School for Murder

by Robert Barnard

  Septimus Coffin had seen men appointed headmaster, appointed over him, on the basis of little papers they had read to conferences of educators on word acquisition by seven-year-old Kenyan Asians in some undesirable suburb of Birmingham, or on the basis of some windy rubbish they had written for The Times Educational Supplement on the place of community studies in sixth-form syllabuses. But Septimus, who would have made a good headmaster, had none of the little bits of paper necessary to argue his case before the Judgment Seat of the educational bureaucracy. He had ended his career at the Grammar School, at about the time it had merged with the other schools of the town to become Cullbridge Comprehensive, as nothing more than senior Classics Master.

  Now, belated but sweet, had come his opportunity.

  He seized it with admirable firmness and sound judgment. He did, in fact, what Mr Crumwallis would have done had he had the instincts of a headmaster, instead of merely a headmasterly façade. He acted on the principle (beloved of Israeli generals) of the pre-emptive strike. Or, to put it another way, he adopted the slogan of the casting director: ‘Don’t ring us, we’ll ring you.’ He made a list—indeed, he had made it earlier—of the twenty most influential parents (clergymen, bankers, lawyers and also some people of genuine moral probity). He rang up each of them in turn and announced to them in a dignified but neutral tone the changed dispensation at Burleigh School. He set out the guidelines on which he intended to run the school; he itemized the reforms, particularly in the medical and catering departments, that he was initiating ‘as from today’; he described the teaching standards that he was insisting upon ‘as a matter of priority’. He used these phrases somewhat cynically, knowing that they would appeal.

  He rang, too, the parents who had already signified their intention of removing their boys. With them he adopted a more supplicatory tone, and secured from several of them a promise that they would hold their hand, or at least think over their decision. He looked over the applications for the post of matron that had come in when it was last advertised, decided on the most qualified, got her on the phone and offered her the salary she demanded. She promised to be on hand from nine o’clock next morning. All in all, it was a very good afternoon’s work. And it meant that his phone was engaged almost non-stop. Any other parent who wanted to get through to him would have to wait until next morning, and by then his counter-measures should have begun to make their effect. He was pleased with himself. It would not even have bothered him greatly if he had known that several times during the afternoon’s work Inspector Pumfrey had listened in on his extension in the study.

  As his spiel developed into a formula, smoothly and convincingly delivered, Septimus Coffin allowed his mind to wander a little. Allowed it, for example, to speculate on whom he would most like to be arrested for the murder of Hilary Frome. Without malice he did it, but do it he did. Percy Makepeace, he finally decided. With Muggeridge a good second. And Corbett Farraday an also-ran, pleasant though he was in a hamsterish kind of way. These three were more than just expendable: the school would be better for their departure. So it would be, too, for the departure of Iain McWhirter, but he was, alas, not expendable from a financial point of view.

  Coffin meditated, too, on the long-term future. Would it be possible, he wondered, to persuade Miss Gilberd to move with her mother into the headmaster’s quarters and take general charge of the boarding section? She would be very good at it. Motherly in the best and most no-nonsense meaning of the term. He himself had no desire to shift the possessions of a lifetime, or to live on the job and have boys after school as well as during it. He wondered whether to sack Mrs Garfitt on the spot, but decided to give her leave for a few days, and bring his sister in to manage the institution’s food. Mrs Garfitt’s sense of economy had no doubt been carried too far under the enthusiastic prodding of Enid Crumwallis, but no private school in the current financial climate could afford to sneeze at the ability to haggle, scent out a bargain or simply cheat. And those abilities Mrs Garfitt possessed in abundance.

  So, all in all, it was a satisfying, fulfilling afternoon. Now all that was required was a speedy arrest, and the right arrest. It was all very well building castles in the air, but would Percy Makepeace make a convincing murderer? Would anyone, he wondered, believe that he had the nerve?

  • • •

  ‘No, Mr Muggeridge,’ said Superintendent Pumfrey firmly. ‘I’m quite sure Mr Freely can take the football game. I don’t want our talk interrupted any further.’

