Well-Schooled in Murder (16 page)

“Matthew was writing a letter to someone called Jean. Do you know who that is? It was someone he had dinner with.”

The boys shook their heads in unison at this. Their confusion looked genuine. Lynley took out his pocket watch, checked the time, and asked them a final question.

“Matthew’s parents don’t believe that he ran away from the school. Do you believe he did?”

It was Smythe-Andrews who replied for them all. He laughed once—it sounded like something between a yelp and a sob—and said bitterly, “We’d all run off from this place if we only had the nerve. Or somewhere to go.”

“Matthew had somewhere to go?”

“Looks like he did.”

“Perhaps he only thought he had that. Perhaps he only thought that he was running to safety when in reality he was running to his death. He’d been tied up. He’d been tortured as well. So whatever he saw as safety was in reality—”

A loud thump issued from one of the cubicles. Arlens had fainted and fallen to the floor.

It was time for history. Harry Morant knew he should have gone to the lesson, since he was part of a panel giving a report to the class this very morning. He would be missed. The cry would be sent out to find him. Harry didn’t care. He didn’t care about anything any longer. Matthew Whateley was dead. Things were changed. The weight of power had shifted. He had lost all.

For a time he had been deliriously safe after months of terror. For three short weeks he had known what it was to fall asleep without the fear of being roughly awakened, of being dragged from his bed and thrown to the floor, of that terse voice grunting
want a grind, nancy boy? want a grind? want a grind?
, of quick slaps to the face—never enough to leave a mark—and hands grabbing and squeezing and poking his body, of being led through a dark corridor and into the lavatory, where a candle was lit and an unflushed toilet brimmed with excrement and urine and the voice said
bog-washing tonight…still want to be cheeky?
And then being dunked into the foul mess and trying not to cry, trying not to vomit, and failing at both.

Harry couldn’t understand why he had been chosen, for he’d done everything just as he was supposed to do at Bredgar Chambers. His older brothers had attended the school, and far in advance they’d let Harry know exactly what would be expected of him if he wanted to fit in. He’d done it all. He’d climbed to the highest part of the bell tower—up that claustrophobic, winding stone staircase—and carved his name deeply into the wall. He’d learned to smoke—although he didn’t like it much—and had jumped to the bidding of every prefect who ever spoke to him. He’d followed the rules, tried to remain anonymous, never sneaked on another pupil no matter what the offence. Yet it hadn’t worked. He’d been singled out anyway. Now it would all begin again. At the thought, a cry caught in his throat. He fought against tears.

In the late morning, the air was still cool. The sun was out but it didn’t do very much to cut through the chill. Where Harry sat on a concrete bench in a corner of the walled sculpture garden that was the midway point between the school and the Headmaster’s house, it seemed particularly cold, as if the marble and bronze statues that stood among the rose bushes were themselves contributing to the glacial air. He shivered, hugging himself tighter until he was bent double.

He had seen the arrival of the police, had been in the vestry with the rest of the choir when Mrs. Lockwood brought them in and gave them over to Chas Quilter. At first he hadn’t thought they were police at all, for they didn’t look like what he’d been expecting ever since breakfast when the word filtered through the dining hall that Matthew Whateley was dead and that New Scotland Yard would be coming to the school. Harry had never seen detectives before, had never been exposed to the mysteries and rituals associated with those three words
New Scotland Yard
. So he’d developed an elaborate idea of what the metropolitan police would look like and how they would act, based largely upon what he had seen on television and read in books. But these detectives did not fit into the mould he had created for them.

For one thing, the man was too tall, too handsome, too well-groomed, and too splendidly dressed. His voice was too patrician, and the cut of his suit did not suggest that he carried any sort of weapon. The woman who accompanied him was not much better. She was far too short, too unattractive, too plump, and too frumpy. Harry could not imagine confiding what he knew to either one of them. Not for a moment. Not at all. The man would listen from his icy great height and the woman would watch through her little pig eyes and he would talk and talk and try to make them understand what he knew and how he knew it and why it had all happened and who was responsible and…

It was all an excuse. He was looking for excuses. He was wild for excuses. He needed a reason not to speak at all. Deciding that they weren’t
proper
detectives was about as good a reason as he was going to be able to come up with. So he would cling to it. They couldn’t help him anyway. They wouldn’t even believe him. They didn’t carry guns. They would listen, take notes, go on their way, and leave him behind to face the consequences. All alone. Without Matthew any longer.

Stubbornly, he refused to dwell upon Matthew. To think of Matthew was to think of what he owed him. To think of what he owed him was to think of what was right and honourable and required of him now. To think of that was to head directly into the realm of terror. For what was required of him was the truth, and Harry knew what he faced if he told it. The choice was simple. To die or say nothing. He was only thirteen. There was no choice at all.

“…sculptures and roses mostly. It’s only a few years old, if you’d like to see it.”

“Yes, let’s have a go at that as well.”

Harry cringed at the sound of approaching voices, shrivelled at the noise of the wooden gate opening in the flintstone wall. Panicked, he looked for a place to hide. But there was nothing to protect him from discovery. He felt tears of futility burn his eyes as the female detective and Chas Quilter came into the sculpture garden. They stopped dead when they saw him.

Lynley met Sergeant Havers in the centre of the quad where, in blatant defiance of the propriety which said that adults should not set a bad example for pupils in an academic setting, she was smoking a cigarette as she scowled down at her notes. Towering above her, Henry VII managed to look disapproving about it.

“Have you noticed our Henry’s facing north?” Lynley asked as he joined her on the steps beneath the statue. “The school’s main entry is east, but he’s not even looking in that direction.”

