Well-Schooled in Murder (26 page)

Frank Orten was bent over the highchair, inexpertly wiping the last bit of breakfast from his younger grandson’s face with a damp cloth.

“Have these eggs, Frank,” Elaine Roly said. “You’ve not touched your coffee. I’ll see to the little ones. Time they had a bit of a wash.” That said, she lifted the one from the floor and the other from his highchair. The older boy poked at the lace collar of her dress, but she stoically ignored his jabbing fingers and carried both yelping children from the room.

Orten pulled a chair back from the table, sat, and made short work of his eggs and bread. Lynley and Havers took chairs themselves, saying nothing until the porter pushed his plate to one side and gulped some coffee.

“What time did you notice that the rubbish fire had been rekindled?” Lynley asked.

“Twenty past three in the morning.” Orten lifted his coffee mug.
Gramps
was painted on it in bright blue letters. “I had a look at the clock before I went to the window.”

“You were awakened by something?”

“Not asleep, Inspector. Insomnia.”

“So you heard no noise?”

“None. But I smelled the smoke and went to the window. Saw the glow. Thought that the fire had reignited somehow, so I went to have a look.”

“You were dressed?”

His fractional hesitation seemed without purpose. “I got dressed,” he said. Without being prompted, he continued. “I went out the back, through the field. Not by way of the lane. Got there and saw the flames had begun to grow fairly strong. Blasted idiots, I thought. Some sort of prank the senior boys were pulling, without thinking of the danger should the wind come up. So I took a shovel and used it to put the fire out.”

“Are there outdoor lights you might have switched on?”

“Lights on the front of the vehicle shed, yes, but they were off and there are no lights to the side. It was dark. Told you that earlier, Inspector. I saw no clothing then. Main concern was to get the fire out.”

“Did you see anyone, notice anything out of the ordinary aside from the fire itself?”

“Just the fire.”

“Was it unusual that the lights on the vehicle shed were off? Are they normally kept on at night?”

“Normally, yes.”

“What do you make of that?”

Orten looked in the direction of the kitchen, as if he could see through its walls for an answer that might be in the vehicle shed across the field. “I suppose if the lads were playing a prank, they’d want the lights off so they’d not be seen, wouldn’t they?”

“And now that you know it wasn’t a prank?”

Orten lifted a hand and dropped it back to the table. It was a gesture indicating acceptance of the obvious. “Same thing, Inspector. Someone not wishing to be seen.”

“Not a prankster, but a killer,” Lynley said thoughtfully. Orten made no reply, merely reaching for his cap that lay like a centrepiece upon the table. The letters
B.C
. decorated the front of it, yellow upon blue, but they were soiled here and there, needing to be cleaned and restored to their original colour. “You’ve been at the school for years, Mr. Orten,” Lynley went on. “You probably know it better than anyone. Matthew Whateley disappeared on Friday afternoon. His body wasn’t found until Sunday evening. We’ve good reason to believe it was dumped in Stoke Poges on either Friday or Saturday night. Since we have the boy’s clothes, and since his body was nude when it was found, we can assume he was nude when he was taken from the school and that he was probably taken after dark. But the question is, where was he from the time he failed to show up at games after lunch on Friday until he was taken?”

Lynley waited to see how Orten would react to the implicit invitation to be part of the investigation. The porter looked from Lynley to Havers and pushed himself a few inches back from the table. The movement gained him not only physical distance but an intriguing degree of psychological distance as well.

He answered openly enough, however. “There’s storage areas, I suppose. A wing of them beyond the kitchen, near the masters’ common room. More in the technical centre. More in the theatre. Trunk rooms in the houses. Attics as well. But everything’s locked.”

“And the keys? Who has them?”

“Masters have some.”

“Keys that they keep with them?”

Orten’s eyes flickered momentarily. “Not always. Not if they have too many to carry about in their trousers.”

“What do they do with them, then?”

“Hang them in their pigeonholes, usually. Right outside the masters’ common room.”

“I see. But surely those aren’t the only keys to the buildings and the rooms. There must be duplicates should any get lost. Master keys, even.”

