Murder At School

by James Hilton

  “It didn’t follow him here,” Revell answered, with a feeling of having badly put his foot in it. “So far as I know, not a soul at Oakington knew about it except me. I’ll be frank with you and tell you how I got to know. You’ve heard, of course, of the two boys whose deaths here during the past year have caused such a sensation in the papers?” The other nodded. “Well, a detective from Scotland Yard was here recently looking up all our pasts and so on. He took me into his confidence a bit and told me of the affair.”

  “He had no business to,” was the quick response. “It was a thing that ought to have been forgotten long ago. And in any case, after all these years, I don’t feel that the slightest real disgrace attaches to my brother. He was, behind that attitude of cynicism that so many people misunderstood, one of the bravest and sincerest men who ever lived. He was among the first to enlist when the War broke out, and for two years he waged a constant battle, not so much against the Germans, as against a far more terrible foe —his own nerves. You may think this is high-flown language—but I assure you I’m only telling the simple truth. My brother fought a long and terrible battle, till at last his nerve gave way. He was court-martialled. He would doubtless have been shot but for the pleading of an officer who understood him a little. And afterwards he went back to the trenches and never gave way again till a particularly bad head-smash caused him to be sent home. In all, he fought for nearly three years, was wounded four times, and also badly gassed. I defy anyone to call that the record of a coward!”

  And Mr. Geoffrey Lambourne looked, for the moment, as if he really were capable of defiance.

  “I should say not!” Revell answered. “I think it’s one of the pluckiest records I ever heard of.”

  The other warmed to his sympathy. “I knew you would think so. My brother wrote to me that he felt you as a kindred spirit. The trouble with him was always that he was too imaginative, too sensitive to things that other people hardly felt at all. He often worried over other people’s troubles far more than they did themselves. They never knew it, of course. He hid everything behind that mask of cynicism. But Mrs. Ellington saw beneath it, apparently. Perhaps you did, also. Was he comfortable here—in his work, I mean?”

  “I think so. Oh yes, I’m pretty sure he was.” For a moment Revell had a wild idea that he would tell Geoffrey Lambourne the whole amazing story of his confession. Nothing but vague caution prevented him; it would be safer, he felt, on second thoughts, to let the whole unpleasant business remain as it was. There was no knowing what Geoffrey would do if he were told, and whatever he might choose to do could hardly lead to anything but further trouble.

  Lambourne, still with quietly smouldering indignation, was continuing. “You know I rather wonder if this other business—the deaths of the two boys—was worrying him at all. I see one of the jurymen at the inquest suggested it, too. It was just the sort of thing that WOULD have worried Max. Since the War he had always been deeply interested in crime —often, in fact, I’ve told him frankly that he was getting morbid about it. He once told me that there wasn’t a crime I could think of in which he couldn’t to some extent sympathise with the criminal. I remember inventing the most horrible and ruffianly affair, more out of amusement than anything else, but when I had finished he replied quite seriously: ‘Yes, I can quite conceive circumstances in which a good man might be driven to do a thing like that.’ Over-imaginativeness again, of course.”

  Revell was finding all this extraordinarily interesting.

  “Yes, he even told ME once, apropos of some murder case, that after being in the War he could never manage to be very indignant over a little private and unofficial slaughter.”

  Lambourne nodded. “That was just the sort of thing he WOULD say. But really, of course, it was a grotesque perversion of the real state of affairs. My brother was deeply indignant over murder; but he felt that the State, after organising murder on a wholesale scale for four years, had no right to be. And he hated what he called the legal torture of criminals. He not only hated it—it upset him whenever he thought about it, which was very often. I recollect at the time of the Thompson-Bywaters case, he was positively ill through worrying over it. I was with him on the night before Mrs. Thompson was executed—we were sharing a room at a hotel— he couldn’t sleep a wink, and was in such a state of collapse by the morning that I had to send for a doctor. ‘If I could save that woman with my own life, I would,’ he told me, and I quite believed him. Whenever he conceived a sympathy for anyone, even though he might never let them know it, he was ready to sacrifice himself in almost incredible ways. And it was the irony of ironies that most people thought him sarcastic and unfriendly and perhaps even callous!”

