Was It Murder? (3 page)

And, since Revell usually did so whenever he had the chance, the ritual was jointly observed.

CHAPTER II

SOLVED!

Sunday at Oakington in Revell’s time had always been a depressing day.  No cooked foods were served from the kitchens; all newspapers (except religious weeklies) were removed from the School reading-room; no boy could leave the grounds without special permission; games and gramophones were alike forbidden; three chapel services had to be attended; and it was also a day of compulsory black suits, shoes, and ties.

To Revell, comfortably dozing while the chapel bell importunately rang for the first service, there came the jumbled memories of some hundred or so of such days.  Not that he had had an unhappy time at School.  But there was an unholy glee to be derived from lying between warm sheets and thinking of the Oakington multitude shivering in its pews on a December morning with the prospect of nothing but cold brawn for breakfast.  He wondered also, since Roseveare was not apparently a cleric, who read the lessons. . . .

Roseveare. . . .  The name somehow managed to banish his drowsiness; after a little delay he got up, enjoyed the steamiest of hot baths, dressed, and went downstairs.  The butler met him with a reminder of his breakfast engagement with Mr. Ellington.  He nodded and walked out through the porch into the chill wintry air.  From the chapel across the intervening lawn came the sound of a hymn.  Ellington’s house, viewed from where he was, presented the appearance of a suburban villa leaning coyly against the massive flanks of School House.  It was not perhaps very elegant, but it had enabled four generations of pedagogues to combine marriage and housemastership in a manner both effective and discreet.

Revell walked briskly across the quadrangle, climbed the short flight of steps, and rang the door-bell.  A woman’s voice from the interior called “Come in!”  He entered and waited a few seconds in the hall.  The voice again cried “Come in!”—whereupon, fired with a little determination, he walked over to the room from which the sound had seemed to proceed and boldly pushed open the door.  He found himself immediately in the presence of a dark-haired, bright-eyed little woman, almost pretty, who was frying rashers of bacon at a gas-cooker.

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” she stammered, seeing him.  “I thought—I thought you might be the boy bringing the milk. . . .  Oh, do forgive me. . . .  I suppose you are Mr. Revell?”

Revell smiled and admitted that he was.

“I really am most awfully sorry.  My husband’s in chapel, you know— he’ll be here in a few minutes.  The servants all go to chapel too, so I have to get the breakfast myself on Sundays.  I hope you’ll excuse me.”

“Rather,” answered Revell, gaily, turning on the torrent of chatter

he held in reserve for such occasions.  “I love cooking and

kitchens, as a matter of fact.  If I’d been old enough to go to the

War, there’s only one thing I’d wanted to be—a batman.  The

morning miracle of ham and eggs—“

“Yes,” she interrupted, “cooking is rather fun.  And Molly prefers it to going to chapel, I know, but we—or rather, my husband—has to insist on her going to the first service, even if she misses the others.  It’s an old school custom, I suppose.”

“I wonder,” said Revell, with that air of slightly cynical abstraction that always or nearly always interested women, “is Oakington really old enough to have any old customs?”

“I don’t know.”  She was, he perceived, out of her depth.  But his spirits rose as he contemplated her; she would at least relieve the concentrated boredom of a breakfast with Ellington.  Ellington, in fact, appeared on the scene almost at that moment.  “Sorry to keep you waiting,” he grunted, and to his wife he added, rather sharply:

“Why didn’t you show Mr. Revell into the drawing-room?”

“I’m so glad she didn’t,” interposed Revell.  “A drawing-room in a morning is like—“  He paused, trying to think of some epigram, either original or purloined; but as neither the housemaster nor his wife appeared to be listening he gave up his effort and merely smiled.  And Mrs. Ellington faintly smiled back.

Eyeing her a little later across the breakfast-table, he guessed her to be anything between twenty and thirty years younger than her husband.  Vivacious in a shy, limited kind of way, she talked a good deal about nothing in particular, and Revell, as he had expected, found her animated chatter a pleasant antidote to Ellington’s ponderous small-talk.  Ellington was, undoubtedly, a prime bore; his conversation consisted almost entirely of house-match anticipations.  Once or twice Revell tried to take things in hand himself, but without much success.  Even his less-subtle witticisms passed unnoticed, though occasionally, a minute or so too late, Mrs. Ellington responded with a scared little laugh, as if she were just beginning to feel her way cautiously into an unfamiliar world.

