“Anything else?”
“Trunk rooms in all the houses, but they’re kept locked and only the housemasters and the matrons have the keys to get into them. Attics above the drying rooms in the houses as well, but each of them is padlocked. And again, only housemasters and matrons have the keys. Storerooms in the science building and an enormous tank of water above the aquariums where one could certainly have drowned Matthew Whateley, but not held him captive for long. Unless he was bound and gagged and his killer knew that no one would be about for the rest of the afternoon. Beyond that, the theatre has dressing rooms and storage rooms behind the stage, and a lighting booth above it. If no performance was scheduled and if someone had access, I should imagine the theatre’s our best bet, Inspector. Pupils were in there this morning—I saw our Chas Quilter, by the way, looking as if Yorick had just come back from the dead and he wasn’t too pleased at the prospect—but if it was empty after lunch on Friday, it’s as good a place as any to have held Matthew Whateley. Especially considering its distance from the playing fields where the students were gathered.”
“But how would one gain access, Sergeant? It seems to me that the theatre—with all its props, equipment, costumes, and so forth—would be one of the most securely guarded buildings at the school.”
“Oh, it would be locked, all right. But that’s no problem at all. I looked into that before I began. Frank Orten told us that keys are kept in two locations—in his office and in the pigeonholes outside the masters’ common room. His office is unlocked during the day, so if Orten wasn’t about for the moment, anyone could slip in unnoticed and grab the keys marked theatre and hope for the best. And if daylight is too risky for a manoeuvre like that, at night a credit card or some other suitable piece of plastic is all that one would need to break into the office in less than fifteen seconds. Their security’s pathetic. I can’t believe they haven’t been robbed blind.”
“What about the pigeonholes outside the masters’ common room?”
“Worse,” she replied. “Frank Orten told us the common room is kept locked, didn’t he? With only the masters and the skivvies having keys? Well, it wasn’t locked this morning. I walked right in. And the pigeonholes are not only conveniently labelled with each master’s name, but I’d say a good fifty percent of them had keys hanging right in them. All one would need to know is what master used what keys. Then, just pop round the common room and bob’s-your-uncle.”
“We’re wide open once again. Everyone had access. Everyone had means.”
“Who had opportunity?”
“To grab Matthew after lunch and stow him somewhere until he could be dealt with? Who didn’t have opportunity?” Lynley thought about the question himself. Something John Corntel had said pricked at his memory. “Let’s find Cowfrey Pitt,” he said.
Although the morning break had not yet ended, the German master was not with the other teachers in the common room. Instead, Lynley and Havers found him in his classroom on the first floor of the west side of the quad. He was writing in a barely legible scrawl across the blackboard, sloppily slashing umlauts here and there like a private form of Morse code. When Lynley said his name, he continued writing and did not turn from the board until he had completed the job to his satisfaction. He illustrated this point by stepping back from his work, surveying it critically, erasing a few words, and rewriting them with little improvement. Then he gave his attention to his visitors.
“You’re the police,” he said. “Don’t bother to introduce yourselves. Your reputations have preceded you. I’ve a lesson in ten minutes.”
He delivered this information indifferently, brushing flecks of chalk from the sleeve of his gown. The gesture spoke of a less than believable concern for his appearance, for the gown he wore was more grey than black, crusted along the shoulders with both dandruff and dust.
Sergeant Havers shut the door and stationed herself next to it. She gave Pitt the benefit of a look that managed to be expressionless at the same time as it was completely judgemental. It told the German master that his lesson might be scheduled in ten minutes, but it would begin when the police deemed it appropriate, and not before.
“This shouldn’t take long,” Lynley said to Pitt. “Just a few points to clarify, and we’ll be on our way.”
“I’ve an upper sixth group coming in here, you know.” Pitt offered this bit of news as if it would determine the length of the questioning he was about to endure. At the door, Sergeant Havers leaned against the wall, suggesting a sort of permanency. As if reading this, Pitt said, “So. Clarify, Inspector. Clarify. Please do. Don’t let me stop you.”
