Well-Schooled in Murder

by Elizabeth George

  “And Chas? Was he at this party?”

  “He was there.”

  “All along?”

  A moment for thought, for recollection, for a decision about truth or deception. “Yes. All along.” The spasm that jerked his lip betrayed him.

  “Are you sure about that? Was Chas there every moment? Was he there when you left?”

  “He was there. Yes. Where else would he be?”

  “I don’t know. I’m just trying to get at the truth of what happened here on Friday when Matthew Whateley disappeared.”

  Brian’s eyes clouded. “Are you thinking Chas had something to do with that? Why?”

  “If Matthew ran off, he had to have some reason for doing so, didn’t he?”

  “And you see Chas as the reason? Sorry, sir, but that’s rot.”

  “It may be, which is why I’m asking whether Chas was in the social club for the entire evening. If he was there, he could hardly have been seeing to Matthew Whateley.”

  “He was. He was there. I saw him every moment. I never took my eyes off him. He was with me most of the time anyway. And when he wasn’t…” Brian stopped talking abruptly. His right fist closed. His lips whitened as he pressed them together.

  “So he left,” Lynley said.

  “He didn’t! It’s just that there were some phone calls for him. Maybe three. I don’t remember. Someone came and got him and he went to the front of Ion House where the phone is and took the calls there. But he was never gone long enough to do anything.”

  “How long was he gone?”

  “I don’t know. Five minutes, ten minutes. No more than that. What could he have done in that time? Nothing. And what difference does it make? None of the calls came before nine o’clock and everyone knows that Matthew Whateley ran off in the afternoon.”

  Lynley saw the fine edge of the boy’s control, and used it by asking, “Why did Matthew run off? What happened to him here? You and I both know that behind closed doors things go on in a school that the Headmaster and the staff either don’t know about or turn a blind eye to. What happened?”

  “Nothing. He just didn’t fit in. He was different. Everyone could tell. Everyone knew it. He never got the picture that one’s mates are important—more important, the most important…For him, it was lessons and prep and getting ready for university and nothing else. Nothing.”

  “So you knew him.”

  “I know all the boys in Erebus. That’s my job, isn’t it?”

  “And save for last Friday, you do your job well?”

  His face closed. “I do.”

  “Your father pushed Matthew for the governors’ scholarship. Did you know that?”

  “Yes.”

  “How did you feel about it?”

  “Why should I have felt anything? He promotes a student every year for the scholarship. This year, his protégé won. So what?”

  “Perhaps that made it difficult for you to smooth Matthew’s way into the life of the school. He was from a different background than most of the boys, after all. It would have taken some effort on your part to see that he felt at home here.”

  “What you really mean is that I was jealous of Matthew because of my father’s interest in him, so I didn’t lift a finger to make it any easier for him to fit in. In fact, I made him so miserable from the first that he finally couldn’t stand it and ran off and got himself killed in the process?” Brian shook his head. “If I put the heat on every boy that my father took an interest in, I’d be spending all of my time at it. He’s looking for another Eddie Hsu, Inspector. He won’t rest until he finds one.”

  “Eddie Hsu?”

  “An old Bredgardian that my father tutored.” Brian smiled, an expression of bitter pleasure. “Until he killed himself, that is. In 1975. Just before his A-levels. Haven’t you seen my father’s memorial to Eddie in the chapel? It’s hard to miss. ‘Edward Hsu…beloved student.’ My father’s been looking for his replacement ever since. He has a real Midas touch, does Dad. Except that everything he touches dies on contact.”

  A sharp knock sounded on the door. “Byrne! Let’s do it! Hey! Let’s go!”

  Lynley didn’t recognise the voice. He nodded at Brian who said, “Join the party, Clive.”

  “Hey, let’s be-bop over to…” The other boy froze when he saw Havers and Lynley. But he recovered quickly, saluted, and said, “Oh ho! Here be the coppers, I’d guess. Nabbed you at last have they, Bri?” He rolled onto the balls of his feet.

  “Clive Pritchard,” Brian said by way of introduction. “Calchus House’s finest specimen.”

