“You’ve been extremely kind, Mr. Ormiston,” she says when they part, offering her hand.
Mr. Ormiston takes it. “Good luck, Arcadia.”
She waves as the Jaguar disappears.
It is still early and the boys and girls of the Priory School are just stirring when she gets to the dormitory. It probably is a good idea to take a shower and clear her mind, changing clothes before heading back to the hospital.
She is climbing the stairs to the fourth storey, on which the girls’ rooms are located, when she meets Henry on his way down to breakfast.
“Morning, Arcadia,” he says then stops, puzzled. “Did you sleep in your clothes?”
“I’m afraid that I didn’t get much sleep. My parents — my parents were in a very bad accident. I’m getting changed and going back to the hospital.”
“I’m so sorry. Are they going to be OK?”
He will find out eventually, but a sudden weariness comes over her. She does not have the energy to explain the affair and simply says: “I hope so.”
Another student bounds down the stairway and they step to one side to let him pass. Their elbows touch. “If you need anything,” Henry is saying, “please tell me?”
“I will.”
He is used to her need for occasional solitude and seems to sense that the conversation is over. He nods and continues downstairs. Less than a minute later, however, she receives a text message. From Henry. It simply says:
Sorry abt yr parents, A. Hope u feel better. H
She smiles. Of course Henry is more than an acquaintance. Only a friend would text when he could have turned around and caught up with her, but wants to respect her need for privacy. Or perhaps he just wanted to use his phone before it has to be switched off during the school day. Or perhaps he was so used to using the phone that he texted rather than walk a few yards.
She freezes.
Pulling out the slip of paper, she dials the number Mr.
Ormiston gave her. The teacher picks up after three rings. “Hang on, I’m pulling over. Who is this?”
“It’s Arcadia, Mr. Ormiston.”
“My goodness, that was quick. You’re almost as bad as Sophia — Miss Alderman.”
“She would use a phone instead of walking down a corridor?”
“She would phone instead of raising her voice,” he replies. “What’s this all about, Arcadia?”
“Mr. Ormiston, at last night’s staff meeting. You said Miss Alderman and Headmaster were both there. Did Headmaster leave early?”
The phone is silent. “Why, yes he did. There were contractors down at the rugby pitch and then he had a fundraising dinner to go to. Arcadia, you don’t think — ”
In the classroom yesterday she assumed that Miss Alderman was calling someone outside school. A fundamental error. Plus the typewriter. A swirling signature. Mud. The hat and a few stray locks. And all the rest, distraction. “I’m afraid I do, Mr. Ormiston. I have to go.” She hangs up.
She walks briskly across the quadrangle. As she unlocks the door to the staff wing of the administration building, she hits ‘send’ on her phone, a one-word text message to Magnus: “Headmaster.”
It is only seconds before the reply comes: “Don’t be rash.” But as she has already reached the top of the stairs it is a little too late for that.
“Good morning, Miss Bennett,” she says brightly to Headmaster’s secretary.
Miss Bennett looks up, surprised to see a student in so early. She has also come from the staff wing rather than the general office stairs.
“I must say,” she continues, before Miss Bennett can challenge her, “that is a lovely typewriter on your desk. Rare to see the old originals these days.” She can hear voices behind the door. It muffles them, but clearly a man and a woman.
“It’s an antique,” Miss Bennett says proudly. “But we still use it for the occasional form or if Headmaster wants to type a special note to someone.”
“I can imagine,” Arcadia says admiringly. The voices in the office are getting heated. “Speaking of Headmaster, he asked to see me. I’ll let myself in.”
She is at the door before Miss Bennett can rise from her seat. “Wait, you can’t just barge in there he’s with — ”
“Miss Alderman?” Arcadia says, opening the door.
She has entered in the middle of an argument. Both Headmaster and Miss Alderman are standing in the centre of the room, their faces visibly strained. The tension in the air is palpable, but both turn to face her. Upon seeing her, Headmaster’s face first registers surprise; Miss Alderman’s seems to register concern — but Arcadia now discounts her ability to read the woman’s emotions.
