Well-Schooled in Murder

by Elizabeth George

  In the study, huddled on the ottoman with her hair hanging like wet streamers round her shoulders and down her back, Deborah found herself examining the entire question of deception, dwelling upon the central point that some forms of betrayal were beyond forgiveness. Estranged from Simon all those years ago, separated from him by six thousand miles, yet all the time loving him, she had sought only to forget, to replace the pain of their disjunction with anything that remotely resembled peace. To be loved by someone, to be held, to be caressed, to be the object of passion and the focus of desire. It had all been a way to mask reality, a pretence in which she acted the role of heart-engaged lover and per suaded her emotions to follow along. It had worked for a while; it might have worked forever, had Simon not come back into her life.

  She should have waited for him. She should have held herself back. She should have recognised the self-doubt that had driven him away from her for years. But she hadn’t. So she had betrayed him, and in doing so she had been false to a love that had drawn them to each other for most of her life, a love that had allowed them to reach beyond mere commonalities and to touch each other’s spirit with unmatched intensity and unequivocal joy. If such a love were betrayed by cruelty or impetuosity or even an inability to face the truth, how did one survive? Where did one find the strength to go on?

  Her arms tightened round her. Head pressed against her knees, she rocked back and forth to find comfort, but she found only sorrow.

  “Havers and I shall go back to the school in the morning and have the Headmaster listen to the tape.”

  “You’ve decided the Chinese element is of no merit, then?”

  “I haven’t dismissed it. I can’t do that. But the tape does seem to provide much more of a motive than bigotry. If we can identify the voice—be it a student or a teacher—I think we’re a step closer to the truth.”

  Deborah heard their footsteps on the stairs. In a moment they would walk by the study door. She shrank from discovery, to no account, for they did not pass by, but rather entered the room together, halting just inside the door.

  “Deb!” Lynley spoke her name with sharp concern.

  She looked up, brushing wet hair off her face, all too aware of the sight she presented. She managed a smile.

  “Caught in the rain,” she said. “I’ve been sitting here, trying to work up the energy to light the fire.”

  She saw her husband go to the bar and pour a brandy. Lynley joined her at the fireplace, reached for the matches on the overmantel, and lit the kindling beneath the logs.

  “At least take off your shoes, Deb,” he said. “They’re soaked. And your hair—”

  “She’s all right, Tommy.” St. James’ brief remark gave evidence of nothing, although the fact of the interjection itself—so completely unlike him—spoke worlds that all three of them chose to ignore. He brought Deborah the brandy. “Drink this, my love. Your father hasn’t seen you, has he?”

  “I’ve only just come in.”

  “Then perhaps you ought to change your clothes before he catches sight of you. God knows what he’ll do—or think—if he sees you like this.”

  St. James’ tone was kind, a study in revealing nothing save solicitude. Still, Deborah saw Lynley look from her to her husband. She saw his body tense and knew that he intended to speak. She sought to prevent him.

  “You’re right. I’ll just take the brandy with me.” Without waiting for a response, she said, “Good night, Tommy,” rose, and brushed a kiss against his cheek. She felt his hand close fleetingly round her arm. She knew his eyes were on her, knew that they reflected the extent of his concern, but she did not meet them. Instead, she attempted to make a dignified exit from the room.

  Her shoes squished noisily against the carpet. Even dignity was denied her.

  St. James descended the stairs to the kitchen. He had not eaten dinner—much to Cotter’s loudly voiced disapproval—and he felt an emptiness within him that, while it had nothing to do with food, might at least be disguised by a makeshift meal.

  Aside from the household dog and cat, who looked up hopefully from their respective positions in basket and on stove top, neither Mrs. Winston—his longtime cook—nor Cotter was in the kitchen at the moment. St. James went to the refrigerator, opened it, and was joined by the little long-haired dachshund who vacated her basket for the promise of a snack. She came to sit at his feet, managing to look as soulful and ill-fed as possible.

