Murder At School

by James Hilton

  “Yet YOU suspected it?”

  “Oh yes, but then, as I said before, I suspect everything and everybody.”

  The attitude, which had been amusing enough at first, only served to irritate Revell now that his thoughts had become further engrossed in the case. That evening, in the privacy of his bedroom, he wrote out a short summary of the whole Marshall affair, concluding with a few supplementary memoranda which might, he felt, help him by being set down logically on paper. Under the heading—“Have there really been murders?” he wrote:

  “I think so. The first ‘accident’ will be hard and perhaps impossible to elucidate, but if the second ‘accident’ is definitely proved to be murder, then a considerable balance of probability will lie in favour of the first accident having been murder also, especially if there can be found any adequate motive for the double event. And such a motive undoubtedly exists.

  “Let us, then, examine the second ‘accident’. Clearly, there are only three possibilities—(1) a bona-fide accident, (2) suicide, and (3) murder. The following points weigh heavily against the first possibility:

  “(1) Even on the darkest night any person of normal eyesight can see the water in the swimming-bath—therefore, he would most likely notice the absence of it. If also he were familiar with the bath, as was the deceased, he would probably notice the totally different sound of his own footsteps caused by the emptiness of the bath.

  “(2) The wrist-watch discovered on the top diving-platform is a rather suspiciously direct pointer to the theory of the dive.

  “(3) The burned-out fuses. Here again we have something by no means intrinsically suspicious, but one must admit that it happened very fortunately or unfortunately upon this particular night out of all other nights.

  “We have, then, disposed of the accident theory, though maybe not conclusively enough for a jury—especially a Coroner’s jury. There remain the two other possibilities. Suicide seems out of the question; we are thus left with the third—murder—by process of elimination.”

  Under the heading “Why suspect Ellington?” Revell went on to write;

  “(1) He is the only person who apparently benefits by both the accidents together. (Note that he would not have benefited in any way by one of them separately.)

  “(2) He is known to have been walking about the School grounds at a time when the murder MAY have been committed.”

  Lastly, under the heading “Questions to be solved”, he wrote:

  “(1) In the case of both accidents, how EXACTLY was the thing done?

  “(2) Why did the Head send for me last December? Why did he appear to have suspicions then? And why hasn’t he any (apparently) now? Why does he seem as though he would be glad if I went back and forgot the whole business?

  “(3) Is Lambourne entirely trustworthy? Is his pose of indifference sincere?”

  And upon these wise and cautious speculations Revell went to bed and to sleep.

  Revell stayed on at Oakington, and each morning at breakfast Dr. Roseveare’s welcome was just a shade more ironical. The dead boy’s body was in the meantime coffined and taken away by motor-hearse for burial in the family grave in Herefordshire; the living boys returned after their Speech Day holiday, full of other and various topics; the swimming-bath again echoed to the shrieks of the junior learners. Oakington, in fact, began to function normally again, and the second Marshall affair seemed as if it might soon sink into impenetrable limbo with the first.

  But to Revell, of course, the problem of the two deaths was an ever- insistent reality. He pondered over it night and day, and the readiness of the others to forget only increased his determination. The trouble was, as it had been right from the beginning, that although he had plenty of theories, there was precious little evidence in support of any of them. Nor did his most careful investigations bear much result. He got into diplomatic conversation with various boys who had known the two brothers, but none could tell him anything of importance, and even their “suspicions”, when he probed them, turned out to be based on nothing more than the mere coincidence of the double tragedy.

  Several times he strolled casually into the swimming-bath, professing a keen interest in the School swimming, but really in the hope of discovering something hitherto overlooked or of surprising Wilson at some suspicious task —one of his theories had included the baths-attendant as an accomplice. But he discovered nothing, and all Wilson’s occupations seemed entirely innocent.

  In his notebook, naturally, it was all quite simple, for he had written down:

  “Assuming that the theory accepted by the Coroner is incorrect, and since the boy’s injuries were too severe to have been caused by a mere fall off the side, it follows that his death must have been caused by some object or instrument. It is clear, too, that he must have been struck either (1) while he was standing on the side or (2) he must have been induced to descend into the empty bath and then struck. As there were no blood-stains on the side, the second possibility seems more likely. In that case the murderer would have had to be someone who could have made some plausible excuse for inducing the boy to descend into the bath. Ellington, as one interested in swimming, could have done this.

  “Question, therefore: What was the weapon or object used to kill the boy, and what was done with it afterwards? What, also, did the murderer do with his clothes, if, as seems likely, they were blood-stained?”

  In detective stories, as Revell well knew, he would only have had to take a few casual walks about the School grounds to discover both the clothes and the weapon, to say nothing of complete sets of finger-prints. Unfortunately, once again, realities were different, and though he kept half an eye on the shrubbery as he strolled round the Ring, it was not with any intense expectation of finding anything. Naturally the murderer would have taken care to destroy or at least to hide his weapon. It was a pity, perhaps, as Lambourne said, that you could not legally prove a thing had existed merely by proving that somebody had had motive and opportunity to destroy it. And it was equally a pity that proof by elimination was not held in such high respect in law-courts as in Euclid.

