EDMUND CRISPIN

Love Lies Bleeding

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by

Victor Gollancz 1948

Copyright © Rights Limited,

1948. All rights reserved

Edmund Crispin has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as the author of this work

Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2017

Cover image © Shutterstock.com

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008124151

Ebook Edition © June 2015 ISBN: 9780008124168

Version: 2017-10-26

To the Carr Club

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter 1: Lasciva Puella

Chapter 2: Find out Moonshine

Chapter 3: Thieves Break in and Steal

Chapter 4: Holocaust

Chapter 5: Bloody-Man’s-Finger

Chapter 6: Love Lies Bleeding

Chapter 7: Saturnalia

Chapter 8: The Death of a Witch

Chapter 9: Love’s Labour’s Won

Chapter 10: Meditations Among the Tombs

Chapter 11: Reasoning but to Err

Chapter 12: A Green Thought in a Green Shade

Chapter 13: A Sennet: Enter Second Murderer

Chapter 14: Exit, Pursued by a Bear

Chapter 15: Rout

Chapter 16: Eclipse

Chapter 17: Peace Indivisible

About the Author

Also in this series

About the Publisher

1
Lasciva Puella

The headmaster sighed. It was, he recognized, a plaintive and unmanly noise, but for the moment he was quite unable to suppress it. He apologized.

‘The heat…’ he explained, and waved one hand limply in the direction of the windows, beyond which a good-sized lawn lay parching in the mid-morning sun. ‘It’s the heat.’

As an excuse, this was colourable enough. The day was torrid, almost tropical, and even in the tall, shady study, its curtains half drawn to prevent wood and fabric from bleaching, the atmosphere was too oppressive for comfort. But the headmaster spoke without conviction, and his visitor was not deceived.

‘I’m sorry to plague you with my affairs,’ she said briskly, ‘because I realize that your time must be completely taken up with the arrangements for speech day. Unfortunately, I’ve no choice in the matter. The parents are insisting on some kind of investigation.’

The headmaster nodded gloomily. He was a small, slight man of about fifty, clean-shaven, with a long, inquisitive nose, sparse black hair, and a deceptive mien of diffidence and vagueness.

‘It would be the parents,’ he said. ‘So much of one’s time is spent in trying to dissipate the futile alarms of parents…’

‘Only in this case,’ his visitor replied, keeping with decision to the matter in hand, ‘something really does seem to have happened.’

From the farther side of his desk, the headmaster looked at her unhappily. He invariably found Miss Parry’s efficiency a little daunting. He seemed to see, ranked indomitably behind her, all those bold, outspoken, competent, middle-aged women whose kind is peculiar to the higher levels of the English bourgeoisie, organizing charity bazaars, visiting the sick and impoverished, training callow maidservants, implacably gardening. Some freak of destiny into which he had never enquired had compelled Miss Parry to forsake this orbit in search of a living, but its atmosphere still clung about her; and no doubt her headship of the Castrevenford High School for Girls was calculated rather to confirm than to mitigate it…The headmaster began to fill his pipe.

‘Yes?’ he said non-committally.

‘Information, Dr Stanford. What I most need is information.’

‘Ah.’ The headmaster removed some vagrant strands of tobacco from the bowl of his pipe and nodded again, but with more deliberation and gravity. ‘You’ll permit me to smoke?’ he asked.

‘I shall smoke myself,’ said Miss Parry decisively. She waved the proffered box firmly though not unkindly aside, and produced a cigarette case from her handbag. ‘I prefer American brands,’ she explained. ‘Fewer chemicals in them.’

The headmaster struck a match and lit the cigarette for her. ‘It would probably be best,’ he suggested, ‘if you were to give me the facts from the beginning.’

Miss Parry blew out a long stream of smoke, rather as though it were some noxious substance which must be expelled from her mouth as quickly and as vigorously as possible.

‘I need hardly tell you,’ she said, ‘that it has to do with the play.’

This information struck the headmaster as being, on the whole, more cheering than he had dared to hope. For some years past, the Castrevenford High School for Girls had cooperated with Castrevenford School itself in the production of a speech day play. It was a tradition fruitful of annoyances to all concerned, the only palliating circumstance being that these annoyances were predictable and ran in well-worn grooves. Mostly they consisted of clandestine embraces, during rehearsals, between the male and female members of the cast – and for such incidents the penalties and remedies were so well tested as to be almost automatic.

The headmaster’s spirits rose. He said, ‘Then this girl is in the play? I’m afraid I haven’t been able to give it much attention this year. It’s Henry V, isn’t it?’

‘Yes. The choice didn’t please my girls very much. Too few female parts.’

‘Doubtless the boys were disappointed for the same reason.’

Miss Parry laughed, sincerely yet still briskly; as if to imply that humour, while essential to cultivated intercourse, must not be allowed to usurp the place of more important matters.

‘Very distressing to all parties,’ she said. ‘Anyway, this particular girl is playing the part of Katherine. Her name is Brenda Boyce.’

The headmaster frowned as he lit a second match and applied it to the bowl of his pipe. ‘Boyce? Are they local people? A boy of that name was here up to about two years ago. A rather worldly boy, as I recall.’

‘That would be a brother,’ said Miss Parry. ‘And you might describe the whole family as worldly. The parents are of the expensive, cocktail-party-and-chromium kind.’

‘I remember them.’ The headmaster deposited the spent match delicately in an ashtray surmounted by a silver elephant. ‘Quite likeable, I thought…However, that’s not relevant at the moment.’

‘The parents are relevant in a way.’ Miss Parry sat back and crossed her sturdy, uncompromisingly utilitarian legs. ‘That is to say that their sophistication offers some clue as to what this problem is not. Brenda, as you might expect from her upbringing, is rather a fast little baggage – she’s sixteen, by the way, and due to leave at the end of this term – and a pretty child into the bargain. She is not, therefore, likely to be upset by any demonstration of – um – youthful erotism.’

Here Miss Parry gazed at her host with marked severity. ‘Go on,’ said the headmaster. He was aware that Miss Parry required no encouragement from him, but conversational silences, even when motivated by the mere necessity of drawing breath, must out of ordinary courtesy be bridged somehow.

‘As you know,’ Miss Parry proceeded, ‘there was a rehearsal of Henry V in the hall here yesterday evening. And when Brenda got home from it at about half past ten, she was, according to her parents, in a very peculiar state of mind.’

‘What do you mean exactly?’

‘Evasive. On edge. Yes, and frightened, too.’

They could hear the headmaster’s secretary typing in the little room next door, and the fitful buzzing of flies on the window panes. Otherwise it was very quiet.

‘Of course,’ said Miss Parry after a moment’s pause, ‘they asked her what was the matter. And – to be brief about it – she would give no explanation at all, either to her parents or to me, when I questioned her this morning.’

‘The parents telephoned you?’

‘Yes. They were evidently worried – and that, Dr Stanford, is what worries me. Whatever their faults, they aren’t the sort of people to make a fuss about nothing.’

‘What did the girl herself say to you?’

‘She implied that her parents were imagining things, and said there was nothing to explain. But I could see she was still upset, and I’m tolerably certain she was lying. Otherwise I shouldn’t have troubled you about it.’

The headmaster meditated briefly, scrutinizing as he did so the familiar objects of the room: the rich blue Aubusson carpet, the reproductions of Constable and Corot on the walls, the comfortable leather-covered armchairs and the big flat-topped desk at which he sat. He said thoughtfully: ‘Yes. I see why the upbringing is relevant. You mean that even if someone had – ah – made a pass at this young woman—’

He paused on this mildly plebeian mode of expression, and Miss Parry completed the sentence for him.

‘It would not have distressed her. Exactly. In fact, it would probably have had just the opposite effect.’

‘Indeed.’ The headmaster appeared to be brooding over this evidence of female precocity. ‘Then you think,’ he said presently, ‘that it’s something more serious than that?’

Miss Parry assented. ‘In a way.’

The headmaster eyed her with some apprehension; they had spoken of sexual matters before, but for the most part in general and hyperbolic terms, and at the moment directness seemed called for.

‘Seduction?’ he murmured uncertainly.

Miss Parry volleyed courageously. ‘I had thought of that,’ she admitted – and then leaned forward with a gesture almost of impatience. ‘But I’m inclined to rule it out. You’ll allow me to speak frankly?’

‘I should welcome it,’ said the headmaster gallantly.

Miss Parry smiled – a small, nervous smile so out of keeping with her habitual candour that it was a kind of revelation to him; he realized suddenly that she found such topics objectionable not out of prudery or obscurantism, but because their discussion was a real derogation of some unacknowledged ideal of decency to which she subscribed. He liked and respected her for it, and he smiled back.

‘There are two possibilities,’ she said. ‘A rape, which she couldn’t help; or a seduction, which she regretted afterwards.’

Miss Parry hesitated. ‘I know it’s unpalatable,’ she went on, ‘to talk about a girl of sixteen in terms like that, but I hardly see how it can be avoided…If it is a rape, then I scarcely imagine that one of your boys is responsible…’

‘Agreed,’ said the headmaster. ‘To my knowledge, there isn’t a boy in the school who’d have the nerve.’

‘And as to seduction…Well, in the first place, Brenda is a self-possessed and knowledgeable child, quite capable of taking care of herself. And in the second place—’

‘Yes?’

‘In the second place, I asked her outright this morning if anything of that sort had occurred. Her only reaction was surprise – and I’m positive it was genuine.’

‘I’m greatly relieved to hear it.’ The headmaster pulled a handkerchief from his breast pocket and dabbed perfunctorily at his forehead. ‘But in that case I don’t understand what upset the girl – or why she should be so secretive about it.’

Miss Parry shrugged. ‘No more do I. As far as I can see, sex is out of it, and although there are a good many conceivable alternatives, there’s no actual evidence for any of them.’

‘Then how can I help you?’

‘All I want is to establish, as far as possible, that nothing untoward happened during the rehearsal, or on the premises here. My responsibility ends with that.’

‘I see. Well, that should be easy enough. I’ll speak to Mathieson, who’s producing the play…If you like, I’ll do it now. I believe he’s teaching this period, so I can easily get hold of him.’

‘There’s no immediate hurry.’ Miss Parry rose and stubbed out her cigarette. ‘The whole affair is probably an ignis fatuus. Perhaps if you could telephone me later on…’

‘By all means.’ The headmaster, too, had risen. He pointed to a statuette of Aphrodite which stood on a rosewood side table by the door. ‘I’m very glad,’ he said, ‘that that woman isn’t responsible. When we have trouble with the play it’s generally safe to assume that she’s at the bottom of it.’

