by James Hilton
“Yes, sir, but I thought perhaps that was only a sort of blind— detectives often do that sort of thing when they’re working on a case.”
“Do they, by Jove? You seem to know a lot about detectives and their ways.”
“Yes, sir. My father’s a detective.”
“Oh, I see. That accounts for it.” (And he snobbishly thought: Good heavens, does the modern detective, not content with graduating at Oxford, send his sons to a boarding-school?) “Anyhow,” he added, “I’m not a detective, either in disguise or otherwise, so I’m afraid you’re wrong.”
“I’m sorry, sir.”
“Oh, it doesn’t matter, I assure you. And I’m quite interested in the affair about the Marshall boys, and if you do happen to know anything of special interest about it, I’d be glad to hear what it is.”
“It wasn’t about the two boys, sir—it was about Mr. Lambourne.”
“Mr. Lambourne, eh?”
“Yes, sir. You see, I thought that perhaps as the two boys may have been murdered, Mr. Lambourne may have been murdered as well.”
Revell had the presence of mind to be severe. “Mr. Lambourne murdered? My dear fellow, you’re talking through your hat, or you would be, if you’d got one on! And really, though I daresay you mean well, it’s not altogether proper of you to go about spreading ideas of that kind! Didn’t you read the Head’s remarks in the newspapers a little while ago? I’m sure you did. He said that probably there hadn’t been any murders at all. And now, apart from taking no notice of that, you’re calmly suggesting that the death of Mr. Lambourne was another murder! I’m ashamed of you, Mottram. You’re obviously an intelligent person—I’m sure your opinions must count a good deal amongst your friends, and it’s just your kind of person who ought to squash these absurd rumours, not invent them!”
Revell thought that was rather well spoken. But Mottram was not to be intimidated. “I’m sorry, sir, I didn’t think you would be annoyed. But I haven’t spread any rumours. I haven’t talked to anybody about this except Jones. And I DO think the two Marshalls were murdered, anyhow, and so do a lot of other people, my father says.”
“But, my dear boy, leaving the two Marshalls out of it for the time being, what possible reason can you have for thinking that Mr. Lambourne was murdered?”
“I don’t say he was, sir. I only say that if the two Marshalls were, he might have been as well.”
“MIGHT HAVE BEEN! And how much do you suppose that counts without any evidence?”
“Oh yes, I know, sir.” He seemed for a moment to be slightly uncomfortable. Then summoning fresh courage, he went on: “The fact is, sir, there IS something we happen to know that Jones thought you might be interested in. Of course it doesn’t matter, sir, if you’d rather we didn’t bother you with it.”
Revell laughed. “Now you’re coming to earth. I’m willing enough to hear facts, but I really must decline to listen to wild theories without a shadow of foundation!” (And he successfully contrived to look indignant as he said it!)
“It’s about the night that Mr. Lambourne—died—sir. You remember that at the inquest Mrs. Ellington was supposed to have been the last person to see him. She said that she left him soon after eleven o’clock.”
“Yes, I remember.”
“Well, sir, somebody went to see him later than that.”
Revell controlled his inward excitement. “You’d better tell me how you know and all about it.”
“Yes, sir. We thought you’d be interested.” There was just a suggestion of a snigger on Mottram’s face. “You see, sir, Jones and I were matched against each other in the School chess tournament, and as we were rather late in playing off the game we asked Mr. Lambourne during the afternoon if we could stay up after lights-out and play it off in the Common Room. It’s better, you know, to have everything quiet when you’re playing chess.”
“Doubtless. But it wouldn’t have been much of an excuse for staying up late when I was a boy here.”
“Ah yes, sir, but we asked Mr. Lambourne. He often gave us permission for things that no one else would.”
“I see. Well, go on. He told you you could stay up, I suppose.”
“Yes, sir. We began to play about ten, and I won about a quarter past eleven. That was earlier than we’d expected, so we thought we wouldn’t go up to the dormitory immediately. We put the light out and sat by the window, you see—”
“In the dark?” Revell interrupted.