  They had reached the end of the second circuit and were now once again within sight of the entrance of Ellington’s house. Mrs. Ellington, as it chanced, came cycling along the drive towards them, and as she approached she dismounted and smiled at Revell. “I hope you’ve been giving me a good character,” she began. “Mr. Lambourne came here hating me pretty badly, so I hope you haven’t let me down.”

  Geoffrey Lambourne made haste to reply. “Not at all, not at all. On the contrary, Mr. Revell has told me how you have on so many occasions helped my brother. I am deeply grateful to you, and I think he did quite right to put you before me in his thought and feelings, I, after all, was a thousand miles away, but you were on the spot.”

  “Oh no,” she answered, embarrassedly. “I did very little. I really don’t deserve all your praise. But I’m glad you don’t hate me now, anyway.”

  She smiled again and left them, whereupon Lambourne turned once more to Revell. “A charming woman,” he remarked, when she was well out of earshot. “I can guess how my brother felt towards her—it wasn’t his way to feel things by halves. And there had never been any woman in his life before.” The School bell began to clang, and he hurriedly consulted his watch. “Good heavens, we’ve been talking for nearly an hour—I mustn’t keep you any longer. I have to return to London this evening—this is really a very hurried visit. But perhaps we may meet again some day. Good-bye.”

  When Revell sank into an easy-chair in the Head’s deserted drawing-room, his mind began at first to function with curious slowness, as if it were recovering after the numbness of a blow.

  Geoffrey Lambourne’s story only, of course, added to the already long enough list of things that people had SAID. Yet, on reflecting carefully, Revell was amazed to find how strangely it fitted in. Guthrie’s character study of Max Lambourne had been based on only half a story; Geoffrey Lambourne had now supplied the other half, which would have made the character study entirely different. Guthrie, for example, had mentioned the court-martial episode, but it was Geoffrey Lambourne who, by explaining it, had made it appear in a totally different light. Nothing that Geoffrey had said really contradicted Guthrie’s evidence, yet somehow, after hearing Geoffrey, Guthrie’s whole idea of Max Lambourne seemed fundamentally absurd.

  The confession was, of course, the snag. After all, if a man behaved suspiciously, as Lambourne had done, and if afterwards he confessed to the crime of which he had been suspected, there was usually no reason to disbelieve him. Guthrie, by accepting Lambourne’s confession as bona fide, had only acted as most reasonable persons would have done. That suspicion should wrongly point to a man, and that his confession, when made, should be false, was really too much to credit.

  And yet… and yet… could it be that… ? Once again Revell found himself theorising wildly without evidence. It was no use trying not to; he could not help it. And the mainspring of his theorising was nothing less than a conviction, strong enough to be proof against all logic, that Max Lambourne had not and could not have committed the murders at all.

  Then why on earth had he confessed to them? And suddenly, like a bubble born and swelling on the surface of troubled water, a theory vividly complete darted across Revell’s mental vision. Supposing Lambourne had confessed to save someone else… ?

  Even a
s the idea came to him, the cautious and critical second self that watched over his actions bade him pause and think where he was going. How scornfully, in his more normal mood of cynicism, would he have rejected such a motive! How he would have laughed at it if he had met with it in a play or a novel! Fantastic self-sacrifice had never appealed to him even ethically, and he had always regarded Sidney Carton’s last moments as those of a bore who must also have been a bit of a prig. Yet now, in perfect seriousness, he was casting Max Lambourne for the same unlikely role! Was it possible?

  Ten minutes of profound thinking convinced him that it was. The theory gained on him; he saw details rising up at every step, like fragments of a new scene when one approaches it on a misty day. The murders, he argued, had been committed by someone else. Lambourne, with a shrewdness quite in consonance with his abilities and with his study of crime, had guessed from the beginning the identity of the culprit. His story about laying the false clue of the cricket-bat was true; in his own queer, tortuous way he had done his best to unmask the murderer. Later, however, he had got into a mess; he had imagined that Guthrie suspected him (and perhaps the detective did), and he had been greatly upset by the severity of Guthrie’s cross-examination. Even though he might have known that Guthrie could prove nothing, he would have worried desperately over the matter; in fact, as Geoffrey Lambourne had said, it was just the sort of thing he could not endure.

