by J F Straker
***
At just after half-past seven that Saturday morning Colin Russell, hurrying down the main corridor to take the Third Form prep, encountered a breathless and perspiring Anne.
‘You’re late,’ he said, unnecessarily and with mock severity.
‘I know. I ran all the way. I clean forgot I had promised to take James’s prep for him. Anyway, you’re late yourself.’
‘Admitted. I have many faults, but early rising, thank heavens, is not one of them.’ The gloom that had encompassed him at their parting on the previous evening seemed to have vanished. ‘Which reminds me — do I get breakfast in bed when we are married?’
‘Only if you cook it yourself.’
The Third Form classroom was at the far end of the middle arm of the E, and from it Colin could see the trees which surrounded Abbey Lodge. Between the Lodge and the school the mist that had earlier obscured the Wain valley was beginning to clear, although it still lay like a dirty white shroud over the Tan and the swampy ground beyond. It looked like the start of a fine day, thought Colin; which, since he was not on duty and not due to take a game in the afternoon, was a satisfying thought.
He had been some time in the room before he noticed that one of the desks was unoccupied.
‘Where’s Cuttle?’ he asked the form at large.
The form at large answered him. But, since Cuttle was a day-boy and the rest were boarders, their knowledge was no greater than Colin’s. The general opinion, that Tony Cuttle was sick, was therefore accepted.
A duffel-coated figure emerged from a patch of mist and came striding across the playing-field. Even before he could see his face Colin recognized him as Chris Moull; no one but Chris would be wearing a beret. He was just wondering what could have driven Chris so early from his bed when he became aware that in the Fifth Form, one room removed from the Third, all was not as quiet as it should be. There was talk and some laughter.
Since no noise ever emanated from a class over which Philip Smelton presided, Colin went to investigate. Silence was instant as he opened the door, heads bent hastily to their tasks. There was no sign of Smelton.
‘Has Mr Smelton been in yet?’ he asked.
A chorus of ‘No, sir,’ answered him.
‘Well, get on with your prep and don’t let me hear any more noise,’ he said sternly.
As he left the room Joseph Latimer came hurrying down the main corridor. ‘Is Smelton in there?’ the headmaster asked.
‘No, sir. He should be, but I gather he hasn’t turned up yet. I was going to get Moull to take them.’
‘Is James taking the Fourth?’
Colin looked his surprise. Didn’t the old man know his son was away? ‘Miss Connaught is taking his prep for him,’ he said, and left it at that.
Latimer clucked in annoyance. ‘One of them will have to take prayers this morning,’ he said. ‘I have to go to the hospital. Young Cuttle was knocked down by a car on his way to school.’
‘I noticed he wasn’t in prep,’ said Colin. ‘Is he badly hurt?’
‘I understand not. But I would prefer that the school should at present remain in ignorance of the accident. I will tell them myself when I have more information.’
Colin supposed that ‘the school’ referred only to the boys, and talk at the staff table during breakfast was at first devoted to speculation on Tony Cuttle’s injuries.
‘I hope Smelton hasn’t had an accident also,’ said Colin. ‘Last seen he was going like stink in the direction of Tanbury. That was around nine-forty last night.’
‘We should have heard before now if he had,’ said Anne. ‘I expect he overslept this morning.’
‘The poor man may be ill,’ Miss Webber, the senior matron, suggested. She was a neat little woman, of no beauty and unadorned by beauty’s aids, but with a constant cheerfulness and ready sympathy not yet dulled by years of attendance on the wants and ailments of small boys. ‘He hasn’t been looking at all well lately.’
‘I hope he isn’t sick and I hope he hasn’t had an accident,’ said Colin. ‘With the old man at the hospital and James returning God knows when we’re going to be short-handed this morning.’ He looked across at Moull. ‘All set for a really heavy spasm, Chris? Your early-morning walk indicates an abundance of energy. Where did you go?’
‘Past the Lodge and round by the river.’
‘Phew! Quite a stroll. What got you up so early? Something on your mind?’