Lynley walked to the window. The room looked out over the quad, and directly opposite it the bell tower rose, giving access to the roof, its very height a temptation that, no doubt, no Bredgardian schoolboy eager to prove his mettle had ever been able to resist.
“What can you tell me about the off-games chit that got Matthew Whateley released from the soccer game Friday afternoon?”
Pitt remained behind his desk. He pressed his knuckles to its surface. They were cracked and looked sore. “Little enough. It was the regulation form from the San. With his name on it. Nothing else.”
“No signature?”
“Judith Laughland’s, you mean? No. No signature.”
“Is that regular procedure, to receive an off-games chit with a boy’s name but no signature from the San sister to verify its authenticity?”
Pitt moved from foot to foot. One hand went to his fringe of oily hair. He pulled at a single stiffened lock that curled behind and beneath his left ear. “No. She usually signs them.”
“Usually. But this one wasn’t signed.”
“I’ve said that, Inspector.”
“You did nothing to check on it, though?”
“That’s right. I didn’t check.”
“Why not, Mr. Pitt?”
“I didn’t have the time. I was running late and had to get out to the game myself. I hardly thought about it. Matthew Whateley had bunked off games before. Some three weeks ago, in fact. If I thought anything at all when I saw the new chit, it was that he was up to that trick again and I’d see to him later. But I forgot to do so. If there’s a crime in that, arrest me.”
“What happened three weeks ago?”
“He’d an off-games chit—this one signed by Laughland—that he brought to me himself. If you ask me, he was faking that one, trying to look sick and working on a cough to make it authentic. But if Laughland bought into it, who am I to complain? So off he went.”
“Where?”
“To bed, I presume. To his room. Or to the day room. I’ve no idea. I didn’t follow him.”
“I’d think seeing a second off-games chit on Friday, so soon after the other, would have made you immediately suspicious, Mr. Pitt. Especially if this one wasn’t signed and the earlier one was.”
“Well, it didn’t. There it is. I just gave it a quick look and put it in the rubbish.” Pitt took a piece of chalk from his desk. He rolled it in his palm, using his thumb to guide it. Outside, a bell rang, the five-minute warning before the next lesson.
“You were running late, you said. But this was after lunch, wasn’t it? Had you been off the grounds?”
“I’d been to Galatea. I was…” He sighed, but looked tense and sounded more defensive than defeated. “All right. If you must know, there was a row with the wife. I lost track of time. The only reason I stopped by my pigeonhole and saw the chit at all was that I was carrying a stack of papers to my room. I saw the time on the bell tower and realised I wouldn’t be able to make it to the classroom and then back to the playing field before the boys started tearing up the lawn.”
“But to be just a few minutes late? What sort of crime is that, Mr. Pitt, that you would drop everything and run out to the field?”
“Crime enough for Lockwood. Especially in my circumstances. With a wife who likes the bottle just a bit too much. Do you want me to be any clearer, Inspector? I’d mor
e on my mind than Matthew Whateley.”
Pupils called to one another outside in the hall. Sergeant Havers maintained her position by the door. Pitt looked in her direction, dropped his chalk onto the desk.
“I’ve a lesson,” he said with terse insistence.
Lynley responded placidly. “I take it that you and Mr. Lockwood don’t get on.” He could see Pitt’s reaction in the muscles round his eyes.
“Lockwood’s looking to sack me because I don’t fit the picture of what he has in mind for Bredgar Chambers. He’s been trying to build a case for dismissal since first we met.”
“Unsuccessfully, it seems.”
“The problem he faces is that in spite of my wife and in spite of my appearance, I’m good in the classroom, and the number of my pupils who do well in their A-levels proves it. So he’s stuck with me. And stuck with the fact that I know a bit more about him than the average master does.” Pitt offered the last sentence in a manner to encourage further enquiry along those lines. Lynley was willing to play along.
“Such as?”
