A (Very) Public School Murder

by Parke, Simon;

  But Peter had no such issues now. His newsagent was well stocked with all manner of delights, his fridge an entirely private place – and with PC Wilson on hand in a crisis, such as now. Here was a most competent police officer, who one day might make a very good butler.

  *

  It was now ten on his first night in the East Wing at Stormhaven Towers. He had not expected to be there at the start of the day, but then, that was life. ‘Where we wake in the morning, we may not take our rest,’ as the Bedouin used to say.

  He would shortly make a trip to the common room. Wilson’s only failure was to remember the kettle Peter had asked for; but while a loss, it was not insurmountable. He could find boiling water in the common room easily enough, and then bring it back to his room for a quiet drink before lights out. ‘Lights out!’ Hah! It seemed the right phrase now that he was back at school . . . though as the prefect in charge, he did have some extra powers here tonight.

  He put his clothes away in the small chest of drawers and laid out his bathroom gear on the glass shelf above the sink. It was a wonder in itself – monasteries didn’t have glass shelves. I must get one of these above my sink at home, he was thinking. His sink at home was a crowded place, and a simple shelf above it would ease the crowding. The soap could stay on the sink but the toothbrush and paste could have their own place on the shelf . . . it had not been a wasted day. He then moved towards the door, turned the handle and stepped out into the dark corridor.

  Suddenly, a figure emerged from the shadows. Peter froze. It was young Crispin, breathless and terrified.

  ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost!’ said Peter.

  ‘I have seen a ghost!’ said Crispin.

  They sat in his room.

  Abbot Peter had made space on the bed for himself. Crispin sat in the chair by the window.

  ‘I don’t believe in ghosts,’ said Crispin.

  ‘No,’ said Peter, who only did occasionally . . . well, he couldn’t decide. Tamsin would laugh in his face at the idea, but that didn’t mean she was right. The Chinese astronomers saw new stars a long time before the European astronomers did. They were looking at the same medieval sky with roughly comparable instruments . . . but they were seeing different things – and why? Because Chinese cosmology allowed for celestial change, for the possibility of new stars in the sky . . . while pre-Copernican Europeans didn’t. New stars were not possible in their world view . . . so they didn’t see any. You only hear what you can receive and see what you can accept . . . Peter’s life was colourful testimony to that.

  ‘But it was no one I knew,’ said Crispin, shaking his head.

  ‘You didn’t recognize the ghost?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I could get us a cup of tea,’ said the abbot.

  ‘Not for me, thanks. I don’t drink tea or coffee.’

  He wasn’t terrified any more, this was Peter’s conclusion and his breathing was now steadier.

  ‘And what were they doing?’ he asked.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘This figure you saw.’

  ‘Oh, just walking down the corridor – tilting his head sometimes, like this.’

  Crispin twisted his shoulders slightly and angled his head to demonstrate.

  ‘At least he wasn’t holding his head under his arm,’ said Peter.

  Crispin almost smiled. But he was not quite free from the shock and Peter was disturbed. He was aware the East Wing was locked, that no stranger could simply have wandered in. There were two police on patrol somewhere outside – though what they did at night, he wasn’t sure. His guess was they’d be paying particular attention to the fridge in the school kitchens. He knew a young constable in Brighton whose night beat was almost entirely shaped by the tea stations along the way. But if the ghost wasn’t a visitor, it must be a resident.

  ‘And you didn’t know him, you’re sure of that?’

  ‘Sure. I mean, I only saw his back – and the side of his face, but . . .’

  ‘No one you’ve seen before. So what was he like? It was a man, you say?’

  ‘It was a man, yes.’

  ‘How old?’

  ‘Old. I don’t know; fifty?’

  ‘That’s not old, Crispin.’ Another joke that failed. ‘And what was he wearing?’

  ‘He was pale in the moonlight, his face was white, when he walked past the window, pale face – pale suit.’

  Peter would probably have preferred him in tights and a doublet, distant from the murder investigation, separated by the centuries. This ghost sounded contemporary, a more present threat.