‘Something on his stomach, more likely,’ said Anne. ‘Those pancakes last night would have sunk a battleship. Only an appetite like Chris’s could have coped with them.’
But he hasn’t much of an appetite this morning, she reflected, watching him. The young man’s round and freckled face had lost its usual grin; he had refused the porridge and was making heavy weather of a boiled egg. He seemed nervy and on edge; and when Miss Dove, the under matron, accidentally jogged his arm, causing tea to spill on his grey flannel trousers, he snapped his annoyance in a manner most unlike him.
Diana again, Anne decided. That girl doesn’t half lead the poor boy a dance.
When Smelton had not appeared by the end of breakfast Colin decided to telephone to his house. Anne went out to the hall with him. ‘I must ring Grandfather,’ she said. ‘The woman can’t come this morning, so I’ve left a cold lunch ready for him in the larder. He’ll never think to look.’
‘Wasn’t he up when you left?’
‘Oh, yes. But he’d gone off for his swim and hadn’t come back. He was in a filthy temper, too. He accused me of trying to “manage” him when I told him he ought to stay in bed on account of his throat.’
‘Pig-headed old devil,’ said Colin. ‘How’s his voice? Has he got it back yet?’
‘No. I think that’s what made him so bad-tempered.’
Anne stood by Colin while he telephoned the Smeltons’, her curiosity growing as she listened. When Colin put down the receiver he looked puzzled.
‘Mrs Smelton says she hasn’t seen him this morning.’
‘Eh? What on earth did she mean by that?’
‘I can’t imagine. I asked her, but she just hung up.’
‘It’s an odd way for a woman to talk about her husband,’ said Anne. ‘As though you’d asked her whether the milkman had called. I know she is given to staying in bed of a morning — that’s why Mr Smelton so often has breakfast here. But if she meant he had left the house before she woke up — well, why isn’t he here?’
‘Search me. But it’s my guess that he didn’t go home after we saw him last night. His wife sounded extremely huffy.’
‘He doesn’t strike me as a night-bird but you never can tell with men. Now let me ring Grandfather.’
There was no reply from the Lodge. ‘He must he in the garden,’ said Anne. ‘I’ll try again later.’
Neither of them heard Smelton’s car, but as they turned away from the telephone he came in through the front door. When he saw them he took off his hat and began to apologize for having missed his prep. ‘Clean forgot I was taking it this morning,’ he said, not very convincingly.
They looked at him curiously. He seemed in poor shape. He had not shaved, his suit was badly rumpled, and his hair looked as though he had poured water over it and then smoothed it down with his hands. ‘Maybe his wife told him to go jump in the river and he obeyed her,’ Colin said later to Anne.
‘He must have spent the night out,’ she declared. ‘He would never come straight from home in that condition.’
‘He’s been up to something he didn’t ought too,’ said Colin. ‘Unless he had an extremely guilty conscience he would never have bothered to apologize to humble folk like you and me, ducks.’
Colin’s main reaction to the senior master’s arrival was relief that he would not now have to take morning prayers himself. That was something he had not yet been and hoped he might never be called upon to do. He was not afraid of small boys en masse on the playing-field or in the classroom, where disorder could be quelled
and discipline restored by a stentorian roar. But the thought of taking prayers terrified him. What could he do if the sudden hush that descended upon the assembled school at the entrance of the headmaster or Smelton did not descend for him? An Army-type bellow or a well-aimed hymn-book might have the desired effect, but neither remedy seemed in harmony with the occasion.
When Anne tried to telephone her grandfather again after morning school there was still no reply. ‘I shall have to go home after lunch and make sure he’s all right,’ she said to Colin. ‘Thank goodness I’m free this afternoon.’
‘So am I. I’ll come with you. We might go in to Tanbury for tea and the flicks afterwards.’
Although the staff had their evening meal in the common room, for lunch they sat with the Latimers at the top table in the dining hall. With fifty-odd boys eating and chattering around them general conversation was not easy, and normally they conversed only with their immediate neighbours. But that day most of them were silent, for Mr Latimer had returned from the hospital and they were anxious to hear the latest news about Tony Cuttle’s injuries. These, said Mr Latimer, were not serious. There were no broken bones and remarkably few bruises. The boy was suffering mainly from shock and slight concussion, and should be back at school within a week or ten days.