  Bill Muggeridge took it with the sort of philosophy always shown by someone who has a Hardyesque feeling that in this life nothing much good is ever going to happen to them. He ambled into the study again, and sat down, muttering. It was not surprising he had wished to put off the evil hour, for Mike Pumfrey’s temper had very clearly not been improved by the interruption. His toothbrush moustache, indeed, seemed to bristle and assume a life of its own, independent of the flesh beneath. The case, to him, was beginning to bear all the hallmarks of the work of a madman: it had the madman’s simplicity of means, the madman’s daring, the madman’s wholesale and indiscriminate bloodthirstiness. Pumfrey had found the deadly sliver of glass on the floor of the dining hall, with fragments of shepherd’s pie still clinging to it. If it had gone further down the throat of the boy to whose lot it fell, it could certainly have killed him. Pumfrey’s temper had not been improved by the hysteria of Mrs Garfitt, which he suspected of being a mixture of concern for herself and her job, and sheer amateur dramatics. Mrs Crumwallis had topped off his disgust with the case, the school and the personnel involved by her reaction to his order that no more of the pie be served or eaten.

  ‘But the waste!’ she had said, not knowing that the financial position of the school was no longer her affair.

  ‘By gum!’ Pumfrey had muttered through his teeth, resolving to save himself till later, as far as Enid Crumwallis was concerned.

  So he was brusque to the point of intimidation when, at last, he had Bill Muggeridge in front of him again. He leant forward, fixed him with his cold blue eyes, twitched his moustache, and made it clear that there was to be no more nonsense.

  ‘Right—this time let’s have the truth, and no shilly-shallying or silly-buggering around. Why did you think your wife was going out to meet Hilary Frome?’

  ‘Well, I’d seen them, hadn’t I?’ said Bill, shoving his chin forward suggestively, as if he were arguing with the ref. ‘Seen them together. Monday, it was, or Tuesday, I forget, but they met up by the trees, the ones separating the headmaster’s lawn from the football pitch.’

  ‘I see. And you were nearby and saw them?’

  ‘I was refereeing a game, wasn’t I?’ said Bill, who seemed to have slipped into an interrogative rut. ‘All the kids saw them as well. Bloody embarrassing. Not that they know her ways like I do, but boys of that age will snigger at anything.’

  ‘Her ways?’

  ‘Her little come-hither methods. Looking up, with her head tilted to one side. Brushing against him with her thigh. I’ve seen it often enough. Fell for it myself, come to that. Gawd—it makes me puke.’

  ‘How old is your wife, Mr Muggeridge?’

  ‘Hell, I don’t know—twenty-nine? Thirty?’

  ‘Wasn’t Hilary Frome a bit—?’

  ‘Young? She’s not against baby-snatching, if she fancies the baby. Mind you, she normally goes for more mature men, I grant you. But probably going with someone as young as that would—I dunno—act as a sort of tonic—know what I mean? A pick-me-up. Convince her she wasn’t over the hump, if you get me.’

  ‘Oh, I get you. Now, you decided to follow them. What exactly were you after?’

  ‘After?’ Bill scratched his head, and Pumfrey sensed the beginnings of prevarication. ‘I dunno. I hadn’t really worked it out.’ And that was certainly possible. Bill Muggeridge generally had the air of a man whose motives were a muddle, whose plans of action were anything but carefully calculated modes of procedure.

  ‘I wan
ted to catch them,’ he said, finally.

  ‘Was it jealousy?’

  ‘Blimey, no. Bit late in the day for that.’

  ‘Was it really fear you’d lose your job?’

  ‘Well, partly. And then, if it was with little golden-haired boy Hilary Frome, it would give me a marvellous lever with old Crumwallis. Then, you see, Onyx and me, we’re pretty much washed up as it is, and I did wonder . . .’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Well, there’s all those kids . . . not mine, most of them . . . and she’d screw me for maintenance, get every penny she could . . . And I thought to myself, judges don’t like that sort of thing . . .’

  ‘What sort of thing?’

