A (Very) Public School Murder

by Parke, Simon;

  ‘Don’t you find the people of Stormhaven repulsive?’ said Tamsin. ‘Human hyenas for the morbid.’

  ‘They’re hardly unique, Tamsin. It’s the history of show business. Remember that public hangings were for centuries the single most popular form of entertainment in England.’

  ‘Among lowlife, perhaps.’

  ‘No, among all life. Thomas Hardy, one of our most revered novelists, made great efforts to attend public executions.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really. And he was keen to get a good view apparently. He didn’t want to miss out on any of the twisting agony . . . and really, you can only call it “book research” for so long.’ Tamsin smiled. ‘And I’m told the hanging of two men and a woman in Iran last year has over 784,000 visits on YouTube – whatever that is. Humans like to loiter around death from a place of safety. They flirt with mortality from the comfort of their own armchairs. Or in this case,’ he looked at the present watchers, ‘from the side of the A259 with their smartphones and Thermos to hand and a short walk from their cars.’

  Tamsin and the abbot had come here to get off-site, away from the school and review the day’s interviews. The two of them now sat in one of the old workers’ cottages, the roof long gone but still retaining the outline of the flint stone walls. Such small rooms, such close living, thought Tamsin. Red poppies, fragile and strong, grew in the concrete soil, delighting in the evening sun and the salt breeze.

  ‘The gardener,’ said Peter.

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Gerry, the gardener. He died last year, while working at the school.’

  ‘What of him?’

  ‘Jennifer wasn’t the first employee at Stormhaven Towers to die of aconite poisoning. Gerry did too.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Mrs Docherty told me.’

  ‘A police informer, is she?’

  ‘In a manner. She’s a cleaner there, so she knows everything. She mentioned Gerry when I was collecting my breakfast this morning. And then Wilson kindly found the relevant newspaper cuttings online.’

  ‘Saint bloody Wilson.’

  ‘The roots of the wolfsbane plant – as I’m sure you know – are where the highest level of poison is found – but it’s still there in the flower. And this unfortunate fellow had a cut on his hand when he touched one, the pathologist said – so the poison entered his bloodstream quickly and went straight to the heart. He died in the cricket pavilion – that’s as far as he got.’

  Tamsin wondered whether this digression was a waste of time. She didn’t like wasting time. The abbot seemed to be enjoying the meander, but was it taking the case forward?

  ‘It wasn’t much reported at the time,’ said Peter, ‘because, well, it wasn’t considered a murder . . . just a tragic accident. He died holding the plant.’

  ‘Why was he holding it?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘And where was it growing?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Well – where had he been working that morning?’

  ‘No one knows.’

  ‘I’m spotting a pattern.’

  ‘Somewhere on the school premises – but gardeners do their own thing, they go where they will. You have a gardener at the police HQ, I saw him there. But I don’t imagine you could tell me much about his daily routine.’

  Tamsin couldn’t argue. She had never even noticed the gardener. Why would she?

  ‘But here’s the fact of interest,’ said Peter. ‘Someone at Stormhaven Towers grows aconite. And the likelihood is that the grower and the killer are one and the same.’

  ‘Not necessarily.’

  ‘No. But if they’re two different people, why didn’t the grower come forward when Gerry died?’

  ‘Fear?’

  ‘Possible.’

  ‘Relationship?’

  ‘Possible.’

  His idea wasn’t as watertight as he’d imagined – Tamsin had spotted the leaks.

  ‘The killer certainly has a streak of the nasty about them,’ he said and looked down at the spot where Jennifer was so recently killed. ‘She didn’t need to die in that slow and humiliating manner. They could have killed her instantly with the concrete slab. But they didn’t want to, they wanted to use poison – an unpleasant poison.’

  ‘Is there a nice one?’

  They sat for a moment listening to the sea, though Tamsin heard only the bells of panic. She needed to bring this case home.

  ‘Ironic, really,’ said Peter.

  ‘What’s ironic?’

  ‘The word “aconite” comes from a Greek word which means “without struggle” . . . when in truth the victim struggles a great deal before death.’

