‘I suppose so.’
‘And then?’
‘I told you the rest. It was near the end of the lesson. I’d decided to let them go a bit early. They were milling around by the door. I heard a girl scream. At first I couldn’t locate it. Then I dashed out and went next door.’ He stopped and swallowed. ‘He was hanging over the electric unit, all twisted. He was sort of wrapped round it. Apparently it was part of the new central heating plant. At the time I didn’t realise how he’d died. In fact I wasn’t sure he was dead.’
There was a pause before Geoffrey asked, ‘What did you do?’
‘I came out, shut the door, and dispatched a couple of the more dependable types: one to the office to ring for an ambulance, and one to get Springer.’
‘What did he say?’
‘He said … his first words were, “It’s going to be very hard to support you on a professional basis on this one, Ralph. At the bottom line, when the chips are down, we teachers, that is you, Ralph, have to carry the can. I know you won’t feel too comfortable with that, Ralph, but we both know that’s how it is.”’
Troutbeck had quite a good imitation of his head-teacher’s voice, Geoffrey noticed. He’d caught the equivocal vowels, half mid-atlantic manager, half south London bloke, quite accurately.
‘But you can’t be blamed for a pupil’s accidental death.’
‘Springer seems quite content that I should be. It’s certainly the end of my teaching career.’ Ralph’s tone was not, Theodora thought, particularly anguished; there was, indeed, almost satisfaction in it. Was he masochistic or just genuinely relieved that he could now give up, even dishonourably, a job for which he had no talent.
‘But even if you have to bear some responsibility for the control of the class, that’s a different matter from saying that you actually killed the boy.’ Geoffrey had the air of tidying up the topic in a way which would have suited his previous role as a naval officer rather more than his present one of sympathetic pastor. ‘What is it that the police are saying? I wasn’t too clear from your message on the ansaphone.’
Troutbeck took his time. Then he said, ‘The police had me and Springer in together and told us that they were treating the death as an intentional killing, not an accident. They feel the medical evidence shows that the boy was in some sort of a fight, and that he was deliberately thrown and held on to the electric unit.’
‘Wouldn’t anyone who held the boy on to the unit also have been electrocuted?’ Theodora realised she had become so interested in the details of the method she too had abandoned the pastoral voice.
‘If he was hurled against the unit, no one need have held him. But if he was held, whoever held him would have had to have been insulated in some way. Perhaps by wearing those heavy rubber gloves that electricians use when dealing with power lines. There’s plenty of spare workmen’s clobber lying around.’
Theodora shuddered at the thought of such premeditation.
‘What about his fellow pupils?’ Geoffrey asked. ‘Could any of them have done it?’
‘The police say they all give each other alibis.’
‘But don’t they also give you an alibi? You couldn’t have been out of sight of them when you were teaching them.’
Troutbeck flushed. ‘I was out of their sight just once. I had to go back to the classroom for some more copies of the script we were working on. I was only away for five minutes and they had work set.’ He was defensive. ‘It was early in the class. I’m pretty certain the Kostases were both with me at that point.’
‘Both?’ Geoffrey pressed.
‘Well, one certainly was, because he was near the door as I returned.’ ‘Which one?’ Geoffrey pressed.
Ralph practically wept. ‘I don’t know, they both look alike to me.’
‘Have the police any ideas? If he wasn’t killed by accident or by one of his fellow pupils in a fight, who could have killed him? And why?’
‘Well, it wasn’t me,’ said Troutbeck with vehemence. ‘I can’t say I liked the Kostas boys, or indeed any of that appalling year, but I didn’t kill anyone. I reckon the police’d do better going over some of those thugs that his family seem related to.’
‘You know his family then?’ Theodora pressed the question.
‘Not especially. But I’ve seen some of them picking the boys up at the gate after school sometimes. I always assume the Greeks run the same sort of mafia as the Italians.’ Troutbeck was almost dismissive. ‘They all seem to have a fair amount of cash about them, and I don’t think it comes from running Greek restaurants.’
‘What do this particular bit of the Kostas clan do for a living?’ Theodora inquired.
‘The father’s got a transport business. HGVs and vans and things.’
