Well-Schooled in Murder

by Elizabeth George

  “Simon.” She nodded a greeting at St. James before speaking to Lynley. “I was with the Horsham scenes-of-crime team when they got called to Cissbury. So I went with them. It seemed best at the time.”

  “What’s happened?”

  Havers told them briefly about the attack upon Jean Bonnamy, about the blood and the rake and the ruin of the woman’s face; about her fractured skull; about the manner in which the flesh had been torn from her neck; about the finger she had lost when the rake drove through it; about her father’s panic that quickly gave way to shock.

  “When she didn’t come in from getting wood for the fire, he dialled the emergency number. He didn’t know what else to do. She’s in hospital in Horsham. Still unconscious when I left.”

  “What do the doctors say?”

  Havers waggled her hand back and forth. “Touch and go, Inspector. She may make it. She may not.”

  “God.”

  “That’s not all,” Havers said.

  Lynley looked at her sharply, hearing the bite behind her statement. “What is it?”

  “I saw your car out front and went into the quad to look for you. I went into the dining hall. Everyone was talking about it. Chas Quilter’s gone missing. No one’s seen him since one o’clock.”

  “It seems he disappeared right after lunch,” Havers said as they lifted their umbrellas against the rain. They strode towards Ion House, matching their pace to the slower gait of St. James. “At least that’s the last time anyone claims to have seen him.”

  “Who saw him last? Who spoke to him?”

  “Brian Byrne, evidently. Right before their afternoon chemistry lesson, Chas asked him to tell Emilia Bond that he was going to the Sanatorium for aspirin. After that lesson, Brian went to the San to check on Chas, only to find that he wasn’t there.”

  “After what happened to Matthew Whateley, Brian didn’t send up a hue and cry at once?”

  “Apparently he spent the next few hours trying to find Chas himself. He’s claiming that Chas has been upset about personal problems—Brian either doesn’t know what they are or he wouldn’t say, and I have my own thoughts as to which is the case. At any rate, he launched his own search. He didn’t tell anyone that Chas was missing until everyone noticed it at dinner. I should guess he was covering for him, hoping he’d turn up.”

  “Where did he last see Chas?” St. James asked.

  “Just outside the dining hall. Brian was leaving and Chas was waiting for him on the stairs. He claimed to be feeling unwell—and Brian says that he looked like hell. But again, that could be his attempt to protect him now he’s run off and got himself into trouble. Or to protect himself, for that matter. If he suspected that Chas was about to run off, he should have reported him to a staff member.”

  “What’s Lockwood done about it?” Lynley enquired.

  A heavy gust of wind blasted against them. Sergeant Havers struggled to hold on to her umbrella. “Like everyone else, he didn’t know Chas was missing until dinner.”

  “With the Board of Governors coming for a meeting tonight, one student murdered, and now a second student missing. This must be déjà vu of the worst kind for Lockwood.”

  “He was doing a Salome when I saw him a moment ago. Your head on a platter, Inspector. That sort of thing. But it isn’t déjà vu.” She had to raise her voice to be heard over the wind and the rain. “The circumstances are identical. Using the San as an excuse and then disappearing. Still, I don’t think this duplicates Matthew Whateley’s disappearance. I’ve had a talk with Daphne.”

  They entered Ion House through the east door which took them into the common room. There they shook off their umbrellas and removed their coats, dropping them over the backs of several tattered armchairs. St. James switched on a lamp. Lynley closed the door to the hall. Havers squeezed some of the water out of her hair and stamped her feet for warmth.

  “It seems that Daphne had a second run-in with Clive Pritchard last night. She was crossing from the library to Galatea House when he jumped out from behind a tree and scared the devil out of her. Made a grab. Pressed up against her so she could have a proper feel of his equipment. The same sort of thing we saw him do before the German lesson. So she was ready enough to talk about him.”

  “And?”

  Havers shook her head. “She knew about the chamber above the drying room, all right. She didn’t know which building it was in, but she knew the room existed somewhere. There’s no secret about that among the pupils, it seems. A number of legends appear to be connected with all the old attics. Hauntings. Ghoulies and beasties and things that go bump in the night. The usual rot.”

