Well-Schooled in Murder (56 page)

“I imagine you were the one who phoned Chas repeatedly Friday night,” Lynley said to Cecilia. “You knew about the upper sixth social club. You knew where he would be. Why did you phone him?”

Cecilia wept. “The baby.”

“I should guess you needed someone to talk to,” St. James said to the girl. “In this kind of tragedy, it only helps if you can talk to someone you love.”

“He was…I
needed…
”

“You needed him. Of course. What could be more reasonable?”

Lynley spoke. “Did he come to you on Saturday, Cecilia?”

“
Please
. Don’t make me. Chas!”

Lynley looked towards Mrs. Streader, but she shook her head and with a worried glance at Cecilia said, “I wasn’t here Saturday. I…Cecilia, tell them.”

“Chas didn’t. He didn’t. He wouldn’t. I
know
him.”

“If that’s the case,” Lynley said, “then you no longer need to protect him, do you? If he did nothing save come here to see you, Cecilia, what purpose does it serve to withhold the truth?”

“He didn’t!”

“What happened when he came? What time was it?”

Tears blotched her skin. “He didn’t! You want me to tell you he killed that little boy. He didn’t. I
know
it. I know him.”

“Prove it to me. Tell me the truth.”

“You’ll twist it! I know! But you can’t twist this because there’s nothing there but what happened. He came here. He was here an hour. He left.”

“Did you see the minibus?”

“He left it on the road.”

“Not in the churchyard?”

“No!”

“Did he talk about the churchyard?”

“No.
No!
Chas didn’t kill Matthew. He couldn’t kill anyone.”

“But you know the boy’s name. You
know
it. How?”

She twisted away from them.

“He’s been here. Today. Where did he go? Cecilia, for God’s sake, where did he go?” The girl said nothing. Urgently Lynley went on, searching for something that would convince her to part with the facts. “Don’t you see? If he’s done nothing, as you claim, then he himself may be in danger.”

“You’re lying,” she spat at him.

She spoke the truth. But that no longer mattered. The line that divided truth from fiction was obliterated by death.

“Tell me where he is.”

“I don’t know. I don’t
know
. He wouldn’t tell me. I told him I’d never betray him, but he wouldn’t tell. He knows you’re after him. He didn’t do anything, but he knows you think he did. And he laughs at you. He laughs. He said to tell you that he’ll lead you on a path of glory. That’s what he said. Those were his words. And then he left.”

“When?”

“An hour past. So follow his trail, if you want. Follow it.”

Lynley got to his feet. Chas’ message was burning its way into his skull. He recognised the words. He had seen them when Deborah St. James had shown him Thomas Gray’s poem on Monday night.

Lynley didn’t want to understand what Chas’ message to him meant. He didn’t want to reveal his sudden fear to the girl. She had already borne enough.

But Cecilia seemed to read beyond the impassivity on his face. As he thanked her and walked with St. James to the door, she followed them. “What is it?” she asked. “What do you know?
Tell
me!”

Lynley looked at Mrs. Streader. “Keep her here,” he said.

He went out into the rain. St. James followed. The door closed behind them, cutting off Cecilia’s cries.

From the boot of his car Lynley removed two torches, handing one to St. James. “Hurry,” he said and drew up the collar of his coat.

The wind angled the rain into their faces as they rushed down the drive and crossed the country road to the lane leading to St. Giles’ Church. It was unlit, deserted, and the beams from their torches reflected upon great pools of water from the long afternoon of storm. Small wind-torn branches caught at their trousers, and mud oozed from verges that were still bare of spring growth.

Lynley knew such a walk would be difficult for his friend. He knew he ought to help him lest he lose his footing. But as he glanced at St. James, the rain beating against his face, the other man shouted, “I’m all right. Go on!” and Lynley broke into a run, driven by that partial line of poetry and its implicit message, driven by the fear he had heard in Cecilia Feld’s voice, by the hopelessness he had seen that day on Chas Quilter’s face.

The paths of glory lead but to the grave
. And hadn’t that proved true for Chas? Senior prefect, member of the rugby first fifteen, the cricket first eleven, the tennis first six. Handsome, admired, intelligent. Guaranteed Cambridge. Guaranteed success. Guaranteed everything.

The lych gate loomed in front of him, water streaming off it in sheets. Lynley ducked beneath it, and the beam from his light caught upon a sodden garment lying in a heap in a corner. Lynley picked it up. It was a Bredgar Chambers jacket, once blue but now quite black from the rain. He didn’t bother to look for the name tag that would be sewn onto the lining. Instead, he tossed the jacket to one side and plunged out from the shelter of the lych gate once again.

“Chas!” he shouted. “Chas Quilter!”

He ran towards the church in the distance, his feet pounding against the concrete path. He arced his torch from side to side, but it shone upon nothing except ghostly gravestones—slick with water—and grass beaten down by the rain.

Under the second lych gate another garment lay, this a yellow pullover. Like the first, it had been flung into a corner, but one arm had caught upon a nail protruding from the lych gate wall. Eerily, like a spectre, this pointed towards the church. Lynley ran on.

“Chas!” His cry seemed to die in a blast of wind that was howling from the west.

He shot the beam of his light across the graves. He shot it towards the church. He played it on the windows. He continued to run.

“Chas! Chas Quilter!”

The wind had knocked a tree rose onto the path, and Lynley stumbled against it, his trousers catching upon its thorns. He shone the light down, ripped the material away from the bush, and righted himself. As he did so, the beam of his light flashed momentarily on a streak of white ahead. It seemed to be moving.

“Chas!”

