Seven Years

by Peter Robinson

  “Naturally, we employ several men in various capacities,” Ms. Langham went on, as if reading my thoughts, “but we most definitely do not accept male pupils.”

  “I see,” I said. “Of course not. My mistake.”

  She smiled, but it wasn’t in her eyes. “So sorry to disappoint. Now, if—”

  “I can’t imagine why my friend never mentioned this,” I said, rallying.

  “Friend?”

  “The friend who told me about this place. I must have got it mixed up with somewhere else.” I smiled.

  “You have no daughters, then, I assume?”

  “None.” I didn’t have any sons, either, but I wasn’t going to tell Ms. Langham that.

  “Then I’m afraid I can’t help you.”

  “I also have a book I’d like to return to you, a biography of Mary Shelley, with your school stamp. As I happened to passing this way, I just thought I’d drop in and… well…”

  Ms. Langham continued to stare suspiciously at me. I much preferred not being noticed.

  I took a deep breath. “She mentioned a Miss Scott, my friend did. When she asked me to return the misplaced library book. Apparently it belonged to a Miss Scott.”

  Ms. Langham frowned. “Miss Scott?”

  “Yes. I think Scott was the name.”

  “I’m afraid Miss Scott is no longer with us,” she said through tightening lips. “Look, what’s your game? What’s this all about? Why are you really here? Are you a reporter? Is that it? A private detective? One of the parents? We’ve dealt with the problem.”

  “Ms. Langham! I don’t see why you should leap to such conclusions merely because I asked about Miss Scott. Why assume I’m a reporter? Did she leave under a cloud or something? Was there a scandal?”

  “All I can tell you is that Miss Scott is no longer employed at this establishment. And now, if you’ll—”

  “Where is she?”

  “I really have no idea, and even if I did I wouldn’t tell you. Now I think it’s time you left before I call the police. As you can imagine, we have to take special care to keep an eye open for any suspicious looking males hanging around the premises.”

  At that, I jumped out of my chair and held out my hand, palm towards her. “There’s no need for that. I was just… I mean, I was simply…” I put my hand to my forehead and groaned. “Would you at least tell me when she left?”

  Her hand hovered over the telephone. “I don’t see as it’s any of your business, but she left our employ shortly after the beginning of term. Late September. About a month ago. Caused us more than a little trouble finding a replacement at such short notice, if truth be told.”

  “Was it a sudden departure?”

  She touched the handset and lifted it slightly from its rest. “Mr. Aitcheson, you really must leave now.”

  “All right,” I said, sitting down again and opening my briefcase. “All right. Please don’t do anything rash. I’m not a reporter or a detective. Just give me one minute, and I’ll show you why I’m here, if you’re interested. One minute. Please.”

  I could see her thinking it over. Finally, her curiosity got the better of her. She let the phone drop back in its cradle. “Very well,” she said, in the stern tone of a deputy headmistress. “Please illuminate me.”

  I decided on the spur of the moment to leave Mary Shelley out of it and put my cards on the table. I showed her the edition of Browning with the inscription. She read it, turned a little pale, I thought, then handed the book back to me and said. “There’s a decent pub in the village. The George and Dragon. Meet me there at half past twelve.” Then she walked over and opened the door. “Now I really must go.”

  “What did you say your occupation was, Mr. Aitcheson?” Ms. Langham asked as she sat opposite me in the George and Dragon, a rambling old country pub with a whitewashed facade, window boxes full of geraniums and a well-appointed dining room, with white tablecloths and solid, comfortable chairs.

  “I didn’t,” I answered her, “but I’m retired.”

  “From what?”

  “I was Professor of Classics. At Cambridge.”

  She nodded as if I had answered a question correctly. “Indeed you were.”

  “You’ve decided to trust me? You believe I’m not a reporter or a private eye?”

  Ms. Langham nodded and smiled. “After class, I Googled you. Quite an impressive career.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t say that.”