  Then suddenly (so Revell’s theory continued), he had realised how the whole terrible business might react on Mrs. Ellington. The detective, in course of time, might subject HER to the same savage questioning. Even if he did eventually arrive at the right conclusion and arrest Ellington, there could be nothing but unhappiness in store for Mrs. Ellington. For though she might not care for her husband a great deal, to see him tried and convicted for murder would be a frightful ordeal. And an ordeal, too, from which he (Lambourne) would save her if he could. Most likely he had not reached his final decision until that last evening when she had visited him. Her kindness then, her solicitude for his health, and his own deep love for her, might all have combined to give him a vision of that simple, ultimate sacrifice which would ensure her peace of mind. After all, what did it matter? He had no family to disgrace; his health was bad; he would probably not live long in any case. He had no future to which he or any other human being could look forward hopefully; he was doomed, in some sense, as much as any convicted criminal. Why not, indeed, cut the Gordian knot that entangled his own miserable affairs, and those of Oakington itself? If he had said of Mrs. Thompson, a stranger, that he would save her with his own life if he could, would he not be far more likely to feel the same impulse of self-sacrifice towards Mrs. Ellington, whom he loved?

  Revell had to check himself from thinking too eloquently. But it really was remarkable how easily the details fitted in. Lambourne’s motives for the two murders, as recounted by Mrs. Ellington, had been more than a little fantastic; but that was quite natural if they had been merely a last-minute improvisation by Lambourne himself. The overdose of veronal, too, took on another aspect when viewed in this light; Revell was now convinced, with Guthrie, that it had been suicide. To confess to a crime one hadn’t committed was surely enough; to stand trial and go to the scaffold for it was well beyond most human endurance. Revell could picture the scene in Lambourne’s room on that fatal night—could picture Mrs. Ellington soothing him, as she believed, to sleep, after receiving his promise that he would repeat his confession to the detective on the morrow. But doubtless he had not been really asleep, but merely closing his eyes, happy with her so close to him and well satisfied with the neatness of his plan. And then, when at length she had gone, he had—perhaps with a last cynical smile— reached out for the bottle and played his final act in the rather incomprehensible drama of life.

  Revell jotted down the whole of this new theory without its emotional trimmings, and then considered it as critically as he could. It seemed to him to have few flaws. Of two theories, both equally unprovable, he considered it rather more credible than the other. Both were intricate, both were perhaps fantastic; but his was psychologically in character, whereas the other was not.

  But of course the greatest and most important difference between the new theory and the old one was that while the former was a final and definite closure of the whole affair, the latter opened it wider than ever. For if Lambourne had not committed the two murders, then someone else had; and that someone else was still, presumably, alive and at Oakington. And suddenly, with a fresh and more sinister thrill, Revell re-read his earlier memorandum of one of Max Lambourne’s aphorisms—“two successful murders very often lead to a third.”

  A THIRD? Was it possible, then, that at that very moment somewhere within those sham Gothic walls the murderer was already contemplating the final item of his triple bill?

  * * *

  CHAPTER 10. — MORE THEORIES

  An inter-school cricket-match on a blazing midsummer afternoon is decidedly not an occasion to encourage morbid introspection, and it must be admitted that Revell’s latest theory did not seem quite so probable as he languidly listened to the plick-plock of the Oakington cricketers from a deck-chair by the side of the pavilion. He was supposed to be watching them, but in reality his eyes were half-closed and he could see nothing but sunlight and the brim of his Panama. From time to time, obedient to a warning murmur about him, he would cautiously open one eye and ejaculate a tired cry of “Well played, sir!” or “Oh, jolly well hit, sir!” It amused him to be a ritualist on such occasions.