He broke away from the path and dashed through the graves towards the figure he saw beneath a widespread yew tree near the southwest door of the church. White shirt. Dark trousers. It had to be Chas. It couldn’t be anyone else. Yet the figure up ahead was tall, too tall. And he was turning and turning and turning back and forth. As if taken by the wind, as if struck by the wind, as if dangling in the wind….

“No!” Lynley flung himself the last twenty yards to the tree and grabbed onto the boy’s legs to support his body. “St. James!” he shouted. “For Christ’s sake! St. James!”

He heard an answering shout. Someone was coming. He squinted against the rain, his heart pounding in his chest. But the figure that hurtled along the path and tore through the graveyard was not his friend. It was Cecilia.

She screamed. She flew across the lawn. She clawed at Chas. She clawed at Lynley, tearing at his arms, biting his hands as she attempted to separate him from the boy.

“Chas!” she screamed. “No! Chas! Don’t—”

Her words were cut off as St. James reached them and grabbed her, pulling her away and dragging her back. She tried to beat at him, but he held her arms behind her and pressed her face into his chest.

“Let her go!” Lynley shouted. “Grab the boy. Hold him. I’ll cut him down.”

“Tommy!”

“For the love of God, St. James. Do as I say!”

“Tommy—”

“We’ve no time!”

“He’s dead.” St. James flashed the beam of his light upon Chas Quilter’s face, revealing the ghastly colour of the wet flesh, the exophthalmic eyes, the swollen, protruding tongue. He flashed the light away. “It’s over. He’s
dead
.”

21

Lynley met with Cecilia in her bedroom. Mrs. Streader sat next to the bed, one hand on the girl’s arm and the other wiping away her own tears. She murmured Cecilia’s name occasionally, but it seemed more to comfort herself than to comfort the girl, who was sedated and rapidly slipping towards sleep.

Outside the bedroom, Lynley could hear St. James and Inspector Canerone talking. Someone coughed. Someone else cursed. A telephone jangled. It was answered on the second ring.

Lynley’s heart felt sore. It seemed an additional cruelty to question Cecilia, but he did so anyway, giving ascendancy to the policeman within him and forcing into submission every impulse he had to assuage the girl’s pain.

“Did you know Chas was coming to see you this evening?” Lynley asked her. She turned her head to him lethargically. “What did he talk to you about, Cecilia? Did he mention Matthew Whateley? Is that how you knew his name?”

Cecilia’s eyelids drooped. Her tongue, looking swollen, passed over her lips. She spoke listlessly. “Chas…he said…Matthew saw the minibus. He was on the back lane to Erebus and Ion, and he saw. Tuesday night. So he knew.”

“Matthew knew that Chas had taken the minibus?”

“He knew.”

“You spoke to Chas on the phone Friday night. Several times. Did he tell you he’d taken Matthew to the room in Calchus House?”

“He said…no…nothing of Matthew. We…it was the baby. I wanted to talk to him about the baby. I had to…we…to decide what to do…If he would just tell his father…but he wouldn’t. His father…he wouldn’t tell him.”

“He didn’t tell you about Matthew? He said nothing about the chemistry laboratory? About the fume cupboard?”

She shook her head weakly. “Nothing of Matthew.” A crease appeared between her eyebrows. She sought Lynley’s eyes. “But he said…someone else knew of the minibus. That it didn’t end…with Matthew. But that it had to end somewhere. It had to end…” Her hand rose to her lips. Tears streaked slowly from her eyes. “I didn’t…I should have known what he meant. I didn’t. I didn’t think he would…there’s the baby. And…
Chas
.”

Mrs. Streader wiped the girl’s cheeks. She said, “Sissy. Sissy, love. It’s all right. There. It is.”

“It didn’t end with Matthew,” Lynley told the girl. “Someone else saw Chas with the minibus that night. A woman. Jean Bonnamy. Did he tell you about her? Did he tell you what happened to her this afternoon?”

“No. Jean…He said nothing of Jean. Only that you’d been after him…that you wanted him to talk to you…to tell you…he said you didn’t understand. You couldn’t know. He felt bound…” Her eyelids closed.

“Bound to you? To protect you? As you had done for him?”

She stroked the satin that banded the top of the white wool cover. “Protect. Chas protect,” she murmured. “He’s like that, Chas is. He’ll protect.” Her hands relaxed. Her jaw grew slack. She slept.

Gently Mrs. Streader smoothed the girl’s forehead. “Poor love,” she said. “She’s been through it, Inspector. Parents, pregnancy, the birth, the poor baby’s deformity. Now this. And she loved him. They loved each other. I had no doubt of that. I’ve seen the young men come to my house to visit girls they’ve got in trouble before this. But there was never one who touched the sort of devotion Chas Quilter had for this child. Never one.”

“Did you hear any part of their conversation tonight?”

Mrs. Streader shook her head. “They wanted time alone and I gave it to them. You may go ahead and argue that I was derelict in leaving them alone together, after what they’d got up to in the past and the result that’s lying like a half-made little lamb in hospital. But I saw no reason to deny them what comfort they could take from each other’s presence. There’s little enough love in the world, and even less joy. If a few minutes holding one another brought them a bit of peace, what right have I in refusing to allow it?”

“You weren’t here on Saturday night when Chas came to see Cecilia?”

“I wasn’t. But I’ve no doubt he was here. Cecilia told me he’d said he would come to her that night, and Chas wasn’t a boy who made promises he didn’t keep. Just like today.”

“Today?”

Mrs. Streader arranged Cecilia’s hair against the bedclothes. “He phoned at noon. He said he was coming.
Promised
he was coming. And he was here by four. That was Chas.”