‘Oh, of course I do,’ Bevan said and sounded more petulant than ever. ‘Of course I do, and so should you if you’ve any sense. Putting guns into those boys’ hands — it’s madness. If this doesn’t put an end to Staveley’s nonsense, nothing will.’
‘Then they’ll try to poison us, do you suppose, Bevan?’ It was Sam Chanter, sounding amused. ‘Or will it be a secret poison gas developed in the school labs and made of a substance undetectable to modern science?’
‘Oh, you can laugh, Chanter,’ Bevan cried shrilly. ‘You can laugh! You weren’t standing next to the bloody man the way I was. You didn’t see what it did to him. It’s easy for you to scoff when you weren’t the target. This time,’ he added with a needle of malice sharpening his whine. ‘Next time maybe it’ll be your turn.’
‘This is ridiculous,’ Collop said. ‘And you’ve got to stop talking such garbage, Bevan. It was an accident and no one can be —’
The door of the common room opened and swung back against the wall with a little thud as the Headmaster came striding in with a great air of purposefulness. It was a moment before they realized that Staveley was behind him.
‘Gentlemen,’ he said and then saw Hattie and looked a little puzzled but went straight on. ‘Gentlemen, I’m afraid this is a dreadful business we have to deal with. Quite dreadful.’
‘How is he?’ Sam asked.
‘Harry Forster’s just come back. Still unconscious, he says. They’ve put him in intensive care, and he seems to be holding his own. My secretary is seeing to the flowers and so forth.’
Hattie couldn’t help it. She let out a little yelp of laughter, and Sam closed one hand unobtrusively over her wrist and she caught her breath and managed to suppress it. Flowers — oh, God, flowers!
‘The police are still going over the site. They’ve checked the kits and the guns.’
‘Oh, Christ!’ Staveley said loudly and rubbed his face with one hand. He looked much older than he had this morning, Hattie thought, and wanted to go and take his arm and lead him to a chair, he looked so ill. But she stayed where she was. The Headmaster was running on as though Staveley hadn’t spoken.
‘They say they can see no evidence of anything at all wrong there, and now they’re taking the guns to their own people to be checked. To see if the aiming mechanisms were properly aligned …’ He waved one hand in a general sort of way, clearly not knowing anything about guns and how they might be checked. ‘But they seem to think it was an unfortunate accident. A ricochet.’ He nodded then, liking the word. ‘A ricochet.’
‘It couldn’t be anything else,’ Staveley said, and now he seemed to have regained some of his energy. He pushed his way further into the room past the Headmaster and looked round at them. ‘How could it be anything else? A dreadful one-in-a-million chance, a ricochet, could have happened to anyone.’
‘You were using live ammunition,’ Sam said. ‘Is that the usual thing?’
‘Well, of course it is. Sometimes. I mean it was target practice. A display. We had to do it the right way; no use if they never find out how the real thing works, is it? We’re training them, it’s a Cadet Training Force, remember, they’re learning —’
‘Learning to use live ammunition to shoot up people’s faces,’ Sam said woodenly and Staveley turned upon him, almost whimpering.
‘It’s all very well for you to go on at me, as though it was my fault. All of you, you’re all the same, the police were the same and you, Headmaster, you too, as if it was my fault. I can’t be blamed for a ricochet, it could happen to anyone —’
‘You sanctioned the use of live ammunition, though, Staveley. I didn’t know about that,’ the Headmaster said and looked briefly at Hattie as though wanting her to agree with him. ‘Had I been consulted I could never have agreed, but there it is. I left all that to you as you were so keen, and I have learned a painful lesson.’
‘It could have happened to anyone!’ Staveley shouted and the Headmaster patted his arm soothingly and said, ‘Yes, of course, my dear chap, we all understand. You’ve had a dreadful shock, no one understands better than we do, a dreadful shock. Perhaps you could help him to feel better, Mrs Clements, get him to lie down.’ And he looked round the cluttered staff common room as though it would suddenly metamorphose into a hospital ward where Hattie could take care of Staveley.
