It's Murder at St. Basket's

by James Lincoln Collier

  “You’re pretty cheerful about us getting birched, Margaret,” Leslie said.

  “Who wants the rest of my shepherd’s pie?” she said.

  Suddenly I remembered. “Wait,” I said. “I forgot the important part.” I decided to lower my voice so Mrs. Rabbit wouldn’t hear. “Listen, about six years ago some kid disappeared from St. Basket’s. Just disappeared. First they thought he was kidnapped, but then they found his clothes someplace, and they decided he had committed suicide by drowning himself.”

  “And?” Leslie said.

  I took a look around to see where Mrs. Rabbit was. She had ducked into her little storage pantry, where she hid when she wanted to sit and rest. Usually she drank a bottle of Guinness’s stout while she was resting. She kept a lot of it stashed away in there. I know, because Leslie and I usually try to beg a couple of bottles off her when we can. Mostly she says no, but sometimes if we plead hard enough she’ll let us come in there and drink a bottle with her, if she’s sure Miss Grime has gone out.

  “Listen to this,” I said. “Your father said that the kid was a Pakistani kid, the son of some rich Pakistani millionaire or something.”

  They just looked at me for a minute, and nobody said anything. Finally Margaret said, “Why would he drown himself?”

  “Well, what Mr. Plainfìeld said, he was despondent, he was getting bad marks or something.”

  “Nobody drowns himself over bad grades,” Leslie said.

  “You can’t be sure, Leslie,” Margaret said. “I read in a book once about a boy who shot himself because he was sent down from Oxford.”

  “That was just a book,” Leslie said.

  “Never mind that,” I said. “The thing is, who was he?”

  We sat there thinking. “Doesn’t anyone want the rest of my shepherd’s pie?” Margaret said. We went on thinking.

  Finally Leslie said, “Perhaps we should ask David what he knows.”

  “I don’t know if we should,” I said. “If there’s anything funny about it he might get upset, or lie, or I don’t know what. I mean, we could do that if we have to, but the best thing would be to try to find out about it ourselves.”

  “That’s impossible, Christopher. By the time we get out of here again it will be all up with David.”

  It was true; and we sat around for a while gloomily thinking about it, and then Shrimpton came down and told us all to go to our rooms for study period. At St. Basket’s, you’re supposed to be in your rooms studying from seven o’clock until nine o’clock and lights-out at nine-thirty. So we have to go to our rooms at seven, but we don’t usually do much studying; mostly we just fool around.

  Mrs. Rabbit came out of her pantry and gave us some stuff for David to eat and we went up to the fourth floor. The whole thing was pretty crazy. Nobody ever said anything about David being sick, or that we should bring up his food, or anything like that. They were ignoring the whole thing. Mrs. Rabbit just gave us some sandwiches or a fried egg and some bangers or something, usually with a pot of tea and an apple or some cookies—biscuits, the English call them. She didn’t say any more things like, “‘E’s supposed to come to dinner, not dinner come to him.” She just didn’t say anything. It wasn’t normal. I mean, you figure if a kid is sick Miss Grime or Shrimpton ought to have come around and told us who was going to bring up the food, and who would bring down the dishes and organize it all. But they weren’t doing anything—they were just ignoring the whole thing.

  That’s what made it seem so suspicious. And I’ll admit, it scared me. It gave me this feeling that something was wrong. It gave me the feeling that something bad was happening, something really bad. And I would have liked to have forgotten about the whole thing; I would have liked it if David had just disappeared, so we wouldn’t have to bother about him anymore. I know that’s a terrible way to feel, to wish that your friend would disappear so you wouldn’t have to help him, but that’s what I felt. It was too scary for me. Oh, sure, I’d tell myself I was making it all up, I was getting all into a thing over nothing: there wasn’t anything wrong with Choudhry except a sprained ankle, and in a few days he’d be better and it would all be forgotten about. But I couldn’t convince myself. I just knew something bad was going on; and it scared me.