  ‘Have you finished?’ said Tamsin. She wasn’t really listening, the anxiety drowning the abbot out. ‘It’s getting late.’

  ‘And one other thing: obviously Ferdinand had told the headmaster something before they broke on Sunday afternoon.’ Tamsin nodded in a distant fashion. ‘Cressida told us there was a worry on his mind and Geoff confirms that. Was that to do with Holly – or something else that Ferdinand knew?’

  ‘You’d best be getting back to the school.’

  ‘Yes.’

  He knew a dismissal when he heard one.

  ‘Keep an eye on them tonight, Abbot. I don’t want to be arriving to another murder tomorrow.’

  Peter got up and contemplated the tough little poppy bending in the wind, making good from dry rocky soil.

  ‘Give my love to Hove,’ he said and, without further pleasantries, started the walk back to Stormhaven Towers.

  And the killer.

  Peter was deep in Loner’s Wood.

  He ran a steady pace through the dark and twisted trees, and dismissed the noise at first. The night has sounds all of its own, unheard in the day, and this was surely just another?

  On returning from Tide Mills, where Tamsin had behaved badly, he’d sat alone in his room for a while . . . but felt the need to get out. He needed to exhaust his body – the best way he knew to clarity of mind. And so in the running kit provided by PC Wilson, he’d set out across the Downs towards Hope Gap and then Cuckmere. He’d run past the famous Smugglers’ Cottages, silhouettes on the cliff edge, and then along the grassy path to the Cuckmere Inn offering lunches ‘from just £5.50’. He then turned on to the steep and winding Eastbourne road before stepping off into Loner’s Wood.

  The light was fading and the wood was obscurer still – shadowed and hidden even in daylight, with sky kept out by the thick overhang of oak, sycamore, conifer and ash. As Bart had said, it was a good place to run as long as you didn’t mind being alone in the dark. But now Peter was wondering if he was. It was dark – but was he alone?

  He reminded himself again, the night had its own conversation, this he knew. It was different in the desert night. There, you heard the rustle of the wind in your clothes, the camels’ snuffle and spit – but in between, and beneath a trillion stars, the silence hung heavy, allowing the soul to listen for subtler signs of life, information from the unknown inner regions. But here in England, there was noise. Perhaps a fox was on the prowl or a deer even – he’d seen a deer on Stormhaven golf course; there must be some families around.

  But the noise seemed to follow him – he did not leave it behind. And it possessed a thudding human quality . . . the quiet pounding of a runner on those soft woodland paths – though whether in front or behind, he couldn’t be sure. And so what? So what if another runner was out and about tonight? This was not private land. Why shouldn’t they be running here? It was probably a local runner, their paths crossing briefly. And so Peter continued, unsure of his bearings but glad to be out beneath the stars, with nothing to do but put one foot in front of another, to keep going.

  Was running spiritual? There was certainly health in it, beyond the merely physical . . . this, at least, was Peter’s sense. It was the tenacity required, the endurance – the willingness to make the mind and body do thi
ngs they do not want to do. These were good disciplines . . . though he had some way to go before reaching the endurance of the running monks of Mount Hie in Japan. They supposedly achieved enlightenment by completing a thousand marathons in a thousand days.

  It wasn’t quite as it sounded, however, as Peter had discovered: the thousand days did not have to be consecutive. Indeed, seven years was the normal length for this challenge. And it was also true that each marathon had a number of ‘shrine breaks’, with the monk pausing for prayer at holy places along the way. It was a different sort of marathon to those he’d endured in the Sahara – such desperate, relentless and dismantling affairs . . . not a shrine break in sight, just sun, rock and scrubland.

  The spiritual benefit of this practice, according to the Japanese monks, lay in the physical demands which exhausted the mind, the ego and the body, until nothing was left. ‘And when you are nothing,’ said one of them, ‘then something comes up to fill the space.’ And this something was the vast consciousness that lay below the surface of their lives, a sense of oneness with the universe . . . Peter had known such things.

