by James Hilton
Evidence was then given by several boys, including the two who slept in the beds on either side of Marshall’s. None of them had heard anything during the night. They agreed that they usually slept well and did not waken easily.
A “certain liveliness” seemed to have been introduced into the proceedings by the evidence of a Mr. John Tunstall, chief engineer to the local gas company. On being informed of the accident by telephone, he said, he had immediately visited the School, and made an examination. The gas-fitting was very old, and of a type that no company would supply or recommend nowadays. He had found a large fracture in the pipe near the ceiling-rose. This had evidently been the cause of the fitting’s suddenly dropping loose. Such fractures did sometimes occur in fittings that had seen many years’ service, especially if they had been subjected to any particular sort of strain. Questioned by the Coroner on this point, he said that he had in mind another and a similar fitting at the School that had been pulled down as a result of some of the boys swinging on it.
Dr. Roseveare next gave evidence, if evidence it could be called. The Coroner allowed him latitude to make a few kindly remarks concerning the dead boy and to express sympathy with his relatives. From that he passed to the more practical announcement that the governors of the School had already given orders for the complete electrification of the entire buildings. He also craved leave to state, since the point had been raised, that there never had been, to his knowledge, any instance of Oakington boys swinging on the gas-fittings. The incident presumably referred to by one of the witnesses had been that of a window-cleaner who had carelessly broken off one of the fittings with his ladder. As Headmaster he thought it only fair, in the interests of the School, to mention this…
That was all. The jury, without retiring, returned the inevitable verdict of “Accidental Death”.
Roseveare waited in silence until he could see that Revell had got to the end. Then, moving forward a little in his chair, he coughed interrogatively. “Well? And what do you think of it?”
Revell handed back the cutting. “It was an odd sort of accident, of course,” he commented. “But then, odder ones have happened, I daresay.”
“Precisely.” Roseveare’s grey, deep-set eyes quickened a little. “I naturally regarded it in that light myself. So did the poor boy’s guardian, a Colonel Graham, living in India, from whom I received a most courteous and sympathetic letter. And then, just about a week ago…” He paused. “You will probably think it was quite a small and insignificant thing. Indeed, I hope you do. Anyhow, let me tell you about it.”
Through the haze of cigar-smoke Revell nodded encouragement. Roseveare continued: “Last week I had a letter from Colonel Graham—a second letter. He suggested that Mr. Ellington, as the poor boy’s housemaster and cousin, should take charge of his personal belongings until he himself came home from India in about six months’ time. I had naturally been expecting instructions of such a kind, and had already had everything collected and stored away. I was just looking them over before passing them on to Ellington when—to make a longish story a little shorter—I chanced upon this.” He produced a second slip of paper from his wallet. “It was between the pages of the boy’s algebra-book.”
It was a sheet of notepaper with the Oakington crest and letter-heading. At the top was the date—September 18th. And underneath, in carefully printed capital letters, the following:
“IF ANYTHING SHOULD HAPPEN TO ME, I LEAVE EVERYTHING TO MY BROTHER WILBRAHAM, EXCEPT MY THREE-SPEED BICYCLE, WHICH I LEAVE TO JONES TERTIUS. (SIGNED)—ROBERT MARSHALL.”
Revell, after a short pause, handed back the document without remark. Roseveare went on: “You can perhaps imagine my feelings at the discovery of such a thing. It raised—hardly perhaps so much as a suspicion— but a sort of—shall I say a sort of curiosity in my mind. It was rather disconcerting to reflect that on the very evening before the boy died he had been thinking of his own possible death.”
Revell nodded. “I suppose there WAS a three-speed bicycle?”
“Oh yes. And he WAS friendly with Jones—I verified all that. I couldn’t get hold of another example of his printing to compare with, but the handwriting of the signature seemed authentic enough.” He clenched his hands on the arms of the chair and added, with a touch of eagerness: “I daresay the whole thing is just pure coincidence. I certainly don’t want you to assume that there is more in it than meets the eye.”
