Well-Schooled in Murder

by Elizabeth George

  They left the chapel and crossed the quad, passing beneath the statue of Henry Tudor, nodding to members of staff and to the occasional pupil, walking through the far west doors.

  Corntel saw that Emilia had been right, as usual. Aside from a groundsman trimming the grass at the trunk of one of the chestnut trees at the playing field’s edge, there was no one else about. He wanted to make the conversation easier for them both, but it had long been his curse to be incapable of starting a sensible conversation with any woman. So he struggled for a question, for a comment, for anything. He found nothing. Instead, she was the first to speak, but the words she said did nothing to ease the strain between them, even though they might well have done so had she spoken them to a different sort of man.

  “I love you, John. I can’t bear to see what you’re doing to yourself.” Her head was down, her eyes on the ground, watching her feet scuff messily through the grass. The top of her head did not even reach his shoulder, and looking at her pale, soft hair, Corntel was reminded of the delicate spun glass that his mother brought out at Christmastime to make into clouds round the angels that she always hung on a twisted piece of driftwood.

  “Don’t,” he replied. “It’s not worth it. I’m not worth it. You know that now, if you didn’t before.”

  “I thought that was the case at first,” she agreed. “I told myself that you had duped me for a year, that you’d been pretending to be a different man altogether from…Friday night. But I’ve not been able to convince myself of that, John, try as I might. I do love you.”

  “No.”

  “I know what you’ve been thinking. You think I believe you killed Matthew Whateley. After all, it fits, doesn’t it? What could fit better? But I don’t believe you killed him, John. I don’t believe you even touched him. In fact”—she looked at him and then smiled gently—“I’m not altogether sure you were aware of Matthew at all. You’ve always been a bit absent-minded, you know.”

  She was attempting to alleviate the heaviness and tension. But her words rang false.

  “It makes no difference,” Corntel said. “Matthew was my responsibility. I may as well have killed him. Once the police find out the worst about me, I’ll be rather hard pressed to convince them of my innocence.”

  “They won’t find out from me. I swear it.”

  “Don’t. You may find that promise impossible to keep. Thomas Lynley’s no fool. He’ll be talking to you soon enough, Em.”

  They had come to the centre of the playing fields. Emilia stopped walking and faced him squarely. A light wind played in her hair.

  “Don’t you think he’s clever enough to realise that if you went into London to ask for his help, you’d hardly be the one responsible for Matthew’s disappearance in the first place? No matter what else he discovers about you, he’s not likely to forget that, is he?”

  “On the contrary, what better device could there possibly be? To wear the guise of innocence, the killer asks the help of the police. I’ve no doubt at all that Thomas has run into that sort of behaviour before. Be assured he’s not removed me from his list of suspects simply because we share an old school tie. Matthew Whateley was tortured, Emilia. Tortured.”

  She reached for his arm. “Do you think he’ll believe that you took the boy off campus? That you tortured him, murdered him, dumped his body in a churchyard, and returned to the school, without a hair out of place, and with so little conscience in the matter that you were able to go to the police yourself and request their help?”

  He looked down at her hand, so small and white against the black of his gown. “You know it’s possible, don’t you?”

  “No! You were curious, John. Nothing more than that. It’s no sign of anything. The only reason you think it is a sign is that I panicked. I was silly. I acted like a little fool. I didn’t know what to do.”

  “You didn’t know me. Not completely. Not until Friday night. Well, now you know the worst, don’t you? What do we want to call it, this thing that you know, Emilia? An illness? A perversion? What?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t care. It has nothing to do with Matthew Whateley. More, it has nothing—nothing—to do with us.”

  Corntel heard the conviction with which she spoke and admired her for it even as he knew that there was in reality no us any longer. He doubted that there had been one in the first place. He admired, as he always had, her forthright honesty. He admired her willingness to risk herself for him, to throw away pride and even common sense for the sake of what she believed was love. But he knew that had love once been possible between them—and she had stirred and reached him as no other woman ever had—it had died on Friday. She might lie about it now, when she was feeling lost and needed to regain at least something of the friendship that had been theirs before, but her face on Friday had mirrored the truth. Love does not always die slowly between a man and a woman. Sometimes it’s extinguished in an instant. He meant to tell her all this, but did not have the chance.

