by Bruce, Leo
“He wants to ask you about the murder,” was Mrs. Skippett’s greeting, introduction and explanation in one.
“Oh, does he?” said Mr. Skippett with a gold-toothed smile as he shook hands with Carolus. “I can’t say I know much about it, to tell the truth. Only what the wife has told me. I never go up to the school if I can help it. Too much tittle tattle up there.”
“What I wanted to ask you is nothing directly to do with the school …” began Carolus.
“That’s a good thing because its right outside my knowledge, what they get up to. I did hear about them putting that rat in the Matron’s bed and wondered wherever they got it from. A rat’s not a thing you can lay your hand on just when you want it. But when it comes to them murdering one another with bows and arrows, well, I said to the wife, we might be back with Robin Hood.”
“You look after the churchyard, don’t you, Mr. Skippett?”
“Have done for a good many years. The Rector before this one, Mr. Tomhurst, asked me if I would and I didn’t like to say no.”
“You remember the Saturday afternoon on which Sime was found at the foot of the tower staircase?”
“I remember it all right, but that’s not to say I was up there that afternoon. I went up on the Sunday, twice, as I always do.”
“But you wouldn’t have spent much time in the churchyard on Sunday.”
“No, but I was up there all Monday. I always spend Monday there. Where it is, they throw their cigarette ends away before going into church and empty packets and I don’t know what. You wouldn’t think people going to church would leave a lot of litter like that but you’d be surprised.”
“So you tidied up the churchyard that Monday. Did you notice anything unusual?”
Mr. Skippett thought hard and looked disappointed.
“I can’t say I did.” he said. “Not to say out of the ordinary. There’s always a bit to tidy up.”
“You didn’t find some little branches of yew stripped from a bigger branch?”
Mr. Skippett brightened up.
“It’s funny you should say that, because that’s just what I did find. Quite a lot of them, there were, pushed into the hedge down in the far corner. I thought at the time, that’s funny, but I’d quite forgotten it until you mentioned it. Yes, there was quite a lot of them. I said to myself someone must have wanted the stick for something and cleaned them off.”
“I told you he’d be able to tell you,” put in Mrs. Skippett proudly. “He’s quite a one for noticing things and doesn’t mind who he tells about it.”
“You’ve never found the stick from which they were cut, I suppose?” asked Carolus.
“No. That I haven’t done. But you wouldn’t expect to, would you? Whoever troubled to do that wanted it for something and took it away.”
“If he had of done, he’d tell you,” said Mrs. Skippett. “He can’t keep anything to himself. Same as me. I must come out with it, whatever it is.”
“That’s good, because there are one or two things I’d like to ask you, Mrs. Skippett. You were working in the hall yesterday afternoon, I believe?”
“Not al the time, I wasn’t. But Mrs. Sconer’s very particular about the hall and I must say it does look nice when it’s done with the parquet, and that. I can’t bear to see anything Let Go till you don’t know whether it’s got polish on or not. Gives me the willies, anything like that. So I was in the hall most of the afternoon.”
“Did anyone pass through?”
“I shall have to think,” said Mrs. Skippett. “I started there soon after I’d had my dinner in the kitchen. Half past one it may have been. Mr. Parker came downstairs and went off to the boys’ part of the school. He was back a few minutes later and went up to his room. I thought, you’re going to have a nip at the whisky bottle, I thought. Well, he does like a drop or two now and again, especially lately.”
“Then there was Mrs. Sconer coming down from Matron’s room, perhaps half an hour later. ‘I’m going out to the rose-garden, if anyone wants me,’ she said to me, quite pleasant, as she went by. I thought, you’ve been upstairs hearing the latest from Matron, I thought. But I didn’t take much notice, not at the time.”
“Did you see either of those again?”
“Not till tea-time. Then Parker came downstairs, after his tea and it reminded me to take it through to the common-room. About the same time Mrs. Sconer came in from the garden.”
“Anyone else?”
