The Lying Tongue

by Andrew Wilson

  As I finished reading the interview I heard footsteps coming toward me. It was Mrs. Fowles.

  “How are we getting on?” she asked.

  “Oh, very well indeed,” I said. “It’s a mine of information. And so well kept.”

  Her creamy cheeks began to turn a shade of strawberry pink.

  “No, you’ve done a remarkable job,” I said. “First-rate, it really is.”

  “You really think so? I’ve only tried to do my best, keep things in order, in their proper place, nothing more than that.”

  “It’s been a great help to me. I can’t thank you enough.”

  Mrs. Fowles looked down and started to play with the seam on her flowery blouse.

  “If there’s anything else you need…“

  “I wondered if you could take me around to see the school secretary? As I’ve got a few names now, I thought she might be able to give me some contacts and addresses. Then I thought I could write to them with a few questions.”

  “Yes, of course. I’ve got another lesson in”—she looked at the clock on the wall—“about a quarter of an hour, but I would be happy to introduce you. Did you see her—Mrs. Barwick—this morning?”

  “The headmaster’s secretary? Oh yes, I did see her, briefly, but we weren’t introduced.”

  I followed Mrs. Fowles down the corridor to the headmaster’s office. She knocked on the door of the headmaster’s secretary and held the door open for me. Sitting at a neat and tidy desk was an attractive, blond fiftysomething woman.

  “Katherine, this is Adam Woods. I think the headmaster may have mentioned him to you,” said Mrs. Fowles. “He’s the young man who is doing his thesis on the relics and art of the abbey.”

  “Oh, of course,” she said, standing up to shake my hand. “How do you do? Yes, the headmaster did tell me you might be dropping by.”

  Her blue eyes sparkled as she spoke and she seemed to be constantly smiling.

  “I’ll leave you two to it,” said Mrs. Fowles. “Thank you, Katherine. And, Mr. Woods, if you need anything else, you know where to find me.”

  “Yes. Thank you again for all your help,” I said.

  Her cheeks colored slightly as she edged back toward the door.

  “Good-bye,” she said, closing the door behind her.

  “Thank you, Jeanette,” said the secretary, taking up a notepad and pen from her desk. She turned back toward me. “Now, what can I help you with?”

  I cleared my throat.

  “As you know, I’m working on an art history project, a thesis, on the objects on display in places like the abbey here.”

  She nodded, keen to hear more.

  “I think the success of the thesis depends on my ability to talk to people who came in close contact with the art, these relics and statuary. This morning Mrs. Fowles very kindly gave me access to the school’s scrapbooks and magazines so I could pick, at random, a few names.”

  “Yes, I see,” she said, combing her right hand through her hair.

  “I wondered whether, if I gave you a list of names, you could find contact details for them so I could write to them and ask them a few questions.”

  “And Mr. Peters knows all about your request?”

  “Yes, he does.”

  “I’d better just check with him first, if you don’t mind. I won’t be a moment.”

  She knocked on the headmaster’s door and walked in, leaving me in the office, alone. Her desk was bare, except for a computer and a large diary. Today’s date had various appointments scheduled for the headmaster, written in exquisite, tiny handwriting. At eleven o’clock he had had a meeting with a local planning officer, regarding the building of a new science block. At four in the afternoon he had a staff meeting. And there at the bottom of the page, in the space that served as a sort of horizontal margin, the secretary had written my name, followed by a question mark.

  As I looked at the computer’s screen saver, a picture of a greyhound, which I presumed to be the secretary’s dog, I thought about the possibility of trying to log in so I could retrieve some of the records before Mrs. Barwick came back. My hand hovered over the mouse. The idea was absurd. I couldn’t risk her walking in to find me messing about with her computer.

