I, Dreyfus

by Bernice Rubens

  A few weeks later – we were already approaching the Easter vacation – I again found George loitering outside my study. This time I was determined to question him. But as I approached, I saw James Turncastle walking quickly down the corridor, and I watched as he reached George, put a strong arm about his shoulders and hurried him out of my reach. The incident disturbed me, and again I knew not why.

  The following morning, as I was working in my study after assembly, a knock came at my door. It was matron. She looked very flustered.

  ‘Sir,’ she blurted out, ‘George Tilbury is missing. He hasn’t answered to the register and … and …’

  ‘And what, Matron?’ I asked, hearing my thunderous heartbeat.

  ‘His bed hasn’t been slept in.’ She was almost weeping. ‘And all his clothes are still there.’ Then she broke down completely.

  ‘We must start a search,’ I said. I tried to hide my agitation but my heart was full of foreboding. call the upper school to assembly in hall.’

  This was quickly done and, within ten minutes of Matron’s call, I was appraising the boys and some of the staff of George Tilbury’s disappearance. Dr Reynolds took charge of the search of the grounds and outbuildings, while I myself led a party of boys about the school proper. We arranged to meet again at lunch-hour, unless George had been traced before that time.

  ‘We have to find him,’ I told them. I tried to hide the panic in my voice.

  They set off, the grounds search-party, while I led my troops through the nooks and crannies of the school. At lunch-time, we reassembled. There had been no sightings. I ordered the search to be continued throughout the day until darkness fell. And by then it was clear that George Tilbury had simply disappeared.

  At this stage I find it hard to go on writing. I’ve tried to read aloud what I’ve written, but without a listener, I know with certainty that it is not fiction. George Tilbury went missing on that day, and nothing would ever be the same again.

  Chapter 19

  Rebecca Morris had traced James Turncastle’s Devonian aunt. She had located the clinic where James was being treated but she had failed to gain admission as she was not his next of kin. The receptionist had given her the name and address of James’s aunt, to whom enquiries should be directed. Rebecca did not write for an appointment, for she feared a refusal. So she went in person. She found that Miss Turncastle lived close to the seashore, in a richly appointed villa surrounded by a vast and well-laundered garden, but there were no forbidding iron gates, nor the sound of dogs. A gardener noted but ignored her approach as she drove up the gravelled drive and rang the single bell in the middle of the oaken door. A uniformed maid answered her ring and asked her what she wanted.

  ‘Could I see Miss Turncastle?’ she asked.

  ‘Is she expecting you?’

  ‘No. But I called on the off-chance. I’m a friend of her nephew James,’ she said. She knew she was taking a risk but she could think of no other reason for wishing to see her.

  The maid invited her inside and told her to wait in the hall. Rebecca looked around the panelled walls. There was little to indicate the nature of the character who dwelt therein. The maid returned quickly and almost begged her to follow. Rebecca had the impression that Miss Turncastle had not received a visitor in a long while.

  She was sitting in a stiff upright chair in the drawing-room, although she was surrounded by comfortable loungers. It became her, that seating, Rebecca thought. She wore a rigid look on a face that was a stranger to a smile, her upper lip curled in perpetual disdain, and her nostrils quivered faintly. The woman fairly stank of piety.

  ‘You’re a friend of James,’ she said. She did not invite Rebecca to take a seat. She wished to assume the position of cross-examiner.

  ‘Yes,’ Rebecca answered. She would not elaborate unless she was called upon to do so.

  ‘A great disappointment to his parents, that boy,’ Miss Turncastle said. She sniffed as punctuation. ‘My brother gave him everything.’

  Everything except love, Rebecca thought. She waited for Miss Turncastle to continue. She needed to know as much as possible about James, and his aunt was very forthcoming.

  ‘I volunteered to care for him while they were abroad,’ she said, ‘and it was a thankless job I can tell you. The boy has no gratitude.’ Rebecca wondered what he should be grateful for. But Miss Turncastle was about to tell her.

  ‘I gave him a good home in the holidays. No shortage of food, and he’s not a small eater. He had his own room and he didn’t have to do a thing for himself. He sulked most of the time. Didn’t seem to make any friends. Understandable I suppose,’ she concluded. She still had not offered Rebecca a seat. Now, what is it you want?’ she said.

