By now the site was filled with ambling droves of boys, converging on Hubbard’s Building with books and files under their arms. And among them the headmaster observed Mr Philpotts, running across the dry grass towards Davenant’s.
Mr Philpotts was a chemistry master whose principal characteristic lay in a sort of unfocused vehemence, resulting in all probability from an overplus of natural energy. He was a small, stringy man of about fifty, with immense horn-rimmed spectacles, a long, sharp nose, and an unusual capacity for garrulous incoherence. In his present haste lay no reason for apprehension or surprise; he always ran, in preference, apparently, to walking. But unfortunately he was of a complaining disposition; the smallest upset was liable to bring him scurrying to the headmaster’s study, full of ire and outraged dignity; and the headmaster, watching his approach, had little doubt that in another minute or so Mr Philpotts would be assaulting his ear with some complicated tale of woe.
The prospect did not depress him unduly, since the wrongs and affronts which Mr Philpotts suffered seldom demanded more than a little tact in their settlement. And so, when Mr Philpotts knocked on the study door, it was with a cheerful voice that the headmaster invited him in.
It soon became plain, however, that Mr Philpotts had something of more than ordinary importance to relate.
‘A scandal, headmaster,’ he panted. ‘A most dangerous and wanton act.’
He was invited to sit down, but declined.
‘The perpetrator must be found and punished,’ he proceeded. ‘Most severely punished. Never in all my experience as an assistant master—’
‘What is the matter, Philpotts?’ the headmaster interposed with some severity. ‘Begin at the beginning, please.’
‘A theft,’ said Mr Philpotts emphatically. ‘Nothing more nor less than a theft.’
‘What has been stolen?’
‘That’s exactly the point,’ Mr Philpotts spluttered. ‘I don’t know. There’s no means of telling. I can’t be always stocktaking. There isn’t the time. And what with Common Entrance, and speech day, and the mid-term reports—’
‘Then something has been taken from the chemistry laboratory?’ the headmaster demanded after a moment’s rapid diagnosis.
‘A cupboard has been forced open,’ Mr Philpotts explained with indignation. ‘Forced open and rifled. I warn you, headmaster, that I cannot hold myself responsible. Many’s the time I’ve said the locks were inadequate. Many’s the time—’
‘No one is attempting to blame you, Philpotts,’ said the headmaster smoothly. ‘What does this cupboard contain?’
‘Acids,’ said Mr Philpotts with unusual directness and pertinence. ‘For the most part, acids.’
‘A good deal of poisonous stuff, in fact?’
‘Exactly. That is what makes the offence so serious.’ Mr Philpotts inhaled violently, by way of expressing his disapproval. ‘You see, no doubt, how serious it is?’
‘Certainly I see, Philpotts,’ said the headmaster with considerable asperity. ‘By some miracle, my judicial faculties are still functioning…You have no idea what, if anything, is missing?’
‘I presume that something is missing,’ said Mr Philpotts tartly. ‘Otherwise there would seem to be little point in breaking open the cupboard…The only thing I can say definitely is that no very large quantity of any substance has been taken.’
The headmaster said, ‘Very well. I shall have to consider what’s the best thing to do. In the meantime, will you see to it that the chemistry laboratory is kept locked whenever it’s not actually in use? It’s rather late in the day for such precautions, but we don’t want to be caught out a second time…By the way, when did you discover this?’
‘Last period this morning, headmaster. I wasn’t teaching until then. I can guarantee, too, that the cupboard was all right at five o’clock yesterday afternoon, because I had occasion to put some apparatus away in it.’
‘All right, Philpotts,’ said the headmaster. ‘I’ll let you know as soon as I’ve decided what steps to take.’
Mr Philpotts’ nodded importantly, left the room, and bounded away in the direction of the science building. As the headmaster returned to his window, the tolling of the school bell ceased, and such boys as were still on their way began running. A few moments later, as the clock struck two, the headmaster heard the distant trilling of the electric bell in Hubbard’s Building. A flushed and desperate latecomer scampered past, and in a last frantic burst of speed vanished from sight. There was peace.
