‘I always said that Malcolm was straight,’ said Toby.
‘I think we all felt that. But the police had this idea the whole time that Pickerage was holding out on them, keeping something back. They’d get something new out of him, and then there would still seem something more. Because the fact is, though he was upset at being asked to do that by Hilary Frome, Hilary was still his big god, right up to the time he died. He held back about what he’d been asked to do partly out of instinct, because a school-kid knows things like that get him into trouble, but partly too out of loyalty to Hilary.’
‘Talk about loyalty being bloody misplaced,’ said Bill Muggeridge, taking a great swig of his bitter.
‘But I bet there was something else,’ said Glenda Grower. ‘I bet there was some idea at the back of his mind that Hilary must have tried to poison him.’
‘I think there probably was. But that was something I don’t think he was even admitting to himself. But he did give himself away in one respect. Yesterday he had his lunch upstairs in the boarding annexe. The constable on duty there said he mashed over every mouthful he ate. Now this was before poor old Harris started spewing blood all over the dining hall. If Malcolm was still suspicious of an attempt on him, he would surely have suspected poison. And in that case mashing up the stuff wouldn’t have done one iota of good.
‘He knew Hilary had done the razor-blade trick himself. He knew the boarding annexe routine, and he’d slipped in in school time. R for razor-blade in the diary. The next day, Tuesday, he shoved the glass in the shepherd’s pie that Mrs Garfitt had made. But she froze it down, and he was disappointed of his sensation. I rather think that by now Hilary must have been rather hepped up on the whole idea of death. I think he had some kind of cold fever on him, and the only thing that could cool it was a death. And of course a death was one way he could be absolutely sure that the school would be at the centre of a storm of dreadful, damaging publicity.’
‘And Fate delivered Pickerage into his hands,’ said Corbett Farraday portentously.
‘It did. Clever old Fate,’ said Septimus. ‘With his medicine standing outside in the corridor, so that just anyone could have tampered with it. But I suspect that, whether or not Malcolm had been consigned by Fate to the sick room, he was in any case the chosen victim.’
‘But why? That’s horrible!’ protested Dorothea Gilberd. ‘He was his friend.’
‘People don’t do things like that!’ protested Percy Makepeace.
‘Most people don’t do murder at all,’ said Septimus. ‘And Malcolm marked himself out because he knew of Hilary’s plans. Even if he had not confided in Malcolm about a possible murder, Malcolm knew he was responsible for the other things. A great man can trust his disciples only so far. And a fifteen-year-old boy knows perfectly well that a thirteen-year-old can have knowledge winkled out of him. So if murder was to be done, Malcolm was the obvious victim. Quite apart from the possibility that Hilary relished the wiping out of a disciple whose devotion had proved to be less than total. You talk about his being Hilary’s friend. But did Hilary have any friends? I don’t think any relationship where emotion was involved ever entered his mind. No, I really don’t think there was the least hesitation in Frome’s mind when, as Corbett poetically observed, Fate delivered Malcolm into his hands.’
‘I don’t like this,’ shivered Penny.
‘One thing about how the whole thing is going to be presented to the public by the police, at the inquest and by us. It will be quite easy to argue that Hilary had no idea of the strength of the aconite he had put into the medicine. He’d abstracted it from his father’s office at the hospital, during one of the teaching sessions he had with him there—Dr Frome was . . . er . . . supplementing the science teaching.’
‘I say! Bally cheek,’ said Corbett Farraday.
‘Hilary—the idea is ironic—was thinking of becoming a doctor. Naturally he needed special coaching. He went around to his father at the hospital after school, and understandably enough his father was often called away. But it will be quite possible to argue that he had no idea of the strength and effect of the stuff he used. That this was just one more in a series of japes. I am fairly sure that the police will spare the feelings of Dr and Mrs Frome, and suggest at the inquest that this was what happened. “Death by misadventure” the jury can bring in.’
There came a delirious snuffling sound, rising to a squeak, from Mr McWhirter, who sounded like a piglet who had just discovered a chocolate box.
‘There is, I fear, one thing against such a theory.’
‘Quite,’ said Septimus.
‘But what?’ said Dorothea. ‘I mean, really, I can believe that much more easily than I can believe in a boy of that age actually deciding to murder his best friend.’
‘You are forgetting,’ wheezed Mr McWhirter, ‘the vodka bottle. Why would he use gloves if he didn’t already have murder in mind? He could hardly have imagined that the headmaster would call in all the resources of forensic science if it was just a case of a mere school jape.’
‘Quite,’ repeated Septimus. ‘But I think it will be for the good of the school if we accept the alternative explanation, at least for public consumption. Make it a party line, in fact. It makes things easier for Dr and Mrs Frome, to say nothing of ourselves.’ He pushed his chair back, regretfully, but not too regretfully. ‘As for me, I must get back to the grind. I have parents to ring, suppliers to haggle with. A headmaster’s work, as my displaced predecessor might have observed, is never done. My displaced predecessor, by the way, is preparing to go and stay with his wife’s sister. She runs a nursing home for the genteel insane, which is in need of an injection of capital. We must hope, must we not, that he is not fleeing from one sinking ship to another?’
