[DCI Neil Paget 01] - Fatal Flaw

by Frank Smith

  ‘I’m afraid it is becoming very difficult for the smaller independent schools such as Thornton Hill to survive these days,’ she explained. ‘The staff didn’t like it, of course, but we only have a certain amount of space, and when it was put to them it was either that or staff cuts, they agreed - reluctantly. Most of them managed to find accommodation close by, but several of them travel here each day from Broadminster.’

  In answer to his questions regarding Monica herself. Miss Crowther seemed somewhat vague, and it soon became apparent that her knowledge of the girl came as much from hearsay as personal contact. ‘We try to instil a sense of community, a team spirit in our girls here at Thornton Hill,’ she said. ‘In fact we pride ourselves on it, but Monica simply resisted any and all attempts to include her in the circle. I regret to say she was a wilful girl; quite difficult to deal with - and quite unlike her mother.’

  ‘I must say I’d gathered a rather different view of Miss Shaw from her housemistress,’ Paget ventured, but Samantha Crowther was shaking her head gently but firmly.

  ‘Poor Jane. You mustn’t take what she says too literally. Chief Inspector. She does so want to believe the best of people, but some of the girls simply walk all over her, and she doesn’t seem to realize it. She means well, of course, but you can’t afford to let the girls get ahead of you. They’ll try it on every time, especially with someone like Jane.’ Miss Crowther sighed. ‘Unfortunately, with her, shall we say, “limitations”, we do have to make allowances. I’m sure you understand.’

  Paget understood only too well. There was nothing to be gained by spending any more time with Samantha Crowther. ‘You mentioned two others who were here last night,’ he said as he rose to go. ‘If I could have their names, and you can tell me where I might find them...?’

  ‘Of course. One is Mr Lambert - he takes maths and computing sciences, so essential these days - and the other is Mrs Frobisher. She’s modern languages. I can ring through on the house phone to see if they are in, if you wish.’

  Harold Lambert told Paget that he had gone to bed about eleven the previous evening, and knew nothing of what had happened until Miss Crowther rang him about eight o’clock that morning. Lambert seemed to be genuinely shaken, but when asked for his opinion of Monica Shaw, he shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

  ‘I’m afraid she wasn’t one of my better students,’ he said. ‘The unfortunate thing was that she could have been if she’d been prepared to apply herself. She could have been in the top two or three. But she seemed...’ He stopped, searching for the right phrase. ‘This may sound absurd to you. Chief Inspector, but it sometimes seemed to me that she was bent on not learning. It was as if she took some sort of perverse pride in failing.’

  ‘What about the girl rather than the student? What was your impression of her?’

  Lambert shook his head sadly. ‘She had no social skills. I’m afraid. Consequently she had no friends. She was a very moody girl; uncommunicative, even sullen. Trying to talk to her was like talking to a wall. She’d simply stand there staring off into the distance as if you weren’t there at all. Most frustrating.’

  Lambert spread his hands apologetically. ‘I’m sorry, but you did ask.’

  Mrs Frobisher confirmed everything Lambert had said, including the fact that Monica could have been, in her opinion, a much better student if she hadn’t spent so much time ‘day-dreaming’, as she put it. ‘She did just enough to get by...’ Mrs Frobisher stopped. ‘No, that’s not true,’ she amended. ‘I might as well be honest even though she’s dead, poor soul. She did not do enough to get by. I’m sorry to have to say it. Chief Inspector, but if I’d had my way, Monica would have left this school long ago. I’m not telling you anything I haven’t told Miss Crowther many times before, but I was always overruled. Monica Shaw was here because her mother is who she is, and it was her wish that Monica remain here. That’s the truth of it.’

  Unwanted and unloved. Was this to be Monica’s epitaph?

  The chief inspector’s footsteps echoed hollowly as he made his way through empty halls. What a wretched life the girl must have had. How long had she been here? Six years?

  To Monica Shaw it must have seemed an eternity.

