‘That is all, gentlemen. You will naturally be curious as to the details of the affair, but I am not allowed to say more than I have. By this evening, no doubt, it will all be public property. In the meantime, let us have as happy and successful a day as we can.’
He gestured dismissal, and after a moment’s hesitation Peterkin, the second master, moved forward. ‘I’m sure I’m speaking for all my colleagues, when I say that we shall do our utmost to – to carry out your wishes.’
A murmur of concurrence was followed by a brief, uncertain hush. Then they filed out, slowly and mutely. Fen would have given much to see into their minds. He went to join the headmaster.
‘Everyone here, sir,’ Galbraith reported.
‘Good,’ said the headmaster. ‘I’m glad that’s over…And now, chapel.’
They emerged from Hubbard’s Building, in the wake of a furtively murmuring band of dominies, as the bell began tolling. The many groups lingering on the site veered towards it, and an ambling, disorganized procession began. To Stagge – his lapel lifted so that his prominent nose might more effectively take in the scent of the yellow rose in his buttonhole – the substance of the meeting was conveyed. Galbraith left them and hurried back to the study in Davenant’s.
‘What now?’ Fen demanded.
‘I think,’ said Stagge, ‘that I’ll have a look at the common room, while everyone’s out of the way.’
‘I shall go to the service, then, and meet you afterwards.’
‘Very well, sir. Later on I’m going to investigate Mr Somers’ rooms. I don’t know if you’d like to come with me…’
‘I’ll be there,’ Fen promised.
He walked to the chapel with the headmaster, who immediately disappeared through the vestry door, and waited, contemplating the crowded approaches, until the cessation of the bell warned everyone to go inside. Fen had no ticket, but he persuaded Wells to allow him into one of the galleries, and stood at the back throughout the service, observing with faint amusement an inordinate degree of surreptitious whispering in the masters’ stalls. The choir processed in red and white with the chaplain and the headmaster bringing up the rear, prayers were read, hymns were sung and canticles chanted in voices of electrifying volume and timbre, the headmaster expatiated on such few topics as are simultaneously appropriate to prize-givings and the Christian religion, and Parry’s Jerusalem brought the proceedings to a noisily idealistic close.
Fen slipped out a little before the end, and, lighting a cigarette, walked back across the empty site to Hubbard’s Building. Through a gap in the beech trees he could see the river, with a single swan dipping its beak and head into the water with the luxurious deliberation of an epicure placing a spoon in a coffee cup. Oblongs of radiant emerald among the dry grass of the playing fields marked the cricket pitches, and the heat was refracted fiercely from the asphalt paths. Mr Merrythought was stretched at full length under a tree; a sparrow watched him with the cheerful insouciance of a street arab. Thousands of feet up, a skylark sang in adoration of the sun. Light flashed, swift and dazzling, from the windscreens and polished metal of the long line of parked cars. Turning as he came to the porch of Hubbard’s Building, Fen saw the crowds emerging from the chapel, and spreading out like a jet of multicoloured steam from a narrow orifice. The clock chimed the half hour.
Stagge, grimy and flushed with effort, was still in the common room; his work, he admitted morosely, had met with no success, and he still had the downstairs classrooms to examine. Fen commiserated mildly, refrained from offering to help, and went outside again. On leaving chapel, the boys had abandoned their relatives and hurried back to their houses to change. The headmaster was drifting sociably from group to importunate group. Old boys of three months’ standing strolled aggressively about with pipes in their mouths, unsuccessfully attempting to conceal their automatic subservience to erstwhile form masters and housemasters. Presently the return of the boys, clad now in white vests, blue shorts and running shoes, made it clear that the display was about to begin. The Corps band arrived, their well-polished instruments glittering in the sun, and assembled by the cricket pavilion. An audience of parents, masters, old boys and domestic staff gathered at the edge of the field. The boys disposed themselves in orderly ranks on the turf. Major Percival, adjutant to the Corps and gymnastics instructor, climbed a stepladder with a large grey megaphone in his hand, and surveyed them complacently. The clock struck a quarter to eleven. ‘Attention!’ said Major Percival through his megaphone, and was instantaneously obeyed. Sergeant Shelley lifted his baton. Mr Merrythought fell into a spasm of premonitory barking. Conversation flickered, faded, died. The band, squinting down their noses at the music clipped to their instruments, launched into a Sousa march.