He put down his empty glass and got up. But he did not leave, and began tugging at his moustaches with an unusual access of embarrassment.
‘Oh—there’s one thing I’d better mention, because the police are going to ask about it. It seems two of you had—quite unwittingly—a small part to play in the drama. You, Glenda, I gather, taught him about Thuggee, did you not? And you, Toby, read them The Ballad of Reading Gaol one day when you took over from McWhirter. There were records of both classes in a scrap-book he kept. No blame on you two, of course, but perhaps those two subjects had best be avoided for the remainder of the school year, what?’
And he walked out of the deserted saloon bar.
‘Oh my God,’ said Glenda.
‘Hell’s bells,’ said Toby.
‘What was that?’ said Dorothea. ‘What on earth was he talking about?’
‘I think I know,’ put in Percy Makepeace. ‘Didn’t the Thugs—tewibly undesiwable chappies—didn’t they—?’
‘Make their intended victim feel welcome,’ said Glenda, as if remembering her class. ‘Made professions of friendship and love for him, did everything to promote his feelings of security, sometimes even aroused affection for the man who was to be his killer.’
‘But, I say, he did the same for Onyx,’ said Bill, awed by alternative possibilities.
‘I taught them all about it,’ said Glenda. ‘I must admit I enjoyed that class. Went at it with relish. Hilary enjoyed it too, I remember. I’ll never tell them about Thugs again. I’ll stick to the respectable religions.’
‘Ha! Like Mohammedanism, as currently practised in Iran?’ suggested Mr McWhirter, repeating his piglet squeal. ‘If we suddenly find more and more of our boys missing a hand, we’ll know where to pin the responsibility.’
Toby had left his glass untouched since Septimus Coffin’s departure, and looked rather sick.
‘I’ll certainly never teach that poem again,’ he said. ‘Assuming I ever become a teacher, which I begin to doubt.’
‘What was wrong?’ asked Dorothea in bewilderment. For Oscar Wilde, not surprisingly, had not figured in Palgrave’s Golden Treasury, 1911 edition, prepared for use in the Public Schools. ‘What’s in it?’
‘ “Yet
each man kills the thing he loves,” ’ repeated Toby. ‘I taught it one day to 4A when McWhirter was sick. “The coward does it with a kiss, The brave man with a sword!” Whenever I read that now I’ll see Hilary Frome making up to Malcolm—perhaps making love to Malcolm—and all the time planning to kill him.’
‘What was it Hardy said about things that might be bracing to healthy intellects being capable of being used by sick minds?’ asked Mr McWhirter. ‘The boy intended to kill, remember, and he would have killed whether his teachers had put fancy notions into his head or not. They were just the gilt on the gingerbread. Not that I believe in fancy notions myself, but he could just as well have got ideas from Macbeth killing Lady Macduff’s perfectly unbearable little brat, so I’m not going to cast the first stone.’
‘This is so horrible,’ said Dorothea Gilberd. ‘One wonders if one can teach anything. I just can’t believe we’re talking about boys.’
‘One boy,’ said Tom Tedder.
‘I agree,’ said Penny Warlock. ‘It’s just disgusting. I’m going to see Sep on Monday and tell him that, whatever happens, job or no job, I won’t be here after summer.’
‘Foolish girl!’ said Glenda Grower. ‘Do you imagine there are no potential teenage murderers in the state sector? You really must get the message that one simply does not give up a job these days. On the contrary, one claws one’s way into one.’
‘She’s quite right, Penny,’ said Dorothea. ‘There simply are no jobs going. I wouldn’t get one, with all my experience. And things are going to be better under Sep. Do you know, he’s asked me to move with Mother into the head’s quarters and take over the supervision of the boarders?’
‘I say, how spiffing,’ said Corbett Farraday. ‘You’d enjoy that.’
‘You wouldn’t weally, would you?’ said Makepeace, awed. ‘All those tewible boys. Not a moment’s solitude.’
‘I’m not all that devoted to solitude,’ said Dorothea. ‘And of course Toby will be here till summer, to help. But I don’t know how things will be . . . There are other considerations . . . There’s something—’
‘Dorothea and I are thinking of marrying,’ said Tom Tedder bluntly.
And after that other considerations, and even Hilary Frome, tended to get forgotten. Penny Warlock, however, did not forget. On Monday after school she went along to Septimus in the headmaster’s study and announced her intention to him.
‘No, no,’ he said, concerned. ‘I can’t accept that as final. You would be very, very silly.’