It began to rain towards the end of the meal.  “Bad time of the year for a visit,” commented Ellington.  “Nothing but rain and fog.  Been a pretty bad Term altogether, in fact.”  Revell waited to see if this were to be a prelude to some remark about the Marshall affair; and so, perhaps, it might have been but for the sudden intrusion, amidst numerous jocund apologies, of a small-statured, red-faced, cheery-looking person whom Ellington introduced as “our padre—Captain Daggat”.  The two seemed on good terms; Ellington made Daggat take a cup of coffee, although the latter insisted that he had already breakfasted.  “Snug little place, this, eh?” he said, winking at Revell.  “Not so bad being a married housemaster.” He sat down at the table and dominated the talk by sheer fatuousness.  He made foolish jokes with Mrs. Ellington, talked shop with Ellington himself, and addressed Revell from time to time with that slangy familiarity which a certain type of parson cultivates in the belief that it makes people feel “at home” with him.  Towards ten o’clock, when Ellington had to rush away to take a class in scripture, Revell made polite excuses to go.  But Daggat hung on to him mercilessly.  “Come along, old chap.  You’ll enjoy a stroll round the old place, even if it IS raining.  Good-bye, Mrs.  Ellington, and many thanks. . . .  Seen our War Memorial Hall yet, Revell?”

Despairingly Revell allowed himself to be piloted from place to place.  They explored the Memorial Hall, the Museum, the Library, and the new science laboratories.  Revell summed up Daggat as that commonest of types, the athletic parson.  His slang, his bubbling eagerness to be of service, his frequent references to the War (which he seemed to recollect as a sort of inter-school rugger-match on a large scale)--all would have jarred inexpressibly had not Revell been hoping that in due course, and preferably without prompting, Daggat would talk about the dormitory tragedy.  When at length he suggested “a pipe and a pow-wow in my snuggery”, Revell agreed willingly enough.  The snuggery proved to be on the first floor of the main School House block; it was the usual room affected by such an occupant, with its wide-open windows and languishing fire, its sporting trophies, its hackneyed reproductions of too famous paintings, and its mantelpiece full of fixture-cards.  Pinned to the wall by the fireplace was the list of preachers in Oakington School Chapel during the current term. Revell glanced at it.  “So you’re on duty to-day?” he commented.

“Yes.  They usually book me for the beginning and end of Term.”

“I hope I’m not taking up your time when you’d rather be preparing?”

“Oh, not in the least, my dear chap.  I always preach extempore.

Often I don’t even know my subject till I get into the pulpit.  It’s the only way.  Once let the fellows feel that you’re not speaking straight from the heart, and you lose grip on them.  Don’t you think so?”

Revell answered vaguely.  He was thinking, as a matter of fact, about Mrs. Ellington, and idly speculating upon how and where she had met Ellington, what in him had attracted her, and whether they had been married long.  Daggat roused him from such problems by asking what years he had been at Oakington.

“I was here during the War.  ‘Fifteen to ‘eighteen.”

“You were too young, I suppose, to be in the big scrap?”

“’Fraid so.”  Revell felt like adding:  “Too young to have had any of those stirring adventures which you are going to tell me about now if I give you half a chance.”  Something of his feeling must have translated itself into a warning glance, for Daggat, after momentary hesitation, twisted the subject to a different angle.  “Ten years ago, by Gad!” he exclaimed.  “To think it’s all as long ago as that!  And yet a pretty good deal’s happened in the interval, I must admit—even at Oakington.  Almost a complete change of staff, you know.  I don’t suppose you’ve seen many familiar faces.”

“I caught sight of old Longwell this morning, but he didn’t know me—I never took drawing.  Some of the servants’ faces I seem to remember.  But apart from that, everyone’s a stranger.”  He added:

“I gather there was something like a clean sweep when the new Head came?”

Daggat nodded.  “I came in ‘twenty-three—a year after the Head.  I heard stories, of course, of what things had been like before . . .”

They chatted on, coming at length to reminiscences of particular boys whom Revell had known in his time, and whose younger relatives were still at Oakington.  It was easy, in such a connexion, to mention Marshall, and Daggat was only too eager to discuss the tragedy.  “I suppose you read about it at the time?” he queried, and Revell allowed him to presume so.  “Ah, a terrible business.  Queer thing, when you come to think about it, that a gas-thingumbob should come crashing down just when a boy’s head is underneath it.