  Clive grinned. His left eye was slightly lower than his right, and its lid drooped lazily. In conjunction with the grin, this had the effect of making him look a little bit drunk. “You know it, lad.” He gave no further notice to the police. Instead, he said, “We’ve ten minutes to get to the field, laddie, and you’ve not even changed. What’s happening to you? I’ve a fiver riding that we’ll smash Mopsus and Ion, and all the while you’re sitting here having a natter with the cops.”

  Clive himself was dressed not in the school’s uniform, but in a blue tracksuit and jersey striped in yellow and white. Both were extremely tight-fitting, serving to emphasise a build that was not muscular but wiry. He looked like a fencer and moved quickly, with a fencer’s agility.

  “I don’t know that I…” Brian looked at Lynley questioningly.

  “We’ve enough information for now,” Lynley replied. “You’re free to go.”

  As Sergeant Havers stood and moved towards the door, Brian walked to his cupboard, opened it, and pulled out a tracksuit, gym shoes, and a blue and white jersey which he selected from three that were hanging on hooks.

  Clive stepped forward. “Not that one, Bri. Criminy, you’re getting thick, aren’t you? We’re in yellow today, unless you’re planning to join the Ion boys’ team. I know you and Quilter are each other’s dolly-bird, but let’s have a bit of house loyalty, shall we.”

  Stupidly, Brian looked down at the garments in his hands. His brow creased. He stood motionless. With an impatient grunt, Clive took the jersey from him, pulled the yellow and white one from the cupboard, and handed it over. “Can’t be with Quilter this afternoon, lovey pie. Come on. Bring your gear. Change in the sports hall. We’ve a field of pretty boys waiting to be coshed. And hardly time to see to them all. I’m living hell with a hockey stick. Have I told you that? Mopsus and Ion are the sinners and they’re about to meet their retribution. Pritchard-style.” Clive mimed the action of smacking Brian’s shins.

  Brian winced, then smiled. “Let’s do it,” he said and allowed Clive to dance him from the room.

  Lynley watched them go. He did not overlook the fact that neither boy met his eyes as they left.

  9

  “Let’s look at what we have,” Lynley said.

  In response, Sergeant Havers lit a cigarette and settled comfortably into her chair, a Schweppes tonic water in front of her.

  They were in the public bar of the Sword and Garter, a cramped little pub in the village of Cissbury, three quarters of a mile along a narrow country road from Bredgar Chambers. The Sword and Garter had already proved itself to be an inspired choice for their conversation prior to heading back to London. Considering its proximity to the school, Lynley had shown the publican Matthew Whateley’s photograph—not really expecting any recognition from the man. So it was with some surprise that he saw the publican nod his shaggy head, that he heard him say, “Aye. Matt Whateley,” without the least hesitation.

  “You know the boy?”

  “I do. He visits regular with Colonel Bonnamy and his daughter. They live just a mile or so beyond the village.”

  “His daughter?”

  “Jeannie. She’s in here—sometimes twice a week—with Matt. They stop now and then when she drives him back to the school.”

  “They’re relatives of the boy?”

  “No.” The publican pushed the Schweppes across the bar and followed it with a glas
s in which rested two pieces of ice. He opened a cupboard, rooted around for a bit, and came up with a battle-worn metal teapot into which he dropped three sad-looking tea bags. “It was all part of the Bredgar Brigade. That’s what I call them. Do-gooders. Matt’s one of them, but not as bad as the usual lot.” He disappeared through a door to the left of the bar and returned a moment later with a steaming kettle. He poured hot water into the teapot, dunked the tea bags five times, and removed them. “Milk?” he asked Lynley.

  “Thank you, no. What sort of do-gooders?”

  “School calls them Bredgar Volunteers. I call them do-gooders. They visit the house-bound, do work in the village, help out in the forest. You know the sort of thing. Lads and lasses choose what volunteer work they want to do. Matt chose visiting. He got assigned Colonel Bonnamy to visit. Regular bantam, the colonel is, too. Matt’s had his hands full with visiting there, I should say. Earning his stripes, dealing with Colonel Bonnamy.”

  So part of the puzzle had been fitted into place with the identity of the woman to whom Matthew had been writing his letter. Jean. The colonel’s daughter. Beyond this, the publican’s conversation revealed that Matthew’s disappearance and death were still facts that Bredgar Chambers had managed to keep concealed. No doubt Alan Lockwood would be gratified to know that.

