School for Murder

by Robert Barnard

  ‘Why would he want to know that?’

  ‘Well, to get a hold on her, of course. He used to say “All power enriches, and absolute power enriches absolutely.” It was some old saying, or something. He liked knowing things about people, even about other boys at school. And if he’d got anything on the Grower, he could have used it with his father.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I know you think I’m slow. But how would he have used evidence about Miss Grower’s . . . supposed tastes with his father?’

  ‘Oh, you know Dr Frome. Don’t you? I mean, he was terribly ambitious for Hilary. I mean, terribly. It had started in the last year or two, when Hilary had grown up, and was so . . . striking, you know. He saw that Hilary could be something. He’d like to have taken Hilary away and sent him to a Public School, but it was too late by then. Hilary saw that if he was going to get anywhere, he’d have to go to Cullbridge Comprehensive. But his father was very stiff-necked, you know, because he’d refused to send him there four years ago, and he didn’t like admitting he’d been wrong. So Hilary collected data on Burleigh, to try and make him change his mind. But when old Crumwallis offered to make Hilary head boy, his dad dug his heels in. I mean, he was creepy at times, his dad.’

  ‘Creepy? I didn’t notice anything creepy about him.’

  ‘Didn’t you? I can tell you, I did. When Hilary took me home, they just looked me over—well, not his mum, so much, but his dad—to see if I was good enough. Like an inspection, you know. And they asked about my parents, and that, and my dad works for an estate agent’s in Cullbridge, and I don’t think that was good enough. I mean, he was so ambitious . . . And then, if anyone made any complaints about Hilary—’

  ‘Oh. Did people make complaints about Hilary?’

  ‘Oh, one or two did. Like the father of one of the younger boys at Burleigh went along to Dr Frome last year to complain that Hilary had been bullying his little lad. Isn’t that feeble? I mean, doing something like that? Hilary’d just been playing with the kid, really, just teasing him, you know? The father knew he wouldn’t get anywhere if he went to old Crumwallis, so he went to Hilary’s dad instead.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Oh, Hilary’s dad really bawled him out. I mean, really made it hot for him, you know? He got on his high horse, told him to take it to the headmaster if he thought he had any complaint, told him if there was nothing in it he’d sue him for slander, warned him not to say anything to anyone else or he’d have him in the courts, showed him the door, and all that. That’s what I mean, it was creepy. He hated anything that got in Hilary’s way. He’d have done anything to make sure Hilary got ahead.’

  ‘And that bothered Hilary, did it?’

  ‘Well, it did a bit. I mean, Hilary wanted to get ahead, naturally, and he would’ve. But he could see his dad was all uptight about it, and going about it in the wrong way.’

  ‘I see. Tell me, what did Hilary think about this idea that he would be head boy next year?’

  ‘He thought it was a laugh. And a dead bind, too. I mean, when he first heard about it, he was really cheesed off. It was like the headmaster had put one over on him, wasn’t it? And he rather wished he’d treated the head like he’d treated all the rest of the creeps here. Those were his words, Hilary’s. But then he thought about it a bit, and he saw there might be possibilities. I mean, he still wanted to leave and have his GCE year at the Comprehensive, but he didn’t want to burn his boats, you know. He thought that being head boy might be a real giggle . . .’

  ‘What sort of thing was he planning to do?’

  ‘Well, I mean, really wreck the school, but in a sort of clever way, so that old Crumwallis thought he was doing a splendid job, and was egging him on to do all sorts of things that he knew would bring the school down around the head’s ears. He hadn’t really worked it out, but it could have been a gas. He was so clever, so inventive, was Hilary.’

  ‘He certainly seems to have had a fertile mind.’

  ‘Oh, he did. I hope . . .’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I hope his child has it too . . . Because I think I’m going to have Hilary’s child.’

  CHAPTER 15

  SUGGESTIONS AND DISCOVERIES

  When he had bundled Margaret Wilkinson off home, in the care of Penny Warlock, Mike Pumfrey burrowed deeper into his comfortable desk chair and raised his eyebrows at Sergeant Fenniway.

  ‘Poor kid,’ he said. ‘I mean, you know, poor kid.’

  Sergeant Fenniway seemed to think he was being heartless.

  ‘She’s going through a rough time.’

  ‘Of course she’s going through a rough time. I don’t see why that should make her talk like a human word-processor.’

  ‘Don’t your kids talk like that?’