‘I know, I know, I’ve heard it all,’ said Penny. ‘There are no jobs. Cling on to the one you’ve got—’
‘But it’s all true, dear girl. And if you’re thinking that this school won’t be here anyway after the summer, then I wouldn’t be too sure. I’ve wooed back most of the parents who wanted to take their treasures away. They’re as happy as we are with the outcome. The sensation may even do the school some good. I’ve had new parents inquiring.’
‘Oh no!’ said Penny. ‘They couldn’t be so awful.’
‘Our sort of parent could. It may even give the school a sort of cachet.’
‘Well, you don’t expect me to find that sort of ghoulishness attractive, Sep, do you?’ said Penny, her mouth pouting with distaste. ‘But anyway it’s nothing to do with whether the school will survive or not. It’s a matter of what sort of school it is. There’s nothing serious to be done here. We’re just filling up time for the boys until they’re sixteen. It’s—I’m sorry, Sep—but it’s just an awful school. That’s why I want to leave.’
‘Of course it’s an awful school. My dear girl, you miss the point. Some state schools are good now, some are bad. In ten years’ time some of the good ones will be bad, some of the bad ones good. You can’t go around insisting on teaching in good schools all your life. Of course we just fill in time, mostly. You’re—what?—twenty-three. How much of the trigonometry you learned at school do you remember? Or the chemistry? How much do you think I remember, at seventy-one? The average person has nothing left from his education ten years after he leaves school—nothing that he wouldn’t have picked up anyway on his own. And that goes for if he went to a good school just as much as if he went to a bad one.’
‘Then why do we go on?’
‘Because education is prescribed by the state for all children between the ages of five and sixteen. You’re looking at it entirely the wrong way round, my dear. You’re asking what sort of education this school gives boys. You should be thinking about what kind of people it gives jobs to. Look at us all. Me—a retired, bored schoolmaster, you a young, jobless one. Glenda thrown out of the state system after a totally malicious and fabricated accusation. Teddy a failed artist. Percy a failed everything. We’re too old, or we’re too young, or we have stains on our characters, or we’re flops who need a second chance, or a third or a fourth. Burleigh gives a profession to people like us. Respectable employment. And we fill in the boys’ time for them quite as well as most other schools, you’ll find. You want to teach classes full of young geniuses with an aptitude for classics. You never will, you know. You may one day have one such pupil, and it’s as likely to be at Burleigh as anywhere else. Now, think about it. I want you to be in charge of classics here from now on. I shall be busy playing headmaster, and you’ll take over the senior classes from me at once . . .’
You had to give it to him, Septimus Coffin was persuasive. By the time she left Penny had promised to think it over. Septimus walked around his study rubbing his hands with satisfaction. He was getting sharp pleasure out of his Indian summer of authority. Things were coming round remarkably quickly. He had had a most satisfactory talk with Father Michael about a possible future for Percy Makepeace in the Anglican Church. Not orders, because Percy had apparently no more vocation for that than for schoolmastering. But Father Michael had drawn his attention to a position with the Bishop of Sturford, as a personal assistant, a position that could be filled by a layman of a religious turn. And the Bishop of Sturford, apparently, was devoted to chasubles and thuribles and that sort of nonsense. It would suit Percy down to the ground. Then there was the irredeemably Southern League team of Cullbridge, in need of a trainer . . .
Yes, really he felt quite pleased with himself. The clouds were clearing from the face of the sun, and the road ahead stretched clear to the horizon. Under his guidance and leadership Burleigh School seemed set for years to come to fill a modest but dignified position in the private educational system of this country. Hilary Frome, it seemed, would prove to be that figure beloved of Victorian headmasters, the boy who left his school a better place than he had found it.
ROBERT BARNARD has been nominated three times for mystery writing’s highest honor, the Edgar Award. His most recent books include The Case of the Missing Bronté, A Little Local Murder, and Death and the Princess. He was for seven years Professor of English Literature at the University of Tromsø in Norway, the northernmost university in the world. He now lives in Leeds, England.
by the same author
THE CASE OF THE MISSING BRONTË
A LITTLE LOCAL MURDER
DEATH AND THE PRINCESS
DEATH BY SHEER TORTURE
DEATH IN A COLD CLIMATE
DEATH OF A PERFECT MOTHER
DEATH OF A LITERARY WIDOW
DEATH OF A MYSTERY WRITER
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Copyright © 1983 Robert Barnard
www.SimonSchuster.com.
First published in the United States by Charles Scribner’s Sons 1984
Published in Britain as Little Victims
ISBN: 978-1-4767-1621-3 (eBook)
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publi
cation Data
Barnard, Robert.
School for murder.
I. Title.
PR6052.A665S3 1984 823'.914 83-20185
ISBN 0-684-18113-4
Copyright under the Berne Convention.
All rights reserved. No part of this book
may be reproduced in any form without the
permission of Scribner.
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