  Now Lynley and Havers sat at a small table by a window overgrown with honeysuckle not yet in bloom. The sunlight that filtered through the vine and into the pub was tinted green by leaves. Lynley stirred his tea thoughtfully as Sergeant Havers read through the first few sections of her notes. She yawned, rubbed her fingers through her hair, and rested her cheek on her hand.

  As Lynley watched her, he thought how ironic it was that he had come to depend upon having Havers as his partner. Initially he had believed that no one could possibly be less likely to suit him. She was prickly, argumentative, easily given to anger, and bitterly aware of the enormous gap that existed between them, an impassable chasm created by birth, by class, by money, by experience. They could not have been more antithetical, Havers struggling with a fierce determination to rise out of a working-class neighbourhood in a grimy suburb of London while he moved effortlessly from his home in Cornwall to his town house in Belgravia to his office at New Scotland Yard. But their differences went far beyond mere background. Their perceptions of life and humanity occupied two opposite ends of the spectrum as well. Hers was ruthless, without sympathy, suspicious of motives, and based on distrust of a world that had given her nothing. His was laced with compassion, rich with understanding, and based almost entirely upon a guilt that insisted he reach out, learn, expiate, rescue, make amends. He smiled at the thought that Superintendent Webberly had been absolutely right to put them together, to insist they remain in partnership even at moments when Lynley believed it was an impossible situation that could only grow worse.

  Havers drew in on her cigarette and let it dangle from her lips as she began to speak from behind its plume of grey smoke. “How well do you know the housemaster, sir? John Corntel?”

  “Only as a schoolmate, Havers. How well do schoolmates ever know one another? Why?”

  She dropped her notebook to the table and tapped upon a page for emphasis. “When he was at the Yard yesterday, he said that Brian Byrne was in Erebus House Friday night. But Brian himself said that he was in the sixth form club in Ion House and that he didn’t return to Erebus until eleven. So John Corntel’s lying to us. But why lie about something so easy to verify?”

  “Perhaps Brian told him he was in the house.”

  “Why would he do that when any other pupil at the sixth form party Friday night could place Brian there?”

  “That’s assuming another upper sixth pupil would do so, Havers. I don’t think you can make that assumption.”

  “Why?”

  Lynley mulled over an explanation of the peculiar system of honour that governed the behaviour of pupils in an independent school. “It doesn’t happen,” he said. “In a school like this, the pupils’ first loyalty is to their mates, not to a code of conduct or a set of rules. Generally no one ever sneaks—no one tells tales about another who breaks the rules.”

  “But this afternoon, didn’t Brian Byrne do a bit of sneaking on Chas? He said that Chas left the sixth form party to take some telephone calls.”

  “Hardly a violation of school rules. And, after all, I did push him into making that admission.” He went back to the previous point she had been making. “Where are you heading with John Corntel?” Havers stubbed out her cigarette, reached for the pack to have another, but gave up the idea when Lynley said, “For God’s sake, Sergeant. Have a bit of mercy, will you?”

  She pushed the pack away. “Sorry. If Corntel thought Brian Byrne was doing duty in Erebus House that night, it seems that he could have got that idea only two ways. Either Brian told him he was doing duty—which seems unlikely, since Brian freely admitted to us that he was at a party—or Corntel himself wasn’t in the house and merely assumed that Brian was.”

  “Where do you place John Corntel?”

  Her teeth pulled on the inside of her lower lip. She answered delicately. “There was something so odd in the way he described Matthew to us yesterday, sir. Something—”

  “Longing? Seductive?”

  “I’d say. Wouldn’t you?”

  “Perhaps. Matthew certainly seems to have been a beautiful child. But tell me how you see John Corntel involved.”

  “Matthew wants to get away from the school. Corntel has a car. He helps him do so. Isn’t that where you were heading when we spoke to the Headmaster?”

  Lynley contemplated the ashtray on the table. The acrid smell of burnt tobacco was like a siren, beckoning, charming, impossible to resist…. He shoved the ashtray towards the window. “Someone seems to have helped him escape. Perhaps Corntel. Perhaps someone else.”

