Unholy Dying (26 page)

Oddie pondered.

“Interesting thought. Perhaps we should call the school's headmaster, see if he's available for a chat.”

“What about the areas we've still got to look at?” asked Charlie. “The St. Catherine's menfolk, the Bishop and his committee?”

“We'll go back to the Shipley station and set those up afterward. This is new, and may just be a bundle of nasty rumors, but it's close to home for Horrocks, and I'd like to establish whether there's any basis of truth in it. I'll call the headmaster now.”

“I'm Peter Frencham,” said the man waiting for them at the school gate, shaking them both by the hand. “I thought I'd come out and guide you through this melee.”

Both Oddie and Charlie decided that they liked what they saw. Frencham was in his early forties, probably, but with gray beginning to show at his temples and worry lines already forming around his eyes and across his forehead. Par for the course, most likely. The main thing was that he looked capable and dependable: if one didn't always agree with his decisions, one would know they had been taken after careful thought, and he would explain them in a way that could be understood.

“Lunchtime chaos, I suppose,” said Charlie. “I remember it well.”

They were about to set off through the mob for the school buildings when something caught Charlie's eye. Two boys a hundred yards or so away had spotted them, and had turned with military precision and begun to walk away. Charlie touched Peter Frencham's arm.

“Who are those two boys?” he asked. The words were no sooner out of his mouth than the smaller of the two turned around to try and catch a furtive glimpse of the school's visitors. “Oh, I think I could guess one of them.”

“Yes, he's very like his father.” The headmaster lowered his tone. “Unfortunate for the boy, you might say.”

“Very. So, that's Lennie, is it? How would they know who we are?”

“It's all around the school—probably all around Shipley—that the Horrocks murder is being investigated by a police duo, one middle-aged and white, the other young and black. It's a bit too much like a TV crime series pairing not to cause comment. It gives them a delicious sense of watching something on the box come to life.”

“Who would be spreading this? I've been off in the Midlands, so Mike was on his own most of yesterday.”

“Samantha Horrocks only had one day off when her father was killed.”

“Of course.”

“I gather she's not pretending to be grief-stricken. I've been rather wondering whether it was Samantha that you wanted to talk to me about.”

They were at the door of the main building, and he pushed it open and led them down corridors, some of them containing excited children who stopped their shouting when they saw them. Eventually they arrived at a quieter area, where Peter Frencham opened a door.

“Before we get on to what we've come about,” said Charlie when the door had shut behind them, “could I ask who that boy was with Lennie Norris.”

“Ah, that was Mark Leary. The Leary family's prominent in the St. Catherine's congregation, I believe.”

“I've talked briefly with his mother,” said Oddie. “The boy dashed in and out to get some sports gear, but I only caught a glimpse of him.”

“It's a very sporty family, the men, anyway. The father played football for Shipley years ago, and he was following in
his
father's footsteps. Took over the family firm—electrical goods—as well. They're pretty substantial people in a Shipley context. The daughter's just come to us, and her teachers speak well of her—keen brain, with a touch of rebelliousness that doesn't go amiss. The mother's a very sensible woman.”

“Yes,” said Oddie cautiously. “Seemed rather nervous when I spoke to her.”

“Really? Maybe it's St. Catherine's being thought to be involved in the Horrocks case.” He seemed about to say something, but then changed his mind. “Was it Samantha Horrocks you wanted to talk about?”

“Yes, it was,” said Oddie. “Of course we've been interested in his family, as we were bound to be, but somehow the coincidence of the Pardoe story and the killing meant that we've concentrated on that so far. Now something's come up.”

“I think I can guess what it is.”

“It concerns a history teacher.”

“Yes . . . Superintendent, I'm quite happy to fetch Cassie Daltrey so you can have a talk with her, but do you mind if I fill you in with a bit of background first?”

“I'd welcome it.”

The policemen made themselves as comfortable as possible in upright chairs. Peter Frencham perched on his desk.

“First, the girl herself: Samantha lives a bit outside our normal area, but she got a transfer here from Rodley because she's very keen on history. It's a subject that's being downgraded in schools these days, more's the pity, so it's important when there
is someone who wants to specialize that they get the best teaching. Cassie Daltrey's one of the best, and her reputation reached young Samantha. I talked to the girl and her mother—her father never came into it—organized the transfer here, and on the whole it's all gone very well.”

“Right. But people have been talking, have they?”

“Yes. I should say it's happened before—talk, I mean. And the truth is that it may be there's talk
now
because there's been talk
before
. Do you take my point?”

“It mushrooms,” said Oddie. “There were allegations about Miss Daltrey and a pupil in the past?”

“Three years ago.”

“So people are just waiting for something similar to happen again.”

“That's exactly it. I sometimes wonder whether something rather similar hasn't happened to Father Pardoe.”

“Talk begets talk. But in fact I think things have happened rather differently in his case. And we haven't heard of any serious sexual allegations about him in the past.”

“Right. I think what I really meant was that the spate of sexual allegations here and in Ireland against priests and nuns means people look closely and skeptically at the conduct of all the Catholic hierarchy. Just one more point. I knew there was talk going around in the upper forms, the odd smutty joke too, as you can imagine. I was about to have a quiet word with Cassie, suggest that any special tuition would have to take place here in school, not at her flat. How she'd have taken that, I don't know. But another business came up, and like a coward I put Cassie and Samantha on the back burner. I'm afraid I was glad to. That's about it, really.”

“Thank you for being so frank.”

“I'll fetch her now and leave you both alone with her.”