  ‘Pretty much,’ admitted Pumfrey. ‘I suppose the schools have given up caring. Occasionally mine say something quite funny as well. My daughter the other day said one of her friends “wasn’t as pregnant as she thinks she is.” ‘I hope the same is true of that poor little thing. The illegitimate child of Hilary Frome starts off with two pretty nasty black marks against it before it even arrives in the world.’

  ‘It didn’t sound very certain to me,’ said Fenniway.

  ‘Nor to me either . . . It’d be interesting to see whether the Fromes acknowledged it. I’d be willing to bet they wouldn’t. Not if what she told us is half-way true.’

  Pumfrey picked up off the desk, where Margaret Wilkinson had left it, Hilary Frome’s diary. He really should have looked more closely at it before. He began leafing through the pages for the first three months of the year. As he read the cursory entries, he pursed his lips, and the brown toothbrush above his lips began to quiver with life.

  ‘At least this thing begins to make a bit more sense now. Most of it’s just dates and engagements, as far as I can see. Look at this, Fenniway: I think he’s got a little code for girls he intends to stand up. He puts a tiny skull and crossbones after their initials. Sarky little swine. I bet . . . yes, look: the night he died, Thursday, 29th March, has ‘OM, Sports Pavilion’, then the skull and crossbones in a different pen. I suppose that must mean that he originally intended to meet her, then changed his mind when Crumwallis asked him to take over the boarding section that evening.’

  ‘Anything else of interest?’ asked Fenniway.

  ‘Hmmm. Pickerage on Sunday—and occasional dates elsewhere, some during school time. Trips to the lavatories, do you suppose? How little boys’ schools change, after all. There are one or two other names that come more than once: PQ and TW. Quigly was the name of one of his pals—one of his conspicuously few pals—that his mother mentioned. Quigly and Willis. I suppose those are the two. Nothing much else that I can . . . That’s a bit odd, though. Occasional single letters. V on March 22nd, R on the 26th. Don’t suppose it means anything, but all the other names are given two initials, so you’d think these would be even closer friends. Yet they’re only mentioned once.’

  ‘Anything about any of the teachers?’

  ‘That’s a point. Wait a bit: here’s a GG. That could only be Miss Grower, surely. Here are several PMs . . . Ah, and here’s a DG. Those all must be teachers, don’t you think? When did Miss Gilberd say he made that clever little scene in the delicatessen? Monday, that’s it. And on Monday the 26th here’s her initials, along with that initial R—which has no time by it, and neither do the teacher’s names. In other words, when he has enjoyed one of his little triumphs over one of the teachers, he notes it down in his diary.’

  ‘As you say, a right little charmer.’

  Pumfrey banged the little book shut with a sharp blow of his fist.

  ‘Ugh! In this job you have to stamp hard on any feeling that whoever did it has rid the world of a reptile, and done it a real service. Even if, as seems likely, in this case they did it inadvertently. What now, Fenniway? What further ornament to the race is there to interview?’

  ‘Well, there is the Muggeridge woman.’

 
‘Oh God, there is, too. I wonder if we need to see her. After all, he clearly didn’t keep the date.’

  ‘Still, he made it. It sounds as if they were talking for quite a time, from what Muggeridge said. Of course, they probably did it just to cheese him off, humiliate him in front of the littlies. But something might have been said . . .’

  Pumfrey sighed.

  ‘I suppose so. I rather hoped that one lousy mother a day might be considered a reasonable ration. You do keep me up to the mark, Fenniway. Still—it surely needn’t take more than a few minutes. What’s the time, by the way? Nearly four. Let’s go right away: we might get in and out before that sweaty oaf gets back home himself.’

  They collected their things, locked up the study, and went through the door that led into the older part of the school. The boys had mostly gone in the last quarter of an hour, enthusiastic to spread the news in the coffee bars and through the groups of street-corner loungers (groups which Mr Crumwallis had been very down on, in the days of his prosperity). The older boys expected to accumulate considerable cachet by recounting the story of Hilary Frome’s last minutes to the girls of St Mary’s or (at a pinch) the Comprehensive girls, who mostly were tied up with boys at their own school, but could on rare occasions be tempted away. The corridors of Burleigh were deserted. It was as they were passing up the passage that led towards the front door that Pumfrey heard voices, and motioned to Fenniway to stop and keep quiet. What he had heard was the continuation of a discussion that had been going on in the Staff Common Room since school finished.

