A Javelin for Jonah mb-47

by Gladys Mitchell

  “I’ll do what I can,” promised Hamish, “but, as you know, I spend most of my time at the pool. I’ve got a prospect there, too. It’s Paul-Pierre, that misfit from Nantes who was chucked out of Rendlesbury for knifing the science master. He’s clocking just under eighteen minutes for the fifteen hundred metres free-style. He could get into the next Olympics if he sweats at it.”

  “Yes, for France, though, not for us.”

  “Come, come!” said Hamish. “Think European! What about the Common Market? Besides, I believe I’ve got a second string who is coming along very nicely, or will be, once I can get through to him. Patriotism, although still, in some of its aspects, a dirty word, retains a certain amount of influence on my mind, same as on yours, and this young fellow is a Scot. It took me some little time to spot him. He’s a dour, black-browed character with a chip on his shoulder because he thinks he was unfairly expelled from school. He trains without help and spends most of his time churning out length after length with no regard for speed, style or fatigue, but I believe he’s got what it takes.”

  The youth’s name was Neil. He had no intimates, let alone friends, and, when spoken to, would reply either in the briefest possible manner or not at all.

  “A difficult bloke,” continued Hamish, “but—and this is where patriotism rears its bloody but still unbowed although diminished head—he is a fellow Scot, as I say. Wonder what his surname is?”

  This turned out, upon friendly enquiry, to be Menzies.

  “My mother’s maiden name,” said Hamish, delighted by this coincidence.

  “Aye,” said the scowling youth. “I’ll tell ye this, mon,” he continued, “I could beat yon Froggie over the fifteen hundred.”

  “Paul-Pierre?”

  “Aye.”

  “Well, let’s ask him whether he’d like to try you out. He’ll be Olympic class if he keeps up his training, though, and you’ve never actually timed yourself over the distance, have you?”

  “I can swim his bluidy head off.”

  The match was arranged and Paul-Pierre won it, but so narrowly that Henry, who was watching, was astounded. Paul-Pierre swaggered.

  “I was not really trying, me,” he said. Neil turned and clouted him.

  “We’ll dae it again, when ye are trying,” he said, when the Frenchman scrambled out of the water into which he had been knocked. Paul-Pierre scowled and muttered, and, after that, Hamish arranged so that their training-times did not coincide. Neil, he decided, might be content to say it with fists, but Paul-Pierre’s proved handiness with a knife was not a matter he intended should be displayed in any circumstance over which he himself had control.

  A fortnight later Neil approached him.

  “Gin I apologized to yon Frog for belting him into the water, think you he’d swim me again?”

  “Well, it’s a handsome, manly offer, Neil. I’ll ask him. But it’s to be a proper apology, mind. None of our backhanded Hieland insults.”

  For the first time since Hamish had known him, the boy grinned.

  “That’s a’ richt,” he agreed. Paul-Pierre accepted the apology superciliously but without giving actual offence, and the match was arranged for the following day. In the morning, at the staff breakfast-table, Miss Yale announced that she was off to London for the day to keep a dental appointment.

  “Oh, no, nothing special,” she replied, in response to a kind enquiry from Henry. “Just routine. Don’t suppose he’ll find anything to do. I’ve got teeth like a horse.”

  As this was only too true, nobody knew what to say about it, and Henry hastily went on, “I’m off myself this morning, but I’ll be back for lunch. Got to charm Gottswalds into letting us have that landing-area for the high jump sooner than they think they can give it to us. I’d like to surprise Barry with it when he gets back. He’ll be delighted.”

  “That takes two of us off the field, then,” said Miss Yale. “Can you lend a hand, James?”

  “Only until eleven,” replied Hamish. “I’ve got a timed fifteen hundred metres coming off in the pool, and I must be there, not only stop-watch in hand, but ready to break up the fight which may ensue when the race is over.”

  “Oh, it’s another race, is it?” asked Henry, interested, in his dedicated way, in all that went on in the College. “Sorry I can’t manage to stay and watch.”

  “Yes. Neil has challenged Paul-Pierre again. As P-P. won last time by less than a yard, I think that, this time, Neil might turn the tables.”

