It's Murder at St. Basket's

by James Lincoln Collier

  “Come to think of it, no,” I said. “That’s kind of funny. If he’d had a brother who’d died young you’d have thought there’d be a picture of him up, at least. You know, with some black cloth around it, or something.”

  “You’d expect a large portrait or even a statue, considering the lolly they have.”

  “Back home if somebody in the family’s been killed in a war or something, they always have a picture up, with maybe his medal hanging underneath it or something.”

  So there was a lot about it that didn’t make sense; but there was a lot about it that did: the suicide boy, and the funny way Mrs. Rabbit had warned us, and the way David had acted about not wanting to leave the place, and of course shouting that out about his brother when he saw Miss Grime.

  But we really didn’t get much of a chance to discuss it until nearly suppertime because Leslie and I had football practice which we couldn’t get out of. By the time we got back up to our room all covered with mud and feeling tired and beat up, it was almost six o’clock. We flopped down on the floor because we didn’t want to get our beds all covered with mud, and just sort of sat there, until suddenly Leslie said, “I say, all of David’s things are gone.”

  We jumped up. It was true. It was as if he’d never been there. His clothes, his books, his shoes, his pictures from the wall—everything was gone. Even the sheets were gone from his bed, with only the blankets folded up at the foot.

  “Wow,” I said.

  “What do you suppose they’re going to do to him, Christopher?”

  I didn’t answer that for a while. Then I said, “Probably they’ve taken him to the hospital.”

  He nodded. “Probably. Yes, surely that’s what they’ve done.”

  But neither of us believed it, and neither did Margaret when we went across the hall and told her. She just put her hands over her face and began crying.

  “Stop your bloody noise, Margaret,” Leslie said. She tried to stop, but every once in a while she made a sniffle. To tell you the truth, I felt like crying myself. I felt scared and homesick, and all I wanted to do was be back in New York with my parents and my sister, away from all this crazy stuff. But there wasn’t any hope of that; I could no more get my father to believe that people at St. Basket’s murdered students and buried them on the grounds than I could have got the fifth formers to swallow it. I didn’t have any reason for getting him to send me a plane ticket. If I wrote him with some excuse—I was sick or hated it—which wasn’t an excuse because it was true—he’d write back to stick it out until end of term, and so forth. There just wasn’t any point in it.

  So what we did was to try to cheer each other up, and by the time we went down to supper we all felt a little better. It was the usual slop—pork pies, which I wouldn’t even dare describe to you, and the pale peas, and chips, which is what they call French fries. After a while we began to feel a little normal again; and Plainfield had just got finished snapping a few French fries through Mrs. Rabbit’s window with his spoon when Miss Grime came in.

  She had on one of her huge orange dresses, and she’d got her face kind of cranked up into a smile. That surprised me, because I’d expected she was going to have us birched. But she stood down by the end of the table, smiling around at us, and we stood up the way we were supposed to when she came in, and sat down again.

  “I have good news for you, children,” she boomed out. “I’ve just come from visiting David Choudhry in the hospital. He’s feeling quite bright, quite on the mend, and sends you his greetings. He should be fit as a fiddle shortly.”

  “He’s in hospital, M’am?” Margaret said.

  “Yes, yes, he went off first thing this morning. I must confess I didn’t reckon he was quite so bad as he turned out to be. An error on the school’s part, and we shall make amends to him for it. The bone wasn’t broken, of course, Mr. Jaggers was quite right about that, but apparently it had gotten infected somehow.

  The poor little chap was quite out of his head last night, spewing all manner of nonsense, but once they’d lanced the leg and he had a bit of a rest, he came right around. Quite his old self now.”

  “M’am,” Leslie asked, “can we visit him at the hospital?”

  “Not possible, I’m afraid. They’re not allowing him visitors just at present. I sympathize with your concern for your schoolmate, nonetheless. And because I consider your behavior last night good-spirited, if misguided, I am quite willing to forget the whole matter. We shall wipe the slate clean and carry on as before.”

  “Then could you tell us what hospital it is?” I asked. “So we could write him letters, I mean?”