‘Have you …’ Theodora was tentative. ‘Have you felt able to meet the family yet?’
Troutbeck shook his head. ‘I wanted to. I did try when Mrs Kostas came up to the school after …’ He broke off. ‘Springer wouldn’t let me. He said it would be better not.’
‘I know it will be difficult, but I think you should.’
‘I tried to say a word to the brother, the other twin.’ Troutbeck stopped.
‘What happened?’
‘He spat at me,’ Troutbeck brought out. ‘Then he said his father would want payment.’
Geoffrey was startled. ‘Money?’
‘Oh no,’Troutbeck said, and was the hint of triumph, Theodora wondered again, masochism or relief? ‘I think it’s my blood they’ll want.’
When Troutbeck had gone, Geoffrey paced up and down the kitchen as if it were quarterdeck. ‘Two problems then. One, who killed Kostas and why; and two, how can we help Troutbeck?’
‘Do I take it that you don’t think Troutbeck killed Kostas?’ Geoffrey ruminated. ‘I don’t think it’s impossible. I’d say he was something of an hysteric, wouldn’t you?’
Theodora nodded. ‘But we’re not, you know, police. Surely we would agree that our – I mean the Church’s – duties are the same whoever did it. The Kostas family and Troutbeck have an equal right to our concern.’
Why did Theodora sound so anxious, Geoffrey wondered. He was in full agreement with her. ‘We’ve rather left to one side,’ he said in his best vicar’s manner, your problem with Mrs Stephanopoulos and her daughter’s kidnap.’
‘Not entirely,’ Theodora was thoughtful.
‘Surely unconnected.’
‘I expect you’re right,’ Theodora agreed. But she did wonder. She was sure she was not mistaken. She had certainly seen the Kostas car hire firm’s card on the table beneath the statue of the Virgin and child at the Stephanopouloses’ house, which was odd when you considered they seem to have gone everywhere by embassy transport and the Kostas firm was on the other side of the water.
CHAPTER SIX
Artistic Life
‘An icon is a diagram of essential, eternal truths.’ Cromwell tossed his black mane from his broad brow. The Hapgood twins crossed their legs in unison, leaned back in their chairs and gave themselves up to the appreciation of an accomplished performer. Eulalia Topglass, from one of the southern states of North America, wrote Cromwell’s comment in her notebook with the bitten end of a pencil. The Canon of Exeter’s niece, Candida Warren, reserved her judgement. She reckoned she knew about ecclesiastical art and distrusted actors. In the back row, Clarissa Bennet, the fair-haired girl whose eye had met Theodora’s in the hall, staring over the banisters yesterday, spread her fingers out in front of her and concentrated on their essential diagrammatic form.
On the screen hung at one end of the large studio at the top of St Veep’s main school were projected side by side two slides. The one on Cromwell’s right hand was of a conventional 1930s portrait of a middleclass English woman, shown three-quarter length standing beside a window and turned partly towards the garden depicted in the background. The one on the other side of him presented to the audience a likeness, in the muted blue and silver of Greek fourteenth-century icons, of
the Virgin and child.
‘What strikes us first about an icon is how much is missing,’ Cromwell went on. ‘The nearest parallel in literature is Greek classical drama. There, all that the nineteenth century taught us to look for – the glorification of the unique individual, the psychological nuances which divide us from each other and make us unrepeatedly peculiar – are absent.’
Cromwell’s pointer tapped the Virgin and child. The dark eyes of the Virgin, who looked neither young nor old, gazed out to meet those of the audience. Theodora looked at its lines. She’d seen it before, she realised, recently. Then, with a sweeping movement, he flipped the pointer in the air and caught it in his other hand and tapped the picture on his right.