  The funny thing was, Margaret and Leslie weren’t so worried about it as I was. I mean, in their heads they suspected that something was wrong. After all, Leslie had taken a big chance trying to get away to talk to his father, and he wouldn’t have done that if he hadn’t thought something was wrong. But it didn’t seem to get to them the way it got to me. I mean, it wasn’t always hanging in their minds—they could fool around or talk about some of their friends at home or anything. The only thing I could think was that somehow, being English and sort of safe and protected the way English kids are, they just couldn’t believe that anything terrible would happen in the end. The English just sort of have a faith that things will work out all right. But I didn’t have the safe, protected feeling. Maybe because I was far away from home. I just couldn’t get it out of my mind that David was going to die and that there wasn’t any way we could stop it from happening.

  It didn’t help much, either, when I got a look at David. I hadn’t seen him since breakfast time. His leg seemed to me more swollen, and sort of yellowish looking, even though his skin was pretty brown. It was getting pretty painful. His face was pale and sweaty, and he didn’t feel much like eating. He said he’d thrown up his lunch. We sat around and talked to him.

  “You ought to eat something to keep up your strength,” Margaret said.

  “Is that tea in the pot?”

  “Yes,” Leslie said. “Play mum, Margaret.”

  She poured him his tea, and he ate a bit of his sandwich, and it perked him up a little. So I said, “David, what do you think about trying to get out of here? We could take you to a hospital somewhere.”

  “No, I don’t want to go. Besides, you chaps will just get in more trouble.”

  “That doesn’t matter,” Leslie said. “We’re gated anyway.”

  “No, I’ll be all right,” he said.

  It seemed to me funny that he wouldn’t go. “Look, David, we make a chair of our hands and carry you downstairs. It wouldn’t be too hard. You’re pretty light. We could go right up to that hospital there by Pond Road. We’d be careful not to hurt you.”

  He shook his head. “Thanks awfully, but I’ll be all right.”

  There was something funny about that, too, and after lights-out, I tossed and turned. It kept waking me up. I kept dreaming that we were carrying David down those stairs. It was pretty hard, because of the stairs being narrow, and I was worried that we’d bang his leg and hurt it. It seemed to me in the dreams that I was doing most of the carrying—or, at least, most of the worrying. Then I’d get half awake and realize I wasn’t carrying David, but I’d worry over him just the same, and then I’d doze off and dream about carrying him until I got half awake again.

  Between bad dreams and not sleeping and worrying about getting called in by Miss Grime, I didn’t feel too hot when we went down for breakfast, and maybe that’s why I didn’t notice what Margaret Fallows was wearing at first. Breakfast was the usual slop: tea and cold toast and bacon and one of Mrs. Rabbit’s typical fried eggs with the burnt, curly edges. You’d think after fifteen years at St. Basket’s she’d have learned how to fry an egg right. “The usual tire patch,” I said.

  Mrs. Rabbit put her head through her window. “‘Ere now, Yank, bloody good job I didn’t ‘ear that.”

  I blushed. “The bacon looks terrific,” I said.

  “It bloody well ought,” she said, but she didn’t explain why. I sat down, and then I noticed that Margaret wasn’t wearing her maroon blazer, but a regular dress. “Where are you going, Margaret?”

  She’d got her mouth jammed with egg. “Didn’t you know, it’s my birthday. Charles is taking me out to lunch at Wheeler’s.”

  Charles was her brother. He was seventeen, he went to Wes
tminster School, which was very posh, and Margaret thought he was pretty famous. He was taking his A levels, which are special tests you have to take if you want to go to a University. Only it didn’t seem that he was going to pass many of them, because from the stories Margaret told, he seemed to spend most of his time hanging around pubs instead of studying. “What’s Wheeler’s?” I said.

  “Oh, it’s a super restaurant.” Except the English don’t say super, they say soopah, and they don’t say restaurant, they say resturong, as if it were a French word.

  Leslie came in. “It’s Margaret’s birthday,” I said. “Charles is taking—” Then it dawned on me. “Margaret, Margaret, now listen, you have to tell Charles about Choudhry.” I guess I was pretty excited. “You understand me, Margaret? Understand?” I grabbed her by her collar. “You’ve got to do it, Margaret.”

