Child's Play (22 page)
By
lunchtime Torrance had been moved from the hospital’s accident department to a small private room on the second floor. Perched on the window ledge, Dewi watched over her while he waited for the first of the round-the-clock guards to arrive. Every so often, he checked the monitors on a trolley beside the bed.
She
lay on her back, snoring gently, her chest rising and falling reassuringly. The cage over her injured ankle made a hump at the foot of the bed and an ugly welt was developing on her forehead. Although her face had been cleaned, revealing grazes on cheek and chin, her arms were still streaked with dirt, with more dirt embedded under her short, square fingernails, and her tangled hair was riddled with grains of glinting sand. The bruises, grazes and dirt took nothing from her; if anything, he thought, they suited her, for she was an earthy young creature, as bold and sweaty and natural as the horses she rode with such panache and which she so clearly loved. As the ambulance was hurtling towards the hospital, she had suddenly roused herself to ask about Purdey, before sinking once more into a stupor as soon as he reassured her.
He
felt a little strange; light-headed and slightly sick from shock. Never before had he seen anyone thrown by a horse, and he could still barely believe she had survived, let alone with only minor injuries. Whoever had cut the surcingle straps must feel intensely disappointed, he thought, and was probably already planning their next attack, for whether she was aware of it or not, Torrance knew something about Sukie’s death. Why else should someone try to kill her? he asked himself. So why had McKenna, when he called him from the hospital, continued to counsel caution about assuming that Sukie had been murdered?
A
shadow fell across the glass panel in the door, then Janet walked in. ‘I’ve brought her pyjamas and things,’ she said, placing a soft leather travel bag on the floor. She peered at the sleeping form. ‘She looks OK, considering.’
‘
She’s tough. The medics said she’s got muscles all over.’
‘
Horses do that for you,’ Janet replied. ‘When they’re not trying to kill you, that is.’
‘
You
like
horses.’
‘
They’re still dangerous at both ends and uncomfortable in the middle.’ She walked around the bed to join Dewi by the window. ‘What actually happened? All I’ve heard are wild stories about sabotaged saddles, horses turning turtle in mid-air and Wonder Woman here being impaled on broken jumps.’
‘
Don’t be catty. It doesn’t suit you.’
‘
I swear it’s getting hotter.’ Unfastening another shirt button, flapping the garment against her skin, she added, ‘I wasn’t being catty. I was commenting on the fact that Torrance’s importance seems quite disproportionate to her status.’
‘
She’s obviously popular. She was elected house captain, remember?’
‘
Yes, but why is she so
significant
? Nobody’s got a clue what to do with the horses now. The school’s in utter turmoil.’
‘
Don’t exaggerate,’ Dewi chided. ‘They’ve got Miss Attwill. She must know what to do.’
‘
You think? If you ask me, she’ll be hard put to work out which end needs feeding.’ Janet grinned. ‘And no way is she going to exercise Tonto or Purdey. Tonto’s a lunatic and Purdey, she told me, “has all the typical and worst qualities of a horse of that colour”. In other words she’s a stroppy redhead.’
‘
Then the horses will have to go to a livery stable.’
‘
I shouldn’t think that’s even occurred to them. They can’t see further than the boundary walls.’
‘
It’s far more likely that Scott’s destroyed their capacity for joined-up thinking. People are so worried about upsetting her they forget what they’re supposed to be doing.’
‘
In what way?’ she asked, almost hypnotised by the blips proceeding without interruption across the monitor screens.
‘
By doing the rounds with the security guards, I was hoping to loosen a few tongues,’ Dewi told her, ‘and perhaps dig up something on the ones on duty Tuesday night. I thought they might only alibi each other because they’ve got a vested interest, but the only vested interest they’ve got is appeasing Scott. If they don’t pass her house at exactly the right intervals, she reports them to their boss. Bath and Knight do the same, too.’
‘
Spending the nights on watch can’t do much for
their
relationship,’ Janet remarked spitefully.
‘
Don’t make two and two add up to five simply because they live together.’
‘
Come on! I admit Knight just looks as though she feeds on wasps, but Bebb’s the archetypal dyke type.’
‘
They’re sisters,’ Dewi told her. ‘Miss Knight and
Mrs
Bebb. She’s a widow.’
‘
That
is
a surprise,’ she said slowly. ‘How d’you find out?’