Miss Parry smiled. ‘The Platonic halves…’ she said.

‘The Platonic halves,’ said the headmaster firmly, ‘are best kept apart until they’ve left school. Apart from anything else, a little enforced abstinence makes the eventual impact much more violent and exciting…’ He became belatedly aware of the duties of hospitality: ‘But won’t you stay to lunch?’

‘Thank you, no. I must be back by the time morning school finishes.’

‘A pity. But you’ll be at the – ah – celebrations tomorrow?’

‘Of course. Who’s giving the prizes?’

‘It was to have been Lord Washburton,’ said the headmaster, ‘but he’s fallen ill, so I’ve had to get a last-minute substitute – the Oxford Professor of English, who’s an acquaintance of mine. He should be interesting – in fact, my only fear is that he may be too interesting. I’m not quite sure that he’s capable of the sustained hypocrisy which the occasion demands.’

‘In that case I shall come to the speeches. As you know, I avoid them as a rule.’

‘I only wish I could,’ said the headmaster. ‘Not in this particular instance, but in general…Well, well. I suppose these crosses helped to justify my three thousand a year.’

He showed Miss Parry out, and returned to the correspondence which lay on his desk. A Mrs Brodribb, it appeared, had much to say on the subject of Henry’s School Certificate results – a matter on which the headmaster himself was only imperfectly informed. There was to be a meeting of the Headmasters’ Conference in a fortnight’s time. Someone wished to endow a prize for the best yearly essay on The Future of the British Empire… The headmaster groaned aloud. There were far too many prizes already. The boys wasted too much of their time competing for them, and the masters wasted too much of their time setting and correcting them. Unluckily, the donor in this instance was too eminent to be offended; the only gleam of comfort was that with tact he might be induced to read the essays, and award the prize, himself.

The headmaster glanced rapidly at the remaining letters, and then put them aside. The problem of that lasciva puella, Brenda Boyce, had aroused in him a mild curiosity – and since the matter had to be dealt with, it might as well be dealt with now. He went to a dark green metal filing cabinet and investigated its contents; they revealed the fact that Mathieson was at present teaching English to the Modern Lower Fifth. The headmaster picked up his gown and mortarboard and, carrying them under his arm, made for the door.

2
Find out Moonshine

‘For I have learned,’ said Simblefield, a small, spotty, cowardly boy, ‘to look on nature not as in the hour of thoughtless youth but hearing oftentimes the still sad music of humanity nor harsh nor grating though of ample power to chasten and subdue.’

He paused, and an expression of pleasure appeared on his unprepossessing features. Simblefield’s highest aim, in the recitation of poetry, was to get through his allotted portion without actually omitting any of the words; and this he had succeeded in doing. That there were subtleties of interpretation beyond and above this simple ambition he was, of course, vaguely aware, but in the flush of his present triumph he held them of no account.

In the silence which followed his breathless intoning, Mr Hargrave, the school’s most savage disciplinarian, could be heard in the next room booming Latin at his cowed and sycophantic form. Simblefield looked expectantly at Mr Mathieson, who was gazing with folded arms out of the classroom windows. Being an exceptionally naive and stupid boy, Simblefield supposed that Mr Mathieson was seeking for words adequate to commend his performance; but in this diagnosis Simblefield was mistaken, for in fact Mr Mathieson had fallen into a transient and inchoate daydream, and was momentarily unaware that Simblefield had finished. He was an untidy, heavily built man of middle age, clumsy in his movements; and he wore an ancient sports coat with leather pads sewn to the elbows, and a pair of baggy grey trousers.

The sound of fidgeting aroused him, and his reverie merged discouragingly into the austere reality of the classroom. It was a large, box-like place, the lower reaches of its walls liberally decorated with ink and fingermarks. The master’s desk, ponderous and antiquated, stood on a dais beside a pitted and pock-marked wall blackboard. There were a few cheerless pictures of indefinite rustic and classical scenes. A thin film of chalk covered everything. And some twenty boys sat behind wilfully collapsible desks, occupying their brief intermission in various more or less destructive and useless ways.

Mathieson observed that Simblefield was no longer giving tongue, but was, instead, gazing at him with much complacency.

‘Simblefield,’ he said, ‘have you any notion at all of the meaning of this poem?’

‘Oh, sir,’ said Simblefield feebly.

‘Just what is our attitude to nature in our thoughtless youth, Simblefield? You must be well qualified to answer that question.’

There was some laughter of a rather insincere kind. ‘Potty Simblefield,’ said someone.

‘Well, Simblefield? I’m waiting for an answer.’

‘Oh, sir, I don’t know, sir.’

‘Of course you must know. Think, boy. You don’t take much notice of nature, do you?’

‘Oh, yes, sir.’

‘No, you don’t, Simblefield. To you, it’s simply a background for your own personality.’

‘Yes, sir, I see, sir,’ said Simblefield rather too readily.

‘I have grave doubts, Simblefield, as to whether in fact you do see. But some of the others may.’

There was an instant clamour. ‘I understand, sir.’ ‘Only a fool like Simblefield wouldn’t understand.’ ‘Sir, it’s like when you go for a walk, sir, you don’t really notice the trees.’ ‘Sir, why do we have to read Wordsworth, sir?’

‘Quiet!’ said Mr Mathieson with determination. An uneasy hush ensued. ‘Now, that is precisely the way in which Wordsworth did not look at nature.’

‘Wordsworth was a daft fool,’ someone said sotto voce.

Mr Mathieson, after briefly considering tracing this remark to its source, and deciding against it, went on, ‘That is to say that for Wordsworth nature was more than a mere background.’

‘Sir!’

‘Well?’

‘Didn’t Wordsworth nearly have his head cut off in the French Revolution, sir?’

‘He was certainly in France shortly after the Revolution. As I was saying—’

‘Sir, why do they cut people’s heads off in France and hang them in England?’

‘And electrocute them in America, sir?’

‘And shoot them in Russia, sir?’

A further babel arose. ‘They don’t shoot them in Russia, you fool, they cut off their heads with an axe.’ ‘Sir, is it true that when they hang a man his heart goes on beating long after he’s dead?’ ‘Oh, Bagshaw, you idiot.’ ‘Yes, you fool, how could he be dead if his heart was beating?’

Mathieson banged on his desk.

‘If anyone speaks again without permission,’ he said, ‘I shall report him to his housemaster.’

This was at once effective – being, indeed, an infallible specific against any form of disorder. At Castrevenford, to be reported to one’s housemaster was a serious affair.

‘Now,’ said Mr Mathieson, ‘let us return to the subject in hand. What, Simblefield, do you suppose Wordsworth to mean by “the still, sad music of humanity”?’

‘Oh, sir.’ Simblefield was clearly dismayed at this further demand on his meagre intellectual resources. ‘Well, sir, I think it means…Look here, sir, suppose a mountain, or a bird, or something…’

Luckily for Simblefield, whose ability to camouflage his ignorance was held in well-justified contempt by the rest of the form, he was not required to finish; for it was at this moment that the headmaster entered the room.

The boys got hastily to their feet, amid a scraping of desks and banging of chairs. It was rare for the headmaster to visit a form room during school hours, and their curiosity was tempered by an apprehensive mental inventory of recent misdeeds.

‘Sit down, gentlemen,’ the headmaster remarked benignly. ‘Mr Mathieson, can you spare me a minute or two?’

‘Of course, headmaster,’ said Mathieson; and to the boys, ‘Go on reading until I come back.’

The two men went out into the corridor. It was bare, echoing, with uneven wooden boards; and owing to the fact that the teaching block had not been designed for its present purpose, being actually a converted lunatic asylum (a circumstance which regularly provoked a good deal of mediocre wit), the light was insufficient. At present, however, the corridor had the merit of being comparatively cool.

‘Aequam memento rebus in arduis servare mentem,’ said Mr Hargrave in the adjacent room, ‘does not mean, “Remember to keep a month’s water for the hard roads”, and only a blockhead like you, Hewitt, would credit Horace with making such an asinine remark.’

The headmaster said, ‘How did the rehearsal go last night, Mathieson?’

‘Oh…well enough, headmaster. I think we shall get a reasonable performance.’

‘No troubles or hold-ups of any kind?’

‘No. I don’t think so.’

‘Ah.’ The headmaster appeared to be listening to the sounds which emanated from the Modern Lower Fifth – abrupt crescendos of chatter alternating antiphonally with panic-stricken outbursts of shushing. He applied his forefinger judicially to the centre of his lower lip.

‘This girl who’s playing the part of Katherine,’ he resumed. ‘How does she strike you?’

‘She acts well,’ said Mathieson.

‘But apart from that – as a personality.’

Mathieson hesitated before replying. ‘To be frank, headmaster, she seems to be rather a sexy young creature.’

‘Yes, I’m glad to have you confirm that. The situation is that she arrived home from last night’s rehearsal in a state of considerable agitation, and we can’t find out what upset her.’

‘She was perfectly all right during the rehearsal,’ said Mathieson. ‘Almost too lively, in fact.’

‘Yes. Well, I’m pleased to hear it; it lessens our responsibility to some extent…Do you know if she has – ah – designs on any particular boy?’

‘I may be quite wrong, but I rather thought that Williams…’

‘Williams? Which Williams? There are dozens.’

‘J. H., headmaster. In the Modern Sixth. He’s playing Henry.’

‘Oh, yes, of course. I think I’d better have a word with him…By the way, your dress rehearsal’s this evening, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘I’ll try and look in,’ said the headmaster, ‘if I can find the time.’

So Mathieson returned to the task of instilling Wordsworthian metaphysics into the barren intellects of the Modern Lower Fifth, and the headmaster made his way to the porter’s office, where he left instructions that J. H. Williams was to be summoned to his study immediately after morning school.

When Wells, the porter, entered the Modem Sixth room ten minutes before the end of the last period, he found Mr Etherege expounding the technics of demonology and black magic.

Wells was not greatly surprised at this. Mr Etherege was one of those leavening eccentrics who are sometimes to be found at a large public school, and he had been at Castrevenford for so long that he now legislated for himself, both as to what he taught and as to how he taught it. He had a fancy for the esoteric and remote, and among his more recent obsessions were yoga, Notker Balbulus, an obscure eighteenth-century poet named Samuel Smitherson, the lost island of Atlantis and the artistic significance of the blues. No boy passed through his hands without acquiring some knowledge of whatever obscure and useless subject happened to interest him at the moment.

