Adders on the Heath (13 page)

Myrtle mumbled unintelligibly and twisted nail-bitten fingers in her apron.

'You've read about these horrible murders, of course,' Dame Beatrice went on. 'Well, now, I wonder whether you can describe a young man who called here on the night in question and wanted to use the telephone?'

'The night in question, madam?' Myrtle abandoned the picking at her apron.

'Yes, the night in question, Myrtle. You're not always having young men call after dark asking to use the telephone, so do not deny that he came. I happen to know that he did.'

'Oh,
him
! Well, I shut the door too quick to see much of him. I was scared, see, on account we was alone in the house.'

'We being...?'

'Cook, Shirl and me.'

'Oh, yes. Your master and mistress had gone to London, I believe.'

'That's right, and it was the master as told me to say as nobody called. He didn't want to be mixed up in anything, he said.'

'Well, now, what about this young man?'

'He was out of breath, but he talked posh and his hair needed combing. You don't mean...?' Her mouth fell open as her mind assimilated a new, delicious, terrifying idea. 'You don't mean as I've spoke with a
murderer
, do you?'

'Well, we can't go so far as that at present, but the police are keeping an open mind.'

'The police are keepin' an open mind,' repeated Myrtle, obviously memorising the phrase. 'Coo, wait till I tells Cook and Shirl!'

'And you can add nothing to your description?'

CHAPTER ELEVEN

HEADMASTER AND STAFF

'He made also ten tables, and placed them in the temple, five on the right side, and five on the left. And he made a hundred basons of gold.

'Furthermore he made the court of the priests, and the great court, and doors for the court, and overlaid the doors of them with brass.'

2nd Chronicles 3, Authorised Version

The preparatory school at which Richardson had taught proved to be a show place on which, it was obvious to Dame Beatrice, (who, in her capacities as mother, grandmother, aunt, honorary aunt, great-aunt and godmother, had visited many preparatory and public schools), a great deal of money had been spent. She suspected that mulcted parents had been compelled to contribute to the splendour. However, it was easy enough to see where the money had gone.

The Headmaster, who appeared to know her not only by reputation but who claimed to have been present at a dinner where she had been the principal guest, welcomed her with the utmost cordiality. He received her in a large, beautifully furnished study whose windows overlooked the playing fields, and he insisted upon showing her over the school before he heard on what errand she had come.

They visited the swimming bath, the chapel and the library. To Dame Beatrice's satisfaction, after they had looked in upon the various classrooms and the woodwork and metalwork rooms, they visited the laboratories. There were two of these, both equipped as though for post-graduate research. One was for biology, the other for chemistry.

Dame Beatrice affected great interest in the first, despite her repugnance to the animals and birds, stuffed and defunct, which, exhibited in glass cases, appeared to be a prominent feature of the room.

'Outside, of course,' said the Headmaster, 'we keep our rabbits. The caretaker looks after them during the holidays. So good for the boys to learn to look after animals and it reduces sex instruction to the minimum.'

He seemed about to enlarge upon this when he received an urgent message from someone who urgently desired his presence elsewhere, so, pausing only to apologise to Dame Beatrice for leaving her, and to promise to 'send Stevens' to look after her, he departed.

Stevens turned out to be the head boy, an extremely good-looking, scrupulously well-groomed child of about thirteen. He introduced himself.

'Please, Dame Beatrice, I'm Stevens. The Head said to show you the chemistry lab. I don't think you'll find it very interesting. It's only bottles and Bunsen burners and test tubes and beakers and retorts and those sort of things.'

'I feel,' said Dame Beatrice, 'that I might hurt the Headmaster's feelings if I left it out. Is a class going on in there, I wonder?'

'Almost bound not to be. It isn't much used because we haven't got a proper stinks master since the last one left.'

'Dear me! How long ago was that?'

'Soon after Mr Richardson went.'

'So I suppose a laboratory boy is no longer employed here.'

'Well, actually, he still is. It isn't easy to get a good lab. boy, you see, because they're not paid enough, so I think that's why the Head has stuck to Borgia. He potters about in there, keeping things dusted, and he's got to make a list of the stock, and things like that, and he keeps the two labs, clean and feeds the rabbits and the aquarium fish and all that, so I suppose he's worth his wages.'

'I must make the acquaintance of this man of many parts. What is his name?'

