Well-Schooled in Murder (9 page)

The sofa—blue vinyl—was covered with an old pink counterpane to protect it. Patsy Whateley removed this and folded it slowly, giving care to matching the corners and smoothing the lumps. Lynley sat.

Patsy Whateley did likewise, choosing the plaid chair and making sure that her dressing gown did not become disarranged. Her husband remained standing next to the stone fireplace. This held an electric fire, but he made no move to light it, even though the room was uncomfortably cold.

“I can return in the morning,” Lynley told them. “But it seemed wisest to me to begin working at once.”

Patsy said, “Yes. At once. Mattie…I want to know. I must know.” Her husband said nothing. His bleak eyes were on a picture of the boy that had pride of place on the sideboard. Grinning like any brand new third former, Matthew had been photographed wearing his school uniform—yellow pullover, blue blazer, grey trousers, black shoes. “Kev…” Patsy sounded uncertain. It was clear that she wanted her husband to join them, clearer still that he had no intention of doing so.

“Scotland Yard will handle most of the case,” Lynley explained. “I’ve already spoken to John Corntel, Matthew’s housemaster.”

“Bastard,” Kevin Whateley said on a breath.

Patsy straightened in her chair. She kept her eyes on Lynley. Her hand, however, drew a fold of her dressing gown into her fist. “Mr. Corntel. Mattie lived in Erebus House. Mr. Corntel’s housemaster there. At Bredgar Chambers. Yes.”

“From what I’ve been able to gather from Mr. Corntel,” Lynley went on, “it appears that Matthew may have had the idea to seek some freedom this past weekend.”

“No,” Patsy replied.

Lynley had expected the automatic denial. He continued as if she had not said it. “It appears that he’d got hold of an off-games chit, a paper from the Sanatorium saying that he was unfit for Friday afternoon’s hockey game. The school seems to think that perhaps he was feeling out of place and he wanted to use the opportunity of his proposed visit to the Morant family and the off-games chit to get away, perhaps to come back to London with no one being the wiser. They think he was trying to hitchhike and was picked up by someone on the road.”

Patsy looked at her husband as if hoping that he would intervene. His lips moved convulsively, but he said nothing.

“Can’t be, Inspector,” Patsy said. “That’s not our Mattie.”

“How did he get on in school?”

Again Patsy’s eyes went to her husband. This time, his own met hers momentarily before they slid away. He removed his peaked cap and twisted it once in his hands. They were strong labourer’s hands, Lynley saw, nicked in several places.

“Mattie got on well in school,” Patsy said.

“He was happy there?”

“Quite happy. He’d won a scholarship. The Board of Governors Scholarship. He knew what it meant to go to a proper school.”

“Prior to this year, he’d gone to school here locally, hadn’t he? If so, he could have been missing his mates.”

“Not a bit of that. Mattie loved Bredgar Chambers. He knew how important it was to be educated right. This was his chance. He’d not have thrown it away because he missed some mate of his here at home. He could see his mates at half term, couldn’t he?”

“But perhaps someone special in the neighbourhood?”

Lynley saw Kevin Whateley’s reaction to the question, a quick uncontrolled movement of his head towards the windows.

“Mr. Whateley?”

The man said nothing. Lynley waited. Patsy Whateley spoke.

“You’re thinking of Yvonnen, Kev, aren’t you?” she said and explained to Lynley. “Yvonnen Livesley. From Queen Caroline Street. She and Mattie were mates in primary school. They played together. But it was just children playing, Inspector. Yvonnen wasn’t more to Matthew than that. And besides…” She blinked and said nothing more.

“Black,” her husband finished.

“Yvonnen Livesley’s a black?” Lynley clarified.

Kevin Whateley nodded, as if the colour of Yvonnen’s skin were adequate evidence to support their contention that Matthew would not have left the school illegally. It was a weak position, especially if they had grown up together, especially if they were—as the boy’s mother claimed—mates.

