those two murder cases,’ he said.

‘You hated seeing people you liked die, but this time you’d be trying to find out after the event if someone you didn’t know at all had been murdered. That’s quite different. And what’s more, you know bloody well you enjoyed all that snooping and conspiring with the Super. It was really very like your job as a private secretary.’