  “But if Neil can beat him, he’s an Olympic prospect, isn’t he?” asked the lovely Lesley.

  “We shall see.”

  With two of the staff absent there were to be no lectures that morning, so Hamish went on to the field immediately breakfast was over and watched the long jump as he had promised. Men and girls trained together where the facilities allowed for this, and there was a mixed bag of long-jumpers, some serious-minded, some frivolous, lined up at the top of the runway.

  At the end of the line was Colin, Barry’s prospect for the inter-college record. He was well-built for long-jumping—tall, long-legged, flexible, beautifully muscled and very fast indeed from his starting-mark down to the take-off board. Moreover, he very, very seldom missed the board and, when he did, he was behind it, not over its front edge, and so his jump counted.

  Hamish watched in silence for a bit. Then, while the pit was being raked, he walked over to the line of athletes and said, “I’ve got to get back to the pool soon. I wonder if you’d mind if I concentrated on Colin for two or three jumps?” He turned to the lad himself. “You want to get airborne,” he said. “You could easily add a foot and a half to your jump if you’d manage a higher take-off.”

  At this, Jones, who had left his gymnasts to amuse themselves as they pleased and who had been watching the jumping, came up, hands in pockets, and said unnecessarily, “You’re not too bad, Colin, but you want to jump higher, man. Higher and wider, as the swimming instructor said to the breast-stroke novice who ought to have been corrected, instead, for using a scissor kick. That’s right, isn’t it, Jimmy? A joke, Colin, boy. Where’s your sense of humour?”

  “In abeyance, naturally, while he’s concentrating so hard,” said Hamish. “Get lost, Jonah, old chap. Can’t you see we’re busy? Come on, Colin. One or two more, and then I’ve got to get along to the pool.”

  “I wonder whether it’s any good trying the hurdle again?” said the youth. “I couldn’t manage to get over it when I tried it with Barry, but perhaps it would help me now.”

  The hurdle to which he referred was nothing more than a light cane placed across the long-jump pit and supported on two short uprights. It was so delicately poised that a touch would bring it down. It proved an obstacle which Colin found no help. If he cleared it, he had lost concentration and took feet off the length of his jump; if he took it with him, he was using his old style, but found that striking the light cane was a hindrance because again his concentration was affected.

  “It’s no good, Jimmy,” he said, after his third attempt. “I think I’m better without it.”

  “Oh, I’d stick at it for a time or two,” said Hamish. “But please yourself, of course. Perhaps Barry will come back with some new and more helpful ideas. He’s sure to have been trying to work something out for you while he’s on leave.”

  Hamish walked over to the outdoor pool, cleared it of swimmers and called up his two competitors. Neil was taciturn, Paul-Pierre ill-tempered. The race was a fiasco. At the halfway stage, when Paul-Pierre was half a yard behind, he swam to the side of the bath.

  “Cramp,” he said, in response to Hamish’s enquiry. Neil swam doggedly on, but, without the incentive of competition, failed to make as good a time as on the previous occasion.

  Hamish expected an enquiry from the others as to the result of the race, but found that any interest which might have been shown in it was utterly and entirely eclipsed at lunch-time by news of a serious accident to the long-jumper, Colin.

  Henry h
ad returned and was addressing the staff table as Hamish took his seat. Jones’s place was empty and the atmosphere in the students’ part of the dining-hall was gloomy and menacing.

  “I can’t think what Barry will do when he hears about it,” Henry was saying. “I have his holiday address, so I shall write to him. I am glad I do not have to give him the news by word of mouth.”

  “Barry will murder Jones,” said Jerry, “and quite right, too. What’s Gassie got to say about it?”

  “He doesn’t know yet,” replied Henry. “We’re waiting for a report from the casualty department at the hospital. I’m to ring them up at two. I’ve had to let Colin’s parents know, of course, because he’s been taken to hospital, but I want to hear something quite definite before I worry Gassie.”