  But in Loner’s Wood tonight, a sense of oneness had gone, replaced by a dread sense of two . . . a sense of hunter and hunted. Peter was being followed, he was sure of it now – and his heart beat in fear in a place he didn’t know. He’d keep on running, this seemed the best action, his mind racing; he’d aim for clearer ground, there must be some ahead. With luck, he’d find the Eastbourne road, wherever that was – he’d quite lost his bearings. There was no setting sun to guide him, just overbearing trees, opaque vision and the different rules of the night.

  And then suddenly, there was a noise behind him, approaching fast, the loud pounding of feet close at hand. Peter turned to his right, but it came from the left, a grunt of breath, a hand over his mouth – and laughing. Peter’s response was immediate, instinctive. He was at the assaulting arm, gripping the wrist, twisting it with desperate power, making it hurt, pulling it down and round, savage force, back up towards the aggressors shoulder – and then pushing him forward, falling together, another body beneath him as they hit the soft ground.

  And then Loner’s Wood went quiet.

  The ghost stood on Matron’s Landing.

  He was listening to the night, as often he did. The East Wing of Stormhaven Towers seemed quiet, but this was not the quiet of peace. A fearful silence hung in the dark corridors; a pleading silence which begged the angel of death to pass their door and leave them be, let them live to see the dawn.

  But no matter . . . the ghost would walk awhile, enjoy the space of the students departed. The school was so much better with them gone. In a dark cape and black safari hat he reached the Head’s Landing where the old grandfather clock ticked and tocked with heavy beat. He moved silently down the wooden staircase, past the portrait of Nathaniel Bleake, the school founder who stood forever at the top of the stairs, pride of place – though ignored in every other way.

  ‘They pay you nothing more than lip service, Nathaniel,’ said the ghost.

  And he did not speak out of turn. This school had drifted some way from its original vision, like a drugged animal with no memory of the days of its health. He continued down the stairs and let himself out by a side door. Schools have many side doors, doors away from public gaze, for trade, for cleaners, for gardeners and the like . . . and for those who wish to leave without being seen, for whom the main entrance is not appropriate, not doused enough in darkness for their purposes. He would be mindful of the policeman by the gate. He kept close to the walls, running his fingers along flint as he walked, smooth and sharp, the sun long gone in the western sky. ‘The day thou gavest Lord is ended,’ as he had once sung in the shadowy chapel to his left, in clearer and more certain times.

  The ghost noted another policeman hovering around the main entrance; and so he returned inside an alternative way, a small path round the side, a hidden area for the bins and then through another door away from public gaze. He walked silently along the corridor. He shouldn’t be here, it was unwise but he couldn’t help himself. He stopped by their door and listened. He heard the tap running, smelt soap, heard teeth being cleaned at the end of the day.

  And he felt sad, sharp pangs, for that is something they’d once shared – and never would again.

  Peter felt for blood

  at the side of his head, where he’d taken the hit. He expected blood, the wet feel of the damage done. He’d thudded against a gnarled root in the fall after the attack. Beside him, his attacker rolled in pleasing pain.

  ‘No need for evasive action, Abbot!’ Bart lay on the ground, rubbing his wrenched arm. He was angry at the abbot’s assault, the sharp twist and wrench, when he’d only been playing. He hadn’t meant anything by his midnight jape . . . it was just a joke. The abbot had not needed to act as he had, absolutely no way. ‘I saw you leave the school – and thought it would be fun to give chase.’

  There was no blood as far as Peter could tell . . . just fury at this stupid invasion of his solitude.

  ‘An attack from behind, the hand over my mouth – this was not fun,’ said Peter. ‘It was angry.’

  ‘But I didn’t mean anything by it – you’re making it more than it was.’ Peter got up from the ground; his only desire was to be away from this man. ‘I just wanted to give you a bit of scare, Abbot – in Loner’s Wood and all that! You know, like we spoke about. You didn’t need to assault me.’

  ‘I did need to assault you.’

  Bart remained on the ground, rubbing his arm.

  ‘You were like a mad man.’