  And then Miss Grime’s voice ripped through the air like a bomb and we all jumped up and stood there. “Margaret has to do what, Quincy?”

  I stared at her. I was good and scared. “Nothing,” I said in a soft voice.

  “Don’t lie to me, Quincy.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Quincy, if I don’t have an answer within ten seconds I shall have Mr. Shrimpton birch you.”

  She scared me to death, that’s the truth. She didn’t used to scare me so much, but she did now. I just had this feeling she wasn’t normal, that she’d be willing to do something crazy if she decided to. And being scared that way, I couldn’t think. But finally I blurted out, “I wanted her to bring me some sweets.” It was something she was likely to believe.

  “Quincy, I am utterly confounded. I believe you must be totally amoral. You will certainly be the last Amedican who sets foot in this school. I have most assuredly learned that lesson.” She clapped her hands together. “Margaret, your brother is waiting for you.”

  CHAPTER 8

  IT WAS PRETTY clear that Miss Grime knew we were onto something, but we didn’t know what she’d guessed. I still kept expecting that she would call me in and do something to me. I didn’t know what, just something terrible. They birched the kids in the lower school a fair amount, and sometimes even the first and second formers, but I guess they were afraid to birch the rest of us; we were too big, and besides, the kinds of things the upper school kids did weren’t birching things. The only things the older kids did wrong were smoking in the bog—that’s what they call the bathroom—or bringing in booze, which the fifth formers did sometimes, or cutting classes. You couldn’t birch an older kid for that.

  Still, you hear these stories about kids at English schools being locked into closets and fed on bread and water, or having their hands tied behind them and stuff. I guess these are mostly stories kids tell each other about their schools. All kids want to make their own school the worst prison, and I guess everybody exaggerates the stories a little. Even so, it just seemed to me that there was some kind of punishment Miss Grime could put on me. But mostly it was just being scared of her. I didn’t want to have to go in there and get ripped at by that booming voice she had.

  By the time lunch was over she didn’t call me in, and I realized she wasn’t going to. I didn’t know why. I guessed that she just didn’t want to bring the whole subject of David Choudhry up. Of course, she couldn’t know for sure we had been trying to tell Plainfield’s father about David; but she must have had a pretty good suspicion of it, and I guess she figured if she called us in to talk about it we might get onto the subject of David’s leg.

  In the afternoon I went into the bog where a couple of fifth formers were smoking and asked them if they remembered the scandal about the St. Basket’s boy who’d committed suicide. The fifth formers were fifteen and sixteen; one was even seventeen, and I figured they might have remembered it. But they didn’t. “Where did you hear that tale, Quincy?”

  “Some kid I met on the Heath on Sunday told me. He said his father told him. It was all in the papers at the time.”

  “Have you got any fags, Quincy?”

  “I don’t smoke,” I said.

  “I hear you’ve been gated, Quincy. Where were you trying to get to?”

  “I didn’t want to talk about it. “I wanted to get some sweets.”

  “An unlikely tale, Quincy. Come on, out with it or I’ll bash you.”

  “I’ve got to go to maths,” I said. And I ducked out.

  So there was nothing to do but wait until Margaret came back. She was supposed to be back by supper-time, but she wasn’t, so Leslie and I ate alone, mostly talking about sports to keep our minds off our troubles. Leslie was big on rugby, he knew all about the famous players and what they ate for breakfast and so forth, and I let him reel all that stuff off at me because it allowed my mind to rest. So he reeled away, and then just as we were jamming home the stewed prunes, Margaret came dashing down into the dining room.

  “Am I late?”

  Mrs. Rabbit put her head through the window. “I should think you was, miss. I ain’t standin’ ‘ere for me ‘ealth. Poor Mrs. Rabbit.”

  “I’m terribly sorry, Mrs. Rabbit. Charles took me out to the country and we got lost coming back.”

  “I should think you’ll ’ear from old Grime. ‘Ere’s your supper now. Lovely beans on toast. Be quick now, I can’t spend the noight watchin’ you lot eat.”

  Margaret sat down and quickly we asked her what she’d found out.

