by Alice Castle
She felt flustered, and cursed herself for having wasted precious time on what was probably going to turn out to be a wild goose chase over at the Prep School. She should have stayed here and polished all her folders, got everything ready for the official inspection she now realised she’d accidentally brought down on herself. She fumbled at the heavy, ugly padlock, which had been put on the door with more speed than finesse by the porter, and finally let the two men in. The new mortice lock couldn’t be fitted too soon.
Once ushered into the small space, the two men and Beth barely had space to turn round, and it immediately began to feel just as cramped as the corridor outside. Though the archive office was now clear of all the boxes which, as far as she knew, had been stacked there for years, the men looked around the room without comment. She hadn’t been expecting lavish compliments on her organisational abilities – though that would have been nice – but some sort of recognition of all the hard work she’d done would have gone down well.
It didn’t come.
‘I wish I could offer you both seats, but as you see there’s only one chair and a fold-away one over there,’ she fussed.
‘Miss Haldane, Beth, you take the seat. No, I insist,’ said the Head, ever urbane even in these cramped surroundings. ‘Now, the Bursar tells me you have stumbled across something rather… disturbing… in our archives here.’
Beth noted the word ‘our’ applied to the archives. Was he giving her a subtle reminder that whatever she had found belonged to the school, and was not hers to do with as she wished?
‘That’s right, it’s a very… serious discovery, and naturally I wanted to make you, both of you, aware of it as soon as I possibly could. I think it may have… implications, given the murder of Dr Jenkins.’
The Head held up his palm. ‘Now, now, Beth. Let’s deal with one thing at a time. I don’t think any of us need to leap to any conclusions, however tempting that may be. Let us simply consider the facts. First of all, we need to see this information that you have uncovered.’
‘Of course.’ Beth leapt out of her seat and then realised she was going to have to disclose the ledgers’ hiding place. She cursed herself again for wasting time earlier. If she’d come straight back here, she could have had the ledgers on her desk and they would probably then still have been safe on the shelves. Damn. All right, the hiding place was not exactly Fort Knox, but it had done its job and the ledgers seemed so at home tucked away, with all the secrets they contained, on her shelves. But there was nothing for it.
She stepped forward and slid the first of the books out of line and laid it reverently down on the little table. The men crowded around it, one on each side of Beth, the three of them peering at the black leather cover with its patina of age. She slid on the cotton gloves and opened the ledger to the page she had marked. Both men leaned in closer to make sense of the faded words. Then both leaned back. If the atmosphere in the room had been less electric, the synchronicity of their movements would have amused her. But this was serious.
The men looked at each other. The Bursar’s florid face was for once devoid of its patronising smile, but as usual, one of his legs was jiggling restlessly. The Headmaster’s shrewd eyes were guarded. Even his billowing Hermes tie seemed less colourful all of a sudden.
‘What the hell do we do with this?’ said the Bursar tersely. The Head said nothing, but steepled his fingers in front of his face, bowed his forehead, and thought. Both Beth and Tom Seasons stared at him. Beth felt a pang of pity for the man.
The school was not having a great fortnight.
First, a grisly murder on the premises, now the revelation that the entire school foundation relied upon the proceeds of slavery. The Headmaster lifted his head from his hands for a second, and he looked hunted. This was going to be very hard to play.
Luckily for Wyatt’s, Dr Grover was a very clever man. He was not going to rush into any revelations, but nor, Beth was sure, would he brush this under the carpet. ‘Right. I need to give this matter some serious thought. Thank you for bringing it to my attention, Beth,’ he said, with a faint bow in her direction.
Beth was grateful that his reaction was so different from that of the Bursar. She glanced at him but, if she was expecting thanks or even an apology from that quarter, she’d have quite a wait.
The Bursar slanted a look of dislike at her, swiftly masked with his usual hefty bonhomie. ‘Nothing Wyatt’s can’t deal with, eh?’ he joshed, but the words sounded empty and the Head didn’t respond.