“Let’s see. There was Mr. Sconer came out of his study and went through to the boys’ part, or it may have been to the staff part, you can’t tell because as you know you can go right through. I thought, someone’s going to catch it, I thought. But he wasn’t long gone. He came back not more than ten minutes later and went into his study again. I thought, it’s a good thing he hasn’t got one of the boys with him because you know what that means and I don’t like it when he takes the cane to one of them. It gives me the horrors when you hear one of them howling out. But yesterday there was nothing of that.”
“Anyone else?” persisted Carolus.
“Yes, there was. This is the funny part, really. Mollie Westerly came down from her room and went through to the boys’ part. I thought, I know where you’re going, you’re going to see Sime. And sure enough not five minutes later Stanley came in and asked me if Miss Westerly was up in her room. I told him, no, she’s just gone through to the boys’ part and he dashed off as though he were after her. I thought, that’ll lead to trouble, I thought. But I didn’t see either of them again. Nor anyone else, so far as I can remember. But of course I wasn’t there all the time. Mrs. Horlick and I usually have a cup of tea before I take the staff tea to the common-room but she was off yesterday and I had my tea alone. Anyone could have been about in the hall then and I shouldn’t have known.”
Carolus prepared to leave but without much confidence in being able to do so promptly.
“I’m most grateful to you both,” he said.
“That’s all right,” said Mr. Skippett. “Only too pleased.”
“If there’s anything else you want to know, don’t mind asking,” Mrs. Skippett added.
“You’re welcome to what little I can tell you. I only hope it puts some idea in your head.”
“It’s no good asking Mrs. Horlick anything because it was her afternoon off. If you want to know you come to me and I’ll tell you what I can.”
“Same with the church part of it. What I don’t know nobody can tell you and I’d be only too willing.”
“Well, thank you,” said Carolus reaching the door and getting it open.
“It’s not as though we had anything to hide,” said Mrs. Skippett, following him into the entrance passage. “Not like Some.”
“I never was one to want to hush things up,” said Skippett as Carolus opened the front door and passed through it.
As he left them on the pavement and made for his car he heard their farewells.
“Don’t forget, if you want anything!”
“You just pop in here and I’ll tell you!”
Waving politely Carolus drove away.
Back at the school he was approached by Mayring who spoke with the awed relish of a schoolboy sending another to the headmaster’s study.
“The police want you,” he said. “They’ve taken over the common-room for their enquiries. They’ve had me in and kept me nearly an hour. Like Inquisitors!”
Carolus was accustomed to C.I.D. men but was in a weaker position than usual this time, in fact might be himself a suspect. He had heard of the man in charge of this enquiry, a certain Detective Superintendent Osborne, famed for his thoroughness and his overbearing manner. Carolus rather looked forward to the encounter.
He entered the common-room to find the table had been moved and Osborne, with the local man Haggard, was sitting behind it.
Osborne looked up.
“Wait outside, please,” he said. “I’m not ready for you yet.”
Carolus smiled and decid
ed to bide his time. He went out, and meeting Duckmore asked him where tea was being served for the staff. Hearing it was in Matron’s room he went there. Five minutes later a flustered Mayring looked in and said “They want you now!”
Even then Carolus did not take any petty advantage of the situation by letting Osborne wait. He finished his tea and went.
Osborne, a heavy man with a big expanse of pale cheeks and a very small mouth, had grey hostile eyes and a harsh voice.
“Your full name, please,” he said and Carolus told him.
“Do you know that it is a very serious offence to obstruct the police in the execution of their duties?” asked Osborne.
“Yes, isn’t it?” agreed Carolus. “And how often the police themselves are guilty of it. But don’t let’s waste time with chit-chat, Superintendent. What do you want to know?”
“I warn you, Deene. I know you’ve been a nuisance in previous cases. You’d better understand that I won’t tolerate that sort of nonsense. If you take one false step I shall charge you with obstruction. This is a serious case and I’ll have no amateur theatricals disturbing my enquiries. What are you doing here, anyway?”