  ‘Do you believe in ghosts?’ asked Crispin.

  ‘I don’t not believe in them,’ said Peter, clumsily. ‘I find the idea of an unhappy soul loitering, adrift from their true time zone, looking for resolution of some sort – well, I find that quite psychologically compelling . . . though absurd as well, of course.’

  ‘You don’t believe me?’

  ‘I believe you entirely, Crispin. I believe you saw a figure walking down the corridor, tilting his head.’ Peter tilted his head in solidarity. ‘The question is: who was he . . . and what was he doing in the East Wing?’ Crispin shrugged. He wasn’t so bothered about that. ‘So how are you feeling about all this?’

  ‘All what?’ Crispin sounded worried.

  ‘Well, it has hardly been a normal day. Your headmaster has been murdered.’

  ‘Are you really sure about that?’

  ‘About it being murder? It’s a strong possibility.’

  There was a knock on the door and Crispin convulsed in fear. Peter rose to comfort him just as the door opened.

  ‘Well, this is all very cosy,’

  said peroxide Penny Rylands, surveying the scene. She was looking at a man and a boy in the man’s room, the abbot standing over Crispin. ‘Does the Church never learn?’

  ‘I was just . . .’

  ‘I really don’t want to know, Abbot. Not my affair – and Crispin’s an adult now.’ Peter looked at her but she could not look back. Penny was somewhere else, distracted, tense and twitchy. ‘And I need to know where Jennifer is.’ Peter was thrown for a moment.

  ‘Jennifer?’

  ‘Jennifer Stiles! The head’s PA. She’s not in her room. Have you seen her, Crispin?’

  Crispin shook his head.

  ‘Crispin’s had his own troubles,’ said Peter. ‘He’s seen a ghost.’

  ‘And he wouldn’t be the first here, there have been sightings before – but I’m sure he’ll recover. My concerns are more with flesh and blood.’

  ‘I’m sure there’s a good reason why Jennifer is not in her room,’ said Peter. ‘I have no doubt that in the morning . . .’

  ‘Don’t patronize me.’

  Penny was snarling tension, like a cornered dog.

  ‘Does she have a mobile?’

  ‘Yes, of course she does. How could the head’s PA not have a mobile?’

  ‘How indeed?’

  ‘But I don’t have one, since you ask.’

  ‘You don’t have a phone?’

  ‘It’s gone missing.’

  ‘When was that?’

  ‘I don’t know, I had it this afternoon.’ And then she paused, puzzled. ‘And then it disappeared.’

  ‘I see.’

  Was this important?

  ‘Just like Jennifer’s – though we found hers in her bag. Well, I found it.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  He was lost.

  ‘It doesn’t matter, we found it.’

  ‘You found what?’

  ‘Jennifer’s phone! But it doesn’t matter – what matters is that she’s not in her room when she should be. And unlike you, I’m worried.’

  The angel appeared through the dark

  ‘What’s happened to you?’ they asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Jennifer, relieved to her bones to see someone she knew. Her head was throbbing and she was aware now, or beginning to be aware, that she was lying on the ground, wit
h the night sky above her. There was probably a reason – Tide Mills, now she remembered. She’d come to meet someone or perhaps that was another day.

  ‘Lie still,’ said the angel, holding her head with care. ‘There’s nasty bleeding at the back of your skull – has someone hit you?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Jennifer, though why she was lying here she wasn’t sure.

  ‘I’m going to hold something against the wound to stop the bleeding, so just relax – can you do that?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘You’re going to be all right, Jennifer. You deserve this.’

  ‘But what are you doing here?’ asked the stricken figure, though she didn’t remember the answer. Dizziness overcame her beneath the coastal stars and then vomiting. She was throwing up over the Tide Mills cottage, the playground of her youth, though the pathologist – later the following day – would say Jennifer Stiles, the head’s PA at Stormhaven Towers, died of asphyxia.

  The angel was long gone by then, with wings stained in blood.

  ‘We need to give

  the murder investigation a name,’ said Tamsin.

