Murder Has No Class

by Rebecca Kent

  “Nevertheless, considering there are four tutors in this establishment, it seems feasible to expect at least one other person able to lend a hand. After all, in such cases, surely two figures of authority would present a more forceful deterrent to unacceptable behavior?”

  “That isn’t always possible. When we are taking classes we can’t be forever running back and forth at someone’s beck and call. It is therefore imperative that one learn to assess an unfortunate situation and act on a viable decision instead of crying for help at the slightest sign of discord. Miss Montrose should be every bit as accountable as the rest of us, and I refuse to make an exception in her case.”

  As always, whenever she so much as hinted that he gave preferable treatment to Sylvia, Hamilton’s eyebrows drew together. “All that comes with experience,” he said shortly. “Miss Montrose hasn’t been here long enough to gain that kind of authority.”

  Meredith thinned her lips. “I think she has been here quite long enough.” The words were out before she had considered them. Dismayed at her rashness, she waited for Stuart’s reply.

  Instead of responding, however, he got to his feet and tugged down the hem of his coat. “I can see you are exhausted by your engagement this afternoon, whatever that was. I shall leave you now to recover.” He spun around and strode to the door.

  Just as she was beginning to breathe easier, he turned, one hand on the doorjamb. “Just as a warning,” he said quietly. “I do not appreciate being opposed without just cause. Nor do I appreciate being left in the dark about certain activities of my headmistress. I shall let it go for now, but I think you should know that my tolerance is wearing thin. Good day to you, Meredith.”

  Before she could answer him, the door had closed behind him.

  Only then did she realize that he had failed to mention the matter of interest that had brought him to the school that afternoon.

  Uttering a guttural sound in her throat, she picked up a ledger and flung it at the door. The resulting thud helped calm her temper, and she rose to retrieve the fallen book.

  As she did so, a familiar sight brought her to a halt. Staring into the corner of the room, she said loudly, “What do you want now?”

  The pink mist swirled around itself, spinning gradually into a frothy cloud, until eventually the figure of James Stalham appeared in the middle.

  It took Meredith a moment or two to realize that the mist had not turned red this time. Eying the apparition warily, she announced, “I have just visited the Stalham estate.”

  James nodded.

  “I now believe that you did not kill your father.”

  For a moment the mist turned red at the edges, and she hurried to reassure him. “I am doing my best to find out what really happened that night.” She hesitated, as he continued to stare at her, then added, “I think perhaps Pauline Suchier might have shot your father.”

  James violently shook his head.

  Frustrated, she stared at him. “You disagree? How could you know for certain that Miss Suchier was not responsible for your father’s death? You said yourself at the trial that she was the subject of an argument between you and Lord Stalham.”

  This time, while shaking his head again, James raised his hands and waved them as if dismissing someone.

  Meredith narrowed her eyes. “Do you know something, perhaps, that didn’t come out at the trial?”

  This time she was rewarded with a nod. “So please, tell me what it is.”

  James began mouthing words, and she stopped him with a raised hand. “I can’t read your lips.” She sighed in frustration. “I don’t know why I can’t when I can read everyone else’s, but I can’t, so you will have to find another way to tell me what you know.”

  James responded by flattening his palm as if he were pressing against a wall.

  Meredith frowned. “I don’t understand. What are you doing? Opening a door?”

  James shook his head, and pushed his palm farther away from him. When Meredith failed to react, he kept bringing up his hand and pushing it out until finally she cried out, “I don’t understand what you are doing!”

  At that moment a loud rapping on the door made her jump out of her skin. “Meredith?” It was Felicity’s voice and she sounded concerned. “Are you all right?” The door opened, and her friend peered in. “What are you doing in here? Talking to yourself?”

  Meredith glanced over at the corner, but as she’d expected, the mist had vanished. “Not exactly,” she said carefully.

  Felicity’s expression changed. “You were talking to the ghost.”

  “Shhh!” Meredith put a finger against her lips. “Someone might hear you.”