‘How did it happen?’ asked James. He had appeared in time for the first lesson, although neither Anne nor Colin had seen him return.
‘I have not heard Cuttle’s version, of course,’ said his father; he never referred or spoke to boys by their first names, a practice common among the staff and frowned on by him, ‘but I had a talk with the driver of the car. He told me that he had just crossed the bridge — there was a thick mist along that stretch of road, and he was going very slowly — when the boy appeared from nowhere and ran into the side of his car.’ He frowned. ‘If the man was going as slowly as he tried to make out it seems to me that he should have seen the boy in plenty of time. Cuttle must have been on the road; he didn’t dash out from a house, or anything like that. And although there certainly was a mist down by the river I did not myself find the visibility poor when I drove in to the hospital.’
‘But that was later,’ said Anne. ‘It was very thick down by the wooden bridge when I came across this morning.’ She turned to Moull. ‘You went along the river, Chris. What was it like there?’
‘Pretty thick,’ said Chris. ‘But it lifts quickly.’
A thought occurred to Anne. ‘You didn’t see J.C. taking his morning dip, I suppose?’
The young man shook his head.
Smelton had not spoken during the meal. Anne had seen the headmaster looking with undisguised disapproval at his unshaven chin, but Smelton seemed to be either unaware of or indifferent to the disapproval. I suppose he will go home and tidy up after lunch, she thought, but he certainly does look a mess. I should have thought he would hate the boys to see him in that condition.
She mentioned this to Colin as they walked across to Abbey Lodge after lunch. The sun was shining, and they stood for a few minutes on the wooden bridge watching the water as it frothed and sparkled over the succession of tiny waterfalls.
‘He’s an odd chap,’ said Colin. ‘I can’t make him out. Tell me — if his wife is as attractive as you say she is, why can’t he get on with her?’
‘He makes out that she’s extravagant. But Dorothy says she is no more extravagant now than when they got married. It’s just a bee in his bonnet, she says.’
‘I hope that doesn’t happen to us.’
‘It won’t.’ She caught his arm. ‘Come on. I’m worried about Grandfather.’
‘I don’t see why. He looks pretty tough to me. Those skinny chaps often are.’
‘It’s not his health — it’s what he may be up to that worries me. The only other time he got really mad at me he cleared off for two whole days.’
‘Good Lord! Why?’
‘It was all so silly,’ the girl said, panting a little as they neared the top of the rise. ‘It happened last Easter, a few days after the end of term. I came into the breakfast room one morning and found him reading a letter. He immediately slipped it into his pocket, but not before I had seen there was a blue stamp on the envelope. I knew it must be from abroad — so, quite innocently, I asked him who it was from. You wouldn’t think there was any harm in that, would you?’
Colin assured her that he would not.
‘Neither did I. But Grandfather flew into a rage and accused me of spying on him, and glowered at me all through breakfast. I thought that was the end of it; but unfortunately — and quite by accident — I found him reading the letter again. That really tore it.’
‘That was when he cleared off?’
‘Yes. He came back later in the morning while I was out shopping, packed himself a bag, and disappeared until the following evening.’ She laughed. ‘I don’t know where he went, but he was in extremely good spirits when he returned. I’ve never seen him so cheerful.’
‘Perhaps he’s got a girlfriend,’ Colin suggested. They had crossed the main road and were on the track through the woods. ‘In which case bang goes your inheritance. Was he equally mad at you this morning?’
‘He seemed to be. I think it was not being able to bawl me out that irritated him. All he could manage was a feeble croak. I was upstairs making his bed when he went off for his swim, and there he was, standing in the garden in his dressing-gown and shaking his fist at the house. So childish. And he is always back for his breakfast by seven-fifteen. I’m sure he stayed out later on purpose to annoy me.’