“That will be all, Miss Bennett,” says Headmaster, taking charge of the situation after a pause. “Please go to Friday morning prayers. I may be delayed, in which case ask Mr. Roundhay to begin without me.” His secretary withdraws, shutting the door. He turns to Arcadia, smoothing his white hair. Composing himself. “I was terribly sorry to hear about your parents, Arcadia. You must be devastated.”
Silver-tongued to the end.
“Yes, I suppose I must be,” she says. “To have your parents ripped from you — even adopted parents — is a terrible thing.”
Headmaster and Miss Alderman are calibrating their responses. They know that she knows something, but not how much.
“Mother is, however, stable.”
“Why, what a relief that must be,” says Headmaster expansively. “But I understand that she remains unconscious.”
“That’s true.” She looks down. She does not have Miss Alderman’s acting experience, but she can try. “She did manage to say a few words, however.”
“Really?” Despite himself, Headmaster takes a half-step backward.
“Yes,” she looks him in the eye. “Curiously, she was asking for you. ‘Mr. Milton’, she said, a couple of times.”
“How odd,” is all that Headmaster says.
“How odd indeed.” Wistfully: “Perhaps her last thought, as she lay on the brink of death, was to thank you for looking after her children so well.”
“Yes.” He is being careful. “Perhaps that was it.”
“Or perhaps she was saying something more.”
“Arcadia,” Miss Alderman interjects. “This is surely a difficult time for you and your family. Maybe you should leave and be with them.” Does she know where this line of conversation is going? Arcadia no longer cares.
“One thing I noticed about your school, Headmaster,” she says, moving towards the bookshelf with Nineteen Eighty-Four on it, “is that it has cameras in virtually every room — except this one. Almost the entire campus can be watched from here, but no one watches the watcher. It’s a shame, I think. Because cameras can be very useful. They help capture an objective reality. They often fail utterly, of course, to record the full context, the lived experience. But as proof that you were at my parents’ house last night, for example, they would probably suffice.”
“What in God’s name are you talking about?” Headmaster blusters. He seems genuinely confused. He does not know about the cameras. “You are clearly delusional. I shall send for Nurse immediately.” He picks up the phone.
“The cigarette threw me, I confess,” she continues. “A predictable distraction for someone who has been studying too many kinds of tobacco. You collected it from an ashtray perhaps. Mr. Pratt, I recall, smokes Lucky Strikes — but his stay in hospital may cure him of that.” She looks at Miss Alderman, but butter would not melt in her mouth. “I am, however, fairly confident that the mud on our doorstep will match the mud in the rugby field. Then it’s a matter of checking your boots for the same mud.” She returns her gaze to Headmaster, who has put the phone down without dialling.
“You were clever, almost too clever. The ruse of smashing a window in the backdoor briefly fooled the police, but as a backup you had also disguised yourself. Hiding your car out of sight. Walking with an umbrella and a hat. Giving any witness two things to not
ice that would not actually identify you.
“But you were rushed. You panicked. You had mud on your shoes. The window was clearly smashed after the act of violence was committed. The table showed that a guest had been invited in for whisky. And you dripped my parents’ blood in the hallway.
“Nevertheless, the lack of hair did throw me. What witness could fail to notice that mane of white hair of yours? And then I realised that of course it is a wig. I wonder how you explained that to my parents when you went to see them. Perhaps you used it to come across as vulnerable. Non-threatening. When you were anything but.”
Headmaster has unconsciously raised a hand to straighten a stray hair. His face is calm, but he is thinking, calibrating his next move.
“And what about the weapon. It was a very sharp blade, long and thin. The police didn’t find one at the scene. You could have disposed of it, I suppose, but then there’s always the chance that it will be found. Far better to hide it in plain sight, where no one would suspect. A metal blade that could be cleaned and left in place, something like a gold-plated letter opener.”
