Well-Schooled in Murder

by Elizabeth George

  “She’s put his name on everything,” he said to Havers, “which is no doubt required by the school. But look at what else she’s done for the boy.” He turned a sock down to reveal the numbers 3, 4, and 7 fixed to tape. He reached for the trousers, and on the inner waistband alongside the boy’s name was the single number 3. On the collar of the pullover again they saw 3. Another pair of trousers was marked with a 7.

  “Match the numbers so he knew how to dress himself?” Havers asked in disgust. “Gives me the flipping chills, that does, sir. Choo-choo trains on the walls and Mummy’s dress-by-numbers in his clothes?”

  “It tells us something, doesn’t it?”

  “It tells me Matthew Whateley was probably as good as suffocating. If he had any sense, that is. Was it his parents’ idea that he come to this place, Inspector?”

  “It appears to have been.”

  “So they wanted little Matt to fit in with the swells he’d be meeting in his new school. No slip-ups would do if he was to climb the ladder of social success. Starting at thirteen with his clothes all numbered so he put them on right. No wonder he ran off.”

  Lynley was thoughtful, pondering the numbers. He replaced the clothes and asked the senior prefect to verify whether the requisite clothing allowed by the school was present in Matthew Whateley’s cupboard. Chas came to look it over and indicated that, aside from the school uniform, everything was there. Lynley closed the cupboard and drawers and said to the boy, “There’s no study area in here. Is there a day room in the building where the boys do their prep?”

  Chas nodded. He seemed uncomfortable, and perhaps, as the chief representative of the school, anxious to make an excuse for the chaotic condition in which they’d found the dormitory. Like other people Lynley had encountered in his years of policework, Chas alleviated the pressure of discomfort through a momentary garrulity, giving out information that wasn’t asked for but was, by its nature, revealing.

  “There’s a day room down the hall if you’d like to see it, sir. Every floor in the house has at least three to five senior boys living on it. They’re upper sixth boys, so they’re supposed to understand what order is all about and see that the younger boys hold to it. The house prefect is supposed to see that the senior boys under him keep tabs on the dormitories assigned to them. And to the day rooms.” He smiled rather dismally, but said no more than, “God knows what condition we’ll find the day room in.”

  “Sounds as if the system has broken down a bit in Erebus House,” Lynley concluded. As they followed Chas Quilter down the hallway, through a door, and into a second corridor, Lynley recognised the only conclusion possible to reach, based on the information Chas had just given them. Indeed, the senior boys were responsible for seeing to it that the younger boys were disciplined. Indeed, the house prefect was responsible for seeing to it that the senior boys did exactly that job. But the senior prefect—Chas Quilter himself—was responsible for the smooth working of the entire scheme. If the scheme didn’t work, chances were very good that Chas Quilter himself was at the root of the problem.

  Ahead of them, Chas was opening a door. “The third form Erebus boys do their prep in here,” he was saying. “Each one has his own desk and shelf. We call them barn stalls.”

  The day room was in only slightly better condition than the dormitory had been, and like the entry to Erebus House, it showed its age. Vague odours lingered in the air: a piece of forgotten, moulding food; a pot of glue left open; hastily discarded clothing that needed to be washed. An uncarpeted hardwood floor was stained with ink and splodged with grease spots where contraband food had been dropped. Dark knotty pine panelled the walls, and where it was not covered with assorted posters, it was heavily gouged. As were the study areas themselves—the barn stalls, as Chas had called them. Lined up along the four walls of the room, these showed the most severe signs of age.

  They looked very much like a series of tall-backed pews with unpadded wooden seats perhaps three feet long. These seats faced a large shelf with a single drawer beneath it to serve as a desk. Above this were two narrower shelves for schoolbooks. As in the dormitory, each barn stall had been given the stamp of the personality of the boy who used it. Postcards and photographs and wildly coloured transfers had been stuck onto every surface of every stall, and where a previous occupant had left his mark a bit too permanently, the current owner had merely ripped it off, leaving traces of glue and paper behind, showing a disembodied hand here, part of a face there, a few letters from a word, the wheel of a vehicle. Everywhere restless thirteen-year-old fingers had picked at wood that was centuries old. Everywhere young bodies had worn away the varnish so that great pale patches showed through the dark, protective lacquer.

