“That’s a comforting thought,” Lynley responded, removing his umbrella from the rear seat. Without one herself, Havers joined him under his. “What did you uncover in Cissbury?”
They began walking in the direction of Calchus House. A bell sounded the summons for afternoon lessons. For a few moments they were caught up in the tide of blue and yellow uniforms as schoolchildren hurried past them in the rain. Havers didn’t speak until they were alone on the path. “As far as I can tell, Clive’s story checks out, sir. The barman at the Sword and Garter saw him by the rubbish bin late Saturday night. He couldn’t exactly tell what Clive was doing, but in his words, ‘Whatever it was, he was doing it to a bird who seemed to like it well enough.’”
“Are there lights by the rubbish bin?”
Havers shook her head. “And the barman couldn’t describe the boy he saw other than in general terms about his size. He didn’t know the girl at all, or at least he didn’t get a clear look at her. So we can say the boy wasn’t necessarily Clive.”
“It could have been another boy from the school,” Lynley agreed.
She took up the idea with an enthusiasm that suggested she had been thinking it over since leaving the village. “Someone Clive knew would be sneaking off to meet a girl in the village on Saturday night. Someone who might have bragged to Clive about his conquest afterwards, including details of the encounter by the rubbish bin.”
Lynley saw how her hypothesis didn’t quite fit together. “It sounds good enough, but when it comes down to it, Havers, my guess is that Clive’s going to hand over the name of that girl. She’ll verify his identity. We’ll be back to square one. What time did the barman see them?”
“Just after midnight.” Havers dragged her feet on the path. After a moment of reflection she said, “Well, there does seem to be something in that, sir. Clive’s clever. We saw that in the way he chose to use those pictures at just the right moment. I can see him going into Cissbury to arrange an alibi and then coming back to deal with Matthew Whateley’s body later. He claims that he saw Emilia Bond when he was coming over the wall from his trip to the village. But he could just as easily have come back earlier, taken the minibus to Stoke Poges, dumped the body, and seen Emilia Bond upon his return. She didn’t see him, after all. We’ve only his word that he saw her when he was climbing over the wall. And if Frank Orten saw the fire round three in the morning, surely Clive had time to do everything.”
“Stretching it, Havers.”
“A bit. But he could have. He could have. And you can’t tell me that bloke wouldn’t know how to orchestrate a crime. His first words from the cradle were probably ‘synchronise your watches.’ If you ask me, all we need is some evidence from that room in Calchus House, something more from the minibus, and Clive Pritchard as we know and love him is going to be history.”
Lynley frowned, going over Havers’ words in his mind. Getting no response from him, she continued.
“I saw Jean Bonnamy in the village as well. Posting some letters. She was a bit done up, Inspector, like she was going to meet someone for lunch.”
“Hardly a suspicious activity, Sergeant.”
“I know that. But when she’s seen to herself, she’s not half-bad. Nice hair, nice skin. I had a good look at her. And I couldn’t help wondering what she might have looked like fourteen years ago, what she might have looked like to an eighteen-year-old boy.”
“Edward Hsu.”
“It’s possible, isn’t it? She’s lived in Hong Kong. She has her father’s love for things Chinese. She might be Matthew Whateley’s real mother. She might have kept track of him all these years. She might even have seen to it that he was sent to their house as a Bredgar Volunteer. We have only Giles Byrne’s description of what Matthew’s natural mother was like, scheming and money-grubbing. Perhaps she wasn’t like that at all.”
“Your argument suggests Giles Byrne is more involved in Matthew Whateley’s birth than he would like us to think.”
“Jean Bonnamy could have known about Giles Byrne through Edward Hsu. She could have gone to him for help. And now, to protect her, Giles Byrne might be lying like the devil.”
“We’ve thought that from the first about Byrne,” Lynley agreed. “Perhaps Constable Nkata will find something in Exeter.”
“Or nothing,” Havers added.
“Then we’ll be closer to the truth.” Lynley guided Sergeant Havers across the lane to Calchus House. “Let’s see what the crime scene team have come up with.”
