Death at St. Asprey’s School (20 page)

“You are very bitter. You make me regret that I sup
ported your stay here when my husband felt it could serve no further purpose.”

“Oh well. I shan't be here much longer.”

“I think I ought to tell you that my husband has appealed to Mr. Gorringer to use his influence. He really thinks that your pessimistic outlook threatens the future of St. Asprey's.”

Carolus laughed.

“That will tickle Gorringer. He'll be over here as fast as a borrowed car can bring him.”

“Exactly,” said Mrs. Sconer. “He arrives this evening. He feels that in view of your insistence on the idea of a murder having taken place he should see you before the Inquest.”

“No harm in that. Anything else you wanted to see me about? I ought to get across to my class.”

“My husband will understand your absence since you are with me,” promised Mrs. Sconer grandly. “And there
is
something else I wish to tell you.”

“Good. Nice piece of evidence?”

“A very curious circumstance which I have not mentioned till now because I have only just realized that it may be…”

“A clue? Then let's hear it.”

“It is something that happened on the afternoon of … the fatal accident. Someone entered our bedroom.”

“Would that be unusual?”

“Unprecedented. Mrs. Skippett does the room in the morning and after that only I and very occasionally my husband go … goes … go in.”

“I see. How do you know of this intrusion?”

“I went up myself after seeing you in the drawing-room. I found one drawer in my husband's chest-of-drawers not properly shut.”

“But surely you can't feel
so
sure of Mrs. Skippett's efficiency that you can assume an intrusion by someone else?”

“It is not only that. I opened the drawer and found it disarranged. My husband has a very orderly mind and keeps everything in perfect order. The drawer was in chaos. What is more,
a pair of gloves was missing.”

For the first time Carolus seemed a little impressed. “How can you be sure of that?” he asked.

“I had checked the contents that very morning.”

“Why?”

“I am sorry to say that I had lost confidence in the honesty of Mrs. Skippett. Matron had informed me…”

“Yes, yes. I see. Then why do you not suspect Mrs. Skippett of taking the gloves?”

“Because she had finished on this floor before I made my examination. The gloves were removed during the afternoon while she was doing the hall downstairs. She would never have risked a return to it. She would have had to pass Matron's door.”

“I see your point. But someone risked it.”

“So it appears. The gloves at all events were removed and the drawer left untidy. My husband tells me that he certainly never came upstairs that afternoon.”

“That's very interesting. I take it the staff don't leave their clothes at the school during the holidays?”

“Certainly not. They require them, of course. Nor should I encourage anything of the sort.”

“So that during the summer term none of them would be likely to have brought gloves?”

“Most improbable. You think one of the assistant masters actually entered my bedroom that afternoon and appropriated a pair of my husband's gloves?”

“Looks like it, doesn't it?”

There was a fighting glint in Mrs. Sconer's eye.

“I can scarcely believe it!” she said.

“Whoever it was must have had urgent need of a pair of gloves,” said Carolus casually.

“You understate it. Not once, since St. Asprey's opened…”

“But then you haven't had a murder before, have you? The only surprising thing about it seems that the person was not observed.”

“You mean by Matron? But Mr. Deene, even Matron hasn't got eyes in the back of her head.”

“No? We all have our little limitations, don't we? I must go back to my class.”

Before lunch Carolus had an awkward scene with Duckmore. It was raining and unable to escape into the open air, during the twenty minutes between the end of classes and lunch, Carolus found himself trapped by Duckmore in a corridor. He had the feeling that Duckmore was designedly waiting for him there. Certainly he was pale and wretched-looking and his movements were spasmodic and uncertain. There was something almost pleading in his manner.

“I
am
going,” he said.

Carolus, somewhat baffled by the situation of a man who had confessed to murder overnight conducting classes of small boys in the morning, made no reply but nodded in what he hoped was an understanding way.

“The Bishop is coming at four,” Duckmore added, a sentence which might have been amusingly enigmatic if Carolus had not known the circumstances.

