School for Murder Read online

  ‘Really, Willis, mind your own business. I’m not even sure that I’ve decided yet.’

  ‘After that write-up, it had better be something a bit more decisive than tossing each other off in the bogs.’

  ‘What a crude, Sunday paper mind you have, Willis. And what makes you think I choose Pickerage to toss me off in the bogs?’

  ‘You asked to go spot on half past two in Makepeace’s class today. I’m by the window and I’d seen Pickerage make his enticing little way there just a minute before. You arranged it.’

  ‘You have a very narrow range of ideas as to what can be done with Pickerage in the bog. If I want that, there’s ten or twelve in his year I’d fancy more. Wattling, for example. Actually Pickerage and I have a relationship that goes much deeper than your grubby little mind could encompass, Quigly.’

  ‘All that means is that he’s your latest disciple.’

  ‘Disciple? Is that what you think, Quigly? Of course, he would make a very good successor.’

  ‘You haven’t gone yet.’

  ‘Well, this year, next year—it won’t be long. And without me the school might sink into torpor. Passive acceptance would be the order of the day. This school is too awful to deserve passive acceptance. There has to be someone around to galvanize you lot into action.’

  ‘Is that all you’re planning to do with Pickerage on Sunday? Train him up in the role of agent provocateur?’

  ‘Really, Willis, your French accent is quite ghastly. Anyone’d think you’d never been south of Harwich. Actually, I haven’t decided what I’m going to be doing with Pickerage on Sunday. But I think it’d better be something original, something with a bit of spice. Because I admit that I’m bored, and that’s unforgivable. I’d hate to think I was going stale.’

  Hilary said the same thing, in a rather different tone of voice, over the breakfast table next morning to his parents.

  ‘I think I’ll be away most of the day tomorrow,’ he said. ‘I feel like a long hike somewhere or other.’

  ‘A good Sunday walk is always a good thing,’ said Mrs Frome.

  ‘I’ll do something a bit longer than that,’ said Hilary. ‘Take some food and be away the whole day. All this responsibility at school is getting on top of me. I can feel myself going stale. And if I’m going to be head boy, I can’t afford to get stale.’

  They looked at him, fondly and proudly. When he’d got up and gone out, Dr Frome said to his wife:

  ‘I think after all it was a good plan to keep Hilary at Burleigh. In spite of the academic standards. That boy is showing a real sense of responsibility these days.’

  CHAPTER 5

  TEACHERS

  It needed no especial acuteness of perception in Hilary Frome to discover that Penny Warlock was the axle around which the sexual activity of the Staff Common Room revolved. Such, naturally, as it was. For while Glenda Grower was the better-looking, Glenda struck rather than attracted; Penny was definitely pretty, and certainly the more approachable. And Penny was only twenty-three.

  She was silently amused at the forms the approaches took: the clumsy grope from Bill Muggeridge; the galumphing puppyishness of Corbett Farraday; the appraising eye of Tom Tedder (for either loyalty to Miss Gilberd, or lethargy, prevented anything more tangible). About Toby, Hilary Frome was wrong. Appreciative though he was of Penny, ally though he felt her to be, there is between nineteen and twenty-three a great gulf fixed which prevented anything in the way of advances. Toby imagined Penny as a girl of infinitely greater experience and sophistication than himself, though, in looking back on her four years at Bedford College and her half year of unemployment thereafter, Penny could only be struck by the slim amount of worldly knowledge gained, the fleeting, unsatisfactory nature of the relationships formed. Thus, though she had little intention of responding more than politely to any of the advances, she enjoyed the game: it made her feel human. And that was not the feeling engendered by her relations with either of the Crumwallises, for example, or with Mr McWhirter.

  As a rule the advances occurred either when she was alone with one or other teacher during a free period, or in the time between the end of school and the journey home. Most of the teachers lingered a few minutes in the staff room, not from any affection for the place, but to allow the unruly mob of boys to get down the long road that led to Cullbridge, and thence to disperse to the bus station, to Wimpy bars, the library or their various homes. Then the staff could walk home in peace. So though the place was as ill-furnished as it was ill-lit, they hung around there, putting books away in lockers, glancing at newspapers, knocking out their pipes or whipping through the odd bits of marking. Or, on occasion, making the odd concealed, subdued, terribly English pass at Penny.