But the headmaster scarcely appreciated it. A theft of poison – even a conjectured theft – was, as Mr Philpotts had platitudinously observed, a serious matter. Moreover, it was far from easy to decide on any effective course of action. The guilty person was not necessarily a boy – indeed the headmaster inclined, in the absence of definite evidence, to dismiss this hypothesis. But there were the groundsmen, the members of the staff, the public (who could move with relative freedom about the school premises) and, of course, Brenda Boyce, who on Williams’ showing had definitely been in the science building on the previous evening…
He bit irritably at the stem of his pipe. Though he was averse from informing the police, it was obviously his duty to do so. Very reluctantly he reached for the telephone.
It was at about this moment that Mr Etherege left the masters’ common room with Michael Somers. And as both of them were going in the same direction, they fell into conversation.
Somers was the youngest member of the Castrevenford staff – a slim, tall, wiry man, good looking but for a hint of effeminacy in the smallness and regularity of his features. He had smooth black hair, and a tenor voice whose agreeable modulations held a suspicion of artifice and self-consciousness. He taught English, and with conspicuous competence, but he was not popular with the boys, and the headmaster, who had a certain respect for the merciless perspicuity of the young, was inclined privately to distrust him on that ground. Experience had taught the headmaster that the principal, if not the only, reason for a master’s unpopularity was insincerity. Mere severity never affected the boys’ judgment unless it was associated with hypocrisy or cant; and leniency – Somers was notoriously lenient – was a bribe which by itself was incapable of winning their affection.
Somers’ colleagues regarded him with mixed feelings; the current of his conceit, though subliminal, was strong enough to be perceived. But Mr Etherege, who reputedly was devoid both of morality and of human affections, assessed his fellow-beings solely by the criterion of their suitability as an audience for his own utterances; and since Somers was appreciative and attentive, Mr Etherege held him impeccable.
‘And what,’ Mr Etherege demanded, ‘is the matter with Love?’ He was referring not to the passion which drowned Leander, but to one of his senior colleagues.
Somers looked surprised. ‘The matter?’ he said. ‘I didn’t know anything was the matter with him. How do you mean?’
Clearly this reply was disappointing to Mr Etherege. In addition to his other eccentricities he operated as a kind of central clearing house for Castrevenford scandal. In some ineluctable fashion he managed to acquire the most intimate information about everyone and everything, and he was always prepared to pass it on. But now, a likely well-spring having dried up, he was slightly aggrieved. And certainly, if Somers was ignorant of Love’s temperamental disorders, there was not much enlightenment to be hoped for elsewhere. Love had been Somers’ housemaster at Merfield, and Somers was very much his protégé. Mr Etherege sighed.
‘I should have thought,’ he said reproachfully as they toiled up a flight of stone stairs, ‘that you would have noticed it.’
‘I’ve hardly seen him for the past week,’ Somers explained.
‘He seems to be consumed by some inner fury,’ said Mr Etherege. ‘He’s touchy, irascible and uncivil. Love, I freely admit, is not an exuberant man at the best of times, his innate puritanism is too strong. But this phase is quite exceptional. Obviously something has annoyed him very much
.’
‘He tends to sulk,’ said Somers, ‘whenever things aren’t exactly to his liking.’
This comment struck Mr Etherege as being too obvious and uninteresting to require affirmation, or indeed, an answer of any kind.
‘In fact,’ he proceeded, ‘the school is overburdened with mysteries at the moment…By the way, how is your wrist?’ He pointed to Somers’ right arm, which was protected by a sling.
‘Pretty well recovered, thanks. But what’s all this about mysteries?’
‘You’ve surely heard about the theft from the science building?’
‘Oh, that. Yes. Philpotts told me when I was on my way in to school this afternoon.’
‘And about the High School girl?’
‘No. What High School girl?’
‘She had an assignation with J. H. Williams in the science building,’ said Mr Etherege. ‘That in itself would be nothing out of the ordinary, of course. But it appears, in the first place, that Williams didn’t turn up, since he was headed off by that busybody Pargiton; and in the second place, that the girl arrived home in a state of great distress and trembling…What do you make of that?’
