A (Very) Public School Murder Page 12

  ‘Look guys, I’m not finding this very helpful,’ said Bart. ‘What’s the point of spooking everyone?’

  ‘You mean you’re scared?’ said Penny.

  ‘I’m sure we’re all scared,’ said Cressida. ‘And the truth is, we may not know what we know. Who knows what I’ve seen without realizing I’ve seen it?’

  This was a further concern for the room to ponder. It’s one thing to know you’re a target and why . . . you can take precautions of sorts. But not to know what you know – or the significance of what you know; to be an innocent amid the evil plans of an anonymous psycho . . . well, this was disturbing.

  ‘I think Cressida should move into the East Wing to be with us,’ said Ferdinand. ‘She’ll be safer.’

  ‘I’ve already spoken with the police about that,’ she replied. ‘And I’m in my new room already . . . just waiting for some fresh sheets to arrive.’

  Ferdinand did wonder why she couldn’t go and find the sheets for herself, like they’d all had to. There would be some on Matron’s Landing – matron always kept a supply there for ‘accidents’ as she called them. But then Cressida probably thought this beneath her, just like she thought many things beneath her, this was Ferdinand’s view . . . a rather distant queen of the school. Obviously one must cut the bereaved a little slack, grief can make a good man bad – but to be honest, she’d always been like this, always slightly removed from the school community, which was not ideal . . . far from ideal in his book.

  ‘You’ll find fresh sheets on Matron’s Landing,’ he said. ‘It’s where I found mine.’

  Cressida made no response and no eye contact.

  Tamsin stepped in. ‘So if you do know something, however small, it would be wise to tell us – rather than lie to us.’

  ‘Has anyone lied so far?’ asked Holly, with interest.

  ‘People do lie to the police, Holly – it’s almost an automatic response.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Perhaps they have little secrets of their own to hide; or perhaps they want to protect another, someone who they think – or hope – is innocent.’ Holly nodded, thinking about this. ‘But it’s always unwise, Holly. Protecting those you deem innocent can sometimes make them appear a great deal more guilty, believe me.’

  ‘Well, I’m not protecting anyone!’

  ‘Withholding the truth is not the same as a lie,’ said Geoff.

  ‘I’m not sure I agree, Geoff,’ said Peter.

  ‘And I’m not sure I’m bothered, Abbot!’

  ‘What was it Edmund Burke said? “For evil to triumph it requires only the good to stay silent.”’

  Geoff raised his eyebrows in disdain.

  ‘Oh, and does anyone here know a Benedict?’ asked Tamsin. ‘Or is Benedict one of you?’

  The interview with Crispin

  was a brief affair. It was gentler for the blue school blazer he still wore – as though he was about to go off for a double science class. But he wasn’t – he was a suspect in a murder investigation . . . though hardly top of anyone’s list. Where was the necessary hatred to be found in him? And when he spoke, he spoke mainly of the ghost he’d seen. Peter learned nothing new, but it gave Tamsin a chance to probe.

  ‘It’s not really likely it was a ghost,’ she said, declaring her hand. She wasn’t prepared to sit here and pretend ghosts existed.

  ‘What else could it have been?’ said Crispin firmly. Most Haunted was one of his favourite TV shows; he recorded them and watched them back-to-back. He’d even spent a night in the most haunted house in England, Preston Manor in Brighton . . . and a ghost was almost inevitable in an old place like this.

  ‘A real person?’ suggested Tamsin.

  ‘I don’t see how that works – not when there’s no one here who looks remotely like the person I saw.’ If he’d argued about anything with his friends, it was about the possibility of ghosts – a debate which generally found him in a minority of one. But he was happy with that. The idea of ghosts, the fact of their existence, was something he needed, a source of comfort to him, a sign of something beyond . . . and the hope he’d see his mother again. Perhaps she’d come and speak with him? That would be awesome.

  So while he’d been shocked last night by the strange apparition, and been glad of the abbot’s company, by the morning he was nothing but happy. There are ghosts, they do visit – and he’d told Holly all about it.

  ‘So what did you do on Sunday afternoon?’ asked Peter.

  ‘Nothing really. I was on the internet a bit, had a bath. Nothing much.’

  ‘Apart from a visit to the headmaster’s house.’

  He hadn’t been going to mention that. And how they knew, he had no idea. Had he been seen?

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘I just went to return some stuff Dr Cutting had lent me.’

  ‘What stuff?’

  ‘On my Crippen project. She’d given me something on the Hippocratic oath; I was just returning it.’

  ‘And she was there, was she?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you get on well with Dr Cutting?’

  ‘She’s been nice to me.’

  ‘Is she nice to everyone?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know. And I don’t much care. Why would I care?’

  He was angry.

  Whereas Holly, former head girl, was charming in interview. She sat in the blue school tracksuit, with Stormhaven Towers in gold across her back. Yet she transcended her clothes in a manner Crispin could not; Crispin was a boy, Holly a woman . . . or almost.

  ‘I’ve never been interviewed before,’ she said winningly, sitting down opposite them, a little giggly.

  ‘Well, it’s all quite painless for those who tell the truth,’ lied Tamsin – the truth hurt a great deal sometimes. But she wished to be firm, to lay down some markers. Men may stumble over Holly, but she wouldn’t be following them. ‘Do you have anything you’d like to tell us?’