The team were still at work up above the drying room, and the crime scene photographer was just climbing down the metal ladder, followed by one of the other officers.
“Anything?” Lynley asked the second man who was carrying a work case. Above them a vacuum began to howl.
The officer placed his case on the floor, squatted over it, and said over his shoulder, “Just finished dusting for prints. They’re hundreds of them. Hairs. Fibres. It’s like a rubbish heap.”
“How long before you—”
“We don’t have the manpower of the Met, Inspector. We’ll be sorting through everything for weeks. That’s the best we can manage.”
Lynley knew how reluctantly Horsham CID had sent their crime scene team to the school in the first place. He chose his words carefully. “We’ve one of the upper sixth boys under suspicion. If there’s anything we can use to tie him to this room, to tie Matthew Whateley to this room…”
The man scratched his head, rearranging a haystack of untidy grey hair. “Whateley was…how old?”
“Thirteen.”
“Hmmm. Does seem unlikely that Whateley…” The man removed the top tray from his case and brought out three plastic bags. “These might have belonged to your upper sixth lad,” he said. “I’m not certain a thirteen-year-old would have been using them, and I hope to hell an adult would have the finesse to arrange his sexual liaisons in a more attractive environment. Apologies to you, Sergeant. Not a sight for a lady.” He dangled the bags in front of their faces. Each contained a used condom. As he continued to speak, he swung the bags back and forth, keeping time to his words. “An old blanket’s been used up there as well. We’ve packaged that already. I’ve money on its showing plenty of stains. You know the sort I’m speaking of, no doubt. Appears the room was used for a bit more than…Well”—he grinned lasciviously—“no doubt you take my meaning.”
“The drawings on the wall suggest that well enough,” Lynley said drily. Havers, he noted, was standing with her arms folded across her chest, her face a stubborn refusal to give in to the Horsham officer’s attempt to embarrass her. She was used to it. Women had been in CID for years, but not everyone welcomed them. Lynley drew her into the corridor.
She was quick to speak. “Those fit in with Clive’s personality, don’t they?”
He nodded. “Anyone who’d have at a girl standing up next to a rubbish bin would hardly draw the line at having her lie down in a bit of dust and filth. And yet, I wonder about Clive’s willingness to take precautions against pregnancy, Havers. That seems out of character, doesn’t it?”
Havers’ face registered the extent of her distaste. “Unless the girl insisted. Although I can’t imagine any girl in her right mind wanting to…up there…alone with him…Frankly, our Clive made my skin crawl, Inspector. So whoever the girl is, I should guess she goes in for whips and chains. That seems to be Clive’s style.”
“If we can find her, Havers, we’ll have someone who can place Clive Pritchard in that room.”
“Affirmation that he knew of the room’s existence,” Havers concluded. Her eyes widened as she completed the thought. “Daphne!”
“Daphne?”
“The girl he went after in Cowfrey Pitt’s German class. If I’m not mistaken about her, she’s just the person we’re looking for to put the thumbscrews to Clive.”
They returned to the administrative offices in the east quadrangle, seeking the current location of the girl whom Clive Pritchard had harassed on the p
revious day. The Headmaster’s secretary had all the pupils’ schedules in a file on her desk, but instead of looking through it to seek the information Lynley wanted, she handed him a telephone message and spoke curtly enough to transmit her displeasure at having to come into unsavoury contact with the police.
“Scotland Yard,” she said. “You’re to phone them.” As Lynley’s eyes dropped to the telephone on her desk, she added icily, “From the porter’s office, if you please.”
Frank Orten was not at his desk when they entered his office. The room was unoccupied, a fact that was not lost on Lynley. Hanging against the wall on the other side of the counter that separated Orten’s work space from a waiting area designated by the presence of three wooden chairs, keys dangled from a pegboard. Lynley went behind the counter and examined them. Havers remained by the door.
“Minibus keys are there, aren’t they?” she asked.
