The Case of the Watching Boy (Andrew Tillet, Sara Wiggins & Inspector Wyatt Book 9)

by Robert Newman

  The Case of the Watching Boy

  Andrew Tillet, Sara Wiggins & Inspector Wyatt, Book Nine

  Robert Newman

  1

  An Official Request

  “Ah, there you are,” said the headmaster as Andrew opened the door of his study. “Come in, my boy, and sit down.” He studied Andrew through his gold-rimmed spectacles as he sat down on the other side of the large desk. “Surprised that I sent for you?”

  “A bit, sir.”

  “But it didn’t worry you?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Good. I commended you on that the last time I asked you to come see me, said it was proof of a clear conscience. And I’m delighted that your conscience remains as limpid as ever. The fact is that I asked you to come here because I wanted to ask you if you would do me—and the school—a service.”

  “If I can, sir, I’ll be happy to.”

  “Oh, you can—there’s no question about that. Whether you’ll want to is something else again. But the only way we can determine that is for me to tell you what I want. Do you know Markham? Christopher Markham?”

  “Yes, sir. I do.”

  “What do you know about him?”

  “Well, he’s a little younger than I am—about a year. And he’s not in my house, so I don’t know him as well as I do many other chaps, but he’s a fairly good cricketer, a very good tennis player, and on the whole, quite well liked. But with it all, he’s something of a solitary.”

  “Yes, he is. Do you know anything about his family?”

  “No, sir. I heard he’s an orphan.”

  “Not quite. His mother’s dead, died shortly after he was born. But his father’s alive, attached to our embassy in Peking at the moment. He has no close relatives, so he stays with Mrs. Bartram and me during holidays. That gives me a rather special responsibility as far as he’s concerned.”

  “Yes, I can see that, sir.”

  “Mr. Slyke, his housemaster, was here to see me last night. He’s a little worried about Markham, and he got me worried.” He paused. “What did you mean when you said he was something of a solitary?”

  “Well, he does like to walk alone, sir. I don’t mean that as a figure of speech. He seems to have some fairly good friends. But he also does like to go off alone, walk the Downs, collect mineral specimens, and watch birds.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I’ve met him out on the Downs.”

  “In other words, you like to walk alone, too.”

  “Sometimes. Yes, sir.”

  “Of course I knew that. That’s one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you. The reason Mr. Slyke is worried about Markham is not because he’s been going off alone almost every afternoon recently—but because he suspects he’s been slipping off at night and coming back just before dawn.”

  “I see, sir.”

  “That’s why I called you in. To ask you whether you’d be willing to look into the matter for me.” Andrew glanced at him, then down. “Well?”

  “If you don’t mind, sir, I’d rather not.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because its seems to me it’s a kind of sneaking.”

  “When you say sneaking you mean spying, informing. Or, in the vernacular, peaching, snitching, or squealing.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “In one respect, that’s the sort of answer I’d expect from you. In another, it not only saddens me—it shocks me. How long have you been here at Medford?”

  “Three years, sir.”

  “In all that time have I ever done or said anything that would suggest that I would—not just encourage or approve—but even tolerate sneaking?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Have any of the masters?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Then how could you imply that that was what I was asking you to do?”

  “Sir, I apologize. But the truth is that there are schools where it is encouraged.”

  “So I’ve heard. But I wouldn’t have anyone here—boy or master—who would be capable of such a thing. When I asked if you would look into this matter of Markham’s behavior, I meant just that. I don’t want you to tell me what he’s been up to. Since he’s alone here and I’m acting in loco parentis, I would merely like to know if he’s involved in anything I should be concerned about.”

  “I see, sir. One more question. Why are you asking me to do this?”

  “An interesting question. You happen to be one of the best-liked boys in school. Not just because you play a good game of cricket or because you’re pleasant, honest and—I understand—intelligent and amusing. But because of what is believed about you.”

  “Believed?”

  “Yes. Your mother is a well-known actress. You never talk about her. Your stepfather is with Scotland Yard. You never talk about him either. But the fact that you haven’t has encouraged the boys here to imagine a very rich life for you in which—during holidays—you meet many of England’s famous actresses who are friends of your mother’s. And even more interesting and exciting, you help your stepfather solve his most difficult cases.”

  “I see. It’s true that I don’t talk about my mother or stepfather—any more than Chadwick talks about his father, who is in the Foreign Office, or Dunwoodie, whose father is a general—but that’s the only part of what you’ve said that’s true.”

  “Is that so? I’ve heard rumors that lead me to believe there’s a modicum of truth in what they believe. But that’s beside the point. The boys will continue to believe what they want to believe and you must suffer the consequences. This is one of them. I trust you and I believe that Markham does, too. That’s why I made the request of you that I did. The question is, will you do what I’ve asked you to do? Will you—being as open as you like—cast a friendly eye on Markham?”

  Again Andrew hesitated a moment. Then he nodded.