‘I’ll be calling the Board of Governors this afternoon. We need to have a properly thought-out strategy on all of this. At the moment, I’d be grateful if you didn’t discuss this with outsiders.’ Dr Grover addressed the remarks to them both, but she sensed they were meant for her. She was reluctant to respond.
She was convinced that Jenkins’ death was linked with the ledgers, and she felt that the greatest safety lay in making sure as many people as possible knew the secret. That way, if the murderer did intend to do away with people in the know, he’d have a packed field to deal with before he got to her and Ben. She knew it was selfish, but she could justify it with perfect ease every time she thought of her son.
Luckily for her, the Bursar piped up with a hearty, ‘Of course, of course,’ which seemed to cover them both, and Beth smiled gladly.
She shut the door on them both a few moments later. The Head was going to have a busy afternoon, on the phone to the shocked Governors. Beth didn’t know any of them personally, but they were the great and good of Dulwich and beyond. They included bigwigs from the City, as well as a BBC high-up, an MP, an actor on the fast track to national treasure status, and a judge. None would be thrilled, she was sure, to hear that they had linked their names with a school founded on the proceeds of human misery. No matter how Wyatt’s was flourishing now, it had its roots firmly in muck.
Mind you, there was something of a fashion at the moment for large institutions to wake up, as suddenly as Sleeping Beauty, after long, peaceful interludes of blissful forgetfulness, and be forced to contemplate the actions of their founding fathers. Several Oxbridge colleges were being compelled to consider removing statues of Cecil Rhodes, whose nineteenth century views on Anglo-Saxon supremacy were now causing as much embarrassment as his lavish endowments had once delighted. Wyatt’s would certainly not be the first establishment with a problem reconciling an ancient fortune with today’s moral standards. It was the kind of mess that no-one wanted to have to deal with.
Beth was full of sympathy for Dr Grover. This was not a problem of his making, and it had fallen squarely at his door. She wasn’t sure what the best strategy would be, though for her the most appealing tactic would be a ‘mea culpa’ approach which did not seek to excuse, even with the justification that different times dictated different standards.
In the meantime, Beth had dilemmas of her own to contend with. Should she let Inspector York know of this latest development, or should she leave it up to the school to contact him in its own good time? Would that time ever come, she wondered? She wasn’t sure that anyone on the administration side wanted to link slavery with murder. She could imagine the lurid headlines even now.
A sharp ping from her phone broke into Beth’s reverie. She fished it out of her bag. Why was it that wherever she put it, it was never easily accessible? She keyed in her code and a text flashed up. It was full of emojis. She peered at it in surprise. Though a few of the mothers that she knew – those with children already in their teens – had to speak ‘smiley face’ in order to communicate with their young, and would occasionally slap an emoticon on an ordinary inter-mother text, hardly anyone of her generation bothered. Then she realised. This came from Lou, the junior school receptionist.
She hadn’t really been expecting any news from Lou, who seemed a few colours short of a rainbow. Beth knew that she herself would have had major problems remembering who had dropped a particular child off on a particular day – except that murder had a habit of
fixing things pretty effectively in people’s minds. In amongst the little pictures signifying great joy and a brainwave, Lou divulged that she had not only remembered but could positively prove that it had been little Ellen’s mother, Dr Jenkins’ daughter, who had taken the child to school that day.
‘Lol mrs fitch dropped ellen, signed lost property book picked up gym kit,’ Lou had typed, along with tiny pictures of shorts and a t-shirt as if to back up her testimony.
Bless the girl for doing a thorough check, thought Beth, mentally chiding herself for having dismissed Lou so easily. She should have trusted more in Wyatt’s. The school would never employ someone who was genuinely as dippy as Lou had seemed. She texted back a fulsome thank you, scattered with little emojis. When in Rome, send an emoji of a toga.
People’s behaviour towards others was always such a strong influencing factor. Lou’s cheery friendliness was perfect for the Junior School. Dr Grover’s upbeat, business-like intelligence seemed to get the best out of everybody, even pompous sods like the Bursar. And Dr Jenkins, now.
