Magpie Murders (47 page)

It ended where it had begun, in the theatre at Fawley Park. Looking around him, James Fraser had a sense of inevitability. He had abandoned his career as an actor to become the assistant of Atticus Pünd and this was where his first case had brought him. The building was even shabbier than when he had first seen it now that the stage had been stripped and most of the seats piled up against the walls. The red velvet curtains had been pulled aside. With nothing to conceal, no play about to begin, they looked tired and threadbare, hanging limply on their wires. The stage itself was a yawning mouth, an ironic reflection of the many young spectators who had been forced to sit through the headmaster’s productions of
Agamemnon
and
Antigone
. Well, Elliot Tweed would not be performing again. He had died in this very room, with a knife driven into the side of his throat. Fraser was not yet used to murder and there was one thought that chilled him in particular. What sort of person kills a man in a room filled with children? On the night of the school play, there had been three hundred people sitting together in the darkness: little boys and their parents. They would remember it for the rest of their lives.

The theatre suited Pünd. He had arranged the seats so that they were facing him in two rows. He stood in front of the stage, leaning on his rosewood cane, but he could just as easily have been
on
it. This was his performance, the climax of a drama that had begun three weeks earlier with a frightened man visiting Tanner Court. The spotlights might not be illuminated but still they bowed their heads towards him. The people he had asked to be here were suspects but they were also his audience. Detective Inspector Ridgeway might be standing next to him but it was clear that he had been given only a supporting role.

Fraser examined the staff members. Leonard Graveney had been the first to arrive, taking his place in the front row, his crutch resting awkwardly against the back of his chair. The stump of his leg jutted out in front of him as if purposefully blocking the way for everyone else. The history teacher, Dennis Cocker, had come and had sat next to him although Fraser noticed that neither of them had spoken. Both men had been involved in the last, fateful performance of
Night Comes Calling
when the murder had happened, Graveney as the author of the play, Cocker as its director. The lead part had been taken by Sebastian Fleet. Aged just twenty-one, he was the youngest teacher at Fawley Park and he had ambled in nonchalantly, winking at the matron who deliberately turned her head away, ignoring him. Lydia Gwendraeth was sitting in the row behind, ramrod straight, her hands folded on her lap, her white starched cap seemingly glued in place. Fraser was still convinced that she had been involved in Elliot Tweed’s murder. She certainly had a motive – he had behaved horribly towards her – and with her medical training she would have known exactly where to place the knife. Had she run through the audience that night, taking revenge for the humiliation she had suffered at his hands? As she sat, waiting for Pünd to begin, her eyes gave nothing away.

Three more members of the staff came in – Harold Trent, Elizabeth Colne and Douglas Wye. Finally, the groundsman, Garry, arrived, his hands deep in his pockets and a scowl on his face. It was clear he had no idea why he had been summoned.

‘The question we must ask ourselves is not why Elliot Tweed was killed. As the headmaster of Fawley Park, he was a man with more, you might say, than his fair share of enemies. The boys feared him. He beat them mercilessly and on the slightest pretext. He made no attempt to disguise the fact that he took pleasure in their pain. His wife wanted to divorce him. His staff, who disagreed on so many issues, were united only by their dislike of him. No …’ Pünd’s eyes swept over the assembly. ‘What we must ask is this. I have said it from the start. Why was he murdered in this way, so publicly? The killer appears as if from nowhere and runs the full length of the building, pausing only to strike out with a scalpel taken from the biology laboratory. It is true that it is dark and that the eyes of the audience are focused on the stage. It is the most dramatic moment of the play. There is a mist, a flickering light, and in the shadow appears the ghost of the wounded soldier as portrayed by Mr Graveney. And yet, it is a huge risk. Surely someone will have seen where he comes from or where he goes. A preparatory school such as Fawley Park provides many simpler opportunities for murder. There is a timetable. It is known, at all times, where everyone will be. How convenient for a killer who can plan his movements in the sure knowledge that his victim will be alone and that he will be unseen.