  ‘Fear can make us mad . . . but tonight, I hope I was sane,’ said Peter. ‘It was a move I learned in the desert. Brother Sosimus, as I recall – a monk who’d previously been a policeman in Algiers. And if you want a quiet life, you don’t become a policeman in Algiers. It’s a defensive move, of course – damage limitation in the face of attack . . . your attack.’

  ‘It’s a shame you can’t take a joke.’

  Bart was in some pain and still on the ground. He was wondering if his arm was broken.

  ‘I’m going back to the school now,’ said Peter. ‘I expect you to as well – there’s a curfew after eleven. Otherwise you’ll be reported absent and have the police to deal with.’

  ‘I’m so scared!’ said Bart, sulkily – like this monk had any power over him!

  ‘And a police caution on your CV to aid further job applications,’ added Peter. ‘I don’t wish for your company on the return journey, however – so do find another way back to the school. And I hope your arm feels better in the morning.’

  This wasn’t completely true . . .

  ‘I said I could catch you,’ said Bart. ‘I just didn’t realize you were a psycho who can’t take a bit of fun.’

  ‘You first,’ said Peter, inviting Bart to start running. ‘I’ll leave after you.’

  The Director of Wellbeing rose to his feet awkwardly, leaf mould on his hands and face. For a frozen moment, they faced each other in Loner’s Wood – but it was Bart, the larger man, who backed down. ‘Till next time, Abbot,’ he said and then turned away and began the run home. He made off towards a copse that was almost a wood within a wood. Peter let him go. He’d seen the road ahead, a way out of the wood . . . and he had a ghost to catch.

  It was quiet in the common room,

  a gathering of restrained evening chat.

  ‘It does have the feeling of a tomb,’ said Geoff as he placed a sweet sherry on the table for Terence. ‘We really could be inside one of the pyramids.’

  ‘I wouldn’t know,’ said Terence crisply. ‘I have little experience of tombs.’

  ‘We’ll all get there eventually,’ said Geoff.

  ‘And if the tomb is like a quiet summer’s evening, then perhaps it’s not all bad.’

  Why be so depressed, Geoff? thought Terence. Really!

  ‘And you call this a quiet summer’s evening, Terence?’

  The bursar shrugge
d . . . while across the room, Holly struggled.

  Had Holly been with her friends, it would not have been a quiet summer’s evening . . . anything but. When Holly and her friends got together, they aimed for a screeching, dancing, vomiting oblivion by midnight . . . a reverie of excess away from the powers-that-be.

  ‘Here’s to the Oblivion Girls!’ they’d say, ‘Love you all and love you forever!’ But tonight, the Oblivion Girls seemed a long way away. Holly sat holding an amaretto on ice, bought for her by Penny. It seemed very grown up. Penny was sad, though, and unable to say much. So Holly found herself holding her hand, which was odd, because Mrs Rylands was Director of Girls and part of the Senior Management Team and Holly was – well, what was Holly now? Pupil? Old girl? Child? Adult? Blackmailer? For the first time, she felt slightly ridiculous in her Stormhaven Towers tracksuit, which had always been a home, a place of safety. It was as though that game was finished . . . but she wasn’t quite ready to leave the cocoon.

  ‘I didn’t know her very well,’ said Holly. It was Jennifer who Penny mourned and Holly didn’t know what to say, because she didn’t care a fig about Jennifer, not really; and adults were meant to cheer her up, not the other way round.

  Penny smiled.

  ‘You must look after Crispin,’ she said, in a mother-to-daughter way, looking to where he sat. Crispin was a lonely figure across the common room, staring out of the window at the last embers of the summer’s day. He wasn’t quite a man among men yet, still soft-skinned . . . and cautious.

  ‘Crispin doesn’t need looking after,’ said Holly with a dry chuckle. ‘He knows more than the rest of us put together.’

  ‘Really? He always seemed a rather shy boy to me.’

  ‘There’s not much that Crispin doesn’t see.’

  ‘Is that a note of admiration, Holly?’

  Penny squinted a little in mock intrigue, as women do in matters of love.