Death at St. Asprey’s School

by Bruce, Leo

“Oh I can’t remember now. Two of them, anyway.”

  “Was Stanley one?”

  “Was he? Yes, I believe he was, and Mayring was the other. I just asked the two of them from the common-room to do it.”

  “Was it usual for Sime to sleep in the afternoon?”

  “I didn’t go down there more than necessary so I don’t know everything. But 1 think he had a nap after his lunch unless the boys kept him awake.”

  Reviewing in his mind Matron’s pieces of narrative and answers to his questions, Carolus noticed a singular thing. Not once had she speculated on the identity of Sime’s murderer, or asked Carolus any questions which suggested the least curiosity about it. In view of her inquisitive nature, there could only be one explanation for that. She knew, or believed she knew, who had killed Sime.

  Chapter Eight

  Carolus went from Matron’s room to the Common Room to find Mayring and Duckmore sitting there in uncomfortable silence. Mayring had evidently taken literally the instruction Carolus had given him not to let Duckmore leave because he sat on a high chair between him and the door while Duckmore was slumped on a settee with broken springs beside the fireplace.

  “Have the police been here?” asked Carolus.

  “No. They’ve left a man in Sime’s room and gone. I suppose they’re with Sconer,” said Mayring in a solemn voice.

  Looking at the young man Carolus could see that he was scared. This told him nothing for Mayring was scarcely nineteen years old and less than two hours ago had discovered the body of a murdered man. Whatever he knew of this, or even if he knew nothing at all except the fact, one could expect him to be unnerved. Duckmore did not look up when Carolus came in.

  “I think I ought to tell you both that I came here at Sconer’s invitation to find out what was causing the trouble. I have a good bit of experience in finding out things. Now I want to get at the truth about Sime’s death and I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

  Mayring nodded solemnly but Duckmore did not stir.

  “You found the body, didn’t you, Mayring?”

  “Yes. I took in Sime’s tea as I usually do, and there it was…”

  “What time was that? You don’t know exactly by any chance do you? Don’t say anything if you don’t.”

  “I can be pretty exact. The tea is supposed to be put in here by one of the chars at four-thirty. When I came in from archery and found it wasn’t here I was pretty annoyed. We’d had a bit of trouble about this tea. On the days when Mrs. Skippett brings it it’s sometimes late and once it was already cold when we got it. So I looked at my watch to see how late she was and found it only just after half-past four. At that moment Mrs. Skippett appeared with the tray and Sime’s was the first cup poured. So by the time I had put some bread and butter and jam on a plate and taken it in it was, say twenty-five to five. No later.”

  “I see. Who poured it out?”

  “Parker. He usually does.”

  “Who else was here?”

  “Only Stanley. Duckmore was on duty in the boys’ dining-room.”

  “When you saw Sime was dead what did you do with the cup you were carrying?”

  “I … suppose I must have brought it back here. Yes, I did! I remember seeing it afterwards on the table. I didn’t realize what I was doing.”

  “Do you remember what you said?”

  “Not the exact words. I was badly shaken, I can tell you. I said Sime was dead.”

  “How did you know that? You had a cup of tea in one hand and a plate in the other, presumably, so you couldn’t very well touch him unless you put them down there.”

  “How did I know?” repeated Mayring a little wildly. “I could see. Anyone could. His eyes were popping out. There was masses of blood. It was ghastly.”

  “Yes. I saw it.”

  “Anyway Parker and Stanley went in at once. They touched him I suppose. Parker told me to go and tell Sconer he was dead and I went.”

  “Did you go back to Sime’s room with Sconer?”

  “No. As we came through the hall Matron came hurrying downstairs, flushed up and excited. She told Sconer that Duckmore had run out of the front gates and he sent me after him. Then I met you and that’s all I know.”

  “Is it, Mayring?”

  The young man looked confused and resentful.

  “Yes,” he said. “If I knew any more I’d tell you.”