Orten nodded, but it was as if his head was automatically doing what his mind intended him not to do at all. “I’ve a set of all the school keys in my office up in the quad. But that office is kept locked, if you’re thinking that anyone could get in there and pinch them.”

“Even now, for example? Is it locked now?”

“I imagine the Headmaster’s secretary’s unlocked it. She’d do so if she arrived before me.”

“So she has a key to it.”

“She does. But you’re hardly suggesting the boy was nabbed by the Headmaster’s secretary, are you? And if not her, who’s going to go in in the middle of the schoolday when I’m not about and pinch some keys? With no way of knowing what door the keys will open? Not much good that would do, I say. Keys I have in my office aren’t marked with anything more than a single word.
Theatre. Technical. Maths. Science. Kitchen
. No way to tell what room in any building the key would open. Not without looking through my code book. So if someone pinched keys, someone took them from the pigeonholes in the entry outside the masters’ common room. And since
that’s
kept locked, the only person who could have done the pinching was one of the masters.”

“Or anyone else with access to the masters’ common room,” Lynley pointed out.

Orten countered in a manner that implied how improbable he believed his own words. “Headmaster. Skivvies. Wives. Who else?”

The porter
. Lynley didn’t say it, but he saw it wasn’t necessary. Orten’s cheeks had begun to redden even as he listed the possibilities.

Lynley and Havers paused by the Bentley, Havers to light a cigarette and Lynley to frown at her for doing so. She looked up, caught his expression, and held up a stubby-fingered hand in admonition.

“Don’t even say it,” she warned him. “You know you’re longing to rip this right out of my mouth and smoke it down to the nub. At least I’m honest about my vices.”

“You parade them,” he replied. “You broadcast them to the world. Is
virtue
even part of your vocabulary, Sergeant?”

“I chucked it along with
self-control
.”

“I might have known.” He gazed at the main drive that curved gently to the left beneath a giant beech tree, and from there to the secondary lane leading off towards the vehicle shed, the boys’ houses, and the science building. He dwelt upon the information Frank Orten had given them.

“What’s up?” Havers asked.

Lynley leaned against the car, thoughtfully rubbed his hand against his jaw, and tried to ignore the scent of tobacco smoke. “It’s Friday afternoon. You’ve nabbed Matthew Whateley. Where will you keep him, Sergeant?”

She tapped cigarette ash onto the pavement, playing it about with the toe of her badly scuffed brogue. “I suppose it depends upon what I wanted to do with him. And how I wanted to do it.”

“Carry on.”

“If I wanted to have a bit of physical fun with him—the sort of thing that the school’s resident paederast or a paedophile might well be chuffed by—I’d take him where there’s not the slightest chance that he’d be heard if he didn’t enjoy the activity as much as I did.”

“Where would that be?”

She scanned the grounds as she answered. “Friday afternoon. All the boys are on the playing field. Games going on. It’s after lunch so I’d stay away from the kitchen where the skivvies are doing their cleaning up. Boys might be coming and going in the houses. Girls as well, in Galatea and Eirene. So I’d go for one of the storage areas. In the theatre, perhaps. Or in science or maths.”

“Not in one of the buildings in the main quad?”

“Too close to the administration wing, I’d say. Unless…”

“Go on.”

“The chapel. The vestry. That rehearsal hall next door.”

“All fairly risky for the type of encounter you have in mind.”

“I suppose. But say it was a different kind of encounter. Say it was only a bit of a nab to scare the lad. On a bet. For a joke. Then I’d take him to a different place. It wouldn’t have to be remote at all. It would just have to be frightening.”

“Such as?”

“Climb up the bell tower and onto the roof. Perfect if he’s afraid of heights.”

“But hard to manage if he’s struggling, wouldn’t you say?”

“If he’s duped into following someone he trusts—or someone he admires, or has no reason to fear—then he might go along. He might be told to do so. He might think he’s been given an order that he has to obey, never knowing that the person who’s giving it has something altogether different in mind when they reach their destination.”