  ‘Ah well,’ said Septimus Coffin, on the Monday after the Parents’ Evening, ‘it’s four o’clock. The madding crowd seems to have ceased madding. At last the respectable citizen can take to the streets and get himself home.’

  ‘I go the back way anyway,’ said Bill Muggeridge, smelling as usual of stale sweat, and exuding a bullish discontent. ‘No cause to rush home in my opinion.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Coffin, tugging at his nicotine-stained moustache. ‘As I get older I think more and more of my stomach, and I’m not ashamed to admit it. I’m promised a nice piece of rump steak with sauté potatoes. I’m beginning to smell them already.’

  ‘You bachelors,’ said Bill Muggeridge. ‘All right for some.’

  Septimus Coffin always resented that cheap jibe. In his young days unmarried men had been assumed to be wicked dogs, gay bachelors. Now they were assumed to be—well, gay, but not in the sense he acknowledged. And that he certainly was not. He merely grunted.

  Mr Makepeace, who dreaded public places where he might meet the boys of Burleigh, sat longer than any, pretending to go through the disgracefully scrappy mathematics homework that his classes saw fit to throw his way. Toby, on the other hand, just looked in on the way to the boarding annexe, and popped straight out again, while Corbett Farraday had no particular fear of the boys—weren’t they all boys together at Burleigh?—and stayed in the Staff Common Room for no other reason than to work himself up to an approach to Penny. He it was, that Monday, who plucked up courage to approach her, huffing and puffing around her with the slightly intimidating bonhomie of a young St Bernard.

  ‘I say, isn’t the weather fine,’ he said, leaning over her and pushing his well-scrubbed face close to hers. He looked like an advertisement for baby-soap, grown up. ‘I mean, it does look like being a jolly nice evening.’

  ‘Yes, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Are you interested in wild flowers at all?’

  Oh God, the approach botanic, thought Penny.

  ‘Well, I haven’t thought much, really, about . . . wild flowers.’

  ‘Because the area round Cullbridge is awfully rich in rare species. I don’t think many people know that.’

  ‘No, I don’t think they do.’

  ‘It’s a bit of a hobby of mine, actually. Sort of sideline. I wondered if one evening you’d like me to show you some of the things you can find . . .’

  ‘Sort of nature ramble?’ said Penny, gathering up her marking.

  ‘That’s the ticket. Awfully fun if you know what you’re looking for. Then we could make for home, and you could meet Mother.’

  Penny added to her load a pile of books she had in fact marked yesterday. Corbett Farraday’s face fell, like a toddler whose jelly-baby has been snatched from its grasp.

  ‘Oh, what a blow. Have you got all that marking tonight?’

  ‘ ’Fraid so, Corbett. Latin’s not one of those languages you can teach with tape-recorders and acting little plays. You have to drum it into them. Some other night, eh?’

  ‘Poor old Corbett,’ said Septimus Coffin, as Penny shoved the books into her briefcase and made off down the drive. ‘Never mind—none of the others have better luck.’

  ‘Don’t they?’ said Corbett Farraday eagerly. ‘Well,
I suppose I’ll have to keep trying. Mother’s awfully anxious for me to bring a nice girl home. She’s a Corbett, you know—that’s who I’m named after. They used to be a big family in Cullbridge: milling and banking and that sort of thing. Mother says if I don’t get a move on the line will die out.’

  ‘Good Lord,’ said Septimus Coffin. ‘To think I may be looking at the last of the Corbetts.’

  Glad she had avoided meeting Mrs Farraday (née Corbett), whom she imagined as some Gorgon straight from the pages of George Eliot, Penny swung down the drive, wishing she had not had to assume a double load of exercise books to avoid her. As she neared the front gates, Glenda Grower rode out from the path to the bicycle sheds and pedalled past her. A few yards on, though, she stopped, and turned her head round.

  ‘You don’t feel like coming round for a bite of supper tonight, I suppose?’ she shouted.

  Penny was conscious of the slightest of flushes coming to her face. To cover her confusion, something unusual with her, she said:

  ‘I’d love to. Salisbury Cresent, isn’t it?’