“There was moonlight, sir.”
“But surely you wouldn’t sit there doing nothing, even if there was moonlight?”
“Well, sir, I suppose it doesn’t matter if you DO know—we were having a smoke.”
“A SMOKE?” He laughed. “The old game, I see—I used to do it myself. But not at your age—it’s really too early.” He tried to look fatherly. “However, go on with the story.”
“About a quarter to twelve, sir, just when we were thinking it was time to go to bed, we heard footsteps along the corridor coming towards the Common Room door—it sounded like somebody in slippers. Of course we got an awful wind-up, thinking somebody in the rooms above might have smelt something, but the footsteps went right past the door and down to the end of the corridor. After they’d gone by I went to the door and opened it an inch or so to see who it was, and it was Dr. Roseveare, sir, in his dressing-gown. Of course, as you know, sir, there’s only one place he could have been going to—there’s nothing beyond the Common Room except Mr. Lambourne’s room and the store-cupboards.”
“Well, what happened after that?”
“I don’t know, sir. We waited a bit, till we thought he’d be safely in Mr. Lambourne’s room—then we scooted off to bed. But you see, sir, what it means—that the Head must have been there later than anybody else!”
“Oh yes, I quite see that, Mottram.” He felt he must at all costs minimise the importance of the affair, and he also did not much care for Mottram, in whom he recognised an unpleasantly exact replica of the sort of youngster he himself had been at such an age. “Interesting to know all this, of course, but it no more proves Mr. Lambourne was murdered than it proves Queen Anne was murdered. ‘Fraid you won’t successfully follow in your father’s footsteps, Mottram, if you let yourself jump to such wild conclusions.” And to show that the matter had made only the slightest of impressions on him, he resumed his chatter about the cricket and led the two boys gently back to the pavilion.
But he knew that it was, or might be, tremendously important. Mrs. Ellington, according to her evidence, had left Lambourne at a little after eleven. The Head, in his dressing-gown, had visited him at a quarter to twelve, and had returned at some later time unknown. Why? What could have been the need for a visit at such an hour? And, most of all, why had Roseveare, when questioned by Guthrie, told a direct lie by stating that he had not seen Lambourne after nine o’clock?
That night, as Revell smoked a cigarette in bed, he found himself thinking, incredulously at first, of Mottram’s impudent suggestion that Lambourne had been murdered. Then suddenly, as if a window had been opened in a hitherto closed room, he thought—Good God, suppose the little devil were right? Suppose Lambourne had known too much, and the real criminal, whoever he was, had visited him that night and dosed him, somehow or other, with the veronal tablets? Was it possible? It did not invalidate the self-sacrifice motive, though of course it might be found to supersede it. And it most certainly recalled Lambourne’s axiom that two successful murders often led to a third. What, then, if the so-probable third had already been committed, and Lambourne, by the bitterest of ironies, had been its victim?
So, for a little time, Revell permitted himself to suspect the Head. Roseveare had, all along, behaved with a certain suspiciousness; he possessed, too, more perhaps than anyone else at Oakington, the kind of brain that could plan deeply and craftily. Unfortunately, apart from the one item of his late and unacknowledged visit to Lambourne, there was not a tittle of evidence against him. There was not even a possibl
e motive. Why on earth should a headmaster murder two of his boys and thereby ruin the reputation of his school?
To which the answer came, in due course, that Roseveare need by no means have murdered the boys at all. Supposing that Ellington had done that, that Lambourne had discovered proof, and that Roseveare, to avoid the worst sort of scandal, had politely snuffed out the too-clever investigator? THERE was a motive, at any rate, and a fairly likely one. Was the theory possible, then?