'Well,
we
call him Borgia. It's rather apt, you see, because, well, his job is mostly in the stinks lab. and, well, he does keep on about poisons. I don't know his real name.'

The chemistry laboratory was on the other side of a stretch of well-tended lawn and took up the first floor of a two-storied building of modern design.

'The ground floor is a sort of drill-hall for chaps who've been sentenced,' Dame Beatrice's guide explained. 'If chaps cheek the prefects, or don't come in quickly enough from games, and things like that, they get sentenced to run so many times round the drill-hall. A master is on duty to see they do their proper stint. If they slack, he has authority to speed them up with a cane. Otherwise we don't, on the whole, get beaten. I mean, you have to do something really pretty bad. The only chap who's really had it since I've been here was a rather sporting type who gave a pretty ripe adjective in an English lesson and, when asked to explain, said he was only quoting from
Lady Chatterley's Lover
. Obvious, we all thought, but he still got a stroking. Rather a dim shame, actually, to cane chaps for quoting the classics. I mean, look at the Latin authors, my father says.'

'Indeed, yes,' Dame Beatrice solemnly agreed, 'but written Latin, one surmises, was sometimes intended as a matter for mirth, rather than as an instrument for special pleading. What is your own opinion?'

'I thought
Lady Chatterley
howlingly funny. You had to skip the dull bits, of course, which were most of it.'

They left the drill-hall by mounting a staircase. Swing doors opened on to the chemistry laboratory. Dame Beatrice prowled around and was examining one of the cupboards when the Headmaster reappeared.

'Ah, boy,' he said, to Stevens, 'run along now.'

'Good-bye, Dame Beatrice,' said Stevens.

'A good boy-a very good boy,' said the Headmaster, when the child had disappeared. 'I hope he has shown you round. He is up for Charterhouse. He should do very nicely, I think. Well, now!'

'Yes,' said Dame Beatrice. 'He tells me that you have lost your science master.'

'True, true, unfortunately only too true. An excellent teacher, but, of course...'

'Yes?'

'Industry, you know.'

'Oh, he has gone into a factory, has he?'

'Longer hours, shorter holidays, but with far more money and no necessity to keep school discipline. Keeping discipline, dear lady, is the bugbear and the despair of many science masters and some of the French teachers of French. The average boy seems to be inimical to French and to be several steps ahead of the teacher of chemistry. But I have a new man coming very soon, I hope.'

'You had a young man named Richardson on your staff some time ago, I believe.'

'Richardson? Richardson? Ah, yes, of course I had. A promising teacher, in his way, but he left us to go into private practice-a tutoring job, you know.'

'You regretted parting with your chemistry master. Did you feel equally sorry to see Mr Richardson go?'

'I gave him a very good testimonial.'

This professional gambit was not lost on Dame Beatrice. She cackled.

'The man you want to get rid of gets the best testimonial,' she said. The Headmaster looked pained.

'No, no, really,' he protested. 'Of course, an Arts man is always very much easier to replace than a Science or Maths, man.'

('Culture's two a penny these days,' remarked Laura, ungrammatically but truly, when she heard this.)

'I see,' said Dame Beatrice. 'Did you ever think of him as a possible murderer?'

The Headmaster did not attempt to pretend that he misunderstood her.

'I have asked myself the question since the crisis to which you refer became local knowledge,' he said. 'My answer is that Mr Richardson, no matter what the provocation, is quite incapable of delivering the
coup de grace
. More's the pity,' he added. 'One really ought to be a better man than Gunga Din, you know.'

'Why?' Dame Beatrice enquired. The Headmaster waved his hand.

'Hewers of wood and drawers of water,' he said vaguely. 'And by Gunga Din I mean the average boy. Not that there is, of course, an average boy, I suppose, but it's astonishing and enlightening and also rather depressing, to realise how very much alike they all are. I remember my relief, in young manhood, when I realised that my sins were shared by every young man in the world. Bad for the ego, but a solace to the conscience.'

'To the conscience?' Dame Beatrice enquired. 'I wish I knew what the difference is between conscience and the fear of the law. There
are
the saints, of course, and one hesitates to condemn them for wrongheadedness.' She paused. The Headmaster said he felt that, in the majority of cases, if there were no retribution there would be a great deal more crime. By this he did not refer to the hanging of murderers. There was, in his opinion, no need to be barbarous, and, that, in any case, murder was not always a crime, although it might be so described by those brought up in the generation which had anticipated his own.