‘Indeed, the darkness, the speed with which the crime is committed, results in catastrophe! Inspector Ridgeway was of the belief that the assistant headmaster, Mr Moriston, who was sitting next to Mr Tweed that night, must have witnessed something and that he was subsequently killed in order to silence him. Perhaps blackmail had been involved. The discovery of a large amount of cash in his locker would certainly seem to suggest this. We now know, however, that the two men had swapped seats just before the performance began. Mr Tweed was several inches shorter than Mr Moriston and had been unable to see over the head of the woman who was sitting in front of him as she was wearing a hat. It was Mr Moriston who was the true target. The death of Mr Tweed was an accident.

‘And yet it is strange because Mr Moriston was a very popular man. He had often come to the defence of Miss Gwendraeth. It was he who chose to employ Mr Garry, in the full knowledge of his criminal record. He was also able to prevent the suicide of a child. It is hard to find anyone at the school who spoke anything but well of John Moriston – hard, but not impossible. There was, of course, one exception.’ Pünd turned to the maths teacher but he did not need to name him. Everyone in the room knew who he meant.

‘You’re not saying I killed him!’ Leonard Graveney barked out the words. He couldn’t stop himself smiling.

‘Of course it is impossible that you could have committed the murder, Mr Graveney. You lost a leg in the war—’

‘Fighting your lot!’

‘And you now have a prosthetic. You could not have run through the auditorium. That much is painfully clear. However, you will agree that there was a great deal of enmity between you.’

‘He was a coward and a liar.’

‘He was your commanding officer in the Western Desert in 1941. You were both involved in the battle of Sidi Rezegh and it was there that you lost your leg.’

‘I lost more than that, Mr Pünd. I was in hospital, in constant pain, for six months. I lost a great many of my friends – all of them better men than Major bloody Moriston could ever hope to be. I’ve already told you all this. He gave the wrong orders. He sent us into that hellhole and then he abandoned us. We were being ripped apart and he was nowhere near.’

‘There was a court martial.’

‘There was an
enquiry
, after the war.’ Graveney sneered as he spoke the word. ‘Major Moriston insisted that we had acted on our own initiative and that he had done everything he could to bring us back to safety. It was my word against his. Useful, that, wasn’t it! All the other witnesses being blown apart.’

‘It must have been a great shock for you to find him teaching here.’

‘It made me sick. And everyone was the same as you. They thought the world of him. He was the war hero, the father figure, everyone’s best friend. I was the only one who saw through him – and I would have killed him. I’ll give you that much. Don’t think I wasn’t tempted.’

‘Why did you remain here?’

Graveney shrugged. To Fraser, he looked worn out by his experiences, his shoulders slumped, his thick moustache drooping. ‘I had nowhere else to go. Tweed only gave me the job because I’d married Gemma. How else do you think a cripple with no qualifications manages to earn a living? I stayed because I had to and I avoided Moriston as best as I could.’

‘And when he was awarded his medal, when he was given the CBE?’

‘It meant nothing to me. You can stick a piece of metal on a coward and a liar but it won’t change what he is.’

Pünd nodded as if this was the answer he had expected to hear. ‘And so we arrive at the contradiction that is at the heart of the matter,’ he said. ‘The only man at Fawley Park with a motive to kill John Moriston was also the one man who could not possibly have committed the deed.’ He paused. ‘Unless, that is, there was a second person who had also a motive – even the same motive – and who had come to the school with the express purpose of exacting his revenge.’

Sebastian Fleet realised that the detective was staring directly at him. He straightened up, the colour rushing into his cheeks. ‘What are you saying, Mr Pünd? I wasn’t at Sidi Rezegh or anywhere near it. I was ten years old. Rather too young to fight in the war!’