  “John,” she said, “Inspector Lynley’s coming this way.”

  The drama students were working on make-up design. They had begun the project the previous week in one of the classrooms on the west side of the theatre, and now they were spread throughout the complex’s four dressing rooms, creating artistic reality from a conception put upon paper, preparing themselves for the theatre master’s critical evaluation.

  Chas Quilter was among them, feeling, as he usually did, a bit at odds with the level of enthusiasm and pleasure with which the other students generally addressed themselves to any assignment. Today his discomfiture was worse than usual, since browsing through make-up boxes, experimenting with wigs and beards, testing out the effect of a particular shade of eye shadow or pancake had stimulated the group to new heights of excitement, an excitement he simply could not share. Yet he understood both their devotion to the task and their joy in completing it, even if he could not feel it himself. They were, after all, taking theatre studies as part of their A-level course work, determined to make their way from universities onto the London stage. He was doing drama only as an optional extra, having signed up for the course as a means of staying busy during his final year at Bredgar Chambers. For him, the class was a means of forgetting. It had worked for the most part. But it was not working at all today.

  Clive Pritchard was the reason. He and Chas had been assigned a dressing room together—an outcome of the alphabetical curse of their surnames—and there was no third party present to alleviate the storm-trooper effect of Clive’s repellent personality.

  His make-up design acted as the most cogent illustration of his nature. While the other pupils, explicitly following the theatre master’s instructions, had selected characters from Elizabethan tragedies round whom they would paint their faces, Clive had entered a world of his own invention, turning himself into a cross between Quasimodo and the Phantom of the Opera, the former apparently giving him the opportunity to fit a hideously long, dangling earring through the hole which he had driven through his earlobe by means of an upholstery needle in October.

  Chas remembered the circumstances in the upper sixth social club, with Clive drinking whisky from a flask which he had smuggled out of his grandmother’s home during the first half-term. As he drank, he grew louder, more cocksure, more belligerent. His entire demeanour demanded attention and, failing to get it through mere braggadocio concerning a tattoo which he had carved into his inner arm with penknife and india ink during the recent holiday, he captured his audience by means of a more realistic display of his propensity towards self-mutilation. Obviously he had come prepared to do so, since an upholstery needle was not generally among the items found in a schoolboy’s kit. But Clive had produced and used it upon himself without flinching. Chas recalled the sight of the slick, curved needle boring into Clive’s earlobe and emerging on the other side. He had not known an ear could bleed so profusely. One of the girls had fainted. Two others had been sick. Clive smiled and smiled like a madman through it all.r />
  “So. You like?” Clive spun from the mirror and displayed his handiwork, a sparse-haired wig, newly rotting teeth, the flesh beneath his right eye bulging and putrescent, small corks flaring his nostrils to skeletal dimensions. “This goes one better than your pansy Hamlet, Quilter. Admit it.”

  Chas didn’t have to admit the obvious. He’d chosen Hamlet because of the ease of designing the make-up. It required the simplest transformation, his colouring being acceptable for the Danish prince in the first place. There was neither art nor talent involved in what he’d done to his face, but he didn’t care. His heart wasn’t in the exercise anyway. His heart had been in nothing for months.

  Clive danced like a boxer from foot to foot. “Come on, Quilter. Admit it. This mug’s enough to make those birds in Galatea House pass out at the sight. Then when they do…” He laughed and thrust his pelvis forward suggestively. “It’s sort of like necrophilia to do it to a bird when she’s knocked out cold. Nothing like it, Quilter. But you know that already, don’t you?”

  The words danced their way past Chas’ consciousness. He thought only how glad he was that Clive did not feel enough familiarity to use his Christian name. It was a positive sign, something which told him that in spite of everything, he wasn’t yet entirely lost.