  “You’ll probably have to tell the police a good bit more than that. About the archery this afternoon, who was there at what times. Perhaps other things which I’m not going to ask you now. Have you discovered who killed your puppy?”

  Mayring blinked and hesitated, then said—“Not for certain.”

  “Whom do you suspect?”

  “I don’t know. But it’s rather strange that when Sime became laid up all those things finished. I didn’t jump to any conclusions, of course.”

  “No. I shouldn’t.”

  Mayring stood up.

  “If there’s nothing else you want to ask me I’ll be running along,” he said.

  “There is. But it’s something you may find difficult to answer. Would you close your eyes a moment? That’s it. Now try to see Sime’s room as it was when you went in with his tea. Can you see it?”

  “I can see him all right. Nothing else.”

  “Is he in bright light?”

  “Oh yes. He is. Was, I mean. Too Bright.”

  “Daylight?”

  “Yes, of course. He was right opposite the window.”

  “The curtains were drawn back?”

  “Certainly. Must have been. His curtains are green things, fairly thick. If they were drawn over and the light was on I should have noticed. It was bright daylight.”

  “And the window?”

  “I’m sure it was open. He kept it open the whole time even when the curtains were drawn.”

  “Thanks,” said Carolus. “There’s nothing else I want to ask you just now.”

  Mayring, looking relieved went out leaving Carolus with Duckmore.

  “Cigarette?” suggested Carolus.

  Duckmore shook his head.

  “What made you run out like that?” asked Carolus gently.”

  Still Duckmore did not speak.

  “You must have had a reason.”

  “I don’t know.” The words were muttered rather than spoken.

  Carolus pressed on, still speaking in a friendly almost tender way. “You knew Sime was dead?”

  “Yes.”

  “How?”

  Now Duckmore looked up and stared at Carolus in a bewildered way.

  “How’did you know? You had been on duty in the boys’ dining-room. Sime’s death wasn’t discovered by Mayring until after half-past four. How did you know?”

  There was silence in the shabby little common-room, a long silence which Carolus did nothing to break. Then suddenly Duckmore stood up and turning to Carolus looked full in his eyes before asking a most extraordinary question.

  “Did I do it?”

  Carolus made no answer to that at all, but after a moment or two said in a calm businesslike voice: “Tell me about you and Sime.”

  Duckmore was seized with almost hysterical loquacity.

  “It has been going on all this term,” he said. “During the holidays Sime found out something. At least I’d told him, really. He wanted money. He knew I was that most unfortunate person, a schoolmaster with private means.”

  Carolus, to whom the term could be held to apply, smiled. “There’s one person more unfortunate, surely,” he said. “A schoolmaster without private means. But go on.”

  “You see, for three years I was out of the world.”

  “You mean?”

  “In a mental home. Oh, I was a voluntary patient, of course. But Sime knew this…”

  “How?”

  “One day last term I just mentioned the village in which it was: Buckfield in Somersetshire. I said nothing about Holly House, the name of the home itself. Just mentioned the glass i
n the church there. But when Sime came back this term he had been there and knew the whole story.”

  “Did that matter?”

  “Yes. You see I am studying for the Church. I have always wanted to take Orders. I went to see the Bishop of Bungay—a very go-ahead man. He advised me to do a year or two as a schoolmaster and if all went well he would ordain me. So I knew that if anything went wrong here all my plans would be upset.”

  “I don’t see how Sime knowing that you had been in a mental home could do you much harm. You could leave this school and go to another.”

  “That’s what I thought until all those mysterious things began to happen. If anyone knew about my past I should be suspected at once, as Sime pointed out. It was a terrible position.

  “And the only way out of it was to get rid of Sime. That’s why … I could have done it, you know. I was out there this afternoon practising archery with the rest. I know what an arrow can do. I had even felt an urge to do it. I had fought against that, but while Sime lived there was no peace for me—no hope, even. I felt something in me pressing me on to kill Sime…”

  “With a bow and arrow?”

  “When you shoot an arrow at a target you know you are using a lethal weapon. You know that your arrow could kill a man. I couldn’t help having thoughts of that kind about Sime. Then when I knew…”

  “Knew what?”