  “No need for false modesty, Professor Aitcheson. Catullus and Ovid, no less. Two of my favorites. I checked the school library, and we have your translations on our shelves. One of them even has a small author’s photograph on the back, which matches your photo on Wikipedia. And you in person, of course, though perhaps it was taken a few years ago?”

  “Ah, the computer age,” I said. “Yes, it was a few years ago, alas, and I had far more hair and a few less pounds then.”

  She laughed. “Look, if we’re going to talk about this business, we might as well be on a first name basis. I already know your name is Donald. I’m Alice.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Alice. So there is something to talk about, then?”

  Alice frowned. “I’m not sure yet, but I think there might be.” She tapped the book I had put on the table between us. “This is quite extraordinary,” she said, picking it up and rereading the inscription. “And another book in the same lot led you here?”

  “Yes. A biography of Mary Shelley. With the Linford School stamp. I didn’t want to mention it at first because… you know…”

  “You thought it might get this Miss Scott into trouble?”

  “Possibly.”

  “Very gentlemanly of you to lie to me about it, then. Though as we don’t know exactly who sold it to the second-hand bookshop, we shouldn’t be too fast to point the finger of blame. Perhaps someone stole it from her?”

  At this point, a young waitress, barely out her teens, came to take our orders. When I suggested we share a bottle of Chablis, Ms. Langham looked at me apologetically and said, “If I had an alcoholic drink at lunchtime, my pupils would surely smell it on my breath, and my life wouldn’t be worth living.” She glanced at the waitress and said, “Isn’t that right, Andrea?”

  The waitress blushed and nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I’ll have a diet tonic water, please.”

  I ordered a pint of bitter. “Ex pupil?” I asked, when Andrea had gone.

  Ms. Langham nodded. “Not one of our greatest successes, but I’m a firm believer in letting people find their own niche in life. Andrea wants to be an actress, so this is just a temporary stopgap for her. At least she hopes so. I must say, she made a passable Duchess of Malfi in the school production last year.”

  “I never imagined The Duchess of Malfi as the sort of play one performs in a girls’ boarding school. Or any school for that matter. A bit too bloodthirsty, surely?”

  Ms. Langham smiled. “Times have changed.”

  “So it would seem. I’m beginning to wonder exactly what sort of school Linford Hal is. The Duchess of Malfi? Translations of Catullus and Ovid in the library? ‘Porphyria’s Lover?’”

  She laughed. “You can’t blame us for that last one. Besides, we like to think of ourselves as progressive. Though we don’t have Ovid’s erotic poems, you understand. Just the Metamorphoses.”

  “Even so. I translated both volumes.”

  “I know.”

  Our drinks arrived and we gave our food orders to Andrea. I sipped my beer and watched Alice Langham as she read the inscription again. “This is what brought you here?” she asked. “Truly?”

  “Yes. I’m curious. Well, probably a bit more than that. You said yourself that you find it extraordinary. There’s something distinctly chilling about it, don’t you find? The tone of the inscription. The reference to enjoying poems about mu
rder and so on. The ‘bargain’ and the reference to time approaching. It could be a taunt, or even a thinly veiled threat, something intended to frighten her.”

  Alice Langham closed the book and slid it back over the white cloth. “Yes, I agree,” she said, giving a little shudder. “It’s really quite nasty. That’s why it interests me, too.”

  “Did you know Miss Scott?”

  “Oh, yes. I knew Marguerite Scott. Not well, but I knew her.”

  “And was she the kind to run off with school property?”

  “Not as far as I know. I’m sure the book was her own. She simply stamped it as an identifying mark.” Alice shrugged. “Even if it did belong to the school library, we’d hardly be bothered enough to hunt her down, or it.”

  “And the Browning?”

  “A gift, it seems.”

  “Do you know anyone called Barnes?”