Eulalia, who was concentrating hard, jumped. The pointer circled the second picture. Helena Braithwaite, as pictured by Phillip de Laslo © 1930, became the focus of fifty pairs of eyes. Like the Virgin, Lady Helena was in blue, the sleeves of her dress lined with white. Theodora had the unsettling experience of gazing at her grandmother’s familiar face, forty years younger than she had known it. The Hapgood twins leaned forward to study the costume more closely. Was she wearing a tea-gown, they wondered? They had heard of such things in the literature of the period. Stylistic detail was their speciality, and they were eager to learn. In one hand Lady Helena had a rose, the other rested on the back of a drawingroom chair. The face turned towards the window and looking out on to the garden was vivacious, eager, not quite smiling, as though about to greet pleasant visitors. The garden in the background showed an herbaceous border in its late summer glory.
‘Compare and contrast,’ said Cromwell. ‘What, instinctively, is the reaction to which the artist compels us here?’
The question was rhetorical. But Eulalia, more used to the participatory methods of American education, responded. ‘We look for the story?’
‘Go on.’
‘Why the dress, the view, the expression on the face?’
‘Just so. Even the symbols – the rose, the garden – which might lure us to the universal, are here made idiosyncratic, particular to this woman in this setting at this time. We do not have a diagram, we have history. Commonplace history.’
‘But that’s not fair,’ Candida Warren burst out. ‘No one is asking us to worship Lady Braithwaite.’
‘I sure find her a really attractive lady,’ said Eulalia courteously, defending her own type.
The Hapgoods grinned their approval. The delight of Cromwell’s session, they had agreed, was the scope it allowed for both universal type and individual character to emerge. Theodora, in the back row, found herself similarly happy to be where the discussion of ideas was natural and valued; where, in fact, education was taking place. She had come to hear Cromwell, taking advantage of the pleasant convention of the establishment which allowed staff to attend each other’s sixth-form classes. Theodora had been surprised and flattered to be asked by Doris King if she might look in on Theodora’s class on St John with her Oxbridge pair. ‘I’ve often felt the author of the gospel was less Greek and more Hebrew than Doctor Dodd supposes, and I’d like to hear the arguments.’ Theodora, in return, had courteously wondered if she might attend Miss King’s session on Alcestis with her lower-sixth group. ‘I’ve long felt we were meant to find an element of parody of male querulousness in Admetus and I’d like to hear the arguments.’ Both had come together with other colleagues to hear Cromwell’s ‘Art for Amateurs’ course, a fixture for Tuesday afternoon in the Lent term sixth-form calendar, and hugely popular. To Theodora too it had offered a welcome release from worry about Jessica.
Theodora gazed at the two pictures displayed on either side of the art master. The long white studio with its glass roof and northern light produced a contemplative religious atmosphere. The electricity had not, on Cromwell’s order, been switched on, so the two slides showed up sharp and clear.
She reflected on what Cromwell had said. Of course icons had a different use from mere portraits, in which there must always be an element of selfglorification. Icons are part of a living faith and its practices, part of a ritual which could help to bring people into God’s presence. They are a mechanism, a device for changing us by the discipline of prayer and meditation. There are limits on what one could do with and by an icon. It is not possible, for example, to hang it on the wall of a gallery beside Lady Braithwaite’s portrait. Icons aren’t really pictures at all, Theodora thought. They’re things, holy things, like churches or crosses or altars.
‘The icon,’ Cromwell was pressing on, ‘resembles certain seventeenthcentury Dutch paintings, for example flower paintings, where every bloom has a particular symbolism in terms of human virtue. Such paintings intend to tell us something like a puzzle. They do not invite, they do not require us to use our imagination. Lady Braithwaite’s portrait may tell us about love, a particular emotion; the icon appeals not to love but to worship in the universal mode.’
Candida Warren stirred uncomfortably. This was all rather far from her uncle’s sound Anglican tradition.
Cromwell glared round as if scenting reservations on the part of his audience. ‘It is a sign of the degeneration of our times that we are incapable of making that sort of distinction, or of recognising the true and different natures of things which only superficially resemble each other. To us all paintings are just paintings. Are we not diminished by that failure in discrimination? In the past, icons were objects of power, not artifice. Hence the iconoclasts of the Byzantine period supposed they were destroying pernicious and potent things, not decorations and superfluities. Icons to the iconoclast possessed demonic power.’
Candida felt she must put in a word for Anglican sanity here. ‘But it’s we who give them the power,’ she burst out. ‘Of themselves they are nothing
– just wood and gilt. And whatever we give power to is just an idol.’