“It comes down to that, doesn’t it?” Lynley said. “Destination. Chas Quilter showed you the school yesterday. Have you a good idea of its layout?”

“Fairly.”

“Then do some prowling. See if you can ferret out a place where Matthew might have been kept for at least a few hours in perfect secrecy, no one the wiser.”

“Think like a paedophile?”

“Whatever it takes, Sergeant. I’m going to search out John Corntel.”

She dropped her cigarette to the ground and crushed it out. “Were those thoughts connected?” she asked him.

“I hope not,” he replied and watched her set off down the main drive.

He walked back to the secondary lane which would take him to Erebus House and John Corntel’s quarters. He had only got as far as the fork, however, when he heard his name called. Turning, he saw Elaine Roly hurrying towards him, rearranging the lace collar of her dress as she donned a black cardigan. Large spots of water darkened the dress itself.

“Trying to wash the little ones,” she said in explanation, brushing at the spots as if this would dry them. “I’m not much good with boys that young, I’m afraid. When they get a bit older, I can manage them fine.”

“As you’ve done in Erebus House,” Lynley replied.

“Yes. Indeed. Are you heading there now? I’ll walk with you, shall I?” She began to do so. Lynley said nothing to her at first, waiting for her to say something that would explain why she had called out to him. Certainly her purpose could have nothing to do with an impulsive desire for companionship in a walk up the lane. She pulled at the buttons of her cardigan, as if checking to make sure each was firmly sewn onto the wool. He heard her sigh. “Frank didn’t tell you about his daughter, Inspector. You’ll think he’s hiding something. I can see you’re clever enough to know when someone’s not being completely straightforward with you.”

“I did think there was more to his story.”

“There is. But it has to do with pride, not with hiding. And there’s his job. He does want to protect his job. That’s understandable, isn’t it? The Headmaster isn’t the type to overlook an absence when one’s supposed to be on duty. Even if it’s an emergency with no time to let Mr. Lockwood know the details.” She was speaking quickly.

“Saturday night?” Lynley asked.

“He wasn’t
lying
. He simply wasn’t telling you everything. But he’s a good man. Frank’s a fine man. He’s not involved in Matthew’s disappearance.”

Through the trees that lined the lane, Lynley saw that the pupils were leaving the chapel, some coming out the front doors of the school, heading south in the direction of the theatre and technical centre. They were talking and laughing. As he watched them, it seemed to Lynley that the death of one of their number should have affected them more, should have sobered them, should have allowed them to see how brief a span of time was allotted them. It didn’t, however. That was the way of the young. They were always convinced of their own immortality.

Elaine Roly said, “Frank’s divorced, Inspector. I doubt he’d tell you that. It wasn’t a pleasant situation, from what little he’s told me. While he was stationed at Gibraltar, his wife took up with a brother officer. Frank was a bit of an innocent at the time. He never suspected a thing until she asked for a divorce. He was bitter about everything. He resigned his commission, left his two daughters with his wife in Gibraltar, and returned to England. He came right here to Bredgar Chambers.”

“How long ago?”

“Seventeen years. Just as he said earlier. The girls are older now, of course. One lives in Spain. But the other—the younger girl, Sarah—lives in Tinsley Green, on the other side of Crawley. She’s been troubled for years, married twice, divorced twice. She’s dabbled a good bit in alcohol and drugs. Frank thinks he’s responsible, since he deserted her and her sister. He puts himself on the rack over that.

“Sarah phoned Frank on Saturday night. He could hear the children crying. She was crying as well, talking about suicide. That’s Sarah’s way. She’d had a row with her current boyfriend, I should think.” Elaine Roly reached out, touched Lynley’s arm lightly for emphasis. “Frank went to his daughter on Saturday, Inspector. He was supposed to be on duty. He didn’t think to tell the Headmaster where he was going. Perhaps he didn’t want to, for he’d only been with her on Tuesday—his regular night off—and the Headmaster might have drawn the line at another evening away from the school, mightn’t he? So when Frank got the call, he simply panicked and left. It was just as well.”