The framers of education acts have little use for such dominies as Mr Etherege; but in this, as in so many other things, they are grossly impercipient. The fact is that every large school requires an advocatus diaboli – and at Castrevenford Mr Etherege occupied this important post. He was flagrantly lacking in public spirit. He never attended important matches. He was not interested in the spiritual welfare of his boys. He lacked respect for the school as an institution. In short, he was impenitently an individualist. And if, at first sight, these characteristics do not appear particularly commendable, you must remember their context. In a school like Castrevenford a good deal of emphasis is necessarily laid on public spirit, and the thing is liable to develop, if unregulated, into a rather dreary fetish. Mr Etherege helped to keep this peril at bay, and consequently the headmaster valued him as much as his more sternly dutiful colleagues. His divagations from the approved syllabus were the price that had to be paid, and its evils had in any case been minimized by the removal from his timetables of all work for important examinations.

Cautiously skirting the mirific sign of the pentagram which was chalked on the floor, Wells delivered the headmaster’s message to Mr Etherege, who passed it on, embroidered with pessimistic conjecture, to J. H. Williams. Wells departed, and Mr Etherege commented briskly on the Grand Grimoire until an electric bell, shrilling violently throughout the building, indicated that morning school was over; at this he uttered a cantrip, designed, as he said, to protect J. H. Williams from bodily harm during his interview with the headmaster, and dismissed the class. Williams – a dark, clever, good-looking boy of sixteen – at once made his way through a jostling, clamorous, rout of his contemporaries to the headmaster’s study, his vague apprehensions unallayed by Mr Etherege’s promise of supernatural protection.

He found the headmaster gazing out of his window, with his hands clasped behind his back.

‘Williams,’ said the headmaster without preliminary, ‘you must not make assignations with young women.’

A moment’s reflection had persuaded him that this was the likeliest gambit for their interview. He knew that Williams was a candid and sensible boy, who would deny such an accusation only if it were untrue.

Williams went red in the face. ‘No, sir,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry, sir.’

‘Be more accurate, Williams,’ the headmaster admonished him mildly. ‘If, at your age, you’re sorry that you arranged to meet an attractive girl, then you ought to be examined by a doctor…The phrase you should use in such circumstances is: “I apologize”.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Williams agreed, rather helplessly.

‘And where exactly was this rendezvous?’

‘In the science building, sir.’

‘Ah. I take it, then, that the arrangement was made during last evening’s rehearsal?’

‘Yes, sir. The rehearsal ended at nine forty-five. So there was a quarter of an hour to spare before I needed to be back at my house.’

The headmaster made a mental note that this gap must not be allowed to occur next year.

‘This appointment,’ he said, ‘was it made on your own initiative?’

‘Well, sir’ – Williams risked an apologetic grin – ‘one might say it was a cooperative effort.’

‘Indeed.’ The headmaster considered for a moment. ‘Have you any excuses to make?’

‘Well, sir, I don’t know if you’ve actually seen Brenda, sir—’

The headmaster interrupted him. ‘Yes, that’s obviously the only justification you could offer: Vénus tout entière à son Williams attachée. Being in the Modem Sixth, you should know your Racine.’

‘It’s only natural at my age, sir,’ Williams murmured hopefully, ‘as you said yourself.’

‘Did I?’ said the headmaster. ‘That was indiscreet of me. But if we all gave way to our natural impulses as and when we felt like it, we should soon be back at the Stone Age…What exactly happened during your meeting with this young woman?’

Williams looked surprised. ‘Nothing, sir. I wasn’t able to turn up.’

‘What?’ the headmaster exclaimed.

‘Mr Pargiton caught me, sir, just as I was leaving the hall. As you know, sir, we’re supposed to go back to our houses immediately the rehearsal’s over, even if it finishes early…And of course, I was heading at the time in the opposite direction to Hogg’s. Mr Pargiton’ – Williams’ tone betrayed considerable resentment – ‘took me back and handed me over to Mr Fry.’

The headmaster reflected that Pargiton’s officiousness, which was normally rather tiresome, had its uses after all.

‘And you’re prepared to swear,’ he said, ‘that after the rehearsal you never set eyes on the girl?’

‘Yes, sir. That’s the truth.’

The headmaster sat down abruptly in the swivel chair behind his desk. ‘As I said before, you must not make assignations with young women.’

‘No, sir.’

‘Nor must you, on leaving this room, go round complaining about obscurantist repression of wholesome desires.’

‘No, sir, I shouldn’t dream—’

‘Your mind, Williams, is probably full of half-baked Freudian dogma.’

‘Well, actually, sir—’

‘Forget it. God forbid that you should be permanently celibate. But the term lasts only twelve weeks, and if you can’t abstain from the opposite sex for that length of time without suffering psychological damage, then your brain is an altogether feebler instrument than I’ve hitherto believed.’

Williams said nothing; his logic was incapable for the moment of contending with all this.

‘And in conclusion,’ the headmaster remarked, ‘kindly remember that there will be hell to pay if you attempt to meet this girl again…Now go away.’

And Williams took himself off, mightily pleased both at the efficacy of Mr Etherege’s spell and at the headmaster’s directness and good sense. He did not suspect that the headmaster’s directness and good sense had been carefully calculated so as to appeal to his own youthful mixture of idealism and cynicism. The headmaster had had considerable practice in getting the results he wanted.

Perceiving that Pargiton lingered in front of the teaching block, the headmaster sought, and found, confirmation of Williams’ narrative. He then telephoned to the High School and gave Miss Parry a concise summary of what he had learned.

‘I see,’ she said. ‘In that case, I’ll return to the attack. How long could Brenda have waited in the science building?’

‘Until about half past ten, I suppose, when Wells locks it up for the night.’

‘Good. Thank you very much.’

‘By the way,’ the headmaster added, ‘you might let me know what results you get.’

‘Of course,’ said Miss Parry. ‘I’ll telephone you later on.’

‘Later on’ proved to be about ten minutes before the beginning of afternoon school.

‘Look here,’ said Miss Parry, ‘are you quite certain that boy is telling the truth?’

‘I’m positive,’ the headmaster replied. ‘Why?’

‘Brenda denies that she ever went anywhere near the science building.’

‘Oh, Lord…Well, mightn’t that simply mean she was leading Williams up the garden path?’

‘It may. I don’t know.’

‘Does she deny having arranged to meet Williams?’

‘No. She wanted to at first, but I think that was only to protect the boy. She maintains that she thought better of it, and went home instead.’

‘I see…No other information?’

‘Nothing. The girl’s as obstinate as a donkey…There’s only one thing I’m sure of.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Something,’ said Miss Parry, ‘has nearly frightened her out of her mind.’

3
Thieves Break in and Steal

The site of Castrevenford School is a substantial rectangle, bounded on the west by the river Castreven and on the east by a main road. Elsewhere the line of demarcation is vaguer: northwards the playing fields peter out indeterminately into farming land, while to the south there is a confusing huddle of school buildings adjacent to a disorganized cluster of houses named Snagshill, which is a suburb both of Castrevenford and – more definitely – of the school itself. The main teaching block – a large but comfortless eighteenth-century erection of red brick, ivy-covered and a kind of game reservation for mice – stands isolated on the western boundary, with a clock tower, roofed by well-oxidized copper, surmounting it. From it, a gentle slope, planted with elms and beeches and riddled with rabbit warrens, runs down to the river bank. Here the school boathouse is situated, and a substantial landing stage. Across the river there are fields, woods, a distant grange; and beyond them can be seen the towers and spires of Castrevenford town, three miles upstream.

The boarding houses are seven in number, scattered irregularly about the circumference of the site. At the north-eastern angle is the chapel, an uncommonly hideous relic of late Victorian times, put up with such parsimony and haste that the authorities go in hourly fear of its subsidence or total collapse. The school gates open on the main road. A long drive runs from them, through an avenue of oaks, to the teaching block – which may be most conveniently referred to by its tide of Hubbard’s Building. Near the gates is the hall, severely box-like and utilitarian. The science building, the scout hut, the armoury and the library are grouped together on the south side near Davenant’s, which is the largest of the boarding houses. In it the headmaster’s study is situated, since his private house is half a mile away from the site.

The rest of the area is occupied by playing fields, squash and fives courts, the gymnasium, the swimming pool, the tuck shop, and the carpenter’s workshop. It is provided with a complex tracery of asphalt paths designed specifically, in the view of the boys, to make them walk the maximum possible distance between their houses and Hubbard’s Building.

It was this scene – or at all events a part of it – that the headmaster contemplated as he stood at his study window, meditating the problem of Brenda Boyce. At five minutes to two the school bell began tolling, and the headmaster, finding his conjectures profitless, fell to considering whether, in spite of the more conservative members of the staff, its wretched clangour should not be permanently silenced. The thing was intended, of course, to encourage punctuality; but it had not been used during the war, and the resumption of its daily tintinnabulation had resulted in no appreciable decrease in the steady minority of latecomers. There were too many bells at Castrevenford altogether. There were the clock chimes, which sounded the hours, halves and quarters with peevish insistence; the bells in the science building; the electric bell which marked the beginning and end of each lesson; the handbells in the houses; the chapel bell, which had obviously suffered some radical mishap during its casting…

By now the site was filled with ambling droves of boys, converging on Hubbard’s Building with books and files under their arms. And among them the headmaster observed Mr Philpotts, running across the dry grass towards Davenant’s.

Mr Philpotts was a chemistry master whose principal characteristic lay in a sort of unfocused vehemence, resulting in all probability from an overplus of natural energy. He was a small, stringy man of about fifty, with immense horn-rimmed spectacles, a long, sharp nose, and an unusual capacity for garrulous incoherence. In his present haste lay no reason for apprehension or surprise; he always ran, in preference, apparently, to walking. But unfortunately he was of a complaining disposition; the smallest upset was liable to bring him scurrying to the headmaster’s study, full of ire and outraged dignity; and the headmaster, watching his approach, had little doubt that in another minute or so Mr Philpotts would be assaulting his ear with some complicated tale of woe.

The prospect did not depress him unduly, since the wrongs and affronts which Mr Philpotts suffered seldom demanded more than a little tact in their settlement. And so, when Mr Philpotts knocked on the study door, it was with a cheerful voice that the headmaster invited him in.

It soon became plain, however, that Mr Philpotts had something of more than ordinary importance to relate.

‘A scandal, headmaster,’ he panted. ‘A most dangerous and wanton act.’

