Well-Schooled in Murder

by Elizabeth George

  He began to cry.

  His father said, “God. No,” and nothing more.

  Lynley spoke gently, like a parent relating a bedtime story and not the tale of a barren crime. “I imagine that Chas came to you late Tuesday night, perhaps even on Wednesday. He’d had a phone call from Cecilia, he’d known she was in labour, and he’d done something terribly foolish in order to go to her. He’d taken the minibus. It was an act of desperation, to be sure, and he was just desperate enough to try it. Frank Orten was gone on his regular night off. Chas wouldn’t be missed for a few hours. But when he returned, Matthew Whateley saw him. Chas came to tell you that.”

  The boy’s hands were at his face. He wept against his closed fists.

  “He was worried,” Lynley said. “He knew Matthew might report what he’d seen. He told you that. He just needed someone to talk to. He didn’t intend that anything should happen to Matthew. He probably just wanted your reassurance, the kind of thing friends give each other all the time. But you saw a way to calm his worries, didn’t you? At the same time as you won his friendship forever.”

  “He was my friend. He was.”

  “Indeed. He was. But there was a chance you would lose him when he went to Cambridge, especially if you weren’t accepted yourself. So you needed a way to bind him to you, to have a connection with him beyond that tenuous old school tie. Matthew Whateley provided it. As did Clive Pritchard. Clive helped you without even knowing he was doing so, didn’t he, Brian? You knew he wanted to find the duplicate tape Matthew had made of the bullying. You knew Matthew was scheduled to go to the Morants’. So I imagine you masterminded the entire scheme for Clive. He would nab Matthew after lunch on Friday and go on to games himself—a bit late, no doubt, but that was probably par for the course for Clive—while you would put an off-games chit with Matthew’s name on it in Mr. Pitt’s pigeonhole. Everyone benefitted from your plan. Clive was able to have his fun with Matthew—torturing him with lit cigarettes on Friday after games in the chamber above the drying room in order to encourage Matthew to reveal the location of that duplicate tape—Chas would be able to rest easy in the knowledge that all his secrets were safe once Matthew was dead, and you would be able to offer Chas irrefutable proof of your infinite friendship—Matthew Whateley’s corpse.”

  Giles Byrne spoke. “It’s not true. It can’t be. Tell him. It can’t be.”

  “It was clever, Brian. A tribute to sheer, audacious intelligence. You would kill Matthew to protect Chas, but Clive would think he himself was responsible for the boy’s death. I imagine you took Miss Bond’s school keys from her pigeonhole in the masters’ common room. It would be easy enough to do so, and she wouldn’t miss them on the weekend. Then late Friday night you fetched Matthew from Calchus House. You took him to the chemistry lab, killed him in the fume cupboard, and returned his body to Calchus House so that when Clive next went to see him, he would find him dead and—not knowing how he died—assume responsibility. He would panic, come to you for advice. And you would offer to dispose of the body. Clive would be grateful. He would even help. He would hold his tongue and protect you, because in protecting you, he would assume he was protecting himself. But Chas knew the truth, didn’t he? I suppose you had to tell him. It was the only way to reveal your supreme act of love for him. So he knew. Perhaps not at once. But eventually. When the time was right for you to reap his gratitude.”

  Alan Lockwood protested. “How could all this have happened? There are hundreds of pupils…there’s a duty master…it’s an impossibility. I don’t believe it.”

  “Most of the pupils were on exeats. Others were at a hockey tournament. Still others had been partying heavily and were no doubt sleeping off a booze-up. The school was virtually deserted as a result.” Even now, Lynley found that he could not add that the duty master—John Corntel—had forgotten to patrol, that Brian probably knew Corntel wasn’t alone for the evening, that since his room adjoined Corntel’s, he would surely know that Emilia Bond was with him and he would suspect how they would be spending their time, that, as a result, the school was his to do with as he pleased.

  “But why?” Lockwood demanded. “What had Chas Quilter to fear from anyone?”

