School for Murder Read online

  ‘Is that what you think it was?’

  ‘Could be. The boys, for example, might not know he doesn’t drink at home. You know what schools are like—all sorts of rumours get around: this master is a sex-maniac, this one an alcoholic. And they’re usually perfectly innocuous chaps. So one of the boys could well have imagined that the Crumwallises knocked it back enthusiastically in the privacy of their home. By the way, did you see the name of the Science teacher here?’

  ‘No,’ Fenniway looked at the prospectus. ‘C. Farraday? Doesn’t mean a thing to me.’

  ‘Corbett Farraday. Enthusiastic naturalist chappie, always writing letters and little pieces for the Sturford Gazette about plant species threatened by insecticide, or the medicinal properties of this or that weed. There was an interview not so long ago. I wonder what he’s been teaching the boys . . .’

  They thought about that for a moment.

  ‘Poisonous properties, and all that?’ asked Fenniway. ‘Surely he wouldn’t be so silly?’

  ‘He looked a young chap, mad keen and so on. That sort does all sorts of silly things, till experience tells them to put a sock in it. Let’s hope this isn’t the experience . . . Well, no point in going into that until we’ve heard from the labs. It seems to have acted remarkably quickly, whatever it was. But we’ve got to remember he seems to have knocked back one while he was down here.’

  ‘When presumably he didn’t notice it tasted off,’ interjected Fenniway.

  ‘Well, he wouldn’t necessarily notice. Alcohol often tastes vile to people who aren’t used to it. Funny so many get the taste, really He mayn’t have had much before.’

  ‘Today’s youngsters?’ said Fenniway, sceptically. ‘He was practically sixteen, remember. Don’t tell me the doctor doesn’t have sherry and stuff regularly on tap in the house.’

  ‘Hmmm. See your point. Well, I don’t think there’s much more we can do here tonight, but before we wind things up, I think I’d like a word with that lad upstairs. Freely. Looked a sensible, down-to-earth type to me, and he might be a corrective to what we’ve just been hearing. Do you think you could go upstairs and be with the boys in the dormitory? Someone should be there. I thought of asking that old fool, but I decided he’d probably unsettle them more than calm them down.’

  ‘What do I tell them? About the boy’s death. They’re bound to be wide awake.’

  ‘Tell them what we know, which is practically nothing. We don’t know how he died, but presumably it was something he ate or drank. Not supper—emphasize that—or more of them would be affected by now. There’s no point in holding that kind of thing back. This is going to be the sensation of the school tomorrow. It’s going to be all over town, in fact.’

  ‘I wouldn’t like to bet on this school’s future,’ said Fenniway.

  ‘Nor me. And I wouldn’t weep tears over it, either. But let’s not hurry the process. Just keep things quiet and unemotional, and talk to the ones who are awake.’

  When Toby came in five minutes later, Pumfrey said:

  ‘Things quietening down?’

  ‘A bit,’ said Toby. ‘Mainly because they’re tired, not because they’re accepting it. Things are going to be bloody dreadful in the morning.’

  ‘I guess so,’ said Pumfrey. ‘And not just for the boys either. How did you come to land up in a place like this?’

  When Toby had told him, Pumfrey whistled.

  ‘By gum! No salary. I like their cheek! Why would you accept it?’

  ‘You may have noticed there’s a lot of unemployment about. I had six months to fill in before I go up to Cambridge. I didn’t want to do it at school or at home. I get a bed, and food, and a bit of pocket money from the teaching I do when I fill in. It hasn’t worked out badly.’

  ‘But it’s a lousy school, isn’t it?’ Toby considered.

  ‘Yes. I sometimes think most schools are, in different ways. The one I went to certainly was. All penny-pinching and ludicrously outdated snobberies. This one has some pretty dreadful teachers. Makepeace’s classes are nothing but advanced courses in riot-fomentation. A lot of the others like McWhirter just don’t seem to care. But there are one or two perfectly good teachers as well, so far as I can judge.’

  ‘What about the boys? So far I’ve only met Pickerage.’

