Raising Arcadia

by Simon Chesterman

  She is seated in the front row, with Magnus and their aunt and uncle. Before the altar is the coffin, the wooden box that holds what was once her Father.

  They rise to sing the opening hymn, John Bunyan’s “To Be a Pilgrim”:

  Who would true valour see,

  Let him come hither…

  A few rows back, Mr. Ormiston has taken the afternoon off in order to be present. He has brought her violin from school — a thoughtful gesture. They have not spoken since Friday, when she hung up on him in mid-sentence. After that brief exchange he telephoned the police, urging them to get to the Priory School as quickly as possible.

  By the time Inspector Bradley and Constable Lestrange arrived, she was walking across the quadrangle towards the dormitory. “We’re here to interview Mr. Milton, the Headmaster,” Lestrange said. “Have you seen him recently?”

  She was about to reply when a cry rang out from the top floor of the administration building. The police officers turned away from her to look up to the open windows of Headmaster’s office — just in time to see the body as it fell down and crashed onto the paving stones below. The two men ran over to where it lay, but there was nothing to be done. Headmaster’s mane of white hair had detached during the fall; caught in a breeze, the wig wafted down to land on the grass some yards away.

  The officers then rushed to his office, but it was empty. She found out later that on the large oak desk there was a note written in Headmaster’s swirling cursive. In it, he confessed to the murder of Ignatius and the attempted murder of Louisa Greentree. He had gone to their house with the intention of extorting money from them, he wrote, but they had refused. He had acted alone. In order to spare his family from disgrace and to limit the damage to the school that he loved, he was choosing to take his own life. He apologised to all those he had hurt.

  The suicide note was affixed to the desk by a golden letter opener, stuck almost an inch deep into the wood. It was later determined to be the murder weapon.

  Her family is perhaps the least wealthy at the school, so the idea that Headmaster would choose them for the purposes of extortion makes little sense. But the police have not asked her for her views and she does not see the need to offer them. After interviewing Miss Bennett, the secretary, they began searching for Miss Alderman. Her office was found to have been hastily cleared and her apartment was deserted. They will not have much success finding her.

  Today, Constable Lestrange is attending the funeral in his personal capacity — another kind gesture. It is the first time she has seen him out of uniform. Plainclothes suits him.

  He is seated next to Mr. Ormiston. Earlier in the day it was announced that Mr. Ormiston is taking over as Acting Headmaster of the Priory School. A proper search will be undertaken in due course for a new Head; in the meantime, classes need to be taught and 507 boys and girls need to be fed and sheltered. His role is primarily that of a caretaker, but word has quickly spread about the surveillance network at school and Mr. Milton’s secret office. Mr. Ormiston has already announced that the school will be taking down all cameras except those around its perimeter. The footage that is recorded will be held by an office of campus security and accessed only when clear need can be demonstrated.

  At the front of the church, the priest announces the first reading, from Psalm 23. Magnus stands and moves to the lectern.

  Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me…

  She and Magnus did meet, a little later than planned, on Friday afternoon at Mother’s hospital bed. Mother remains in a coma and, though the doctors did not tell them so, each passing day makes it less likely that she will recover fully. But there is hope.

  Over the weekend, they maintained a kind of vigil by her bedside, mostly wordless. It is the longest time that the siblings have spent together in years. Mother would have been pleased.

  On Sunday, when an orderly asked them to step out of Mother’s room in order to bathe her, they stood in the corridor and were nudged into conversation.

  “Magnus,” she said at last, “have you ever come across the term ‘provocation protocol’?”

  She was loath to admit ignorance in front of her brother, but her own research had been of limited success. It was possible that his access to classified government files would yield something more. Among other things, it had turned up the warning about the threat to their parents that ultimately saved Mother’s life.

  “Where did you come across that term?” he responded lightly. Perhaps too lightly — subtlety was never his strong suit. But it was not the time for criticism.

  “It was in the fragment of the letter that I found in Milton’s secret office.”

  Magnus paused for only a fraction of a second, clearly determining how much to reveal. “It’s a kind of experiment,” he said. “A controlled way of challenging the emotional mood of an individual to determine his or her psychological stability. A way of testing the balance between one’s rational brain and one’s emotions — what Freud called the ego and the id. Some of our government agencies use it to evaluate agents.”

  “Does that suggest that Milton was connected to one of those agencies?”

  “Not necessarily. Merely that there may be an overlap in the procedures.” Magnus was choosing his words carefully, though he always does.

  “I assume there is some connection between these procedures and academic research into the area?”

  “Naturally,” he said. “There is a rich field of research on how humans respond to stress and other stimuli. The ethical and legal limits on such research mean that some related work is carried out using monkeys, though even that can be controversial if the animals are seen to be treated cruelly. Why?”

  “It may not have been a formal title, but at one point Milton said to Miss Alderman that he didn’t care what ‘her professor’ did to him.”

  “Curious.”

  “That was what I thought.”

  “Allow me to look into the matter further.”

  They returned soon after to Mother’s bedside, until visiting hours were over.

  Magnus finishes his reading and the priest announces the second piece of scripture, from the third chapter of Ecclesiastes, which she is to read. She stands and approaches the lectern.

  To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:

  A time to be born, and a time to die…

  Towards the back of the congregation, she sees that Henry Stamford has taken a seat. He gives her a brief thumbs up; without pausing in the reading she offers a slight nod by way of acknowledgment.