  ‘Older women having it off with boys. It’s even worse than vice versa. They put on their specs and lay about them with words like “degenerate” and “sick”—lay it on real nasty. Now I’m going to need a judge on my side when it comes to maintenance for those little bastards of hers, so I thought it would help if I could prove that that’s what she’s been up to. If it ever came to that, of course . . .’

  Pumfrey had cooled down during Bill Muggeridge’s muddled dissection of his own grubby motives, for the contemplation of the murkier side of the human race must always have a grain of fascination to a policeman. Now a flash of inspiration showed him a further layer to Bill Muggeridge’s unsavoury motivation.

  ‘Ah!’ he said. ‘You thought it wouldn’t come to that?’

  Bill Muggeridge looked mighty cunning.

  ‘Well, I did wonder. The Fromes are pretty big around here. Pots of money. Must have—all these doctors have. And Hilary being the Great White Hope, the coming Frome, and all that . . .’

  ‘You thought they’d buy you off?’

  ‘Well, if you want to put it like that. Perhaps a lump sum. Or maybe they’d be willing to help with Onyx’s brats if Hilary was kept out of it. I was damn sure they wouldn’t want Hilary’s future spoilt, his name bandied about. I mean, I hadn’t worked it out . . .’

  ‘You were tossing several balls in the air?’

  ‘That’s it. More or less.’

  ‘The trouble was, you never caught them.’

  ‘What? Oh, them. No, I didn’t, and that was that. The story of my life: the big chance, and then—poof—it goes up in smoke as I watch. I could have made a nice little thing for myself there, one way or another.’

  ‘Hmmm. Do you think they did, in fact, get together?’

  ‘Well, I thought they did. Last night. But listening to the boys, it sounds as if that bugger Frome stayed in the boarding annexe all evening. So I dunno. Might suit his nasty sense of humour to lead her on and then stand her up.’

  ‘It might, at that. What does your wife say?’

  ‘Says she just went for a walk. Stupid cow. You don’t put a ring round the date two days ahead to remind yourself you’re going for a walk.’

  ‘No. Well, I may have to talk to your wife—’

  ‘Best of British to you.’

  ‘And when, by the way, did you get home?’

  ‘Get home? Well, it was just after the end of Coronation Street. The eldest kid was watching.’

  ‘Say eight-five. And did you go into the school or the boarding annexe?’

  ‘No, ’course I didn’t. They wouldn’t have gone in there. I looked around the grounds, on the playing fields.’

  ‘And the bird, or birds, had flown. I see. Well, I’m sorry your enterprise came to nothing—’

  ‘Oh, that—’

  ‘You seem to have had a nice little scheme worked out there.’

  ‘Well—’

  ‘Could well have brought you in a few quid one way or another.’

  ‘That’s what I—’

  ‘I don’t think I’ll be wanting you again for a bit. Oh, and Mr Muggeridge—’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You strike me as one of the grimiest individuals I’ve met for many a long day, and I assure you I do meet ’em. Close the door behind you on the way out, won’t you?’

  Bill Muggeridge, stunned into even greater inarticulacy than usual, shuffled out and shut the door. Mike Pumfrey, who had enjoyed orchestrating the little litany of the last minutes of the interview, watched him with a smile on his face, then he banged his pencil down on the desk.

  ‘Manure,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said the more generous Fenniway.

  ‘Oh, you liked him, did you? He struck you as a prepossessing specimen of your average, likeable human being?’

  ‘Give over,’ said Fenniway, who was accustomed to his boss’s use of his occasional bursts of articulateness. ‘But still, he’s fairly human. Grubby, so to speak, but not evil.’

  ‘And therefore not a murderer, you’d say?’

  ‘That’s what I was thinking.’

  ‘I’m not so sure. Some murderers I’ve met have been far from flaming brands of wickedness. Remember Margaret Hicks? No, she was probably before your time. Pushed her grandma over the cliffs when she thought no one was looking, just for the contents of her handbag. She wasn’t evil. The judge said so. He practically apologized for having to send her to prison, the way some of them do these days. She was a bit like this Muggeridge: a grubby little soul. That sort does the first thing that comes into their heads, because there’s nothing inside there that tells them not to. That’s what laws are for—to persuade them not to do it.’