  ‘I heard that James was ill. I wanted to know what’s the matter with him, and how he’s getting on.’

  ‘I don’t know whether you can call it ill,’ the woman said. ‘They say he’s had a breakdown, though he could of course be putting it on. He’s a bit of a liar, our James.’

  ‘But why should he have a breakdown?’ Rebecca insisted.

  ‘Well if it really is what they say it is, it’s probably guilt. It’s always guilt, isn’t it, a breakdown. Guilt.’ Miss Turncastle relished the word, donating it at least three syllables. ‘He’s got plenty to feel guilty about.’

  Rebecca felt that at last she was getting somewhere. ‘Like what?’ she asked.

  ‘Like what? I’ve already told you. Of letting his father down. Isn’t that enough for a breakdown? I don’t know how the boy can live with such guilt.’

  Rebecca wanted to grasp the woman’s turkey neck and screw it tight. She was tired of standing and wondered whether she dared take a seat. But she was too cowardly.

  ‘D’you visit him?’ Rebecca asked.

  ‘I’ve been once,’ the woman said, ‘but he didn’t welcome me. I shall not go again.’

  ‘What about his parents?’

  ‘I’ve written to them of course and told them about the situation. They’ve asked to be kept informed and I shall do as they wish.’

  Rebecca saw no point in staying. She was not prepared to be the receptacle for Miss Turncastle’s spleen. She was depressed too. There was no hope of a clue from James. But she would find some excuse to keep in touch with the clinic. For her part she did not wish to see Miss Turncastle again.

  ‘I must be going now,’ she said.

  ‘The maid will show you out,’ Miss Turncastle muttered. She did not move one inch in her chair. She simply sat there and waited for gratitude.

  Rebecca was glad to return to her car, if only to sit down. But she didn’t dawdle. She wanted to get out of those grounds as quickly as possible. It was only when she was a few miles beyond the Turncastle estate that she turned into a lay-by and conducted a sad board meeting with herself. It could well be, she accepted, that Miss Turncastle was right. That an overwhelming guilt had precipitated James’s breakdown. But the poor boy could feel guilty about many things, and his rotten father was only one of them. She needed to feel that James’s guilt was connected to the Dreyfus trial. She had to think in those terms, else her quest was futile. She remembered that she had a psychiatrist acquaintance. She would enlist his support as soon as she returned. She drove out of the lay-by and speeded towards London. She wanted very much to be with Matthew.

  As he had promised, Sam went again to the prison for an updated reading. And it was just as well. For in no other way would his friend have continued his narrative without believing that it was fiction. For worse was to come. And Dreyfus knew it.

  Chapter 20

  I needed to know whether George had gone back to his home but I was wary of phoning his parents as I did not want to panic them. But after our fruitless search I could postpone it no longer. I would ascertain that George had not gone home – for some reason I doubted that easy solution – then I would alert the police.

  Sir Henry himself answered the phone. I came straight to the point. I saw no reason for a preamb
le, nor could I have fashioned one.

  ‘Is George, by any chance, at home?’

  ‘Of course not,’ Sir Henry said. ‘Why did you ask?’

  ‘He seems to be missing,’ I said, though there was no ‘seems’ about it.

  ‘Missing?’ he shouted at me, as if it were I who had lost him. ‘Since when?’

  Then I heard Lady Tilbury’s voice. ‘What’s the matter dear?’

  Then a pause. Then a scream.

  ‘Since when has he been missing?’

  ‘We don’t know,’ I said. ‘His bed wasn’t slept in last night.’

  ‘Have the police been informed?’

  ‘I shall do that now,’ I said. ‘I wanted to ring you first. But we’ve been searching all day.’

  ‘I’m leaving now,’ Sir Henry said. ‘I’ll be at the school in a couple of hours.’ He put the phone down before I could say any more. In any case, there was nothing more to say. I looked at my watch: 7.30. It was going to be a long night.