  “No doubt promoted by the administration to keep the pupils from seeking them out,” St. James noted.

  “No doubt,” Havers replied. “Only it didn’t work in this case. From what Daphne said, there’s one boy who’s given the Calchus House room a proper work-out on a regular basis for the last two years. The only problem is that he isn’t Clive Pritchard, although I could tell that Daphne would have preferred to put the finger on him.”

  “If not Clive, then who?”

  “Chas Quilter.”

  “Chas—”

  “The same,” she said. “I admit that I was prepared to hear that Clive was our man. But I suppose I should have been ready for it to be Chas. Yesterday Daphne alluded to his hypocrisy. That’s all she would say at the time. But now Chas has disappeared, her tongue’s loosened quite a bit. It seems he was having it off with some bird two or three times a week, mostly last summer term. The girl’s not here any longer, and Daphne couldn’t say if Chas has found a replacement for her. But as far as I can tell, any number of the ladies would be only too willing to volunteer for the duty.”

  “Including Daphne herself?”

  “A woman scorned?” Havers asked. “I don’t think so. She’s a misfit, Inspector. She knows Chas Quilter—or any other bloke—would never give her a second look. Combine those two facts and we’ve a girl—the sort that no one ever notices—who hears and sees more than other people think. You know what I mean.”

  St. James spoke. “The sort of person people talk in front of because she projects such an air of disinterest?”

  “Like part of the furniture. Yes. I think so. So she hears things. She sees things. She files them away.”

  “One can’t escape gossip in a school like this,” St. James said to Lynley.

  “Especially if the gossip concerns itself with sex,” Havers added. “Adolescents have other interests, naturally, but nothing ever quite matches the power of who’s-having-a-poke-with-whom. If Chas Quilter was using that chamber to have at the young ladies last summer term, it stands to reason that he would continue doing so now. Probably with more success, since he’s senior prefect this time round. And it does explain why the senior pupils don’t appear to hold him in any particular awe. If he’s busy breaking the rules himself, he could hardly demand that they do otherwise.”

  “So we still have no way to tie Clive Pritchard to that room,” Lynley noted.

  “That’s true enough,” Havers replied. “But we do have something better, don’t we? Another motive for murder. Sexual licence, isn’t that what Cowfrey Pitt named it? If the word went out on Chas, he would have been expelled. Out on his ear. What university did Brian Byrne say Chas hoped to attend?”

  “Cambridge.”

  “Expulsion from Bredgar Chambers might have put an end to that.”

  “You’re arguing that Matthew Whateley knew Chas Quilter used the room.”

  “It was common enough gossip, sir. Something that Matthew might have dropped in a conversation that got back to Chas. Chas already knew Matthew believed in upholding the school rules—he had the audiotape of Clive Pritchard’s bullying to prove it. So it was probably only a matter of time before Matthew blew the whistle on Chas himself. But first he might have told the story to someone he knew—someone he could trust—the very same way he had come to Chas about Clive Pritchard. So it wouldn�
��t be enough to eliminate Matthew. That other person would have to be eliminated as well. Just in case she remembered what Matthew had revealed about Chas.”

  “Jean Bonnamy?”

  “That’s how I see it.”

  “But why not her father? Wouldn’t Matthew have told him as well?”

  “Possibly. But he’s old. He’s sick. Chas would reason that the shock of an attack on Jean would drive everything else from his mind. Besides, there was a dog in the cottage. Who would want to risk attacking the old man with a dog there to protect him?”

  “An old dog, Havers.”

  “How would Chas know that? He attacked Jean outside. The dog was in the cottage. He could hear him bark, no doubt, but he couldn’t see him.”

  “But we know Matthew said nothing to Jean. Surely she would have told us had he done so.”

  “We know that, sir. Chas doesn’t. All he knows is that Matthew knew her well enough to write her letters. We gave him that information ourselves.”

  “You seem relatively sure that Chas is our killer.”

  She sounded impatient. “Everything about it fits, Inspector. He had motive. He had access. He had opportunity.”

  “Does he have knowledge of chemistry?” St. James asked.