  One thing, however, these few apparently unfruitful days at Oakington did yield, and that was a rich crop of rumours and impressions. The rumours he mainly ignored (they varied from theories of “curses” laid on the Marshall family to reports of masked men searching the School grounds at midnight); but the impressions were valuable. Revell learned, for example, that Ellington was unpopular, being considered somewhat of a bully, and that Roseveare was idolised. Lambourne, he found, was a bad disciplinarian and rather unpopular with the boys on account of his sarcastic manner; Daggat, on the other hand, though laughed at and thought rather a fool, was quite well liked. Murchiston, the School doctor, was also a favourite, chiefly, no doubt, because he was slack and good-natured.

  He learned a little more from an afternoon’s chance meeting with Mrs. Ellington in the neighbouring village of Patchmere. He had borrowed a bicycle and was pedalling for pleasure about the country lanes he had known years before; she, with her handle-bar basket full of packages, was obviously on business. “I’ve just been getting butter and eggs from the farms,” she explained. “It’s really a good excuse for a ride on a day like this, isn’t it?”

  He agreed. They chatted for a while, standing against the kerb of the sunny village street; then, since she was returning, it occurred to him to accompany her. “I’m only riding about because I’ve nothing better to do,” he said.

  She laughed her pretty laugh as she mounted her machine. “All right, then. But why do you come here for a holiday if you are so bored?”

  “Oh, I’m not at all bored. On the contrary, I’m enjoying my stay immensely —it’s my first long visit, you know, since I left the School.”

  “And how long ARE you staying?”

  “Not—er—not beyond the end of the week, I don’t suppose.”

  She appeared to accept his explanation without any further puzzlement. They gossiped pleasantly along
the lane back to the School, and as they turned in at the gateway she said, with a touch of mockery in her voice: “Well, if you’ve nothing better to do, you might have tea with me, eh? The kettle will be boiling in ten minutes or so.”

  “Thanks,” he answered, laughing. “I’ll come.”

  When he returned after putting away his bicycle he found her alone in the rather conventionally-furnished sitting-room that overlooked the quadrangle. “My husband’s away,” she said, greeting him with a smile. “He’s gone to the funeral of that poor boy—down in Herefordshire, you know.” She added: “I’m so glad you’re not offended with us—I’m afraid we were rather rude when you came here to tea the other day.”

  He thought it rather sacrificial of her to say “us” and “we” instead of “him” and “he”, and he replied, meaningly: “I’m quite sure YOU weren’t in the least rude, Mrs. Ellington.”

  “Oh well, then, if you really insist on it, I’ll say my husband was. I’m afraid he very often is. He’s not really happy as a schoolmaster, you know —he’s not made for the job. Anyhow, it won’t be for much longer —I think I told you we were going to be quite rich. And Tom’s decided he’ll give up school and go out to Kenya Colony.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, now that he can afford to buy a decent ranch or whatever you call it.”

  “But—well—what about you?”

  “ME? Oh, I don’t mind—why should I?”

  Yet he felt, somehow, the narrowness of the gulf that separated her from tears. He was thrilled a little, too. For all his man-of-the-worldliness, he could never QUITE escape the feeling that married people, merely by being married, belonged to an older generation than himself; and to that extent he was always rather astonished when they began to tell him their troubles, as they very often did. But Mrs. Ellington was hardly telling him—she was hardly even hinting.

  He said, at a venture: “I feel confoundedly sorry for you, anyhow. I don’t altogether know why, but it IS so.”

  She answered: “I guessed it—right from the time of our first meeting last December. Curious, wasn’t it?”

  “I say, did you really?”

  “Yes. But I hardly thought I should ever have the chance of saying so.” She smiled and seemed marvellously on the point of breaking down. “Tell me,” she added, in a voice that trembled, “are you writing another book… ?”

  And the incident, with all its implications and unexplored possibilities, was over.

  But, as he had to admit to himself afterwards, he was really no nearer a solution of the Marshall affair. As the days came and went and each morning made it a little harder for him to face the Head’s quizzical glance, he came to the reluctant conclusion that his Oxford detecting triumph must have been a fluke. Though, of course, it had been altogether less baffling. Here at Oakington crookedness and mystery hampered him at every turn; at certain moments the whole place seemed shrouded in an atmosphere of dark malevolence, amidst which Roseveare, Ellington, and even Lambourne strutted about like figures in a nightmare.

  “‘Fraid I shall have to give it up,” he told the latter on the Friday night that was exactly ten days after the swimming-bath tragedy. “I really can’t stay on here for ever, and there doesn’t seem much chance of my being able to do anything.”

  Lambourne nodded sympathetically. “Yes, I rather thought that’s what would happen. Ah well, it’s not the first time a clever murderer’s succeeded in getting away with it. D’you know, I think most people, if they were careful enough, could manage to commit one murder in safety—it’s really not so very hard. The temptation is, when you’ve done it, to repeat yourself with another. Even then you may perhaps carry it through with a bit of luck —the Brides in the Bath murderer did, and Ellington here, we may presume, is having the same good fortune. But the third time is nearly always unlucky—bound to be, by the law of averages, isn’t it?”