  “Not much,” she said. “First let me tell you about Wheeler’s. It was absolutely soooopah, frightfully expensive, and I had some smashing strawberries flown in from somewhere, and Charles gave me lots of wine, and then we drove out to the country.” If you ask me, she was sort of drunk. Whatever it was, she had to give us a play-by-play account of the whole day, right from leaving in the morning. Going out for lunch with Charles seemed to be about the most exciting thing that had happened to her for years.

  “Is Charles still famous?” I asked.

  “What? Oh, Charles says he expects all A’s and B’s on his A levels. He says he expects to get into Oxford without any trouble.”

  “Modest as ever is our Charles,” Leslie said. “Did you trouble to say anything about David?”

  “Oh, yes.” She looked a little embarrassed. “I’m afraid he wasn’t frightfully helpful. He said not to be a silly ass and all that, St. Basket’s wasn’t going to let a boy die.”

  “Did you tell him about the boy who committed suicide?”

  “Oh, yes, surely. He remembered that case. He said the father came over from France and spent fortunes on private detectives, but they never found out anything, except for his clothes turning up on the beach. There was something about the way they found the clothes that didn’t seem right for suicide, but Charles couldn’t remember what. Maybe it had—”

  And then we realized Mrs. Rabbit was standing by the table, face low down, sort of in amongst us. “Yer mustn’t talk about that,” she said in a low, kind of hissing whisper. “Yer mustn’t never, ever talk about that again.”

  We didn’t say anything, but sat quiet, staring at her.

  “That’s all over and done with, and yer mustn’t talk about it. Yer couldn’t help the little lad now.”

  We were quiet some more, and then finally I said, “Why not, Mrs. Rabbit?”

  She kind of licked her lips and looked toward the door as if she were afraid Miss Grime might suddenly appear out of the air. Her voice stayed whispery. “Poor lad. I’ve put it aht of me mind all these years, and I means to keep it aht.”

  “What, Mrs. Rabbit?”

  She straightened up. “Yer’ve ‘ad yer warnin’, I’ve said me tuppence worth.” And she went back to the kitchen.

  We didn’t say anything. We just kept quiet and went on eating. We didn’t say anything at all. It was dead still. All you could hear were the sounds of spoons clicking on the plates. I’d never heard the sounds of spoons clicking in there before. Even when there were just the boarders eating supper there was always somebody arguing or shouting and you n
ever could hear spoons clicking.

  After a while Leslie finished his custard pudding and stood up. “Come on, Quincy,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  “No, don’t go,” Margaret said. “Wait for me.” She was still on her beans and toast.

  Leslie sat down. “Be quick about it, then, Margaret.”

  When we finally got up to the fourth floor, David was sleeping. We left his sandwiches and tea on a chair by his bed and went into Margaret’s room, which was a worse mess than ever, because of her rushing out in the morning to have lunch with the famous Charles. We dumped all her stuff off the chairs onto her desk and sat down.

  “Have you got any fags, Margaret?” Leslie said.

  “No,” she said.

  “You stupid idiot, you could have pinched a packet from the famous Charles.”

  “Never mind about the cigarettes, Plainfield,” I said. The only thing I had in my head was David. I was really sick of having him hanging over my mind all this time. I didn’t want to be responsible for him anymore. I just wanted to get rid of him some way. I just couldn’t stand being nervous about him all the time. “Listen,” I said, “I’m serious. I think we ought to tell the police. We’re just a bunch of kids.”

  “Chicken, Quincy?”

  “I say, Leslie, shut up,” Margaret said. “You’re just as scared as we are.”

  He blushed. “Sorry.” He paused. “But it isn’t going to work. They’ll never believe us. Suppose one of us went round to the police station and actually got somebody to listen. Why, they’d just come round here and speak to Shrimpton or Groin-Fortesque and he’d say it was just schoolboy talk and not to pay it any attention.”

  He was right, and we knew it. But I still didn’t want to have to be responsible for David anymore. “Well, then the only thing left to do is get Choudhry into the hospital. I think we could do it. I mean, if we got up in the middle of the night and carried him quietly down the back stairs and out through the yard. Once we got onto the Heath it would be pretty hard for anybody to see us, and then we could get him to a hospital.”