Lynley found them on a hook above which was a label printed with the single word vehicles. Other hooks had labels as well, printed with the names of the various buildings: maths, technical centre, theatre, etc. The houses were also represented by labels, the two girls’ houses—Galatea and Eirene—segregated from the boys’ houses on the other side of the board. Havers had indeed been accurate in her assessment of the school’s security. It was nonexistent.
The office door opened, and Frank Orten entered. His quasi-military cap was pulled low on his forehead, and his jacket and trousers were spotted from the rain. He hesitated in the doorway, looking from Havers to Lynley to the pegboard of keys.
Lynley spoke. “How often is your office unoccupied like this, Mr. Orten? Would you say it’s a fairly common occurrence?”
Orten went to his desk behind the counter. He removed his hat and placed it on a shelf next to a glass jar filled with small pink and white seashells. “Wouldn’t say that,” he replied.
“At least once a day? Twice? More?”
Orten looked offended. “One goes to the toilet, Inspector. No law against that, as far as I know.”
“Leaving the office unlocked?”
“I’m not out of it three minutes!”
“And this time?”
“This time?”
Lynley indicated the state of the man’s uniform. “You’ve been out in the rain. Surely you don’t need to go outside to find a lavatory, do you?”
Orten turned to his desk. A large black binder sat upon it. He opened this. “Elaine has my daughter’s kids with her at Erebus. I checked on them.”
“Your daughter is still in hospital?”
“She is.”
“Which hospital is that?”
Orten swung round in his chair. “St. John’s. In Crawley.” He saw Sergeant Havers make note of his answer. He adjusted his neck against the high collar of his uniform jacket. “What’s this?” he demanded.
“Details, Mr. Orten,” Lynley replied. “I’ve come to use your telephone, if I may.”
Orten shoved the telephone towards Lynley in a fashion that did not hide his irritation. Lynley dialled the number for the Yard and within moments was speaking to Dorothea Harriman. He did not give her an opportunity to deliver her message. Instead, his earlier conversation with Sergeant Havers in mind, he asked:
“Has Constable Nkata reported in yet, Dee?” On the other end of the line, he could hear Superintendent Webberly’s secretary shuffling through papers. In the background, word processor keys tapped and a printer whirred.
“You’re in luck, as usual,” Harriman replied. “He rang from Exeter not twenty minutes past.”
“And?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“That was his message. ‘Tell the Inspector nothing.’ Seemed a bit cheeky to me, but that’s Nkata’s style, isn’t it?”
Lynley didn’t bother to correct her impression of the constable’s message. He understood it well enough. The Exeter investigation into Giles Byrne’s story about Matthew Whateley’s birth was turning up nothing. Sergeant Havers’ intuition was proving accurate.
Harriman was continuing. “You’ve had some information from Slough police that I thought you’d want, Detective Inspector. They’ve completed the autopsy. There’s a clear cause of death.”
“What have they told us?”
“Poisoning,” she replied.
Lynley’s mind began to race with ideas. It was as he had thought: something in the food Matthew Whateley had been given while held in the chamber above the drying room; something he had drunk; something that had worked quickly upon him; something a pupil had access to….
Then Dorothea Harriman spoke again, her words cutting through and destroying the entire direction of his thoughts.
“It was carbon monoxide,” she said.
20
It was nearly four o’clock when Detective Inspector Canerone of the Slough CID ushered Lynley into his office, a cramped cubicle furnished in metal and plastic, with a preponderance of Ordnance Survey maps on the walls. An electric kettle—hissing steam from its spout—sat atop one of the three dented filing cabinets, while on another were arranged a child’s collection of Beatrix Potter figurines.
“They belonged to my son,” Canerone said in explanation. “I couldn’t bring myself to throw them away when he moved off with his mum. Tea?” He pulled open one of the cabinet drawers from which he produced a china teapot, two cups, two saucers, and a sugar bowl. “She left this behind as well,” he continued, unabashed. “It seemed a shame to leave it all at home where it’ll never get used. There’s no milk. You don’t mind?”
“Not at all.”
Lynley watched the other detective make the tea. His movements were ponderous, and he paused frequently as if considering whether a potential gesture were a solecism that might cause him social embarrassment.
