Well-Schooled in Murder (30 page)

Corntel seemed to read his mind. “Do you? Was my performance that fine? Shall I lay some phantoms to rest for you now?”

“If it helps. If you wish.”

“Nothing helps. I don’t wish. But Emilia’s nothing to do with Matthew Whateley’s death, and if laying phantoms to rest is the way to convince you, then so be it.” He looked away bleakly. “She was here Friday night. I should have seen at once why she had come and what she wanted, but I didn’t. Not soon enough to stop things from getting out of hand and ending miserably and upsetting us both.”

“I take it she came to make love with you.”

“I’m thirty-five years old.
Thirty-five years old
. Can you of all people know what that means?”

Lynley saw the only possible connection and put it into words. “You’d never made love to a woman before?”

“
Thirty-five
. How pathetic. How puerile. How obscene.”

“None of those things. Just a fact.”

“It was disastrous. Try to imagine the details so I needn’t fill them in. Do that much for me, will you? Afterwards, I was humiliated. She was upset, weeping but trying to excuse everything as her fault. Believe me, Tommy, she was in no frame of mind to do anything but return to her own rooms. I didn’t see her leave Erebus, but I can’t think why she would have done anything else.”

“Where are her rooms?”

“She’s tutor at Galatea House.”

“So Cowfrey Pitt might be able to corroborate her comings and goings?”

“If you don’t believe me, yes, ask Cowfrey. But her rooms aren’t near the private quarters, so he may have no idea where she was.”

“What about Saturday night? She was here again?”

Corntel nodded. “Trying to make things right. Trying to…How does one go back to being friends after a scene like that, Tommy? How does one recapture that which twenty minutes of steamy, futile grappling on a bed have utterly destroyed? That’s why she was here. That’s why I forgot to do my rounds as duty master this past weekend. That’s why I didn’t know that Matthew Whateley had run off. Because I couldn’t act the man the first time in my life that I had the opportunity.”

Matthew Whateley had run off
. It was the second time Corntel had said it, and there were only two possibilities for the misinformation. Either he knew nothing about the clothing Frank Orten had found upon the rubbish pile, or he was playing it safe and sticking to the established story until offered a new one by the police.

13

It was just eleven when Lynley met with Sergeant Havers in what Bredgar Chambers labelled the Big Schoolroom on the south side of the main quadrangle. This was the original teaching facility on the campus, a white-walled chamber with oak wainscotting and an elaborate vaulted ceiling. Windows were set high into the south wall of the room, and beneath them hung the portraits of every headmaster the school had known since Charles Lovell-Howard had first been given the reins of authority in 1489.

The room was empty at the moment, with a vague pulpy odour of wet wood permeating the air. When they closed the door behind them, Sergeant Havers crossed to the windows and sauntered along the line of portraits, following the school’s history until she came to Alan Lockwood.

“Only twenty-one headmasters in five hundred years,” she marvelled. “When one comes to Bredgar Chambers, it looks like one comes to stay. Here. Look at this, sir. The bloke just before Lockwood was head for forty-two years!”

Lynley joined her. “That goes some distance to explain Lockwood’s need to keep Matthew Whateley’s murder under wraps, doesn’t it? I wonder if any other boys were murdered while under the tenure of earlier headmasters.”

“It’s a thought, isn’t it? But all of the heads had boys die, didn’t they? Girls as well. The memorial chapel is ample proof of that.”

“Quite. But a sudden, unexpected death due to war or illness is one thing, Havers. One can hardly cast blame upon anyone for that. A murder, however, is something else. One looks to cast blame. One must.”

Voices rose and fell outside the room as they spoke. Dozens of footsteps pounded down a stairway. Lynley opened his pocket watch.

“Morning break, I should imagine. What have you found in your ramble through the school?” He looked up to see Sergeant Havers staring at the window, frowning. “Havers?”

She stirred. “Just thinking.”

“And?”

“It’s nothing. Just what you said about blame. I wondered who takes the blame when a student commits suicide.”

“Edward Hsu?”

“Beloved student.”

“I’ve gone back to him myself. Giles Byrne’s interest in him. His death. Giles Byrne’s interest in Matthew Whateley.
His
death. But if Matthew Whateley were indeed killed at this school last Friday or even last Saturday, how can we assign blame to Giles Byrne? Unless, of course, he was here. Rather doubtful, but worth looking into.”

“Perhaps not him, sir.”

“Who? Brian Byrne? If you attempt that, you lose the connection you’re trying to establish in the first place, Sergeant. Edward Hsu killed himself in 1975. Brian Byrne was perhaps five years old at the time. Are you casting blame for a suicide on a five-year-old boy?”

She sighed. “I don’t know. But I keep going back to what Brian said about his father.”

“Temper that with the knowledge that he dislikes his father. Didn’t you get the impression that Brian would be only too happy to deride Giles Byrne, given the opportunity to do so? And we gave him that yesterday, didn’t we?”

“I suppose.” Havers wandered the length of the room to the dais at the east end, over which was carved in bas-relief an elaborate depiction of Henry VII on a destrier caparisoned, ready to charge. Beneath this stood a refectory table and chairs, and she pulled out one of these and plopped down into it, splaying her legs out in front of her.

Lynley joined her. “We’re looking for a place where Matthew Whateley might have been confined from Friday afternoon to Friday night—perhaps even Saturday night—when he, or his body, was removed. What have you come up with?”