  With a sinking heart, I dialled the local police station. Perhaps I should have informed them earlier, as soon as George had been reported missing. But at that time I had harboured a faint hope that he might be found and I didn’t want a production made out of it. I had the reputation of the school in mind. I was wrong. I should have called them right away. God help me, but they wouldn’t have found him. I know that now. But they should have been given a chance.

  Very soon, three members of the local police force, all in plain clothes, arrived at the school, and in their presence George’s disappearance assumed an altogether different colouring. It was suddenly attached to crime. I called the policemen into my study, together with Dr Reynolds, and after a few preliminary enquiries they outlined their plan of campaign. An official search would go out in the morning at first light. The small lake on the boundaries of the school grounds would be drained. Many pupils, especially those in George’s house, would be questioned, as well as his teachers and Matron. They asked permission to start with the teachers straightaway.

  ‘Perhaps we could start with you, Sir Alfred,’ they said.

  Dr Reynolds rose to go. ‘I shall be in my study,’ he said. I was alone and I felt if not accused then certainly responsible. I answered their questions freely, for I had nothing to hide. I realised that, although I felt a special attachment to George, I knew very little about him. I mentioned that I had seen him on the day before when he was loitering outside my study. But I didn’t teach the boy and probably knew less about him than the other masters. ‘Mr Eccles will help you there,’ I added.

  The interview was of short duration. I had told them all that I could. Then I directed them to Dr Reynold’s study and told them that he would introduce them to other teachers, as I had to wait for George’s father, who would be arriving within the hour.

  ‘An unpleasant business,’ one of the inspectors said. ‘Always is with children.’ His voice was laced with pessimism. I dreaded the arrival of Sir Henry.

  But there were worse arrivals in the shape of two reporters from the local newspaper. They had received a tip-off from the station and lost no time in scooping the story. I couldn’t deny them an interview, but played it down as well as I could. I knew that it was now only a matter of time before the invasion of the national press. The reporters ferreted round the school for a while, and I didn’t stop them, as matters had already gone far beyond my control. Lucy was concerned as much for me as for George. She made a cauldron of hot soup to keep the inspectors on their toes, and she even doled it out to the reporters. All the while she said nothing. She had caught their pessimism. She did not even talk to me, for she knew that we both feared the worst.

  Sir Henry Tilbury drove past the school and came straight to my house. I took him into the drawing-room. I was glad that Lady Tilbury was not with him.

  ‘Did anything happen to upset him?’ was Sir Henry’s first question. Was he bullied in any way?’

  ‘Not as far as I know,’ I said. ‘And I would have noticed bullying. Mr Eccles might know more.’

  I don’t know why I kept referring to Eccles. With no logical reason, I sensed that he held a key. ‘Only yesterday,’ I said, ‘I saw George hanging about outside my study, and I had the feeling he wanted to tell me something. But he must have changed his mind. In any case, a friend of his came along and they both walked away. Perhaps it was nothing at all,’ I said. But in my mind, I felt it was a key of sorts and I blamed myself for not insisting that he talk to me. ‘The police are in the school now,’ I went on. ‘I’m sure they’d want to talk to you, and you to them.’

  ‘May I phone my wife?’ he asked. ‘She’s frantic with worry. She insisted on staying at home in case George turns up. But she’s there alone.’

  ‘Of course,’ I said and, pointing to the phone on the table beside him, I left the room. I couldn’t imagine what words they would find to say to each other. Where were the words for ‘no news’, a ‘search party’, ‘divers’, and the ‘draining of a lake’. No words at all. Just a silence of shared despair.

  I went to the kitchen, carrying that same silence with me. I noticed that Lucy had been crying and her tears irritated me. They seemed to have come to a premature conclusion. I shed no tears, but I have to confess that I shared her worst fears. It was clear that no one of us would go to bed that night. Later the two reporters tapped on our door to say goodnight and to give thanks for the soup. Then they rushed away to file their stories. I would make a point of not buying the local paper in the morning.

  The inspectors were still interviewing. I invited Matron into the house. I knew she would not be able to sleep, so she paced our kitchen as a change from her own. In time the inspectors left and what remained of the night was absorbed unnoticed into the day. At morning assembly I announced George’s disappearance to the whole of the school and the chaplain offered up prayers for his safe return. And after assembly the inspectors returned. The school routine was totally disrupted but I accepted that necessity. There was an air of excitement amongst the boys owing to the thrill of survival. Sir Henry had joined the search party and I was relieved that an event had interfered with his silence.

