Well-Schooled in Murder (41 page)

“Then who—”

“It has to be Harry Morant. Look how the pieces fit if we argue it’s Harry and not Matthew who was being bullied. Whoever did the bullying was breaking school rules, no doubt over a period of time. A school like Bredgar Chambers isn’t going to put up with this sort of abuse, so the bully faced certain expulsion if he was found out. Matthew knew about the bullying. Everyone knew. But they were all caught up in the code of behaviour that we spoke of before.”

“Not sneaking on another student?”

“Look how that affected Matthew. Kevin Whateley indicated that the boy had become more and more withdrawn during the last term. But Patsy said that there was never a mark on him, so it’s safe to say that no one was harming him. Add that to what Colonel Bonnamy told us about the conversation he and Matthew had concerning the school’s motto—‘Let honour be both staff and rod.’ Everything fits. That unwritten code of behaviour demanded that Matthew hold his tongue about the bullying of Harry Morant. But the school’s motto demanded that he take action to stop the bullying himself. That was the honourable thing to do. So he withdrew from his parents as he tried to decide how to uphold the school motto at the same time as he didn’t violate the unwritten code that was supposed to govern his behaviour among his peers. This tape represents his decision.”

“Blackmail?”

“Yes.”

“Jesus. It cost him his life.”

“It probably did.”

Her eyes widened. “Then one of the
pupils
…Sir, all of them must know.”

He nodded. His face was grim. “If this is the reason behind Matthew’s death, I think they’ve known from the first, Sergeant. All of them.”

He reached for the stack of the day’s post that Yvonnen Livesley had pushed to one side of his desk. Absently he looked through it, finding the postcard midway through the stack.

Like the other, it had come from Corfu, a photograph of the brilliant white buildings of the Monastery of Our Lady of Vlacherna set against the vibrant blue of the sea. The wooded height of Kanoni rose in the distance. Unlike the other, earlier postcard, however, the message on this one began with no salutation, as if by omitting his name, Helen was managing to do what she had set out to do: distance herself from him more and more every day.

Two days of dreary rain! With the only entertainment being a prolonged visit to the museum at Garitsa. I know what you’re thinking. The lion of Menekrates
is
perfectly sweet, but after an hour of gazing upon him, one does long for something more animate as a diversion. But desperate times call for desperate measures. I’ve given myself wholeheartedly to relics and coins and bits of temple under glass. I shall be so cultured that you’ll hardly know me upon my return.

H.

Aware that Sergeant Havers’ eyes were on him, Lynley shoved the card into his jacket pocket, trying to keep his face indifferent, trying to refrain from rereading the last three words, trying to keep himself from hoping they meant that Helen would at last bring her Greek exile to an end.

“So,” Havers said breezily with a nod at his jacket pocket, “nothing new on that score, I take it?”

“Nothing new.”

As he spoke, a sharp knock at the door heralded the entrance of Dorothea Harriman, secretary to Lynley’s divisional superintendent. She was dressed for her evening’s departure in typically Walesian fashion, wearing a tailored green suit, white blouse, a triple strand of cultured pearls, and a curiously shaped hat sprouting green and white feathers. Beneath it, her hair was cut to match the Princess’ latest style.

“Thought I’d catch you still here,” she said, leafing through a stack of folders she cradled in one arm. “This lot was phoned in for you this afternoon, Detective Inspector Lynley. From”—her refusal to wear spectacles caused her to squint down at the scrawl across the front of the folder—“Detective Inspector Canerone. Slough police. Preliminary autopsy results on—” Again the squint. Lynley got to his feet.

“Matthew Whateley,” he finished, extending his hand for the folder.

“Is Deb home as well?” Lynley asked as he followed Cotter up the narrow stairway in the St. James house. It was nearly eight o’clock, an unusual time for St. James still to be working in his laboratory. To bury himself in forensic tasks into the night had long been his habit in the past, but Lynley knew he had given that up in the last three years that marked his engagement and his marriage to Deborah.