She keeps her eyes on them as both Headmaster and Miss Alderman turn to the desk, where the golden blade sits next to a stack of papers. As they turn back to face her, their eyes meet. Are they still together on this? Were they ever?
“Well, what an interesting little story you have constructed!” says Headmaster, walking around behind his desk to the window. “And yet you are a little young to be setting yourself up as a police officer, don’t you think?”
“The only thing I don’t understand is why,” she says. “What was it you asked of them? What did they refuse to do that led you to kill them?”
Headmaster turns to the window. “It’s getting a little stuffy in here, don’t you think?” He opens the wide glass panes that look out over the quadrangle, letting in the morning breeze. He takes two deep breaths.
“It’s such a shame,” Headmaster says at last. “You are at a crucial stage of your development. I just needed Louisa and Ignatius’s cooperation.” His voice hardens. “And they would not cooperate.”
“What did you ask them to do?”
“They were holding you back, Arcadia. I had to set you free. Your finding out that you were adopted was serendipitous — a happy coincidence, as you needed to be cut loose from their sentimentality. I had been pressing them for years that you should not be wasting your weekends with them, but your ‘mother’ insisted. And now she was having second thoughts about the next stage of your education. I’m afraid that couldn’t be allowed.”
“Is that why the envelopes that you had been preparing for her end after this week?”
Headmaster is momentarily pleased. “The envelopes? Ah, see, you are so many steps ahead of your so-called ‘parents’! Yes, the envelopes were as much as she would agree to continue your training on weekends. She wanted it to be a game, a puzzle. But you are capable of so much more. And now you have worked out that the code for this weekend was to mark the transition from their guardianship to mine.”
“Your guardianship?”
“Yes. Louisa and Ignatius were inferior intellects. I had always felt that it was a mistake to place you with them, but I was overruled. Now there was a chance to right that mistake. Don’t you see that this was necessary if you were to develop — that if you stayed with them it would forever retard your growth?”
“And so to help me grow, you kill my parents?”
“I didn’t kill your parents. I liberated you from the straightjacket of their mediocrity. They wanted you to have a ‘normal’ childhood. But you are not normal. And you could be extraordinary!”
“You’re insane.”
“Insane? I have spent my life crafting an environment to bring the most out of children. Raising them better than their parents ever could. To be better than their parents ever could be. There are costs — there are always costs. To do it scientifically, to do it objectively, means not becoming attached, not becoming biased. I make that sacrifice. And sometimes others must be sacrificed: parents who stunt their children, limit their potential.”
There is a wild-eyed quality to Headmaster’s appearance now, strange in someone who has always come across as so calm, so measured. She knows there is the real possibility of violence, but does not even consider fleeing.
“You — you, however, were special. You showed real potential from before you even enrolled at the Priory School. Your brother had gifts, but he is congenitally indolent. We made mistakes with him, mistakes that were rectified in your case. A half-scholarship to make you strive; enemies to make you fight. And look at what we have achieved! Here you stand, on the cusp of greatness.”
Magnus also. Sebastian’s part in this. Provocation protocols. But the delusions of the crazed man before her do not detract from the moral simplicity of the situation. She takes out her mobile phone. “I’m phoning the police.”
Headmaster’s face now darkens. “You stand on the cusp of greatness — and yet your self-righteousness is insufferable. Rather than grasp this nettle, you slink off back to normality. How pathetic. But this is not how my career ends,” Headmaster continues, moving away from the open window, speaking to Miss Alderman now as much as to her. “I’m not taking the fall for this. You were part of it, ‘Sophia’ — or whatever you’re calling yourself now. You were all part of it.”
“Not this,” Miss Alderman says quietly. “Not murder.”
“It wasn’t murder,” he snorts. “It was science. I thought you understood that.”
“I’m not sure I understand anything anymore,” the substitute teacher says, almost to herself, watching him move across the room. “You have crossed about half-a-dozen lines here, Charles. There will be consequences.”