They got on in capital fashion and drank sherry together, the Headmaster explaining that he kept port and sherry to offer to H.M. Inspectors of Schools. He had taken the very first opportunity of opening his school to the Ministry. Parents liked to think that Dotheboys Hall was out of date and that each child was bedded in a hygienic dormitory and was entitled to its quota of cubic feet of air in the classroom.

'Talking of space, as represented by the cubic feet to which you refer,' said Dame Beatrice, 'your chemistry classes appear to be particularly lucky.'

'Oh, the science lab., yes. Good set-up there. I rather pride myself on it. We have to move with the times. We even have a model launching station.'

'And a poisons cupboard, I believe.'

'Every amenity, dear lady.' He smiled, but looked a trifle anxious.

Dame Beatrice thanked him for showing her round the school, referred to Stevens with warmth, and began to take her leave. The poisons were in the school chemistry laboratory, and she had seen them. This did not add up to much, in her opinion. Even less than before did she believe that Richardson had guilty knowledge of the two murders.

There was one person whom, so far, she had not encountered, but whom she was determined to meet and question. The simple thing to do was to ask the Headmaster outright whether she might interview the youth. This plan she abandoned in favour of asking the school caretaker where she might find the lab. boy.

'Him?' said the caretaker. 'He'll be in the caff. Nothing much doing for him at the school till they get a new science master.'

'But the Headmaster keeps him on?'

'Might get a science master any time.'

'And lab. boys are not very easy to come by, I suppose. What is this one like?'

'Proper little 'Itler.'

'Really? I wonder what you mean by that?'

'Punch-drunk with power.'

'Ah, yes, I see. He feels that in his hands he holds the lives of all in the school, both Staff and boys.'

'Something of that sort.'

'I really do understand. It is not an uncommon feeling, especially when one has access to deadly poisons. What is his name?'

"Ere, I never said nothing about poisons,' said the caretaker. 'Anyway, name of Borgia-or so 'e claims.'

The cafe, indicated with a certain amount of reluctance by the caretaker, proved to be a respectable shop which sold cakes and ice-cream and where coffee and soft drinks were dispensed in a room which opened off the back of the premises.

The interior gave promise of the same quietness. Dame Beatrice, guided by a kindly girl who wore a black frock and a small blue apron, took a seat and ordered coffee and biscuits. She also asked whether the waitress knew a Mr Borgia.

'Borgia?' repeated the girl. She smiled. 'I think it's just his nonsense, madam. There he is, at that table over there, with his girl friend. Ask
me
, his name's Smith, Jones or Brown-something more like that.'

'Or, of course, Robinson,' said Dame Beatrice absently. 'I should very much like to meet him.'

'Well, he wouldn't be everybody's fancy, madam, being, in my opinion, a nasty bumbacious piece of work, but his girl friend has got to get back to the shop in ten minutes, so he'll be on his own after that. He'll likely sit on in here, smoking his fags. He generally does. Got nothing much else to do until they get a new science master up at the private school, so he told me.'

'I wonder whether you would be kind enough to give him this note?' said Dame Beatrice, scribbling it as she spoke. 'You may read it, if you wish to do so.'

She sipped the execrable brew which the cafe had provided and watched the waitress deliver the written message. The young man, a black-haired, pale-faced, rather spotty individual in a shiny and tight-fitting bright blue suit, looked across at her, made a remark to his girl friend, who giggled, and then hitched his chair round so that his back was towards Dame Beatrice.

She waited, drinking, in the meanwhile, what she could of the hell-brew. This involved taking the smallest possible sips of it and she soon signalled the waitress to take the rest away.

'It's horrible stuff, madam,' said the waitress, sympathetically, 'but we can't make it no better at the price. Ah, there she goes.'

This last remark was a species of obituary on Borgia's girl friend, who rose from his table, slapped him lightly on the top of his brilliantined head and strolled with swinging hips out of the cafe. Borgia sped her with a slightly vulgar pleasantry and then came across to Dame Beatrice.

'So what?' he asked.

'Sit down,' said Dame Beatrice. 'I fear that I cannot recommend the coffee. Did you have any?'

'Me? No. A cuppa does me.' He looked at her suspiciously. 'Not as I need one now,' he added. 'Anyway, I don't take nothing from dames.'

'I am sure you do not. No really manly young man would.'