Cotter shook his head. He paused on the stairs, and although most of his face was unreadable, he could not keep the concern from his eyes. “Been out most of the day. Some Cecil Beaton exhibit at the Victoria and Albert she wanted to see. Shopping as well.”

It was a poor excuse. The Victoria and Albert Museum was long since closed for the day, and Lynley knew Deborah well enough to know how little she relished browsing through department stores. “Shopping?” he asked sceptically.

“Hmm.” Cotter continued climbing.

They found St. James bent over one of the comparison microscopes, making minute adjustments to the focus. A camera was attached to it, in preparation for documenting whatever two objects he was currently examining. Near the window—closed against the undulating pattern of the continuing rainfall—his computer was rhythmically spilling out sheets of paper upon which graphs and columns of numbers were printed.

“Lord Asherton’s ’ere to see you, Mr. St. James,” Cotter said. “Will you be wanting coffee, brandy? The like?”

St. James raised his head. Lynley saw with a jolt that his thin face was drawn, as if marked by sorrow and drained by fatigue. “Nothing for me, Cotter,” he replied. “For you, Tommy?”

Lynley declined and said nothing more until Cotter had left them alone together. Even then, finding a safe foundation upon which to construct a conversation with his friend was a delicate task. There was too much history between them, too many areas forbidden to discussion.

Lynley drew out one of the stools from beneath the worktable and slid a manila folder next to the Zeiss microscope. St. James opened it, scanned the information scrawled on the documents inside.

“These are the preliminary results?” he asked.

“Such as they are. Toxicology shows nothing, St. James. And there’s no trauma at all to the body.”

“The burns?”

“Made by cigarettes, as we thought. But certainly not enough damage to kill him.”

“It says here they’ve found fibres in the hair,” St. James noted. “What sort of fibres? Natural? Synthetic? Have you talked to Canerone?”

“I spoke to him right after I read the report. All he could tell me at the time was that his forensic team were saying the fibres appeared to be a blend. Natural and synthetic. The natural one is wool. They’re still waiting for the test results on the other.”

St. James gazed thoughtfully at the floor. “From your description I was thinking of the way hemp is treated when it’s turned into rope. But that obviously isn’t what they’re dealing with when they talk of natural and synthetic substances. Especially if they know one of them is wool.”

“That was my first thought as well. But the boy was tied with cotton cording, not with rope. Probably heavy shoelaces, according to Canerone’s forensic team. And Matthew was double-gagged, St. James. There were fibres of wool in his mouth.”

“A sock.”

“Perhaps. That was tied in place with a cotton handkerchief. There were trace deposits of cotton on his face.”

St. James went back to the previous information. “What are they making of these fibres in his hair, then?”

“A number of hypotheses. Possibly from something he was laid against. Material from the carpet on the floor of a car, an old jacket in the boot, a blanket, a tarpaulin. Virtually anything that’s made of or covered by material. They’ve gone back to St. Giles’ Church to take samples inside, on the off chance that the body was kept there prior to being dumped in the field.”

“I’d guess that’ll be a useless exercise.”

Lynley played with an unopen box of slides. “It’s a possibility. But I’m hoping against it. Far better for the investigation if the fibres in his hair are from something in the location where he was held captive. And he
was
held captive, St. James. The pathologist sets the time of death between midnight and four
A.M.
on Saturday. That leaves at least twelve hours unaccounted for, from the time Matthew disappeared right after lunch to the time of his death. He had to be somewhere on the grounds of the school. Perhaps the fibres will tell us where. In addition to that”—Lynley flipped over a page of the report and pointed to a section of inconclusive findings—“they’ve come up with some sort of trace deposits on his buttocks, his shoulder blades, his right arm, and under two of his toenails. They’re putting them all through a gas chromatograph to be certain, but microscopically they appear to be the same thing.”

“Again, something from where he was held?”