  ‘I don’t care what you say, I think it’s pretty odd, those two taking over the school like that at the drop of a hat. Taking advantage, I call it, and I’ve no liking for Crumwallis. It’s almost as if they planned it.’

  The voice was Bill Muggeridge, instinct as usual with a dull and unspecified grudge. The next was Tom Tedder’s.

  ‘Come off it, Bill: don’t try to be subtle, it doesn’t become you. Why not say right out that they’ve been planning these things to ease the Crumwallises out, and get the school at a price they can afford?’

  ‘I didn’t say that.’

  ‘Well, I do feel,’ came the high, self-assured voice of Glenda Grower, ‘that you’re looking a gift horse in the mouth. All of us would rather work for Sep than that addle-pated fraud Crumwallis, and I for one don’t see Sep or McWhirter wading through slaughter to a throne. Is Burleigh really worth a corpse?’

  ‘Perhaps they didn’t mean the corpse,’ resumed the obstinate voice of Bill. ‘Perhaps they just didn’t know about poisons. We’re not all like Corbett.’

  ‘Oh, I say, half a mo . . .’

  ‘Do you think it weally will be better under Coffin?’ came an unmistakable lisp. ‘I mean, he’s tewibly sarcastic, and iconic, and that, and he has awfully high standards. Will we weally be safe? I should think he could be absolutely woothless

  ‘What precisely,’ asked Glenda, ‘do you mean to imply by that, Percy?’

  ‘Nothing!’ came the agitated voice. ‘Nothing at all. I’m just talking about possible sackings—though I suppose he will call them wedundancies . . .’

  ‘Well, I agree with Glenda,’ said the more pacific voice of Dorothea Gilberd. ‘I think some of you are being horribly ungrateful. After all, if the Crumwallises had been in charge for another fortnight, we would all have been out of a job next term. Sep may have played his cards closely, but he’s really saved our bacon.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be too sure of that, old girl,’ came the relentlessly jolly voice of Corbett Farraday. Pumfrey could guess how much Dorothea Gilberd liked being called ‘old girl’. ‘From what I hear, Dr Frome has been cooking our goose, whatever good old Sep may have been doing with our bacon.’

  ‘What do you mean? How do you know?’

  ‘One of my parents—mother of Gillies in 3B—came to see me as soon as school finished. All this worried mother hen stuff. She says that Frome has been going on about the school to anyone who has rung up to offer condolences. Not many have, of course: too bally awkward. But some of them have been parents, and of course they’ve passed it on, and it’s spreading like wildfire.’

  ‘Hence all the phone calls to the school, I suppose. What’s he been saying?’

  ‘Pretty much what you might expect. Telling them how much he blames himself, how he knew Mrs C. was incompetent and a menace, how it will need more than, a new head to knock the school into shape, telling them not to make his mistake, get their little Jormnies out before it’s too late . . .’

  ‘My God,’ said Tom Tedder. ‘He seems to be doing a thorough job.’

  ‘He seems to me,’ said Glenda Grower authoritatively, ‘to be very definitely jumping the gun. I never thought to put in a good word for Mother C., but as far as I’ve heard, no one has proved it was her negligence or slovenliness killed the boy.’

  ‘From what I’ve heard,’ said Tom Tedder, ‘it was certainly deliberate. Poison put into the bottle.’

  ‘Either way,’ said Corbett Farraday, ‘that leaves Mrs C. with her trousers down. Sorry, skirts. Nobody but a lunatic would have left that bottle out in the corridor all day.’

  ‘No,’ admitted Glenda. ‘Oh, I can see the man has a pretty big grievance against the Crumwallises. But he does seem to be over-reacting as far as the school as a whole is concerned. Sort of protecting himself, in a way. Because after all, he was pretty chuffed to have the apple of his eye designated as the next head boy, wasn’t he? And that was only a couple of weeks ago.’

  ‘I expect that’s why he’s over-reacting, wouldn’t you think?’ came the sensible voice of Miss Gilberd. ‘Because in a way he had been giving the school his seal of approval. I only hope the other parents manage to see it for what it is.’

  ‘I suppose they may when they sit down and think it over,’ said Glenda Grower. ‘After all, several of the parents have probably got a better idea of what kind of a thug Hilary Frome was than his doting parents seem to have had. There were those that complained to his father about him last year, remember. Boys talk, you know, and some of the mums and dads may well have realized that Hilary was behind all the riot and brouhaha that went on around this place.’