“I shall go as soon as he leaves. You can
take
me if you like.” He spoke as though he had to answer to Carolus for any delay or doubt about his reporting to the police.

“I will,” said Carolus. “About five?”

He found the whole conversation somewhat macabre.

“Yes. Yes. After the Bishop has gone. He won't stay more than half an hour. Terribly busy man.” He turned to admonish two small boys. “Nichols! Stop ragging Winn! You'll make him blub again.” Then to Carolus, “Fiends, aren't they? Yes, I'll go with you. You can hand me over yourself. It will be a relief, really.”

At lunchtime everything was done to make it seem an everyday occasion. Matron re-appeared, Duckmore sat surrounded by the Junior boys at his table and was audibly discussing cricket, Mrs. Sconer smiled graciously on the scene. An uninformed visitor could never have guessed that the school had been the scene of a desperate murder and that one of the assistant masters was about to confess to it.

Afterwards Carolus found himself alone in the common-room with Parker. The Oldest Assistant seemed very calm.

“What did you think of our friend last night?” he asked, as he lit his pipe.

“I think he should tell the police what he told us.”

“Yes. One can't help feeling sorry for him, though. A man who is being consistently blackmailed is under great provocation.”

“To murder? I can't agree. He has other remedies. Sime was not a very clever blackmailer.”

“I suppose not. But he seems to have been clever enough for Duckmore.”

“Duckmore was not the only person at the school he was blackmailing.”

“He wasn't?”

“No. He knew about Sally O'Maverick.”

“Sally? What about her?”

Carolus knew that he was about to shatter an illusion.

“She underwent an operation,” he said gently.

“You mean?”

“Abortion.”

“Good God!”

“Someone here arranged it and paid for it. Sime knew that. That was his second line of blackmail.”

“What a bastard!” said Parker.

“Sime, you mean? Yes, he was.”

“Are you sure about this?”

“Oh yes. I've seen Sally O'Maverick's aunt, Mrs. Ricks.”

“And you know who it was?”

“Yes.”

“So someone else had a motive for murdering Sime besides Duckmore.”

“Quite a number of people.”

“I suppose it will all come out at the Inquest tomorrow?”

“Most of it, anyway. One must never under-estimate the police. If I could find Mrs. Ricks, so could they.”

“I see what you mean. So the school is finished?”

“Not necessarily, I should have thought, but I'm not really competent to judge. I know how you feel about the school, Parker, but for me, you must know, it is of quite secondary importance. I'm concerned with the fact that a man has been murdered.”

“I know,” said Parker sadly. “I don't expect anyone else to feel as I do. A little private profit-making concern—but I've given more than twenty years of my life to it. I see your point about murder. But do you see mine?”

“Yes,” Carolus said. “I do. I'm a schoolmaster myself. But don't be too pessimistic about the school.”

Carolus did not see the Bishop that afternoon but in a breathless confidence from Matron just after tea he heard that he had arrived. Matron was as enthusiastic about delivering her news as about gathering it, and baulked of immediately informing Mrs. Sconer (who was entertaining
the Bishop to tea) of the afternoon's events she fell back on Carolus.

“Duckmore has been behaving in a most peculiar way all the afternoon,” she said, “until the Bishop's car arrived. Fortunately the boys don't seem to realize what's going on because Mayring had his first rehearsal on the cricket field and little Swinton came to me in tears because he's not going to be Peaseblossom or some such thing. Parker has ben in the study with Mr. Sconer for half an hour—what
they
think they can do without Mrs. Sconer is a mystery to me. Now the Bishop's in the drawing-room and they're using the Parents' Tea Service. What will happen tomorrow I
don't
know.”

Carolus stared at Matron in wonder at this confession.

“You don't?”

It was not until well after five that Duckmore came to Carolus in the common-room. He looked very calm and serious.

“I'm ready now,” he said. “If you'd be kind enough to drive me down to the village. I'm told that the Detective in charge of the case is staying at the local policeman's cottage. I hope he'll be there now.”