  ‘That’s it. Number five. About nine suit you?’

  ‘Great.’

  And with a wave Glenda Grower remounted, and rode stylishly through the gates. Penny strode on, regretting the flush that had risen to her cheeks, wondering if she had received her second tentative approach that afternoon.

  • • •

  One by one the teachers made their ways to their homes—modest, mostly celibate, mostly cheerless homes.

  Corbett Farraday let himself into the moderately imposing Edwardian villa which he shared with his mother. He called a gay ‘I’m back’ in the direction of the lounge and started up the stairs. But he was halted by a massive ‘Corbett!’ and, putting a cheery face on it, he went towards the door behind which waited for him, looking indeed the spit image of Aunt Glegg in The Mill on the Floss, his mother.

  Mr McWhirter had summoned a taxi to take him home, as he often did when afflicted with the snap and bite of chilblain pains. He had been first away, for he was not one to linger with colleagues. In the back of the taxi he snuffled contentedly at some (he thought) particularly witty riposte he had made to some piece of boyish impertinence from 3B in the final period of the day. Then he paid his fare, added a tip so meagre as to be barely decent, and shuffled across the pavement, through the front gate, and down the path to his semi-detached residence.

  Whether or not there was a Mrs McWhirter was a matter of some debate at Burleigh. The general opinion was yes, but certain it was that no one had ever seen her. What could she be like? What kind of private life could be imagined for this dried-up bundle of chilblains and nasal catarrh? What Elaine waited in her tower for this shuffling Lancelot? The fact was, there was such a person, and there was even a daughter, now at Oxford. But Mrs McWhirter, cutting her losses, spent most of her time away, on the excuse that she was nursing her mother; and the daughter, if she felt like coming home, preferred to regard home as where her mother was. Mr McWhirter did not regret them. He thought private life was a much over-rated thing. Once in the house, he carved himself a slice of meat from an ancient joint, put it on a slice of bread, and settled down at his desk with a sigh of pleasure, preparing to continue work on the Gaelic dictionary on historical principles which he had been occupied with now for nearly forty years.

  There was never any doubt that Mr Makepeace lived alone. He had a ground-floor flat in a gloomy, yellow-brick, nineteenth-century house. He did not greatly mind the lack of light. At times he liked to sit there, with no more than two or three candles dotted about the room, imagining himself in some sort of shrine. Very frequently he was away from home, sampling the forms of service offered by the various high-church ecclesiastics in the area, driving determinedly over the countryside in a little red Mini that had become used to the eccentricities of his driving technique. Twice on Sundays he would thus venture forth, as well as to Evensong on Wednesdays and Fridays. And dotted through the year were the increasing number of Days dedicated to Saints who were honoured with his particular attentions. Such occasions, when he could worship the Saint in question on his or her (he had no sexual bias in these matters) day, in a church dedicated to him or her, in an atmosphere of tallow and incense, surrounded by flickering shadows and gorgeous vestments dimly perceived—these were the red-letter days of Mr Makepeace’s life. And there was no chance whatsoever of meeting boys from Burleigh in a church.

  Tonight he prepared, with an aesthete’s excitement, his evening meal: he grilled a trout, prepared a butter sauce, boiled three potatoes of equal size, and a modest serving of fresh peas. Then he arranged the meal with mathematical precision on a plate, and took it to the dining table, placing it next to a dazzlingly white, freshly laundered napkin. He stood for a moment admiring it. It looked almost too good to eat. Then he fell to with relish.

  Mr Makepeace, if the truth were known, was the most purely sensual of all the teachers at Burleigh School.

  Monday evenings were always highspots in his week. For nearly six months now he had gone to Father Michael at St Cunegonde’s for long, thrilling discussions about whether he had a vocation for the priesthood. Father Michael’s personal opinion was that if Mr Makepeace had a vocation it was more for Drury Lane than for the Anglican Church. But he was a merciful man, and kept the conversations going, trying to probe if there was a grain of spiritual content implanted beneath Mr Makepeace’s addiction to theatrical spectacle.

  • • •

  Dorothea Gilberd perched the tray on her mother’s lap, and tucked the bedclothes fussily around her.