  She shook her head. “No. That’s the puzzling thing. It doesn’t ring any bells at all. I mean, it’s not an uncommon name. I’ve racked my brains since we first talked. I’m certain we have had pupils called Barnes in the past, but we don’t have any at the moment. Of course, it needn’t be anyone connected with the school, though I will admit it sounds rather that way. Do you think Miss Scott is in danger? That reference to the time being near?”

  I nodded. “It’s possible. The book was sold to Gorman only a month ago, around the time you told me Miss Scott left Linford School, though there’s no telling how long she’d had it on her shelves before then, I suppose.”

  “But the danger could still be imminent, couldn’t it, if she sold the Browning as soon as she received it?”

  I nodded. “Something may have already happened to her. That’s one of the things I want to find out. Where she is. Whether this Barnes fellow has done her any harm. You wouldn’t tell me where Miss Scott lives before. Will you tell me now?”

  She gave me an address in a village a few miles from Beverley.

  “Is she still there?” I asked.

  “I assume so. Though she wouldn’t need to inform the school of a change of address.” She paused. “I remember seeing the place once. We were on our way to Beverley for a talk. Official teachers’ professional development day. For some reason, I was giving her a lift, and we passed this… mansion. She said I might not believe it, but it was where she lived. It was quite impressive. As I remember, it’s a rather palatial manor house in a desirable location. Her husband used to be something high up in finance. Born into money, too. Very well off, apparently. Anyway, it doesn’t sound like the kind of place one gives up so easily.”

  “I suppose not. Nor does it sound as if the person who lives in such a place needs to cart a box of old books to sell in Beverley. What happened to this husband?”

  “He died. Drowned, I believe. A swimming accident. I’m afraid I don’t know all the details. She never said any more than that and, well, it wasn’t something one pried into, disturbing old feelings and all, probing old wounds.”

  “Drowning, you say? An accident?”

  “That’s what she said.”

  “Hmm. How long ago did it happen?”

  “I’m not sure. Seven or eight years, or thereabouts. Before she came to Linford Hall, at any rate.”

  “Did Miss Scott come from around here?”

  “As far as I know, they’d always lived in the same house she’s in now, at least since they were married. I don’t know where Miss Scott lived before then. I think she taught in Hull for a while before she came here, though.”

  “I assume she didn’t need to work.”

  “I suppose not. But one thing I will say about Marguerite is that she’s an excellent teacher. She loved her job. She wasn’t the type to hang about the house all day and… well, do whatever people do when they hang around the house all day.”

  “I read quite a bit, watch old films, do a little gardening, go for—”

  Alice laughed. “I don’t mean you. You’re retired, and even though you’re entitled to be as lazy as you want, I’m sure you use your time most productively. Marguerite was a hard worker. I think she needed her job. Maybe not for the money, but because it meant something to her.”

  “Yet the school let her go. She never remarried?”

  “Not that I know of. And I think I would have known. After all, she was with us for four years. A wedding would have been hard to overlook.”

  “And the story behind her abrupt departure from Linford?”

  “Aha,” said Alice. Thereby hangs a tale. And she put her finger to her lips as Andrea delivered their meals.

  I have to confess that I had been expecting some titillating story of lesbianism in a girls’ boarding school, or perhaps a confirmation of my Lady Chatterley’s Lover theory, a sexual liaison between posh Miss Scott and the school groundskeeper or gardener. After all, what else could a teacher do that was terrible enough to lose him or her the job? It turned out that Linford School was a law unto itself in that respect.

  Crushes happened often enough, Alice told me, and in most cases they could nipped in the bud before they progressed to a serious level. Students had even had crushes on her, she admitted. Sexual assault, unwanted fondling and the like were much rarer, though a games mistress had been fired three years ago for squeezing a student’s breast.

  “Did a troublesome student have a crush on Marguerite Scott?” I asked.

  Alice shook her head. “No. Nothing like that. Unless it was an extremely well-kept secret.”