“I know his background, Inspector. I’ve made it my business to know it. He wants to sack me and I’ve no intention of giving up without a fight. So I’ve one or two items I can pull out of my hat if the Board of Governors decide to sit in judgement on my competence.”
Pitt possessed fine expertise in playing out his information for maximum effect. Lynley had no doubt that he used this same method when dealing with superiors and colleagues. It couldn’t make him a likable man, or a man pleasant to deal with.
“Mr. Pitt,” Lynley remarked, “as you’ve said yourself, you have a lesson this hour. We’d get through this interview a bit more quickly if you got to the point.”
“There is no point, Inspector. Just that I know all about Lockwood’s second-class performance at the University of Sussex, about his interesting live-in arrangement with three young ladies before he married Kate, about his job in the last state school that would have him where his colleagues finally sent him to Coventry because he snitched on them to aggrandise himself every time they stepped out of line. The Headmaster would love to sack me, Inspector, if he could only be sure I’d hold my tongue and not tell the Board of Governors everything I know about him.”
“You’ve apparently managed to uncover quite a bit.”
“I go to conferences. I meet other teachers. They talk. I listen. I always listen.”
“Yet this is a relatively prestigious school. How did Lockwood manage to become headmaster if his background is as black as you paint it?”
“By carefully adjusting the facts here and there. By climbing over the wounded. By sucking up to people who could help his career. For a price, of course.”
“Giles Byrne?”
A look of approval passed across Pitt’s face. “You’re a quick study. Bravo. Why do you think Matthew Whateley was given the governors’ scholarship in the first place? Not because he was the best or the brightest. He wasn’t. He was very average. A nice boy, but average. That’s all. There were half a dozen other candidates more deserving than he. The decision rested with the Headmaster. But Giles Byrne wanted Matthew. So Matthew was selected. Quid pro quo. And Byrne was able to illustrate for the other members of the Board of Governors exactly how much power he really does wield. He’s like that, you know. But then, aren’t we all? Power’s an intoxicant. Get a bit, want a bit more.”
Certainly the aphorism could be true in Pitt’s life. Knowledge was power, and he’d wielded enough in the last few minutes to derogate the Headmaster in every way he could, as if blackening the man’s reputation somehow did something to improve his own, as if placing the focus of their conversation on Lockwood would eliminate the chance of its coming to rest upon another, closer, more tender area.
“You traded duty weekends with John Corntel,” Lynley pointed out. “Why?”
“My wife had expressed an interest in seeing a play in Crawley. I wanted to humour her, so I asked John to trade.”
To keep her away from the bottle, no doubt, Lynley thought. He asked, “What play did you see?”
“Otherwise Engaged.” Pitt smiled thinly at the irony of the title. “An older play, I know. But we’d not seen it before.”
“Friday night? Saturday?”
“Friday,” he replied.
“And on Saturday?”
“On Saturday, nothing. We stayed in for the evening. Watched television. Read. Even tried to have a conversation with one another.”
“Did you see Emilia Bond during this time? Friday or Saturday?”
The question piqued Pitt’s interest. He cocked his head. “Not at night. I saw her during the day, of course. She lives in Galatea House. It’s hard to avoid her. But I didn’t see her either evening. And as I recall, her door was closed when I walked through the building.” Seeing the alteration in Lynley’s expression, Pitt went on. “I do check on my girls, Inspector. I’m housemaster, after all. And frankly, they bear a great deal of watching.”
“Ah.”
Pitt coloured. “That’s not what I meant.”
“Perhaps you might explain what you meant.”
Outside the classroom door, a raucous burst of laughter told them Pitt’s upper sixth group were getting restless. Neither Lynley nor Havers made a move to admit them into the room.
“They’re unnecessary trouble on the campus, Inspector. Provocation. Temptation. I’ve seen two of them expelled in the last year for licentious conduct—one with a groundsman if you can believe that—and another slither off in the sort of disgrace that her parents euphemistically labelled ‘transferring to another school.’” He gave a snort of laughter. “That’s just at Galatea House. God knows what they’re up to over in Eirene.”