The staff room was farther down the corridor, and it was less than a couple of minutes before Frencham was ushering in a quietly smart, brisk, but decidedly pleasant woman, probably, Charlie thought, in her early thirties. Oddie took the desk, she and Charlie the two chairs that the headmaster's study boasted. Cassie Daltrey was on the surface completely cool and in control.

“I gather it's about Samantha,” she said at once.

“That's right.”

“I thought it might be. She told me her father was making what you might call tabloid noises. I wonder, could I tell it to you in my own words, rather as if you were the headmaster? I'd expected to be called in for a little chat with him before too long.”

“Please, go ahead. We might interrupt to take up points as you go along.”

Both men, however, registered in their minds that she had been preparing for a chat with the headmaster, so her account was likely to be, if not untrue, then prepackaged with her own slant.

“First, yes: I'm a lesbian. I have my own circle, here and in the towns around, and in Leeds. I'm discreet about it, and I don't resent having to be discreet. If there was a heterosexual teacher in the school who had a fair range of partners, I would expect him or her to be discreet too. You could say I'm old-fashioned like that.”

“And if one of your pupils were to ask you about it?” Oddie put in.

She paused for a moment or two to think.

“Yes, that's a question, isn't it? It's probably only a matter of time before one does. I'd probably say my private life is my own affair. And provided I am discreet about it, I think that is the
case. If I flaunted my sexuality then I'd have to expect questions, discussion, jokes, and even public scandal.”

“Fair enough.”

“Right. Now—getting a star pupil in history these days is a bonus. If you downgrade a subject it loses prestige, and most of the bright kids start thinking in terms of doing something else.
Except
the ones who really have a talent for it, a feel, an instinct—call it what you like. I mean the ones for whom nothing else will do. I had it three years ago, when I first came here, with a girl called Nicola Barnes. She could have sailed into Oxbridge, but that option doesn't have the prestige with the young it once had. She opted for Leeds, and living at home, which I think of as a shame, and second best, but the economic pressure to do that is very strong these days.”

She paused. Oddie seemed about to fill in the gap, then decided not to.

“There were no rumors, no talk while she was here. Quite rightly. Nothing went on. I gave her special tuition, if necessary at my home, but nothing happened, and I made sure nothing did. Since then she has become part of the lesbian scene in Leeds. And so—”

“Talk started here?”

She shrugged.

“Yes. I still don't know for certain how it got around, but I suspect worried parents. Mrs. Barnes started wondering about the friends her daughter was bringing home. And then people cast their minds back and started asking questions about her and me. The talk never got going until six months after she'd left here. What it did mean was that when I got another potential star pupil, and it was a girl, the talk was ready-made. I was exceptionally careful, but there was always going to be jokes, name-calling, that sort of thing. I suppose I should be grateful:
students are more sophisticated, and a bit more tolerant too, these days. Twenty years ago things might have got really nasty.”

“So you gave up the private tuition classes at home?”

Cassie Daltrey shook her head.

“There I didn't have any option. I need a break at the end of the day before teaching at Samantha's level, and the school doesn't stay open all evening—budgets don't allow that. So we've had the odd tuition session at my flat, and I've been as discreet about that as possible, and made sure she has been too.”

“And Samantha herself?”

Was there a slight tightening of her body?

“What about Samantha?”

“I imagine she's heard the rumors, maybe come in for some smutty jokes.”

“Both. Samantha's the one student I couldn't fob off with the line that my private life is my own business. I told her about it over coffee the first time she came to my flat. But Samantha needs the tuition if she's to get to Oxford. She has to make up for lost time, as far as the teaching at her old school is concerned. And Oxford is what she wants, and no substitute. No, that's not true: she'd have settled in the end for anywhere away from home while her appalling father was alive, but Oxford she has a yen for. I tease her and say it's watching videos of
Brideshead Revisited
, but I think it's just as likely to be Oxford's first-rate reputation for history. She's a girl who knows where she's going. She also, like Nicola, has a
sense
for history. That's vital.”

“And that was all there's been?”

“That, Superintendent, is all there's been.”

“But there's been trouble for her at home, has there?”

“Trouble with her father. Really, you ought to talk to Samantha
about that. She just alludes to it with me and shrugs it off. Says she's learned to cope with his kind of beastliness. I think she doesn't want to upset me, though she wouldn't. She'll talk about her father generally—or would, before he died. A terrible father: an emotional sadist, someone with a real taste for humiliation. But please do remember that Samantha was about to get away from him. I really believe that. If all this hasn't upset her, she should get to Oxford, and with a bit of luck go up in October. And I can assure you, Samantha is not a murderess. She has the strongest possible sense of right and wrong. That's why she passionately hated all the things her father did in his professional life, particularly his thirst for destroying people.”

“She felt morally outraged by his journalistic standards?”

“Yes. I think that puts it pretty well. And by the way, Chief Inspector, my guess—it's no more—is that Samantha is definitely heterosexual. I've never seen anything to suggest otherwise. So when he made allegations about her and me, she could test his standards of proof and honesty for herself, in her own life.”

And that, essentially, was all they got out of her. They probed, asked her to amplify and explain, but five minutes later she was on her way back to the staff room to collect the headmaster. She paused for a moment in the empty corridor to collect herself. A litany was running through her head:
If only that were true. If only that were all. If only just for once in my life I had been wise. If I'd just let it emerge, what she wanted—not tried to pressure her my way. But I didn't, and I lost her. What a fool I am. And I never learn. It will happen again. And one day I'll be ruined
.

In the headmaster's study the two policemen were doing an expert appraisal of her performance.

“The sanitized version,” said Oddie.

“Probably,” said Charlie. “But very well done.”

“She was prepared.”

“I suspect someone in her position, with her tastes, is always prepared.”