Paint Gold and Blood

by Michael Gilbert

  “That sort of thing. Well, then he got much more secretive and used a super-private code of his own. It was a sort of numerical cipher, depending on abbreviations which he would understand, but other people wouldn’t. As far as I can see, Brindy seems to have adopted much the same system in that sort of passage.”

  “Blow me down,” said Stewart. “Don’t tell me he’s been having it off with one of the maids.”

  “No. The places where he gets dead secretive are where he’s discussing money. It’s maddening. I can translate a lot of the unimportant stuff now – the weather and house politics and things like that – which are no use to us, but as soon as he comes to money, which we do want to know about, I get lost in a maze of capital letters.”

  “Any particular letters?”

  “A, B and S seem to be the favourites. P and D turn up occasionally. Since the topic is money I assume that ‘A’ could be accountant or actuary. ‘B’ could be banker or broker, or even barrister, in which case ‘S’ could be solicitor. Also there’s one combination of letters which is constantly cropping up, ‘I C R F’. It’s obviously important, but I haven’t been able to find it in any standard dictionary of abbreviations.”

  “Right now,” said Stewart, “’B’ stands for bed and that’s where you’re going. It’ll all look a lot clearer in the morning.”

  Stewart was playing in the final of the Public Schools’ Racquets Championship. He objected, not unreasonably, to the tactics of his opponent, an unmannerly Harrovian, who kept grabbing hold of him. When he dragged himself back to consciousness he found it was Snowball who was shaking his arm. He said, “Something’s wrong with Peter. Keeps talking. Think we ought to fetch matron?”

  Stewart got out of bed and went across to Peter, who was rolling from side to side. There was enough light in the room to see that his eyes were half open, but there was no sense in them. Then he said, in a conversational voice, “B. Must be something, mustn’t it? B, B, B.”

  “Seems to have a bee in his bonnet,” said Snowball. “What do you think we ought to do? If he rolls about much more he’ll roll right out of bed.”

  Stewart, still half-asleep himself, was trying to think. He seemed to remember that it was dangerous to wake up someone who was having a nightmare. It could cause a disastrous shock. Or was that someone who was walking in his sleep? Whilst he was worrying about it Peter solved the problem for him by rolling to the edge of his bed and being sick. Then he sat up and said, “What the hell’s happening?”

  “You’ve had a nightmare and you’ve been sick. Don’t bother, Snowball and I will look after it.”

  “I don’t see why you should. I’ll mop it up.”

  But Snowball had already departed.

  “Relax,” said Stewart. “Lie back. Take twelve deep breaths. That’s right. Think beautiful thoughts.”

  By the time Snowball was back with a cloth and a bucket of water Peter was already asleep again. Looking down at his flushed face Stewart said, “Clearly it’s time I took a hand in the game.”

  The next day Peter seemed to be his normal self. When he looked for his notes and papers Stewart said, “Not today, or tomorrow.”

  “I’m quite all right,” said Peter. “Don’t fuss.”

  “I’m not fussing,” said Stewart. “I’m being realistic. A weekend off will do you all the good in the world. And it’s no good looking for your stuff, I’ve locked it all up and I’ve got the key. Instead of stewing over those papers you’re going to take some proper exercise. I’ve booked a racquets court for you and Bear this afternoon. You’re neither of you any good, so you’ll sweat like pigs.”

  “I thought we were in a hurry to get the answer.”

  “We are. And I propose to take certain steps in that direction myself.”

  Peter knew that further protests would be useless. Also the idea of a two-day holiday from the tantalising jigsaw in which he had buried himself had its attractions. He said, “I don’t know what you think you can do, but carry on.”

  After lunch Stewart whistled up Bartlett, who seemed to have constituted himself his unofficial messenger-boy. He said, “Tell Dakin I want a word with him.”

  When Dakin came running, Stewart said, “I’m given to understand that your uncle is none other than the Lord Bishop of this diocese. Right?”