  ‘Pickerage is a fair specimen of the boarders. He’s all right. Comes from a pretty awful home, apparently. No father to speak of—he’s got a new family, lives in Germany, and doesn’t give a damn about Malcolm. The mother flits from flower to flower, and swoops in here on occasional state visits. Terribly embarrassing for the boy. I’m sorry for him. In spite of it all, he’s a nice little chap.’

  ‘I gather the headmaster had to slipper him last week.’

  ‘Er—yes,’ said Toby.

  ‘Any resentment there?’

  Toby was puzzled by the question.

  ‘You mean Pickerage resented the slippering? Good heavens, no. Pickerage doesn’t worry about a little thing like that. And he’s not the resentful type.’

  ‘But mischievous, I gather. The head said he doctored the fruit cup, or something.’

  ‘So the headmaster believed,’ said Toby cautiously.

  ‘You don’t?’

  ‘I rather doubt it. If it was just an isolated prank (and he’s capable of a prank like that), he would have told me, at least after the slippering. On the other hand, if it was part of something bigger . . .’

  ‘Something bigger?’

  ‘Didn’t the headmaster tell you? He should have. Someone hid a razor blade in the flannel of one of the boarders. It made a fearful mess, though it was only a superficial wound.’

  ‘I saw a boy up there with plaster all down his cheek. That would be him, I take it.’

  ‘Yes, that’s Wattling. He’s a friend of Pickerage. I do know these boys, Superintendent and I really don’t believe Pickerage is capable of anything as vicious as that was. And especially not of aiming it at one of his friends. That was Wattling’s flannel, and Pickerage knew he just chucked it at his face every night.’

  ‘I see. I can only take your word for it. In the police force we get cynical about thirteen-year-old boys. We only see the worst, and some of those are fairly horrible, I can tell you. So this seems to be part of a series of incidents . . . or, perhaps, someone taking advantage of a series of incidents. Now, I gather this Hilary Frome was head boy designate, splendid character all round, pink of respectability and model of responsible behaviour. Is that right?’

  Toby thought for a moment.

  ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘Aaah.’ Pumfrey leaned forward, a ferret-like expression on his face. ‘Headmaster fooled. Is that it?’

  ‘Pretty much,’ admitted Toby.

  ‘Doesn’t surprise me. Wouldn’t take much, I imagine.’

  ‘No. He and his wife save any sharpness they have for money matters,’ said Toby, throwing loyalty to the winds. ‘Hilary Frome was in fact riding two horses. All the rest of the staff knew that, and of course the boys knew it too. For the headmaster he did a great act as the old-style schoolboy of the boys’ weeklies: “Play up, play up, and play the game,” and all that kind of thing. For most of the teachers—Makepeace, for example—he was the one behind any riot, disruption, discontent or whatever. And they were right. He was a stirrer. He was what they used to call a bad influence in the school. I was beginning to be afraid . . .’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Well—about Pickerage. Pickerage admired him tremendously. As you can imagine, that’s not unusual, especially in boarding-schools. And Hilary had dash, and style, and good looks—all the usual things that make a schoolboy hero. But Hilary not only encouraged this hero-worship, he really seemed to make a friend of Pickerage. Almost a protégé . . .’

  ‘You wondered how far it had gone?’

  ‘Yes. For example, they were together all last Sunday. I knew in advance, but there wasn’t much I could do. Pickerage said they were going to Frome’s house, but they didn
’t. So naturally, I suppose, I wondered what they did . . .’

  ‘I see. How would you sum this Frome boy up, then? What was behind this double game? Just mischief?’

  ‘Mischief? He wasn’t the mischievous sort, if you mean schoolboy mischief. If you mean something nastier—well, maybe. You’ve got to remember I didn’t know him all that well. I didn’t teach him, you see, so the other teachers certainly know him—knew him—better than I did. What I knew I certainly didn’t go for. He was a very cold character, I think. Calculating. Really only interested in himself. He seemed to be always looking at himself—not literally, but trying to see what effect he was making. Posing himself against a background, if you see what I mean. He was sort of clinical—trying things out all the time. Like dissecting a frog, only using people and real-life situations. For example, he enjoyed seeing how far he could push the teachers—with concealed insults, fomenting riots, with prying into their private lives. I think if he’d driven poor little Makepeace to a nervous breakdown, his reaction would simply have been “so that’s how far one has to go, to have that effect.” ’

  ‘He sounds a right little charmer. I presume that the teachers hated his guts.’

