Well-Schooled in Murder
Page 11
“Little bum-boy,” Pitt murmured. “What a show of Headmaster our Alan puts on. What a lovely show of power. What a man. What a god. But just scratch the surface and you’ll see who’s in control. Little Matt Whateley proved that.”
“What are you talking about, Cowfrey?” Corntel’s anger was fading, giving place to irritation. Yet he saw that again he had foolishly played into Pitt’s hands.
“Talking about?” Pitt repeated with factitious surprise. “My, you are out of touch, aren’t you, Johnny? What’s been keeping you so busy that you’ve even lost sight of the latest school gossip? Hmm? Is there something I should know about your personal life? Or perhaps I ought to guess?”
Anger returned. Corntel walked away.
7
Lynley decided to meet with Matthew Whateley’s three roommates in the dormitory they had shared. When Chas Quilter delivered them to the room, each boy went immediately to his own cubicle, like an animal scurrying for safety. They seemed to take care not to look at one another, but two of them cast their eyes quickly upon the senior prefect, who followed them into the room and stood, as he had before, by the door.
Seeing the contrast between Chas and these boys, Lynley realised that he had forgotten how great are the changes that occur between the ages of thirteen and eighteen. Chas was developed, fully formed, a man, while the boys still possessed all the softness of childhood—round cheeks, silky skin, indefinite jaws. There was a wariness to them as they perched each one upon the edge of his bed, and Lynley wagered that it had more to do with the presence of the senior prefect than it did with the police. Chas’ physical presence alone would probably be more than enough to intimidate a boy five years younger than he. His position of importance at the school did not help matters.
“Sergeant,” Lynley said to Havers, who had automatically opened her notebook in preparation for the interview, “will you take stock of the school for me? Interior and exterior.” He saw her mouth begin to open with the automatic reference to police procedure and Judge’s Rules, and stopped her by saying, “Have Chas show you everything, if you will.”
Havers was quick enough to understand, wise enough to keep the comprehension from showing upon her face. She nodded and escorted the senior prefect from the room, leaving Lynley alone with Wedge, Arlens, and Smythe-Andrews. He took stock of them. They were nice-looking boys, neatly dressed in grey trousers, crisp white shirts, yellow pullovers, and blue and yellow striped ties. Of the three, Wedge seemed the most self-possessed. Once the senior prefect was gone, he looked up from his examination of the faded linoleum floor. Backed by his collection of rock and roll posters, he appeared confident and ready to engage in conversation. The other two seemed less so. Arlens was giving his full attention to the bathing beauty arched into the surf while Smythe-Andrews squirmed restlessly on his bed, poking at the heel of his shoe with the stub of a pencil.
“Matthew Whateley appears to have run away from the school,” Lynley said, going to sit on the end of Matthew’s bed. He leaned towards them, his arms on his legs, his hands clasped loosely in front of him, a model of relaxation. “Have you any idea why?”
The boys exchanged furtive looks.
“What was he like?” Lynley queried. “Wedge?”
“Nice bloke,” Wedge responded, fastening his gaze on Lynley’s face as if this act might serve as verification of complete truth. “Decent bloke, Matt was.”
“So you know he’s dead.”
“Whole school knows he’s dead, sir.”
“How did you find out?”
“Heard about it this morning at breakfast, sir.”
“From whom?”
Wedge picked at his palm. “Don’t know. It just came down the side of the table. Matt’s dead. Whateley’s dead. Some boy from Erebus House is dead. Don’t know who started it.”
“Were you surprised?”
“I thought it was a joke.”
Lynley looked at the other two boys. “And you?” he asked them. “Did you think it was a joke?”
They took their lead from Wedge, both of them nodding solemnly. Wedge spoke again.
“One doesn’t expect that sort of thing.”
“But Matthew had been missing since Friday. Something had to have happened to him. It couldn’t have come as a complete surprise.”