  She sat with Peter in the waiting room in bright July sunlight, at the beginning of a morning of interviews. They’d agreed to meet early to catch up on events before the questioning began. Tamsin was drinking black coffee and eating a croissant with raspberry jam.

  Peter’s morning had started a little earlier. He’d already been down to the kitchen, where bread, cereal and boiled eggs were laid out in self-service style by Mrs Docherty on the early shift.

  ‘Never seen a monk close up,’ she’d said, busying herself with the cleaning of surfaces. She was mainly employed as a cleaner at Stormhaven Towers, to be fair. Only in emergencies – like the chef demanding unreasonable amounts of overtime – was she sent to the kitchen where boiled eggs were probably the limit of her competence.

  ‘Then be grateful,’ said Peter. ‘They’re better kept at a distance. We haven’t met. I’m Abbot Peter. And you?’

  ‘Mrs Docherty.’ She was hesitant, unused to revealing her name . . . or to anyone being interested. ‘So what are you doing here?’

  ‘Helping with the investigation. That’s the idea.’

  ‘It’s the queen and her dog when the headmaster’s murdered!’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  And who were ‘the queen and her dog’? wondered Peter.

  ‘I’m just saying.’

  ‘What are you just saying?’

  There was clearly a grievance here.

  ‘That it wasn’t like this for Gerry. That’s all I’m saying . . . nothing like this for Gerry.’

  ‘Who’s Gerry?’

  ‘I’m not sure they sent anyone when he went.’ She was pouring oats into a large plastic serving bowl.

  ‘I don’t know Gerry.’

  ‘Well, you wouldn’t, would you – because he’s dead.’

  ‘He worked here?’

  ‘He was the gardener, Gerry was. Died last year, poisoned, clear as day. They never found who done it, though. But then no one was much interested, were they? He wasn’t a nob, was he?’

  ‘A nob?’

  ‘A posh sort. Are you not from this country?’

  ‘I’ve been away awhile.’

  ‘Should have stayed away. It’s going to the dogs.’

  ‘But I’m very sorry about Gerry.’

  ‘Terrible at the end, I saw him. He was here, in the kitchen. Dizziness at first, then vomiting. Though they say he died of asphyxia . . . in the cricket pavilion.’

  ‘The cricket pavilion?’

  ‘That’s as far as he got.’

  Peter had forgotten about breakfast.

  ‘Dizziness, vomiting, asphyxia . . . that sounds a little like aconite poisoning,’ he said.

  ‘That’s what it was, monk. Aconite!’ He wasn’t completely stupid. ‘I read about it. They said he was just unlucky with one of those plants. You’d not think gardening dangerous, eh? Not like skydiving and the like. But you never know, do you? There must be a dangerous plant here somewhere.’ She cleaned a little more, rubbing hard. ‘You don’t know when you’ll go, monk, that’s for sure. I tell that to Mr Docherty. “You don’t know when you’ll go,” I say.’

  ‘We know neither the day nor the hour, Mrs Docherty.’

  Peter had taken his coffee, toast and marmalade back to his room to reflect on a troubled night, with both Crispin and Penny so disturbed. He’d watched the sun rise, taken a short walk across the dewy grass, pondered the death of Gerry – and then waited for Tamsin to arrive with her coffee and croissant.

  ‘Does it have to have a name?’ he asked, believing there must be a better use of their time.

  ‘All murder investigations have a name, Abbot . . . just like all tornadoes have a name.’

  ‘I’ve always struggled with mindless destruction being called “Lucy” or “Susannah”.’

  ‘When “Chief Inspector Wonder” would do.’

  They laughed.

  ‘How about Cliff?’ he offered. ‘Operation Cliff?’

  ‘We had a previous investigation called Cliff . . . it sort of goes with the territory here.’

  ‘Son of Cliff . . . or how about Cliff – the Sequel?’

  ‘Now you’re being stupid.’

  ‘And you’re not? The idea that we have to give the investigation a name . . .’