  “Hey, I could do some creeping with this, couldn’t I, Quilter?” Clive was asking. He demonstrated by slinking round the room, ducking beneath the make-up tables, peering stealthily into mirrors, whipping a rack of costumes in front of him and dashing them away from his shifting eyes. “I go across campus. It’s dark, see?” He chose a cloak from the rack, draped it round his shoulders, and acted out the scene as he described it. “I could choose Galatea House for a glimpse of old Cow Pitt and his wife, but that’s not what I have in mind tonight. No, not tonight.” He grinned. His eyeteeth were long, extremely lupine. “Tonight I choose to look in on the Headmaster. I explore the truth. Does Lockwood really hump with his clothes on? Does he hump his wife or does he prefer one of the more delectable little third formers? Or does he select a different girl from Galatea or Eirene every night of the week? And do they say to him as he pumps like a dog, ‘Oooh, oooh, Headmaster, I just love it when you stuff me. You’re such a man!’ Only I will know for sure what’s going on, Quilter. And if they look up from their panting and howling and see my face in the window—if they see this mug—they’ll never know who’s looking in on them, will they? They’ll only shriek like the devil and know they’ve been caught at last!” He whirled the cape to one side and stood, legs spread, hands upon hips, head thrown back.

  The opening of the dressing room door saved Chas from having to make a reply. Brian Byrne entered. Clive lunged at him with a howl, then fell back laughing when Brian started.

  “Holy Jesus! You should see your face!” Clive took up the cape again and struck a pose. “What say to this, Bri?”

  Brian shook his head slowly, an admiring smile growing wider on his face. “Amazing,” he responded.

  “Why aren’t you in lessons, laddie my lad?” Clive moved to the mirror and tried out a number of scowls.

  “I’m in the San,” Brian answered. “Terrible headache. You know.”

  “Ah, fondling our Mrs. Laughland, son?”

  “No more than you, I dare say.”

  “No more than anyone.” Clive winked lasciviously and gave his attention to Chas. “Save perhaps young Quilter here. Gone in for celibacy, haven’t you, mate? Setting a good example for all the lads and lasses, like the senior prefect ought.” He pulled at the skin beneath his eyes, stretching it viciously but giving no sign of pain. “A bit late for that, wouldn’t you say? We’re living in a veritable den of iniquity.”

  Chas dropped his eyes to the make-up box on the table beneath the mirror. The colours there swam before his vision: a palette of eye shadows, an open case of blushers, two tubes of greasepaint. All of them lost definition momentarily.

  Clive was continuing to speak. “Christ, Christ! What a piece I had Saturday night, Bri. You should have been with me and had a go yourself. Some little Sharon on her way through Cissbury. Met her outside the pub and got into her pants and showed her what’s what. ‘Ooooh, baby,’ she was shrieking. ‘Oooh, yes, yes, yes!’ That’s the way I like ’em. On the ground, in the dirt, and screaming for more.” He did a little dance step. “What I wouldn’t give for a fag right now!”

  Brian grinned, reached into his blazer pocket, pulled out a packet of cigarettes. “Here.” He tossed them. “You can have the rest.”

  “Great stuff, Bri! Thanks!”

  Chas found his voice. “Don’t smoke them in here, will you?”

  “Why not?” Clive asked. “Will you put me on report? Get me warned off by Lockwood?”

  “Just use some sense. If you have any.”

  Clive stiffened. He opened his mouth to speak, but Brian interceded.

  “He’s right, Clive. Save them for later. Okay?”

  Clive’s eyes went moodily from Chas to Brian. “Yeah. Right. I’m off, then. Thanks, Bri. For the fags. You know.” He left the room. In a moment, Brian and Chas heard him calling out to several other theatre pupils who had gathered on the stage. The girls shrieked appropriately at his appearance. The make-up, evidently, was a smashing success.

  Chas brought a fist to his lips. He closed his eyes. He felt nausea overcome him in a surge, like a wave. “How can you stand him?” he asked.

  Brian pulled a stool over and sat down. He shrugged, smiling affably. “He’s not all bad. Just a lot of show. You’ve got to understand him.”

  “I don’t want to understand him.”