  “Yes, sir. I will.”

  2

  The Watcher on the Tor

  It was by sheer good luck that Andrew found Markham as soon as he did. After Latin, his last class of the day, he walked over to St. Edmund’s, Markham’s house. There was no sign of him in the quad, at the fives court, or on the playing field where two house cricket teams were practicing. That meant he was probably out on the Downs, but where? After all, they extended in every direction for miles around the school. The last time Andrew had met him on the Downs it had been near the foot of Bodmin’s Tor, which lay northwest of the school.

  He looked toward the tor, about three-quarters of a mile from the school, and there, at the top of it, he saw a sudden flash as something bright reflected the westering sun. Was it Markham? It might be. Even if it wasn’t, the tor was a good place to look over the Downs, see if he was elsewhere.

  It took about a half hour to walk to the tor and climb the steep, rocky southern face. When Andrew got to the top, he saw that his guess had been a good one. There was Markham, stretched out with a pair of field glasses beside him.

  “Hello,” he said quietly and without surprise. He had apparently been watching Andrew approach through the glasses, and it had been the sun reflected in their lenses that had originally caught Andrew’s eye.

  “Hello. New glasses?”

  “What? Yes, fairly new.”

  Andrew picked them up and examined them.

  “They look like good ones.”

  “They’re quite good. Useful anyway. I’ve been watching a pair of peregrines.”

  “Yes, there’s a pair that has a nest on the far side of
the tor. Where are they?”

  “They were over there a while ago,” said Markham, pointing to the northeast. Andrew raised the glasses and looked that way but couldn’t see them. He lowered the glasses and suddenly realized that the way Markham had been lying, he couldn’t have been looking to the northeast. If he had been looking anywhere, it had been to the northwest. He raised the glasses again, looking in that direction, and found himself looking down at a house with a high stone wall around it that was just off the road that led to Bath.

  “I always forget about that house there,” he said. “It’s down in that combe and you can’t really see it from the Downs, just from up here.”

  “I know,” said Markham.

  “Look,” said Andrew, lowering the glasses. “We’d better talk.”

  “About what?”

  “About why I’m here.” Putting down the glasses, Andrew sat down cross-legged next to Markham and told him about the headmaster’s summons and what he had had to say to him.

  “I had a feeling that old Slyke had his eye on me,” said Markham.

  “It’s clear he has,” said Andrew. “Do you feel like telling me what you’ve been up to?”

  Markham turned and looked at him. He was quite fair, had a very open face, and blue eyes. It was only when you looked at them closely that you realized they had shadowy, troubled depths.

  “You told the headmaster you weren’t going to tell him what I told you—if I did tell you anything—no matter what it was.”

  “That’s right.”

  “I don’t have to ask you whether I can trust you. I know I can.” He looked off toward the school. “It’s strange. There’s something I’ve got to decide. And I felt from the beginning that if I could talk to one person about it, it would be you.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. I suppose partly because I know I can trust you and partly because of some of the things you’ve done. I mean … well, your stepfather is an inspector with Scotland Yard, isn’t he?”

  “Yes, he is. But what do you mean by things I’ve done?”

  “I know you never talk about it, but I’ve heard that you’ve been involved in several of his cases. That you had been, as a matter of fact, even before he and your mother got married.”

  “It’s true I’ve known him for some time. And my mother has too, but.…”

  “I said I know you don’t like to talk about it, and you don’t have to. The truth is, I’d like to tell you what’s been happening, and I’d like to hear what you’ve got to say about it.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “It began a little over a week ago. I was on my way across the Downs to the old Roman camp. You know where that is.”

  “Yes.”

  “I was just going past the tor here when I met this woman.”

  “What kind of woman?”

  “I don’t know how to describe her. I mean, I don’t know how you would, but … she was about average height, dark hair and dark eyes, and very pretty.”

  “How old?”

  “I don’t know. I’m no judge of women’s ages, but she looked about the same age as the mothers of the youngest first-formers at school.”

  “Middle to late twenties, then. Was she from around here?”

  “Oh, no. She was from London.”

  “How do you know?”

  “She said so later on. But even if she hadn’t, I’d have known it from the way she was dressed—in something light gray and gauzy and ruffly—and the way she talked. She was very much a lady.”

  “Was she alone?”

  “Yes and no. She was alone near the tor, but she had come in a carriage and the coachman was waiting with the horses on the road about two or three hundred yards away.”

  “All right. Go on. I gather you talked to her.”

  “Yes. She seemed surprised to see me there, asked me if I lived nearby. I told her about the school and she seemed surprised at that, too—said she hadn’t known it was there. Then I said good-bye and left.”

  “That’s all you said to one another?”

  “That’s all we said then. I went on toward the old camp and I kept thinking about her, wondering who she was and what she was doing there. I had a feeling that she was worried and upset about something, and I wondered what it was. Finally I turned around and went back, thinking I’d see if she was still there.”