  “He knew the rules, Mr. Lockwood. He’d got a girl pregnant. He’d taken one of the school vehicles to go to her. He’d hidden the truth about Clive Pritchard’s bullying of Harry Morant. In his mind, he was the strongest candidate for expulsion, and he believed that expulsion from Bredgar Chambers would destroy his future. His mistake was in telling Brian that. For Brian immediately saw how to use it in order to win Chas’ love. But Brian didn’t take into account that Chas would feel the weight of both guilt and responsibility, not to mention the anxiety of potential discovery. You see, the chance of discovery didn’t end with Matthew Whateley’s death. Chas found out that the boy had written to Jean Bonnamy about seeing him Tuesday night. He was with us when Sergeant Havers and I found the draft of a letter to her. I’ve no doubt that Chas spoke to Brian about that. And Brian saw that while he could do nothing to assuage Chas’ guilt or lighten the burden of responsibility that weighed upon him, he could do something about the potential for discovery. So he decided to remove the final possibility of endangerment to Chas. He went after Jean Bonnamy, as another gift of love.”

  Brian looked up. His eyes were dull. “Am I supposed to confirm what you’ve said? Is that what you want?”

  “Brian, for God’s sake,” his father pleaded.

  But Lynley shook his head. “There’s no need. We’ll have the forensic evidence from the lab, the minibus, and the chamber in Calchus House. We have Jean Bonnamy’s description of you, and no doubt we’ll find traces of her blood, her hairs, and fragments of her skin on your clothes. We have your knowledge of chemistry. And ultimately, I should guess, we’ll have Clive Pritchard telling the truth. Unlike Chas, I shouldn’t think Clive’s going to be willing to kill himself rather than implicate you in Matthew Whateley’s death once he learns how the boy really died. So there’s no need, Brian. I’ve not brought you here for that.”

  “Then for what?”

  Lynley removed the Bredgar Chambers ties from his pocket. He uncoiled them on the table and then loosened the knot that held them together.

  “One of these ties is predominantly yellow,” Lynley said. “The other is blue. Will you tell me which is which, Brian?”

  The boy lifted a hand a few inches off the table. He dropped it weakly, as incapable of making the decision now as he had been when choosing the correct jersey to wear for a hockey game two days before. “I…I don’t know. I can’t tell. It’s the colours. I—”

  “No!” Giles Byrne lurched to his feet. “God damn you. This is enough.”

  Lynley stood. He wrapped the ties round his hand and looked down at the boy. He wanted to feel that mixture of rage and glory, that black satisfaction of a murder avenged and a killer sent on his way to the bar of justice. But he knew quite well there was no possibility that even the most rudimentary vengeance might grow from the ruins of the past few days. “When you killed him,” he asked heavily, “did you know Matthew Whateley was your brother?”

  Sergeant Havers used the Headmaster’s study to make the requisite telephone calls to the Horsham and Slough police. They were courtesy calls. The formal exchange of information would come later, after statements were compiled and reports were written.

  St. James and Lockwood remained in the council room with Brian Bryne while Lynley went in search of the boy’s father. Giles Byrne had left the room only moments after Lynley asked his final question, not remaining to hear Brian’s answer, not remaining to face the confusion, the dawning comprehension, and ultimately the horror as each crowded past the other across his son’s face.

  Brian had seen the reality quickly enough. It was as if Lynley’s single question had unlocked a series of memories within him, each one more wrenching than the last. He said only, “It was Eddie. It was Eddie, wasn’t it? And my mother. That night in the s
tudy…They were there…” before he gave a strangled cry. “I didn’t know…” He lowered his head to the table, burying his face in the crook of his arm.

  After that, the story came out in disjointed pieces, erupting between Brian’s wretched sobs. It was not so very different from Lynley’s conjectures. Central to the tale was Chas Quilter: whom Brian had accompanied to Stoke Poges late Saturday night; who in his distraction had not noticed the blanket-shrouded figure on the floor in the rear of the minibus; whose need to see Cecilia alone had prompted him to agree wholeheartedly when Brian had offered to wait for him outside the Streaders’ house in the bus; who did not know that Brian had used the time in Stoke Poges to dump Matthew’s body in St. Giles’ churchyard.