  Like his cubicle in the dormitory, Matthew Whateley’s barn stall was not decorated in the fashion of the other boys’. No rock and roll posters, no film stars, no nubile young ladies in suggestive dress, no longed-for automobiles, no photographs depicting athletic prowess. Nothing at all, in fact, save a snapshot of two children squatting, mud-splattered, on the tide-receding bank of the Thames, with Hammersmith Bridge in the background. One of the children was a grinning Matthew, poking at the mud with a long, curved switch. The other was a laughing black girl whose feet were bare and whose hair fell to her shoulders in dozens of beautiful beaded plaits. Yvonnen Livesley, Lynley thought, Matthew’s friend from home. He examined the picture and once again doubted Kevin Whateley’s assertion that Matthew would not have been running home for an opportunity to see this girl. She was lovely.

  He handed the photograph to Sergeant Havers, who slipped it into her notebook wordlessly. While she watched, he put on his spectacles and looked over Matthew’s textbooks. They were fairly standard academic material, representing English, maths, geography, history, biology, chemistry, and, in keeping with the spirit of the school, religious studies. On the desktop was an incomplete maths assignment. Next to it lay a stack of three spiral notebooks. Lynley divided it all, giving half to Havers and taking half himself. He sat in Matthew’s barn stall—a tight fit for a man of his height—while Havers disappeared into the stall in front of him. Chas walked to the window, opened it, and looked out on the grounds.

  A voice called from outside, another answered. Several boys laughed. But in the day room there was only the sound of books being opened, pages being thumbed through, notebooks being checked. Tedious, painstaking, absolutely necessary.

  Havers spoke. “Something here, sir.” Over the top of the barn stall, she handed him a spiral notebook. It contained a letter of some sort, obviously a rough draft, for several words had been scratched out and replaced by others more suitable.

  Lynley read it.

  Dear Jeanne [crossed out] Jean:

  I would like to thank you very much for the dinner Tuesday last. You’re not to worry about how late I got back because I know the boy who saw me won’t say anything. I still feel [crossed out] think I could beat your father at chess if he’d only give me some proper time to think out the moves! I can’t see how he manages to think so far ahead. But next time I shall do better. Thanks awfully again.

  Lynley removed his spectacles and looked towards the window where Chas Quilter still maintained his distance.

  “Matthew has written a letter to someone named Jean,” he said. “Someone with whom he had dinner. On a Tuesday, evidently, but there’s no telling which Tuesday since he hasn’t dated the letter. Have you any idea who Jean might be?”

  Chas’ brow furrowed. He took his time about replying, and when he finally did so, he excused the delay by saying, “I was trying to think of the names of the masters’ wives. It seems likeliest that it might be one of them.”

  “It doesn’t seem likely he’d be on a first-name basis with one of the wives, does it? Or is that generally the accepted manner of address?”

  Chas admitted that it wasn’t and shrugged in apology.

  “He also says that he got back late, that one of the boys saw him but won’t say anything. W
hat do you take that to mean?”

  “That he was out after curfew.”

  “Isn’t that something his house prefect should have known?”

  Chas looked uncomfortable. He studied his shoe tops before replying. “Should have. Yes. Bed checks are generally done every night.”

  “Generally?”

  “Always. Nightly.”

  “So someone—one of the senior boys or the house prefect—should have reported Matthew missing if he wasn’t in his dormitory after curfew. Is that correct?”

  The hesitation was marked. “Yes, someone should have seen he wasn’t in Erebus.”

  He didn’t mention the person at fault. But Lynley did not miss the fact that both John Corntel and now Chas Quilter seemed determined to protect the Erebus House prefect, Brian Byrne.