Havers made a quick observation of the statue and said, “Perhaps he means to give the entrance the benefit of his profile.”

Lynley shook his head. “He wants us to remember his moment of glory. So he looks to the north, in the direction of Bosworth Field.”

“Ah. Death and treachery. The end of Richard III. Why does it always slip my mind that you’re a Yorkist, Inspector? You never give me a real fighting chance to forget it. Do you spit on Henry’s tomb whenever you get the chance to slip down to the Abbey?”

He smiled. “Religiously. It’s one of my rare pleasures.”

She nodded thoughtfully. “A man must take his pleasures where he can.”

“Did you learn anything useful in your time with Chas?”

She stubbed out her cigarette on the base of the statue. “As much as I hate to admit to it, you were right about most of the condition of the school. From the outside, it’s fine. Green grass, trimmed bushes, beautiful trees, clean buildings, scrubbed windows. The whole lot. But most of the interiors look like Erebus House did. Worn and ill-used. Except for the newer buildings—theatre, technical centre, and girls’ houses—on the south side of the school, everything is ancient, Inspector. Classrooms as well. And the science building looks as if it hasn’t changed much since Darwin’s time.” She swung her hand around to encompass the quad. “So why do fancy nobs send their kids here? My comprehensive school was in better shape than this. At least it was more up-to-date.”

“The mystique, Havers.”

“The old school tie?”

“That as well. Like father, like son.”

“I suffered, you suffer?”

He smiled bleakly. “Something like that.”

“Did you like Eton, sir?” she asked him shrewdly.

The question caught him off guard. It hadn’t been Eton. It could never have been Eton with its beautiful buildings and its rich traditions. The place itself had no power to wound. It merely had been the wrong time in his life to be sent away from home. It wasn’t a time to be cut off from a family in crisis and a father who was wasting away under the onslaught of disease.

“As well as anyone liked it,” he replied. “What else have you besides the condition of the school?”

Havers looked as if she were about to say more about Eton. But instead she went on with, “They’ve something called a sixth form social club here. The seniors belong. It’s in a building attached to Ion House—where Chas Quilter lives—and the students go there to do their drinking on weekends.”

“Which students?”

“It’s only for the upper sixth formers, but I got the impression that there’s some sort of initiation rite involved because Chas said that some students choose not to belong. He called it ‘not going through the steps for membership.’”

“He’s in the club?”

“I suppose that’s rather expected of him, isn’t it, since he’s senior prefect. Sort of shoring up the school’s great traditions.”

“The initiation rite is one of the traditions?”

“Apparently. I asked him how one became a member and he blushed and said that one did ‘all sorts of rot’ in front of one’s mates. At any rate, there appears to be some heavy drinking going on. The students are supposed to be limited to two drink chits a week, but since other students are in charge of handing out the chits and of keeping account of how many drinks are taken by a single individual, things have got out of hand. It sounds as if their Friday night parties get a bit wild.”

“Chas does nothing to control the wildness?”

“I don’t understand it, to tell you the truth. It’s his job, isn’t it? Why even be senior prefect if he’s not going to do it?”

“That’s easy enough to answer, Havers. Any prefectship looks good on a student’s academic record. I dare say universities don’t actually check to see what kind of prefect the student was. They just see that he was one and make assumptions about him from there.”

“But how did he get to be senior prefect in the first place? If he had no leadership skills to begin with, wouldn’t the Headmaster have known that?”

“Showing leadership skills when you’re not senior prefect is far easier than showing them when you are. It’s a pressured situation. People change under pressure. Perhaps that happened with Chas.”

“Or perhaps the Headmaster found Chas too attractive to hide him away,” Havers commented in her usual acerbic fashion. “I imagine they spend lots of time alone together, don’t you?” Lynley shot her a look. She defended herself with, “I’m not blind, Inspector. He’s a beautiful boy. Lockwood wouldn’t be the first to cave in to a pretty face.”

“Indeed. What else did you discover?”

“I spoke with Judith Laughland, the nurse in charge of the Sanatorium.”

“Ah. The San sister. Tell me about her.”

Havers had worked with him long enough to know his fondness for details, so she described the San sister first: perhaps thirty-five years old, brown hair, grey eyes, a large birthmark on her neck beneath her right ear which she kept attempting to hide by swinging her hair forward to cover it and finally by raising up the collar of her blouse and holding it together. She smiled a great deal and unconsciously groomed herself as she spoke, patting her hair, playing with the buttons of her blouse, smoothing her hand down her leg to make sure her stockings fit well.

Lynley focused on these last points of interest. “As if she were preening? For whom? Were you with Chas?”

“I got the impression it’s how she would act round any male, sir, not only Chas, because while we were there, one other of the older boys came in, complaining of a sore throat, and she laughed about it and teased him and said something like, ‘Just can’t stay away from me, can you?’ and when she popped a thermometer into his mouth, she touched his hair and patted his cheek.”

“Your conclusion?”

Havers looked thoughtful. “Not that she would get herself involved with any of the boys—she must be nearly twenty years older than they are, after all—but I think she needs their flattery and admiration.”

“Married?”

“The boys called her Mrs. Laughland, but she’s not wearing a wedding ring. Divorced is my guess. She’s been here three years, and I’ll wager that she arrived right after the divorce. So she’s got herself concerned with starting a new life, and she needs a bit of reassurance that she can still attract men. You know the sort of thing.”

This would not be the first time they had come into contact with those by-products of separation and dissolution. Both of them had witnessed the initial loneliness, the panic caused by the thought of spending the rest of one’s life without a partner, the rising fear and the need to cover it with a facade of gaiety, the subsequent rush into activity and involvement. These reactions to loss were not solely appended to the world of women.