“Little enough. Storage and supply rooms by the kitchen which we have to discount, since he disappeared after lunch and too many people would have been working in that area. There are two old lavatories there that don’t look as if anyone uses them regularly. Filthy inside, toilets broken as well.”

“Any sign of recent occupation?”

“None that I could see. If he was in there, whoever had him was careful to make sure no trace was left behind.”

“Anything else?”

“Trunk rooms in all the houses, but they’re kept locked and only the housemasters and the matrons have the keys to get into them. Attics above the drying rooms in the houses as well, but each of them is padlocked. And again, only housemasters and matrons have the keys. Storerooms in the science building and an enormous tank of water above the aquariums where one could certainly have drowned Matthew Whateley, but not held him captive for long. Unless he was bound and gagged and his killer knew that no one would be about for the rest of the afternoon. Beyond that, the theatre has dressing rooms and storage rooms behind the stage, and a lighting booth above it. If no performance was scheduled and if someone had access, I should imagine the theatre’s our best bet, Inspector. Pupils were in there this morning—I saw our Chas Quilter, by the way, looking as if Yorick had just come back from the dead and he wasn’t too pleased at the prospect—but if it was empty after lunch on Friday, it’s as good a place as any to have held Matthew Whateley. Especially considering its distance from the playing fields where the students were gathered.”

“But how would one gain access, Sergeant? It seems to me that the theatre—with all its props, equipment, costumes, and so forth—would be one of the most securely guarded buildings at the school.”

“Oh, it would be locked, all right. But that’s no problem at all. I looked into that before I began. Frank Orten told us that keys are kept in two locations—in his office and in the pigeonholes outside the masters’ common room. His office is unlocked during the day, so if Orten wasn’t about for the moment, anyone could slip in unnoticed and grab the keys marked
theatre
and hope for the best. And if daylight is too risky for a manoeuvre like that, at night a credit card or some other suitable piece of plastic is all that one would need to break into the office in less than fifteen seconds. Their security’s pathetic. I can’t believe they haven’t been robbed blind.”

“What about the pigeonholes outside the masters’ common room?”

“Worse,” she replied. “Frank Orten told us the common room is kept locked, didn’t he? With only the masters and the skivvies having keys? Well, it wasn’t locked this morning. I walked right in. And the pigeonholes are not only conveniently labelled with each master’s name, but I’d say a good fifty percent of them had keys hanging right in them. All one would need to know is what master used what keys. Then, just pop round the common room and bob’s-your-uncle.”

“We’re wide open once again. Everyone had access. Everyone had means.”

“Who had opportunity?”

“To grab Matthew after lunch and stow him somewhere until he could be dealt with? Who
didn’t
have opportunity?” Lynley thought about the question himself. Something John Corntel had said pricked at his memory. “Let’s find Cowfrey Pitt,” he said.

Although the morning break had not yet ended, the German master was not with the other teachers in the common room. Instead, Lynley and Havers found him in his classroom on the first floor of the west side of the quad. He was writing in a barely legible scrawl across the blackboard, sloppily slashing umlauts here and there like a private form of Morse code. When Lynley said his name, he continued writing and did not turn from the board until he had completed the job to his satisfaction. He illustrated this point by stepping back from his work, surveying it critically, erasing a few words, and rewriting them with little improvement. Then he gave his attention to his visitors.

“You’re the police,” he said. “Don’t bother to introduce yourselves. Your reputations have preceded you. I’ve a lesson in ten minutes.”

He delivered this information indifferently, brushing flecks of chalk from the sleeve of his gown. The gesture spoke of a less than believable concern for his appearance, for the gown he wore was more grey than black, crusted along the shoulders with both dandruff and dust.

Sergeant Havers shut the door and stationed herself next to it. She gave Pitt the benefit of a look that managed to be expressionless at the same time as it was completely judgemental. It told the German master that his lesson might be scheduled in ten minutes, but it would begin when the police deemed it appropriate, and not before.

“This shouldn’t take long,” Lynley said to Pitt. “Just a few points to clarify, and we’ll be on our way.”

“I’ve an upper sixth group coming in here, you know.” Pitt offered this bit of news as if it would determine the length of the questioning he was about to endure. At the door, Sergeant Havers leaned against the wall, suggesting a sort of permanency. As if reading this, Pitt said, “So. Clarify, Inspector. Clarify. Please do. Don’t let me stop you.”

Lynley walked to the window. The room looked out over the quad, and directly opposite it the bell tower rose, giving access to the roof, its very height a temptation that, no doubt, no Bredgardian schoolboy eager to prove his mettle had ever been able to resist.

“What can you tell me about the off-games chit that got Matthew Whateley released from the soccer game Friday afternoon?”

Pitt remained behind his desk. He pressed his knuckles to its surface. They were cracked and looked sore. “Little enough. It was the regulation form from the San. With his name on it. Nothing else.”

“No signature?”

“Judith Laughland’s, you mean? No. No signature.”

“Is that regular procedure, to receive an off-games chit with a boy’s name but no signature from the San sister to verify its authenticity?”

Pitt moved from foot to foot. One hand went to his fringe of oily hair. He pulled at a single stiffened lock that curled behind and beneath his left ear. “No. She usually signs them.”

“Usually. But this one wasn’t signed.”

“I’ve said that, Inspector.”