  Brian reached out, brushed at the shoulder of Chas’ shirt. “Powder,” he explained. “You’ve managed to get it everywhere. Down your trousers as well. Here. Let me see to it.”

  Chas stood abruptly. He moved away.

  “Holiday’s not far off,” Brian said. “Have you decided if you’ll come with me to London? Mum’s off to Italy with one of her men, so we’ll have the place to ourselves.”

  There had to be an acceptable excuse, Chas thought. There had to be a reason. He couldn’t find one. Any that he gave would speak of rejection, and that would engender anger. He couldn’t risk that. He sorted through a tangle of thoughts that were becoming progressively more difficult to control.

  “Brian,” he finally managed to say, “we have to talk. Not here. Not now. But we have to talk. I mean really talk. You need to understand some stuff.”

  Brian’s eyes rounded. “Talk? All right. Of course. Wherever. Whenever.”

  Chas rubbed his damp hands against the sides of his trousers. “We have to talk,” he repeated.

  Brian rose and grasped Chas’ shoulder. “We’ll talk,” he replied. “What else are friends for?”

  Emilia Bond offered to find someone to stand in for John Corntel duringhis fifth form English lesson at ten o’clock, so Lynley and the English master returned to the private quarters of Erebus House. They entered not through the main door that the boys would use but through the smaller, secondary door at the west end of the building. A brass plate hung upon it, engraved with the single word Housemaster.

  The quarters were a surprise to Lynley. Stepping into them was like being swept back to that postwar period when furnishings were meant to be declared “sensible.” Heavy sofas and chairs with antimacassars upon their arms; maple tables of graceless line; lamps whose shades had no distinction; framed flower prints upon the walls. That every piece was of quality workmanship, there was no doubt. But the overall effect was one of age, as if the rooms had been decorated by an elderly woman concerned about maintaining a proper image.

  Corntel’s study repeated this theme, with a squat desk, an over-large three-piece suite covered in floral cretonne, and a drop-leaf table upon which stood a pottery jug and a full ashtray that filled the room with the smell of charred tobacco. That last item seemed one of the two contributions Corntel himself had made to the decorating of his home. The other was his collection
of books, and they took up a great deal of space. They were arranged upon shelves; they were stacked in piles under the desk; they were crammed into narrow crannies on either side of an undecorated fireplace.

  Corntel pulled back the curtains which had been partially drawn to cover the windows. Lynley noticed that the study looked out upon Calchus House, and that a pathway between the two buildings passed not twenty feet from the window. There would be little privacy in this room, save with the curtains drawn.

  “Coffee?” Corntel offered and motioned towards a cupboard recessed into the wall. “I’ve an espresso machine if you’d like to try some.”

  “Thank you.”

  Watching the other man go about the business of making the coffee, Lynley recalled Elaine Roly’s words. Little witch wants to turn him inside out. And has done so, if you want the truth from me. He applied Roly’s allegations to John Corntel’s present state, questioning whether a relationship existed between the matron’s words and the housemaster’s condition.

  Never had he seen a man wear such a thin veneer of protection. Emotions roiled just beneath the surface. They evidenced themselves in his eyes which refused to hold contact with Lynley’s own, in his hands which snatched at objects clumsily as if receiving inaccurate data from his brain, in his shoulders which hunched shell-like round him, in his speech which failed at modulation. It was hard to believe that Corntel could be reduced to such ill-hidden anxiety merely out of love for a woman, unrequited or otherwise. And something in the manner in which Emilia Bond had looked at the man when Lynley had come upon them in the playing fields suggested that if love led the vanguard that assaulted the walls of Corntel’s peace, it was not unrequited at all. That being the case, the problem became one of identifying the crucial element that lay at the heart of John Corntel’s affliction. Lynley thought he recognised it well enough. One usually does recognise the symptoms of disease in a fellow sufferer.

  “What was the name of that boy at Eton who was so good at escaping the duty master?” Lynley asked. “You know the one. No matter who it was on night or weekend duty, he always knew exactly what the routine would be—when rounds would be made, when doors would be checked, when a surprise visit was due to a house. Do you remember him?”