For twenty minutes – while the band played marches, waltzes and pot-pourris, and Major Percival bellowed words of command – the school waved its arms and legs, stood on its head, bent and unbent, turned somersaults, marched and countermarched; all with a clockwork precision which drew murmurs of admiration from its progenitors and a qualified approval from its temporal pastors. Certainly they made a colourful and attractive spectacle, Fen thought, and then told himself regretfully that he ought to be more usefully occupied than in gazing at colourful and attractive spectacles. Loose ends must be tidied up; the case had been exceptionally straightforward and obvious so far (the problem of motive apart), but it might be useful to have confirmation on one or two points. He looked about him, perceived a middle-aged master standing alone some few yards off, and went up to him. ‘I wonder,’ he said, ‘if you’d mind pointing out Mr Etherege to me?’
‘I am Etherege,’ said the middle-aged master. He took Fen’s hand and then dropped it suddenly, as though it were a nettle. ‘I’m very pleased to meet you,’ he went on. ‘Your boy is doing splendidly. I have great hopes for him.’
‘No, no,’ said Fen. ‘I’m not a parent.’
‘Indeed?’ said Mr Etherege civilly, and shook hands again, in the same perfunctory fashion as before. He had neat dark hair, thin at the crown, and wore horn-rimmed spectacles. Despite the disreputable hacking coat and grey flannel trousers which he wore beneath his gown, he was overwhelmingly urbane, with the air of an impoverished but unrepentant aristocrat. Fen introduced himself, and Mr Etherege, apparently on the point of shaking hands a third time, thought better of it and gestured, instead, at the school’s gyrations.
‘Are you enjoying this?’ he asked.
‘Tolerably well,’ said Fen. ‘It has the unexacting, boneless charm of a ballet.’
‘It represents Discipline,’ said Mr Etherege, whose question had clearly been less a demand for information than a pretext for some discussion of his own. ‘And to the uninstructed mind, Uniformity.’ His abstract nouns were audibly furnished with capital letters. ‘But the latter notion is fallacious.’
‘No doubt,’ said Fen. He perceived that this incipient homily required punctuation rather than argument.
‘Fallacious,’ Mr Etherege proceeded, ‘because the attempt to produce Uniformity inevitably accentuates Eccentricity. It makes Eccentricity, as it were, safe. It is only when a boy is thrown on his own devices, in business or at the university, that he tends to become typed. Man is a gregarious animal. At school Gregariousness is compulsory and inescapable, and thus encourages its opposite. But in the world at large, a man who desires the company of his fellows is compelled to associate himself with some broadly defined Category – the sportif, the artistic, the studious and whatnot – and in so doing has the sharp edges of the Individuality rubbed away. It is only in a place like this that you can be sure of finding freaks.’
‘Ah,’ said Fen.
‘In fact, much of the criticism of the public schools is based on a childish psychological Error – to wit, that the adolescent mind is receptive rather than critical. This is simply untrue. The customary left-wing objections to a preponderance of schoolmasters of the conservative persuasion are therefore foolish. In these matters,
the senior boys always take the view diametrically opposed to that of their instructors. To install socialist masters would inevitably result in a nationwide revival of Conservatism.’
Mr Etherege paused upon this magniloquent prognosis, and Fen grasped the opportunity of changing the topic. ‘Interesting,’ he observed not untruthfully. ‘Love, then, must have encouraged libertinism, and Somers – what did he encourage?’
‘Somers lacked personality,’ said Mr Etherege, ‘with the result that he neither encouraged nor discouraged anything.’
‘And he also, I take it, lacked money.’
‘His salary was three hundred and seventy pounds a year,’ Mr Etherege stated tranquilly, ‘and the balance in his bank account, when he died, must have been about a hundred and fifty pounds. Therefore it’s inconceivable that he was murdered for profit. He had made no will, so that what little he had will go to a very well-to-do aunt in Middlesbrough, who is his nearest relation. He had no particular friends and no particular enemies, so that murder from personal motives is almost equally inconceivable.’