‘I’m not shocked! I mean, yes, of course I’m upset, anyone would be, but it wasn’t my fault. You could as easily say it was your fault for wanting me to set up a display for Founder’s Day! Yes, it could be said to be the Founder’s fault — no one can say I had anything to do with it.’
‘Of course, Staveley. Do sit down now, relax. You’ve had a difficult day.’ Carefully, the Headmaster didn’t look at the old man who stood there and shook his head and muttered again under his breath. ‘It wasn’t my fault, it wasn’t my fault.’
‘Well, there it is. We must wait and pray for poor Tully and hope all will be well for him. I have of course cancelled the performance of The Taming of the Shrew tonight, Collop. You hadn’t, I’m sure —’
‘I had expected something of the sort, Headmaster.’ Collop sounded a little sardonic. ‘Especially as I saw several of the cast leaving with their parents.’ He looked over his shoulder out of the window into the quadrangle where now the last stragglers had vanished and just the two policemen stood at the gate looking tired. ‘Am I to keep the production ticking over, as it were, with occasional performances so that we can do it later? Or shall we leave it to bite the dust like poor old Tully?’
‘Good gracious, Tully isn’t — I mean, the comparison is hardly — really, I can’t think of such matters now. We can discuss that tomorrow. I’m leaving now. The police have taken my statement — not that it was of much use, since I was in my office with some of the Councillors at the time — and want to talk to all of you. Then you can go. Goodnight.’ And he turned and went with what would have been a scuttle in a man less elegantly made, and left them all standing staring after him.
‘If you’re ever shipwrecked make sure you do it with our revered boss,’ Collop said. ‘And make sure you get into the same boat he does. Born survivor if ever I saw one.’
‘Police?’ Bevan said fretfully. ‘Haven’t I had enough of a shock today without having police to worry me? Haven’t I suffered sufficiently, being a target of these hooligans and —’ He stopped then and brightened visibly. ‘Protection, that’s the thing. They’ll have to protect me, won’t they? All of us. With homicidal maniacs running around the school.’
‘Oh, such stuff!’ Harriet said loudly and they all turned and looked at her, a little surprised. They’d forgotten she was there, probably, she thought savagely. ‘There are no maniacs in the school any more than there are in here, and to suggest those boys are to blame for what happened this afternoon is outrageous.’
‘Oh, yes, the police will protect us.’ Bevan was pulling on his coat, ignoring Hattie completely. ‘That’s the ticket. I’ll see them first, explain, they’ll see the sense of it, I’m sure —’ And he went, and Collop laughed.
‘Survivor number two. It’ll be a crowded boat, won’t it? No room for the rest of us.’
‘He has a point,’ Wilton said. He looked wretched, his skin damp and sallow, his eyes baggy and mournful. He’s had a worse fright than Bevan, Hattie thought, wondering why. What makes him think he’s a target? Bevan’s just a self-centred pig who only ever thinks of himself, but I thought Wilton had more sense. ‘I mean there was a gun and someone fired it and it did hit a master. A bit too coincidental, isn’t it? You know how the boys are about us.’
‘I thought Tully was rather well liked, actually,’ Sam said lightly. ‘Just as you are. They think you’re a wimp, of course, but they don’t dislike you.’
Wilton looked at him and there was a flicker of gratitude in his gaze, and then he looked away, wretched again. It was Collop who answered.
‘Tully had a few cronies. A regular collector of Gavestons, was Tully. The on
es he liked he liked, and they knew it and hung around him. The others …’ He shook his head. ‘He was as heartily disliked as I am. And you can’t say worse than that.’ He looked almost proud of his unpopularity.
‘Gavestons?’ Hattie was diverted and Collop flicked a glance at her.
‘Never mind, my dear. Don’t you worry your pretty little head over it. Just you stick to your poultices and potions, or whatever it is you dispense. Leave the history and the drama to us.’
‘Gaveston was the favourite of King Edward II,’ Sam said quietly. ‘A highly dubious character and not at all relevant, I’d have said. Unless you have other evidence, Collop?’
Collop shrugged. ‘Not to say evidence. But it was common school gossip that Tully liked a lad or two about him of a cold night. Certainly he played favourites.’