  I moved my hand away from the computer, but it lingered over the diary once more. Out of curiosity I turned the page. I glanced at the door. There was no sign of her yet. I looked down at the headmaster’s agenda. There was an appointment with a Mr. Perth-Lewis at 9 AM about his son, Neil. The secretary had arranged a telephone call with the parent of a prospective pupil at 10:30. And there, scheduled for a meeting with him at noon, was Lavinia Maddon. Next to her name the secretary had written, “Biography of Gordon Crace.” I remembered the way the headmaster had reacted when I had mentioned Crace’s name during our meeting. I had assumed it was because of something I had said. Now I knew differently. He was obviously dreading the appearance of Lavinia and the prospect of dredging up an old scandal, one he thought had been long buried.

  I heard the door open and quickly turned around.

  “Mr. Woods? I’ve just had a word with the headmaster and it’s as I’d thought.”

  I tried to gather my thoughts. My mouth had dried up. My heart was racing. My blood felt like acid running through my veins.

  “Yes?” I said, desperately trying to control my anger.

  “He’s happy for you to contact whomsoever you please, but he would like me to write or telephone them first just to make sure they are happy with that. I’m sure that’s okay with you.”

  She looked at me with her bright, twinkling, happy eyes. I felt like poking them out.

  “Yes, yes, of course,” I said, hating her for what she had just told me and what I had seen written in her hand.

  “If you give me a list of the names you want me to look up, I can start straightaway, if you like.”

  “Yes, that would be very kind. Thank you,” I said.

  I looked in my bag and took out my notebook.

  “Excuse me. Sorry, but do you have a sheet of paper?”

  “Of course, yes. Here you are,” she said, opening a drawer in her desk and taking out a sheet from a neatly stacked pile of paper.

  Everything was so ordered, so regimented. Did nothing go wrong in this woman’s life?

  I wrote out the names on the paper, making sure that those from the debating society (Matthew Knowles, Timothy Fletcher,

  Adrian Levenson and David Ward) were mixed up with ones I had picked out at random from the scrapbooks. At the bottom I added one extra name, that of Ruth Chaning, the young art teacher Crace had known while at the school. I passed the list, on which I had written twelve names, over to the secretary.

  “I think, unless I’m very much mistaken, I can give you the details of one of these already,” she said, smiling to herself.

  “What do you mean?”

  She walked over to her computer and tapped in a name.

  “Do you know which year Adrian Levenson left the school?” she asked.

  “I suppose it must have been at some point in the mid-sixties.”

  “Yes, thought so,” she said, looking at something on her screen. “Here we are. It is the same one.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Unlike most of us newcomers, Mr. Levenson has been here since the early days. In fact, I suppose you could say he has never really left the school. He’s the games master. Would you like to speak to him?”

  “Oh, yes,” I said, trying to disguise my surprise.

  The secretary used the phone on her desk to call Levenson, but as there was no answer, she left a message briefly explaining my project and asking him to call the office. Then she said she would go straight down to the basement to search for the records.

  “If you don’t mind waiting for a few minutes, it may take me a while,” she said, gesturing toward a chair.

  As I waited, I felt panic rising inside as I thought about Lavinia Maddon and her imminent arrival. I couldn’t qu
ite believe she would be here the next day, stalking these grounds and looking for clues about Crace. How much did she know? Most probably much more than she was letting on to me. It was obvious she was trying to get to the bottom of the mystery of Chris’s death and Crace’s part in it. It was too late to stop her now. What would she think if she saw me here? She, for one, wouldn’t be taken in by my story about my thesis and the relics in the abbey. In fact, she had the power to blow my cover. All she needed to do was causally mention to the headmaster that I was the personal assistant to Gordon Crace and the foundations of all my hard work would be swept away.

  There was only one thing for it: Lavinia would have to be stopped.