She thought back. It was only a fortnight ago, but already her strong reactions to the man were fading, partly out of respect for the dead, partly just because life moved on. When she thought of Jenkins now, she thought of a problem to be solved, not a person. She pressed send.
Beth looked up from her phone abruptly and gazed up at the small square of window. She was having her own lightbulb moment.
Chapter Fourteen
Half an hour later, having sidled out of Wyatt’s again, she was sitting in the Aurora café, idly stirring a spoon in an uninspiring and now rather cold cappuccino. The door banged and she looked up to see the tall figure of Inspector York grappling to shut the slightly warped door of the café.
‘It doesn’t really close properly,’ said Beth, as the grumpy waiter bustled forward to fiddle with it himself. He cast an angry look at York as though he was responsible for its state, instead of it being a long-neglected bugbear of all who frequented the place, particularly on cold or windy days.
York gave Beth a rueful smile as he took his seat, then struggled to his feet again as the waiter passed muttering, ‘Counter service only.’
‘Can I get you anything else? Another coffee? Sandwich?’
Beth shook her head vigorously, wanting to warn him off attempting to eat anything here without aggravating the waiter still further. She heard him ordering a bacon sandwich with his coffee, and sighed a little.
He sat down again and the rickety table dipped towards him. He took a napkin from the dispenser on the table next to them, wadded it up quickly, and slipped it under the short leg, then braced his hands on the cold marble surface. The table was steady.
Beth, despite herself, was impressed. She’d sat here several times now with Katie – against Katie’s better judgement – and the tables were always rickety but she’d never done anything about it. She did love a practical person. She found herself smiling up at him, then was horrified at herself, nervously brushing her thick fringe away with one hand, which inevitably made it swing back and all but cover her eyes. Her comfort blanket. She was always more at ease when peeping out from behind this useful portable screen.
Was she upset because she’d felt a stab of disloyalty to her beloved James? But James was long dead. Would he have wanted her to soldier on alone forever? Did that mean that she didn’t want to, all of a sudden? She didn’t even want to begin to think about all that now, with this man sitting in front of her. She blinked as York broke the suddenly charged silence.
‘So, you had something to tell me?’
Beth nodded vigorously, glad to be distracted from difficult thoughts. She did, indeed, have a lot to tell. But first, she had a question to ask.
‘Have you discovered anything more about the blackmail?’
York looked blank. Beth was exasperated. All right, he made a policy of never replying to any of her questions, but come on. What was the point of pretending he didn’t know what she was talking about?
‘You know, those sums of money that suddenly started to come into Jenkins’ bank account, £200 a month, then £600 a month…’
‘You shouldn’t really be bandying words like ‘blackmail’ about, you know. Accusations like that have implications,’ he said with a frown.
‘I wasn’t accusing anyone. I have no idea who to accuse,’ Beth pointed out. ‘But was it, you know, erm, extortion?’ she said, after casting around for an alternative word.
York rolled his eyes. ‘No. It turned out to be entirely innocent.’
‘You’re kidding! That much money, every month? How could it have an innocent explanation?’
‘You see, that’s the trouble with only having half the information at your disposal,’ said York heavily. ‘Another reason why you shouldn’t have been poking your nose into his private papers. You should have handed everything over straight away and left it to the professionals.’
Beth was rapidly deciding that York was the most patronising man she’d ever met – barring some of the staff of Wyatt’s, of course. James’s ghost could rest easy.
‘Come on, you’ve told me this much now. Give me the full explanation,’ said Beth, controlling her irritation with an effort. She leaned forward, just as the waiter approached and slapped York’s cappuccino down with enough force to slop it into the saucer.
Both Beth and York looked at him sharply. Seemingly oblivious, he drifted away. York took a quick sip of the coffee, winced, and picked a packet of sugar out of the bowl in front of him, shook it by a corner a couple of times then ripped the top off neatly and dumped the contents in his cup, stirring vigorously. Beth stared at him, eyebrows arched with questions under the heavy fringe. York put the cup down, a decision made.