  “You’ve had your dinner, Peach,” St. James informed the dog. “Probably three times over, if I know you.”

  Peach wagged her tail, encouraged that he had recognised her presence. On the stove, Alaska gave a bored feline yawn. St. James took cheese and a chopping board to the work top beneath the kitchen window. Peach followed, ever vigilant of a crumb’s being dropped to the floor.

  Once the cheese was unwrapped, once the knife was sharpened, St. James gazed down at both without interest. He raised his eyes to the window and what little he could see of the garden a few feet above his head.

  There wasn’t much to it, yet Deborah had imbued the area with her personality. Flowers grew in abundance at the base of brick walls, their colours and scents changing with the seasons. A flagstone path led from house to back gate, overgrown with great patches of unruly alyssum that Deborah stubbornly refused to pull up. In one corner, an ash tree bore four separate birdhouses and a large feeder in which sparrows fought regularly in the greedy way of small birds. A rectangle of lawn held two chairs, a chaise, and a low circular table, all constructed of metal. So foolish a purchase, he had told his wife. But Deborah loved the intricate workmanship of the pieces and had said that she would see to their upkeep, fending off the rust that was an inevitable part of placing metal furniture outdoors in the London weather. And she had done so, sanding and painting faithfully each spring, as often as not getting as much paint on herself as she did on the furniture. But she was true to her word. She had always been.

  St. James felt the knife beneath his hand. His fingers gripped its handle. The wood ate into his palm.

  How had it happened, he thought, that he had given a woman such dominion over his life? How had it happened that he had allowed her to see the very worst of his weakness? For indeed she had seen it, defined by the forces that drove him to be the best in his field, to be admired, to be sought after, to be the first expert witness called upon to explain the meaning behind the pattern of a bloodstain or the implication behind the trajectory of a bullet or the interpretation of metallic striations upon a lock or a key. Some would have called this need to be foremost in science the blind drive of ego. But Deborah knew the truth. She knew what void within him had been filled by his work. He had allowed her to see it.

  She had been a witness to his helplessness, a companion to the pain that still came intermittently upon his body. She had watched her father place electrodes on his leg to keep the dead muscles from atrophying. She had even learned how to use the electrodes herself. He had allowed this. He had even wanted it—to bring her closer to him, to share what he was with her, to allow her to know him completely. It was the curse of loving, the miserable exercise of living. In the past eighteen months of their marriage, he had thrown himself into it like an inexperienced adolescent, holding nothing back, leaving no corner of himself into which he could retreat in safety. Because he had never thought he would need to retreat. Now he paid.

  He was losing her. With each pregnancy that failed, she had withdrawn into herself for a time. He had understood. Although he longed for a child as did she, he knew his need for one did not match her own. So he had been willing to give her the solitude she seemed to require for an act of mourning. He hadn’t realised at first that a bit more of her had seemed to withdraw from him with each failure. He had not counted the weeks that would have told him her recoveries were taking longer, her hopes needing more time to rekindle themselves. Now this fourth failure—this fourth non-birth of a beloved child—had done its worst.

  He had never tho
ught his marriage would splinter under the weight of children who did not even exist. It was inconceivable, even now. Had she been some other woman, had he known her less well, he might have been prepared for the change that had taken Deborah from him. But of all people in his life, he had always seen her as the single constant.

  He looked down at the knife, at the wedge of cheese. Eating was impossible. He put both away.

  Leaving the kitchen, St. James returned to the main part of the house. He climbed the stairs. Their bedroom was empty, as were the other rooms on the first floor, so he continued climbing until he found his wife in her old bedroom next to his lab on the top floor of the house.

  She had changed out of her wet clothes into a dressing gown, and her hair was wrapped, turbanlike, in a towel. She was sitting on the brass bed from her childhood, looking through a stack of old photographic enlargements which she had taken out of the small chest of drawers.

  He watched her for a moment without speaking, allowing the image of her caught by lamplight to fill his heart. Eyes lowered, she held a single photograph in her hand. She sat without motion.