They had come to the door of Somers’ form room. A half-apprehensive murmur of conversation was audible from inside. Somers shrugged, and said:
‘Could she have had anything to do with the theft?’
‘Up to the present,’ said Mr Etherege, ‘she’s refused to say a word. But it’s sinister, Somers, undeniably sinister. It’s exactly the sort of situation which ends in murder.’
The afternoon wore away. The headmaster, having telephoned the police station, spoken to the superintendent, and received the promise of a visit immediately after tea, went on to the dictating and signing of letters and notices. At two forty-five he dismissed Galbraith, his secretary, into the next room and went to his window to watch the school disperse. On Fridays, afternoon school was bisected by the JTC parade, so that the second period began at a quarter to five instead of a quarter to three. The electric bell jangled in Hubbard’s Building, and the headmaster heard the murmur of released tension which followed. It grew quickly to an uproar, compounded of the scraping of desks and chairs, the banging of books, and the clatter of feet on wooden staircases, with overtures of talk and whistling. A throng of some five hundred boys poured out of the doorways, the khaki of their uniforms interspersed here and there with the blue of the Air Training Corps, and the diurnal grey of the medically unfit, clutching files, rubbing at their belts with the sleeves of their tunics, saluting the occasional non-militant master who, his work for the moment finished, mounted his bicycle and rode off down the drive. In the quarter-hour break the boys dispersed to their houses, their heavy Corps boots rattling on the asphalt. Presently the site was again deserted, save for an infrequent group of boys or masters waiting for the parade to begin. The sun shone fiercely, and the leaves of the oaks threw a network of dappled shadow over the drive. The sky was cloudless and vividly blue.
At such a time as this the headmaster was generally visited by one or two members of his staff in search of instruction or enlightenment, but on this particular day he was uninterrupted, and before long returned to his desk and began rather somnolently to prepare the address he was to give at the chapel service on the morrow. From time to time a bellow of command, or the tramp of marching and countermarching, drifted through the open windows from the parade ground. And the hands of the clock on the mantelpiece stood at four when a small red sports car of exceptional stridency and raffishness pulled up outside Davenant’s and Gervase Fen, Professor of English Language and Literature in the University of Oxford, extracted himself laboriously from it.
He was a tall, lanky man, a little over forty years of age. His face was cheerful, ruddy and clean-shaven, with shrewd and humorous ice-blue eyes, and he had on a grey suit, a green tie embellished with mermaids, and an extraordinary hat. He gave the car a laudatory pat on the bonnet, at which it suddenly backfired, and gazed about him with vague approbation until the headmaster emerged to greet him and conduct him into the study, where he slumped down into an armchair.
‘Well, well,’ said the headmaster. ‘It’s most kind of you to help us out like this, at the last moment; particularly as we haven’t seen one another for so many years. What have you been doing with yourself?’
‘Detecting,’ Fen replied with great complacency.
‘Oh, ah. Of course. I’ve read the reports in the papers. There seems to have been a great deal of crime at Oxford just recently.’
‘Do you never read Matthew Arnold?’ Fen demanded. ‘Oxford is proverbially the home of lost corpses.’
The headmaster chuckled, rang for Galbraith, and ordered tea. ‘You’ve come at the right time,’ he said when the secretary had departed. ‘We have a couple of minor mysteries of our own.’
‘Oh?’
‘And possibly of a criminal nature. I’m expecting the local superintendent of police after tea.’
Fen raised his eyebrows. ‘Do explain,’ he said.
The headmaster explained. Warming to his subject, he passed from the episode of the cupboard to the unaccountable behaviour of Brenda Boyce. Fen listened attentively, and when the headmaster had finished:
‘Yes,’ he remarked, ‘I think you were wise to tell the police.’
His host grimaced wryly. ‘I’m afraid they’ll have a good deal to say about our leaving chemicals in such an accessible place.’