“Teaching,” smiled Carolus. “So far only small boys. I hope I don’t have to end by teaching you, either manners or your job. But do lets get down to essentials. I detest badinage, don’t you?”
“Kindly tell me exactly what you did yesterday afternoon.”
“Certainly. That’s the sort of question I like,” said Carolus, and proceeded with lucidity and precision to describe his movements from lunchtime onwards, while Osborne made notes.
“Why did you go to the church?” interupted Osborne.
“I wanted to take a look at that stairway down which Sime had fallen. Very steep, that stairway.”
He went on to describe his return, his meeting with Duckmore, his visit to Sime’s room.
“Were the curtains drawn back when you entered?” asked Osborne.
“Yes. There was sunlight on the dead man.”
Carolus continued with his story, his interviews with Mrs. Sconer and Matron, his return to the common-room. Osborne studiously refrained from asking any questions about his impressions or conclusions, but enquired on what day Carolus had arrived, how he had come to leave one school for another, when he thought of leaving. In answer to the last Carolus said—“Oh, not yet”
“There’s nothing more I want to know from you but you’ll be required to attend the Inquest. The Coroner may want to know more about your presence here. Meanwhile, kindly refrain from any kind of interference. You may go now. Unless you wish to make any statement.”
Was there, Carolus wondered, a gleam of hope or curiosity in the Superintendent’s eye? Could it be that after dismissing Carolus’s pretensions to insight as ‘amateur theatricals’ he at least wondered whether Carolus might have anything interesting to say? Carolus looked solemn.
“There is one thing,” he said, “which I think deserves consideration.”
Osborne had apparently returned to a study of his papers.
“Well?”
“There are Ferrises at the bottom of our garden,” said Carolus and had the satisfaction of seeing Osborne’s small mouth open wide. He left the room, but when he was chatting with Parker some hours later he agreed with the oldest member of the staff that Osborne was ‘no fool, whatever else he might be’.
Mayring was waiting for him when he left the common-room, looking anxiously inquisitive. Once more he reminded Carolus of a boy waiting outside the headmaster’s study to hear how many strokes a friend had received.
“What did they ask you about?” he said.
“Oh, this and that,” said Carolus.
“They asked me about my dog being killed. How do you think they knew about that?”
“An old bird told them, probably.”
“You mean Matron?”
“It might be anyone.”
“They knew. They knew all I said about what I would do to whoever had done it. Do you think they suspect me?”
“I’ve no idea. Osborne is not the chatty sort.”
“Of course I would never have said things like that if I had known what was going to happen.”
“I’m sure you wouldn’t,” said Carolus drily. “Did you tell Osborne you suspected Sime of killing your dog?”
Mayring looked startled.
“I didn’t suspect him!” he said. “Or not more than anyone else.”
“Not even when all the nocturnal disturbances ceased after his accident?”
“I thought it was strange, but I didn’t… I say, Deene, you don’t suspect me of killing Sime, do you?”
“I haven’t got as far as having suspicions yet. Pity about the archery. I hear you were becoming a very good shot.”
Mayring looked like a rabbit being chased from its burrow by a ferret.
“Not really,” he said. “I often missed the whole target!”
“I daresay William Tell did that too when there was no particular inducement to be accurate. Ah well, see you at staff dinner.”
Chapter Eleven
Next day was Sunday and Carolus took advantage of this to follow up a clue, hunch, piece of evidence—he scarcely knew what to consider it yet. Mrs. Ricks, 22 Sapperton Road, Cheltenham—the address in Sime’s scrawling handwriting on the letter the dead man had asked him to post.
It was a blustery morning when he set out and he found Cheltenham in the throes of Eleven O’Clock Service. The streets were almost empty, the pubs by a piece of legislation magnificently Victorian being closed until mid-day to prevent their licence-holders competing with the clergy for popular patronage. There was a self-satisfied look about the place, he thought, as he went to the address he wanted.
