‘You seem remarkably well equipped to deal with accidents of this sort,’ said the Commander.
‘Had to look after ourselves in Kenya,’ said Manifold. ‘You push off to bed.’
When the Commander had gone, Manifold washed his own hands carefully, took off his dressing gown, kicked off his slippers, and climbed into bed. But it was some time before he went to sleep.
10
The three boys were sitting on the edge of Joscelyne’s bed, which was the one nearest to the window. Outside a moon was lighting up the grounds of Trenchard House; a moon so full and golden that it seemed to be giving out heat as well as light.
‘It’s like being on one of those platforms,’ said Joscelyne. ‘Right up in the roof of the theatre, where they work the spotlights. Roger and Billy took me once.’
‘There’s that owl again,’ said McMurtrie. A white shadow had drifted across and disappeared into the top of the cedar.
‘It almost makes you believe in God, doesn’t it,’ said Sacher.
‘Almost. Don’t you always?’
‘Sometimes,’ said Sacher. ‘Sometimes. Do you think he’ll come tonight?’
‘It’s four days now. We’ll give it another ten minutes.’
Ten minutes had gone, and another five, and McMurtrie was on the point of saying, ‘Well, I’m going back to bed,’ when Joscelyne grabbed his arm. A figure was crossing the lawn.
‘It’s GG,’ said Joscelyne. ‘No mistaking him.’
‘Pacing the quarter-deck,’ said McMurtrie.
‘Hornblower in person,’ said Sacher.
‘What can he be up to?’ said McMurtrie. ‘He can’t be on the booze. All the pubs will be shut by this time.’
‘HoId it,’ said Joscelyne. ‘Here comes the next one.’
A second figure had emerged from the shadows and was now crossing the lawn.
‘Our Mr Manifold,’ said McMurtrie. ‘Following GG. Just like he was last time. What can he be up to?’
Sacher said, ‘I meant to tell you, but somehow I forgot. It was when all that business was on up at the embassy. You know TEF sent for me. He had Colonel Brabazon with him, so I had to hang about outside. I heard a good deal of what they said.’
‘Well?’
‘Did you know Sergeant Baker’s really a policeman? He’s here to keep an eye on me.’
‘Stale.’
‘We’d guessed that years ago.’
‘Go on.’
‘Well, TEF said something about Mr Manifold having been put in as an extra precaution to help Sergeant Baker for the rest of this term.’
‘I thought as much,’ said McMurtrie complacently. ‘Didn’t I tell you, Joss?’
‘If you thought that you were wrong. He’s not. When TEF said that, the Colonel sounded quite surprised. He said, “Oh, he’s nothing to do with us”.’
‘Then what the hell is he doing here?’ said McMurtrie.
Joscelyne said, ‘I suppose he could be – what he says he is.’
‘Nonsense,’ said Sacher. ‘He’s no more a school master than my Aunt Hepzibah. We could easily find out. Let’s go and search his room.’
The three boys looked at each other. It was a night made for excitement and discovery.
‘We’ll be beaten for sure if we’re caught,’ said Joscelyne.
‘Why should we be caught?’ said McMurtrie. ‘it’s only on the floor below. Manifold and GG are safely out of the way. Connie’s the only other one who sleeps in that passage. If he comes out and catches us, all Jared’s got to do is give him a sweet smile and he’ll buckle at the knees and won’t say a word.’
Sacher punched him absent-mindedly in the stomach while they considered the project.
‘We’ll never get another chance like this,’ said McMurtrie. ‘Count me in.’
‘I suppose I could always plead I was led astray by evil companions,’ said Joscelyne.
‘Bring your torch,’ said Sacher. ‘We might as well do the job properly.’
The three boys crept along the passage, stepped carefully over the creaking board at the end, and went down the narrow back stair which led to the floor below. Here, too, the moonlight was flooding in through the windows, filling the place with light.
The room at the end of the passage was Latrobe’s. They stood outside his door for a moment and were relieved to hear a gentle rhythmic snore.