Arlens bit at the nail of his index finger. “He was to go with Harry Morant for the weekend, sir. With some boys from Calchus House—that’s where Harry has his digs. We thought Matt had gone with them to the Cotswolds. He had an exeat. Everyone knew…” Arlens hesitated, as if he’d said too much, dropped his head, went back to chewing his nail again.
“Everyone knew what?” Lynley asked.
Wedge took the initiative. He spoke with surprising patience. “Everyone knew that Harry Morant was taking five boys home for the weekend. Harry made a big thing of it to everyone. Like it was something special and only the select would be invited. Harry’s like that.” Wedge concluded sagaciously, “Makes him feel important.”
Lynley watched Smythe-Andrews repeatedly stab at his shoe. His face was sullen.
“All the other boys going on the weekend were from Calchus House? How did Matthew come to know them that well?”
None of the boys replied at first. But none of them were successful in hiding the fact that there was a simple and direct answer to the question which all of them knew and were reluctant to give. Lynley thought about his interview with Matthew’s parents, thought about their persistent assertions of their son’s contentment at Bredgar Chambers.
“Was Matthew happy here?” He noticed the momentary cessation of Smythe-Andrews’ pencil.
“Who’s really happy here?” the boy replied. “We’re here because our parents sent us. Matt was no different.”
“But he was, wasn’t he?” Lynley asked. Again, they didn’t reply, but this time he saw Arlens and Wedge regard one another briefly. “Just look at what he hung on his walls.”
“He was a decent chap.” This from Wedge, like a protest.
“Who ran away?”
“Kept to himself,” Arlens said.
“He was different,” Lynley countered.
The boys didn’t respond. Their determined reserve was its own affirmation. Matthew Whateley had indeed been different, but Lynley guessed that the difference had gone far beyond the pictures on his walls. It sprang from his background, from the neighbourhood in which he had spent his childhood, from his accent, from his values, from his choice of friends. The boy had been out of place in this environment, and all of them knew it.
He gave his attention to Arlens. “What do you mean when you say he kept to himself?”
“Just that…well, he ignored traditions.”
“What sort of traditions?”
“Things that we do. You know. Just things. School things.”
“School things?”
Wedge looked exasperated, frowned at Arlens. “Stupid stuff, sir. Like everyone carves his name in the bell tower. It’s supposed to be locked, but the lock’s been broken for ages, and everyone—the boys, not the girls—climbs up and carves his name somewhere on the wall inside. And has a smoke there as well, if he wants.”
Wedge’s information seemed to loosen Arlens’ tongue. “And hunting for magic mushrooms,” he added with a smile.
“There are drugs in the school?”
Arlens shrugged, subdued perhaps by his own inadvertent admission. Lynley interpreted the shrug as negation and went on.
“But you’ve said magic mushrooms.”
Wedge again took the initiative. “It’s a lark. Going out at night with a torch and a blanket over one’s head and picking magic mushrooms. We never eat any. I don’t think anyone actually eats them. But blokes like to have them about. That was the sort of thing Matt wasn’t interested in.”
“Was he above it all?”
“He just wasn’t interested.”
“He was interested in the Model Railway Society,” Arlens offered.
“And in doing his lessons,” Wedge put in. “He was serious about that. About school.”
“And about his trains,” Arlens reaffirmed.
“Did you ever meet his parents?” Lynley asked.
A shuffling of feet, a fidgeting on the beds, quite telling at that particular question.
“There was a parents’ day, wasn’t there? Did you meet them?”
Smythe-Andrews spoke, but he did not look up from his shoe as he did so. “Matt’s mum used to work in a pub. His dad carves tombstones outside of London. And Matt didn’t hide that from anyone the way some boys might. He didn’t care. It’s like he wanted people to know.”