  An image of her, pale, lifeless, her face masklike, came into my head. I saw her lying in the undergrowth of the forest, her smart, gray skirt soiled with mud, her white blouse sprouting a bloom of blood, the contents of her handbag spilled out over the loamy ground. Her mouth dropped open in an horrific grimace and her lips were beginning to turn blue. Her hair, once so perfectly coiffured, now lay in a tangled mess, and there was a thick red-black liquid oozing from her head. Most of her long, manicured nails had broken or splintered, and her hands were dirty and covered in scratches. A sloe worm slithered over her ankle; a black beetle scuttled into her ear; a slug left a silver trail over her left shoulder as it edged its way closer and closer toward her mouth.

  It was impossible. I would have to think of some other way.

  Then it came to me. Just as I had told the staff of Winterborne Abbey more or less the truth, I would also tell Lavinia exactly what I was doing here. Pre-empting her was the only way forward. It was the best solution to the problem. I would call her, tell her that I was down here, express my astonishment that she was due to arrive the next day, and suggest we meet up. Then she would be the one doing the squirming. She would be the one who felt guilty, not me. I left the secretary’s office and walked outside. I took out my mobile, relieved that I had a signal. I found her London number in my notebook and dialed. Four rings. No answer. Click. The answering machine. I didn’t leave a message but tried her on her mobile. As she picked up the phone, the line crackled and hissed.

  “Hello?” I said, shouting into the phone.

  “Sorry, I’m driving. Can you just wait for a moment?”

  I heard the noise of traffic zooming past her and the loud, screeching brakes of a lorry. She was obviously on her way down here. I wondered how far away she was.

  “Sorry about that. I just had to pull over.”

  “Hello, it’s Adam Woods here.”

  “Oh, hello, Adam. Look, it’s a terrible line. Can I call you back?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “I’ll call you back on this number.”

  A minute or so later, my phone rang. I checked to see that no one could hear me before answering. The line was much clearer.

  “Adam?”

  “Yes, hello, Lavinia. How are you?”

  “I’m fine actually. Just taking my life into my hands by driving on the M3. How are you?”

  “Very well, thanks. I’m down in Dorset at the moment, just doing some work for Mr. Crace, getting some details for him about his old school, Winterborne Abbey.”

  I could hear the shock in her voice.

  “How extraordinary,” she said.

  Obviously she didn’t know what to say.

  “Sorry?”

  “J-just that I can’t quite believe it. That’s exactly where I’m driving to. I have an appointment with the headmaster tomorrow.”

  She had opted to play the honesty card as well.

  “How incredible,” I said, pretending to sound surprised. “What are you coming down for?”

  There was a slight pause on the other end of the line.

  “W-well, I thought it would be helpful for everyone to get as much information about Mr. Crace’s life as possible. Just to speed up the process a little.”

  “I see,” I said.

  “Obviously it was information I was going to pass on to you so you could it take back to Mr. Crace.”

  “That’s just wonderful,” I said. “Since we’re both down here, we should meet up at some point.”

  “Yes, I would like that very much. But what are you doing in Dorset?”

  “Just a spot of research for Mr. Crace,” I said. “As you know, Mr. Crace is a terribly secretive man, and he gave me express instructions not to reveal my true intentions. He told me to come down here and try to find out details about his school without anyone knowing the real reason. He told me he didn’t even want them to know he was alive. So I’ve had to go to the slightly ridiculous lengths of pretending I’m an art history student doing research on the abbey so as to gain access to some of the records.”

  “Really?” She sounded intrigued, but was there a note of suspicion in her voice?

  “Yes. I know it sounds a little far-fetched, but Mr. Crace insisted. He came up with the plan himself: how old boys and staff members view the objects displayed in the abbey, their personal connections to the relics and the statuary. I’ve had a hard time pulling it off, I can tell you.”

  “I don’t doubt it,” she said.

  “Look, I’d love to carry on talking, but I’ve got another appointment in a couple of minutes. Where are you staying?”

  “At the Hazelbury Manor Hotel. Do you have the number there?”

  “No, but I can easily get it.”

  “Why don’t you call me there tomorrow after breakfast?”