  Havers nodded sharply and continued, using her hand for emphasis. “And that’s not all. Daphne saw him at the social club on Friday night. Brian Byrne told us that he left the party to take some telephone calls, but it turns out that he didn’t tell us everything. He didn’t tell us that Chas was in the corridor weeping. He didn’t tell us that Chas left the party at ten o’clock and never returned. Brian’s protecting him, Inspector. Just as he did this afternoon when he kept it under his hat that Chas was gone. He’s been doing that from the first. They all have. You know as well as I that it’s part of their flaming code.”

  Lynley thought a moment. Through the closed door, voices came from the hall. Dinner hour was over. Evening prep would begin within the next few minutes.

  “What time was Jean Bonnamy attacked?”

  “A bit before five, from what Colonel Bonnamy says. Perhaps a quarter to the hour.”

  “And Chas was last seen at one?”

  Havers nodded. “So he had nearly four hours to develop his plan, get to Cissbury, lie in wait for Jean Bonnamy, attack her, and be off.”

  Lynley pushed himself away from the chair against which he had been leaning as they spoke. “Let’s have a look in his room,” he said. “That may tell us where he’s gone.”

  Boys were mingling in the foyer, taking off wet coats and shaking umbrellas as they came in the door. They stood in groups, separated by age, with the youngest closest to the outside door and the oldest nearest the stairs. They were chattering noisily—particularly the third formers by the door who were also engaging in a playful shoving match—but their house prefect brought them to attention as Lynley, Havers, and St. James approached.

  “Ten minutes till prep,” he shouted. “You know what you’re doing.”

  Hearing this, the boys scattered, some up the stairs, some into the common room, others towards the telephone at one side of the foyer. A half-dozen older boys watched warily as the Londoners passed them.

  On the second floor, pupils were ducking into their respective dormitories and collecting textbooks and notebooks for the evening’s prep. Next to Chas Quilter’s room, two boys engaged in hushed conversation, but they parted quickly when one of them raised his head and saw three interlopers in the corridor. They disappeared into two different rooms at the far end of the hall.

  In Chas Quilter’s room, everything was much as it had been when Lynley and Havers had spoken to him earlier. The medical volume, the notebook, the copy of Paradise Lost were still on his desk. The stereo cassette player still held the music created by Moog synthesizer. The bed was still neatly made. The rug on the floor was undisturbed. Only the photograph on the windowsill had been touched, but it merely lay face down as if the boy had decided that he could no longer bear to look upon it.

  Havers was browsing through the pressed-wood cupboard. “Clothes are still here,” she said. “His school uniform is missing.”

  “So it’s not his intention to run off permanently,” Lynley noted. “That does duplicate Matthew Whateley’s disappearance, Havers.”

  “You’re thinking that whoever killed Matthew Whateley also attacked Jean Bonnamy and now has Chas?” Havers sounded unconvinced. “I don’t see that, sir. Chas Quilter’s a big boy. He’s an athlete, after all. Nabbing him would hardly be the same proposition as nabbing Matthew Whateley. Grabbing little Whateley was probably like taking a baby from its pram, compared to what grabbing Chas Quilter would be like.”

  Lynley was at Chas’ desk. He touched the books thoughtfully. There was something in Havers’ words. A possible connection between what they had learned about the senior prefect in the last twenty minutes and what he had been revealing to them—in bits and pieces—all along. He flipped the medical volume open.

  “St. James,” he asked his friend, “do you know anything about Apert’s syndrome?”

  “No. Why?”

  “It’s a thought…” Lynley scanned the page, for the first time reading what Chas Quilter had been reading when they entered his room that morning. The words were dizzying. Lynley tried to assimilate them as, next to him, St. James reached forward and picked up the photograph from the windowsill.

  “Tommy—”

  “A moment.” His eyes swept the text. Coronal sutures. Syndactyly. Acrocephalosyndactyly. Bilateral coronal synostosis. It was like reading Greek. He turned the page. A photograph stared up at him. The final piece of the puzzle that was Chas Quilter clicked into place. It was followed immediately by a dawning understanding of the forces of chance and circumstance that had combined to result in the murder of Matthew Whateley.