‘What about women?’
‘His sexual life,’ said Mr Etherege didactically, ‘was confined to one young woman named Sonia Delaney, who works as a mannequin at a West End store, and whom he visited once or twice each holidays. The arrangement was a purely commercial one, and I see no possibility of any complications there.’
‘Then you’re at a loss to suggest any motive for his murder?’
‘I am at a loss,’ Mr Etherege admitted dolefully. His expression reminded Fen of a cricketer who has missed a particularly easy catch.
‘And as regards Love?’
‘Love,’ said Mr Etherege with something like venom, ‘was an automaton, not a human being.’ It was clear that Mr Etherege was peeved at Love’s failure to supply grist to his highly efficient mill. ‘He and his wife were temperamentally incompatible. She might have killed him.’
‘In fact, she did not.’
‘No? Then most probably he was interfering with some harmless vice, and its practitioner turned on him.’
‘Sonia Delaney?’
Mr Etherege shook his head. ‘He knew about her.’
‘And raised no objection? I thought Somers was his protégé.’
‘Love was a puritan, but not undiscriminating.’ Mr Etherege, whose face during the last few moments had been wrinkled with discomfort, now produced a large handkerchief and blew into it with such violence as to suggest that he was attempting to emulate the effect of Roland’s horn at Roncesvalles. ‘Hay fever,’ he explained. ‘What was I saying?’
‘You were saying that Love’s puritanism was not indiscriminate.’
‘Exactly. It was a commercial puritanism, so to speak, concerned above all with money. Love no doubt objected to Somers having a mistress, but he would have objected far more if, for example, Somers had been attempting to cheat the Inland Revenue.’
The band was by now playing the vapid strains of the Merry Widow waltz. A commercial puritanism, Fen thought: that fitted well enough with Love’s statement about a fraud. Otherwise Mr Etherege had not so far been conspicuously helpful, for all his astoundingly detailed knowledge. The problem of motive would have to be tackled from some other standpoint.
‘Do you mind,’ Fen said, ‘if I ask you one or two more questions?’
Mr Etherege simultaneously sneezed and uttered assent. The resultant sound caused a momentary consternation among their immediate neighbours. ‘That’s better,’ he said, plying his handkerchief vigorously. ‘That’s cleared it. Yes, ask anything you like. I’ve already been approached on the matter of the reports. If you’re wanting to know anything about them, I can tell you quite definitely that when I left the common room at ten last evening Somers had ninety-seven to write.’
‘Your information seems extraordinarily exact.’
‘It is,’ said Mr Etherege rather smugly. ‘In this particular instance there is, of course, a good reason for that. Immediately following the first period yesterday afternoon I asked Somers when he was likely to finish his report. You must understand that I knew he would be late with them, on account of his wrist. He said he proposed to begin them at ten that evening and hand them over to Wells at eleven. I completed my own reports earlier in the evening, and as it seemed to me that he would have his work cut out to do the job in the stated time, I counted the number he had to fill in. As I say, it was ninety-seven.’
‘And can you say which ninety-seven?’
Mr Etherege sneezed again. ‘Oh, yes,’ he observed when he had recovered. ‘For the good reason that Wells took the remainder down to his office at ten.’
‘Useful,’ Fen commented. ‘Tell me more. Was Wells’ regularity, in renewing the blotting paper and sitting in his office between ten and eleven, generally known?’
‘Most certainly.’
‘And Love’s chronometric habits?’
‘Likewise a recurrent and tedious joke.’
‘Good. Have you noticed anything odd about Love’s behaviour recently?’
‘Yes. I mentioned it to Somers only yesterday. He seemed to be brooding over some injury.’ A look of occupational frustration appeared on Mr Etherege’s urbane countenance. ‘But what the injury was,’ he added morosely, ‘I don’t know. Nor, apparently, did Somers.’
‘How did Somers come to sprain his wrist?’