‘Listen, you might find this hard to believe, but there’s a poker circle at Wyatt’s, involving some of the teachers. Jenkins was one, and it turns out he was quite a gifted player. They met once a month, and he almost always won.’
Beth was astounded. She leaned back in her chair for a moment, then burst out, ‘Poker? At Wyatt’s? Are you sure?’
‘Yes, I know, I know. I wonder what those posh parents would make of that, then? Turns out all those clever-clever teachers they’re paying so much money for are more interested in playing cards than in teaching their precious kids,’ York laughed.
‘I can’t believe it’s all the teachers,’ said Beth, thinking of Dr Joyce, head of English, who surely would only contemplate a card game if it were Speculation, as played by Fanny Price in Mansfield Park. ‘And everyone I’ve met there seems really devoted to the kids. To be honest, quite a lot of the parents are actually bankers themselves anyway.’
‘So?’ said York, a bit put out that Beth wasn’t more shocked by his revelation.
‘So, playing the stock market is all about gambling, it’s just a bit more respectable than…poker. And I don’t suppose they were playing during school hours. At least Jenkins was good at it,’ said Beth, who found to her surprise that she now had a little more grudging respect for the awful man. Then she had a thought.
‘Do you think anyone would kill him for winning too much at cards? Or cheating?’
‘We have thought of that,’ said York drily. ‘And the answer is no. He wasn’t just beating one person, who might have turned on him. He was scooping the pot, month after month, beating the whole bunch he played with. I know, it seems pretty surprising.’
Beth had taken a too-hasty swallow of her cold coffee, and nearly choked on hearing about Jenkins’ card-playing prowess. It was true that the man had had a certain arrogant swagger. She’d just thought it had come from being a guy of a certain age, in possession of a penis. There was a type and a generation of men who thought this simple appendage made them superior to every woman around them, and also, in some very strange corner of their psyche, convinced that all females desperately wanted them to demonstrate their skills with that specific piece of gristle at the slightest opportunity, whether the women demu
rred or not. But if Jenkins had actually been good at something… that might account for why he so transparently felt he was God’s gift. Because otherwise, it was pretty inexplicable.
Despite herself, Beth also felt a bit deflated that there was a simple, and almost innocent, explanation for Jenkins’ strange cash deposits. Blackmail had been such a perfect motive for murder. Besides, he was such a loathsome man that she had been all too willing to believe he would be capable of the dirtiest tricks around. She leaned on her elbow, and sighed. ‘So where does that leave us?’
‘Well, we have to rule out that whole idea, but there’s still plenty to follow up,’ said York, not seeming downcast at all.
‘But that’s not good. We want to narrow things down, until all we have left is the explanation,’ Beth protested.
‘Don’t hold your breath. These things can take months to sort out, and loads of cases never get solved at all,’ said York cheerily.
‘But we can’t leave this unsolved,’ Beth protested.
‘We may not have any choice. Things don’t always snap into place, you know. Sometimes you never get the breaks, there’s no evidence – or the worst is when there are one or two leads, you have an idea in your head, but there’s just not enough evidence to do anything with it. That’s a killer, that is.’
‘But that’s not going to be the case here, surely? A murder like this, in Wyatt’s – there has to be an explanation. Someone will have left clues, and we’ll find them.’
‘I wish I had your faith,’ said York, smiling briefly. ‘But in the real world, half the time we can’t get convictions, even if we can get someone in the frame. The CPS – Crown Prosecution Service – has to be sure there’s enough there to stick. Otherwise, a court case would just fall apart. The lawyers pick away at any loophole until there’s nothing left. And it’s right that everyone is entitled to be represented by a lawyer; we’re not a police state. So, if the case isn’t watertight, the CPS won’t touch it. It’s just a waste of taxpayers’ money.’