He was invited to sit down, but declined.

‘The perpetrator must be found and punished,’ he proceeded. ‘Most severely punished. Never in all my experience as an assistant master—’

‘What is the matter, Philpotts?’ the headmaster interposed with some severity. ‘Begin at the beginning, please.’

‘A theft,’ said Mr Philpotts emphatically. ‘Nothing more nor less than a theft.’

‘What has been stolen?’

‘That’s exactly the point,’ Mr Philpotts spluttered. ‘I don’t know. There’s no means of telling. I can’t be always stocktaking. There isn’t the time. And what with Common Entrance, and speech day, and the mid-term reports—’

‘Then something has been taken from the chemistry laboratory?’ the headmaster demanded after a moment’s rapid diagnosis.

‘A cupboard has been forced open,’ Mr Philpotts explained with indignation. ‘Forced open and rifled. I warn you, headmaster, that I cannot hold myself responsible. Many’s the time I’ve said the locks were inadequate. Many’s the time—’

‘No one is attempting to blame you, Philpotts,’ said the headmaster smoothly. ‘What does this cupboard contain?’

‘Acids,’ said Mr Philpotts with unusual directness and pertinence. ‘For the most part, acids.’

‘A good deal of poisonous stuff, in fact?’

‘Exactly. That is what makes the offence so serious.’ Mr Philpotts inhaled violently, by way of expressing his disapproval. ‘You see, no doubt, how serious it is?’

‘Certainly I see, Philpotts,’ said the headmaster with considerable asperity. ‘By some miracle, my judicial faculties are still functioning…You have no idea what, if anything, is missing?’

‘I presume that something is missing,’ said Mr Philpotts tartly. ‘Otherwise there would seem to be little point in breaking open the cupboard…The only thing I can say definitely is that no very large quantity of any substance has been taken.’

The headmaster said, ‘Very well. I shall have to consider what’s the best thing to do. In the meantime, will you see to it that the chemistry laboratory is kept locked whenever it’s not actually in use? It’s rather late in the day for such precautions, but we don’t want to be caught out a second time…By the way, when did you discover this?’

‘Last period this morning, headmaster. I wasn’t teaching until then. I can guarantee, too, that the cupboard was all right at five o’clock yesterday afternoon, because I had occasion to put some apparatus away in it.’

‘All right, Philpotts,’ said the headmaster. ‘I’ll let you know as soon as I’ve decided what steps to take.’

Mr Philpotts’ nodded importantly, left the room, and bounded away in the direction of the science building. As the headmaster returned to his window, the tolling of the school bell ceased, and such boys as were still on their way began running. A few moments later, as the clock struck two, the headmaster heard the distant trilling of the electric bell in Hubbard’s Building. A flushed and desperate latecomer scampered past, and in a last frantic burst of speed vanished from sight. There was peace.

But the headmaster scarcely appreciated it. A theft of poison – even a conjectured theft – was, as Mr Philpotts had platitudinously observed, a serious matter. Moreover, it was far from easy to decide on any effective course of action. The guilty person was not necessarily a boy – indeed the headmaster inclined, in the absence of definite evidence, to dismiss this hypothesis. But there were the groundsmen, the members of the staff, the public (who could move with relative freedom about the school premises) and, of course, Brenda Boyce, who on Williams’ showing had definitely been in the science building on the previous evening…

He bit irritably at the stem of his pipe. Though he was averse from informing the police, it was obviously his duty to do so. Very reluctantly he reached for the telephone.

It was at about this moment that Mr Etherege left the masters’ common room with Michael Somers. And as both of them were going in the same direction, they fell into conversation.

Somers was the youngest member of the Castrevenford staff – a slim, tall, wiry man, good looking but for a hint of effeminacy in the smallness and regularity of his features. He had smooth black hair, and a tenor voice whose agreeable modulations held a suspicion of artifice and self-consciousness. He taught English, and with conspicuous competence, but he was not popular with the boys, and the headmaster, who had a certain respect for the merciless perspicuity of the young, was inclined privately to distrust him on that ground. Experience had taught the headmaster that the principal, if not the only, reason for a master’s unpopularity was insincerity. Mere severity never affected the boys’ judgment unless it was associated with hypocrisy or cant; and leniency – Somers was notoriously lenient – was a bribe which by itself was incapable of winning their affection.

Somers’ colleagues regarded him with mixed feelings; the current of his conceit, though subliminal, was strong enough to be perceived. But Mr Etherege, who reputedly was devoid both of morality and of human affections, assessed his fellow-beings solely by the criterion of their suitability as an audience for his own utterances; and since Somers was appreciative and attentive, Mr Etherege held him impeccable.

‘And what,’ Mr Etherege demanded, ‘is the matter with Love?’ He was referring not to the passion which drowned Leander, but to one of his senior colleagues.

Somers looked surprised. ‘The matter?’ he said. ‘I didn’t know anything was the matter with him. How do you mean?’

Clearly this reply was disappointing to Mr Etherege. In addition to his other eccentricities he operated as a kind of central clearing house for Castrevenford scandal. In some ineluctable fashion he managed to acquire the most intimate information about everyone and everything, and he was always prepared to pass it on. But now, a likely well-spring having dried up, he was slightly aggrieved. And certainly, if Somers was ignorant of Love’s temperamental disorders, there was not much enlightenment to be hoped for elsewhere. Love had been Somers’ housemaster at Merfield, and Somers was very much his protégé. Mr Etherege sighed.

‘I should have thought,’ he said reproachfully as they toiled up a flight of stone stairs, ‘that you would have noticed it.’

‘I’ve hardly seen him for the past week,’ Somers explained.

‘He seems to be consumed by some inner fury,’ said Mr Etherege. ‘He’s touchy, irascible and uncivil. Love, I freely admit, is not an exuberant man at the best of times, his innate puritanism is too strong. But this phase is quite exceptional. Obviously something has annoyed him very much.’

‘He tends to sulk,’ said Somers, ‘whenever things aren’t exactly to his liking.’

This comment struck Mr Etherege as being too obvious and uninteresting to require affirmation, or indeed, an answer of any kind.

‘In fact,’ he proceeded, ‘the school is overburdened with mysteries at the moment…By the way, how is your wrist?’ He pointed to Somers’ right arm, which was protected by a sling.

‘Pretty well recovered, thanks. But what’s all this about mysteries?’

‘You’ve surely heard about the theft from the science building?’

‘Oh, that. Yes. Philpotts told me when I was on my way in to school this afternoon.’

‘And about the High School girl?’

‘No. What High School girl?’

‘She had an assignation with J. H. Williams in the science building,’ said Mr Etherege. ‘That in itself would be nothing out of the ordinary, of course. But it appears, in the first place, that Williams didn’t turn up, since he was headed off by that busybody Pargiton; and in the second place, that the girl arrived home in a state of great distress and trembling…What do you make of that?’

They had come to the door of Somers’ form room. A half-apprehensive murmur of conversation was audible from inside. Somers shrugged, and said:

‘Could she have had anything to do with the theft?’

‘Up to the present,’ said Mr Etherege, ‘she’s refused to say a word. But it’s sinister, Somers, undeniably sinister. It’s exactly the sort of situation which ends in murder.’

The afternoon wore away. The headmaster, having telephoned the police station, spoken to the superintendent, and received the promise of a visit immediately after tea, went on to the dictating and signing of letters and notices. At two forty-five he dismissed Galbraith, his secretary, into the next room and went to his window to watch the school disperse. On Fridays, afternoon school was bisected by the JTC parade, so that the second period began at a quarter to five instead of a quarter to three. The electric bell jangled in Hubbard’s Building, and the headmaster heard the murmur of released tension which followed. It grew quickly to an uproar, compounded of the scraping of desks and chairs, the banging of books, and the clatter of feet on wooden staircases, with overtures of talk and whistling. A throng of some five hundred boys poured out of the doorways, the khaki of their uniforms interspersed here and there with the blue of the Air Training Corps, and the diurnal grey of the medically unfit, clutching files, rubbing at their belts with the sleeves of their tunics, saluting the occasional non-militant master who, his work for the moment finished, mounted his bicycle and rode off down the drive. In the quarter-hour break the boys dispersed to their houses, their heavy Corps boots rattling on the asphalt. Presently the site was again deserted, save for an infrequent group of boys or masters waiting for the parade to begin. The sun shone fiercely, and the leaves of the oaks threw a network of dappled shadow over the drive. The sky was cloudless and vividly blue.

At such a time as this the headmaster was generally visited by one or two members of his staff in search of instruction or enlightenment, but on this particular day he was uninterrupted, and before long returned to his desk and began rather somnolently to prepare the address he was to give at the chapel service on the morrow. From time to time a bellow of command, or the tramp of marching and countermarching, drifted through the open windows from the parade ground. And the hands of the clock on the mantelpiece stood at four when a small red sports car of exceptional stridency and raffishness pulled up outside Davenant’s and Gervase Fen, Professor of English Language and Literature in the University of Oxford, extracted himself laboriously from it.

He was a tall, lanky man, a little over forty years of age. His face was cheerful, ruddy and clean-shaven, with shrewd and humorous ice-blue eyes, and he had on a grey suit, a green tie embellished with mermaids, and an extraordinary hat. He gave the car a laudatory pat on the bonnet, at which it suddenly backfired, and gazed about him with vague approbation until the headmaster emerged to greet him and conduct him into the study, where he slumped down into an armchair.

‘Well, well,’ said the headmaster. ‘It’s most kind of you to help us out like this, at the last moment; particularly as we haven’t seen one another for so many years. What have you been doing with yourself?’

‘Detecting,’ Fen replied with great complacency.

‘Oh, ah. Of course. I’ve read the reports in the papers. There seems to have been a great deal of crime at Oxford just recently.’

‘Do you never read Matthew Arnold?’ Fen demanded. ‘Oxford is proverbially the home of lost corpses.’

The headmaster chuckled, rang for Galbraith, and ordered tea. ‘You’ve come at the right time,’ he said when the secretary had departed. ‘We have a couple of minor mysteries of our own.’

‘Oh?’

‘And possibly of a criminal nature. I’m expecting the local superintendent of police after tea.’

Fen raised his eyebrows. ‘Do explain,’ he said.

The headmaster explained. Warming to his subject, he passed from the episode of the cupboard to the unaccountable behaviour of Brenda Boyce. Fen listened attentively, and when the headmaster had finished:

‘Yes,’ he remarked, ‘I think you were wise to tell the police.’