  ‘They loathed him. They—’ Toby pulled himself up. ‘Well, perhaps you’d better talk to them about that.’

  ‘I will. He certainly seems to have been asking for something, if not something quite as drastic as he got. I presume you weren’t enthusiastic about handing the boarders over to him?’

  ‘Naturally I wasn’t. I didn’t exactly have a presentiment—certainly not of anything like this happening. But I didn’t like it at all. Trouble was, I’d stood out against Crumwallis earlier this week. When Wattling carved up his face, the head wanted to hand him over to Mrs C., without calling the doctor in.’ ‘Really?’

  ‘And as you’ll probably find out, Mrs C.’s ministrations are pretty hit and miss affairs. He just wanted to keep things quiet, obviously. Anything like that, if it gets around, is bad for a school. Bad for recruitment, as you might say. But having got my way over that, it meant I couldn’t protest as I wanted to about Frome being put in charge. I didn’t even think I could explain what I was afraid of. I didn’t think Crumwallis would have understood.’

  ‘I wonder,’ said Mike Pumfrey.

  When he had sent Toby Freely back to the boarders, he and Fenniway began to collect their things together.

  ‘We might as well call it a night,’ said Pumfrey, weariness having settled over his thrusting manner. ‘Get a few hours’ sleep. It’s going to be a hard day tomorrow, and we’ll have to be here early. What’s it like upstairs? Did you get anything of interest out of them?’

  ‘Not really. It seems to have been a fairly ordinary evening up until the end. Supper, telly, and so on. Then he went off to give Pickerage his medicine. One moment he was shouting at the boys in the dorm to keep quiet, the next thing he was in the bathroom retching, then out on the landing, heaving and crying out. Poor little buggers are going to dream about that for weeks. What have you got the telephone directory out for?’

  ‘Just looking up where this Muggeridge lives . . . Hmmm. Where’s Cannonbury Road?’

  ‘Round the back here. I should think if you went across Crumwallis’s lawn and through the trees at the back you’d come to it. By road you’d have to drive round, of course, but even so it wouldn’t be far.’

  ‘Really? Well, I have a fancy to see it, and I think we might take a look on our way home.’

  So they drove round the outskirts of the Burleigh grounds, and eventually came to Cannonbury Road. No. 28, Bill and Onyx’s house, was a really shoddy little semi, thrown together by some builder after a quick buck ten or twelve years before. It was bare, basic, meagre: mean little windows slapped planless into the wall, a miserable little square of concrete slapped over the door. In front was a tiny apron of garden, which the street light revealed to be a shambles of children’s toys and discarded garments.

  The only interesting thing about the house was the top window. Because in it, through a slit in the curtains which had been drawn as incompetently as everything else about the house had been done, a heavy man could be seen, in winceyette pyjamas, red-faced and gesturing angrily. He was shouting at someone or something that could not be seen. Pumfrey let down the car window.

  ‘You bloody tart,’ Bill Muggeridge was shouting. ‘I know what you were after. You don’t usually make much secret of it, do you? If I’d found out where you went I’d have caught you at it,’

  He caught sight, through the slit in the curtain, of the car drawn up outside. He pulled it shut abruptly, and then turned off the light. The policemen heard no more.

  ‘Interesting,’ said Pumfrey. And then they drove home.

  CHAPTER 10

  THE MORNING AFTER

  ‘Through the night of doubt and sorrow

  Onward goes the pilgrim band,’

  sang the boys of Burleigh School. Presiding from the centre of the dais, Mr Crumwallis looked as if he had told wearily over every second of every minute of the watches of that night. Gowned, dark-suited, he ought to have looked fitting, impressive. But no boy could fail to notice the hollows of his cheeks, which seemed to have been scooped out in deep, dark channels, or his eyes, which were ringed round with black, and bleary, and haunted.

  ‘Brother clasps the hand of brother,

  Stepping fearless through the night . . .’