  “Knew that he had been killed…”

  “How did you know that, Duckmore? You were on duty in the dining-room when Mayring found him. Did you come back to this part of the house after the boys’ tea and before you rushed out into the road?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Oh come now, Duckmore, I think you know that. Did you remain with the boys?”

  “Yes. Yes. I was in the big schoolroom. Something was hammering in my head. I wanted to get away.”

  “Yes, but why? Did you know Sime was dead?”

  “I must have, mustn’t I? I told you when I met you so I must have. That’s why I started to run away. I knew I should be blamed…”

  “But how did you know he was dead?” insisted Carolus.

  He was watching Duckmore’s face and saw a strange expression on it. He looked suddenly shifty, cunning, or was it just hunted? An ugly expression in any case.

  “I suppose I must have seen him,” he said at last in a resigned voice. “Must have. No one could have told me.”

  “Only one man knew and that was the murderer.”

  “I must have seen him. Gone to his room and looked in.”

  Carolus spoke in a cold and hostile voice.

  “Whatever your mental condition, Duckmore, you know perfectly well what were your movements this afternoon.”

  “I don’t! I don’t even know whether I did it!”

  Unimpressed, apparently, Carolus continued his relentless questioning.

  “But when you came on duty late, at nearly half past four, you knew Sime was dead. Had you seen his body or not?”

  “Yes. I had. I came in from the archery range and went to the common-room. I was due to be on duty at four-fifteen and it must have been that then. I thought I’d just take a peep at Sime to see if he wanted anything. I looked in and saw what had happened. So I ran to my room.”

  “Why didn’t you give the alarm?”

  “You don’t understand. After all I’ve been through these months, with Sime telling me I should be thought guilty of everything, I was terrified. I wished I hadn’t seen it. For ten minutes at least I fought to pull myself together.”

  “Did you go back to the common-room?”

  “No.”

  “Was there anyone there when you left it before going to Sime’s room?”

  “No one. I didn’t see anyone at all. I just stayed in my room for ten minutes trying to get myself in a condition to go on duty. At last I felt I could do so and went through to the boys’ dining-room. But I was late and they’d nearly finished tea. Matron was there and mentioned that I was late. All the time the boys were at tea and in the big schoolroom afterwards I was trying to decide what to do. I knew I should be suspected of killing Sime. It was too much for me and I made a bolt for it.”

  “Didn’t you realize that ‘making a bolt for it’ was the worst possible thing for you in the circumstances? That in the minds of most people it would condemn you out of hand?”

  Duckmore seemed more alert now and looked at Carolus shrewdly.

  “I didn’t realize anything,” he said. “I felt a hammering in my head and had to get away.”

  “You were on the cricket field this afternoon?”

  “Yes. For a while.”

  “Then you went to the archery range?”

  “Yes. For half an hour.”

  “And from there direct to the common-room?”

  “That’s it. So far as I know. But I would like to be certain, you know. I don’t remember…”

  Carolus looked at him calmly.

  “It will all come back to you,” he said.

  They were interrupted by the entrance of one of the plain clothes men whom Carolus had seen earlier.

  “Which is Mr. Duckmore?” he asked.

  Duckmore rose. His face was quite expressionless now.

  “We’d like to ask you a few questions,” said the policeman coolly and without showing even that false and slightly patronizing respectfulness, that repetitive use of the word ‘sir’, which is the normal police manner of approach. Duckmore went out with him.