Hearing the words, seeing the boys’ reactions, Lynley wondered if schools had changed at all. He wondered if, in fact, their society had changed. In this age of enlightenment, they all gave lip service to the end of class barriers, but how honest were those declarations of equality in a culture that had for generations judged a man’s worth by his accent, by his chance of birth, by the age of his money, by the clubs he belonged to and the people who called him friend? What had Matthew Whateley’s parents been thinking of in sending their son to a school like Bredgar Chambers, even on a scholarship?
“Matthew was writing a letter to someone called Jean. Do you know who that is? It was someone he had dinner with.”
The boys shook their heads in unison at this. Their confusion looked genuine. Lynley took out his pocket watch, checked the time, and asked them a final question.
“Matthew’s parents don’t believe that he ran away from the school. Do you believe he did?”
It was Smythe-Andrews who replied for them all. He laughed once—it sounded like something between a yelp and a sob—and said bitterly, “We’d all run off from this place if we only had the nerve. Or somewhere to go.”
“Matthew had somewhere to go?”
“Looks like he did.”
“Perhaps he only thought he had that. Perhaps he only thought that he was running to safety when in reality he was running to his death. He’d been tied up. He’d been tortured as well. So whatever he saw as safety was in reality—”
A loud thump issued from one of the cubicles. Arlens had fainted and fallen to the floor.
It was time for history. Harry Morant knew he should have gone to the lesson, since he was part of a panel giving a report to the class this very morning. He would be missed. The cry would be sent out to find him. Harry didn’t care. He didn’t care about anything any longer. Matthew Whateley was dead. Things were changed. The weight of power had shifted. He had lost all.
For a time he had been deliriously safe after months of terror. For three short weeks he had known what it was to fall asleep without the fear of being roughly awakened, of being dragged from his bed and thrown to the floor, of that terse voice grunting want a grind, nancy boy? want a grind? want a grind?, of quick slaps to the face—never enough to leave a mark—and hands grabbing and squeezing and poking his body, of being led through a dark corridor and into the lavatory, where a candle was lit and an unflushed toilet brimmed with excrement and urine and the voice said bog-washing tonight…still want to be cheeky? And then being dunked into the foul mess and trying not to cry, trying not to vomit, and failing at both.
Harry couldn’t understand why he had been chosen, for he’d done everything just as he was supposed to do at Bredgar Chambers. His older brothers had attended the school, and far in advance they’d let Harry know exactly what would be expected of him if he wanted to fit in. He’d done it all. He’d climbed to the highest part of the bell tower—up that claustrophobic, winding stone staircase—and carved his name deeply into the wall. He’d learned to smoke—although he didn’t like it much—and had jumped to the bidding of every prefect who ever spoke to him. He’d followed the rules, tried to remain anonymous, never sneaked on another pupil no matter what the offence. Yet it hadn’t worked. He’d been singled out anyway. Now it would all begin again. At the thought, a cry caught in his throat. He fought against tears.
In the late morning, the air was still cool. The sun was out but it didn’t do very much to cut through the chill. Where Harry sat on a concrete bench in a corner of the walled sculpture garden that was the midway point between the school and the Headmaster’s house, it seemed particularly cold, as if the marble and bronze statues that stood among the rose bushes were themselves contributing to the glacial air. He shivered, hugging himself tighter until he was bent double.
He had seen the arrival of the police, had been in the vestry with the rest of the choir when Mrs. Lockwood brought them in and gave them over to Chas Quilter. At first he hadn’t thought they were police at all, for they didn’t look like what he’d been expecting ever since breakfast when the word filtered through the dining hall that Matthew Whateley was dead and that New Scotland Yard would be coming to the school. Harry had never seen detectives before, had never been exposed to the mysteries and rituals associated with those three words New Scotland Yard. So he’d developed an elaborate idea of what the metropolitan police would look like and how they would act, based largely upon what he had seen on television and read in books. But these detectives did not fit into the mould he had created for them.