Cromwell swung round to her. ‘Never underestimate the power of symbols. Advertisers don’t. Politicians don’t. In the past people killed for the possession of them.’ At that moment there was a crash. Clarissa Bennet fell forward with a sort of sigh. The Hapgood twins, who were sitting to the right of her, turned their concerned profiles in her direction. Cromwell ceased in mid-flow. ‘What’s up?’
The more flippant element chorused, ‘Lights, lights! There was much scraping of chairs and solicitous inquiry. Clarissa was aided from the room by Miss King and Eul-alia. Cromwell simply stood with his hands folded over his pointer, leaning on it like a shepherd on his crook, waiting for the hubbub to die down. Theodora scrutinised the tall figure of the man. He was quite egoist enough for his only perceptible emotion to be impatience at the interruption of his discourse. She recalled Clarissa’s small body bent forward, her eyes pinned on to his face, just prior to the faint. One might suppose Clarissa had been very interested indeed in what Cromwell was saying.
‘What sort of a child was Jessica?’ Theodora inquired later that afternoon in the staff common room. ‘Not, I would have said, too happy here,’ Miss Brighouse answered her. ‘She came, of course, late. I mean she didn’t come at twelve. Latecomers sometimes take a while to settle in. Of course, she’d travelled a lot and that’s both an advantage and a disadvantage here. Socially she fitted in perfectly well. Her mama was here, of course.’
‘Academically,’ Miss King put her oar in, ‘she wasn’t quite up to our first-division standards. Gaps in all subjects. The sciences particularly. A familiarity with the subway systems of New York and Istanbul are no substitute for basic physics.’
‘What was she good at?’ Theodora pursued. ‘Art,’ said Oenone Troutbeck, raising her head from packing her briefcase. ‘She was one of Cromwell’s coterie.’
‘Not religion?’ Theodora asked, remembering the cross and Mrs Stephanopoulos’s remarks. There was a silence.
‘Not widely popular as a subject area. Mr Mere, how shall I put it, has a certain dampening effect on his pupils.’
‘As a partly Anglican foundation …’ Theodora ventu
red.
‘Chaplains have always found us a difficult furrow to plough,’ said Miss Brighouse with satisfaction. ‘Not an easy role for a man, I mean, relating positively to clever adolescent girls.’
‘They tend to run rings round them.’ Oenone was blunter. ‘The last one who tried it here had a nervous breakdown within the year. The religious position, when argued for in rational terms, tends to sound a little simplistic. Wouldn’t you say?’ Oenone turned towards Theodora.
‘I agree it’s better to live it than to argue it.’ Theodora felt constrained to say. She was beginning to feel that too much of Oenone might be rather tiresome. ‘Who were Jessica’s friends?’ She brought the conversation back to her line of exploration.
‘She didn’t seem to have anyone very close,’ Miss King answered. ‘There was an aquaintance with the Bennet girl. I suppose the connection was Cromwell and the art club.’
The clock chimed in the distance. There was a flurry of wrists checking watches. Briefcases were hauled on to tables; not a plastic bag in sight, Theodora noticed. The two mathematicians seized violin cases and made for the hall. Ieuan Colt embraced the double bass in its corner and propelled it in front of him across the parquet as if it were a recalcitrant dancing partner. There was a general air of end of day and beginning of evening, an almost visible assumption of different attitudes and pursuits. Education did not finish, it simply changed gear.
Theodora piled her books together, hesitated a moment, and then set off down the hall across the marble towards the sixth-form wing. Before she reached it, she turned left to the medical room. The room was dimly lit and smelt of disinfectant. It was small and sparsely furnished. It was also cold. Illness was not encouraged at St Veep’s.You were not supposed to be sick during school hours; there were more important things to do. At the far end of the room there was a medical couch.
Theodora approached cautiously. ‘How are you feeling now?’
The girl snapped her eyes open suddenly. ‘I’m much better, thank you,’ Clarissa paused. ‘It was the heat you know. Those top rooms are terribly stuffy. We all breath in each other’s air.’
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