  It was true that his theory did not seem quite so fundamentally probable under that canopy of blue sky and sunshine. To begin with, it was several days old, and he had almost pondered it out of existence. Indeed, after so much prolonged reflection, he had now at odd moments considerable difficulty in believing that there had been any murders, or even deaths at all, and that Lambourne, Ellington, Guthrie, and the rest of them could have been any more substantial than creatures of a dyspeptic dream. Only his own mysterious presence at an Oakington School cricket-match kept him a little anchored to reality. Why WAS he at Oakington, anyway? Oh yes, the boy Marshall and so on… He found himself strangely transfixed between sleep and wakefulness, while something subconsciously authoritative warned him to be careful. He had had the thing too much on his mind; he was in danger of becoming obsessed with it. Perhaps Roseveare and Guthrie were right; it was better to forget. Yes, better to forget. Better by far he should forget and smile than that he should remember and go mad… Ah, well played, sir! Very pretty—VERY pretty!…

  Gradually he became aware that some object of fair size intervened between his eyes and the Oakington eleven. And that object, under closer examination, revealed itself as the front portion of a pair of trousers. Furthermore, on tilting his hat-brim a little upwards, he perceived that the trousers were occupied, as it were, and surmounted by an Eton jacket and a face which, in a vague sort of way, he seemed to remember.

  “Excuse me, sir, but could I and my friend see you for a minute or two?”

  “See me?” He stared sleepily. “Why yes, of course, if you particularly want to.”

  The boy nodded with extraordinary gravity. “I’m Jones Tertius, sir— you spoke to me when you came here last year. And this is my friend Mottram.”

  A second Eton jacket obtruded into the line of vision, but by this time Revell was three-quarters awake. “Oh, you’re Jones, are you? Jones— JONES? Good Lord, yes—I remember, of course.” The final quarter of complete consciousness returned to him with a rush. “Delighted to see you again, Jones—and your friend, too. Can I help you at all?”

  “Well, you see, sir, we thought—or at least Mottram thought —”

  “Stop a minute. Is it anything particularly private?”

  “Well, perhaps it is, sir, in a way.”

  “Then let’s take a stroll where we shan’t be interrupted.” He rose out of his deck-chair and unostentatiously piloted the two boys beyond the pavilion thro
ng. “Looks as if we shall win, eh?” he commented. “That batsman’s got a fine stroke—what’s the chap’s name?”

  “Teviot, sir,” replied Mottram.

  “Ah yes, Teviot—he had a brother here in my time, I think.” Not that Revell cared two straws about Teviot or his brother, but it was the sort of conversation that the Head’s secretary might legitimately be overheard having with two juniors.

  When the three of them were well out of earshot of the crowd, Revell changed the subject abruptly. “Now then, Jones, you and your friend can talk to me as much as you like.”

  Jones flushed and seemed rather nervous. “It’s like this, sir,” he began. “We thought—or rather, it wasn’t me who thought at first, sir, but Mottram—It was he who had the idea—and he—he asked me —and—” His breath or perhaps his nerve gave way at that point, and Revell, who liked and understood youngsters better than he admitted, gave his arm a friendly squeeze.

  “Well,” he said sympathetically, “since Mottram seems to have done all the thinking, perhaps it wouldn’t be a bad idea if he did the telling, eh?”

  Jones looked greatly relieved; it was clearly only his good manners as an earlier acquaintance that had constrained him to act as spokesman. Mottram, on the other hand, as soon as the signal was given, began to talk with a suddenness that reminded Revell of a B.B.C. announcer late with his programme and trying to save an odd minute over the reading of the news items. “Jones told me,” he rattled off, “about you questioning him about Marshall Secundus, sir, and when you came here again just after Marshall Primus was killed, I thought you were probably a detective, sir.”

  “Oh, you DID, did you?” The truth, or partly the truth, in a single sentence! Mottram was clearly a force to be reckoned with. “Well, it was an ingenious theory, but that’s all, I’m afraid. You know now, of course, that I’m merely Dr. Roseveare’s secretary.”