  ‘Well—maybe. But this doesn’t look like a murder done on impulse, sir.’

  ‘No, agreed. But I wish I had a better idea of what it did look like. At the moment it looks like the murderous pranks of a maniac with a hatred of kids, but—’

  He was interrupted by the ring of the telephone.

  ‘Yes?’ said Pumfrey, grabbing it. ‘Oh—you’ve got them. Right. Some solution of aconite? Well, it figures. Thought it could be something of the kind . . . No. Say that again . . . It was what? No, I sure as hell didn’t. No . . . No. Well, ring back if anything else comes in.’

  He banged down the phone and looked at Fenniway.

  ‘Well, sir?’

  ‘Well, Sergeant. It seems we’ve been damned fools. It seems we’ve been barking up the wrong tree. The poison was in the medicine glass.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Precisely. And in the medicine. It had been doctored while it sat outside the sick bay, I suppose. Or perhaps . . .’

  ‘But that means—?’

  ‘Precisely. Now we know why Pickerage was so scared. And now we’re bloody back to square one.’

  CHAPTER 13

  TURNABOUT

  The Burleigh School was haunted that afternoon. The navy blue ghost of Mr Crumwallis flitted dispiritedly around the rooms and corridors that once had formed his domain. It was a peering, watery-eyed ghost, one that cleared its throat and let its hand flutter to its mouth in ineffectual gestures. Perhaps Mr Crumwallis was looking his last on the symbols of his state, a Balkan monarch taking a last look round his shoddy nineteenth-century palace before the new regime shunted him off by train to pathetic exile in Baden-Baden or Estoril. Perhaps he was meditating some fantastic turn of events that could restore him to power and prestige. Perhaps he was meditating revenge. He wandered miserably from his private kitchen through the hall, and then down the corridors—being careful not to be seen—that housed the classrooms. He wandered over the lawn and let himself in to the boarding annexe, but seeing a last stray police constable at the top of the stairs he hrrumphed, stammered a word of excuse and shuffled back to his own quarters.

  In his private hall—his, though, no longer—he paused, pretending to admire the watercolour of Dedham High Street, painted by the maiden aunt of one of the school’s headmasters in the ‘thirties. From here he could hear the voice of Septimus Coffin, on the ’phone in his sitting-room. What was he saying? What was he saying about him? How deceived he had been in that man, that elderly cast-off from the Cullbridge Grammar School. He had nursed a viper in his double-breasted. Coffin had revealed himself a ma
n fit for treasons, stratagems and . . . whatever else the poet had said. Spoils, that was it. Spoils. How very apt.

  He wandered over to the other side of the hall, where a tentative oil by the same amateur artist showed Flatford Mill and a dismal inability to master the new medium. He was by the study door, but he could hear almost nothing. The study had been effectively soundproofed, perhaps by some predecessor addicted to flagellation. No sound emerged from it. But he knew that the Superintendent was interviewing his wife. His Enid. The partner of his labours. Stupid cow.

  In that estimate, for once, Mr Crumwallis was at one with the Superintendent. Mike Pumfrey had by now spent some time battling at the pebbly surface of Enid Crumwallis’s complacency, and he had got nowhere. Others, subjected to Pumfrey’s inquisitorial brusqueness, became shrill or hysterical in their self-justifications. Not so Enid Crumwallis. She was convinced not only that she had acted with impeccable logic and discretion, but also that all right-thinking people would have done precisely the same. Like many stupid people, she identified her stupidity with common sense.

  ‘Of course I didn’t leave it in his room,’ she said with grim composure. ‘The boy might have thought that the more he had, the quicker he’d get well. He might have developed a taste for it.’

  ‘Hardly likely,’ began Mike Pumfrey.

  ‘I don’t know about that.’ She leaned forward, as if imparting a fascinating secret. ‘Did you know some of them sniff glue bottles and burn banana skins? Doesn’t bear thinking about. If they can do that, they can do anything.’

  And she leant back once more in her chair and tightened her lips at the thought of the limitless depravity of adolescence.