“Miss Camfield?”
“I’m trying to remember exactly my thoughts at the time. I’m sure I said to myself that the effect of the news was so great that some of them were even frightened. Understandable, of course. Sudden death takes people in different ways, and there were three hundred young people down there in the hall, some of whom are really very young.”
“Thank you. Miss Fryer?”
“I remember thinking that one girl was going to faint and I’d have to go down to her. I do the first aid, you know.”
“Your services were not required?”
“No. The girls on either side of her seemed to rally her.”
“How?”
“I remember they spoke to her pretty urgently, and one took her arm. She pulled herself together then.”
“Why should she faint, do you think?”
“She didn’t actually faint.”
“Why should she look as though she were about to?”
Miss Fryer reddened slightly, but Miss Groombridge answered quite matter-of-factly. “This is a girls’ school, Sergeant Reed. Faints are not uncommon among young girls at the time of puberty. We must average two or three a term perhaps. Some of the girls of that age have a trying time and any sudden stress or shock just at the wrong moment will cause a faint.”
“I see.”
“The horrors can be a damn nuisance when they first start,” agreed Diana Gilbey without turning a hair.
“I see.” Reed turned to Berger, who looked up at him—having been very absorbed in the pattern on the carpet during this last exchange. Berger said: “So nothing out of the ordinary happened, you might say.”
“Nothing whatsoever.”
“We’ll leave that then.” Berger turned to Miss Groombridge. “I don’t want to tread on any toes here, so please don’t answer if you’d rather not. But you will appreciate that in a case like this we have to ask questions about who is likely to benefit, or who might bear a grudge.”
“The girls have told you nobody bore Miss Holland a grudge.”
“So they have. But her appointment here must have disappointed somebody.”
“Lickers,” said Elizabeth promptly.
“Please ignore that,” said Miss Groombridge.
“You mean Miss Lickfold was not disappointed at the time?”
“You know Miss Lickfold applied for the post?”
“Yes.”
“Then why ask us to comment if you know about it?”
“I did say you weren’t to answer if you preferred not to.”
“I say,” interjected Diana Gilbey, “you’d better answer, Miss Groombridge. Detectives always say you leave them free to form their own conclusions if you don’t.”
Reed laughed. “I suspect you’re more interested in the reply than we would be.” He turned to Miss Groombridge. “We’ll go no further along that line in mixed company, ma’am. In fact, we’ll finish there, I think.”
“I would prefer, nevertheless, to state that Miss Lickfold, though disappointed at the time, has had more than three years to get over that disappointment and that she is, in any case, a gentle soul.”
Reed paused a moment before replying. Then—
“We have heard different, ma’am. Not everybody agrees that she is gentle.”
“The girls wouldn’t,” said Elizabeth Milne decisively. “She abused her power.”
“I think,” said Miss Groombridge wryly, “that I will accept your offer to end this conversation, Sergeant.”
“Yes, ma’am. But it does demonstrate to you very clearly how often the opinions we hear vary to such a degree that at times they are diametrically opposed.”
*
Miss Lickfold lived in a semi-detached house in Stratford Avenue. The house was of the front, middle and back variety, with no garage. A side passage alone separated it from its neighbour and led to the back door. This side passage had a gate, still bearing an old plate with the legend “Tradesmen”, and another saying “No Hawkers no Circulars”.
“This is going back a bit,” said Green. “When was it built? About 1920?”
“I imagine so. It was probably an avenue in those days. There are still a few trees, but it’s almost a main road now.”
Their knock was answered by Miss Lickfold herself. As Masters knew, she was nearing retirement age, but he hadn’t expected to see so drab a person, from whom all vitality seemed to have ebbed.
“No doubt Miss Freeman rang to say we were on our way. We are from Scotland Yard.”
“Miss Freeman did warn me.”
“May we come in and talk to you?”
“Of course. Please follow me.”
She was dressed in a suit of indeterminate colour. A mixture of grey and plum was how Masters noted it privately. She had a brown sweater under the jacket and a heavy string of beads. Her hair was short, straight and grey, and she wore rimless spectacles.
Miss Lickfold led them to the middle room. The house smelt stuffy, as though the air was never changed but mixed with the smell of medicaments and ripe fruit.
“I understand your mother is an invalid, Miss Lickfold. I hope we shall not disturb her.”
“She has her bed in the front room. She will have seen or heard your arrival, so I’ll just pop in to tell her who you are, otherwise she will be calling for information. Her life is so uneventful she has become very inquisitive.”
“Quite right, too,” said Green. “You go and tell her we’ve called for a chat. We can wait a minute.”
“Thank you. Please sit down.”
It was a shabby room, but strangely comfortable. The window looked out over a patch of concrete yard which ran up to the garden grass. The room itself was evidently Miss Lickfold’s utility room. It had a dining table which she obviously used as a desk and from which, Masters guessed, she ate her lonely meals. There were two old hide chairs, one on each side of the fireplace, four dining chairs and an art nouveau sideboard littered with all manner of items—books, gloves, a scarf, an empty decanter and a cut-glass jug, a purse and several other packages.