  Even the boys didn’t sound convinced. The news had spread like the Great Plague as they gathered for Assembly, and underneath the frank, animal sensationalism of their reception of the news there was uncertainty, and fear. Death happened—they were old enough to have acknowledged that. But not to people they knew. Not to friends. Not to people of their age. And that sort of death . . . One of the boys in 2B with a good memory had suddenly quoted ‘Alas, regardless of their doom the little victims play.’ The boys around him had looked at each other, one had laughed uncertainly, another had said, ‘Shut up.’ Then Mr Crumwallis had walked in.

  Edward Crumwallis knew he ought to say something. Say something about the death, about Hilary’s death. The thought hovered over him like the onset of a nightmare. What words could he find? What mere formulation could convey his feelings? What if he should break down?

  The memory hammered in his head of the dreadful phone call he had made to Dr and Mrs Frome. Both had been at the hospital until after midnight, though they had understood from the moment they arrived that their son was dead. When they had returned home they had disconnected the phone. Now, this morning, Edward Crumwallis had finally spoken to Hilary’s father, and the doctor’s words rang in his ears:

  ‘I wish to hell I’d never sent him to your school.’

  An influential man, Frome. Doctors were always in some way or other community leaders, much more so than lawyers or bankers. And Dr Frome was clearly not willing to smooth over the terrible event, to refrain from raking over the coals. He sounded, indeed, vindictive. Perhaps somewhere in the back of Edward Crumwallis’s brain there ran a murmur telling him that Dr Frome had every right to be.

  Now, if ever, between hymn and prayer, something ought to be said about Hilary. Something brief, dignified and reverent. Something to raise the spirits of the boys, to still speculation.

  ‘Then, the scattering of all shadows,

  And the end of toil and gloom.’

  Mr Crumwallis cleared his throat. It was no good. Nothing would come.

  ‘Let us pray,’ he said.

  It was his first capitulation of the day.

  • • •

  Dr Frome said exactly the same thing, sitting beside his wife, in the living room of Deauville, Maple Grove, when he was interviewed by Mike Pumfrey and Fenniway.

  ‘I wish to hell I’d never sent him there.’

  It was after nine o’clock, but Dr Frome’s smooth good looks were marred by stubble and red eyes. His wife’s hair was straggling over her eyes, and she had not made up to hide the ravages of th
e night’s events. Not a particularly admirable pair, Pumfrey decided, but at least one that cared. Or seemed to have.

  ‘Why did you?’ asked Pumfrey.

  ‘Send him to Burleigh?’ John Frome put his head in his hands. ‘I don’t know . . . It was four years ago, and that was when it was clear that they couldn’t hold out against comprehensivisation any longer. As you know, they dug in their heels here longer than practically anywhere else, but in the end they caved in. We couldn’t quite run to a good boarding-school, so we chose Burleigh.’

  ‘There was the little girl, too, you see,’ said Mrs Frome. ‘She’s going to St Mary’s. And that’s not cheap, unless you’re very poor, and Catholic.’

  ‘Worst damn decision I ever made,’ said John Frome, straightening himself and blinking his eyes.

  ‘Hilary knew,’ said Mrs Frome. ‘He always said it was neither one thing nor the other. We should have listened.’

  ‘If only they hadn’t scrapped the old grammar school,’ muttered Dr Frome, and Pumfrey saw that he was beginning to erect in his mind a structure of excuses and evasions that would justify him to himself. ‘I’d have been quite happy with that.’

  Mike Pumfrey cleared his throat. Comprehensivisation, he muttered to himself, seemed to have had much the same effect on the middle-middle class in England as racial integration in schools had had on similar people in the States. Normally he would have had little patience with the attitudes of the Fromes, but the morning after such a bereavement didn’t seem the time to argue the social or political toss with them. For once he was almost gentle.

  ‘Yet according to the headmaster Hilary was a most successful boy at school,’ he said. ‘About to become head boy, and so on.’

  ‘Yes . . . yes . . .’ agreed Dr Frome, tiredly. ‘We bought all that too. That’s why we decided to keep him there. He’s good with the soft soap, is Crumwallis. That’s why we told Hilary he’d have to stay for GCE year. Though we knew some of the teaching was abysmal.’