‘That is indeed the case, Mr Fleet. Even so, I remarked when we met that you seemed to be unusually qualified to be working as an English teacher in a preparatory school in the middle of the countryside. You received a first from Oxford University. You have youth and talent. Why have you chosen to bury yourself away here?’

‘I told you that, when we first met. I’m working on a novel!’

‘The novel is important to you. But you interrupted it to write a play.’

‘I was asked to do it. Every year, a member of the staff writes a play, which the staff also performs. It’s a tradition here.’

‘And who was it who asked you?’

Fleet hesitated as if unwilling to provide the answer. ‘It was Mr Graveney,’ he said.

Pünd nodded and Fraser knew that he’d had no need to ask the question. He’d known all along. ‘You dedicated
Night Comes Calling
to the memory of your father,’ he continued. ‘You told me that he had died quite recently.’

‘A year ago.’

‘And yet it seemed strange to me, when I visited your room, that there was no photograph of him taken in the recent past. Your mother accompanied you on the day that you entered Oxford. Your father was not there. Nor was he present at your graduation.’

‘He was ill.’

‘He was no longer alive, Mr Fleet. Do you think it was not an easy matter for me to discover that a Sergeant Michael Fleet, serving with the 60th Field Regiment of the Royal Artillery, died on 21 November 1941? Will you pretend that he was not related to you and that it was merely a coincidence that brought you to this school? You and Mr Graveney had met at the offices of the Honourable Artillery Company in London. He invited you to Fawley Park. You both had good reason to hate Edward Moriston. It was the same reason.’

Neither Fleet nor Graveney spoke and it was left to the matron to break the silence. ‘Are you saying they did it together?’ she demanded.

‘I am saying that they wrote, created and conceived
Night Comes Calling
with the express purpose of committing murder. They had decided to take their revenge for what had occurred at Sidi Rezegh. It was Mr Graveney who, I believe, came up with the idea and Mr Fleet who put it into action.’

‘You’re talking nonsense,’ Fleet hissed. ‘I was actually on stage when that person ran through the audience. I was in clear sight of everyone.’

‘No. Everything was constructed to make it
seem
that you were there, but that is not how it works.’ Pünd got to his feet, using his cane to lever himself up. ‘The ghost makes its appearance at the back of the stage. It is dark. There is smoke. He is wearing the uniform of a First World War soldier. He has a moustache identical to that of Mr Graveney. His face is streaked with blood. He has a bandage around his head. He has very few lines to speak – that is how it has been arranged. It is the power of the writer to make everything work to his own purpose. He calls out one word only: “Agnes!” The voice, distorted by the attack of the mustard gas, is not difficult to fake. But it is not Mr Fleet who is on the stage.

‘Mr Graveney, the director of the play, has been waiting in the wings and, as planned, the two of you change places for this one short scene. Mr Graveney puts on the trench coat. He applies the bandage and the blood. Slowly, he walks onto the stage. The fact that he is limping will not be noticed over such a short distance and anyway, he is playing a wounded soldier. At the same time, Mr Fleet has removed the false moustache that he has worn for his performance. He puts on the hat and the jacket – which we will later find abandoned in the well. He runs through the auditorium, pausing only to stab the man sitting in seat E 23. How can he know that, moments before the play began, Mr Tweed and Mr Moriston exchanged seats and that the wrong man will die?

‘It happens very quickly. Mr Fleet leaves through the main door of the theatre, discards the hat and the jacket, then runs round the side in time to change places, once again, with Mr Graveney who has just exited from the stage. By now, the audience is in an uproar. All eyes are on the dead man. Nobody notices what occurs in the wings. Of course, the two men are horrified when they discover what has occurred. Their victim has been the completely blameless Mr Tweed. But these killers are cold and cunning. They concoct a story that suggests that Mr Moriston was attempting blackmail and two days later they poison him with hemlock stolen from the same laboratory that provided the scalpel. It is clever, is it not? The finger of blame points at the biology teacher, Miss Colne, and this time, their true motive is completely concealed …’