“If not I'll run you into Woldham,” said Carolus.

As they went to the car Carolus was aware of a face at Matron's window, but even Matron might not yet have realized where they were going. Or had she?

Carolus was relieved to see Osborne's car outside the cottage distinguished by a sign, County Police. He asked for Osborne and the local policeman's wife took them into a small sitting-room where Osborne sat alone over the remains of a high tea. Carolus said nothing, waiting for Duckmore to make his announcement.

“Well?” said the Detective Superintendent.

“I've come to give myself up,” said Duckmore.

Osborne's reaction to this was curious. He seemed to take no notice of Duckmore and his melodramatic announcement, but turned to Carolus.

“What do you want?” he asked.

“Just to hear that,” said Carolus. “Now I must be off.”

“Are you responsible for this man coming here?”

“Not at all. It is entirely his own idea. I merely drove him here in my car.”

“I need not delay you then,” said Osborne and turned to Duckmore.

As Carolus left the room he heard Duckmore say distinctly and firmly—“I killed Colin Sime.”

On his way back to the school for what he hoped would be his last night there he decided to call at the Windmill Inn. It was as well he did so for leaning over the bar was Mr. Gorringer, his own headmaster. But Carolus's cheerful greeting was checked by a raised hand.

“I am staying the night here,” said Mr. Gorringer, “but that is not what brings me here at this hour of the day. When I found that you were not at the school I knew, unhappily, where I was most likely to find you. The local hostelry has ever an almost magnetic attraction for you during your investigations, I find.”

“Heard you were coming,” said Carolus.

“Against my will,” said Mr. Gorringer gloomily. “But what else could I do? When my old acquaintance Cosmo Sconer told me of the position here, I was left with no alternative.”

Carolus asked Mr. Pocket, who was eagerly listening to this, for drinks.

“What position?” Carolus asked Mr. Gorringer.

“You can scarcely pretend to be unaware of it, Deene. Sconer informed me that no sooner had you arrived than there was a very unfortunate accident at the school which
cost the life of one of his assistants. This you insisted on describing as murder.”

“It was murder,” said Carolus. “But go on, headmaster.”

“When my friend Sconer then suggested that you could be of no assistance to him, indeed that your presence only exacerbated the situation, you threatened to remain in the village. Now, driven to despair, the reputation of his school hanging by a thread, his life's work in jeopardy, with an Inquest impending, he has appealed to me to use my influence with you. He wants you to leave after the Inquest tomorrow.”

“That may well be possible,” said Carolus.

Mr. Gorringer ignored this.

“I need not say how deeply I have regretted that I ever agreed to your coming here, Deene. It has been an embarrassment to me. I might have known that where you went a violent death would follow. Moreover, I understand that the police in this case are more than usually exasperated by your ill-timed intervention.”

“That's true,” put in Mr. Pocket unexpectedly from across the bar. “The local man was telling me. What they say about amateur detectives would raise your hair. Well, you can't wonder, can you? They've got a job of work to do.”

“Exactly,” said Mr. Gorringer, who seemed determined to behave like the Forsaken Merman. “What is more, your own duty calls you. The Upper Fifth…”

“I think it is more than probable that the last loose ends will be tied up tomorrow,” said Carolus.

“You speak of the last loose ends,” said Mr. Gorringer. “Have you then a suspect for this hypothetical murder?”

“A man has just given himself up to the police as the murderer of Sime.”

Not only Mr. Gorringer's protruberant eyes but Pocket's
beadier ones were, in an expressive metaphor, popping out.

“A man? What man?” cried Mr. Gorringer.

“One of the assistant masters. Character named Duckmore.”

“This is a grave matter,” annunced Mr. Gorringer. “One assistant master in a school confessing to the murder of another. I scarcely know what to say.”

“I wonder it doesn't happen more often, myself,” said Carolus cheerfully. “Think of Hollingbourne.”

“Deene,” said Mr. Gorringer. “This is not a matter for frivolous reflections.”