  He felt the strong current of desire sweep through him, the longing to hold her, to feel her mouth beneath his, to breathe the fragrance of her hair, to touch her breasts, to hear her sigh. Yet never before had he been so aware of the fear of approaching and provoking her flight.

  Still, he crossed the room. Rapt in her study of the photograph she held, Deborah did not look up. St. James himself was momentarily conscious only of the gentle curve of her cheek, the tender shadow of her eyelashes on her skin, the rise and fall of her breathing. It was not until he stood next to the bed, not until he reached out to caress her that he noticed the subject of the photograph that so held Deborah’s interest.

  It was Thomas Lynley. Blond hair caught by sunlight, thin trails of water a sheen on his body as he ran from the sea. He was laughing, one hand outstretched towards the camera, captured in a moment of timeless beauty and effortless grace.

  St. James turned from the sight. Desire died. Despair gripped him. Before his wife could speak, he left the room.

  17

  Lynley watched one expression after another flit across Alan Lockwood’s face as he listened to the tape a second time. Each expression chronicled an emotion felt and subsequently repressed. Revulsion, anger, pity, and disgust succeeded one another.

  They had gathered in the Headmaster’s office, Sergeant Havers lounging in the bay window, Lynley seated at the conference table with the tape recorder in front of him, and Lockwood standing behind one of the chairs, holding securely to the carved shoulder rail. Since the tape had first been played for him, he had said nothing save “Once again, please.” He had looked at nothing save the arrangement of flowers which his wife had brought into his office the prior day. Some of the less hardy blooms had begun to wilt. One of the lilies looked bruised.

  The voices on the tape rose and fell. The pleading continued. The harassment went on. Lynley blocked it out.

  They had arrived at the school shortly before the end of the morning service in the chapel. The choir was just finishing a hymn—the last notes from the organ reverberating down the length of the chapel like a cresting wave—and one of the black-gowned staff was climbing the steps to the octagonal pulpit to do the final reading from scripture. When he turned to face the assembly, Lynley saw that it was John Corntel. From his position by the memorial chapel, Lynley watched the literature master lower his eyes to the Bible and begin to read. He only faltered once.

  “Psalm sixty-two,” he announced. Above his black gown and dark suit, with the light from the pulpit shining against his skin, his face seemed etiolated. “‘Truly my soul waiteth upon God: from Him cometh my salvation. He only is my rock and my salvation; He is my defence; I shall not be greatly moved. How long will ye imagine mischief against a man? Ye shall be slain all of you: as a bowing wall shall ye be, and as a tottering fence. They only consult to cast Him down from his excellency; they delight in lies; they bless with their mouth, but they curse inwardly…’”

  Lynley heard Corntel trip upon the words, right himself, and plunge on to complete the reading. But one line echoed in his mind with as much force as had the organ music only moments before. They delight in lies. The rest of the psalm escaped him.

  His eyes followed the length and breadth of the church, absorbing its symmetry and beauty. Fresh rain-washed sunlight allowed the stained-glass windows to spill colours onto the choir below. Candles glimmered on the altar, each flame creating its own corona. Gold threads woven through the altar cloth reflected this light in a pattern that shimmered like the surface of water. The magnificent reredos looked like ivory, and above it the rose window spread out its ornamental tracery in an intricate web. On both sides of the aisle, schoolchildren knelt in prayer, their heads resting on the backs of the pews in front of them as if in demonstration of piety and prostration. Lining the chapel walls behind them, staff members did likewise. Only the choir remained standing, and at the end of Corntel’s reading, following eight notes of crashing introduction from the organ, they began their final hymn. “Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow” resounded through the chapel. Listening to this, catching the scent of burning candles and old wood, feeling a solid stone pillar pressing against his shoulder, Lynley was reminded of a fragment of the gospel according to St. Matthew. He could almost hear the words, rising above the choir’s singing.

  Ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness.

  The pupils began to file out of the chapel—row after row of them, standing tall, their eyes straight ahead, their uniforms pressed, their hair neatly combed, their faces fresh. They must know, he thought. All of them. They’ve known all along.

  Now he leaned forward and pressed the button on the tape recorder as the torment of the boy ended yet another time with guttural laughter and the sound of weeping. He waited for the Headmaster to speak.

  Lockwood pushed away from the chair and went to the window. He had opened it upon their entrance into the room a quarter-hour previously, and now he pushed on it further and let the cold morning air hit his face. He pursed his lips and inhaled like whistling in reverse. He remained in that posture for nearly a minute. Near him, Sergeant Havers looked towards Lynley. He directed his head at the chair next to him. She took it.

  “A pupil,” Lockwood murmured at last. “A pupil.”

  An inadvertent underlying note of relief rang past the Headmaster’s statement. Lynley understood. Lockwood had made his own quick assumptions about how the tape could complete another part of the puzzle of murder. If a pupil were responsible for Matthew Whateley’s death, the onus of blame did not fall so heavily upon the school. A pupil’s culpability meant that no paedophile had been lurking unidentified among the staff members. No monster dwelt behind a facade of pedagogical purity. Bredgar Chambers’ reputation—and hence the Headmaster’s—was safeguarded as long as that was the case.

  “What penalty does a boy face for bullying?”

  Lockwood turned from the window to answer. “He gets warned off twice. If it happens a third time, he’s expelled. But in this case…” Lockwood’s voice drifted off as he joined them at the table, choosing the chair at its head rather than the more logical one next to Sergeant Havers.

  “In this case?” Lynley prompted.

  “This isn’t an ordinary sort of bullying. You can hear that for yourself. It sounded like an ongoing sort of thing, perhaps a nightly visitation. For that, the boy would be out at once. Absolutely. No doubt about it.”

  “Expelled.”

  “Yes.”

  “What would be the chances of that boy getting into another independent school?”

  “No chance at all, if I had anything to do with it.” Lockwood seemed to like the sound of finality behind his declaration, for he repeated, “No chance at all,” giving separate emphasis to each word.


  “Matthew sent this tape to a friend of his in Hammersmith,” Lynley informed the Headmaster. “It’s a copy. He told her he’d keep the original recording here at the school. So he must have hidden it or given it to someone he thought he could trust, in the hope that doing so would stop the bullying. We think it’s Harry Morant who’s being bullied, by the way.”

  “Morant? The lad Matthew Whateley was to visit last weekend?”

  “Yes.”

  Lockwood frowned. “If Matthew had given the tape to a staff member, it would have been turned over to me at once. So I can only assume that if he gave it to anyone—rather than hiding it—it would have to be a pupil. As you said, someone he could trust.”

  “Someone, at least, he thought he could trust. Someone whose position indicated he could be trusted.”

  “You’re thinking of Chas Quilter.”

  “Senior prefect,” Lynley noted. “There doesn’t seem to be another pupil more trustworthy, does there? Where is he?”

  “This is my usual weekly meeting time with him. I asked him to wait in the library.”

  “Sergeant?” Lynley directed Havers to fetch the boy. She left the Headmaster’s study to do so.

  The library comprised one-quarter of the south quadrangle, abutting the Headmaster’s study. Within moments, Havers had returned from it with Chas Quilter behind her. Lynley rose to greet the boy and noticed his eyes move questioningly from the tape recorder on the table to the Headmaster, who remained seated at its head. When asked to do so, Chas took a seat at the table himself, a chair next to Lockwood. It was as if by choice of seating, battle lines had been drawn, with the Headmaster and his senior prefect on one side of the conflict, and Lynley and Havers on the other. Loyalty to school, Lynley thought and readied himself to see whether Chas would also show loyalty to the school’s motto. Honor sit et baculum et ferula. The next few minutes would tell the tale. Lynley played the tape.