“I like this,” said Green. “We had one just like it when I was a kid. We used to eat in the kitchen and live in this one. We had one of the wireless sets in the windows with accumulators on the floor . . .”
He got no further. Miss Lickfold rejoined them. Green ushered her to one of the armchairs. He and Masters took dining chairs.
Masters began.
“You have probably heard, Miss Lickfold, that an open verdict was returned at the inquest on Miss Holland this morning.”
“I heard before I left the school.”
“It means that we have to try to determine exactly how she came to take the laburnum seeds which killed her.”
“I cannot see, Superintendent, how I can possibly help you.”
“Perhaps not, ma’am, but we must ask a lot of questions in the hope that somebody will be able to give us a hint or two. You, I understand, are the new bursar of the school.”
“I took up the post in September.”
“Having been a teacher at the school for many years?”
“I was deputy headmistress for almost nine of those years.”
“Then you, obviously, must know more than most about the school itself and, since you were her deputy, about Miss Holland, too.”
“Despite our respective positions, we were never close.”
“Why was that?”
“Miss Holland and I were of different generations.”
“But, allowing for the difference in your ages, was there any other reason for your not working closely?”
“Many reasons. As you may already know, I considered that after many years as deputy headmistress, I should have been appointed to the headship when that post fell vacant. Miss Holland was brought in over my head.”
“Naturally you resented that.”
“Intensely. And not only because I considered my experience at Bramthorpe qualified me for the job, but also because the bigger s
alary and the provision of the School House would have meant so much to me and to my mother.”
Green asked: “But that disappointment would have been there if somebody other than Miss Holland had been given the job in preference to you?”
“Quite.”
“So the resentment was not directed at Miss Holland personally, but at the person who superseded you?” asked Masters.
“I’m afraid you cannot split hairs like that. Miss Holland was there, in person. I could not direct my resentment against an impersonal shadow.”
“I understand. But after Miss Holland’s arrival, what then? Was she an ogre?”
“To me, personally? Yes.”
“Personally, or professionally?”
“I suppose I mean the latter. I can recall no actual personal unkindness, but after so long my personal and professional lives have fused together. What affects the one affects the other, and vice versa.”
“So she slighted you, professionally?”
“Unforgivably.”
“So you still feel the resentment, even though you are no longer teaching?”
“Undeniably.”
“We’d better hear a few of the details,” said Green.
“Why?”
“Look, Miss Lickfold, if Miss Holland was the type to ride roughshod over an able, experienced and loyal teacher like you, she probably treated scores of other people in the same way. That means she’d not be short of enemies. What you tell us may help to identify them.”
“I see. But I have no wish to go into details.”
“That’s a pity, but probably the other mistresses will tell us how disgracefully you were treated.”
“No, they won’t,” she replied bitterly. “They all fell into line with all her new-fangled ideas. Miss Holland turned Bramthorpe into nothing more than an examination factory. I was the only one . . .”
“The only one what?”
“Everything I did was wrong in her eyes. My disciplinary measures, the work I set, everything. She thought, because she was M.A., Oxon. and B.Sc., London, that she knew all there was to know about every subject. But there was one subject she knew nothing about, and that was bringing up young people. She thought good examination results were everything. Education should teach girls to be dutiful and obedient even if their passes in external examinations are a grade or two lower. Our girls were sent to us to be taught to be young ladies, not future protestors.”
Masters nodded. “I think I see your point. So how did Miss Holland slight you?”
“She stopped me teaching in the upper school.”
“That could have been in order to strengthen the teaching in the lower school.”
“I hardly think so, in view of the fact that she then manoeuvred me out of teaching altogether.”
“To become bursar?”
“Yes.”
“You don’t like the post?”
“I’m a teacher.”
“Yet you agreed to become bursar. Why, in view of the fact that you could not be dismissed from your teaching job?”
“There are more ways than one of skinning a cat. I could not be dismissed from the school, but I could have the position of deputy headmistress taken from me.”
“Miss Holland threatened to do that?”
“I was told that whether I accepted the post of bursar or not, Miss Bulmer, the senior maths mistress, would be appointed deputy headmistress at the beginning of this term.”
“An ultimatum, in fact?”
“Just so.”
“But was there no quid pro quo?”
“How do you mean?”
“Wasn’t it Miss Holland’s intention to allow you to carry on as bursar for an extra five years, thereby not only allowing you to continue on full salary but also offering the prospect of an increased pension at the end of your service?”
Miss Lickfold didn’t answer for a moment. Then—
“Yes, damn her, that was her scheme. Offering me charity because she knew I couldn’t afford to refuse it. Just to further her own ends . . .”
“Steady, love,” said Green. “Don’t get worked up about it. She’s dead now.”
“Yes, she is. And I’m glad. Very glad. I don’t care how she died. She deserved it.”
Masters looked across at Green and gestured towards the door. They got up quietly and left the house.