Revell nodded once again, but with his glance fixed rather shrewdly on the other. “What is it,” he asked, “that you would like me to do?”
“Nothing definite, I assure you—nothing definite at all. Just consider, if I may so express it, that for a few days you hold a watching brief. Here, as I have told them to you, are the facts—presenting a situation that is, shall we agree to say, abnormal enough to be worth a little extra attention if only for its own sake. Just look over it yourself and tell me how you feel about it—that’s really all I have in mind.”
“But surely, sir, you don’t suspect—”
“My dear boy, I suspect nothing and nobody. As a matter of fact”— the emotional inflection was in his voice again—“this terrible business was a great blow to me—far greater than I have allowed people to see. Apart from personal regrets, the publicity that the whole affair received was a great setback to the School. You may or may not know, Revell, the state in which I found things when I first came here. For half a dozen years I have toiled hard to raise and improve, and then—comes THIS. There is no one on my staff in whom I would care to confide. I cannot probe into the matter myself—to do so would draw even greater attention to it. And yet, of course, there may be nothing at all to probe… My nerves, I am aware, are not in the best condition—I need a long holiday which I shall not be able to take until the summer vacation next year. I can see you are tremendously mystified by all this. And no wonder. It is all, I daresay, perfectly absurd.”
“I must admit, sir, I don’t see a scrap of evidence to suggest anything really wrong.”
“Of course not. There isn’t any, I don’t suppose. And yet—there’s that little demon of curiosity in my mind—why WAS the boy thinking of death on that Sunday evening?”
“Who can say? Coincidences like that DO happen. And there’s nothing very remarkable in the note itself. Just the fatuous sort of thing I might have written myself on a Sunday night after chapel when I’d nothing else to do.”
“Probably—you comfort me even by saying so. Nevertheless, you will not decline my vague and probably quite ridiculous commission?”
“Oh, of course not, if you would really like me to look into it.”
“Good. You see, no doubt, how well suited you are for the task. As a distinguished Old Boy of the School, you have the best of reasons for being here as my guest. You can talk to both boys and masters without anyone questioning your bona-fides. No one, of course, knows or need know why you are really here. You understand?”
“Oh yes.”
“Then I leave things in your hands. I have heard splendid accounts, my dear Revell, of your work in connexion with a certain regrettable affair at Oxford. This, I hope, will be less serious… You were in School House, I believe, when you were here?”
“Yes.”
“Good—that will give you a convenient excuse for meeting Ellington. I mentioned your visit to him, in fact—he suggested you might care to breakfast with him to-morrow morning.”
“I should be delighted.”
“Most likely he will drop in later on to-night to meet you… Another cigar? Yes, do, please. Are you interested, by the way, in etchings? I have one or two here that are considered to be rather choice.”
Revell perceived that the discussion, for the time being, was over, and he could not but notice and admire the ease with which the other resumed his earlier manner. Nerves or not, he certainly had them well under control. They talked on for over an hour on varied topics; Roseveare showed himself to be a man of remarkably wide interests, and obviously enj
oyed an exchange of views with the younger generation. Yet there was not a trace of patronage or of condescension in his attitude. He listened sympathetically when Revell told him of his literary work and of the Don Juan epic. Revell liked him more and more; it was as if their recent more serious talk had been a strange interlude in a much more real intimacy.
Towards ten o’clock Ellington arrived and was introduced. He was a heavily built, middle-aged fellow, thick-set of feature and going a little bald. Under his impact the conversation sagged instantly. He appeared cordial enough about the breakfast invitation, but Revell gathered that it was his housemasterly habit to ask School House old boys to breakfast, and that he did it as a sort of routine duty. Revell, in fact, was not greatly attracted to him. When he had gone Roseveare faintly shrugged his shoulders. “A hard worker, Ellington, and a devoted colleague. But not much of a conversationalist, I am afraid. However… Perhaps you will take a little whisky before going up to bed? I usually do so myself.”
And, since Revell usually did so whenever he had the chance, the ritual was jointly observed.
* * *
CHAPTER 2. — 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 commente
d.
“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.”