  “Write away, by all means, write. I’ll have Mr. Grime take them around tomorrow when he visits, if you like. He plans to peep in on the little chap. We’ve notified his father, naturally. He’ll be coming in from Paris tomorrow. I think he plans to take the little chap abroad for a fortnight or so to recuperate. A wise idea, I think—do the boy good.”

  And so that was the end of that. Except, of course, that none of it was true. But what the truth was, we didn’t know; we didn’t even know whether David was dead or alive. We talked about it; and we decided there wasn’t anything more we could do. We planned that the next time one of us got out we’d send a wire— that’s what the English call a telegram—to Mr. Choudhry. I still had his address written down from the time I visited there. But probably we wouldn’t be able to do that until Bank Holiday, which was almost two weeks away. We knew there wasn’t any point in trying to sneak out anymore. From now on they were bound to keep a close watch on us. And so we made a pact to forget about it, and not mention it again to anyone, including ourselves.

  In a way, I was relieved not to have to feel responsible anymore. I felt guilty about it, but the truth is, I was glad to have the worry gone. It was nice not to have that strain hanging over me all the time. But I tell you, every time I looked over at David’s bed, with that bare mattress and the blankets folded up on it, it got me. It just gave me this sick feeling, of wanting to cry. Finally I went out to the hall closet where they kept the clean sheets, and made up his bed again, which helped a little: It was still a bed that nobody used, but at least I didn’t have to look at the bare mattress anymore.

  Plainfield asked me about it when he came in. “Who made Dav—that bed?”

  “I did. I couldn’t stand staring at that bare mattress.”

  “We’re agreed not to talk about it,” he said.

  “You brought it up,” I said.

  “All right, Quincy. Let’s not talk about it.” So we dropped the subject.

  So school just went on, and by the end of the week I was beginning to forget about it. Sometimes I wouldn’t remember David for a whole morning or something, and I could laugh at funny things again. Thursday afternoon we played our arch-rival, Poormouth Hall. We beat them two to nothing. Plainfield scored one of the goals, which is pretty good because goals are hard to get in soccer. I played part of the game, which is also pretty good for a Yank who wasn’t brought up on the game like the rest of them. The only game I could show off at was rounders, which is a silly kind of baseball. We didn’t play it much, only a couple of times. The English kids all hit like girls and had a lot of trouble doing that. I just stood up there and belted the ball all over the field swinging the bat with one hand. It made me feel pretty good, but of course after that they didn’t want to play it so much. What I was waiting for was cricket season. I figured I’d do okay at that, because it was catching and hitting.

  And so the time drifted on toward the weekend again, and the big question was whether Leslie and I would be allowed out on Sunday afternoon. Miss Grime had said the slate was wiped clean, but we didn’t know whether that included the punishments for everything, or just for the night we’d tried to get David to the hospital. Not that we had any plans to do anything about David. There wasn’t any way we could send a cable from South End Green; we didn’t have any money to send with.

  By Friday night nobody h
ad told us one way or another whether we were going to be allowed out on Sunday. We talked about it in our room after supper. Supper had been worse than the usual slop. It was supposed to have been bangers and mash, but there hadn’t been any mashed potatoes, and the bangers were burnt pretty nearly to charcoal. To make up for it, Mrs. Rabbit had put out some canned applesauce, a plateful of bread and the breakfast marmalade, but it didn’t come out to much of a meal.

  “Mrs. Rabbit was acting jolly odd,” Margaret said.

  It was true: she had been. She had hardly said anything to us when she had given us our supper through her window, and nothing during the rest of the meal. She had spent most of her time stuck away in the back pantry room where she usually went when she was sneaking a Guinness. It wasn’t like her.

  “If you ask me, she was drunk,” Plainfield said. “Absolutely blotto.”

  “She certainly was acting jolly queer,” Margaret said. “Perhaps she needs a hol.”

  That reminded me of Sunday. “What about Sunday, Plainfield?”

  “I vote we just walk out. I’ll bet nobody stops us.”

  “What if they do?”

  He shrugged. “Scared, Quincy?”

  “Please,” Margaret said. Then she said, “I’m hun—”

  “That’s because you didn’t finish your delicious bangers,” I said.

  “I’m hungry, too,” Leslie said. “Why doesn’t somebody go down and pinch something from the kitchen.”