‘
From the guards. It’s a pity Scott didn’t think fit to tell us, but I’m sure she’d much prefer us to jump to the wrong conclusion, like you did. Keeps us off balance, doesn’t it?’
Janet
nodded thoughtfully. ‘Yet another example of something being completely different from the way it appears.’
Suddenly
Torrance groaned and began to thresh about under the light blanket. Janet started towards her, scanning the monitors, but there was nothing to indicate impending crisis. She hovered over the bed. ‘Has she said anything?’ she asked, straightening the blanket about Torrance’s shoulders.
‘
Only about Purdey, but she wasn’t properly conscious.’
Janet
pushed Torrance’s tangled hair away from her face. ‘Mr McKenna isn’t sure Torrance’s fall is connected to Sukie’s death, because there’s probably any amount of skulduggery going on at the Hermitage.’
‘
He told me much the same when I rang,’ Dewi said.
‘
He’s fairly certain Sukie
was
murdered, but until Dr Roberts comes up with the goods, he’s hedging his bets.’ Janet turned away from the bed then, to resume her seat on the window ledge. ‘Talking of which,’ she went on, ‘I hear some enterprising colleagues have opened a book on the killer. Who’s
your
money on?’
‘
It isn’t,’ Dewi replied flatly. ‘I don’t approve of gambling at the best of times, but that’s just sheer bad taste.’
‘
It’s human nature,’ Janet said. ‘I expect there’s another book open now, as well, on the next likely victim.’
When
he finished addressing the school, McKenna had stepped down from the dais and had stood for several minutes by the refectory doors, watching the girls rearrange the benches beside the tables before setting out crockery and cutlery. They functioned like well-drilled army units and in the corridor behind him another platoon, this one made up of domestics and kitchen staff, waited beside their enormous hot trolleys, with Fat Sally in the vanguard. As she led the way into the room, her flesh wobbled grotesquely and indecently with every movement and, for a moment, he had been won over by Ainsley Chapman’s seductive argument. This obese cook, the homely Matron, the lesbian games mistress he had met that morning were, he thought, such stereotypes, while Freya Scott’s whole objective turned on never fitting into the scenarios she created.
Spinning
on his heel, he made for the lobby, where he came upon Jack, who was lounging against the door jamb, hands in pockets.
‘
Can you tell what they’re getting for lunch?’ he asked. ‘From the smell of the food?’
‘
No,’ McKenna replied. ‘Institutional cooking always smells the same. It could be anything.’
‘
Why is that, though?’
‘
I don’t know. Does it matter?’
Not
really.’ Jack followed him on to the forecourt. ‘But if you want, you could partake of whatever it is in Scott’s study. She asked me to extend the invitation.’
‘
I don’t want,’ McKenna said shortly.
‘
She suggested it when we were waiting for you to get back after Torrance’s accident.’
‘
Torrance didn’t have an accident. She had a cunningly contrived fall, which could easily have killed her.’
‘
Scott didn’t like that explanation at all,’ Jack commented. ‘She tried to convince me the surcingle straps had rotted because Sukie didn’t look after the tack properly, so I told her there were clear cut marks, from something like a Stanley or Swiss Army knife, or even a scalpel. Once she’d taken
that
on board she was very quick to let me know that Sean O’Connor keeps Stanley knives in his workshop, which he doesn’t always lock, despite her explicit orders.’
‘
There’ll be knives of one description or another all over the place,’ McKenna said. ‘And Matron, who looks the type to harbour the tools of her trade, may well have the odd scalpel in her room.’ He mounted the steps of the mobile incident room. ‘Once forensics give us a lead, we’ll start looking, although I shouldn’t imagine the saboteur is stupid enough to leave the thing lying around. It’s doubtless at the bottom of the Strait or buried deep inside a muck heap.’
Jack
frowned. ‘There
aren’t
any muck heaps when the horses are living out. The stables are empty.’
‘
As Sean would tell you, because it’s yet another of his jobs, droppings have to be cleared from the pastures to keep the grazing free of parasites.’ He glanced over his shoulder. ‘But don’t panic. You won’t find yourself elbow deep in horse manure. We’ll set Bryn scouting if necessary.’
Jack
dogged his footsteps into the senior officers’ cubbyhole. ‘If we take Scott’s lead, we won’t bother. She’s already fingered Alice Derringer for the saddle, on the basis that she’s one of a handful with the necessary know-how, and the
only
one with a motive for hurting Torrance.’
‘
What motive is that?’