“Perhaps that’s due to having a housemaster and not a housemistress,” Lynley noted. “It must be difficult keeping watch over girls when there are certain conventions of privacy required of you.”
“It wouldn’t be difficult if Emilia Bond did her job with a bit more care, would it? But I can’t depend upon her, so I do it myself.”
“In what manner?”
Pitt bristled openly. “I’ve no interest in sixteen-and seventeen-year-old girls. What does this have to do with Matthew Whateley’s death? I only knew him in games. So why don’t you toddle off and find someone to talk to who can tell you something of value, Inspector? I’m not that person. This is a waste of time for all of us. I know little enough about policework, but it seems to me that you ought to be looking for someone who likes to dandle young boys. Frankly, I’m not your man. And I don’t know who is. I’m only glad to say…” His brows knotted suddenly.
“Mr. Pitt?” Lynley asked.
“Bonnamy,” he said.
“I’ve heard the name. Matthew visited him as part of his job with Bredgar Volunteers. Why do you mention him?”
“I’m in charge of the Volunteers. I know the man. Before Matthew, we’d never been able to place a pupil with Bonnamy and have either of them survive more than a single visit. But he liked Matthew from the first.”
“Are you suggesting Colonel Bonnamy’s the man who liked to dandle little boys?”
Pitt shook his head with a jerk. “No. But if someone at the school was after Matthew that way, the boy might have confided in Colonel Bonnamy.”
This was, Lynley admitted, a distinct possibility. Yet what could not be overlooked was the fact that Pitt had manufactured several potential smokescreens during their conversation. They took the form of his allusions to Alan Lockwood, his references to Giles Byrne, his dissatisfaction with Emilia Bond, and now Colonel Bonnamy’s friendship with the murdered boy. Once again at Bredgar Chambers, there was too much information being given out in an interview, as if the appearance of ostensible assistance would gloss over the ineradicable stain of guilt.
Lynley looked towards Havers who still guarded the doorway. “Let them in, Sergeant,” he told her.
She swung the door open. Four pupils entered at once, three
boys and a girl. They looked at neither their teacher nor the police detectives, but instead directed furtive glimpses back into the corridor with mischievous grins. A second girl began to enter the room but she was suddenly snatched backwards, lifted off her feet, and carried into the doorway by a misshapen, hunched figure wearing a black cape and hideous make-up.
“Sanctuary!” he roared, twirling around with the struggling girl in his arms. “Esmeralda! Sanctuary!” He staggered forward three steps and dropped to his knees. His grasp on the girl did not loosen.
The other pupils laughed as the boy bent his head and nuzzled his face into the girl’s neck, smacking his lips, smearing both her jersey and her skin with his make-up.
“Let me go!” she shrieked.
Cowfrey Pitt interceded. “That’s quite enough, Mr. Pritchard. We’ve benefitted enormously. You’ve at least made us thankful that the film was silent.”
Clive Pritchard released his grip on the girl, and she rolled onto the floor. She was small and unattractive, with sharp, bony features and a spotty face. Lynley recognised her from his visit to Emilia Bond’s upper sixth chemistry lesson the day before.
“You little—” She grasped her yellow jersey. “Look at what you’ve done! I’ll have to have this cleaned!”
“You loved it,” Clive responded. “Close as you’ve ever been to a man, wasn’t it?”
She leapt to her feet. “I ought to—”
“Enough.” Pitt didn’t need to raise his voice. His black tone was sufficient. “Pritchard, get rid of that ridiculous make-up. You’ve ten minutes to do so. And eight pages of translation by tomorrow for this fascinating display you’ve regaled us with. Daphne, you’re excused to see to your appearance as well.”
“That’s it?” Daphne shrilled, fists balled at her sides, her face screwed up so that her eyes disappeared. “Eight pages of translation? That’s to be his punishment? You think he’ll do it?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “Keep away from me, you bastard!” she hissed at Clive and pushed past him to get out of the room.
Well-Schooled in Murder Page 22