  “I do think,” said Lesley, “that you ought to speak to him at once, Henry, just as a precaution in case the news is bad. Pity you couldn’t have been here when it happened. Then you could have heard Jonah’s story at first hand and have something with which to compare Colin’s version.”

  “Where is Jonah now?” asked Celia, who was in College for the afternoon.

  “Down in the village, drowning his sorrows as usual, I expect,” said Martin. “He went belting off in his car half an hour ago. Only hope he’s too scared ever to come back.”

  “What happened exactly?” asked Hamish. “I was out at the pit myself for a bit while Colin was practising. Everything seemed all right then. Jones was advising him to get a bit more flight, but everybody tells him that.”

  “You may well ask what happened,” said Jerry. “That lunatic Jones took it upon himself to coach Colin as soon as you had gone over to the pool. Finding that the cane hurdle didn’t seem to help Colin to get height, what does that gor-blimey fool do but bring over one of those heavy benches which the students sit on when they take off their track-suits or change out of their spikes.”

  “You don’t mean he put a teak bench across the long-jump pit?” asked Hamish incredulously. “Why, Colin comes powering down that run-way at the rate of knots and is going like a bullet when he takes off from the board. No wonder he’s knocked himself out. Jones must be mad!”

  “We’ll be lucky if it’s only broken shins,” said Celia. “I’ve had a bit of nursing experience, and it wouldn’t surprise me if the boy has internal injuries as well. He might have killed himself. Jones is just that much lucky that he didn’t.”

  “But what made Colin fall in with such a crazy idea?” asked Martin. “Did Jonah bully him?”

  “No, he egged him on, according to the girl Clarice, and then, when Colin jibbed, he taunted him with being yellow. Naturally the misguided kid couldn’t stand for that,” said Henry. “Apparently Jonah had worked it out that the very fact that Colin would hurt himself if he didn’t clear the bench would make sure that he did manage to jump over it—only, of course, he didn’t. It seems (again according to our eye-witness) that Colin tore down the runway, took off like a tornado, copped the beastly bench ankle-high, and that was that.”

  “Honestly, Jonah ought to be certified!” said Martin. “You never know what stupid trick he’ll get up to next. Did you hear what he did to one of Celia’s divers?”

  “He shouldn’t be allowed at large,” said Lesley.

  “He ought to be poisoned,” said Jerry.

  “Well, don’t let the students hear you say so. There is more than one who might take the hint,” said Henry. “We’ve got quite a few nut cases here, you know.”

  “I wish one of our psychopaths would lay him out,” said Lesley. “He came into my gym the other day and that silly little Carol took her eye off what she was doing and pulled a muscle because she didn’t make a proper landing. That’s the second one of my special squad he’s managed to lay out. He told Margot to rake the long-jump pit the other day, and she’s slipped a disc. This was before he managed to put Colin out of action. I was absolutely livid about it. ‘There goes the Chronos Vase, and it’s all your fault, you incompetent, poke-nosed, drunken idiot!’ I said to him. ‘Why on earth, if you had to interfere with the long-jump, couldn’t you get one of the men to rake the pit?’

  “ ‘Oh, an osteopath will soon put the wench right,’ says Jonah, ‘or I’ll do a spot of manipulation on her myself, if you like.’ I was so furious with him that I picked up a jumping-rope and swung the leather-covered, sandbagged end of it at his head. He was actually grinning, you know, as though he’d said something clever. ‘I’d like to kill you!’ I said. ‘And I would kill you if I ever found you putting your filthy hands on one of the girls.’ What do you say?” she concluded, turning to Henry.

  “Do your gym squad stand any chance of lifting the Chronos Vase?” asked Henry.

  “Not now we’ve had these accidents.”

  “Then I think,” said Henry, getting up from table, “that, if you do kill him, you are also entitled to dance on the remains.”

  chapter

  3

  Blots on a Copybook

  « ^ »

  Joynings had been established originally by a syndicate of do-gooders who had bought the house and its grounds and had drawn up the College constitution. Gascoigne Medlar was not, in actuality, its first Warden, although he boasted that the College was his own foundation. The first Warden had been appointed by the syndicate. He was a clergyman and a well-meaning idealist, unfitted by nature, upbringing and education to cope with the type of delinquent for whom the original Joynings had been planned. He lasted for nearly a year, but resigned when he had recovered in hospital from an attack by a homicidal member of the junior common room who had disliked his sermons on brotherly love.