“Was there anything at all that might have given you the impression that Matthew was recently unhappy at school? Not unhappy throughout the year, but unhappy within the past few weeks. Arising perhaps from a cause you know nothing about. Sometimes children go through things and don’t feel quite up to admitting it to their parents. It was nothing to do with the relationship that exists between parent and child. It’s just something that happens.” He thought of his own school days and the pretence of getting on. He had never spoken of it to a single soul, least of all to his parents.

Neither of them replied. Kevin examined the lining of his cap. Patsy frowned down at her lap. Lynley saw that she had started trembling, so he addressed his words to her.

“It’s not your fault if Matthew ran off from the school, Mrs. Whateley. You’re not responsible. If he felt a need to run away—”

“He
had
to go there. We did swear…Oh, Kev, he’s dead and we did it. You know we did it!”

Her husband’s face worked in reaction to her words, but he didn’t go to her. Instead, he looked at Lynley.

“The boy went dead quiet within the last four or five months.” He spoke tautly. “Last holiday I come on him three or four times just staring out his bedroom window at the river. Like he was in a trance. But he wouldn’t talk about it. Wasn’t his way.” Kevin looked at his wife. She was attempting to maintain that shell of bland civility that she seemed to feel was appropriate. “We did it to him, Pats. We did.”

Barbara Havers stared up at the facade of her family’s home in Acton and made a mental note of everything that needed to be done to the building to make it more habitable. It was an exercise she engaged in nightly. Always, she dwelt on the easiest items first. The windows were filthy. God alone knew when they had last been washed. But it wouldn’t take too much trouble to see to them if she had enough time off, a ladder to use, and sufficient energy to do the job right. The bricks needed scrubbing. Fifty years or more of soot and grime permeated their porous surfaces, leaving an unpalatable patina in every variation of the colour black. The woodwork at the windows, along the roofline, and on the door had long since lost its last flake of paint. She shuddered to think how long it would take to return that innocent decorative carving to its original condition. Drainpipes down the side of the house were rusted through, spouting like sieves whenever it rained. They would have to be replaced entirely. As would the front garden, which was not a garden at all but a square of concrete-hard dirt upon which she parked her Mini, its rusting condition a suitable complement to the environment in general.

Her survey complete, she got out of the car and went into the house. Noise and odours assaulted her. The television blared from the sitting room, while poorly cooked food, mildew, woodrot, unwashed bodies, and old age all battled to be the ascendant smell.

Barbara laid her shoulder bag on the wobbly rattan table by the door. She hung her coat with the others on the line of pegs beneath the staircase and walked towards the sitting room at the back of the house.

“Lovey?” Querulously, her mother spoke from above. Barbara stopped, looked up.

Mrs. Havers was standing on the top stair, clad only in a thin cotton nightdress, her feet bare and her hair uncombed. The light behind her, shining from her bedroom, served to emphasise each angular detail of her skeletal body through the insubstantial material. Barbara’s eyes widened at the sight of her.

“You’ve not dressed, Mum,” she said. “You’ve not dressed today at all.” She felt a great weight of depression settle upon her as she said the words. How much longer, she asked herself, would she be able to hold down a job and still care for two parents who had become like children?

Mrs. Havers smiled vaguely. Her hands slid over the nightdress as if for confirmation. Her teeth caught at her lip. “Forgot,” she said. “I was looking at my albums—oh, lovey, I did so want to spend more time in Switzerland, didn’t you?—and I must not have realised…Shall I dress now, lovey?”

Considering the time, it seemed a rather useless expenditure of energy. Barbara sighed, pressed her knuckles to her temples to stave off a headache. “No, I don’t think so, Mum. It’s almost time for you to be in bed, isn’t it?”

“I
could
dress for you. You could watch me and see if I do it proper.”

“You’d do it proper, Mum. Why don’t you run yourself a bath?”

Mrs. Havers’ face wrinkled at this new idea. “Bath?”

“Yes. But stay with the water. Don’t let it overflow this time. I’ll be up in a moment.”