  “There’s nobody here to hear me.” Felicity came all the way into the room. “What did the dratted thing do this time?”

  Meredith sighed. “James didn’t do anything. At least, he tried to tell me something, but I couldn’t understand what it was.”

  Felicity made a face. “That’s a shame. He could be telling you who killed his father, and you could be finished with all this sleuthing.”

  “Oh, if only that were so.” Meredith’s stomach growled again, reminding her that she hadn’t eaten anything since midday. “I think we should go to the kitchen and find out what Mrs. Wilkins has left for us.”

  “Good idea. I’m so hungry I could eat a cow.” Felicity held up her hand as Meredith started for the door. “But first, I’d like to know what Hamilton had to say. That’s if you’re at liberty to tell me.”

  Meredith didn’t like the gleam in her friend’s eyes. “Why wouldn’t I be? Anything that Mr. Hamilton says to me I most certainly can pass along to you. I assume the students told you what happened in the dining room this evening?”

  “I heard there was a food fight, and things got a little noisy. Until Hamilton arrived and ordered everyone to their rooms.”

  “Yes, well, that’s what he told me.” Meredith walked to the door. “He was also extremely displeased that the three of us had left Sylvia Montrose alone to handle things. He said she wasn’t prepared for such an awesome responsibility.”

  She hadn’t been able to keep the resentment out of her voice and Felicity grunted in disgust. “Is that man so obtuse he can’t see past his nose? If you ask me, he knows he made a mistake in hiring her, as well as that disgusting Roger Platt, and simply refuses to acknowledge his misjudgment. He really is quite insufferable. Then again, I haven’t yet met a man who isn’t intolerable.”

  Meredith was inclined to agree that there was some truth to Felicity’s observations about Stuart’s defense of his choices, but her complaining stomach wouldn’t allow her to dwell on it now. “Where is Essie? She needs to put some food in her stomach, too, or she won’t be able to sleep tonight.”

  Felicity stepped out into the hallway. “She went down to the kitchen while I came looking for you. She was faint from hunger and I thought it best to send her along.”

  “Very considerate of you.” Meredith closed the door to her office. “Now let’s join her, before we both collapse.”

  Chapter 13

  “We have to call off the protest,” Grace said, as she pulled a plate out of the steaming water in the kitchen sink and handed it to Olivia. “Now that all the students are in detention all weekend, they can’t possibly go to the village. Everyone will be watching to make sure nobody leaves the rooms.”

  Olivia smacked the plate down on the draining board so hard Grace was sure it would break. “I’m not going to give up the plan. We have to think of a way to get them out of the school without anyone seeing them.”

  “How are you going to do that?”

  “I don’t know. But I’ll think of something.”

  Grace frowned as she dug into the dishwater again. Swirling her fingers around to find the knives and forks, she wished with all her heart that Olivia would, at the very least, postpone the protest. She couldn’t see what difference it made if they waited another week. Though come to think of it, without the May Day ce
lebrations it would be a lot harder to escape the eagle eye of P.C. Shipham. The detestable village constable had a nasty habit of turning up at the worst possible moment.

  She dragged a handful of cutlery out of the water and dropped it onto the draining board. Either way, she thought gloomily, they were heading for trouble and she was going to be right in the middle of it. As usual.

  “I’ve got it!” Olivia shouted, making Grace jump so hard she dropped a saucer. It sunk back into the water, luckily without shattering.

  “What exactly have you got?” Mrs. Wilkins asked from the doorway.

  Grace uttered a squeak of dismay and Olivia shook her head at her. “I’ve got the plate she nearly dropped,” she said, holding it up. “Look, it’s all in one piece.”

  The cook advanced into the kitchen, a frown creasing her face. “Just as well,” she muttered, as she headed for the pantry. “What with all the plates that got smashed, we’ll be lucky to have enough for breakfast tomorrow. I can’t imagine what got into those girls tonight. Something must have set them off.”