  “That sounds fine. I’ll do that.”

  I made my way back to the secretary’s office, but Mrs. Barwick was not there. It was obviously taking her longer than she had thought to locate the old records. As I waited, I looked around the room. The office was the very picture of efficiency, with everything neatly filed away in clearly labeled cabinets. There was a shelf of books, including a dictionary, the Bible, a thesaurus, a set of encyclopedias, and a well-thumbed Who’s Who. The walls were lined with faded photographs of the school, etchings of the abbey and a few framed typed letters from well-known old boys. Although I spotted an actor, a television presenter and quite a few famous sportsmen, there was no sign of Crace’s name.

  I heard the door open and turned to see Mrs. Barwick there.

  “You’ve had your fair share of celebrities,” I said, smiling, “all with good things to say about the school.”

  She did not reply. Her eyes, so bright and sparkling a few moments ago, looked stern and serious. She looked older, sadder. In her hand she clutched a piece of paper.

  “I’ve got the names you wanted,” she said, finally.

  “Oh, good.”

  “Well, I’m afraid it’s not all good news.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She sat down at her desk and placed the piece of paper before her.

  “I’ll show you,” she said, gesturing me over.

  I looked over her shoulder at the paper on which I had written the list of names that I had requested. By each of the names, Mrs. Barwick had scribbled little notes in pencil, but her handwriting was so small that I could not read her annotations.

  “Look,” she said, running her finger down the paper. “I’ve got the addresses for these old boys. Greason, Downing, Simmons, Cooper-Lewis, Alderman, Jones, and Booth-Clibborn.”

  They were the names I had picked out at random.

  “Levenson you already know about, so that’s good. But Miss Chaning, I’m afraid, has left no forwarding address, so we’ve no contact for her. And as for the rest, I’m sorry to tell you—I really don’t know how best to say this—well, it’s just that Matthew Knowles, Timothy Fletcher, and David Ward are…well, they all passed away some time ago.”

  “Are you certain?”

  “Yes, it’s all there in their records.”

  “When did they die?”

  “All at different ages.” She looked closely at her pencil notes on the paper. The three names had little crosses next to them. “Mr. Knowles in 19
70, Mr. Fletcher in 1982 and Mr. Ward in 1973.”

  “All of them so young,” I said. “Did the records tell you how they died?”

  “No, I’m afraid not.”

  “Yes, it is bad news.” I started to think out loud. “I wonder what happened to them.”

  “God only knows,” said Mrs. Barwick. “But whatever happened, it doesn’t much help your research, does it?”

  As I turned to go, the secretary said she would just check the answering machine in case Levenson had called. He had, obviously during the few moments while I had been speaking to Lavinia. Although he said he probably would not have much to contribute, he suggested meeting outside the abbey in twenty minutes.

  Adrian Levenson was a physically commanding man even though he was in his mid-to late fifties. Tall, at least six feet two, with broad shoulders, he looked exactly like what he was: a former rugby player turned games master. He was still strikingly handsome, with a rugged, lined face, a squat nose that looked like it had been broken several times, unreadable dark eyes, and a full head of silver-gray hair. As we greeted one another, I noticed that his hands were almost twice the size of mine; his grip left my fingers aching and weak.

  “How do you do, Mr…. ?”

  “Woods. Adam Woods.”

  “That’s right. Good to meet you. I’m Adrian.”

  He was superficially extremely friendly, but I’m sure the bully that Chris had described in his diary was not far from the surface. I would have to be careful.

  “As you can see,” he said, gesturing at his blue jogging pants smeared with mud, “I’m very much an outdoors man. Always have been. Never really interested in indoor pursuits. Spent as little time in there as possible.”

  “It will be interesting to hear your perspective. I’m trying to gather together as many different opinions as possible.”

  “And what did you say it was for?”

  “It’s for a thesis I’m writing for my art history course. About objects on display—”