  “That’s right,” said Dakin. He said it apologetically. It was not a relationship which had gained him any credit.

  “Then listen carefully to what I’m going to say. Are you listening carefully?”

  “Yes, Ives.”

  “Good. Tomorrow is the first Sunday out. I assume that you are planning to go home.”

  “Yes, Ives.”

  “Then when you’ve greeted your mother and told her how much you’re enjoying yourself and all the normal lies, there’s something I want you to say to her. Don’t make it sound important. Just drop it in quite casually with other items, like what you had for breakfast and how many runs you made last Thursday. You follow me?”

  “Yes, Ives.”

  “Now keep your eye on the ball, because here’s where it gets important. Tell her that you’ve heard that I’ve got an extremely wealthy grandfather. Not just a millionaire, but a billionaire. And like all old buffers with too much money he’s looking for a good cause to spend a lump of it on before he’s carried off. Buying your ticket for Paradise is the technical name for it. So what I’ve asked you to find out, by dropping a tactful question to your mother, is whether the Bishop has any particular charity or charities which he favours. Now, have you got that?”

  “Your grandfather wants to splash out some cash. Which charity is my uncle nuts on?”

  “I think I put it a little more elegantly than that, but you have the gist of it. Report back here tomorrow evening at six.”

  “Right-ho,” said Dakin and departed, happier than he had been since his arrival at the school.

  Stewart wandered down to the racquets court to make sure that Peter was sweating properly. He trusted that the Bishop would not enquire too closely about his grandparents, one of whom was dead and the other as near bankrupt as made no difference. He hoped that Dakin would do his stuff. He wasn’t much to look at, but if he were in the running for a scholarship he must have some brains. On Sunday, at six o’clock precisely, he justified Stewart’s confidence in him. He said, “I think I’ve got what your grandfather wants, Ives.”

  “Good.”

  “The one thing my uncle’s dead keen on is the Inner City Relief Fund—”

  “Ah! You interest me strangely.”

  “He’s – I forget the word – anyway he’s the sort of head man of the fund.”

  “The Patron?”

  “That’s right. And he deals directly with the Prime Minister about it. Mummy says that if he plays his cards right he might even make Archbishop.”

  “Deservedly,” said Stewart.

  “Oh, and when he heard there might be some money coming his way he said it would be the second time School House had helped him. Mr. Brind has been supporting him for a good time. Some years ago he’d made something called a covenant. I didn’t understand that bit and I don’t think mummy did either. I expect you know about deeds of covenant.”

  “A seven-year covenant,” said Stewart. “Yes indeed.” The clouds were rolling away with a speed that was almost alarming. He had angled for a small fish and had caught a whale – or was it a shark? He said, “You’ve done excellently. I congratulate you.” He fished out a fifty-pence coin and tossed it across the table. “Fill yourself up with buns and sausage rolls.”

  Dakin picked up the coin, looked at it for a moment, slung it back and took to his heels.

  “Well, well,” said Stewart softly. “A boy who values his principles above his stomach. Wonders will never cease. Must be the result of having a Bishop as an uncle.”

  Peter, coming in at this moment from the five-mile walk on which he had been despatched, said, “What are you sitting there mumbling about? You ought
to be out in the fresh air, not slacking indoors.”

  “I have been far from idle. I have much to tell you. Sit down and give ear. In the long watches of the night, turning your problem over in my mind—”

  “When you weren’t snoring.”

  “Sages have ever been mocked. As I was saying, after mature reflection I decided that you had been looking in the wrong places. Since the topic was money, you had been thinking of bankers and accountants. Might I suggest a different interpretation? Bishops and Archdeacons. And, for good measure, Deans, Precentors and Succentors.”

  “Good God,” said Peter. “Yes, I suppose it could be.”

  “As a clinching proof I have deciphered your mysterious ‘I C R F’. It’s the Inner City Relief Fund, of which our Bishop is the Patron and the moving spirit. Indeed, he has hopes that his efforts, well thought of by the Prime Minister, may move him up to Lambeth Palace.”