  “It’ll be locked.”

  “I think she’s probably still there, drinking Guinness,” Leslie said. “If you got her into a conversation she might just give us something.”

  It suited me fine. I felt like doing something bad. Actually, it wasn’t much of a risk. Mrs. Rabbit never squealed on anyone to Miss Grime; she just bawled you out. “I’ll do it,” I said. “Don’t worry about a thing, folks, fearless Chris Quincy is on the job. Give me your bookbag, Margaret.” We were all supposed to have maroon bags with drawstrings, like small duffle bags, to carry our books in, but of course we boarders didn’t need them—except that Margaret’s mother had made her have one anyway because it said she should on the list.

  “I don’t want to give you my bookbag. You’ll get crumbs in it.”

  “Margaret, it’s all right if you get crumbs in your bookbag. Aren’t you ever going to learn that you don’t have to be good all the time?”

  “I don’t mind being good. I keep telling you that, Christopher.”

  “Yes, you do,” I said. “You just won’t admit it.”

  “How do you know what I mind?”

  “Because that time you were drunk on—”

  “That doesn’t count. I—”

  “Yes, it does too count,” I said. “What about cursing out old Grime? You liked that, didn’t you?”

  “Well, just a little.”

  “You see—”

  “Stop that bloody row, you two,” Leslie said. “Let’s get on with it. Margaret, if you don’t give him your bookbag we won’t give you anything to eat.”

  Margaret liked to eat, and that got her. “I’ll fetch it,” she said.

  I tucked the bag down inside my pants, the way real shoplifters I’d read about did, and put on my heavy blue sweater. That way all I had to do was grab something, slip my hand under my sweater as if I was scratching my belly, and drop whatever I’d swiped into the bag.

  I went on downstairs as quietly as I could. There wasn’t any rule against going down before lights-out, but naturally I didn’t want to run into Miss Grime. The masters were no problem: they were all at the Magdala.

  I got safely into the dining room. The lights were out, and it was dark and gloomy. I went over and looked through Mrs. Rabbit’s window. It was dark and gloomy in the kitchen, too. The only light was coming through the open door of her pantry room. It looked as if she’d been sitting in there, but she wasn’t anywhere in sight. There were a couple of empty Guinness bottles standing on her big kitchen table, though. She hadn’t put the food away, either. The bread was still out, and there were four or five charcoal bangers on a plate in the middle of the table. I figured she’d gone to the loo. That’s another word the English have for bathroom.

  The bottom part of Mrs. Rabbit’s window opens up like a door. I eased the knob slowly around, and then slid the door open enough to get through. Then I stepped into the kitchen and stopped still to peer around. With the only real light coming out of the doorway to her pantry I couldn’t see the cupboards on the side opposite the stove very well. The question was whether she’d locked them. The good stuff was in them—the cookies and dried apricots and the nuts and raisins and oranges they gave us once a month when they figured we were about to come down with scurvy. If they were locked, I’d have to settle for stuff from the pantry which was mainly canned stuff, although a can of peaches wouldn’t be bad if we could get it open with Leslie’s knife.

  I took another look around, and started to tiptoe toward the cupboards. I figured that Mrs. Rabbit would be back shortly, and I’d better not waste any time. I reached the cupboards, and jerked one open. And just then a scary, whispery voice came out of the dark: “Oy, Yank.”

  Mrs. Rabbit was sitting hardly five feet from me in a creaky old chair she kept in a corner. I couldn’t make her out too well, but my eyes were getting used to the dark, and I could see she was holding a mug in her hands. I knew it was Guinness, because the bottle was standing on the floor beside her chair.

  “Still a bit ‘ungry, innit, Yank?’ She didn’t exactly whisper, but she spoke in a low voice. “Hit weren’t much of a supper.”

  “It was okay, Mrs. Rabbit.”

  “Don’t muck about wiv yer old Mrs. Rabbit, lad. Hit weren’t much of a supper.”

  Then I noticed that it looked like she’d been crying. I couldn’t be sure, but her eyes looked funny, and her cheeks were wet, although it could have been sweat, knowing Mrs. Rabbit. “It was all right, Mrs. Rabbit. The bangers were sort of burnt, but the rest was okay.”