His host grimaced wryly. ‘I’m afraid they’ll have a good deal to say about our leaving chemicals in such an accessible place.’

‘Can you rely on them to act discreetly?’

‘Oh, yes. Stagge is a very sensible man.’ The headmaster paused expectantly. ‘Well, have you any suggestions?’

‘None, my dear Horace. There are a good many possible explanations – most of them innocuous, I may say – and nothing to show which is the right one. Not enough data, in fact. What kind of advice do you want, anyway?’

‘The girl,’ said the headmaster slowly, ‘isn’t really my affair. Whatever upset her pretty certainly happened after she’d left the rehearsal. On the other hand, there is a link with the chemistry laboratory business in the fact that she arranged to meet Williams in the science building.’

‘Could you make an announcement about this theft to the school?’

‘I scarcely think it would have any effect. And besides, I have an irrational conviction that no boy was responsible. I can’t explain it, I’m afraid; it’s simply that in the pattern of schoolboy behaviour, which I know tolerably well, this thing doesn’t fit. You occasionally get a boy who steals – yes. But what he steals is almost invariably money or food.’

For a moment they were both silent. The Corps parade was over, and through the windows they could see a mob of boys streaming into Davenant’s, noisily intent on tea. Fen frowned.

‘About this man Philpotts—’ he began, but interrupted himself to listen to some indefinite bumping and scratching sounds outside the study door. ‘What on earth’s that?’ he enquired.

‘You’ll see,’ said the headmaster a trifle grimly. He got to his feet, went to the door, and opened it. A dog came in.

‘Good God,’ said Fen in a muffled voice.

The dog was a large, forbidding bloodhound, on whose aboriginal colour and shape one or two other breeds had been more or less successfully superimposed. He stood just inside the doorway, unnervingly immobile, and fixed Fen with a malevolent and hypnotic stare.

‘This,’ said the headmaster, ‘is Mr Merrythought…He’s rather old,’ he added, hoping perhaps to distract attention from the singular inappositeness of the name. ‘In fact, I might almost say he was very old indeed.’

‘Is he’ – Fen spoke with great caution, rather as Balaam’s ass must have spoken after perceiving the surprise and alarm created by his first attempt – ‘is he yours?’

The headmaster shook his head. ‘He isn’t anybody’s, really. He belonged to a master who died, and now he just wanders about the site. He ought to be put away, really,’ said the headmaster, regarding Mr Merrythought with considerable distaste. ‘The trouble is, you see, that he’s liable to homicidal fits.’

‘Oh,’ said Fen. ‘Oh.’

‘They happen about once every three months. As a matter of fact there’s one due about now.’

‘Indeed.’

‘But don’t worry,’ the headmaster remarked cheerfully. ‘He likes you. He’s taken quite a liking to you.’

Fen did not appear much pleased by this disclosure. ‘I see no signs of it,’ he objected.

‘He would have bitten you by now,’ the headmaster explained, ‘if he hadn’t liked you.’

At this, Mr Merrythought lurched suddenly forward and began to advance slowly on Fen, who said, ‘Now look what you’ve done.’

‘Don’t be alarmed,’ said the headmaster, standing well out of Mr Merrythought’s path. ‘He wants to make friends.’

But Fen was not able to accept this assurance. ‘Go away,’ he adjured Mr Merrythought. ‘Go away at once.’

‘You mustn’t cross him,’ said the headmaster. ‘It’s fatal to cross him, because then he has a fit. That’s why I had to get up and let him in.’

By this time Mr Merrythought had come up to Fen, who was gazing at him with unconcealed apprehension. Still glaring balefully, Mr Merrythought lowered his head on to Fen’s knees (‘There,’ said the headmaster), and in this posture brooded for some moments, dribbling slightly the while. Presently he went away and began trying to climb on to a table.

‘Well,’ said the headmaster briskly, ‘now that he’s found something to occupy him…You were asking about Philpotts, I think.’

‘Yes,’ said Fen, shifting his chair so as to keep Mr Merrythought well in view. ‘Yes. Quite. Philpotts…Is he a temporary master?’

‘No. On the permanent staff. He’s been here for years.’

‘I suppose you’ve had a lot of staff changes recently.’

The headmaster gestured assent. ‘It’s been a great nuisance,’ he said. ‘Things are more settled now, but at the time it was very trying – and one can’t blame the war for all of it. People got restless, and left inexplicably…There was Soames, for example, who suddenly broke away after twenty years’ teaching and went off to be jokes editor to a firm of matchbox manufacturers. And young Sheridan, of course – quite a brilliant creature – who was lured on to the terra incognita of the BBC and became one of those recurrent people in the Third Programme; Morton went to the BBC too, and took a job as an announcer…I understand that he shouted so loud when introducing a variety programme that he fell down on the floor in a syncope, and never rallied.’ The headmaster appeared much moved. ‘A melancholy end, though I suppose…Oh, Lord.’

This final ejaculation was occasioned by the activities of Mr Merrythought, who was now attempting to scale a wall. He kept falling back on to the floor with a terrible impact.

‘We can’t have that,’ said the headmaster. ‘He’ll hurt himself seriously in a minute.’

He rummaged in a drawer, and eventually produced from it a rubber bone. Mr Merrythought seized this and began to play a game with it. He held it in his mouth and moved his head with great rapidity from side to side. Then he suddenly opened his mouth. If the bone did not catch on his teeth and fall harmlessly on to the carpet, which it generally did, it flew off at a tangent with considerable velocity. Mr Merrythought would then totter away to retrieve it and the whole process would begin again.

‘He’s almost human, isn’t he?’ said the headmaster. ‘Though I doubt if that can honestly be regarded as a compliment…’ There was a knock on the door. ‘Ah. That will be our tea.’

They talked of indifferent matters while they ate and drank. Mr Merrythought was presented with some weak tea in the slop basin, but he only planted his foot in it, uttered a snort of pain, and returned to the rubber bone. Eventually the headmaster looked at his watch and said:

‘I wonder when the superintendent will arrive. In five minutes’ time I’m supposed to be talking to the Classical Sixth about Lucretius. I suppose I shall have to leave them to their own devices.’

‘I’ll take the period if you like,’ said Fen.

The headmaster looked up hopefully. ‘Wouldn’t you find it very tiresome?’

‘Not in the least.’

‘I don’t like leaving them alone,’ the headmaster explained, ‘if it can be avoided. They tend to settle down and play bridge.’

‘All right,’ said Fen, finishing his tea, stubbing out his cigarette and rising. ‘Tell me where they are and I’ll go at once.’

‘I’ll take you over and introduce you.’

‘No, no, my dear Horace. There’s not the slightest necessity for that; I can introduce myself.’

‘Well, if you insist…The room is the first door on the right as you go in at the main entrance. They’re quite a peaceable, genteel lot of boys, you’ll find. Come back here afterwards and I’ll take you to my house…I’m really most grateful.’

‘I shall enjoy myself,’ said Fen truthfully, and made for the door. Mr Merrythought instantly abandoned the bone and lumbered after him.

Fen was indignant. ‘I do believe he’s going to follow me,’ he said. ‘He thinks I’m White of Selborne, I expect.’

‘I’ll pick up his bone,’ said the headmaster, ‘and while his attention’s distracted you must slip out.’

‘Blackmail,’ Fen grumbled. ‘A blackmailing dog.’

But he cooperated in the manoeuvre, and it was successful. Pursued by sounds which suggested that Mr Merrythought’s trimensual fit was imminent, he made his way to the Classical Sixth room.

4
Holocaust

The High School for girls was in Castrevenford town, with the headmistress’s house adjoining it. And since Miss Parry was a woman sensible of the civilized graces, her study was a pleasant room – broad, cool, predominantly pink and white, with a delicately patterned chintz on the armchairs and Dresden vases on the mantelpiece. There were many flowers, and beyond the windows you could see, on the left, a sparkling segment of the river, with five of the pollarded willows which stood along the tow path. The late afternoon sun flared on the red brick wall enclosing the small garden, drawing the scent from the roses, lying in rich, butter-gold streaks across the lawn where a tall gate intercepted its rays. Beyond the wall was a huddle of old houses, and beyond them the spire of St Sepulchre’s, its brazen weathercock motionless and glittering against the sky.

At five o’clock on the afternoon in question, Miss Parry was gazing at this scene, in an attempt to dispel the mental indigestion occasioned by reading thirty consecutive essays on the pontificate of Leo X, when her telephone rang. She reached for the instrument a little reluctantly. In the normal way she enjoyed responsibility, but for one reason and another the past week had been abnormally trying, and she was conscious of a growing desire for solitude and leisure. Feeling this a treachery, and having a practical rather than an analytical mind, she was inclined to blame the heat. On the other hand…

‘Castrevenford 473,’ she said. ‘Yes, this is Miss Parry speaking. Who is that?…Oh, Mrs Boyce…Brenda hasn’t arrived home?…I see…To the best of my knowledge she left here just after four, yes…Possibly she’s gone to the shops, or to a cinema…Oh, I see. Yes, that does rather alter the situation…Naturally you’re worried, if you particularly asked her not to linger on the way home…Yes…Yes…Well, there are still a few of the older girls in the building; I’ll ask them…Of course…Yes. I’ll ring you back immediately. Goodbye.’

The bell jangled spectrally as she replaced the receiver. After a moment’s consideration she got to her feet, left the study, walked along the short passage which connected her house with the school buildings, crossed the gymnasium, and entered a corridor of studies. From one of the nearest, youthful voices could be heard arguing. Her arrival at its door was heralded by a furious noise suggestive of the Deutschland breaking up on the Kentish Knock.

‘Damn these hockey sticks,’ said one of the voices with injured fervour.

‘Elspeth, you shouldn’t swear so.’

‘I shall say damn, and I shall say blast, and I shall say bloody hell—’

‘Elspeth!’

With raised eyebrows Miss Parry opened the door.

The study appeared to be occupied chiefly by comestibles, textbooks, games equipment and bedraggled wild flowers wilting over the edges of jam-jars. Its furniture was rudimentary, and its windows looked out over the tennis courts. Crammed into it were four sixth-form girls, wearing pleated navy-blue skirts, black shoes and stockings, short-sleeved blouses and ties. Officially, they were a committee meeting of the High School Literary Society; actually, they appeared to be doing little beyond eating. They stood petrified at their headmistress’s apocalyptic entry, like those Cornish maids whom the wrath of Jehovah transmogrified in granite for dancing naked on the sabbath day.