  She has been offered leave of absence from the Priory School, though she has already decided that she will continue attending classes. For the first time, she will attend as a full-boarder. When term ends for the long vacation, she will go to stay with Aunt Jean and Uncle Arthur, who are likely to become her guardians.

  She has already been back to the Priory School once, briefly, on Saturday. While collecting more clothes and books she bumped into Henry, who was shocked by the events. By that time the news had permeated through the school and was being picked up by the local press. Her own role in the identification of Milton as the murderer has not emerged, however. She chooses to keep it that way.

  “I still can’t believe Headmaster would do such a thing,” Henry remarked as they walked across the quadrangle together. “It seems completely impossible.”

  “Not impossible,” she corrected. “Only improbable. Impossible things can be eliminated. But when you have done that, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”

  They reached the gate where a taxi was waiting to take her back to the hospital. Henry was on the point of saying something in response, but the driver tapped on his horn to hurry her up. Henry, her friend, opened the car door for her.

  He waved until the car turned the corner and a dry stone wall blocked her from his sight.r />
  A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up…

  She continues the reading, her eyes moving across the congregation. She has met a few of Father’s colleagues but only a handful of the patients — those tended to be the ones who visited around Christmas to drop off gifts or pay their respects. Some carry the evidence of the ailment that brought them to see Father, others would require closer examination. Even from where she stands it is relatively simple to identify those who drove or took public transport, those who work in offices or with their hands, those whose finances are stable and those who have fallen on hard times.

  Standing at the back of the church is a woman, clad in black. A large-brimmed hat shields her face, but her shoulders and her posture betray her. Magnus is yet to admit defeat, but the only information that he has thus far discovered about Miss “Sophia Alderman” is that her entire digital record is a fiction. Why she would go to such elaborate lengths — including conducting a year-long affair — in order to get close to the school and to Arcadia remains unclear.

  A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance…

  The woman’s head is bowed, but for a moment she looks up and they make eye contact. Arcadia is wary of leaping to unfounded conclusions, but her presence is irrational unless there is some kind of connection between them. If her intention is merely to monitor the event, there are safer ways of doing so; if Arcadia wished to apprehend “Miss Alderman”, she could stop the reading and call to Lestrange to arrest her.

  She does not.

  A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing…

  The Bible verse she has committed to memory, but she must look down to turn the page. In the fraction of a second that her attention is focused on the lectern, the woman withdraws, a slight movement of the west door to the church the only evidence of her presence. It closes as she concludes the reading:

  A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;

  A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.

  Her Aunt Jean, Father’s sister, delivers the eulogy. She recounts stories from the different periods of his life, touching on the alcoholism of his own father and Ignatius’s struggles with his faith. Tales from his medical studies in Edinburgh are greeted with knowing smiles and an occasional laugh from his fellow practitioners.

  On his wife and children, Aunt Jean is brief. Ignatius first met Mother as one of his patients, whom he then got to know socially. They brought each other happiness and comfort; the pride that they felt for their son and their daughter was without limit.

  Listening to her, Arcadia recalls their last conversation, in the car park at school after the concert. Father, out of concern for Mother’s health, had asked her to wait until the weekend to discuss her adoption. There will be time enough, he had said. Yet he was wrong. Time ran out.

  And then the service is over. As a final hymn is sung the pallbearers are asked to come forward. Three medical practitioners stand on one side; Arthur, Magnus, and she on the other. Custom usually limits pallbearers to male friends and relatives, but she was firm. The six pause beside the coffin and then raise it to their shoulders.

  Later, they will drive to the cemetery to lay Father’s remains in the ground. There will be a small reception and then the immediate family members will return to the hospital where Mother lies.

  If Mother wakes, answers to the questions that remain unanswered may be forthcoming. But in the meantime she will begin her own investigations into the identity of the woman Sophia Alderman, the professor to whom she referred, and the person who broke into their home to install and then remove the surveillance cameras, as well as steal Mother’s diaries.

  The police regard the case as closed.

  But the police, she now knows, have limits to their imagination and their powers of deduction. She does not put herself in their place — she has no desire to supply their deficiencies. Nevertheless, she resolves to carry the matter further, wherever it may lead, to find out not just what happened to her parents, but why.

  They reach the doors of the church, held open by two ushers. As she steps into the air outside, an east wind picks up, scattering some leaves across their path and a few stray pieces of confetti from a recent wedding.

  Father’s coffin is not heavy on her shoulder, but she becomes aware of a stinging sensation in her eye. Perhaps a stray piece of confetti has blown into it. She raises her free hand to remove it and her finger comes away wet, dampened by the single tear that she has stopped before it could make its way down towards her cheek.

  Arcadia Greentree will return in

  FINDING ARCADIA

  To understand the present, Arcadia Greentree must dig into her past.

  Her father murdered and her mother in a coma, Arcadia tries to locate the “professor” whom she believes to be ultimately responsible. A series of clues lead her to Oxford University and a confrontation with her enemy — but all is not as it seems.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  SIMON CHESTERMAN is a Professor and Dean of the National University of Singapore Faculty of Law. Educated in Melbourne, Beijing, and Oxford, he has lived and worked for the past decade in Singapore. He and his wife have two children, who are voracious readers. Simon is the author or editor of seventeen books, including One Nation Under Surveillance, Just War or Just Peace? and You, The People. This is his first novel and the only one of his books that his children have read voluntarily.