‘Daniel Spero wasn’t one of them,’ Hattie said sharply, and then frowned as a confused thought came to her. She remembered Gaveston now, and understood the reference; was Collop suggesting that Tully had been shot at by one of the boys who had a homosexual crush on him, and cause to be jealous? Had Daniel been a boy who’d once been a favourite and then been dropped? Had that been the reason for his desperate behaviour? There was a lot to think about there.
‘All this is the most ridiculous nonsense,’ Sam said strongly. ‘Sitting around conjecturing like this will get no one anywhere. I’m going to see if the police are ready to talk to me. Hattie? What about you? I dare say you’re as eager to leave as I am. It hasn’t been an exactly agreeable day.’
Gratefully she went with him, pulling on her coat as she went, holding her bag awkwardly under her chin as she did so.
‘Sam, do you think it was deliberate?’ she said when at last she could speak. They were hurrying along the bottom corridor towards the gatehouse where the police had set up their office for the moment. ‘Do you think it was what Collop said?’
‘A sex thing? No, I don’t. I think it was an accident.’
‘But —’ Hattie stopped still and made him do so too and he turned to look at her. ‘But suppose I tell you that someone — that there had been an intention to — not to do with sex, or not as far as I know, but — Oh, I don’t know how to explain this without starting something I don’t want to. I mean, I’m not sure I’m right to —’
‘You sound like a third-former trying to get out of games or explaining why he hadn’t done his prep,’ Sam said dispassionately. ‘Try again.’
She looked at him and then knew she had to tell someone, and who else was there?
‘Arse. Arse and one of my girls. They’d set a trap for the shooters.’
She explained as succinctly as she could and he listened and didn’t interrupt, for which she was grateful. And then, when she ended with a rather breathless ‘… and now I don’t know what to think. Could it have been they who did this to Tully? Or was it just a ghastly coincidental accident?’, stood and thought for a while.
‘What do you think is most likely?’ he said eventually. ‘An accident or a very clever double bluff? Telling you about the pepper so that it looks as though they couldn’t have done anything worse than that?’
She thought carefully too, and then said, ‘I think it was an accident. I know Arse is a great deal brighter than lots of people think and that he keeps his mind to himself, and I know Dilly’s a bright enough girl. But I don’t think they’re clever enough for that. It’s the wrong sort of cleverness, isn’t it? Devious and — No. It’s not the sort of thing they’d do. The pepper — that was totally believable. I mean, as soon as Dilly said it I knew it was true and they’d done it. It’s in character. But real bullets aimed at real heads, even Tully’s — I can’t see them thinking that way or behaving that way.’
‘Neither can I. I’ve never been one to go for conspiracy theories, and I’m glad you don’t seem to either. Last refuge of a foolish mind, always to look for conspiracies. But all the same, there’s something a bit odd here.’
‘Odd?’
‘If they doctored some of the bullets with pepper, how come the police haven’t found them? We’d have heard if they had. I doubt there’s anything that’s happened here this afternoon that wasn’t known about by everyone on the premises within a matter of minutes, the way news travels here. So how come no one said anything about pepper this afternoon when the checks and investigations of the Cadets’ guns was going on?’
‘Perhaps the police kept it a secret?’ She tried her thoughts aloud, not evaluating them before she spoke. ‘No, that won’t do. No need for it, really. Or is there? Do they think it’ll be easier to catch the people who did it if they keep quiet?’
‘Maybe,’ Sam said.
Hattie stared at him. ‘Oh, Lord, what do we do then? Tell them or not? If they haven’t found it, then —’
‘Then Dilly was winding you up with a tall tale and you’ll look a complete ass. Is that what you’re thinking?’
‘Something along those lines.’
‘And if they have found it, then you have a civic duty to tell them who did it so that they can be questioned, in case they’re involved in what happened to Tully.’
‘You’ve got it again. So what do I do?’ She rubbed her face and it felt numb. I’m tired, she thought. Very tired indeed. ‘It’s hell, this place. Always secrets to keep …’
‘Oh?’ he said. ‘What secrets?’
She felt her face go hot. ‘Oh, nothing much; it’s just that they tell me things, the kids …’
‘Important things?’