  7

  Before leaving Thornton Hill School, Paget went back upstairs and surveyed the corridor outside Monica Shaw’s room. Almost directly opposite her room was a door leading to the back stairs. They were long and steep and narrow. He descended slowly to the ground floor, examining each step as he went. There were several damp patches, but how long they had been there it was impossible to tell. The school heating system, which seemed adequate in the rooms, did not extend to the stairwell.

  The ground floor corridor led off to his right towards the front of the school. It would, he surmised, eventually lead him to Crowther Hall and the main entrance. Doors off the corridor led to store-rooms and kitchens, now dark and deserted. To the left of the stairs was the back door, thick, metal-clad, and made even thicker by innumerable layers of paint. It was fitted with a mortise lock, complete with a large, old-fashioned key, and there were bolts at the top and bottom of the door. The bolts were drawn back and the door was unlocked.

  The flagstone floor just inside the door was stained and wet, and the reason was soon made clear when Paget opened it. Snow swirled around the covered entry and blew over the sill to settle on the floor even as he watched.

  Outside, he could see the outline of the path as it went past a couple of greenhouses and continued on towards the tennis courts, but if there had ever been any tracks they had long ago filled in. He closed the door and made his way along dark corridors to Crowther Hall.

  Miss Crowther was standing in the middle of the entrance hall, staring intently at something on the wall. As Paget approached, she turned towards him, a puzzled expression on her face.

  ‘Is there something wrong?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know whether there is anything wrong,’ she said slowly, ‘but it is very strange. There’s a picture missing. A photograph of one of our governors.’

  The framed photographs were mounted in a line along the wall opposite the main entrance. There were five of them, but there should have been six. The space between numbers two and four was empty.

  ‘It’s of Lady Tyndall,’ Miss Crowther explained. ‘I don’t understand it at all. Lady Tyndall was here herself, yesterday, and I’m quite sure it was here then.’

  Paget examined the hook on which the picture had hung. It was bent out of shape as if the weight had been too much for it or someone had pulled down on it. ‘Is it possible that Lady Tyndall herself could have taken it?’ he asked. ‘Perhaps to replace it with a more recent photograph?’

  ‘It’s possible,’ the headmistress said. She sounded doubtful. ‘But I’m sure she would have said something to me. Besides, these photographs are less than six months old, so why would she wish to change it?’

  ‘I have no idea,’ said Paget. ‘Perhaps she can tell you herself.’

  The headmistress looked distressed. ‘I suppose I shall have to ring her,’ she said. ‘About Monica as well. But Lady Tyndall’s not going to like it, you know. She won’t like it at all.’

  She turned without another word and went back towards her study, but it was unclear to Paget which item of information Miss Crowther thought would upset Lady Tyndall more: the death of Monica Shaw or the disappearance of her picture. For that matter, neither was he sure which was the more upsetting to Miss Crowther.

  Mid-afternoon, and it was beginning to get dark. Large, splodgy flakes of snow settled wetly on the windscreen as Paget passed through the school gates and turned right on the Malford road. Slush rumbled beneath the car as he picked up speed, and he eased back on the accelerator as he felt the rear end begin to fishtail. He turned right again at the crossroads, and followed the country road for about a quarter of a mile before he saw the stone pillars marking the entrance to Glenacres on his right.

  ‘Sally Pritchard’s cottage is on t
he left about a hundred yards beyond the gates,’ Miss Crowther had said. ‘You won’t see it from the road because it’s hidden behind a hedge, but you’ll see the opening. It’s all by itself, so you can’t miss it.’

  And there it was. Paget began to turn in, then saw the drift of snow across the drive. It wasn’t large, but it had all but filled in earlier tracks, and he decided not to risk getting stuck. He got out and checked to make sure the car was off the road, then made his way to the house on foot.

  The cottage was small, but it looked even smaller beneath a blanket of snow that sagged below the eaves to form a scalloped edge above the windows. The lights were on inside, and he saw movement behind the curtains as he came up to the door and knocked. A green Fiesta with rust spots on the doors was parked a short distance from the house, and it, too, was covered with snow, although the parking space between it and the house was comparatively bare.

  A young woman opened the door. ‘You must be from the police,’ she said before he could introduce himself. ‘Sylvia rang to tell me what happened.’ She passed a shaking hand across her brow. ‘I still can’t believe it. It seems so...I’m sorry.’ She stood aside. ‘You’d better come in.’