‘
The way Scott tells it, Alice is eaten up with resentment because the fight at breakfast wouldn’t have happened if Torrance hadn’t wanted her to help with evening stables yesterday, which is another thing that’s bothering Scott because she reckons it smacks of bestowing a special favour.’ Jack sat down and tweaked the creases on his trousers. ‘I pointed out it could mean anything or nothing, or just perhaps that Torrance knows Alice is efficient because she fags for her.’ He smiled then. ‘She really doesn’t like the term “fagging”. She says doing a bit of housework teaches the girls something about duty, they all serve their time at it, there’s no likelihood of the seniors coercing the juniors into providing other, less innocent services, and it isn’t free labour, whatever Avril O’Connor might have told me. She got very voluble on the subject of Avril. She sacked her because she was lazy and slipshod, and a gossip to boot, and Scott will not, and I quote, “have the school’s affairs bruited abroad by anyone”. Needless to say,’ he went on, ‘I asked what “affairs” she meant. Very condescendingly she informed me that the Hermitage is a family and in all families there are not only things people
prefer
to keep private, but things which
should
be kept private.’
Chin
on hand, McKenna gazed across at him. ‘Denting her armour isn’t easy, is it?’
‘
I did my best,’ Jack replied. ‘I said a girls’ boarding school must attract a fair number of lesbian teachers, the way paedophiles congregate around children’s homes, so she informed me that although women aren’t bound to betray trust just because they’re that way inclined, undesirables would be flushed out and removed. She doesn’t run a laissez-faire establishment sympathetic to perversions.’ He smiled again. ‘And, of course, if any of the girls got too close, she’d deal with it. Managing people, whatever the circumstances, is her forte. She’s even got certificates to prove it. They’re hung up behind her desk.’
‘
I’ve seen them,’ McKenna said. ‘Are they kosher?’ he asked. ‘Or the sort you can buy mail order from places in the Far East and America?’
Jack
laughed. ‘Oh, they’re definitely genuine. So are all the aristocrats, models, political wives and other high flyers in the photos of old girls she’s got in her study. I recognised quite a few of them.’
‘
I didn’t know you read the society pages,’ McKenna remarked.
‘
The twins like to keep up with what the A list is doing so they spend my hard-earned cash on fripperies like
Hello!
magazine,’ Jack said. ‘If Scott’s right, Charlotte Swann might be gracing its pages before long. She’s set her heart on modelling now the bottom’s fallen out of the Princess Di lookalike market.’
‘
That girl’s a tragedy waiting to happen,’ McKenna said, his voice suddenly gloomy. ‘God knows what her childhood was like. Justine Salomon showed me some pictures of Charlotte’s mother getting married for the fifth or sixth time, before telling me the woman was no better than a tart.’
‘
I wouldn’t know about that,’ Jack commented, ‘but Charlotte
is
illegitimate. Scott told me, when she was giving me the Hermitage-is-a-family spiel. In other words this is the only family Charlotte has, despite her legions of relatives by marriage. Dysfunctional backgrounds, irresponsible parents and promiscuous mothers are par for the course, apparently.’
‘
I wonder how Hester Melville would have turned out if she hadn’t married that dipsomaniac?’
‘
Well, she did. There’s not much point in that sort of speculation.’ Jack paused, before saying quietly, ‘But it would help to know where we’re going with Sukie’s death. After what happened to Torrance, I don’t understand why you’ve still got doubts about her being murdered.’
‘
I haven’t, but as we can’t be sure when the saddle was tampered with, we can’t say Sukie wasn’t the intended victim.’
‘
I overheard somebody saying Torrance was jumping Purdey yesterday. Surely the girth would have given then.’
‘
Perhaps,’ McKenna conceded. ‘It would depend on how deep the cuts were.’
‘
Scott told me she couldn’t understand why Torrance didn’t notice them when she saddled up,’ Jack said. ‘And much as it pains me to agree with her, I must say she’s got a point.’
‘
No, she hasn’t. She’s trying to pass the buck, so that Torrance gets all the blame for being careless.’ Lighting a cigarette, McKenna added, ‘The girls here, like a lot of people, have a habit of undoing the girth only on the left-hand side. The right side’s left attached to the saddle, so next time it’s used, it’s buckled up again on the left. Whoever messed with Purdey’s saddle knew that and made the cuts on the right-hand side, knowing they were most unlikely to be noticed.’