‘He fell off his bicycle,’ said Mr Etherege, ‘about a week ago.’
‘Did anyone see this happen?’
‘About five hundred people, I should say. It happened in front of Hubbard’s Building just as we were all coming out of early school. He was trying to avoid some idiot boy who wasn’t looking where he was going. A very nasty sprain, I may add; I saw it myself.’
‘Did Somers always use black ink?’
‘Ever since I’ve known him he’s used it.’
‘Ah,’ said Fen pensively, ‘and in that case—’
He was interrupted by a round of applause. The display was at an end. Major Percival climbed down from his step-ladder. The band trudged away to rid itself of its instruments, the boys returned to their houses to change, and the spectators, for the most part infirm of purpose, began wandering slowly and vaguely about.
‘Is there anything more?’ Mr Etherege asked, pinching the bridge of his nose to stifle a threatened sneeze. ‘Because I see two parents bearing down on me.’
‘Nothing, thanks. You’ve been most helpful.’
Mr Etherege released his nose, sneezed instantly, and contemplated the approaching couple with visible dismay. ‘I cannot imagine,’ he said, ‘why so ill-favoured a pair should feel it incumbent upon them to breed…Excuse me.’ He went up to the male partner and took him limply by the hand. ‘Very pleased to meet you,’ he said. ‘Your boy is doing splendidly. I have great hopes for him.’
Fen left him, went in pursuit of Sergeant Shelley, who was heading for the armoury, and caught him up almost at its door. He made himself known, and Shelley saluted him with respect. Shelley was an old professional soldier who had been obliged to leave the regular army because of gastric trouble. Though he carried himself rigidly, he looked far from well. He had rheumy blue eyes, close-cropped hair, a pale face, a small moustache and (Fen was interested to notice) a pronounced cockney accent. And he possessed that habit of pertinence and economy of words which a military career often induces.
‘I should like, if I may, to ask you a few questions,’ Fen said without preliminary. ‘Have you heard any rumour of what happened last night?’
‘A bare outline, sir, from Wells.’
‘Admirable. Then I needn’t take up your time with explanations. A .38 revolver was used in both cases, and we want to know if by any chance it came from the armoury.’
‘I thought of that, sir, and I was just going to look. I ’aven’t ’ad a chance to do it up to now.’
‘Let’s go inside, then.’
The sergeant took a key from his pocket and unlocked the door. The armoury wa
s no more than a low, oblong wooden hut, extremely stuffy, and so inadequately furnished with windows that even on this brilliant morning it was necessary to switch on the electric light. There was a pervasive smell of oil. A very large number of antiquated rifles stood in racks along the walls. At the far end, other equipment – belts, haversacks, water bottles – lay in heaps. An imprisoned fly buzzed vehemently against one of the dusty panes, and Shelley’s boots were loud on the uneven planks of the floor.
He went immediately to a sizeable cupboard and opened it, Fen noting that it was kept unlocked.
‘The ammunition’s kept ’ere, sir,’ he said. ‘Mostly blanks, o’ course. But there ought to be three Colt .38s, and some cartridges to go with ’em.’
His examination of the cupboard lasted only a few moments. ‘You were quite right, sir,’ he said. ‘One of ’em’s gone.’ He dragged out a cardboard box with a green label and opened it. ‘An’ this box o’ cartridges ought to be full, only it ain’t.’
‘What about the silencer?’ Fen asked.
Shelley looked blank for an instant, then, ‘Oh, I get you, sir. The one Mr Somers gave me. I’d almost forgotten about it.’ He rummaged again in the cupboard. ‘That’s gorn, too,’ he said presently.
‘Surely it’s rather risky to leave that cupboard unlocked?’
‘Well, not really, sir. I’m always ’ere when the boys come in to fetch their rifles, and when they put ’em back again. And the rest of the time the armoury’s shut up.’
‘How many keys are there?’
‘There’s me own, sir, and there’s one that’s kept in the orderly room, and Wells ’as one – ’e ’as all the keys – and the ’eadmaster ’as one which is kept in ’is secretary’s room.’
Love Lies Bleeding Page 9