“You’re working the case alone?” Canerone asked. “That’s not typical of the Met, is it?”
“I’ve a sergeant to assist. She’s still out at the school.”
Carefully Canerone placed teapot, sugar, cups, and saucers on a tray which he carried to his desk. “You think the boy was killed there.” It was a conclusion rather than a point of interrogation.
“I thought so originally,” Lynley replied. “But now I’m not certain. It’s the carbon monoxide that’s thrown me off.”
Canerone pulled open the top drawer of his desk and removed a package of digestive biscuits. He placed two on each of the saucers and filled the cups with tea. Handing one to Lynley, he munched on a biscuit and opened a folder that lay in the centre of his desk.
“Let’s see what we have.” He blew across the surface of his tea and took a noisy sip.
“One usually associates carbon monoxide with cars,” Lynley said. “But one can be exposed to it—and die from it—in other ways as well.”
“There’s truth in that.” Canerone nodded. “From coal gas. From a faulty furnace. From a stopped-up flue.”
“In a room. In a building.”
“Certainly.” Canerone used a biscuit to gesture at the report. “But the concentration attached to the haemoglobin was high. So the boy was exposed to it in heavy volume. And, I should guess, in a fairly confined space.”
“The room I have in mind is quite small. Up under the eaves and above a drying room. Lots of pipes running through it.”
“Gas pipes?”
“I’m not certain. Perhaps.”
“Then the room’s a possibility. But I rather think…No. Unless it’s dwarf-sized, I don’t think it’ll work. Not at this concentration in the blood. And not if the lad was the only one to die. You can verify this with our forensic team, but I think you’ll find they agree.”
Lynley knew he had to adjust his thinking. He did so reluctantly. “Could the boy have died while being transported somewhere in a vehicle?”
Canerone seemed interested in this line of thought. “That’s more sensible than the room, to be sure. Bound and gagged in a vehicle—perhaps in the boot—with the driver not k
nowing that the exhaust was leaking inside to kill the boy. That’s a good possibility.”
“And when the driver reached his destination and discovered what had happened to the boy, he dumped the body in Stoke Poges and fled.”
At this, Canerone shook his head. He popped the rest of his first biscuit into his mouth. “That’s unlikely. Lividity had already set in. The body had been moved from the site of death into that cemetery quite some time after death. Our man’s guessing, at the extreme, twenty-four hours.”
“So Matthew would have had to be dead in that vehicle for an entire day before his body was moved.”
“A risky business,” Canerone pointed out reasonably. “Unless our killer’s sure that no one’s going to prowl round his car. But whatever the truth turns out to be, it’s a certainty that the boy didn’t die on the hour’s drive between the school and the churchyard.” Thoughtfully he tapped the report against his desk. “Perhaps our killer was intent upon taking him somewhere else. Perhaps he reached his destination, found the boy dead, panicked, left the car, and took twenty-four hours to come up with a way to dispose of the body.”
“By removing it from his car to another vehicle? A minibus perhaps?”
“There’s something in that,” Canerone agreed. “I’d say a bit of evidence as well, since one wouldn’t want to risk having a body lying openly in a minibus.” He turned a page of the report and handed a document to Lynley. “You recall the fibres caught up in the boy’s hair? Wool and rayon. What does that suggest to you?”
“Anything. A piece of clothing. Rug from a car.”
“Coloured orange.” Canerone attended to his second biscuit.
“The blanket,” Lynley said.
Canerone raised his head questioningly. Lynley told him about the drying room, about the chamber above it, about the room’s contents. “Horsham CID have taken the blanket for analysis.”
“Get us a patch of it. We’ll see if we can match the fibres.”
Lynley had no doubt that a match would be made. The fibres would connect Matthew Whateley to the blanket. The blanket would place Matthew Whateley in the room. If Havers had any luck with Daphne, Clive Pritchard would be associated with the room as well. The circle of the crime was beginning to close, overriding Clive’s story about how he spent Saturday night.
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