“Consequences? Bah. In any case, I think it’s time we bring this experiment to an end. For if I go, you go with me.” He now has his back to the door — the only exit. “I have a better idea, however. A better story. A grief-stricken Arcadia Greentree, distraught over the loss of her parents, runs to her Headmaster’s office with all sorts of wild accusations. Headmaster tries to reason with her, but the girl is inconsolable. She becomes self-destructive. In a fit of misery and rage she throws herself from the Headmaster’s window onto the paving stones below. A tragic end to a promising life. The school declares a half-day holiday. And then life goes on.”
She enters the emergency services number, 999, into her phone.
Wild-eyed has been replaced by menacing as Headmaster now begins to advance towards her. Exit is impractical. The door is blocked, the window too high. The secret office is nearby but a dead end. Fight rather than flight, then. Boxing skills are of limited use against a far taller and heavier opponent. A weapon is needed. She turns to the desk for the letter opener, but it is gone. And with a flash of gold she sees that it is in Miss Alderman’s hand.
In her own hand, she hears the number ring once, twice.
“As I said earlier, Arcadia,” Miss Alderman says, her eyes on Headmaster, “it might be time for you to leave. Charles, I think you should move away from the door so that she can go, and then you and I can talk in private.”
“Have you lost your mind?” Headmaster laughs. “There’s no way you come out of this untouched. You’re an accessory to murder, you do realise that don’t you?”
“There are worse things than prison, Charles.” Miss Alderman moves towards Headmaster, the blade of the paperknife pointed at his throat. “Too many people have worked too hard on this for you to throw it all away to save your own skin.”
“Bah,” Headmaster scoffs, but moving backwards slowly away from her. “I don’t care what your professor does to me.”
The operator at the other end of the line picks up: “Emergency, which service do you require? Fire, police or ambulance?”
“No one’s going to do anything to you, Charles. You’re going to do it all yourself.” The substitute teacher keeps her eyes on Headmaster, but says to Arcadia: “Now leave.”
>
The door is clear but she lingers. “What are you going to do?” she asks.
“I’m going to try to make amends,” Miss Alderman says. “And then I’m going to disappear.” For a moment, she looks the girl in the eye: “I’m sorry, Arcadia. I hope that one day you can forgive me.” For a second time, she sees a tear in Miss Alderman’s eye. But it is quickly wiped away.
She, Arcadia, is next to the door and puts her hand on the knob. Through her phone she can hear the operator asking again which service she requires. Yet she knows it may be the last time she sees the substitute teacher. “Miss Alderman,” she says. “The rhesus monkeys who never had a mother from birth were permanently damaged. What happened to the monkeys whose mothers were taken away later on?”
Miss Alderman keeps her attention on Headmaster, but considers her reply. “They suffered,” she says at last. “But if the mother had done her job, then they dealt with it. And they got on with their lives. They survived. And so will you. Goodbye, Arcadia.”
“I don’t even know your real name.”
“You’ll find it.”
Headmaster has begun to see how perilous his situation is. He now calls to his student: “Miss Greentree, please. You can see that she’s crazy. Pick up the phone. Call for help — get the police. Do something. I wasn’t thinking earlier — of course I would never hurt you, a student. Please!”
“I’m sorry, Headmaster,” she says coldly. “But as you said earlier: I don’t work for the police. I’m lucky if they even consult me.”
Arcadia Greentree opens the door and walks down the empty stairs. She hangs up the call and puts the phone in her pocket, not looking back as the door slams behind her.
12
BEGINNINGS
Father’s funeral service takes place the following Monday, in the church at which he and Mother were married nearly three decades earlier. It is an austere building, but stained glass windows scatter dappled light across the rows of mostly empty pews. Father’s sister, Jean, and her husband, Arthur, have arranged a simple ceremony for family and friends. Some colleagues from Father’s practice attend, along with a few of his patients. In all there are around two score in the congregation.
Raising Arcadia Page 16