“It seems a reasonable conclusion, doesn’t it?”

“A reasonable hope. You sound as if you’re heading in a fairly clear direction at this point, Tommy.”

“I think I am.” Lynley told him about the tape.

St. James listened without remark, his sombre expression unaltering. But at the end of Lynley’s explanation, he looked away. His attention seemed to focus on a shelf across the lab upon which were assembled jars of labelled chemicals, assorted beakers, burettes, and pipettes.

“Bullying,” he said. “I thought schools had put an end to that.”

“They’re trying. Expulsion’s the penalty.” Lynley added to this, “John Corntel’s at Bredgar Chambers. Do you remember him from Eton?”

“King’s Scholar in classics. Always with a dozen or so admiring E Block thirteen-year-olds tagging behind him wherever he went. He’d be hard to forget.” St. James grasped the report again. He frowned at it and asked, “How does Corntel fit in? Are you heading towards him, Tommy?”

“Not if the tape has any bearing on why Matthew Whateley was killed. I can’t see how that could apply to Corntel.”

Apparently hearing a measure of doubt in Lynley’s answer, St. James took up the role of devil’s advocate. “Is it realistic to think the tape’s a motive for murder?”

“If expulsion from the school was a consequence of the tape’s being handed over to the Headmaster, if that expulsion put an older boy’s entire education on the line—destroyed the possibility of acceptance into university—I should imagine a boy desperate to succeed might well be moved to murder.”

“Indeed. I see that,” St. James admitted. “You’re arguing that Matthew was in effect blackmailing one of the older boys, aren’t you? And if the tape was made in a dormitory, that does suggest that the tormentor was one of the seniors—lower or upper sixth, I dare say. But have you considered that the tape may have been made somewhere else? Perhaps in a location where this lad—Harry, you called him?—knew he’d be taken, somewhere he’d been taken before.”

“There were other voices on the tape, young voices like Harry’s. That suggests a dormitory, doesn’t it?”

“Perhaps. But these could be voices belonging to lads who may have been present for the same reason as Harry. Victims as well. They didn’t sound like participants, did they?” When Lynley admitted that they did not, St. James went on. “Then doesn’t that suggest the possibility that Matthew’s killer may be someone else entirely, not one of the older boys at all, but one of the men?”

“It’s hardly credible.”

“Because you
believe
it’s hardly credible,” St. James said. “Because it’s out of the realm of decency and morality. As is all crime, Tommy. I don’t have to tell you that. Are you avoiding Corntel? What role does he play?”

“Matthew’s housemaster.”

“And when Matthew disappeared?”

“He was with a woman.”

“Between midnight and four
A.M.
?”

“No. Not then.” Lynley tried to keep from thinking of the manner in which John Corntel had described Matthew Whateley only Sunday afternoon. He tried to keep from drawing conclusions from the manner in which his old schoolmate had lingered over the details of the boy’s natural beauty. Above all, he tried to keep from remembering the damning fact of Corntel’s sexual inexperience and everything that society taught one to believe about the oddities of virginity in a man of his age.

“Is it the Eton tie that makes you believe he’s innocent, Tommy?”

The Eton tie
. There was no Eton tie. There could not be in a police investigation. It was inconceivable. “It merely seems reasonable to follow the tape at the moment, to see where it leads us.”

“And if it leads nowhere?”

Lynley gave a tired, dismissive laugh. “It won’t be the first blind alley in the case.”

“It’s not to be Argentina after all, Barbie,” Mrs. Havers said. In one hand she held a pair of small primary school scissors, the sort whose tips are rounded and whose blades cut with ease through soft butter but little else. In the other hand was a partially bisected grease-stained travel brochure which she waved like a pennant as she continued to speak. “It’s that song, lovey. About crying and Argentina. You know the one. I couldn’t help thinking that we might be just a bit depressed if we spent too much time there. With the crying and all. So I thought…What do you think of Peru?”