by M. J. Trow
‘No.’ Pearcey was adamant. ‘Couldn’t be the school.’
‘Why not?’
‘Look, Lestrade, I’ve got strict orders from upstairs. All the way upstairs. Leave the school alone.’
Lestrade leaned towards him. ‘Well, Pearcey, I have no such orders. Don’t you think it odd that a girl should be murdered in a school laundry, that there should be no sign of forced entry to the laundry and that you go nowhere near the place?’
‘Like I said, I’ve got my orders.’
Lestrade stood up. ‘Right. If I were you, Pearcey, I’d conduct a discreet but careful enquiry into why “upstairs” doesn’t want you messing around St Rhadegund’s. It might pay some dividends. And then,’ he tapped the Inspector on the shoulder, ‘I’d get rid of that chip if I were you.’
By the time Lestrade arrived at Rhadegund Hall it was already dusk. The air was clear and the wind sharp, gusting with icy barbs around cloister and Donegal. A little begowned figure stood in the leeward angle of the Fives Court, flitting nervously like a confused bat, watching the hansom as it rattled round the drive and into the outer quadrangle. The bat swooped and darted through the limes and privet hedges and hailed the Inspector.
‘Mr Lestrade?’
‘Yes.’
‘Saunders-Foote. With a hyphen. Classics.’
‘Mr Foote-Classics.’ Lestrade shook his hand, fumbling in his pocket with the other one. ‘Oh dear, I appear to have no change.’
‘Oh, allow me.’ The classics master handed a clutch of coins to the cabbie who solemnly bit them one by one before reining up and driving away. After all, the man was a teacher. You couldn’t be too careful.
‘I’m so glad you’ve come,’ said Saunders-Foote.
‘I wasn’t aware anyone knew I was coming.’
‘Your fame, sir, goes before you.’ He held Lestrade’s arm and the stars and gaslight from the windows shone in his spectacles. ‘There’s been another one, you know.’
‘Another?’ Lestrade stiffened even more in the chill blast and he felt his neck lock even tighter.
‘Poor Denton. This way.’ Lestrade shuffled through the gathered gloom in the classics master’s wake, both of them flapping, with gown and Donegal, like old sheets in a drying yard. They passed the hallowed First Eleven Square, Saunders-Foot glancing nervously up to the leaded windows above, past which dimly lit figures moved as in a dream. There was a whistling hiss punctuated by a scream, then a moan. Lestrade’s step faltered. He knew the sound of Actual Bodily Harm when he heard it.
‘I beg of you,’ gabbled Saunders-Foot, ‘do not look that way. It’s the Headmaster’s study and it’s . . .’ he gulped, ‘the flogging hour.’
‘Do you not approve of flogging, Mr Foote-Classics?’ Lestrade asked, peering ahead to where the dark line of trees heralded the edge of the jungle around this oasis of civilisation.
Saunders-Foote shuddered. ‘Barbaric,’ he said. ‘Rivalling the excesses of Caligula at his worst.’
Lestrade supposed Caligula to have been the old man’s own headmaster many years ago.
‘Did you know they’ve abolished flogging in the Army, Mr Lestrade?’
Lestrade did know that.
‘Yet in the great English public schools it goes on unabated. And there’s worse . . .’
‘Worse, Mr Foote-Classics?’ Lestrade would have probed deeper, but suddenly felt a sickening crack around the head and went down heavily.
‘Oh dear.’ Saunders-Foote grovelled in the grass trying to find Lestrade. ‘I’m afraid you’ve walked into one of our rugby posts, Mr Lestrade. I keep asking Carman to paint them white. Of course, he’s always . . .’
‘In the rhododendron bushes,’ groaned Lestrade. ‘Yes, I remember.’ He was euphoric for a moment when he realised his head no longer leaned to the right. Now it positively lunged to the left. Such was life.
‘Are you all right?’ Saunders-Foote asked, dusting the man down.
‘I’ll see Matron later,’ Lestrade comforted him, dabbing at the bloodied temple.
‘Oh, I fear she’ll be no use,’ Saunders-Foote fretted. ‘I am quite sure Denton is dead. This way.’
Lestrade was warier now At least there weren’t likely to be any rugby posts in the woods. Conversely of course, the odds against trees were rather diminished. Even a city dweller like Lestrade knew what they had in common – their hardness and their tendency not to move out of the way.