  Listening to Brian, Lynley saw the manner in which Matthew’s murder, committed under the guise of friendship, was in actuality a form of insidious blackmail in which the payoff was to be a lifetime of loyalty and love.

  Chas had heard the story of Matthew Whateley’s disappearance on Sunday afternoon with everyone else. But unlike everyone else, when given the information that the boy’s body had been found in Stoke Poges, Chas knew at once not only the identity of the killer but also the motive behind the crime. Had Brian rid himself of Matthew’s body in any other location, Chas might have spoken up to see that justice was done. But Brian was far too clever to allow Chas the option of unburdening his conscience, so he had created a set of circumstances in which Chas’ speaking up—or pointing the finger of accusation at anyone else—meant that he would be condemning himself, and condemning himself meant abandoning Cecilia when she needed him most. There was absolutely no way for the senior prefect to win, and no way for him to emerge with a conscience that was not stricken by remorse. So he had removed himself from the game.

  Now, with a glance that told St. James to stay with the boy, Lynley left the room. The corridor outside was dark, but at the far end the door to the foyer stood open and beyond it Lynley could see a pale light against the stone floor. The chapel was open.

  Giles Byrne was sitting beneath his memorial to Edward Hsu. If he heard Lynley’s footsteps, he gave no sign. Instead, he remained upright in the pew. Every muscle of his body seemed painfully controlled.

  When Lynley joined him, he spoke. “What’s going to happen?”

  “Horsham CID will send a car for him. And for Clive Pritchard. The school’s in Horsham’s jurisdiction.”

  “And then?”

  “Then it’s in the hands of the prosecutors.”

  “How convenient for you that is. Your job is done, isn’t it? Wrapped up in a tidy little package. You go on your way, content with the truth having been revealed. The rest of us stay here and deal with it.”

  Lynley felt an inexplicable need to defend and deny, but he quelled it, too exhausted and depressed to make the attempt.

  “She did it all deliberately,” Byrne said abruptly. “My wife didn’t love Edward Hsu. I’m not sure Pamela has ever loved anyone. But she needed admiration. She needed to see desire in men’s faces. In the end, she needed more than anything to hurt me. It always comes down to that, doesn’t it, when a marriage is falling apart?” In the half-darkness of the church, Byrne’s face looked skeletal, hollowed by the shadows under his eyes and beneath his cheekbones. “How did you know my wife was Matthew’s mother?”

  “Your story about his birth in Exeter didn’t hold true. You denied knowing his mother, yet an adoption couldn’t have been arranged as you described it: with only you, a solicitor, and the Whateleys involved. So it came down to only two possibilities. Either the mother was involved in the process of adoption, or she’d abandoned the baby, leaving him to you, the legal—if not the natural—father.”

  Byrne nodded his acceptance. “She used Eddie for revenge. Our marriage was running thin when he came into our lives. We had so little in common in the first place. I’d been attracted to her youth and beauty, her vivacity. She’d been on the rebound from a broken engagement and was flattered by my devotion. But you can’t build a marriage on that, can you? It began to fall apart soon enough. By the time we had Brian—as a way to salvage our relationship—it was as good as over, at least on my part. She was a shallow woman, without much substance. I let her know it.”

  Lynley reflected on the manner in which Giles Byrne had probably revealed his disenchantment to his wife. No doubt it had been done with little concern about her feelings, little need to spare her pride. Byrne’s next words confirmed this.

  “She was no match for me in the arena of derision, Inspector. But she knew how I loved Edward Hsu, so she struck back at me through him. To Pamela’s way of thinking, seducing Edward would serve two purposes. She would punish me while she proved to herself that she still had some value. Edward was merely an instrument to effect those ends. She used him well, right in my study where she could be relatively certain that I’d walk in on them eventually. Which I did.”

  “Brian mentioned the study a few minutes ago.”

  Byrne raised a hand to his eyes, then dropped it. Age showed in his movements; it was underscored by the lines in his face. “He wasn’t even five years old. I’d come upon them—Pamela and Eddie—in the study. We had a violent row. Brian walked in on it.” Byrne seemed to be watching the play of candlelight upon the melancholy face of the stone angel atop the altar. “I can still see him standing by the door, his hand on the knob, holding on to a stuffed animal and taking it all in. His mother naked and doing nothing about putting on a shred of clothing; his father in a rage, calling her a two-quid whore while she railed at him about his own desire to bed Edward; and Edward, cowering against the cushions of the sofa, trying to cover himself up. And weeping. God, that horrible weeping.”