  “Tommy.” St. James was saying his name again. His hand shot out to grip Lynley’s arm.

  Lynley looked up. His friend’s angular features were sharp, his expression intense. He was, Lynley saw, holding the photograph from the windowsill.

  “This girl,” St. James said. “I’ve seen her.”

  “Tonight? Here?”

  “No. Sunday. Deborah went to her house to phone the police. In Stoke Poges, Tommy. She lives across the street from St. Giles’ Church.”

  Lynley felt his blood begin to pound. “Who is she?”

  “She’s called Cecilia. Cecilia Feld.”

  Lynley’s eyes went to the wall of framed quotations. To the calligraphic lines from Matthew Arnold. Ah, love, let us be true to one another. And the small, neat signature at the bottom, near the frame. Sissy. Cecilia. Being true. Waiting in Stoke Poges.

  They dropped Sergeant Havers at the hospital in Horsham where she would wait in the hope that Jean Bonnamy might regain consciousness and name her attacker. They drove on through the rain towards Stoke Poges. The continuing storm slowed traffic to a crawl in some places. As the minutes passed and St. James related what little he had heard Cecilia Feld tell the police Sunday night, Lynley felt his sense of urgency grow. It was after eight o’clock when they pulled into the drive of the house across the street from St. Giles’ Church.

  As they got out of the car, Lynley took up the medical volume that he had removed from Chas Quilter’s desk. He tucked it under his arm and followed St. James through the rain.

  The house was dark, save for a light that shone at a distance through the translucent glass of the front door. Their first knock brought no response. Nor did their second. It was only when Lynley found the doorbell—half-hidden under a mass of wet Virginia creeper—that they were able to rouse someone inside the building. A shadowy figure approached. The door opened a cautious two inches.

  She was small, delicate, a wisp of a girl who looked extremely unwell. But Lynley recognised her from her picture. He produced his warrant card. “Cecilia Feld?” When she nodded solemnly, wide-eyed and mute, he said, “I’m Thomas Lynley. Scotland Yard CID. You’ve
already met Mr. St. James, I believe. Last Sunday night. May we come in?”

  “Sissy? Who is it, my dear?” A woman’s voice came to them from a hallway to the left of the front door. Footsteps approached. A second figure in shadow joined Cecilia. She was a taller woman—grey-haired and sturdy, with strong, capable hands. One of them sought Cecilia’s shoulder and drew her back from the door. She stepped in front of the girl. “May I help you?” With a flip of a switch the porch was instantly brightened, and the light fully exposed the two women in the house.

  In spite of the hour, they were both dressed as if for bed, in wool wrappers with slippers on their feet. The older woman had begun to put her hair up in curlers, so her head looked oddly shaped, knobbed on one side and smooth on the other. She scrutinised Lynley’s warrant card. Behind her, Cecilia stood against the wall, her arms cradled in front of her, hands cupping her elbows. Beyond them, from a room at the end of the hall, a diffused light shifted and blinked. A television set, Lynley decided, with the sound turned off.

  Evidently satisfied with Lynley’s credentials, the woman held the door open wider. She introduced herself as Norma Streader—Mrs. Streader, she emphasised—and led them to the room from which the shifting light shone. She lit two lamps and used a remote control unit to switch off the television set.

  Planting herself on the chintz-covered couch, she said, “What may I do for you, Inspector? Please. Sit down.” And then to the girl, “Sissy, I think it’s time you had a bit of a lie-down, don’t you?”

  The girl looked willing enough to leave. Lynley stopped her. “It’s Cecilia we’ve come to see.”

  Cecilia had taken a position near the doorway, arms still wrapped round her body as if in the need to protect herself. When Lynley spoke, she edged a few inches into the room.

  “You’ve come to see Sissy?” Mrs. Streader repeated. “Why?” She examined them shrewdly. “You’re not here on her parents’ behalf, are you? They’ve caused this child enough distress already, and if she wants to stay here with me and my husband, she’s welcome to do so. I’ve made that clear to the social worker, to the solicitor, to the—”