No one answered the bell. No. 22 was a solid house built late in the nineteenth century. The Dombeys might have lived in it. It looked now grim and somewhat neglected but not, Carolus felt, unoccupied whether its inmates were just then at home or not.
He rang again without result and was about to turn away when the door of the adjoining house opened and a tall woman, elderly and inquisitive, looked out. She made some play of seeing Carolus for the first time and said—“Oh! Did you want Mrs. Ricks? She’s gone to church. St. Bravington’s.”
“Thank you.”
“Is there anything I can tell her?” asked the tall woman hungrily.
“Not really, thanks.”
“She’ll be back soon. It’s the Vicar preaching this morning. He never keeps them long.”
“Good. I’ll come back.”
“Who shall I tell her called?”
“Oh don’t bother, please.”
“What’s the time now? Ten to? She should be here soon after twelve. Would you like to come in and wait?”
“That’s very kind of you.”
“I’m on my own this morning,” said the tall woman, preceding Carolus into a drawing-room decorated with Victoriana not recently acquired but in its natural state. “I went to Early Service, you see.”
“Quite.”
“I don’t know what Mrs. Ricks will say when she finds I’ve been entertaining her visitor,” she went on with a touch of coyness. “She doesn’t approve of me, I fear. I am rather unconventional, I suppose!”
“You are?”
“Dear Mrs. Ricks is so very correct. Of course, in a way I admire her for it. But I was brought up to enjoy life. You have known her long?”
“I don’t know her at all, I’m afraid. I have to see her on a matter of business.”
“Oh yes. Connected with her niece, perhaps?”
Was it? Carolus wondered.
“She may not care to discuss business on Sunday. She is very strict about Sundays. When her niece was staying with her…”
Carolus made a bold plunge.
“Miss O’Maverick, you mean?”
The tall woman eyed him keenly.
“I only knew her as Sally,” she said. “But as I have explained, Mrs. Ricks a
nd I are not intimate friends. I understood that her niece had been a schoolmistress. She came here to convalesce. Such a pretty girl! And a great favourite with the men. You could see that.”
Carolus longed to say ‘how?’ but smiled and waited.
“There had never been so many callers as during the time she stayed with Mrs. Ricks. Rather older men, mostly. But I shouldn’t like you to think I was given to gossip.”
“Of course not.”
“One of them was a schoolmaster, I understood, from the school where she had taught. There was even a negro gentleman. From Birmingham, I believe. Or so Mrs. Bobbins, that’s my kind little char, told me. You see she worked for Mrs. Ricks until quite suddenly, a few months ago, just after the niece arrived, Mrs. Ricks told her she didn’t need her any more and I jumped at the opportunity. Chars are not easy to come by. Even you as a man must know that. And little Mrs. Bobbins is a treasure.”
What was more, an informative treasure, thought Carolus.
“She had ceased to work next door when this negro gentleman came,” went on the tall woman, “but she hears of things.”
“Indeed?”
“I don’t think Mrs. Ricks was very pleased when she started working for me,” smiled the tall woman with satisfaction. “Not that she could suspect me of listening to gossip, but well, you know.”
“I expect she, like everyone else, has things about her she doesn’t want known,” suggested Carolus.
“She has, and she keeps it locked up in a cupboard,” said the tall woman snappishly. “I wish people would be more open. Here we are, two elderly women living next door to one another and you’d think to see us we were complete strangers. I’ve noticed it more lately, since her niece came to stay. I do think people might share their confidences and everything else a little more. Don’t you? They are funny!”
Again Carolus suppressed the answer he would like to make and instead of ‘Hilariously!’ said “They are sometimes, yes,” quite seriously.
“I have a great sense of humour,” went on the tall woman. “I often find myself laughing at nothing at all. When Mrs. Bobbins told me about Mrs. Ricks not speaking to her niece for two days I couldn’t help smiling. So petty, to sulk like that.”