When Revell reached that point in his reflections, he dashed his head desperately against the pillows and made up his mind that he would die rather than formulate any further theory. He had theorised and theorised and theorised, and each theory fitted in so beautifully until the next one came along, and at the end of it all he was hardly an inch nearer any provable solution. It would certainly drive him completely mad if he did not give it up; it was a sort of mental debauchery that sapped his energies and made him feel as impotent as a Euclid theorem in the hands of a relativist mathematician. Henceforth, he decided, with many vows, he would merely observe. He would observe Ellington, Mrs. Ellington, Roseveare, Daggat, Brownley, Jones Tertius, Mottram, the School House cat—every living thing, in fact, in that extraordinary conglomeration of mysteries that was placed between Nottingham High School and Oundle in the Public Schools Year-Book. He would be the angel in the house—the recording angel, at any rate, in School House.
* * *
CHAPTER 11. — AMOROUS INTERLUDE
So it began—the strangest idyll, glowing Fitfully nearer to his young heart’s core, And also, on the woman’s side, o’erflowing With sharp and febrile ardours that are more Than ever likely to make sudden showing After ten years of marriage to a bore, Breeding repressions such as Dr. Freud did Well to tell us how are best avoided.
So wrote Revell towards midnight in his room in School House on the seventh of July. As more befitting his secretarial position, he had ceased to lodge at the Head’s house and had been allotted instead the room opposite Ellington’s adjacent to the junior dormitory. The change suited him well, since he had more time to himself and could feel himself less under the immediate surveillance of Dr. Roseveare.
It was his first completed stanza for a month, and he was rather proud of it. (It would need a preliminary one, of course, closing up his hero’s previous adventure and introducing a new one, but that could be done later. One of the advantages of the Don Juan idea was that the hero could do anything he or his creator liked so long as he kept within the rhymed Iambic pentameter.)
Revell had been observing for exactly a fortnight, and he had kept his vow —he had not permitted himself a single new theory. The restriction had at first been irksome, but after a time he had grown almost completely satisfied to be merely a watcher, a noter-down of unconsidered trifles. Such as, for example, that Ellington was getting more ill-tempered and morose than ever; that his wife bore her burden with a patience which must, sooner or later, break down; that the Head, too, was showing signs of the abnormal strain of recent affairs; that Mottram was cheeky and needed a thrashing; that the new master appointed in place of Lambourne was an amusing youngster named Pulteney, fresh from Cambridge; and that house-matches were less of a bore to watch when Pulteney and himself had previously arranged an intricate series of shilling bets upon the number of runs made by each of the twenty-two players.
And also, of course (for it deserves a paragraph to itself), that Mrs. Ellington was an exceedingly charming woman. He had thought so all along, but the revelation had not come to him with full intensity till he took on his rôle of Sunday and weekday observer. He saw her quite often—by chance that was just pleasantly flavoured with the doubt as to whether both of them had not been looking out for each other a little. They talked a good deal about matters which had nothing to do with the School and its affairs —of books, plays, pictures, and so on; she knew very little, but had a lively intelligence, and it delighted Revell to instruct her. She hardly ever mentioned her husband, but it was impossible to ignore the ever-present tragedy of her married life; Ellington was at worst churlish and at best boring. Revell, as his own friendship with her developed and as his feelings for her increased in warmth, could well imagine the relationship that had existed between herself and Lambourne. How she must have enjoyed Lambourne’s clever chatter after her husband’s surly silences; and how he, in turn, must have ached for the woman who had borne, so uncomplainingly, the first decade of a probable life-sentence.
To Revell, naturally, the chief count against Ellington was that he was a double murderer. Yet it was strange how one could accept even the most horrible situation after a time; and there were certainly moments when Revell almost forgot about the murders and hated Ellington most of all for some minor but exasperating piece of rudeness towards his wife.
Once, however, he made an interesting and rather revealing experiment (though, true to his vow, he did not allow himself to dogmatise from it). He was dining with the Head and allowed the conversation to turn on the new-comer, Pulteney. He said he liked him, and spoke approvingly of his discipline, both in form and in the house. Roseveare cordially agreed, and Revell added: “To be quite frank, that seemed rather the weak spot in Lambourne, admirable as he was in other ways—he sometimes let the kids have too much of their own way.”