  ‘And you’re being stupid in a habit, which somehow makes it worse . . . I expect gravitas from those clothes.’ Peter shrugged. There was something in him which enjoyed being a disappointment. Disappointing his adopted mother had been one of his few pleasures as a teenager. ‘And anyway,’ continued Tamsin, ‘the name of the investigation is supposed to give nothing away about itself.’

  ‘Tamsin.’

  ‘Very amusing.’

  ‘You’re not laughing.’

  ‘Do you struggle with the fact that I don’t talk to you about personal matters?’

  ‘Not in the slightest.’

  Perhaps a little.

  ‘And anyway, you do tell me things,’ said Peter.

  ‘Not anything important.’

  ‘And what makes one thing more important than another? It’s in the tittle-tattle that people give themselves away.’

  Tamsin looked at him and remembered why she wanted him here for the interviews. ‘The abbot’s like a deponent verb,’ as someone once said to her. ‘He appears passive – but is in fact active.’

  ‘Rosemary,’ said Peter.

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  What was he talking about?

  ‘Operation Rosemary,’ said Peter. ‘My final offer for the name of the investigation.’

  He wanted to get on with things.

  ‘Why Rosemary?’

  ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘It’s just a name.’

  ‘No, it isn’t.’

  Peter raised his eyebrows with regret; he’d skewered himself, he realized that.

  ‘She was someone I once knew.’

  ‘When?’

  Oh, to hell with it! thought Peter. He’d tell her . . . he’d give himself away.

  ‘She was a nurse in the unit.’

  ‘What unit?’

  ‘And my first – well, I suppose, my only – love. Is that the word? Or maybe obsession.’

  ‘Rosemary was?’

  ‘She rejected me, of course. And whatever she’s done since – I have no idea where she is – that will definitely have been her wisest decision in life.’

  Tamsin was surprised by this revelation and for a moment, her mind was freed from a tumbling headmaster.

  ‘And so that was that, Uncle – no way back with Rosemary?’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘After she rejected you . . . no way back.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You didn’t plead with her?’

  ‘Plead with her? Why would I do that?’

  Tamsin laughed dismissively.<
br />
  ‘It’s what people do when they’re in love.’

  She’d seen it in others – though not known it herself. Love for Tamsin could only ever be a negotiated and acceptably tolerable arrangement between two people.

  ‘I read the letter . . .’

  ‘She wrote to you? She dumped you by letter? She didn’t say it face to face?’

  ‘There was nothing to say.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘So I read the letter, accepted my fate, visited the garden of sadness for a while – and then had a relationship on the rebound, I suppose.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘There’s no need to feign empathy. You don’t do it well.’

  How much dare she ask? But if not now, when? ‘Seize the moment!’ as the fat police receptionist would say . . . though which moment – apart from the biscuits – she’d seized in her life was not immediately obvious.

  ‘A relationship on the rebound – who with?’

  ‘The desert,’ said Peter.

  There was a knock on the door.

  ‘Come!’ said Tamsin and in walked Terence Standing, the school bursar who liked to think he had everything figured out.

  ‘I’m sure I can’t help,’

  he said, before he’d even sat down.

  The waiting room, behind reception, was now the interview room and Terence was first on the list.

  ‘Well, don’t be too sure, Mr Standing,’ said Tamsin, indicating he should sit. She was smartly dressed, white blouse and black skirt, drawing on her extensive wardrobe in Hove.

  ‘It’s just that I have nothing to say.’

  He sat down in a manner to suggest he wouldn’t be here long, that sitting was a slight waste of time.

  ‘Perhaps you have more to say than you know.’

  People always had more to say than they knew, though Terence seemed to take it as an accusation.

  ‘I really don’t,’ he said. ‘This will be a waste of time for us all.’

  His white shirt was as fresh that day as the day before. Perhaps it was a new white shirt, though the red tie must be the same. He was clean-shaven and trim in beige chinos, red socks and black shoes, which for Tamsin was a disaster. Black shoes and beige chinos? A fashion car crash . . . but she had other things on her mind.