  John Corntel knew that the police were at the school. Everyone did. Even if he hadn’t seen Thomas Lynley walk into the chapel that morning, he would have noticed the silver Bentley on the front drive and, noticing it, he would have put two and two together. The police did not usually arrive in such automotive splendour, to be sure. But most of the police did not also lead secondary lives as belted earls.

  In the masters’ common room on the south side of the quad, Corntel watched the last of the morning coffee trickle out of the urn and into his cup. He tried to blot from his mind every image that threatened to crack the fragile composure he had developed to get him through the day. His mind swarmed with if onlys. If only he had phoned the Morants to see if Matthew was among their son’s guests; if only he had thought to see the boy off personally in the first place; if only he had spoken to Brian Byrne and made certain that Brian had kept account of all the boys; if only he had visited the dormitories more frequently instead of leaving it to the senior boys; if only he had not been preoccupied…had not been mortified…had not felt trapped and naked and utterly humiliated.

  On the table with the coffee urn lay the remains of the masters’ breakfast. Three racks of cold toast sat among a silver tray of gelatinous eggs, five strips of bacon glistening iridescently with fat, corn flakes, a bowl of tinned grapefruit sections, and a platter of bananas. Corntel shut his eyes at the sight of all this, felt his stomach churn, and demanded cooperation from his body. He couldn’t remember for a certainty when he had last eaten anything substantial. He vaguely recalled looking at a meal Friday night, but nothing since then. It had been impossible.

  He lifted his head to gaze out the window. Across an expanse of lawn, he could see the pupils at work in a classroom inside the technical centre, drilling and pounding and chiselling away in affirmation of Bredgar Chambers’ philosophy that the creative urge within each child had to be stimulated rigourously. Not ten years old, the centre had long been a source of controversy on the campus, with staff members divided on its propriety at a school such as Bredgar Chambers. Some argued that it gave the pupils a necessary outlet for energies often stifled in a purely academic environment. Others claimed that afternoon games and societies provided that outlet, while a technical centre would do nothing more than ultimately encourage “the wrong element” to seek application to the school. Corntel smiled sardonically at this latter thought. The mere presence of a building in which pupils played with wood and fibreglass and metal and electronics had hardly altered an unspoken policy of admissions that had been in effect for five hundred years and supported by every headmaster. The school’s prospectus might well give lip service to an egalitarian approach to education. The reality was much different. Or at least it had been until Matthew Whateley had come along.

  Corntel didn’t want to think of the boy. He pushed him from his mind. But in Matthew’s place—as if he were there to shake an admonishing finger at Corntel’s failures—came his own father, headmaster of one of the country’s most prestigious independent schools, one entrenched in tradition and fully committed to defining boundaries. No technical centres there.

  “Housemaster!” Patrick Corntel had roared his approval over the telephone line as if they were speaking to one another from foreign countries and not at a distance of less than one hundred miles. “That’s the stuff, Johnny! Housemaster and head of English! By God! Your next move is deputy headmaster, lad. Give yourself two years. Don’t rot in one place!”

  Don’t rot in one place was the credo that had defined his father’s career, driving him ruthlessly from one school to another for twenty years until he had what he wanted, the title of headmaster, the title he wanted his own son to possess.

  “Keep on the ladder, Johnny-lad. When I’m ready to retire, I’ll want you to step into my shoes here at Summerston. But you’ve got to be ready, lad. You’ve got to have the background. So start looking. Start sniffing. Deputy head comes next. You hear me? Deputy head. I’ll keep an ear to the ground and if I hear of anything…”

  Corntel would reply obediently. Yes, Father. Deputy head. Whatever you say. It was easier than arguing, and certainly far easier than telling the truth. Housemaster of Erebus was as far as he was going. Head of English was the pinnacle of his career. He didn’t burn with the need to prove himself to himself or to anyone else. He burned with other needs. They were not the same.

  “Calling in debts, are we, John?”

  Corntel started at the unexpected voice so near his shoulder and turned to see that he had been joined at the coffee urn by Cowfrey Pitt, the German master and head of languages. Pitt was looking particularly unkempt this morning. His fringe of hair was scaly with dandruff. His craggy face had not been shaven well enough and he had done nothing to trim the hair that sprouted like a weed from his right nostril. One sleeve of his gown had a rent along the seam, and chalk marks on his grey suit beneath it had not been removed.