  I felt powerless, and I shut myself in my study for longed-for privacy. And I phoned Matthew. I caught him just as he was going to work, but he gave me time to listen to my story. Even then, surrounded as I was by society, I needed a listener. Matthew said nothing, but I sensed his horror and sympathy down the line. When I had finished, he offered to come down. I told him there was nothing he could do, but that I would keep him informed.

  But he didn’t need me as a courier. The story was splashed soon enough across the lunch-time edition of the London evening newspaper. ‘CABINET MINISTER’S SON MISSING’ was the headline and beneath it a photograph showed Sir Henry at the centre of the search party. During the day the reporters came in their hordes, and from all over England. They carried their notebooks and cameras and thinly veiled enthusiasm. Amongst them there was a television film crew. They found enough boys willing to talk to them, but few teachers volunteered and Matron gave them very short shrift and told them to go back where they had come from. I handed them a prepared statement which provided nothing more than the facts that they already knew but I could not avoid the photographers. It seemed to me that the person of young George Tilbury was slowly disappearing under a cloud of reportage. Somewhere, out there, George was wandering, either in body or in spirit, but the search and the lake-draining had grabbed the headlines and the cause was obliterated in its effect.

  Lady Tilbury arrived later that afternoon and Lucy comforted her as well as she could. She had left someone in the house in case George made any contact, with instructions to phone the school immediately. And every time the phone rang, which it did frequently that day, she inhaled with hope, only to breathe out her terror. After a remedial cup of tea, which cured nothing, she insisted on joining the search. From reports from the outside I knew that divers had entered the lake and I was loath to esco
rt her to the lakeside to find them drawing a blank, or worse, making a discovery. But she insisted. So I took her there, muttering all the while about not giving up hope, and trying to imbue my voice with some confidence.

  She joined her husband at the lake and I noticed a clutch of photographers at the ready, their fingers on the trigger, waiting for the kill. I turned away with some excuse that I had people waiting to see me and I returned to the school.

  Night fell with no findings, and the search was planned to include the village and the nearest town. By the morning Scotland Yard had joined in the enquiries. And more inspectors visited the school.

  Over the next few days while George’s disappearance was causing more and more concern, a number of boys and some teachers were asked to go down to the station to make statements to the police. I noted that all the boys called were of the Eccles group. Eccles himself was not summoned though I’d noticed that even during the disruption of routine he had still managed to host his tea-parties in his study. David Solomon was the only outsider who went down to the station. And that was understandable because he was George’s friend. Yet I noticed a certain reluctance in his gait. It lacked the willingness and even the eagerness of the others. He looked at me as he was led away, and gave a sad shrug of his shoulders. Of the teachers, there were two. Smith of geography, with whom I had a distant relationship – he rather disapproved of my constant availability to the boys – and Jones from maths in the lower school, with whom I’d had little contact.

  George had been gone for over a week, and the search party were running out of places to look. Sir Henry and Lady Tilbury had returned home and sat together in silence waiting for the knock on the door. Term was nearly over and I tried to reorganise our old routine. But in going back to regular lessons and assemblies it seemed that we had written George off, that his disappearance was a mystery that was never likely to be solved. No clues had been found, no arrests had been made. There were not even suspicious rumours around. But something was different. Very different. And it disturbed me. I noticed that, at my lunch-table, some of the chairs were empty. Eccles and Fenby were faithful regulars, as was Dr Reynolds, my deputy. But Smith, I noticed, was eating amongst the members of his house, and Brown from chemistry was nowhere to be seen. When I spoke at assembly every morning, I referred to George’s disappearance with prayers and hopes for his safety. And while I spoke, I heard rustling in the hall, and murmuring, and even at one point, a grunt of disdain. Dr Reynolds called for order, but I was completely unnerved, and when it was over, I went straight to my study, and for the first time in my life I was afraid. More than afraid. Terrified. And I didn’t know why.