  Paget kicked the snow off his shoes and ducked to avoid hitting his head on the low lintel as he went inside and introduced himself.

  Sally Pritchard was a surprise, and a very pleasant one at that. She was small and slender and her eyes were large and blue, set wide beneath a mop of short, unruly hair. But her face was pale, and there were dark circles beneath her eyes. In fact, she looked as if she hadn’t slept all night.

  She wore a chequered shirt, open at the neck, blue jeans, and floppy knitted slippers. An oval pendant set with a stone he did not recognize hung from a slender chain of gold around her neck, but apart from that she wore no jewellery. She motioned him to a seat and settled in a chair herself and tucked her feet beneath her.

  The entire front of the cottage had been made into a single room. It still wasn’t large, but it had an old-world charm that was made even more inviting by the addition of a tinselled Christmas tree adorned with gleaming ornaments, and festive decorations were strung from beam to beam. Through a curtained archway he could see a tiny kitchen, and another door led to what he presumed to be the only bedroom.

  ‘I must apologize for disturbing you,’ he said. ‘Miss Gray did say that you weren’t feeling well, but it is rather important that I ask you a few questions if you feel up to it.’

  ‘It’s nothing serious,’ she assured him. ‘Probably too much rich food and wine at the party yesterday, that’s all, but I didn’t know how long it was going to last when I asked Sylvia to stand in for me this morning. I’m all right now, thank you.’ She paused, hesitating as if afraid to put the next question. ‘Sylvia said that Monica committed suicide...’ Her voice dried up in her throat and she coughed several times to clear it. ‘Is that true. Chief Inspector?’

  So much for trying to keep the record straight, thought Paget. ‘It is only one of several possibilities,’ he told her. ‘Miss Shaw died suddenly during the night. My job is to try to find out why. Which brings me to why I’ve come to you. I understand that you took Monica back to the school after the party yesterday?’

  ‘Yes, she was upset...’ Sally Pritchard seemed to be having trouble with her voice.

  ‘Tell me about it,’ he said quietly. ‘Tell me from the beginning. How did she come to be at the party in the first place? I understand she didn’t ride.’

  Sally cleared her throat once again as she clasped her hands together and looked down at them. ‘I invited her,’ she said. She spoke softly, reflectively, as if to herself. ‘Perhaps...’ She shrugged the thought away and began again.

  ‘Monica was - well, I don’t like to say this. Chief Inspector, but she wasn’t exactly popular around the stables. She had a way of alienating people, but it was just her way. She tried too hard; came on too strong, and people didn’t like that. But she’s worked hard there, and when I found out that she was going to be all alone over there at the school at Christmas, I felt the least I could do was to invite her to our party.

  ‘Anyway, she came and seemed to be enjoying herself - at least for the first part of the afternoon. I don’t know exactly when it was that she started into the wine; it must have been well on into the afternoon, but there were so many people coming and going that I lost track of her for a while. All I know is that suddenly she was becoming a problem. She was talking too loud, breaking into conversations, laughing for no apparent reason. It was embarrassing, especially with so many of our clients there.

  ‘You see,’ she explained, ‘we invite our clients, and the local people with whom we do business, to drop in during the afternoon, and there were quite a few of them there. Well, with Monica acting up the way she was, I was afraid that if Mr Lucas saw her - he’s the owner of Glenacres - he’d have her out of there in a second. If he thought she was upsetting clients, he might even have banned her from coming to Glenacres ever again, and I didn’t want that to happen. God knows, the girl had little enough pleasure as it was; if she couldn’t come to Glenacres, she’d have nothing.’

  Sally Pritchard drew in a long breath and let it out again. ‘Which was why I took her aside and gave her a good talking to. I told her to go for a walk and pull herself together. I warned her about what could happen if she didn’t. But when she’s like that, you can’t tell Monica anything.’ Her face clouded. ‘Couldn’t tell her anything,’ she amended softly. ‘She went off up the yard in a huff, so I let her get on with it. I wish now...’ The blue eyes clouded and she trailed off into a brooding silence.