  “Was she?”

  “Yes. And she seemed very glad to see me again. She said she’d been thinking of going after me because she was in desperate straits and I looked as if I could be trusted, and she wanted to know if she could tell me about it.”

  “And of course you said yes.”

  “Yes, I did. Do you think I shouldn’t have?”

  “I don’t know. Let’s hear what those desperate straits were.”

  “First of all, she said she wasn’t going to tell me her real name because it would be better if I didn’t know it, but I could call her Mrs. Grey.”

  “Lady Jane Grey?” said Andrew with a smile.

  “You mean the one who was queen for nine days? I don’t think so. I think it was because of the color of her dress. Anyway, that was when she told me she was from London and what the difficulty was.”

  “And what was it?”

  “She had been married for several years to a man she had met at the house of a friend. He was quite a bit older than she was, but very wealthy, and for the first few weeks the marriage went well, then it became somewhat stormy.”

  “Stormy how?”

  “It turned out her husband drank a good deal, had a violent temper, and carried on with other women. The friend at whose house she had met him admitted that she had been worried about the marriage but had decided not to say anything to her. Then, a little over three years ago, she had a child—a boy she named Michael—whom she loved very much. So much that from then on she didn’t care what her husband did because she had her son and that was all that mattered to her. Then, a few months ago, things suddenly took a turn for the worse.”

  “In what way?”

  “Something happened to her husband mentally. She wasn’t sure whether he had always been slightly mad and no one had really been aware of it or whether this was something new, but he suddenly began accusing her of being interested in other men and claimed she was planning to leave him.”

  “And this wasn’t true?”

  “Oh, no. Absolutely not. She said her only real interest was her boy. Well, her husband knew that, and the next thing she knew he had taken the boy when she was out visiting a sick friend, hidden him somewhere, and refused to tell her where.”

  “That, I suppose, was to keep her from leaving him.”

  “Exactly. He said that he knew that as long as he had the boy she wouldn’t leave and that, in any case, she was making a sissy of him and it was time someone else had a hand in bringing him up.”

  “What did she do about it?”

  “She went to see a solicitor who told her that although what her husband had done was beastly, it wasn’t illegal. That since he was the boy’s father, he had a perfect right to keep the boy wherever he wanted. When she asked what would happen if she brought suit against her husband to force him to let her have custody of the child, he said she would lose.”

  “It sounds quite stupid and very unfair, but I think I’ve heard of cases like that. What did she do?”

  “She hired a private detective to try to find out where the boy was hidden.”

  “And did he find him?”

  “Yes. It took some time and cost her quite a good deal of money, but the detective finally found that the husband was keeping the boy in that house over there, the one in the combe.”

  “I thought it might be something like that. Then what? What did she want you to do?”

  “How do you know she wanted me to do something?”

  “It’s logical to think that she would. She wouldn’t have told you her problem for no reason.”

  “No, I suppose not. And sh
e did ask me to do something for her. She was fairly sure the boy was in the house there—the detective had said he was. But she wanted to know who else was there, taking care of him. So she asked me if I’d watch the house, let her know.”

  “So that’s what you’ve been up to.”

  “Yes.”

  “Was it she who gave you the field glasses?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why does she want to know who else is in the house?”

  Markham sat up, looked away, then looked at Andrew.

  “She didn’t say, but I think she’s planning to steal the child back again.”

  “That would be my guess. How do you feel about it?”

  “I don’t know.” He paused. “Yes, I do. I think it’s terrible that she shouldn’t be allowed to have her own child! Her husband doesn’t really care about the boy. He only took him to hurt her, so … well, I’ve not only been watching the house at all different hours but, if she’d like me to, I’ll help her get the child back again.”

  “Yes,” said Andrew. “That was something else I rather expected.”

  “Well, what do you think about it? I know some people would say it was wrong, but why is it any more wrong for a wife to take a child away from a husband than for a husband to take him away from his wife, the child’s mother?”

  Andrew sighed. He knew it was more complicated than Markham realized or would be willing to admit. For with his mother dead, it would be strange if he didn’t want to play the brave knight, didn’t want to help a damsel in distress.

  “I know how you feel,” he said. “But before I tell you what I think, I’d like to meet your Mrs. Grey.”

  “Well, you can,” said Markham. “And very soon, too.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She’s coming back today at about four-thirty.”

  “That is soon. All right. I’ll wait.”

  “Good,” said Markham, pleased. He picked up the field glasses, looked through them at the house down in the shallow valley, and said, “Would you like to see the boy?”

  “Yes,” said Andrew.

  Markham gave him the glasses, and he looked through them at the boy who had just come out of the house accompanied by a gray-haired woman who must have been his nurse. Andrew only had a chance to catch a glimpse of him, see that he was a good-looking, golden-haired child and that he did not look at all happy, when the two of them moved toward the rear of the garden and were hidden by the brick wall that enclosed it.