Miss Parry favoured them with a comprehensively omniscient and admonitory stare. She said, ‘Has any of you girls seen Brenda Boyce since school ended?’

There was a moment’s silence until someone plucked up courage to reply. Then, ‘No, Miss Parry,’ said Elspeth.

And, ‘No, Miss Parry,’ the others chorused respectfully.

‘Did any of you see her leave for home?’

‘No, Miss Parry,’ said Elspeth.

‘No, Miss Parry,’ said the others.

The generalized lack of information conveyed by this liturgical responsory struck Miss Parry as profitless. She directed her attention to Janice Dalloway, the girl (she was suffering, it should be said, from a temporary access of evangelical mania) who had rebuked Elspeth’s blaspheming.

‘When did you last see Brenda?’ Miss Parry demanded.

‘Oh, Miss Parry, it was at the end of history, only Miss Fitt kept me behind to talk about my work and then I came straight here so I didn’t see her when she went out of school.’

‘Perhaps she’s in her study,’ a third girl volunteered.

Miss Parry, expectant of further suggestions, received none. ‘Very well,’ she said at last. ‘Go on with your meeting. And remember that you must be out of the building by six o’clock.’

‘Yes, Miss Parry,’ said Elspeth.

‘Yes, Miss Parry,’ the others chanted dutifully.

‘In the normal way,’ Miss Parry added in parting, ‘I like to regard your studies as inviolate – which is to say that I don’t take official cognizance of what is said in them. But swearing, Elspeth, is another matter.’ She paused; Elspeth went rather pale, and studied the floor intently. ‘If I hear you using language like that again, there will be trouble.’

She departed, closing the door behind her. A gust of awe-stricken whispering pursued her along the corridor.

The study which Brenda Boyce shared with another girl was very similar to the first, but tidier, and at present empty. Miss Parry was on the point of quitting it when she caught sight of an envelope lying on a desk by the open window. Investigating, she found it was addressed to herself, and opened it.

Dear Miss Parry

Please don’t worry about me. I’m going away with someone who will make me happy. I can look after myself, so don’t worry. I’ll be writing to Mother and Father. Thanking you for everything you’ve done for me,

Yours sincerely,

Brenda Boyce

Miss Parry uttered an involuntary exclamation of annoyance and dismay, yet – oddly enough – the first thought that occurred to her was that Brenda’s prose style had undergone a remarkable change. None of the usual prolonged euphuistic periods were in evidence – though this rather consciously unlettered simplicity might be due to the stress of some emotion…Miss Parry hunted out a specimen of Brenda’s handwriting and compared it with the handwriting of the note; they tallied exactly – but the stylistic dissimilarity remained. From the laborious flamboyance of ‘the visit to France, the spectacle of bare scaffolds streaming with aristocratic gore, awoke multifarious echoes in Wordsworth’s rhythmicized autobiography’ it was a far cry to ‘I’m going away with someone who will make me happy’. Too far a cry, Miss Parry reflected. She put the paper and envelope carefully into a pocket, and strode back to her study, little relishing the job of communicating her discovery to Brenda’s parents.

In the event, however, they were contained and sensible about it – the more so as Miss Parry did not apprise them of her vague doubts regarding the authenticity of Brenda’s letter. Mr Boyce asked her to communicate immediately with the police; she had more information than they, he said, and the superintendent had better see her first.

But the superintendent, she was informed over the telephone by the sergeant in charge at the police station, was at present visiting the headmaster of Castrevenford School. Miss Parry thanked him, replaced the receiver, and, lifting it again, dialled the number of the headmaster’s study.

The call came through just as the superintendent was on the point of departure. He was a tall, burly, youngish man in plain clothes whose features some freak of heredity had assembled into a perpetual expression of muted alarm, so that to be in his company was like consorting with a man dogged by assassins. Apparently he regarded the business of the cupboard as a will-o’-the-wisp, and he was rehearsing his views to Fen, who had that moment returned from his period with the Classical Sixth, when the telephone rang. It was the headmaster who answered it.

‘Yes, Miss Parry,’ he said. ‘What? Disappeared?…Good God…Yes, the superintendent’s here. One moment.’

He handed the instrument to Stagge, who listened in silence to Miss Parry’s narrative. ‘Very well, ma’am,’ he said finally. ‘I’ll come down immediately. We’ll trace her if it’s humanly possible…Yes. Goodbye.’

He rang off, and explained the situation to the others. ‘So it’s possible she’s gone away with some man,’ he concluded, and glanced at the headmaster. ‘I don’t know if one of your older boys—’

‘Oh, my dear fellow,’ the headmaster expostulated, ‘that’s hardly probable. When a girl of that age elopes with a man, it’s generally someone much senior to herself.’

‘Just the same, sir, if you could make a check…’

‘I can’t, superintendent. At least, not until ten o’clock. The boys are allowed to be out with their parents this evening, and they’re not due back before then.’

Stagge squared his shoulders and picked up his hat. ‘Well, I shall have to do what I can. I hope you’ll let me know, sir, if anything more that’s unusual happens here – anything at all, however harmless it may seem. One can never be sure what one’s up against.’

And with this nebulous threat he departed. The headmaster relapsed into a chair.

‘This would happen just before speech day,’ he muttered. ‘Heaven help us.’

‘Heaven help the girl,’ said Fen rather grimly. ‘I don’t believe in this elopement. It’s the sentimental who elope, and according to you Brenda Boyce is anything but sentimental.’

‘You mean—’

‘I mean that she’s been either abducted or killed.’

The headmaster stared incredulously. ‘But why, my dear Gervase? Why?’ And when Fen shook his head and remained silent, ‘It’s incredible…I don’t know what’s going to happen about the play. I must tell Mathieson.’ He got up and went to the window, whence he was lucky enough to observe that pedagogue slowly receding on a bicycle. ‘Mathieson!’ he called. ‘Mathieson!’

Mathieson braked violently, wobbled, dismounted, and led his machine back to the window. The headmaster hurriedly explained matters to him.

‘Well, headmaster,’ he said eventually, ‘the girl who’s playing Isabella knows the part of Katherine, and is more or less capable of taking it. That means I shall have to spend the whole of tomorrow drumming Isabella’s part into someone fresh…Fortunately there’s very little of it.’

The headmaster agreed that this was indeed fortunate; he seemed almost inclined to congratulate Shakespeare on his prescience in the matter. After a little further discussion Mathieson went away, and Fen drove the headmaster back to his house, where they bathed and dined. Over coffee, the headmaster said, ‘I’m afraid I shall have to neglect you this evening. I’ve got to go back now and interview one or two of the more importunate parents, and after that there’s a Fasti meeting.’

‘What in God’s name is a Fasti meeting?’

‘It’s to settle the school calendar for the rest of the term, and make sure that the various arrangements don’t clash.’

‘Are they likely to?’

‘Very likely. There are sixteen different school societies, all with their meetings. There are sports fixtures and prize examinations and supernumerary chapel services. There are lectures, concerts, recitals, cinema shows…Never a dull moment, I assure you.’

‘That’s all right,’ said Fen. ‘I shall go on working at my detective novel.’

‘At your what?’

‘I’m writing a detective novel.’

‘Indeed,’ the headmaster remarked non-committally.

‘It’s a very good one,’ said Fen with great simplicity. ‘You see, it all begins on a dark and stormy November night in the Catskill Mountains…’

‘Yes,’ said the headmaster, rising hastily. ‘Well, later, my dear fellow. I must be off now.’

‘And in a log cabin there’s a beautiful girl sitting shivering by the fire. She’s shivering, you understand, not because she’s cold, but because,’ said Fen dramatically, ‘she’s afraid.’

‘I see,’ said the headmaster, sidling towards the door. ‘Well, you must tell me all about it when I’ve time to do it justice. In the meanwhile, make yourself at home. There’s whisky in the drawing-room sideboard.’ He hurried out.

Darkness was falling when he left the house, climbed into his car and drove back to the school site, and it was still oppressively hot. But the parents proved less refractory than usual, and the Fasti meeting, though lengthy, less productive of acrimony. Shortly before a quarter to eleven it broke up, and the headmaster was just preparing to depart when Galbraith appeared. He had returned to his bachelor home shortly before four that afternoon, but now trouble had arisen over the chapel tickets and he needed advice. Seating accommodation in the chapel was very restricted, and tickets for parents who wished to attend the speech day service had to be stringently rationed. Some misunderstanding had arisen between Galbraith and the Chaplain, and more tickets had been issued than could possibly be honoured…The headmaster had had a tiring day, but he discussed ways and means with as much enthusiasm as he could muster.

He was still discussing them when, at two minutes past eleven, the telephone rang. Virginia Love’s voice was so blurred with hysteria that he hardly recognized it. He listened in stupefaction to what she had to tell him.

‘Very well,’ he said, and stumbled over the words. ‘This – this is a most tragic business, Mrs Love. I don’t know what to say…my utmost sympathy…I’ll get in touch with a doctor and with the police…Yes…Yes, of course…Goodbye.’

He rang off, controlling himself with difficulty, and turned to Galbraith.

‘It’s Love,’ he said. ‘Shot.’

Galbraith looked bewildered; his professional competence seemed incapable of coping with anything like this. ‘Shot?’ he echoed foolishly. ‘You don’t mean killed?’

‘Yes. Killed.’

‘Suicide?’

‘I don’t know. His wife was too upset to say very much. But in any case—’

The telephone rang again. The headmaster took it up; listened, incredulous and appalled.

‘All right,’ he said at last. ‘Stay there, and don’t touch anything. I’ll make the necessary arrangements.’ He replaced the receiver. ‘That was Wells, speaking from Hubbard’s Building. He’s just found Somers in the common room…’

He put out one hand to brace himself against the back of a chair. His face for a moment was livid.

‘Somers is dead, too,’ he said. ‘Shot through the eye.’

5
Bloody-Man’s-Finger

‘You arrived opportunely,’ said the headmaster, and Fen, sprawled in one of the leather-covered armchairs, nodded sombrely. ‘I’ve no doubt Stagge will welcome your help; certainly I shall. Things are going to be very difficult. Of course, everything possible must be done, but I can’t help wishing this hadn’t happened on the evening before speech day. It’s callous, no doubt—’

‘No, no,’ Fen interrupted. ‘Your principal responsibility is to the school…I suppose it’s too late to cancel anything?’

‘Far too late. The programme will have to go through as arranged. I only hope we can hush things up until at least tomorrow evening. But I foresee the most appalling complications. Publicity of that sort…’ The headmaster gestured expressively and fell silent.