  Paget had to prompt her to get her started again.

  ‘It must have been about half an hour later when I noticed that her anorak was still hanging on the peg,’ she went on, ‘and I began to wonder where she’d got to. I didn’t think she’d have gone home without it, but with Monica you could never be sure about anything. Chances were she was out there in the yard somewhere, sulking more than likely, and probably freezing to death. So, I went looking for her.’

  ‘Just so that I can keep things straight in my mind,’ Paget said, ‘where exactly was the party held?’

  ‘In the red barn,’ she told him. ‘Have you been over to Glenacres?’ He shook his head. ‘Well, you can’t miss the old place. It’s the oldest building there, and the first one you come to on the right as you go up the drive. It should have been pulled down years ago, but then we put the yard office in it, and all the odd bits of equipment we don’t know what to do with seem to end up there. It’s a bit of a tip, really, but a rather essential one. We have the party there every year. There are too many of us to go up to Mr Lucas’s house, and besides, there’s still work to be done, so you’d have people tracking muck in from the yard. This way we can come and go as we please and we don’t have to worry about the mess. Mr Lucas supplies the food and the wine, of course.’

  ‘I see. Thank you. Please go on. Did you find Monica?’

  ‘Yes. She was at the top end of the yard - the barn is at what we call the bottom end. And she was just standing there, shivering and crying.’

  ‘Did she say why?’

  Sally remained silent for a long moment before replying. ‘She said someone had - molested her.’

  Paget sat up straighter. ‘Did she say who it was?’

  ‘No. She said she didn’t know who it was.’ Inexplicably, colour began to rise in Sally Pritchard’s face, and she hurried on. ‘It was in the shed,’ she explained. ‘It was dark. It’s a storage shed where we keep supplies and special feed supplements and things like that. Monica said someone grabbed her and pulled her inside.’ Sally looked down at her hands. ‘It could have been one of the lads playing a bit of a joke.’

  Paget looked sceptical. ‘Do you think it was a joke. Miss Pritchard?’

  The young woman regarded him levelly. ‘You have to understand, Chief Inspector, that Monica was a very emotional girl. Hers was not a happy life.
She fantasized about a lot of things. She was a very lonely girl, so she made up stories. Besides...’ Abruptly, Sally Pritchard fell silent.

  ‘You were about to say...?’ Paget prompted.

  She shook her head as if puzzled, but answered the question. ‘I thought she might be making it up to spite me for telling her to behave herself,’ she said. ‘Now, I’m not so sure.’

  ‘I see. Did you see anyone else about?’

  ‘No, but then it was dark.’

  ‘But I’m told the yard lights were on.’

  Her expression did not change, but he sensed a withdrawal. ‘The light over the door of the shed was out,’ she said.

  ‘Did you look in the shed?’

  ‘Yes. There was no one there. I turned on the inside light and checked. There’s nowhere for anyone to hide.’

  ‘Is there another door or window to the shed?’

  ‘Yes. There’s a back door. It’s on a spring lock. Someone could have gone out that way when they heard me coming.’ A wry smile touched her lips. ‘I’m told I’m not exactly light on my feet when I have my boots on,’ she said.

  ‘Anyway, I went back to Monica and did my best to calm her down, but to tell the truth I still thought she was making the whole thing up. Anyway, I decided that the best thing to do was take her back to the school. The party was all but over in any case, so that’s what I did.’

  ‘How was she physically?’ Paget asked. ‘Did you see any signs of a struggle?’

  ‘Her clothes were a bit messed about, but a stable isn’t the cleanest place, so that could have happened in any number of ways.’

  ‘Am I right in assuming you did not tell Miss Wolsey what you’ve just told me?’

  Sally Pritchard grimaced guiltily. ‘I couldn’t,’ she said simply. ‘Jane is a good friend, but Monica pleaded with me to say nothing about what had happened. She said she’d never be allowed to come over to the stables again, and she was probably right. I agreed, partly, I must admit, because I wasn’t convinced that anything had actually happened to her. I thought it best to say nothing and let the whole thing blow over.’