  Gascoigne Medlar had not been appointed to take his place. Instead, he had bought the house and grounds when the syndicate, acknowledging failure, had put the property up for sale, had retained such parts of the constitution as appeared advantageous, and had jettisoned the rest. The original students, boys from broken homes for the most part, had been admitted without charge. Gascoigne changed that. He was not interested in delinquents as such, but only in the delinquent but athletic children of wealthy parents. He advertised widely at first, and, when the response came, he charged high fees, having spent much of his own money on improvements. He also paid very high salaries in order to attract a first-class staff. If they turned out to be less than first-class, they went. There was only one exception. Jones, his relative by marriage, Jonah though he turned out to be, was allowed to stay on in spite of his misdemeanours. Staff and students complained, but Gascoigne Medlar was adamant.

  “He is my dear wife’s only living relative,” he would explain. “She would return and haunt me if I ever turned poor Davy adrift. He has nobody in the world but me.”

  “Doesn’t seem in character, old Gasbag taking a stand like that,” said Jerry to Hamish when he was discussing Jones’s latest misadventures. “You’d think, if only for his own sake and the reputation of the College, that he’d cut out the sentimental angle and get rid of the fellow. He’s been nothing but a trouble-maker and a nuisance ever since he’s been here. He spends a third of his time half-bottled, another third chasing the women—Ma Yale has complained more than once on behalf of the girls here—and the rest of his life laying out the best of our athletes through sheer damn interfering idiocy.”

  “Perhaps Gassie feels that Jonah is the victim of his own weaknesses with regard to A and B,” said Martin, who was with them, “and that, so far as C is concerned, Jonah may be misguided but well-meaning.”

  “I doubt whether Barry would support that view,” said Hamish. “The unfortunate old thing will be thirsting for Jonah’s blood over that long-jump accident to Colin. He’ll be very, very angry indeed when he comes back from leave and finds that the lad has been laid out with a couple of broken shins.”

  “He knows about it already. Henry has written to him. Lesley isn’t feeling very sweetly disposed towards Jonah, cither,” said Jerry, “although, personally, I think she overplayed her hand when she
went with a mouthful of curses to plague the Old Man about that idiotic girl of hers. After all, to do blighted Jonah justice, he swears he hadn’t asked the wretched kid to rake the pit, and if Lesley had taught her how to use her muscles correctly, she wouldn’t have dislocated a chunk of her silly little spine, would she?”

  “Well, one might perhaps give him the benefit of the doubt there,” admitted Martin, “but he’s a menace and a misfit, all the same, and, whether he’s Gassie’s relative by marriage or not, I think he ought to be driven out into the wilderness to fend for himself and not live here in the lap of luxury. Why, his quarters are as good as those of Gassie himself, and what does he do to deserve them? He’s supposed to be in charge of the men’s gym, but how much time does he ever spend there? Instead of getting on with his own job, he’s making a thorough pest of himself, one way or another, on the field and the track, or else he’s propping up the bar in the Bricklayers’ Arms. It isn’t good enough, especially in a place like this.”

  The opinion expressed by Martin had been endorsed by Henry, and on more than one occasion. Hamish often thought that Henry was like a small, alert sheepdog, chivvying, but never biting, the lost lambs who formed the bulk of Gascoigne Medlar’s flock. Henry brought to his work a monkish singleness of purpose which was remarkable even among his gifted and dedicated companions. These employed their various talents honestly, cheerfully and without stint. They could not be said to love their charges, but they did well by them. Henry was unique at Joynings in that, with him, it was possible not only to hate the sin but to love the sinner. Except for Gascoigne himself, he was the only member of staff ever to have been married. He had lost his wife under tragic circumstances and had found at Joynings a kind of anodyne. Under him, the College had been transformed from a private, although luxurious, prison into a sought-after and surprisingly successful reformatory.