  Grace and Olivia exchanged glances. Just before Stuart Hamilton had roared his commands, Grace had heard the girls chanting. There was not a single doubt in her mind that the brawl had started because of the proposed protest. Whenever the subject of women’s rights came up, emotions tended to get stirred up. Some of the students thought that the suffragettes were disgracing the image of women, and were violently opposed to the protests. Invariably that caused some fierce arguments on both sides.

  Grace stared at her friend and mouthed, “Now what?”

  Olivia raised a closed fist in the air. “We still go,” she mouthed back.

  Mrs. Wilkins emerged from the pantry carrying a tray of sandwiches. “You two, get back up to the dining room and clean up that mess up there. It all has to be spick- and-span before any of us get to bed tonight.”

  “What about the washing up?” Grace asked, pointing a finger at the stack of dirty dishes.

  “Put them all in the sink to soak.” The cook laid the tray on the table. “By the time you get back they’ll be clean and you can leave them to drain on the draining board. You can put them away in the morning.”

  Grace wiped her hands on her apron, while Olivia threw down her tea towel.

  “First thing in the morning, mind,” the cook called after them as they rushed for the door. “And take oil lamps with you. All the gas lamps have been turned off in there.”

  “Yes, Mrs. Wilkins!” they chorused together, then fled for the dining room.

  Arriving breathless at the door, Grace pushed it open. Holding up her lamp, she walked inside and up to the first table. The chaos that met her eyes made her gasp. The remains of food lay everywhere, splattered all over the benches and the floor—even on the walls. Broken dishes lay scattered about and someone had taken off her shirtwaist and thrown it up over a rung of the gas chandelier.

  Grace’s eyes widened. “Look at that. It’s a wonder it didn’t catch fire and burn the place down.”

  Olivia set her lamp down on the end of the table, making it even easier to see the mess created by the rebelling students. “I know. I saw it when we were in here before. That’s what gave me the idea.”

  Grace frowned at her. “What idea?”

  “The idea of how we can get the girls out of here without being noticed.”

  “And how, exactly, are we going to do that?”

  “It’s easy.” Olivia grinned, her teeth reflecting white in the flickering light from her lamp. “We start a fire. While everyone is in here trying to put it out, we smuggle our protestors out the back door.”

  Speechless, Grace could only stand staring at her with her mouth open. She must not have heard right. Surely, surely, Olivia wasn’t planning on burning down the school just to hold a protest?

  “This is so kind of you, Mrs. Wilkins.” Meredith helped herself to another sandwich and glanced at Felicity and Essie, both of whom were munching away as if it were to be their last meal.

  “Not at all, Mrs. Lewellyn. Happy to do it, I’m sure.” If the cook was curious as to why all three tutors were in her kitchen late in the evening, eating sandwiches instead of a nice meal, she gave no indication. “If you’ll excuse me, though, I think I’ll toddle off to bed. I have to be up early in the morning.”

  Feeling a little guilty about keeping her working so late, Meredith waved her hand. “Oh, please, do go. We will tidy up here when we’re finished.”

  “Oh, don’t bother. The maids will see to it.” The cook smiled. “It will keep them out of mischief. Those two can be quite a headache at times, that they can.”

  “It does seem, though, that Olivia and Grace have been behaving themselves quite well lately.” Meredith placed the thick, roast pork sandwich on her plate. “I hope they learned their lesson from the last time they were in trouble.”

  “Oh, I certainly hope so, m’m.” Mrs. Wilkins placed a hand over her heart and walked back to the table, making Meredith wish she had ended the conversation, leaving her free to eat her sandwich. “But I can’t help feeling they’re up to something again. They’ve had their heads together quite a few times lately, and then they shut up whenever I get near them. That’s not a good sign.”

  Meredith felt a pang of uneasiness. “No, it isn’t. I’ve noticed the students are a little restless, too, but I put it down to the approach of summer. This time of year always seems to stir their blood, for some reason.”