  Carolus lit a cheroot and smoked it thoughtfully. The case interested him. He found it difficult to feel deep sympathy for any of the people involved. The Sconers were not an amiable couple and their concern seemed wholly for the school in which they had admittedly invested their money, time and energies but which did not seem to Carolus of outstanding importance in the scheme of things. Sime seemed to have been a highly unpleasant individual if Duckmore’s story was true, while all Carolus knew of Matron conformed with his experience of schools of this kind, a sour and intriguing woman, a power behind the throne and in the opinion of all ‘the Men’, including probably Sconer himself, a malicious bitch. Of Mollie Westerly he had formed no sort of opinion and Mayring was not, he felt, quite the likeable young public school man he wanted to seem. Parker, after twenty years of this life, was (understandably perhaps) ‘taking to drink’ while Bill and Stella Ferris had something ostentatious and faux rustique about them. Stanley, as a favourite of Mrs. Sconer and Matron, was at a disadvantage and might not be a bad fellow while Kneller was deep and as yet inscrutable. Any one of these, Carolus felt, who had the opportunity might have killed Sime, and that was what gave the case its intrinsic interest. But there were unknown quantities here, too. Had anyone else been on the premises that afternoon? What about Horlick, the gardener? And more insistently, why had Sime kept a loaded pistol in his room? Where was it now? And why, within a few moments of knowing Carolus, had Sime entrusted him with a letter to ‘Mrs. Ricks’ which he did not want others to see? The murder itself did not seem to him quite such a problem as some of the corollary questions.

  Young Mayring returned.

  “There’s something I think I ought to tell you,” he said. “I couldn’t say anything in front of Duckmore.”

  “Well?”

  “It was something that happened after you left me with him. We came here together and were sitting quietly when suddenly he came over to me and, looking quite barmy, said: ‘I did it’. I couldn’t believe it for a moment and made him repeat it. Then with an awful sort of grin he said—‘I, said the sparrow, with my bow and arrow, I killed Cock Robin’. I told him not to be an ass. It shook me, I can tell you.”

  ‘Yes, I suppose it would.”

  “When he said that about the sparrow it was like some awful joke, but the first time, when he said ‘I did it’ it sounded as though it was true. If he did do it it must have been by a tremendous bit of luck because he’s not much of a shot.”

  “Who is?” asked Carolus who did not seem much i
mpressed by Mayring’s story.

  “Jim Stanley, I should say,” said Mayring quickly and rather sulkily, and did not seem inclined to talk any more about archery.

  Chapter Nine

  The boys, startled but chattering, were somehow got up to their dormitories where they assailed Matron with questions when she made her rounds.

  “Please Matron, is it true Mr. Sime has been murdered?” “Matron, what do we do if the murderer comes here and tries to strangle Pumfret Minor?” “Do the police know who did it?” “Have you been questioned, Matron?”

  “Now stop talking rubbish, boys,” said Matron crisply. “There has been a little accident. Nothing for anyone to get excited about. You’ll all be in trouble with Mr. Sconer if you don’t go to sleep at once.”

  “Please, Matron, I can’t go to sleep while there’s a murderer about.”

  “Silence! It’s time your light was out. Into bed, Paxton.”

  When Matron switched off the light there were cries of alarm, mostly feigned, and very soon afterwards the silence was complete but for a few awed whispers.

  Meanwhile the Men were gathering for staff dinner which would be a lugubrious affair that evening. Usually Mrs. Sconer, in a dress which emphasized her dignity rather than her figure, smiled graciously to Stanley who sat on her right and condescended to Jumbo Parker on her left, while Mr. Sconer, though he looked up nervously to his wife from time to time, found courage to talk to Mollie Westerly who sat beside him, or even to Matron who, with her thin neck protruding from her dark green dress looked like a stem of arum maculatum, the wild plant we call lords-and-ladies, sat on his left. Between these two trios sat usually only Duckmore and Mayring but now Carolus had joined them.

  A moment’s embarrassment was caused to everyone that evening by Jumbo Parker who appeared in a dark suit usually reserved for Sunday Church and known to be his only outfit beyond the sports coat and flannel trousers he wore everyday.

  “Mrs. Sconer Won’t Be Down,” announced Matron solemnly when they had taken their places.

  The meal was eaten almost in silence except when Matron ventured to explain her difficulty in getting the boys to sleep to which none of the Men added the customary comments on the little abominations, the intolerable ruffians and so on, which usually followed anyone’s complaints about Boy in general.