  “That’s wonderful,” said Peter. “We ought to be able to get home now. Let me have the papers—”

  “Tomorrow,” said Stewart firmly.

  It took two more days, but with the thread in his hand Peter walked confidently through the labyrinth, turning corners which had baffled him before, selecting the right course when the road forked.

  By bedtime on Tuesday the full picture had been painted. “There’s a lot in the early diaries,” he said, “about the question of house feeding against central catering. The change was made just before we arrived.”

  “You should talk to Bear about it,” said Stewart. “The food in School House was so bad that there was a riot. Some of the boys broke into the kitchen and helped themselves. They said it was that or starve.”

  “Brindy was obviously making a packet out of the old system. He fought tooth and nail to keep it. He even threatened to resign. But he thought better of it. It’s clear, too, why he needed the money so badly. That’s where cathedral politics comes into it. First, there’s talk about a chat with Redcliffe—”

  “The Bishop’s bum-boy?”

  “That’s the one. Then he moves up a step in the hierarchy and has tea with the Succentor, who tells him that Compton-Smith, the Precentor, is always threatening to retire and never doing it.”

  “Irritating for the Succentor. I suppose he had his eye on the senior job.”

  “They all seem to spend a lot of time working out who’d get what if someone else retired and Brindy is soon joining in the game with enthusiasm. You remember that letter to Redcliffe you saw. Well that was the first tickle. What he’s got his eye on is a resident canonry. The Dean seems to have been stand-offish, but he realised that he might get round the Bishop by subscribing to his pet charity.”

  “More than the occasional subscription. According to Dakin he’d entered into a deed of covenant. It’s a sort of tax wangle, isn’t it?”

  “That’s right,” said Peter. “My uncle gets people making them for his church. Small ones, in his case. If you do the thing properly, the charity gets back a lot of tax you haven’t paid. But the thing is you’ve got to undertake to do it for a fixed period, and you’ve got to keep the payments up, or the whole thing falls to the ground. In the old days it had to be seven years. And that’s what Brindy did. Undertook to pay five hundred pounds a year for seven years.”

  “Which, at that time, he could do out of his savings on housekeeping.”

  “Right. And when that stopped, he had to find the money from somewhere else. He hasn’t got much capital of his own, I’d guess. At least, there’s no sign of any dividends in his account books.”

  “So he helped himself out of the mission account. It must have seemed a pretty safe sort of swindle. No house knew what any other house had given. He was the only one who knew the real total.”

  Peter said, “Then all we’ve got to do is find out what that total was.”

  “And how do you suggest we do that?”

  The two boys looked at each other. For the first time the enormity of what they were contemplating faced them squarely. Stewart said, “It’s awkward, isn’t it? Suppose we did ask the houses what they’d given each term, people would soon spot what we were up to. Someone would be bound to put two and two together. It would end in an official enquiry. And suppose we’re quite wrong. We haven’t got any actual proof. Suppose the money does come out of Brindy’s own pocket. I can see us getting the sack for propagating a slanderous rumour and departing with our tails right down between our legs.”

  “It would be worse than that,” said Peter. “We’d have to explain how we got the information. Housebreaking, reading people’s private correspondence and after that no one would believe that it wasn’t us who’d pinched the silver off the mantelpiece.”

  “I don’t think it’s as bad as that,” said Stewart. “All we’d have to say would be that we’d talked to Father Elphinstone and suspected there was a shortfall somewhere. But I agree that we should only be vindicated if we were right. It’s a problem. But there’s usually a way round, if you really give your mind to it.”

  Unconsciously he was working his right wrist as though getting ready to meet a difficult service in the racquets court.

  He said, “Do you remember Bear saying that he’d like to win a fifty-pound prize?”

  “So what?”

  “It gave me an idea.”

  “I hope it doesn’t involve burgling someone else’s study.”

  “Nothing so drastic. A little finesse should see us through. Gird up your loins for the decisive engagement. ‘Now’s the day and now’s the hour. See the front ‘o battle lour’.”