  She didn’t say anything for a minute, but had a big gulp of her Guinness. Then she said, “Poor Mrs. Rabbit. Thank the Lord Harry for me Guinness. I wouldn’t have survived without hit.”

  “What’s the matter, Mrs. Rabbit?” I was beginning to feel pretty nervous. It’s kind of upsetting to see a grownup cry.

  She shook her head. “They done in one, Yank. Now they’re doin’ in t’other.”

  I went dead cold, and my mouth went dry. “Who?” But I knew who.

  “Yer myte. The Paki. They’ve got ‘im out in the stable.”

  “David?”

  “‘E’s in the stable. They’ll keep him goin’ all the week so as ‘e don’t begin to smell, and do ‘im in on Bank Holiday when nobody’s abhat. Hit’s what they did with t’other.”

  “David’s brother?” I was good and scared and my legs were feeling weak and trembly. That’s ‘im.”

  “How do you know, Mrs. Rabbit?”

  “C’mere, Yank.” She grunted and heaved herself up out of the chair, which wasn’t too easy because of the Guinness she’d been drinking, but she was all right when she was standing. I followed her into the pantry. She shut the door and turned off the light. We were standing in pitch dark side by side in the little room. “Look there,” she said, clutching my arm to show the direction.

  I looked straight ahead through the dark at the wall; and suddenly I realized I was looking at a kind of television picture of the backyard. I could see everything—the stables, the wall, the gate onto the Heath, even trees moving in the wind, all covered with moonlight. Then in a moment I realized that the stables were on the wrong side: the whole picture was backwards.

  “What is it, Mrs. Rabbit?” I whispered.

  “Mirror,” she said. “Look up there.”

  I looked up. Near the ceiling there was a faint light streaming in, shining down on the mirror. Mrs. Rabbit turned on the light. The mirror wasn’t more than six or eight inches square. It was pretty old and beat up, and h
ad been tacked up on a wall at the back of one of the storage shelves. From the way the stuff was shoved around on the shelf you could tell she normally kept it covered with cans and packages. “Did you put it up?”

  She nodded. “In the old days this ere closet was a coalbin. There’s a bit ov a winder right at the top, so’s they could look in and see how much coal they’d got. Sometimes I’d climb up on a chair and ‘ave a bit of a look out, to see if the lads was comin’ in yet from footer, so’s I could get the cocoa ‘otted up. But it wasn’t safe, that chair, so I put up this ‘ere mirror. More convenient loike. And I could just sit here and watch the lads ‘aving a bash at games. Hit was company for me. And then one day between terms, when no one was abaht, I come in ter ‘ave a look at me larder, and was sitting ‘ere at teatime, just as it was gettin’ dark, and they come aout of the stables, Jaggers and the old man—”

  “Grime?”

  “That’s hit. And ‘e was carrying a shovel, and Jaggers was ‘auling something over ‘is shoulder—something long which they ‘ad got wrapped up in a sheet. They went out to t’other end of the stables, and when they come back they didn’t ‘ave the long package no more, just the shovel. And then it come out in the papers; and that summer when I finally plucked up me courage, and nobody was abaht, I went and ‘ad a look round, and sure enough yer could see the markings where they’d dug the grave.”

  “But why did they do it?”

  She shrugged. “’Ow was I to know? They wasn’t abaht to tell Mrs. Rabbit.”

  I was pretty scared, but excited, too.

  “Why didn’t you call the police?”

  “There wasn’t no use in that, Yank. They wasn’t bloody likely to take any notice of Mrs. Rabbit. You think they’d believe me over the loikes of them?”

  “I guess you’re right.”

  “But blimey, I haven’t been able to get hit off me conscience all these years.”

  “How did you know David was his brother?” I said.

  “Come off it, Yank, they all knew. ‘E’s the spit-an-image of ‘is brother. They changed ‘is name and such, but hit didn’t fool nobody. Why, the ‘ole lot of us knew from the beginning. O’ course, hit was only me ’oo knew where t’other one ’ad got to. Me and the Grimes and Jaggers. The other masters thought it were bloody odd they’d send the little tyke to the school where ’is brother done ’imself in, but that’s all they knew of it. Only me and the Grimes and Jaggers knew.”