Chapter Five
They met once more in Masters’ room. The sergeants had had the foresight to bring in a stock of beer.
“We’ve got just seventy-two minutes before dinner,” said Masters. “I want to hear what you two have heard, and the D.C.I. will tell you what we learned. Then I want to get down there to eat as soon as the dining room opens because I think we may have to go out again.”
“You’ve got something in mind, George?”
“Yes. I’ll discuss it over dinner. Reports now.”
Reed and Berger spoke first. Masters and Green listened attentively. When they had finished, Green spoke.
“Are you going to take the Lickfold woman in for questioning, Chief?” asked Berger.
“I don’t think so. Certainly not at the moment.”
“From the way the D.C.I. spoke, she practically confessed.”
“I’m sure he didn’t mean to imply that.”
“No,” said Green. “The woman needs treatment. She’s caved in, mentally, under the stress of her home life and the severe blows to her self-esteem dealt by Miss Holland.”
“But from everything we’ve heard, Miss Holland was a decent, kind woman.”
“Besides being kind, she was efficient and devoted,” Masters reminded him. “Efficiency and devotion are uncomfortable traits in a headmistress because, though Miss Holland was a kindly woman, she was not prepared to accept the too obvious shortcomings of Miss Lickfold. Devotion to her job led her to harry the weak member of the team even though, in doing so, she made better provision for that member than Miss Lickfold had any right to expect. Wounds to the self-esteem, it would seem, are not cured by kindness, only by restoratives—literally—which . . . well, which restore the injured party to the former state of self-regard.”
“Is that why you didn’t collect her?”
“That’s it,” said Green. “We could be wrong, so we shan’t forget her, but we were both of the opinion she had lost some of her marbles. To have taken her in, without very strong cause, could have been a big mistake. There’s her mother to be looked after, for instance. Apart from the fact that neither of us thought she was guilty. I mean, she wasn’t cunning. She took no trouble to disguise her dislike of Miss Holland. We were left with just a picture of frustration and hatred. But as I say, we could be wrong.”
“And there was nothing else?”
“Not then, but there is now. His Nibs has got some bee in his bonnet from all the signs.”
“Is that right, Chief?”
“It’s certainly been strengthened during the last half hour.”
“What has?”
“An idea which you gave me earlier.”
“Me?” asked Reed, in amazement.
“Yes. Something you said to Berger last night. So drink up and we’ll go and get something to eat. Don’t forget the D.C.I. and myself were not provided with tea and cake everywhere we went this afternoon.”
*
“The food’s not bad here,” said Green, tackling a plate of beef stew with noodles, “but there’s not enough of it. I like a pub that lets you have a decent helping and then some more. If we’re going out again tonight I shall look for a Chinese chippy. Something to go with the beer before we go to bed.”
“We are going out,” said Masters.
“All together?”
“Yes. The School House first.”
“Going to put Mrs Gibson through the hoop?”
“Not Mrs Gibson. The house itself.”
Green finished his beef and picked up the menu. “Coupe Jacques,” he said. “I have my suspicions about that. I’ll go for the rhuba
rb tart.”
“It means a dollop of ice cream with half a tinned peach on it.”
“Is that so? I wouldn’t want it then.”
“You don’t like ice cream?”
“I don’t like simple things tarted up with names like that.” He turned to Masters. “Mrs Gibson will think we’ve come to give her the Coupe Jacques if we arrive without warning.”
“I’d rather arrive unannounced.”
“Suit yourself.”
“You have some serious objection?”
“Nothing that would seem important to you, perhaps. But it can’t be funny for a woman alone in a house where there’s just been a death to have four dirty great jacks descend upon her after dark, without warning.”
Masters considered this for a moment and then said: “Right. I’ll bow to your wishes. Two of us will go. Berger will be one of them, because she knows him. As to the other, it will be either yourself or Reed.”
“Why the choice? And why not you, personally?”
“I’ve got several visits in mind. I’ll do one of the other calls. You can come with me or go with Berger.”
Green grunted his thanks as the helping of rhubarb tart was put in front of him. Then looking up at the waitress, he asked: “Have you got a lemon, love?”
“A lemon, sir?”
“Yes. I’m looking for an answer, you see.”
The bewildered girl moved away from him as if not quite sure of his mental stability. Masters said: “Please don’t worry. That was one of the Chief Inspector’s jokes. What he’d really like is the cheeseboard as soon as he’s finished his rhubarb tart.”
When the girl had gone, Green turned to Masters. “What decision would you make if you were me?”
“I’d come with me. After the call I hope to make I’ll join Berger and whoever his companion is at the School House. Coming with us you’d get it both ways.”
“I’ll forgo the biscuits and cheese.”
“Please don’t. I want to make a phone call before I leave.”
“What are Sergeant Reed and I to do when we get to the School House, Chief?”
“Wait for me. Chat up Mrs Gibson, and don’t let her into the kitchen. So refuse tea or coffee if she offers it to you.”
“Right, Chief. But I must say it sounds a rum assignment.”
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