‘Beautiful, isn’t it,’ whispered McMurtrie. ‘Like a purling brook.’
‘Tonsils most probably,’ said Sacher. ‘Come on.’
They opened the door of Manifold’s room and peeped in. The windows here were on the other side and the moon was masked. The torch came into play.
‘Don’t shine it out of the window, you goat,’ said Sacher. ‘Keep it down on the floor.’
‘It’s spooky, isn’t it,’ said Joscelyne. ‘Now I know just how burglars feel.’
‘I expect they get used to it,’ said Sacher. ‘Just like any other job, really.’ He was much the coolest of the three. ‘If there’s anything here at all, it’ll be in one of those small drawers I should imagine. What we’re looking for is papers. They might give us a clue.’
The right hand small drawer contained nothing but handkerchiefs and socks. The left-hand drawer turned out to be locked.
‘Well, that’s that,’ said Joscelyne. ‘Let’s get back to bed.’
‘I’m not sure,’ said Sacher.
‘What are you trying to do?’ said McMurtrie. ‘If you bust it open it’ll be obvious–’
‘I’m not going to bust anything,’ said Sacher. ‘It’s a rickety old piece of furniture and I believe–’
As he was speaking he removed the right-hand drawer completely and laid it on the bed. Then he put his hand in, got his fingers underneath the end of the left-hand drawer, tilted it, and pushed.
It came open.
‘Hey presto.’
‘Nothing in it but an old pullover,’ said Joscelyne. ‘What a swindle.’
‘There’s something wrapped up in the pullover,’ said McMurtrie.
It was an automatic pistol, with a bulbous black attachment on the end of the barrel. The three boys stared at it in fascinated silence.
Joscelyne said, in a whisper, ‘Wrap it up again and put it back, quick.’
There was no argument. Three minutes later they were back in their own room.
‘What are we going to do?’ said McMurtrie.
‘We ought to tell someone.’
‘Who?’
‘And what?’ said Joscelyne.
It was a difficult question. They debated it for some time.
‘The fact that he’s got a gun doesn’t actually prove anything,’ said Sacher. ‘Lots of people have got guns nowadays.’
‘It’s against the law.’
‘Not if you’ve got a licence.’
‘Why should a school master have a licence? They only give them to policemen and people like that.’
‘If we do tell TEF we’d have to tell him how we found out,’ said Joscelyne. ‘Then we’d be for it, no question.’
They thought about this.
McMurtrie suddenly gave vent to an enormous yawn. He said, ‘We’ll talk it over in the morning. We’ll think of something to do.’
In a very few minutes they were all three asleep; too fast asleep to hear the Commander, who returned an hour later, or Manifold who was later still. Only the owl in the cedar tree saw them.
‘Arrangements for our annual cricket match against St Catherine’s tomorrow,’ said the Headmaster to the school assembled after breakfast. ‘Boys who have already notified me will be allowed out with their parents from twelve o’clock. The game will start at two thirty. You are encouraged to bring your parents to watch it, but it’s not obligatory, However, tea in the marquee will be for boys with parents only. In other words the possession of a parent constitutes a tea-ticket. Any boy in One-A or One-B not actually playing or with a parent can come in and help to hand round. And I mean hand round, Gedge.’
This was a reference to the occasion a year before when Monty Gedge had attached himself to a plate of cucumber sandwiches and eaten the lot.
‘Anything else, Mr Ware?’
‘Nothing, Headmaster. Except that this year I suggest we might win the match for a change.’
‘Agreed. Yes, McMurtrie?’
‘What about the carpentry class, sir?’
This normally took place at twelve o’clock on Wednesdays and Saturdays.
‘We’ll have to postpone that. We’ll see if Mr Bishop can work in an extra hour next Monday. You might go down in break and tell him.’
‘Right, sir,’ said McMurtrie. And later, to Joscelyne and Sacher, ‘I thought it would work.’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘What I said. I’ll want all the twopenny pieces we can raise.’
A whip-round produced three.
‘It should be enough,’ said McMurtrie. ‘I’ll go the back way, and that’ll give me plenty of time.’