  “How soon after that did he kill himself?”

  “Less than a week. He left our house that night and returned to the school. I tried to talk to him repeatedly, tried to explain to him that it wasn’t his fault. But he believed that he had dishonoured our friendship. It was no matter to Edward that Pamela had set out upon a course of seduction that only a dead man might have been able to resist. As far as he was concerned, he should have been strong enough to resist her. But he wasn’t. So he killed himself. Because he knew that I loved him. Because I had been his friend and tutor. Because he had made love to his friend and tutor’s wife.”

  “Then he never knew about the pregnancy at all.”

  “He never knew.”

  “Why did your wife carry the child? Why didn’t she abort?”

  “Because she wanted me to remember the manner in which she’d taken her revenge. What better way for me to remember it than seeing her growing bigger every day with Edward Hsu’s child.”

  “Yet you didn’t divorce her at once. Why not?”

  “Because of Edward. Had I only had the sense to hide my contempt for Pamela’s inadequacies, she would never have sought him out in the first place. Can you understand? I felt responsible for Pamela’s behaviour, for Edward’s suicide, for the baby’s existence. It seemed to me that the only way I could make any expiation at all was to keep Pamela in my life until the baby was born, in the hope that she would tire of the game and give him over to me to dispose of.”

  “You didn’t intend to keep the child yourself.”

  Byrne glanced at him drily. “Pamela would have clung to that baby like the living embodiment of maternal devotion had she even suspected that I wanted him. As it was, I didn’t want him. I just wanted to provide for him.”

  “I take it that Matthew wasn’t born in Exeter.”

  “In Ipswich. Pamela stayed in a home there, the sort of place where one can discreetly give birth and then move on to better things. Which is exactly what she did as soon as Matthew was delivered. As the father of record, I placed the baby in a foster home while Pamela returned to London, posing as a grieving mother whose infant had been stillborn. She mourned suitably for a few weeks. I filed for a divorce which she didn’t contest. Later I returned for Matthew and made the arrangement
s for the Whateleys to get him.”

  “Brian never knew about any of this?”

  “He never knew. He saw that scene in the study but he didn’t know what it meant. And he never met Matthew.”

  “Until Bredgar Chambers.”

  “Yes.” Byrne looked round the chapel. At the foot of the stone angel, a guttering candle spilled its wax and went out. The scent of its extinguished wick sharpened the air. “I thought it was the right thing to do, sending Matthew to his father’s school. Just as I’d done with Brian. Just as is done over and over again. Generations of fathers handing down some sort of pathetic torch to their sons, expecting them to carry it, expecting them to use it to light a world that they themselves have utterly failed to illuminate.” Byrne reached for an old hymnal from the back of the pew in front of him. Uselessly he opened it, closed it, opened it again. “I thought it best that he be made into a man. I thought it best not to coddle him. I thought it best that he be made to stand on his own two feet. I thought it best… He’s eighteen years old, Inspector. I’m fifty-four. And I’ve been sitting here asking a God I don’t believe in to let me exchange places with my son somehow. Let this happen to me—the arrest, the trial, the publicity, the punishment. Let me bear this burden for him. Let me at least do that.”

  Absalom, Absalom, Lynley thought. It was the cry of every father who had stubbornly failed to bind his life and his love to his son. But just like David’s mourning the death of Absalom, this sudden flowering of Giles Byrne’s solicitude could not change reality. It came far too late.

  22

  The night’s storm had tapered to a drizzle as Lynley pulled the Bentley away from the east entrance to the Bredgar Chambers quadrangle. Ahead of them, the unmarked police car from Horsham CID passed under the trees and disappeared round a curve in the drive. Aside from the lights that glowed intermittently upon the paths between buildings, the grounds were dark and deserted. If a duty master walked a designated round to check upon buildings and the whereabouts of pupils, he was nowhere to be seen.