“Will you help me then, lovey? If you will, I can tell you my ideas about Argentina. That’s where we’ll go next. Do they speak Spanish there? I think we’ll have to learn more Spanish before we go. One so likes to be able to communicate with the natives.
Buenos días, señorita. ¿Como se llama?
I remember that from the telly. I know it’s not nearly enough. But it’s a start. If they speak Spanish in Argentina. It could be Portuguese. Somewhere they speak Portuguese.”

Barbara knew her mother might go on in this disjointed fashion for an hour or more. She had often done so, sometimes coming into her bedroom at two or three in the morning to chat aimlessly, unmindful of Barbara’s entreaties that she return to her bed.

“The bath,” Barbara reminded her. “I’m going to check on Dad.”

“Dad’s well today, lovey. Such a man.
So
well. See for yourself.”

That said, Mrs. Havers flitted back out of the light. In a moment water began to splash noisily into the bath. Barbara waited to see if her mother would leave the tub unattended, but apparently the idea of watching the water had been planted well enough in her mind to ensure her staying put for at least a few minutes. Barbara went to the sitting room.

Her father was in his usual chair, watching his usual Sunday night programme. Newspapers covered most of the floor where he had dropped them once he’d given them his usual cursory read. He, at least, was more predictable than her mother. He lived by routine.

Barbara watched him from the doorway, tuning out the raucous roar of a commercial for Cadbury chocolates on the television, concentrating instead on the aqueous sound of his breathing. It had become more laboured within the last two weeks. The oxygen fed to him through the omnipresent tubes no longer seemed sufficient.

Perhaps feeling his daughter’s presence, Jimmy Havers pushed himself to one side in his old wing-backed chair.

“Barbie.” As always, he smiled a greeting, showing teeth that were cracked and blackened. But for once Barbara noticed neither this nor the fact that his hair was unwashed and greasily malodorous. Rather, she saw that his colour was bad. There was no pink to his cheeks; his fingernails were turning a misty grey-blue. She didn’t have to cross the room to see that the veins in his arms looked shrunk to nothing.

She walked to the tank on its trolley by his chair and adjusted the oxygen flow. “We’ve the doctor tomorrow morning, haven’t we, Dad?”

He nodded. “Tomorrow. Half-nine. Got to be up and about with the birds, Barbie.”

“Yes. With the birds.” Fleetingly Barbara mulled over how she would manage this scheduled trip to the doctor with both her parents. She’d been dreading it for weeks. It was inconceivable that her mother should be left alone in the house while she took her father to the doctor. Anything could happen if Mrs. Havers found herself unsupervised for more than ten minutes at a time. Yet the idea of having them both to contend with was overwhelming—her father’s oxygen supply, his virtual immobility thrown against her mother’s tendency to wander off and lose herself blissfully in the crystal cave of her dementia. How was she going to do it?

Barbara knew it was time for some sort of help. Not a well-meaning social worker who’d stop by to make sure the house was still standing, but a permanent live-in. Someone reliable. Someone who would take an interest in her parents.

It was impossible. It couldn’t be managed. There was nothing to be done save muddling on. The thought was suffocating, a nightmare glimpse into a future with neither hope nor end.

When the telephone rang, she trudged into the kitchen to answer it, doing her best not to let her heart sink any lower when she saw the unwashed breakfast dishes with their smears of dried egg still cluttered on the table. The caller was Lynley.

“We’ve a murder, Sergeant,” he announced. “I’ll need you to meet me at the St. James house at half-past seven tomorrow.”

Barbara knew that a brief request on her part for time off would be met with Lynley’s immediate acquiescence. While she’d been careful never to reveal the truth of her living circumstances to him, the number of hours that she’d spent on the job in the last few weeks had certainly garnered her several days of freedom. He knew that. He would not even stop to question such a request. She wondered what was preventing her from making it, but even in the act of wondering, she recognised her self-deception. A new case tomorrow promised at least a moment’s reprieve from the inevitable struggle with her parents in the morning, from the endless trip to the doctor, from the anxious wait to be called into his office while all the time she kept her mother in rein like a fractious two-year-old. A new case obviated the necessity of going through all that. It was licence to avoid, permission to procrastinate.