For one thing, the man was too tall, too handsome, too well-groomed, and too splendidly dressed. His voice was too patrician, and the cut of his suit did not suggest that he carried any sort of weapon. The woman who accompanied him was not much better. She was far too short, too unattractive, too plump, and too frumpy. Harry could not imagine confiding what he knew to either one of them. Not for a moment. Not at all. The man would listen from his icy great height and the woman would watch through her little pig eyes and he would talk and talk and try to make them understand what he knew and how he knew it and why it had all happened and who was responsible and…
It was all an excuse. He was looking for excuses. He was wild for excuses. He needed a reason not to speak at all. Deciding that they weren’t proper detectives was about as good a reason as he was going to be able to come up with. So he would cling to it. They couldn’t help him anyway. They wouldn’t even believe him. They didn’t carry guns. They would listen, take notes, go on their way, and leave him behind to face the consequences. All alone. Without Matthew any longer.
Stubbornly, he refused to dwell upon Matthew. To think of Matthew was to think of what he owed him. To think of what he owed him was to think of what was right and honourable and required of him now. To think of that was to head directly into the realm of terror. For what was required of him was the truth, and Harry knew what he faced if he told it. The choice was simple. To die or say nothing. He was only thirteen. There was no choice at all.
“…sculptures and roses mostly. It’s only a few years old, if you’d like to see it.”
“Yes, let’s have a go at that as well.”
Harry cringed at the sound of approaching voices, shrivelled at the noise of the wooden gate opening in the flintstone wall. Panicked, he looked for a place to hide. But there was nothing to protect him from discovery. He felt tears of futility burn his eyes as the female detective and Chas Quilter came into the sculpture garden. They stopped dead when they saw him.
Lynley met Sergeant Havers in the centre of the quad where, in blatant defiance of the propriety which said that adults should not set a bad example for pupils in an academic setting, she was smoking a cigarette as she scowled down at her notes. Towering above her, Henry VII managed to look disapproving about it.
“Have you noticed our Henry’s facing north?” Lynley asked as he joined her on the steps beneath the statue. “The school’s main entry is east, but he’s not even looking in that direction.”
Havers made a quick observation of the statue and said, “Perhaps he means to give the entrance the benefit of his profile.”
Lynley shook his head. “He want
s us to remember his moment of glory. So he looks to the north, in the direction of Bosworth Field.”
“Ah. Death and treachery. The end of Richard III. Why does it always slip my mind that you’re a Yorkist, Inspector? You never give me a real fighting chance to forget it. Do you spit on Henry’s tomb whenever you get the chance to slip down to the Abbey?”
He smiled. “Religiously. It’s one of my rare pleasures.”
She nodded thoughtfully. “A man must take his pleasures where he can.”
“Did you learn anything useful in your time with Chas?”
She stubbed out her cigarette on the base of the statue. “As much as I hate to admit to it, you were right about most of the condition of the school. From the outside, it’s fine. Green grass, trimmed bushes, beautiful trees, clean buildings, scrubbed windows. The whole lot. But most of the interiors look like Erebus House did. Worn and ill-used. Except for the newer buildings—theatre, technical centre, and girls’ houses—on the south side of the school, everything is ancient, Inspector. Classrooms as well. And the science building looks as if it hasn’t changed much since Darwin’s time.” She swung her hand around to encompass the quad. “So why do fancy nobs send their kids here? My comprehensive school was in better shape than this. At least it was more up-to-date.”
“The mystique, Havers.”
“The old school tie?”
“That as well. Like father, like son.”
“I suffered, you suffer?”
He smiled bleakly. “Something like that.”
“Did you like Eton, sir?” she asked him shrewdly.
The question caught him off guard. It hadn’t been Eton. It could never have been Eton with its beautiful buildings and its rich traditions. The place itself had no power to wound. It merely had been the wrong time in his life to be sent away from home. It wasn’t a time to be cut off from a family in crisis and a father who was wasting away under the onslaught of disease.
“As well as anyone liked it,” he replied. “What else have you besides the condition of the school?”