The back way involved crawling through the overgrown shrubberies on the far side of the school grounds, squeezing through a very narrow gap in the iron railings behind them, crossing the first side road, jumping the ditch and pushing through the hedge on the far side of it, following a path between allotment gardens and finally emerging almost opposite Mr Bishop’s house and wood yard.
McMurtrie, on an occasion when he had been left behind at school for the first week of the holidays, had worked out this route as a quick and unobtrusive way of getting into the village.
He found Mr Bishop at the back of his yard. Having given him the message about the change in times, he stopped for a few moments to look round. It was a place he was very fond of. There were stacks of cut and uncut timber, an array of circular saws, automatic planers and sizers and heaps and heaps of fresh sawdust all over the floor. The smell was entrancing. Lucky Mr Bishop to work in this heavenly place and not in some depressing factory.
‘You’re after sweets, or would it be cigarettes?’ said Mr Bishop.
In the past he had acted as purveyor of both for the boys in his class. It was an additional reason for taking up carpentry.
‘Neither, this time, your right reverence,’ said McMurtrie. ‘I’ve got some telephoning to do.’
‘A girlfriend, I expect.’
‘Naturally.’
The telephone box was a few yards up the side road. It was immediately opposite the big shed which stood at the bottom of old Mr Merriam’s garden. No danger of poor old Mr Merriam seeing him. He would be anchored to his chair in the back room. Elizabeth might have spotted him, if she had been there, but he was pretty certain that she was up at the school. Even if she had seen him, he doubted if she would have reported him. He didn’t rank her with the Establishment.
The telephone box was empty. McMurtrie arranged the three twopenny pieces carefully on the ledge beside the telephone, lifted the receiver, and dialled a number.
It was a number which he had been told to remember, and not to write down. When the pips came he pushed in a coin and a woman’s voice said, ‘Hullo’.
To his relief he recognized it. It was his father’s secretary, a competent but kind middle-aged Scotswoman called Miss Lindsay. She said, ‘And what can we do for you, Master Alastair?’
‘Do you think I could have a word with my father? And if you have to fetch him, please fetch him quickly, because I’ve only got two more twopences.’
‘It would take more than four pennyworth of time to reach him just now. When we last had word of him he was in Beirut.’
‘Oh dear.’
‘He’s due back any day. Is there something I can do for you?’
McMurtrie thought quickly. Miss Lindsay was discreet and reliable. He said, ‘What I wanted someone to do was to check up on one of the masters at this school.’
‘I see.’
Miss Lindsay sounded unsurprised.
‘He says he was at a school in Cheshire, called Broughton House.’
‘Spell it.’
‘I’m not sure, but I think it starts B-R-O-U-G-H-’
‘A preparatory school?’
‘Yes. It’s in Cheshire. And it closed down at the end of last term because of drains.’
‘That shouldn’t be too difficult. Has he a name?’
‘Hold on whilst I put in another twopence. Yes. His name’s Manifold. Kenneth Manifold.’
‘And if I get any information, would you like me to telephone you?’
‘You can’t do that. Mrs Fairfax – she’s the Headmaster’s wife – she listens in to anything anyone says on the school telephone. Could you write it to me?’
‘I’ll do that.’
‘Thanks awfully.’
When McMurtrie had rung off, Miss Lindsay sat for a few minutes thinking. There were only two agencies of any standing which dealt with preparatory schools, and she felt sure that an enquiry to one or other of them, backed by the authority of her office, would quickly produce the information that young Alastair required.
But she was not only discreet. She was also knowledgeable. She knew a good deal of what went on in the block of offices overlooking St James’ Park underground station. After a few moments of reflection she rejected the outside telephone and dialled instead a number on the internal line.
The voice that answered was young and cheerful. She said, ‘Would you mind coming up and having a word, Tony? Something rather odd has just happened.’
11
‘Raymond would have loved to be here, but he’s in Kuwait.’
‘Herbert will be with you next term. His weak point is his hips.’