  “Yes, m’m. Well, I just hope that’s all it is this time. I gave both the maids a good talking to, I did, and I hope they took it to heart. They are so caught up in this women’s rights movement these days. All this nonsense is going to get them put in jail, I told them. Then where would they be? Mr. Hamilton would never let them come back here once they got out, that’s for certain.”

  At the mention of Hamilton’s name, Meredith paled. “Well, keep a stern eye on them, Mrs. Wilkins. Let us hope this is no more than a case of spring fever.”

  “Amen.” Mrs. Wilkins crossed herself and left.

  “What was all that about?” Felicity reached for a bacon sandwich.

  “I don’t know,” Meredith said slowly, “but I have a rather nasty feeling that something is brewing in the wind. We had better stay on our toes, ladies, or we might once again have cause to bring the wrath of Mr. Hamilton down on our heads.”

  Having slept through the night without any interruptions from the ghost of James Stalham, Meredith arose the next morning feeling a little more optimistic. The sun was shining, the birds sang in the trees outside her window, and today was the first of May. Summer, with all its glorious warm sunshine, the tennis and croquet tournaments, perhaps an afternoon or two punting on the river and walks among the fragrant blossoms in the gardens, was only a few weeks away.

  Throwing open her window, Meredith pulled in a deep, deep breath of cool, fresh air. It smelled of newly cut grass and the fragrance of lilac. It was Saturday. Time for a nice walk in the grounds to see what Tom, the gardener, had been planting lately.

  She turned back to the room, her gasp rising in her throat when she saw the pink mist swirling in the corner. “Oh, no. Not you again.”

  James seemed agitated, and kept disappearing, only to appear for a brief moment before vanishing again in the folds of the pink cloud.

  Alarmed, Meredith edged closer to him. “Wait, don’t go.”

  Her powers had an unfortunate way of weakening just at the crucial time when she needed the contact the most.

  Staring at the thinning mist, she held out her hand. “Be strong, James. I know I haven’t made much progress, but I’ll keep trying. I’ll go back there and talk to Smithers.”

  At her mention of the butler, the mist grew dense and dark. Angry red coils of vapor spiraled around the image of the aristocrat. His eyes burned with hostility, and his lip curled, baring his teeth and frightening Meredith out of her wits.

  “I take it you don’t like Smithers,” she said, shrinking back
when James raised his fist and punched the air. “Well, I don’t like him, either. Is there any specific reason you hate him so?”

  James grabbed his throat, tilted his head on one side, and stuck out his tongue.

  Immediately Meredith felt remorse. “Oh, of course. It was because of his testimony that you were convicted.”

  James straightened his head, his eyes flashing in agreement.

  He mouthed something and she shook her head.

  “I’m sorry, I—”

  She broke off as James cupped a hand over his mouth, then flapped his fingers against his thumb and violently shook his head.

  “You’re saying he lied!” she said, with a rush of triumph. “I know. He lied about someone else being there that night. Pauline Suchier was there.”

  James nodded, then began to fade rapidly into the swirling folds of the mist.

  “And your mother,” Meredith added.

  For a brief moment James’s face registered shock and disbelief, and then he was gone, the remnants of the mist curling down to the floor before disappearing altogether.

  He hadn’t known. Meredith walked over to her bed and sat down. If Lady Clara had been at the house that night, James had no knowledge of it. Why hadn’t his mother spoken up when Smithers lied on the stand? Did she really believe her son was guilty of murder? Or had Winnie been mistaken about who she’d seen that night?

  She should talk to Lady Clara, Meredith thought, as she climbed to her feet. But that meant a trip to London, and that wouldn’t be possible until half term, which was still six weeks away.

  She would go back to the estate instead, alone this time, and confront Smithers with what she knew. It might also help if she had a word with Inspector Dawson. He might be able to give her some advice. He was far more approachable than P.C. Shipham and, being his superior, in a better position to advise her.