‘Can you rely on them to act discreetly?’
‘Oh, yes. Stagge is a very sensible man.’ The headmaster paused expectantly. ‘Well, have you any suggestions?’
‘None, my dear Horace. There are a good many possible explanations – most of them innocuous, I may say – and nothing to show which is the right one. Not enough data, in fact. What kind of advice do you want, anyway?’
‘The girl,’ said the headmaster slowly, ‘isn’t really my affair. Whatever upset her pretty certainly happened after she’d left the rehearsal. On the other hand, there is a link with the chemistry laboratory business in the fact that she arranged to meet Williams in the science building.’
‘Could you make an announcement about this theft to the school?’
‘I scarcely think it would have any effect. And besides, I have an irrational conviction that no boy was responsible. I can’t explain it, I’m afraid; it’s simply that in the pattern of schoolboy behaviour, which I know tolerably well, this thing doesn’t fit. You occasionally get a boy who steals – yes. But what he steals is almost invariably money or food.’
For a moment they were both silent. The Corps parade was over, and through the windows they could see a mob of boys streaming into Davenant’s, noisily intent on tea. Fen frowned.
‘About this man Philpotts—’ he began, but interrupted himself to listen to some indefinite bumping and scratching sounds outside the study door. ‘What on earth’s that?’ he enquired.
‘You’ll see,’ said the headmaster a trifle grimly. He got to his feet, went to the door, and opened it. A dog came in.
‘Good God,’ said Fen in a muffled voice.
The dog was a large, forbidding bloodhound, on whose aboriginal colour and shape one or two other breeds had been more or less successfully superimposed. He stood just inside the doorway, unnervingly immobile, and fixed Fen with a malevolent and hypnotic stare.
‘This,’ said the headmaster, ‘is Mr Merrythought…He’s rather old,’ he added, hoping perhaps to distract attention from the singular inappositeness of the name. ‘In fact, I might almost say he was very old indeed.’
‘Is he’ – Fen spoke with great caution, rather as Balaam’s ass must have spoken after perceiving the surprise and alarm created by his first attempt – ‘is he yours?’
The headmaster shook his head. ‘He isn’t anybody’s, really. He belonged to a master who died, and now he just wanders about the site. He ought to be put away, really,’ said the headmaster, regarding Mr Merrythought with considerable distaste. �
�The trouble is, you see, that he’s liable to homicidal fits.’
‘Oh,’ said Fen. ‘Oh.’
‘They happen about once every three months. As a matter of fact there’s one due about now.’
‘Indeed.’
‘But don’t worry,’ the headmaster remarked cheerfully. ‘He likes you. He’s taken quite a liking to you.’
Fen did not appear much pleased by this disclosure. ‘I see no signs of it,’ he objected.
‘He would have bitten you by now,’ the headmaster explained, ‘if he hadn’t liked you.’
At this, Mr Merrythought lurched suddenly forward and began to advance slowly on Fen, who said, ‘Now look what you’ve done.’
‘Don’t be alarmed,’ said the headmaster, standing well out of Mr Merrythought’s path. ‘He wants to make friends.’
But Fen was not able to accept this assurance. ‘Go away,’ he adjured Mr Merrythought. ‘Go away at once.’
‘You mustn’t cross him,’ said the headmaster. ‘It’s fatal to cross him, because then he has a fit. That’s why I had to get up and let him in.’
By this time Mr Merrythought had come up to Fen, who was gazing at him with unconcealed apprehension. Still glaring balefully, Mr Merrythought lowered his head on to Fen’s knees (‘There,’ said the headmaster), and in this posture brooded for some moments, dribbling slightly the while. Presently he went away and began trying to climb on to a table.
‘Well,’ said the headmaster briskly, ‘now that he’s found something to occupy him…You were asking about Philpotts, I think.’
‘Yes,’ said Fen, shifting his chair so as to keep Mr Merrythought well in view. ‘Yes. Quite. Philpotts…Is he a temporary master?’
‘No. On the permanent staff. He’s been here for years.’
Love Lies Bleeding Page 3