  ‘Quite apart,’ said Makepeace, ‘from what one suspects went on now and then in the lavatwies.’

  ‘That’s a point,’ said Tom Tedder. ‘That’s really a point. After all, some of the parents could have made a nasty stink if they’d known a bit on that subject. That would really have cooked Hilary’s goose. Not, I suppose, that any of the boys would willingly have told, but it might have come out if the boys had been upset by it. Who did he go with? Wattling, I suspect. And of course poor old Pickerage . . .’

  ‘I say,’ came the voice of Corbett Farraday, ‘you don’t suppose Mother Pickerage was trying to blackmail Dr Frome, do you? And he got hold of a cachet of instant poison—who better? it seems to have worked much faster than anything I know of—and slipped it into Pickerage’s medicine to keep the thing quiet.’

  ‘More to the point, I should have thought, to have slipped it to Pickerage’s Mum,’ said Glenda Grower. ‘Which would have desolated nobody, least of all poor little Malcolm. Come on, let’s go home. This is getting us fast into Cloud Cuckoo Land.’

  ‘No, but you know, poor little Malcolm has been looking pretty peaky these last few days,’ pursued Corbett Farraday, like a puppy at a bone much too big for it. ‘Not just since the murder. He’s been sort of thoughtful for days. I noticed it on Monday. I’m sure something must have happened to him over the weekend.’

  Bill Muggeridge let out a coarse suggestion, which, like so many coarse suggestions, was in fact nothing but the truth.

  ‘Really, Bill,’ came Dorothea Gilberd’s shocked tones. ‘You really do . . . Sometimes I . . . Anyway, I won’t believe it. . . I’m sure it was something else altogether . . . I’m sure if someone sympathetic could only talk to Malcolm . . .’

  There were signs from the Common Room of chairs being pushed back, of bag
s and books being collected. Pumfrey gave a sign to Fenniway and they both darted up the corridor and evaporated through the front door. Once outside on the driveway, Pumfrey took a deep breath of fresh air, and then, contrarily, took out his pipe and began stuffing it with tobacco.

  ‘Well!’ he said. ‘That was interesting.’

  ‘Was it?’ said Fenniway, creasing his forehead. ‘Just a lot of speculation really, wasn’t it? Some of it was possibilities we’ve been over already ourselves, and most of the rest was just fantastic.’

  ‘The speculations of suspects are usually pretty revealing,’ said Pumfrey, puffing thoughtfully. ‘What they do and what they don’t speculate on. And then there was that about the poison: something we’d thought about earlier, and which we should have remembered when we heard the aconite was in the medicine, not the sherry. I’m kicking myself that it slipped my mind.’

  Pumfrey walked moodily along the gravel, stubbing his toes into the sandy path. The puffs of smoke rose hectically from his pipe. He walked up and down for several minutes, doing no more than nod at the teachers as they departed one by one. Finally he turned back to Fenniway.

  ‘I’m not sure that we’ll bother with that Muggeridge woman just yet,’ he said.

  ‘Oh? Well, if you say so. Do you mind telling me what it is that you’ve remembered?’

  ‘No. No, I don’t, now I’ve thought it through. Look here, it seems to me that there are two odd things about what happened here last night. Two questions that we ought to have asked ourselves. Here’s question number one: why did Hilary Frome insist on—’

  ‘Excuse me.’

  Mike Pumfrey stopped in his tracks. Looking up at him was a brown, Indian face, surmounting the green blazer and short flannel trousers that were the Burleigh required wear.

  ‘Hello. Who are you, then?’

  ‘I’m Patel. I’m in 3A.’

  Patel was not one of those foreign boys for whom their parents were misguided enough to pay (specially inflated) fees on the assumption that they were giving their heirs an English Public School education. Patel’s father owned a supermarket on the outskirts of Cullbridge, and an Indian delicatessen that supplied most of the best Indian restaurants in a fifty mile radius, as well as catering for the few Cullbridge housewives who gingerly experimented at giving their cooking a modestly oriental flavour. Patel’s father was a first-rate businessman, but his understanding of English institutions was still under-ripe, hence his pride in the private education he was giving his son. But young Patel was very bright, and he was getting the message through: it was unlikely that for his younger sons Mr Patel would lay out so much for so little.