Taken separately these observations would have needed handling. Running neck and neck, they taxed even an experienced Headmaster’s wife like Lucy. She managed to bestow an understanding smile on Mrs Shepherd, indicating concern for Herbert Shepherd’s hips and said to Mrs Paxton, ‘Goodness, he must be hot.’
‘The temperature in summer reached a hundred and four in the shade. And the humidity approaches a hundred per cent.’
‘Poor man! Poor you, too! Having to cope with everything at home.’
Seeing she had lost her audience, Mrs Shepherd switched to Elizabeth, who was trying to fill up the bowling analysis page for a keen but inexpert scorer and said, ‘He dislocated them when he was two, and they never really set properly.’
‘Why have I got too many dots?’
‘You don’t count wides and no-balls. They go somewhere else. I’m sorry, Mrs Shepherd. You were telling me about Herbert.’
‘It is difficult,’ said Mrs Paxton. ‘It’s a big house, and it takes a good deal of running. With both boys away at school, and Raymond abroad so much, well it positively rattles. I’ve got a girl who comes in by day to do the rough work but–’
‘But you’re all alone at night?’
‘Except for Tommy.’
‘Tommy?’
‘Our Alsatian.’
‘Oh, I see. He must be a great comfort. I seem to remember Terence telling me that you were rather isolated.’
‘A hundred yards from the main road. And with all these unpleasant men about–’
‘I wouldn’t care for it,’ said Lucy, ‘Every time you open the papers you seem to see about some wretched girl or child who’s been assaulted.’
‘Yes, indeed,’ said Mrs Paxton, who had been steering the conversation in this direction with the skill to be expected of a barrister’s wife, so that she could produce her tit-bit at the appropriate moment. ‘We had the police round only two days ago about that.’
‘About what?’
‘Do you remember that horrible case, near Horsham, about a fortnight ago? The boy who was tortured and then killed.’
‘Of course. Yes,’ said Lucy absently. ‘I thought they’d caught the man.’
‘Not yet. But they know a lot about him. Confidentially–’ Mrs Paxton leant towards Lucy and away from Mrs Shepherd, ‘they know roughly where he lives and they know all about hi
s car. The make and the colour, and things like that. And they’re searching every conceivable place until they find it. They looked in our garage, and an old shed at the bottom of the garden, and beat through the woods. I believe they’ve got more than two hundred men on the search.’
‘Four,’ said Elizabeth. ‘Tick it off in the box and put it down in the analysis. That’s right, you’re getting the hang of it, aren’t you?’
‘I think I can do it myself now, Miss Shaw.’
‘Take it away and try. There’s another four.’
‘They seem to be making a lot of runs,’ said Mrs Shepherd.
‘They’ve about twice our numbers,’ said Elizabeth. ‘And the boys always seem to be so big. They’re a Roman Catholic school, of course.’
It was a theory, firmly believed at Trenchard House, that Roman Catholic schools, in some crafty papistical way, succeeded in holding on to their pupils to a greater age than Protestant establishments, and that this accounted for the fact that they always seemed to win their matches. There was a story, current in the lower forms, that on one occasion the St Catherine’s fast bowler had actually sported a moustache. Whatever the truth of the matter, their run of success had been unbroken for the last five years.
When Nigel had suggested that they might reverse the trend, he had not been speaking solely out of hope. There were reasons for his optimism. He himself was an excellent cricketer and a sound, if rather impatient coach. And for once in a way he had good material to work on.
McMurtrie and Paxton were passable bowlers, good enough to keep the opposition scoring down to a reasonable total. Sacher was a flashy bat and a remarkably agile slip fielder. But the stars of the team were the Warlock twins. Their father, Robin Warlock, was not only an actor. He was a cricketer of ability who captained the Stage cricket club and had featured in numerous charity matches. Roger and Billy were following in his footsteps, not because of any hereditary flair, but because their father had determined to make them into cricketers. He had them coached in the Christmas holidays at an indoor school, and in the Easter holidays at the nets at Lord’s.
Night of the Twelfth Page 10