Roseveare again agreed, and Revell, who had carefully planned his own moves in the conversation, continued: “A rather amusing example of his slack ways came under my notice quite recently, in fact. I remember it particularly because it happened on the night before he was found dead—I’d decided to chaff him about it the next day, poor fellow. I was taking a stroll about the quad latish in the evening—perhaps it would be half-past eleven or so—when, as I came near School House, I thought I heard voices in the Common Room. Naturally I went to investigate, and what d’you suppose it was? Two juniors playing chess! Of course it was no business of mine, especially as they said Lambourne had given ‘em permission, so I just left ‘em there, and Heaven alone knows when they DID go to bed. But chess, mind you—at getting on for midnight!”
He saw that Roseveare had gone very slightly pale and that his knuckles were whitening as he clenched them on the table. “Who were the ruffians —purely as a matter of curiosity?” he queried, with an effort to appear casual.
But Revell had expected the question, and was not to be caught so easily. “Didn’t ask ‘em, I’m afraid, and probably wouldn’t know ‘em even if I saw ‘em again. You can guess they had the lights pretty low.”
And then he changed the subject. He was quite satisfied; he had made another observation.
In his talks with Mrs. Ellington he never mentioned the murders. It was easy not to, now that the affair had practically died out of the newspapers; and, of course, the fact that in her eyes Lambourne was the proved culprit while he himself believed so differently, acted as a simple barrier to discussion between them. Sometimes, though not often, she mentioned Lambourne in some other connexion, and Revell was pleased to note how generous and fair-minded she was; her belief in his guilt had not closed up all the wells of her pity for him.
She was, Revell thought, entirely and deliciously adorable. Sometimes, as they took tea together, or as they chatted during some chance meeting in the lane, he almost caught himself wanting to kiss her. Her delicate smallness appealed so mutely for protection, and her dark eyes, that were sad as a rule when they first met, brightened so noticeably during their moments together that he could not but feel that she, as well as he, was attracted. It more than gratified him; it almost, when he grasped the full significance of it, intoxicated him. Oakington was a dark forest, and he himself was a knight of chivalry faced with the task of rescuing a particularly enchanting damsel from the maw of a particularly nauseating ogre. More and more, as those days of July slipped by, his aim became rescue as well as retribution; and though he dreaded the moment when she would learn the truth, he looked forward to the equally inevitable moment when she would realise how and from what
he might have saved her.
They came to calling each other by their Christian names. Hers was Rosamund. He made absurd puns about it; once, when she came cycling along the drive on a rainy afternoon, he called out “Sic Transit Gloria Rosamundi”, which he thought not bad. She smiled, dismounted, and answered: “I’m going to have a real transit very soon. Tom’s arranged that we shall leave England on the tenth of August. Just think of it—only a fortnight after Term ends for all the shopping I shall have to do!”
“You’re going away so soon?” He was almost bewildered.
“Yes. We shall be on our plantation or whatever it is by the time the Autumn Term begins here. It’s a terrible rush, but of course if we’re going to go, there’s not much point in delaying over it.”
Revell nodded, still dazedly. He was amazed to discover what a personal blow it was to him. Disappointment and then indignation succeeded. “But, Rosamund, what an awful life for you! Have you really thought what it will mean? Some God-forsaken back-block in the middle of Africa—no theatres, no books, no shops—”
“Oh, but we shall have a car,” she interrupted, “and every three months or so I shall drive the two hundred miles for a week’s shopping in Nairobi. And Mudie’s will probably send out a box of books now and again, including yours as fast as they come out, Colin. And there are several other people living within twenty miles or so.”
“God—I don’t know how you can bear to think of it all.”
“But I don’t think of it. I just live on from day to day.” She stared mutely at the front tyre of her bicycle. “What else is there to do?”
“I know.” It was pouring with rain, but neither of them moved. “I shall be sorry not to see you again,” he said at last.
“Yes. And I too. We have been good friends.” And she added, with a lessening of reserve that only emphasised the reticence of her entire attitude hitherto: “I believe you understand a great deal more than I could ever tell you. Perhaps we shall meet again at the concert to-night? Will you go?”