  6

  “What on earth are those boys doing?” said the headmaster. He was walking across the quadrangle with Mr. Lathom, the Classics master.

  Several pairs of boys were on their knees, apparently measuring something.

  “I imagine that’s the great competition, headmaster. The details were all in the school magazine. Perhaps you haven’t seen the new copy yet.”

  “It was on my breakfast table this morning. I’ve got no further than an article – unsigned, but I presume it’s by the editor – about a visit he and another boy paid to our London Mission. They seem to have extracted a lot of interesting information out of the missioner. I only wish more boys would follow their example. However, tell me about this competition. It must have a considerable pulling power if it’s got boys crawling about on the gravel.”

  “It’s called ‘Know Your Own School’. There are about forty questions and there’s a prize of fifty pounds for the first person to answer them all correctly. It’s a race. The deadline is Tuesday evening, so they only have two days to ferret out the answers. You pay fifty pence for an entry ticket – they’re on sale at the bookstore and the tuck shop. I’m told they’re going like hot cakes.”

  “What sort of questions?”

  “One of them was to give the distance in inches between the left-hand corner of the vestry wall and the right-hand corner of the war memorial.”

  “Yes, I see.” There were now at least thirty pairs of amateur surveyors using tape measures, foot rules and pieces of string.

  “Another was to give the Christian names of the staff. When I had been asked nine times for mine I concluded that the simplest course was to write them out and post them up on the notice board.”

  “I wonder if Miss Troop will be prepared to reveal hers. I’ve often wondered what the ‘Y’ stood for. But tell me – these questions are all factual?”

  “All about the school, and all factual.”

  “I see. Then it is a contest of skill, not a gamble.”

  “There was a good deal of discussion about that point in the staffroom this morning. What one might call the Puritan Lobby was in good voice—”

  “Led, no doubt, by Mr. Tuke.”

  “Your knowledge of your staff is encyclopaedic, headmaster. They were shouted down by the sporting element, who pointed out that since it was the object of education to prepare children for life, the sooner they found out that m
odern life consisted almost entirely of bingo and the pools the better for them.”

  The headmaster smiled faintly. He was himself a Puritan, but not an intolerant one. He said, “I imagine that the promoters of this – er – this contest have calculated the financial side carefully. Let me see. They would have to sell a hundred tickets to cover the prize money. That, you tell me, they will do.”

  “Easily, I’d guess. Even though many people are buying in pairs, one ticket for the two of them.”

  “Then there must have been certain overhead expenses. The printing of the entry forms.”

  “Since they were part of the magazine I imagine their cost would be absorbed in the general magazine budget.”

  “I see. Yes. Thought has been applied to this. Is it known who the promoter is?”

  “I don’t think there’s any secret about it. Solutions have all to be handed in to the editor, Ives.”

  “Stewart Ives. Yes. A remarkable boy. Something of the F. E. Smith touch about him. Westminster Abbey or the Old Bailey. He has the makings of a financier.”

  “He’s not in this for money. Any surplus has been promised to the Bishop for whatever charity he recommends.”

  The headmaster said, “Ah! That puts the whole thing on a different level.” He sounded more cheerful. “Quite a different level. If asked, I shall certainly vote in favour of it. Incidentally, I suppose the staff aren’t allowed to enter.”

  “Boys and girls only, I understand.”

  “A pity. I shouldn’t have minded having a shot at it myself. But thank you for your warning. I’ll post my own Christian names on the notice board at once.”

  In the course of that morning Bear drifted into the Ives – Dolamore study. He said, “Some of those questions are real stinkers. How many headmasters of Chelborough since its foundation? Do you realise we’ve been going for nearly four hundred years.”

  “By the rules of the competition,” said Ives severely, “the promoters are neither allowed to enter themselves nor are they allowed to give any assistance to competitors.”

  “Of course not. I wasn’t asking for help. I was just making a comment.”