‘Down here.’ The little classics master’s even littler legs scrambled down a series of banks and ravines. From below, Lestrade heard the rush and roar of a stream, swollen after the recent rains and crashing tempestuously over shiny green rocks. It was several bramble slashes later that Lestrade knelt in the soggy bracken, a veritable wreck of a man, knowing all over again why he hated the countryside.
‘There!’ Saunders-Foote pointed a quaking finger and turned away, sobbing hysterically.
Lestrade peered through the black tangle of trees, praying for a bull’s-eye. He patted the pulsating pedant kneeling by his side and stumbled forward. Just in time he clutched clumps of grass, overhanging roots and branches and a lot of thin air and prevented himself from slithering into the seething foam below. Hooked grotesquely on an uprooted tree lay the body of a man, the water hissing and swirling around his waist. Like Lestrade’s, his head lay to the left, his eyes shut tight, a pair of shattered spectacles hooked on a chain around his neck. Even in the near darkness Lestrade could see he was a young man, perhaps mid-twenties and limply good looking in an odd sort of way. He crawled back up to Saunders-Foote.
‘Who is he?’ he asked.
‘Is?’ Saunders-Foote exploded. ‘You mean he’s alive?’
‘No, I’m afraid not,’ Lestrade had to tell him.
The older man sank back, sobbing, above the roar and gurgle of the stream. ‘Anthony Denton, poor boy. Such a fine spirit. Such a noble Denton.’
‘Yes, yes.’ Lestrade could do without the eulogy. ‘Is he a master?’
Saunders-Foote nodded. ‘Classics, like myself.’
Lestrade was confused. ‘He was related to you?’
Even in his grief, Saunders-Foote sensed the idiocy. ‘No, I mean he taught the classics – you know, Latin and Greek. Homer, Aristotle, Plato, Livy.’
‘Of course.’ Lestrade could not remember any of those in the Penny Dreadfuls. Still, education was so progressive these days. And he did know Plato was a planet. ‘How long had he been with you?’
‘About an hour. We usually walked above the river after luncheon.’
‘No, I mean at the school. How long had he been at Saint Rhadegund’s?’
‘Oh, this was his first term. I had become . . .’ he sobbed convulsively ‘. . . very attached.’
Lestrade lifted the little man up. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘We can’t do much here until first light. Let’s get back to the school. I’d like Matron to patch me up and Dr Nails . . .’
‘No, no, you can’t tell Nails.’ Saunders-Foote snatched at Lestrade’s sleeve.
‘Why not?’ The Inspector asked him.
‘Well, I . . . that is, the reputation of the school . . .’
‘A man is dead, Mr Foote-Classics.’
‘But it was an accident, Mr Lestrade. Surely . . .’
‘Was it, Mr Foote-Classics? Then why, when you met me at the hansom, did you say, “There’s been another”?’
‘Er . . . well, death. Deaths. First that poor girl’s drowning accident and now . . .’
‘Now this young man’s accidentally breaking his neck with his own spectacle chain.’ Lestrade clicked his tongue. ‘Isn’t coincidence an amazing thing, Mr Foote-Classics?’
In the bad light of the evening, with the gas lamps turned low in accordance with the Bursar’s edict to conserve money, Lestrade could understand why Mr Carman, the under groundsman should pursue Matron. She was what in some circles passed for a comely lass, though admittedly they were not the circles in which Lestrade moved. And he was looking at
her from a rakish angle. She had the forearms of a plate-layer, however, and the Inspector felt decidedly worse after her ministrations than before. She worked quickly and loudly, liberally applying astringents to his cuts and bruises. Her incessant chatter was preferable to, and probably designed to disguise, the sound of retching from an adjacent room.
‘It’s Spencer Minor,’ she explained. ‘Yesterday’s mince making a reappearance, I shouldn’t wonder. Tell me, Mr Lestrade, do you like Kettering?’
Lestrade was about to reply that he’d never kettered in his life when the door crashed back to reveal the terrible Theophilus Nails, still in gown and mortarboard. Steam seemed to be escaping from his ears as he surveyed the scene.
‘So, it’s true!’ he bellowed. ‘Matron, get out . . .’
In mid-dab, the muscular nightingale departed.
‘. . . And whoever it is in there,’ Nails roared through the partition, ‘stop vomiting this instant!’
Spencer Minor obliged and Nails turned on his man with all the agility of an expert mountaineer and martinet. For a moment, he thought he remembered Lestrade’s head leaning the other way, but the light or his memory must have been false to him. ‘I thought we’d parted company, Mr Lestrade,’ he bellowed. The word ‘whisper’ was not in his vocabulary.