  “The third time? But there aren’t any more Marshall brothers, surely?”

  “Maybe not, but what does that signify? Once the murderer gets it into his head that he’s cleverer than the rest of mankind, he begins to think of murder quite casually as a means of getting rid of anybody he happens to dislike. It’s true, Revell—I’ve made rather a study of the matter. Two successful murders by the same person are very often followed by a third.”

  “Well, I don’t know how he’ll manage it. He’s not staying on at Oakington after this Term, so his wife says. He’s thinking of going out to Kenya Colony.”

  “Really? That’s very interesting, and Ellington as an Empire-builder is distinctly good. All the same, I don’t see that my original point needs much altering. I shall await with patience the announcement in the Daily Mail that the wife of a wealthy Kenya planter has been mauled to death by a lion or bitten by a poisonous snake or drowned in some river with an unpronounceable name.”

  “Good God, man, you don’t mean that she’s going to be the next?”

  “Possibly not. Perhaps she’ll have an affair with some other chap, and HE’LL be the next. Ellington’s frightfully jealous, you know.”

  “It’s damnable to think of her living with such a fellow!”

  “Yes, isn’t it? But then, if you make your bed, you must lie on it, particularly if it’s a marriage-bed.”

  And Revell, making a mental note of the epigram (which he thought might do very well in some novel he might subsequently write), could only agree that it was so.

  * * *

  CHAPTER 5. — ENTER SECOND DETECTIVE

  That evening Revell informed Dr. Roseveare that he would leave Oakington on the following day. The latter accepted the arrangement without comment, but his conversation at dinner was perhaps a degree more cordial than usual; and over the bed-time whisky he assured Revell that he had greatly enjoyed his company and hoped he would come again. “And I trust,” he added, “that the next occasion will not bring you here with such a melancholy motive.” That was all he said that had the slightest bearing upon the Marshall affair. He guessed, no doubt, that Revell had failed to discover anything of importance, and was too considerate to refer to it openly.

  The best train to town left Oakington about eleven in the morning, and Revell, being in no particular hurry, decided to wait for it. He bade his host good-bye immediately after breakfast and spent a final odd hour wandering about the School. Vaguely, perhaps, he wondered if he might meet Mrs. Ellington or Lambourne, though he had paid them both official farewell visits the previous evening.

  Chance took him up the staircase in School House—chance combined with the knowledge that from the window of the topmost landing he could see across the quadrangle and into the cosy domesticities of Mrs. Ellington’s sitting-room. But from that topmost landing, when he reached it, he perceived that the sitting-room was empty. Ah well, she was probably shopping in the village—he might meet her on the way to the station. And, anyhow, it did not greatly matter.

  He was just about to descend the stairs again when he noticed with surprise that the door of the narrower staircase that led up from the second landing to the disused sick-rooms was standing slightly ajar. Queer… He had often during the recent trouble wished for an opportunity to look over those disused sick-rooms, but the door had always been locked, and he had not cared to attract attention by asking for a key. Rather pleased with the chance so simply and casually presented to him, he pushed open the door and quickly ascended. Soon he found himself in the apartments in which, ten years before, he had spent a not unhappy fortnight with German measles. Since then a new sanatorium had been built at some distance from the School, and these wholly unsuitable and inadequate sickrooms had been dismantled. Nothing remained but the wooden partitions between the rooms and the worn brown linoleum on which the marks of the bedposts were still visible. In places the linoleum had been pulled up, exposing the bare boards; there were marks, too, of hasty carpentering in taking up some of the boards and replacing them again. That, he surmised, had been the work of the electricians w
hen they had laid cables for the dormitory below.

  He tried, mentally, to reconstruct what might have happened on that night at the beginning of the previous Autumn Term. He pictured Ellington, towards midnight, unlocking the door at the foot of the narrow staircase, climbing up, taking up a previously loosened floorboard and letting drop a previously loosened gas-fitting. That, of course, assumed that the boy’s murder had been premeditated and that it would have happened anyhow, some time or other during the Term. The choice of the boy’s first night might have arisen from the curious opportunity that had fallen to Ellington of staying up as late as he liked that night without his wife wondering where he was.

  Revell was occupied with these and other reflections when suddenly, and to his considerable amazement, he heard footsteps approaching from the head of the staircase towards him. And simultaneously a sharp, rather commanding voice called out: “Well, young man, and what do you think you are doing up here?”

  Revell turned and saw facing him a middle-aged man, average in height and physique, moderately well-dressed, and so thoroughly normal in most other respects that he was almost, for that very reason, remarkable. Fresh-complexioned, blue-eyed, and with a small brown moustache, he was the sort of man one usually has a vague feeling of having met somewhere before, though the time and the place escape one’s mind. Even his voice had no particular accent or mannerism, and gave no clue to class, profession, or social position. One thing only it did most certainly indicate, and that was a strong and virile character.