Beyond the oblongs of light from the study windows there was a darkness so thick as to seem almost palpable; yet the flowers – the roses and verbena – seemed to welcome its embrace, for their scent was sharper and more vivid than it had been during the daytime. A moth fluttered round the lamp on the desk, its wings beating a rapid, intermittent tattoo against the buff-coloured parchment of the shade. Pools of shadow lay in the corners, but the light splashed glittering on to the brass andirons which stood sentinel to the unlit fire, and on to the cut glass tumbler which Fen was pensively rotating between his long, sensitive fingers.

‘You sent your secretary home?’ he said.

‘Yes. After I’d telephoned the police. There was no point in his staying.’

‘Good. Then let’s get down to essentials. Apart from the repercussions on the school, are you personally distressed by the deaths of these two men?’

The headmaster rose abruptly, and began pacing round the room. His thin hair was dishevelled, and his eyes looked unnaturally hollow with fatigue. One hand was thrust into his pocket, and the other held a cigarette which was burning away unregarded and scattering its ash in little compact clots on to the heavy blue carpet.

‘To be candid, no,’ he answered after an interval. ‘I never liked either of them very much. But that fact is irrelevant, I trust.’

He halted before an old mirror in a delicate gilt frame and made a half-hearted attempt to straighten his hair. Fen continued to contemplate the dioramic reflections on his glass.

‘Tell me about them,’ he said. ‘Character, history, personal ties – that sort of thing.’

‘As far as I can.’ The headmaster resumed his pacing. ‘Love, I think, was the more interesting character of the two. He teaches – taught, I suppose I must say – classics and history. Competent, methodical – a satisfactory man in most ways.’

‘Did the boys like him?’

‘They respected him, I think, but he wasn’t the sort of person who invites affection. He was a puritan, not altogether lacking in shrewdness. Duty was his lodestar. It would be wrong to say that he disapproved of pleasure, but he was inclined to regard it as a necessary medicine, to be taken at specified times, in specified doses. And for all his competence’ – the headmaster abandoned this hazy diagnosis to be more specific – ‘he was never a successful housemaster.’

‘I didn’t realize,’ said Fen, ‘that he was a housemaster.’

‘Not here. At Merfield. When he left Cambridge he came here as an assistant master. Then he went on to Merfield and got a house. And then, when he reached the age limit for house masters, he came back here as an assistant master. That was during the war, when we badly needed staff.’

‘How old is he?’

‘Sixty-two, I think.’

‘Surely most schoolmasters retire at sixty.’

‘Yes. But Love wasn’t the sort of man to retire as long as he kept his faculties and could do his job. The Loves of this world don’t retire; they die on their feet.’ The headmaster took a silver clock from the broad, carved mantel, emptied a key out of a vase, and began winding it. ‘As a matter of fact,’ he went on, ‘Love has been rather a problem to me. Since the war ended, the governors have been clamouring for a staff age limit of sixty, and by rights I ought to have got rid of him. But I persuaded the board to make an exception in his case.’

‘Why?’

‘I had a certain admiration for him,’ the headmaster explained as he restored key and clock to their places. ‘He always seemed to me to be rather like the Albert Memorial – intrinsically graceless, but so uncompromising as to compel respect. And, of course, the soul of probity, even in the smallest and most trivial things; the sort of man who’d return a stamp to the post office if it hadn’t been cancelled. That may have been why he was a failure as a housemaster. Ruling a house too rigidly and meticulously is always a mistake.’

‘A man whom there were none to praise and very few to love,’ Fen remarked sadly. ‘But he is in his grave, and, oh, the difference to me…What about his private life? Was he married?’

‘Yes. His wife’s a wispy, mousy little woman; all the character rubbed out of her, I suspect, by years of ministering to him.’

‘Anything else?’

‘I can’t think of anything. The man you really ought to talk to is Etherege. He knows all there is to know about everyone.’

Fen emptied his glass with a single gulp and set it on the floor beside his chair. The blue curtains stirred, almost imperceptibly, in a breeze too inconsiderable to alleviate the dry, prickly heat. The moth, momentarily quiescent, was clinging to the inside of the lampshade, its outline blurred and exaggerated by the opaque parchment. The remote but persistent baying of a dog suggested that Mr Merrythought was communing with some inward grief. It was the only sound. The building might have been draped and muffled in a pall.

And palls, Fen thought, were not inappropriate in the circumstances. He found a battered cigarette loose in his pocket and, after ascertaining that it did not belong to one of those evil and recondite brands to which the shortage occasionally condemned him, lit it.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’ll take your advice and talk to Etherege, whoever he may be. And now, what about Somers?’

The headmaster, with that protective deliberation of movement which heat compels, lowered himself into a chair, rubbed his sleeve across his forehead, and yawned.

‘Lord,’ he said, ‘how tired I am…Somers. Yes. Quite a young man. Educated at Merfield, where he was head boy in Love’s house. Love thought the world of him. I should have told you that favouritism was one of Love’s few vices. The way he coddled Somers at Merfield aroused a good deal of resentment.’

He yawned again, and apologized. ‘Somers taught English,’ he went on. ‘Clever, and a shade conceited. Not popular. He came here a year ago, from the army.’

‘Married?’

‘No. He has – had – has – rooms in a rather nice Palladian house in Castrevenford town; it’s supposed to have been designed by Nicholas Revett. I don’t blame him for preferring to live away from the school,’ the headmaster added rather inconsequently. ‘I always used to if possible…However.’

‘Any relatives? Any close friends?’

‘Neither. Parents dead, no brothers or sisters. And as to friends – no, I don’t believe he was intimate with anyone here. Once again, Etherege would be the man to ask. Anything else?’

‘No, thanks.’ Fen blew a smoke ring and watched it expand, opalescent, against the lamp. ‘Not until I’ve seen the bodies, anyway.’ He brooded for a while. ‘I hope,’ he said at last, ‘that the superintendent isn’t going to raise difficulties about allowing me in on this.’

‘I shouldn’t imagine so.’ The headmaster looked up at the clock and saw that the time was twenty-five minutes past eleven. ‘In any case, we shall soon know.’

The superintendent arrived five minutes later. He wore uniform; and an intensification of the habitual expression of alarm on his features suggested that he was oppressed by the magnitude of the disaster. Fen suspected that, like Buridan’s ass, he could not decide what to tackle first. With him were a doctor – an undersized man with bloodshot eyes, neatly bearded and unexpectedly rancorous in utterance – a sergeant, carrying a worn black Gladstone bag, and a constable. Outside, an ambulance was parked, and its white-coated attendants were wandering about spectrally illuminated by its sidelights, until their services should be required.

The social formalities were hurriedly consummated, and Stagge addressed himself to Fen.

‘Murder’s a bit outside my usual province,’ he admitted. ‘If it is murder, that is. So if you’d like to lend a hand, sir, your experience would be most valuable.’ He smiled engagingly, and the admixture of mirth which this gave to his normal mien produced a singularly bizarre and ghastly effect.

Fen murmured his gratification in suitable terms.

‘Splendid,’ said the headmaster, heroically stifling a yawn.

‘You can well understand, Stagge, how distressed I am. Personal feelings apart, this tragedy comes at a very unlucky time for the school. It will be impossible, of course, to keep these deaths a secret, but none the less—’

‘You would wish me to act as unobtrusively as possible.’ Stagge raised his forefinger, apparently in order to focus their attention upon his perspicacity and tact. ‘I appreciate your position, Dr Stanford, and I’ll do my best. If we’re lucky, the newspapers may not get hold of it till after speech day. But I’m afraid, on the other hand, that there are bound to be rumours…’

‘Unavoidable,’ the headmaster agreed. ‘It’s just got to be faced. Fortunately we have many more applications for entry to the school than we can possibly deal with. There’ll be a falling-off when the news is published, and some foolish people will take their sons away, but I’ve no doubt it will still be possible to keep the numbers up to the maximum.’ He became abruptly aware that the occasion was not particularly well suited to a recital of his own problems, and stopped short.

‘Let’s get at the bodies, then,’ said the doctor vampirically, ‘or we shall be up all night.’

Stagge nodded, rousing himself. He glanced nervously at Fen. ‘I thought, sir, that we might go and look at Mr Somers first, then go on to Mr Love’s house.’

‘Good,’ said Fen. ‘Let’s make a move, then.’ His words broke the temporary paralysis and, after a little shuffling for precedence, they all trooped out into the darkness.

The headmaster led the way with a torch which he had taken from a drawer of his desk, and during the three minutes’ walk to Hubbard’s Building no word was spoken. The breeze brushed weakly against their faces, tantalizing them with the prospect of a coolness which never came. A layer of cloud obscured all but a handful of stars. Leaving the turf, their shoes rattled with startling vehemence on the asphalt, and they all breathed laboriously, as though the heavy, tepid air were deficient in oxygen. Presently the ivy-covered bulk of the teaching block loomed above them, and they passed inside.

Dim, infrequent lights were burning. They crossed a bare, stone-paved entrance hall and climbed a broad flight of wooden stairs whose treads were hollowed by generations of hard use. The window panes, made mirrors by the blackness beyond them and the illumination within, reflected their silent procession, and their footsteps awoke harsh echoes. The building seemed tranced into stillness as by a magician’s wand. They entered a long corridor, bare, shadowy and deserted. The numbered doors on either side bore the marks of merciless kicking on their lower panels, and near one of them lay a forlorn single sheet of exercise paper, heavily scored over in red ink, and with the dun imprint of a footmark on one corner. At the end of the corridor they came to a door which was more solid and opulent than those of the classrooms. A line of yellow light shone under it. The headmaster pushed it open and they entered the masters’ common room.

It was a large, tall room, symmetrically rectangular. A well-filled green baize noticeboard was fixed to the wall near the single door. Several tiers of small lockers, painted black and bearing their owners’ names on small strips of pasteboard thrust into brass slots, were at the far end. They saw half-empty mahogany bookcases, a worn, mud-coloured, ash-impregnated carpet, a long line of hooks with one or two gowns that had turned green with extreme age. A large table occupied the centre, littered with inkpots, cross-nibbed pens, ashtrays, and bulky envelopes. Smaller tables flanked it. There were three chairs that were comfortable and a large number that were not. The hessian curtains were undrawn and the windows wide open. And on the floor looking up at the small flies which crawled on the ceiling, lay the body of Michael Somers.