‘I can’t say.’ She managed a sort of laugh. ‘I mean, I said it was secret, didn’t I?’
‘Well, you’d better be careful. Keeping a child’s confidence is one thing. Colluding with them in wrong-doing is something else. Don’t you think?’
Her face became even hotter and she was very aware of the fact that he was watching her closely. ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Sam! One thing has nothing to do with another. We were talking about pepper in bullets and who put it there and —’
‘And you were talking about collecting other facts about some of the things that happen here that might be linked.’ He lifted his brows at her. ‘Weren’t you? If the secrets you mentioned hadn’t been in some way similar to this affair, you wouldn’t have thought to mention them. They bracketed themselves naturally in your mind.’
‘How do you know what goes on in my mind?’ She was angry now and encouraged the feeling. It would give her a good reason to be red in the face. ‘You’re taking a bit much on yourself, aren’t you?’
He stood very still and said nothing and then sighed. ‘I suppose so. Sorry.’
‘That’s all right.’ She didn’t look at him and started to walk again. ‘Well, I suppose there’s only one thing I can do.’
‘Tell the police?’
‘No. And neither will you, if you please. It wouldn’t be right.’
‘Not right? It might be very germane indeed to what happened here this afternoon.’
‘I know. But I’m going to talk to Dilly and Arse first. That’s the right way to do it, isn’t it? Find out from them what happened? They’re entitled to that much, I would have thought. And to a warning that the police will be told if I’m not happy with what they say.’
‘And Tully’s entitled to have the police find out what happened to blow half his face to a pudding,’ Sam said mildly, so that his words seemed even uglier than they were. ‘And I’m concerned about that. So I’ll make a deal with you. You’ll have to accept it because now you’ve told me about what Arse and Dilly did with the ammunition I’m in the same situation you are — with information the police ought to have but without any promise of confidentiality made to them to shackle me. But I’ll respect your delicacy about young feelings and wait till you’ve talked to them. But after that, I claim the right to act as I think I should. You’re not the only one with a conscience, Hattie. I can grapple with ethical considerations as well as you. So, when do we speak to them? I’d suggest the sooner the better. You
agree?’
Twenty
‘Yes,’ Dilly said. ‘I see.’ But she didn’t open the door any wider.
‘We have to talk about it. Under the circumstances. Don’t we?’ Hattie heard the note of appeal that had crept into her voice and tried to sound a little more brisk. ‘So we thought it best to waste no time, but come to see you. May we come in?’
Dilly looked over her shoulder briefly and then, a little unwillingly, stood back. ‘I suppose so.’
They followed her into the hall of the small flat and stood there awkwardly looking at her. There was a smell of elderly cooking oil and fish and French cigarettes and the place looked dull, as though a sheen of dust lay everywhere. Hattie took a deep breath and began to pull off her coat.
‘It’s warm in here. Very cosy,’ she said lightly and looked around for somewhere to hang it. ‘May I — ?’
Dilly took it from her a little sulkily and then held out her hand for Sam’s coat. He gave it to her and nodded gravely and said, ‘I’m sorry about this.’
‘Not as sorry as I am,’ Dilly said sharply. ‘How’d you know Viv would be here?’
‘Vivian? He’s here?’ Hattie felt a weight lift from her back. The thought of persuading Dilly to get him to come to her home, or to allow her and Sam to go to his so that both of them could be quizzed, had been a worrying one. Maybe it would all turn out all right after all, she thought with sudden optimism, seeing good omens about her. ‘That’s great.’
‘Is it? You’d better come in.’
Dilly turned and led them to the end of the narrow hallway, pushed open the door round which a brighter rim of light had been gleaming and led them into the living room. It was cluttered and shabby and stuffy with the smells of food and cigarettes, which were stronger in here. There was an electric fire burning in the grate, and on the rug in front of it the boy Hattie could only think of as Arse was sitting on his heels, staring at the door watchfully.
His face showed no movement but there was a moment of panic in him, Hattie was sure; she could smell it. And she smiled at him as reassuringly as she could, for he looked very young and vulnerable crouched there at her feet.
Dangerous Things Page 21