‘So did I, sir,’ Lestrade felt himself again under the gaze of old Mr Poulson. No wonder Nails’s staff went in fear of him. ‘But I was recalled.’
‘Recalled? By whom?’
‘At the request of Mr Bradlaugh, MP for . . .’
‘Bradlaugh?’ Nails produced a thin, evil cane from nowhere and proceeded to attack Matron’s medicine bottles. ‘I thought I made my views on that fellow clear to you.’
‘This is his county, sir,’ Lestrade reminded him.
‘His county, Lestrade? Have you policemen no concept of the electoral procedure of this nation? Thanks to that unprincipled maniac, Gladstone, even sections of the working classes now have the vote and men like Bradlaugh are at the behest – the behest, mind you – of all of them. Besides, that fellow refused to take the oath. I cannot abide agnosticism. It is worse than self-abuse.’
‘Quite so, sir, but I have a job to complete.’
‘I shall contact the Chief Constable . . .’ Nails fumed, wildly looking around for something else to hit.
‘It was the Chief Constable who authorised my return, Dr Nails. I fear that door is closed.’
‘All over this wretched girl . . .’
‘And a wretched classics master,’ Lestrade told him.
‘What?’
Lestrade remembered the presence of Spencer Minor and motioned the Headmaster into the corridor. ‘One of your staff is dead, sir. Mr Denton.’
‘Young Denton? Good God, man, he was only twenty-two. Heart, was it?’
‘Until daylight, sir, I am unable to say, but I have reason to believe he was murdered.’
The Headmaster snatched Lestrade’s lapels. ‘Murdered? This is a public school. It is eighteen eighty-eight. These things don’t happen. What if Oundle find out?’
‘May we go to your study, Dr Nails? This corridor is hardly the place . . .’
‘I want this stopped, Lestrade. I want it stopped now. If it’s a matter of money, I can see the Bursar . . .’
Lestrade shook his head. ‘Your study, sir?’ he reminded him and followed the man through the bowels of the building, up the worn stone steps, past snoring dormitories to the great studded door. Sewing by the firelight sat a demure little woman, barely the height of the Queen, God Bless Her.
‘Oh, Lestrade. My wife, Gwendoline. Gwendoline, Lestrade.’
She held out her hand. ‘Mr Lestrade,’ she smiled sweetly. ‘How charming. Now, don’t tell me, Theophilus . . .’ She scrutinised Lestrade carefully. ‘Logic,’ she beamed triumphantly.
‘I beg your pardon, madam?’ Lestrade hadn’t the faintest idea what she was talking about.
‘You must be Theophilus’s new logic master – old Butler’s replacement?’
‘Believe me,’ said Nails harshly, ‘this man’s connection with logic is slight indeed.’
‘Oh.’ Mrs Nails looked surprised, her instincts were usually sound in these matters. ‘My instincts are usually sound in these matters.’ She clapped her hands in delight. ‘If it isn’t logic, it must be science . . .’
‘Oh, really, Gwendoline.’ Nails hurled his mortarboard onto the desk. ‘Lestrade isn’t a master at all. He’s a policeman.’
‘Really?’ Mrs Nails’s eyes widened. ‘How very exciting.’ Then her face darkened. ‘Don’t tell me old Bowsett has been complaining about the boys again?’
‘Bowsett?’ Lestrade repeated.
‘He’s a local farmer.’ Nails unhooked his gown and lit a monstrous pipe. He noticed Gwendoline’s disapproving gesture and went ahead anyway. ‘Over Blatherwyck way. Some of my chaps have a nasty habit of bathing naked in his pond and scrumping his apples.’
Lestrade clicked his tongue.
‘Nothing wrong with that, Lestrade. I used to do the same thing myself under Arnold at Rugby. Healthy, competitive spirit. The day a chap can’t pinch the odd apple while in the altogether, England will go to the wall, believe me.’
‘Remember Adam and Eve, dearest,’ Gwendoline reminded him.
‘Don’t preach theology to me, woman. I’ve got a degree in the subject. Now you’re here, Lestrade, you’d better sit down. What of Denton?’
Lestrade flashed a glance at Mrs Nails.
‘Speak, Lestrade. Anything which concerns this school concerns me. My wife is soul of my soul, heart of my heart and so on and so forth. Anyway, she makes the sandwiches for the boys’ tea. Speak.’