Providence, of course—that’s all one can say.  As I’ve told the

School in my sermons time and time again—WE NEVER KNOW.  With all

our modern science and invention—with all our much-vaunted—“

A sharp tap on the door-panel interrupted a peroration whose conclusion seemed reasonably predictable.  “Come in!” yelled Daggat, in a high-pitched, sing-song tenor.  The door opened a few inches, and a man’s voice, deep-toned and rather cultivated, murmured:  “Sorry, Daggat—didn’t know you were busy.  Any other time’ll do.”

Daggat jumped up hastily.  “No, don’t go, Lambourne—we’re only chatting.  Come in and meet Mr. Revell—he’s an Old Boy.”

The new-comer made his way into the centre of the room with a sort of nonchalant indifference.  He was a youngish man, rather tall, perhaps in his early thirties, with dark eyes and hair and a curious half-melancholy carelessness in the way he nodded and smiled.  He was dressed, if not perhaps definitely unconventionally, at least in a way that was not quite expected of an Oakington master on a Sunday morning; in fact, Revell decided, liking him a little on sight, there was nothing about him that was either schoolmasterly or sabbatical.

“We were talking,” said Daggat, puffing away at a huge briar pipe, “about poor Marshall.  Revell knew his brother—the one who was killed in the War.”

Lambourne inclined his head, but made no comment.

“I must say I feel dashed sorry for the present Marshall,” Daggat continued.  “He’s here now, you know, Revell—our head prefect.  The only one left out of three brothers, and both the others killed.  Frightful bad luck, you know, and his parents both dead, too.  The poor fellow was pretty badly cut up, I can tell you.  The Head wanted to give him leave of absence for the rest of Term, but of course there was nowhere for him to go.  His guardian’s in India.”

“How about his holidays, then?”

“I think he spends most of them with other fellows’ people.  He’s very popular.”

“Once he had a fortnight with Cousin Thomas,” put in Lambourne.  “Did you know, by the way, that Ellington was his cousin?  They toured the Lake District, anyhow, caught terrible colds, and finished up with a very bourgeois week-end at a seaside hydro near Blackpool.”

“Yes, he’s very popular,” Daggat reiterated.  “Jolly good at all games, but swimming especially.  Quite the best swimmer Oakington ever had, I believe.  Different in almost every way from his brother, poor chap.”

Revell gathered somehow that Daggat had not greatly cared for the younger Marshall.  “You knew HIM quite well too, I suppose?” he queried.

“Oh, fairly well.  He was in my junior form for English.  Quiet sort of fellow—imaginative, I daresay—read queer kinds of books.  Not bad at his work.  I expect he’d have taken his School Certificate.”

Revell felt that the epitaph on the deceased had, from the schoolmasterly point of view, been fitly and finally pronounced.  As if to clinch the matter, Daggat added:  “Ah well, the only way to look at these things is to believe that somehow or other they’re providential.”

Lambourne smiled.  “I’m afraid you view Providence a shade too indulgently, Daggat.  Even an insurance company would hardly dare to call a falling gas-fitting an act of God.”

Just then the chapel bell began to ring for morning service.  “Must dash away,” cried Daggat, picking up his gown.  “You two chaps stay here and chin-wag as long as you like.”

When he had gone, Lambourne poked up the fire and dragged his chair nearer to it.  “I wish Daggat, as a believer in hell-fire, would use a little more coal,” he remarked.  “It would prevent his visitors from envying the warmth of the lower regions.”  He dug into the coal-scuttle with the shovel.  “Empty, of course.  We call him ‘the Cherub’, by the way.  Decent fellow, except when he’s preaching.  Then he makes you feel you want to wring his neck.  I warn you, you’ll have him to-night, if you go.”

“I know.  He told me.”

“You’re staying at the Head’s, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Just for the week-end?”

“That’s all.”

“Pity.  You might have come along to dine with me one night at the local pub.  I like a change from school dinners now and again.”  He went on, after a pause, and with disconcerting abruptness:  “Like the Head?”

“Pretty well, I think.”

“I suppose you mean that you can’t quite make him out?”

“No, I wouldn’t say that I meant that.”  Revell was a little resentful of the other’s interpretative air.

“You must remember he’s been other things besides a schoolmaster.  Lived abroad a good deal—America and the Colonies.  His degree’s a medical one, by the way.  Bit of a bon viveur, too, and the very devil for being discreet.  All things to all men and to nearly all women, you know.”