  “Which you think is unlikely?”

  “Yes. I’m sorry. It would be difficult to keep that sort of secret around Linford.”

  It turned out that Marguerite Scott’s sins had been of a very different order: persistent absenteeism and a fondness for the bottle being the chief among them, which perhaps helped explain Alice Langham’s reluctance to sample a glass of Chablis at lunchtime. The principal was a strict teetotaler, she told me, which hadn’t helped. Finally, Miss Scott had taken one day off too many and was discovered to be drunk in class after an extended lunch with an old friend. Had she played truant that time, rather than return to school in her inebriated state, her punishment might have been less severe. But not only had she returned to Linford Hall late that afternoon, she had driven her car there and parked it sloppily, scuffing the side of the biology teacher’s Toyota as she did so. The students in the one class she attempted to teach that afternoon complained that she was repeating herself, giggling and bumping into her desk, and that her writing on the blackboard was an illegible scrawl. One of them said that when she stood up to leave, Miss Scott pushed her back into her chair roughly.

  There was no breathalyzer except the principal herself, who deemed Marguerite Scott unfit to carry out her responsibilities, and as this wasn’t her first warning, she was to leave immediately. According to Alice, nobody seemed to have bothered to ask Miss Scott why she had acted in such a manner calculated to result in her dismissal, and it remained a mystery to this day.

  “How long had she been behaving that way: drinking, absenteeism?”

  “Only since after we got back from the summer holidays. Previous terms she’d been perfectly well behaved, if a little aloof and cool in her manner.”

  “Not warm and fuzzy, then?”

  “Not in the least.”

  “What happened next?”

  “Nothing. That was it. She left without a fuss. In fact, I happened to be quite near Gwyneth’s office at the time—that’s our principal, Gwyneth Morwyn—and you wouldn’t believe the language that came out of Marguerite Scott’s mouth. Well, perhaps you would, having been at Cambridge and all, but it was quite shocking to me at the time, and I’m no prude. So whether she had any chance at all of keeping her job when she went in for her little chat with Gwyneth, she certainly had ruined any possibility of forgiveness when she emerged.”

  “And none of you
kept in touch with her?”

  “No. She wasn’t… I mean, she didn’t really mix with the rest of the teaching staff. She was polite enough, but like I said, she always remained rather aloof. She made no effort to fit in. She never talked to us about her life, never shared experiences, asked advice or anything.”

  “The other teachers disliked her?”

  “I wouldn’t say disliked. Not actively, at any rate. But she certainly wasn’t well liked. She had no close friends at Linford. There was no strong connection, no sense of her belonging to the community. That time she pointed out her house, it was about all she said during the entire journey.”

  “And the drinking?”

  “Fairly recent, too. Definitely after we returned from the summer holidays. I mean, she wouldn’t have lasted as long as she did—which is about four years—if she’d been at the bottle the whole time. You can’t hide a thing like that in a closed community like a girls’ boarding school. It’s hard to keep secrets. I’m not saying she might not have been a secret drinker, at home, though I doubt even that.”

  “She had other secrets?”

  “Well, we all have secrets, Mr. Aitcheson.”

  “Donald, please.”

  “Donald, then. Perhaps she did, but they remain secrets. And I’m not only talking about shameful secrets and the like. She didn’t even participate in the normal day to day conversations in the staff room. Whether one fancies a particular actor, or actress, what kind of books, films, and music one likes, what one thinks of Brexit or the latest terrorist incident. Marguerite never joined in any of those sorts of discussions, let alone complained about her life, or a love affair, or anything. We didn’t even know if she had love affairs. She was a dark horse.”

  “And her behavior turned self-destructive only in the last few weeks of her tenure, as far as you know?”

  “Yes. The drinking, being even more anti-social, taking days off whenever she felt like it and not even bothering to report in sick. Of course, we didn’t know at the time, but it was probably because of hangovers.” She shook her head slowly.