‘Very well.’ Lestrade eased himself into the settee whose petit-point Mrs Nails had embroidered herself. ‘When I arrived here earlier this evening I was met by Mr Foote-Classics . . .’
‘Who?’
‘Mr Saunders Foote-Classics.’
‘Oh.’ Nails looked a little blank. ‘Go on.’
‘He took me to the woods out there and to a steep ravine.’ He patted his bandaged head by way of explanation. ‘There I found the body of Anthony Denton. It was difficult light and the body had been in the water, half-submerged . . .’
Gwendoline fanned herself rapidly for a moment until the Headmaster snapped, ‘Come off it, Gwendoline. Your father was a butcher. You must have seen more entrails than Lestrade here has solved cases. Mind you . . .’
‘I believe he had been strangled, sir,’ Lestrade told them.
‘Strangled?’ It was probably the first time in his life that the Headmaster’s voice had dropped below a thunderclap.
‘With his own spectacles chain.’
‘Good Lord,’ muttered Nails.
‘What can you tell me about the deceased, sir?’ Lestrade asked him.
‘Denton?’ Well, not a lot, really. He’d only been with us a few weeks. This was his first term.’
‘And where before that?’
‘Oxford,’ said Nails. ‘All Souls.’
‘Did you make the appointment?’
‘Of course.’ Nails was outraged that Lestrade might have thought otherwise. ‘I never listen to the Governors in these matters. That ghastly Cardigan woman . . .’
Even he shuddered at the thought of it and Mrs Nails patted his brow with a chorus of heart-felt ‘There, there’s’.
‘He came of a good family. Impeccable degree, of course. Studied under Golightly.’
‘Golightly?’
‘One of the greatest scholars of this – or any other – age, Lestrade,’ Nails sighed, contempt for the illiterate man seeping from every pore.
‘And Denton would have left Oxford . . .?’
‘A few months ago. He came from Kent – Maidstone, I believe.’
‘Did he form any attachments here?’ Lestrade asked.
‘Attachments?’ Nails frowned.
‘Yes, was he particularly friendly with anyone?’
‘I dares
ay old Saunders-Foote would have taken him under his wing. Getting a little unsavoury, is Saunders-Foote. He didn’t go on his Grand Tour until he was sixty-one, Lestrade, and rumour has it he fell among gondoliers. Never been the same since. I find myself caring for the man less and less. Not sure his influence on the boys is as wholesome as it might be. I feel perhaps he should have retired at eighty . . .’
‘Anyone else?’
‘I really don’t know. I have a large, thriving school to run, Lestrade. I cannot be held responsible for . . . One moment. You say Saunders-Foote met you with the news of Denton’s demise?’
Lestrade nodded.
‘How did he know about it?’
‘He was in the habit of taking lunchtime strolls with Denton. They walked to the river . . .’
‘Really?’ Nails’s eyebrow all but disappeared under his hairline. It had some way to go.
‘Apparently, Mr Denton paused to relieve himself . . .’
‘Really?’ The Headmaster’s other eyebrow joined the first.
‘. . . while Mr . . . er . . . Saunders-Foote,’ at last the glimmer of realisation, ‘wandered on.’
‘Thank God,’ Nails muttered. ‘What then?’
‘Well, Mr Saunders-Foote realised that Denton was a very long time. He went back to look for him. I understand he heard a bell tolling.’
‘Yes. That would be Ruffage. The commencement of afternoon lessons.’
‘You call the afternoon lessons Ruffage?’ Lestrade didn’t like to miss a point and every school had its quirky traditions.
‘No, no. Ruffage is my Captain of School, Lestrade. Capital fellow. One of his myriad duties is to ring the afternoon bell. Ruffages have been ringing that bell for generations.’
‘Yes, well, there was no sign of Denton. Saunders-Foote searched for a while . . .’
‘Missing his lesson with the Upper Thirds,’ Nails observed. ‘Why on earth didn’t he report it?’
‘I was wondering that. He eventually found him some hundreds of yards downstream. Tell me, is the current always that strong?’
‘Yes, it’s always dangerous at this time of the year. Saunders-Foote should have known that, even if Denton didn’t. It’s a tributary of the Welland, doesn’t level out until Deene. Rhadegund Hall is built on the one craggy outcrop in Northamptonshire. And I do love high places, Lestrade. Pity,’ Nails sighed lovingly, ‘they didn’t give me Harrow-on-the-Hill.’