Yet their first and strongest impression was not of that, but of the heat. It beat against them in a scorching wave, and they saw that it came from a large electric fire standing about halfway down the room. Wells, the porter, stumbled hurriedly to his feet, the sweat running down his face like rain. He mumbled something, but for the moment no one paid any attention to him. After the first overwhelming shock of the heat, they had eyes for nothing but the body.

It was lying supine by a small table, with an overturned chair beside it. Clearly Somers had fallen back against the table and slid down it, for his head was propped against one of the legs, and his arms were outflung as if he had tried to save himself. Blood had streamed down the left side of his face on to the carpet, and where his left eye had been there was a riven, pulp-encrusted hole at which a bluebottle was feeding.

They looked, and, sickened, turned away again. The headmaster said rather shakily: ‘Why in God’s name have you got that fire on, Wells?’

‘It was like that, sir,’ Wells stammered, ‘when I found him. And you told me not to touch anything.’

He wiped the sweat from his face with a limp and soaking handkerchief. Even the bald crown of his head was a hectic, fever-stricken crimson, and his thin, stooping body seemed on the point of collapse. He felt for a back of a chair, his damp palm slipped on the polished wood, and he staggered momentarily.

Fen loosened his tie and unbuttoned his collar. He stood at a window and watched while the sergeant, under Stagge’s direction, photographed the body and its surroundings. Then the doctor began his examination. Stagge, meanwhile, had approached the electric fire and was regarding it dubiously. After a moment’s consideration he went to the wall switch to which it was attached and flicked it off with a pencil. The bars of the fire faded from scarlet through orange to ochre, and then became black. Stagge turned to Fen.

‘An extraordinary thing, sir,’ he said, ‘using a fire on a broiling evening like this.’ He hesitated. ‘I’ve heard that such methods have been used to warm a corpse, and so create uncertainty about the time of death.’

Fen was fanning himself with his pocketbook, an activity which, he found, generated far more warmth than it dispelled; he desisted abruptly. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘But in this instance the fire’s several feet away from the body. And since it’s portable, I’m afraid that theory will have to be ruled out.’ Preoccupied, he moved to the small table against which Somers’ body was lying.

‘It looks to me,’ Stagge observed with a diffidence unsuited to so self-evident a proposition, ‘as if this was where he was working.’

They gazed at the table in silence. A blotting pad lay on it, its white surface covered with mirror images of black ink writing. They could make out the words ‘satisfactory’, ‘very fair’, ‘a marked improvement since the beginning of term’, and innumerable repetitions of the initials ‘M.S.’. A pile of small, printed report forms was on the blotter, and scattered around it were several envelopes similar to those on the central table. Each one bore the name of a form, with a list of initials of masters below it, and contained further report forms. For the rest, there was an ashtray with one or two cigarette stubs, a large circular well of blue-black ink, a mark-book, an open bottle of black ink, a long, broad strip of black cloth with the ends knotted together, and a pen.

Stagge turned to the headmaster. ‘These are mid-term reports, I take it?’

‘Yes, superintendent.’ The headmaster had followed Fen’s example in loosening his tie; he looked raffish yet weary. ‘Form masters and visiting masters were due to have finished them by five this afternoon; then they were to have gone to housemasters, and finally to me.’

‘Mr Somers was behind schedule, then?’

‘Yes. I was aware of the fact.’ The headmaster pointed to the strip of cloth on the table. ‘That, of course, is a sling. Somers sprained his wrist a few days ago, just before the reports were put out, and wasn’t able to do any writing until it got better. However, he told me yesterday afternoon that he would have them done by the morning of speech day, and that was early enough.’ He smiled faintly. ‘I always arrange for the terminus ad quem to be a little earlier than is strictly necessary, since even schoolmasters are fallible.’

‘Couldn’t one of the other masters have acted as his amanuensis?’ Fen asked.

The headmaster spoke rather uncertainly. ‘Yes, I suppose so. But probably he didn’t want to burden anyone else with the job. This is a very busy stage of the term, and even filling in “satisfactory” two hundred times takes longer than you’d imagine. What’s more, Somers was a form master, and had to deal with all the various headings for his form, in addition.’

‘Ah.’ Fen was pensive. ‘When the reports are finished, do the housemasters collect them?’

‘No. Wells does that. He divides them up into houses and passes them on to the appropriate men.’

Fen looked at Wells. ‘Apparently,’ he remarked, ‘you’ve taken some of them away already. There don’t seem to be many here.’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Wells. ‘All the ones Mr Somers had finished, or hadn’t anything to do with, are in my office. But I haven’t taken any since Mr Somers come in here this evening.’

There was a momentary silence, and the sergeant, snatching zealously at his opportunity, said: ‘Fingerprints, superintendent?’

Stagge gestured haplessly. ‘Leave that for the moment,’ he said. ‘There are bound to be prints of everyone on the staff all over this room.’ He tapped on the table. ‘I take it, then, that Mr Somers was working here when someone interrupted him. He got up, knocked over the chair, faced away from the table and towards the door, and was shot…’ He paused, gloomily considering this hollow and unenlightening reconstruction, then observed that the doctor had finished his first brief examination of the body. ‘Well?’ he demanded.

The doctor dusted his knees and wiped his eyes. ‘Exactly what you’d expect,’ he said. ‘He was shot at a distance of something like six feet with – I think – a .38.’

‘Six feet,’ Stagge muttered. He paced out the distance to where the murderer had presumably stood, and having arrived there, looked about him rather vaguely in search of inspiration: but apparently none was forthcoming, for he made no further remark.

‘He must have a thick skull,’ the doctor went on, nodding towards the body, ‘because the bullet’s lodged in his brain…Death was instantaneous, of course.’

‘Time of death?’ Stagge asked.

‘Anything between half an hour ago and an hour and a half.’

Stagge consulted his watch. ‘And it’s twenty minutes to midnight now. Between ten and eleven, in fact. Anything else?’

‘Nothing,’ said the doctor uncompromisingly. ‘Can he be taken out to the ambulance?’

Stagge shook his head. ‘Not for a moment. I must go through his pockets and the sergeant must take his fingerprints. After that you can have him.’

He bent down and removed the contents of Somers’ pockets, laying them on the central table. At first glance there seemed nothing unusual about them: keys, money, a wallet – containing banknotes, an identity card and a driving licence – a pencil, a handkerchief, a half-filled tortoiseshell cigarette case and a utility petrol lighter…

‘But what on earth is he doing with that?’ Fen enquired.

‘That’ was a large sheet of spotless white blotting paper folded into eight, which had been in Somers’ breast pocket. Stagge turned it over carefully in his hands.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘I don’t see anything specially odd about a man carrying blotting paper. I dare say…’

But Fen had taken the sheet away from him and was comparing it with the pad on the table. ‘Same kind,’ he observed, ‘same colour, same size.’ He glanced round the room. ‘And there are several identical pads, all with clean blotting paper.’ Turning to Wells, he said: ‘Are you responsible for renewing the blotting paper in these pads?’

‘Yes, sir. I do it on the first day of every month, regular.’

‘Wells is a stickler for routine,’ the headmaster put in.

‘And this,’ said Fen thoughtfully, ‘is June first.’

Wells nodded eagerly; with the switching off of the electric fire something of his animation had returned. ‘I changed the blotting paper earlier this evening, sir.’

‘I dare say,’ the headmaster remarked rather deprecatorily, ‘that Somers wanted some and just pinched it. People do that sort of thing, you know.’

But Fen seemed dissatisfied with this explanation. To Wells he said: ‘Where do you keep the fresh blotting paper?’

‘In a cupboard in my office, sir.’

‘And where does it come from in the first place?’

‘Well, sir, from the school stationery shop.’

‘And is the same sort of blotting paper sold to the boys and the masters when they happen to want it?’

‘Yes, sir, I believe so.’

‘When you replace it, do you put a specific amount in each pad?’

‘Yes, sir. Three large sheets, folded double.’

‘Good,’ said Fen. ‘Have a look at all the pads in this room, then – including the one Somers was using – and see if there’s a sheet missing from any of them.’

Glad of occupation, Wells began to bustle about.

Stagge said, ‘I don’t quite see what you’re getting at, Professor Fen.’

‘Was ist, ist vernünftig,’ said Fen cheerfully. ‘All facts are valuable, superintendent.’

Stagge’s self-confidence visibly waned at this evasive response, and he was silent, watching the sergeant at his disagreeable task. He had cleaned Somers’ fingers with benzoline and pressed them on to an inked metal plate; now he was transferring the prints to a sheet of white paper. Finishing the job, he straightened up, red with effort, and said, ‘What about his wristwatch, sir? You’ll be wanting that?’

Stagge grunted. ‘I’m glad you reminded me,’ he said, and bent down to unstrap it. The headmaster, watching this operation, broke in with, ‘He’s wearing it the wrong way round.’

Fen looked at him with interest. ‘The wrong way round?’

‘He always wore it on the inside of his wrist, as I believe the Americans do. It isn’t like that now.’

Stagge had the watch at his ear, holding it delicately by the edge of the strap. ‘Anyway, it isn’t going,’ he said, and examined it. ‘The hands are at five to nine.’

‘Is it broken?’ Fen asked.

‘Not that I can see.’

‘What about opening the back, then?’

For answer Stagge went to the sergeant’s Gladstone bag, took from it a jar of grey powder, and with a camel-hair brush dusted this on to the glass and silver of the watch. He stared for a moment, blew off the powder, and picked up the sheet of paper with Somers’ fingerprints on it. For two or three minutes he was absorbed in the comparison, which he made with the help of a pocket lens.

‘Somers’ own prints are on it,’ he said at last, ‘and no one else’s. Which is what you’d expect.’ He prised off the back of the watch and studied its mechanism. ‘Broken, all right,’ he commented. ‘And deliberately broken, I’d say.’

‘To give a wrong impression of the time of death?’ the headmaster ventured.

‘Five to nine,’ Stagge pointed out. ‘Not a very sensible choice. And the glass isn’t smashed.’

Wells had returned from his inspection of the blotting pads, and was hovering inquisitively at the edge of their little group. ‘I saw Mr Somers at ten o’clock, sir,’ he said. ‘Alive and well.’

‘Ah,’ said Stagge. ‘We’ll have a word about that in a minute.’

The doctor, who had been dosing himself impatiently with snuff during this interchange, said, ‘Can he be taken away now?’

‘All right,’ Stagge agreed. ‘But don’t you go away, Stanford,’ he added hastily. ‘We’ve got another body to look at yet.’

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.