‘We’ll soon see,’ said Colin.
There was no sign of the old man when they reached the house. Neither his breakfast nor the lunch that Anne had left for him in the larder had been touched.
‘Looks like you may be right,’ said Colin, as they went upstairs.
J.C.’s room was as Anne had left it that morning. On a chair beside the bed were his clothes, underclothes neatly folded, jacket hanging on the back. On the dressing-table, methodically arrayed, were money and other articles from his pockets.
‘His trousers seem to be missing,’ said Colin.
‘He was wearing them under his dressing-gown.’ The girl’s voice was troubled. She went quickly to the wardrobe and rummaged among the hanging suits. Then she turned, fear in her eyes. ‘His dressing-gown isn’t here. He must still be down by the river.’
He caught her arm. ‘We’d better get down there,’ he said, her fear communicating itself to him.
The river was some two hundred yards from the house, and they ran all the way; through the neat garden, across the fields to the trees — with Anne stumbling occasionally on the uneven, rutted ground, but never pausing — until they came to the river-bank and the small sunlit clearing that John Connaught had made his private bathing point.
Anne’s fingers bit deep into her companion’s tweed-clad arm. J.C.’s towel and dressing-gown lay on the grass, their bright colours somehow grimly foreboding. A slipper lay near them, a second slipper had been tossed some feet away. And on the brink of the river, one leg turned inside out, were the old man’s trousers.
But there was no sign of J.C. himself.
The girl burst into tears. Colin put his arms round her, trying to comfort her. But as he gazed over her head at the smoothly flowing river, its waters unruffled by bobbing head or floating body, his stomach felt sick and his eyes were troubled.
3 - A Man is Found
J.C. was still missing the following afternoon.
‘I keep hoping he may be alive,’ Anne said. She looked pale and tired after a sleepless night, but was no longer tearful. ‘I’m not pretending I was devoted to him, and I don’t think he had much affection for me; but at least he was my grandfather and the only relative I had. Without him there’ll be no one.’ She sighed. ‘I know that’s a selfish thought, but I can’t help it. It’s frightening to be so completely alone.’
‘You’ve got me,’ said Colin. ‘And how about your father? I
sn’t he still alive?’
Anne shook her head. ‘He may be. But it’s twelve years since he walked out on Mummy and me, and he’s never bothered about either of us since. I don’t know where he is or what happened to him. I don’t suppose he even knows that Mummy’s dead.’
They were together with Chris Moull in the common room. James Latimer had taken the boys for their Sunday afternoon walk, and for a little while the school was quiet. This was a time normally devoted by the non-duty staff to reading the Sunday papers and to dozing. But that afternoon none of the three had any inclination to read or doze. The missing John Connaught filled their minds to the exclusion of all else.
‘The police haven’t found him yet,’ said Chris, uncertain whether this was consolation or not.
‘No. And his keys weren’t in his trousers’ pockets. They weren’t on the dressing-table either,’ said Anne. Chris had been told of the previous occasion on which J.C. had disappeared, and she saw no need to explain her train of thought. ‘So where are they if he hasn’t got them? It’s true that none of his clothes appears to be missing; but I can’t be absolutely sure of that, can I?’
‘His money was there, Anne.’ Colin did not wish her to build too surely on what seemed to him to be a very shaky foundation. ‘And what about his things down by the river?’
‘He might have left them like that to frighten me,’ the girl said stubbornly. ‘When you were on your walk yesterday morning, Chris, you didn’t hear a cry or anything, did you?’
Chris shook his head. Colin thought he looked embarrassed, and wondered why. He was about to protest against Anne’s refusal to accept the facts when the door opened and Diana Farling came in.
Diana was Mr Latimer’s secretary. She was a tall, well-built girl with close-cropped red hair and an almost regal beauty. She crossed the room with studied grace and laid a hand, on which glittered a large imitation emerald, on Anne’s shoulder. They had teased her about that ring, accusing her of ostentation. Diana had said that her finger was swollen and she could not get it off, but they had not believed her. Her fondness for jewellery was well known.