  Havers frowned, leafed through her notebook, paused to read. “Why did Matthew want to get away? We thought earlier that it had to do with fitting in, didn’t we? He was different, working class. How would he get on with these nits and nobs? And he didn’t get on, did he? He got cold feet when he was supposed to visit the Morants and spend a weekend hobnobbing on some country estate. So he nicked an off-games chit and did a scarper to keep from facing the fact that he was different from the other boys when the Morants examined them all together. That’s what it looked like to me after listening to John Corntel yesterday. And I can understand why Matthew might feel exactly that way. Like a specimen. Or a charity case. But this Harry Morant he was supposed to visit…He’s a top-drawer lad, sir. And it seems clear that Harry’s as anxious to be gone from this place as Matthew was. Upper class or not. Why?”

  Lynley recalled Smythe-Andrews’ bitter words about the school. He thought about the significance of Arlens’ fainting. “It could be bullying.”

  What had it been called? Pleb-bashing. Making sure the fresh-faced new boys didn’t get cheeky, didn’t get the wrong idea about their menial place in the school hierarchy. Every school had been outlawing bullying for years. Expulsion was the price the bully paid if he was caught tormenting another pupil after he had been warned off doing so.

  “So Matthew runs to escape a bully,” Havers said. “He puts himself into the hands of someone he trusts, only to find that the person he’s turned to is worse than a bully, is…What? A sexual pervert? God, that makes me ill. Poor little bloke.”

  “There may be more to look at, Havers. The family doesn’t appear to have much money. Kevin Whateley carves tombstones, his wife works in a hotel. To get Matthew into the school, they had to bring themselves to the attention of Giles Byrne. Giles Byrne knew Matthew—”

  “And has been seeking a replacement for this Edward Hsu, from what Brian told us. But surely you don’t think a member of the Board of Governors…” Havers reached for her cigarettes and, with an apologetic glance at Lynley, lit one. “There’s something, to be sure.” She went back to her notes. The paper crackled. Across the room, the
publican was polishing the bar with an oily-looking rag. “John Corntel told us yesterday that one of the members of the Board of Governors was at the school when Mr. and Mrs. Whateley arrived. Do you think that could have been Giles Byrne?”

  “It’s easy enough to find out, isn’t it?”

  “If it was Giles Byrne, who knows what sort of hidden agenda he had in putting Matthew up for the scholarship, sir. And why did Edward Hsu kill himself just before his A-levels? Did Giles Byrne put a move on him? Did he seduce him? Has he been spending the last fourteen years looking for another nice piece of boy-flesh to have?” Her eyes snapped to Lynley’s. “What did it say across that photo of the train in Matthew’s dormitory?”

  “‘Choo-choo, little poof.’”

  “Inspector, you don’t think that Matthew was somebody’s nancy boy, do you? He was only thirteen! Would he even know his sexual orientation at thirteen?”

  “He might. He might not. Or he might not have been given the choice.”

  “Jesus Christ.” It sounded like a prayer.

  Lynley thought about his previous night’s conversation with Kevin Whateley. He said to Havers, “Matthew’s father told me that within the last few months he’d become withdrawn, introspective. As if he were in a trance. Clearly something was bothering him, but he didn’t want to talk about it.”

  “Not to his dad. But to someone, surely.”

  “From what you’ve told me, it sounds as if he may well have talked to Harry Morant.”

  “He might have. But I don’t think young Harry intends to open his mouth about anything.”

  “Not yet. He needs time to think, I should guess. Time to decide whom he can trust. He’s not about to make the same mistake Matthew made.”

  “Do you think he knows who killed Matthew, sir?”

  “He may not. But he definitely knows something. I’d bet on that.”

  “Then why didn’t you want to talk to him today?”

  “He’s not ready, Sergeant. Harry needs a bit of time.”

  For the last forty minutes, Harry had been waiting in the porter’s office on the east side of the quad. He sat on the room’s sole ladder-back chair without speaking, the tips of his shoes reaching only far enough to graze the stone floor. His hands braced against the seat, and his eyes remained on the pegboard behind the bruised wooden counter. From this dangled an assortment of keys—to vehicles, to buildings, to houses, to rooms—and they caught the afternoon sunlight glowing in through the window, winking like bronze and silver and gold. The porter was at his desk behind the counter, sorting the post, looking vaguely military in the uniform he wore. Everyone knew that the uniform was an affectation. A school porter hardly needed to dress like one of the Chelsea Pensioners. But it contributed an air of dignity to the manner in which the porter carried out his duties. So no one ever complained about it.