  “I beg your pardon?” Corntel went about the business of adding milk and sugar to the coffee he had poured.

  Pitt leaned closer. He spoke in a low, chummy fashion, as if they shared a secret. “I said, calling in old debts? This Scotland Yard bloke’s an old school friend, isn’t he?”

  Corntel moved a step away, giving his attention to the tray of eggs as if with the intention of taking one of them. “Word gets around quickly enough,” he replied.

  “You scampered off to London yesterday. I asked why. But your secret’s safe with me.” Pitt took up a piece of toast and munched upon it. He leaned against the table, smiling at his colleague.

  “Safe with you?” Corntel replied. “I’m not sure I understand.”

  “Come now, John. No need to play the astounded innocent with me. The boy was your responsibility, wasn’t he?”

  “Just as the girls in Galatea House are your responsibility,” Corntel said. “But I should guess you absolve yourself of guilt fast enough when one of them gets into trouble, don’t you?”

  Pitt smiled. “The cat has claws, I see.” He brushed his fingers on his gown and selected another slice of toast and a piece of bacon. His eyes lingered hungrily upon the eggs. Corntel saw this and, in spite of his natural dislike of the German master, he felt touched by a momentary, unwanted pity. He knew that Pitt would never come into the masters’ common room when breakfast was first being served, when his meal would be hot. It was a matter of pride. To come into the masters’ common room for hot food would be an open admission that life in the private quarters of Galatea House was too unpleasant for Pitt to take his breakfast there. And Pitt would not admit to that any more than he would admit to the fact that his wife was in bed at the moment, soundly sleeping off her regular Sunday evening’s binge.

  Whatever pity Corntel felt for the other man died, however, as Pitt continued to speak. “I suppose this really screws it up for you, doesn’t it, John? You have my complete sympathy, of course, but after all, didn’t you think to check with the Morant family to see that all six boys actually were with them for the weekend? That’s fairly standard procedure. At least it is for me.”

  “I didn’t think—”

  “What about checking the Sanatorium? A boy gets sick and you don’t
even think to pop by and put your hand on his forehead? Or”—Pitt smiled—“was your hand somewhere else at the time?”

  Quick fury damaged Corntel’s forced calm. “You know very well that I had no word from the San. But you did, didn’t you? What did you do when you found Matthew Whateley’s off-games chit sitting in your pigeonhole last Friday? You were running that hockey game in the afternoon, weren’t you? Did you dash over to see what was wrong with him, Cowfrey? Or did you just go on your way, satisfied that the chit was what it seemed?”

  Pitt was deliberately unperturbed. “Don’t tell me you feel a need to push that off on to me.” His eyes—grey-green and reptilian—slid away from Corntel’s to make a quick assessment of who was in the room. There was no one, but in spite of this, his voice lowered confidentially. “We both know who was responsible for Matthew, don’t we, John? You can point out to the police that I saw an off-games chit and did nothing to verify its validity. Please feel free to do so, in fact. But I’m not so sure there’s a crime involved in that. Are you?”

  “Are you even suggesting—”

  Pitt’s face broke into a smile as he looked beyond Corntel’s left shoulder. “Headmaster. Good morning,” he said.

  Corntel turned to see Alan Lockwood watching their exchange from the doorway. He took their measure from head to toe before he crossed the room, his gown flowing round him.

  “Do something about your appearance, Mr. Pitt,” Lockwood said and consulted a schedule which he pulled from his jacket pocket. “You’ve a lesson in a half-hour. That should give you time to clean yourself up. You look like a tramp, or weren’t you even aware of that? We’ve the police on campus. The Board of Governors may show up before the morning’s over, and I have enough on my mind already without having to worry about my teachers’ lack of interest in their personal grooming. Do something about it. Now. Is that clear?”

  Pitt’s features hardened. “Perfectly,” he replied.

  Alan Lockwood nodded and walked away.