  ‘It’s haddock. I know you like haddock,’ she said. ‘Would you like the BBC News on?’

  Mrs Gilberd, her mouth already full of food, grunted through her near-toothless gums, and spat food over her bed-jacket. Her daughter wiped her clean, and then went over to the little table and turned on the portable television.

  ‘There we are. Don’t suppose there’ll be any good news, though, do you? Well, I’ll go and have mine. I’ll be back for the tray in two ticks.’

  But she did not go back to the kitchen. Her mother’s bedroom, once the living-room, was just off the hall, where the telephone was. The television sound had to be loud, though . . . Miss Gilberd picked up the receiver, and dialled.

  ‘Tom?’ she said, her voice low, giving to the conversation a touch of melodrama that Tom Tedder, at the other end, found distinctly ridiculous. ‘Tom, I hate to bother you—you know I do try not to—but could I pop round tonight when I’ve got Mother settled? I’m upset—really upset . . .’

  Tom Tedder’s easy voice came reassuringly down the line. Dorothea Gilberd calmed down perceptibly.

  ‘I expect I’m making a mountain—you know—but it was on my way home from school. Yes, today. And that beast Hilary Frome—I was in . . . But I’ll tell you when I see you. About ten?’

  She put down the receiver, feeling much happier, and even enjoyed the lukewarm haddock that was waiting for her in the kitchen.

  • • •

  ‘Do you have to change him in here, now?’ demanded Bill Muggeridge, as he finished his evening meal of boiled mince and mashed potatoes.

  ‘Piss off,’ said Onyx unemotionally, pulling the disposable paper nappy on to the unappetizing baby with a remarkable lack of expertise, considering it was her fourth. ‘It’s got to be done.’

  ‘I know it’s got to be done. Looks as if it should have been done hours ago, if you ask me. I just asked whether it had to be done in here, while I’m eating.’ He lifted his nose, like a gone-to-seed beagle. ‘This place stinks like a French pissoir.’

  He wasn’t far wrong. Onyx notably lacked inclination for housework, not to mention motherly instinct. Which made it the more regrettable that, in an age when abortion is pressed on one as if it were a free sample, she should have contrived to have four children in six years—unwanted, dubiously parented, ill cared for. The previous one had never been clean before the next one arrived; they had ha
d dummies shoved in their mouths to keep them quiet until they were four or five; and they crawled, ran and fell around the place—filthy, whining and hungry—until Onyx was forced to give them some of the attention they needed. Usually—it was a ploy—when her husband was eating.

  ‘I didn’t know you’d got so bleeding sensitive,’ she said, pulling a filthy pair of leggings on over the nappy. ‘Never used to be. This place doesn’t smell any worse than the changing rooms at Colchester U’s.’

  ‘I didn’t live in the changing rooms at Colchester U’s. And that wasn’t bloody babies. Christ, I’d like to see the end of bloody babies.’

  ‘Just move out, any time you care to. Can’t be too soon as far as I’m concerned. But don’t forget to keep the cheques rolling in. Kids eat up the money.’

  ‘Bloody hell,’ said Bill Muggeridge, raging feebly. ‘You can keep and feed your own bloody kids. Most of ’em aren’t mine anyway.’

  ‘As far as the law’s concerned, they’re all yours.’

  Lacking Mr Bumble’s power of repartee, Bill Muggeridge just muttered: ‘That’s a bloody laugh.’

  ‘I don’t know why you don’t get old Crumwallis to make you head of the boarding section,’ said Onyx, dumping the baby down in its playpen and ignoring its grizzles of discontent. ‘Then you could move over there and we’d all be happy.’

  ‘Oh yes—get shot of babies and land in the middle of a crowd of boys. I can’t stand boys.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Onyx.

  That reminded Bill of something.

  ‘Oh yes, and I saw you this afternoon.’

  ‘Come again?’

  ‘I saw you this afternoon. Walking over to the school.’

  ‘So what? I was coming to have a yarn with Mrs Garfitt. She’d promised me a recipe.’

  ‘That’s a laugh, you and recipes. What were you going to do, set it to music? I suppose it was just by sheer chance you met up with Hilary Frome, was it?’

  ‘Is that his name?’

  ‘You know damned well what his name is. You talked to him long enough.’