  ‘I don’t think I know anything about the murder. I mean, he was just the headmaster, I didn’t really know him.’

  ‘I’m told he liked you.’

  Holly shrugged as if to say, ‘Well, he was hardly the only one!’

  ‘And we hear you were going to be with friends this week?’ said Peter.

  ‘I’m usually with friends in the holidays.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘My parents are getting divorced and it’s not a place I want to be.’ Peter nodded with full comprehension. ‘So I make my own plans, always have really. I don’t want to be dependent on them in any way at all, if I can help it.’

  ‘And you’re a great one for the truth,’ said Tamsin. ‘We hear that as well.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ said Holly, unsure.

  ‘Well, I was thinking of your wish for the school, in one of your review meetings, that it was . . .’ – she looked down at her notes – ‘. . . that it was “a place of truth”.’

  Holly looked unsettled.

  ‘Yep,’ she said, suddenly looking younger . . . much younger.

  ‘So do you always tell the truth, Holly?’

  She didn’t respond.

  ‘It’s just that during our meeting with everyone yesterday afternoon, there was a police search of all the rooms currently being used in the East Wing.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘We didn’t ask permission – but then you don’t in murder cases. You have to be quite grown-up about it all, quite brutal. The police, I mean.’

  ‘Yes,’ said the head girl.

  ‘And in your room, there was a bit of a surprise waiting for us. Can you guess what it was?’

  ‘No.’

  Her worry was evident.

  ‘Certainly not something we’d expect to find in a wardrobe.’ Tamsin paused with Holly, looking straight at her. ‘That clue isn’t helping?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then perhaps it’s going to be a surprise to you too.’

  The ghost had decided

  he must
be more careful. He was quite sure someone had seen him the night before. He’d heard quiet footsteps and then a gasp in the dark when he turned towards the moonlit window. He suspected it was the little dear, Crispin, who shouldn’t have been around, most remiss of him. The boy should have been in bed, all tucked up with his teddy, instead of breaking the curfew. And he did still have a teddy – not a well-known fact about the head boy . . . but one which just made him all the more adorable.

  It would be quite wrong, of course, a relationship – and by that he meant one of a sexual nature, which was the only sort he wanted now. There’s a certain age-gap between people, a certain difference in their years on earth, which, though quite legal – and often desirable – does sit a little uncomfortably with one’s conscience; this was how the ghost felt . . . though his conscience had never been a very clear guide, a rather faltering beacon at best.

  But he would return to the corridors tonight . . . such a spillage of tragedy in the place. First there was Jamie’s death, the tortured fall towards the rocks – a gasp but no scream. They never screamed as they fell, not those he’d seen; there was simply no time and one’s thoughts were elsewhere. And then little Jennifer at Tide Mills. All so unfortunate really . . . but perhaps inevitable, some sort of a judgement on what Stormhaven Towers had become, he thought.

  Nathaniel Bleake, the founder of the school, may have been an intolerable bore – forcing good works, God and seriousness down everyone’s throat. But at least he wanted the best for the poor, whereas his schools today – well, they had good wishes only for the rich . . . unless the poor happened to be extremely good at cricket.

  So he would return tonight and seek a glimpse of the monk detective, which was rather fun. He wasn’t against the idea of a monk being a sleuth – good for a monk to be doing something useful for a change. But perhaps not too useful, he wouldn’t wish for that. He would have to be watched. And in the meantime, there was enough damage done to scupper the link-up with that Japanese corporation, surely? They’d hardly want the place now for their expensive summer conferences . . . the school was damaged goods, too stained with blood for their public relations department.

  In his heart of hearts, the ghost probably wished for the collapse of this place and its utter humiliation . . .

  ‘So what were they doing there?’

  asked Tamsin. She had explained to Holly about the five cloth bags of money found in her wardrobe. The head girl’s face had betrayed no emotion other than a frozen quality – a face put up for public view while work went on behind the scenes.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Holly. ‘Someone must have put them there.’

  ‘Well, that’s what we thought. It’s the obvious answer – because really, why would you have five bags of money in your room? It just doesn’t make sense.’ Holly nodded. ‘But then the question: if someone else did put them there – why haven’t you reported them? That’s a query we’ve had to ponder. It must have been a bit of a shock to find them there – odd arrivals in your wardrobe. Worth a mention to someone, probably . . . only you didn’t.’

  ‘I didn’t see them. I didn’t see the bags. I’ve had other things on my mind – like a murder you haven’t solved.’

  Tamsin smiled. She liked the girl’s spirit, her desire to attack, the brave words of a condemned woman.

  ‘I don’t see a guide dog by your side, Holly – and you don’t walk with a white stick . . . so I’m jumping to the conclusion that you’re not blind.’ Holly did not respond. ‘No one could use that wardrobe – and you do use that wardrobe – without seeing those bags of money . . . bags of money sitting in the wardrobe of the bedroom you’ve lived in for the past year.’

  Holly felt some readjustment was necessary.

  ‘I did see the bags there.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Yesterday – but I didn’t bother to look inside them.’

  ‘You didn’t look inside five large bags that suddenly appeared in your wardrobe?’

  ‘No.’

  It was the best answer she could manage, because this was quite scary. It wasn’t like school because the woman wouldn’t put it down, she kept coming back. ‘And you didn’t think to mention that someone had broken into your room – or worse, had a key? Will you be asking us to believe in the tooth fairy as well, Holly?’

  ‘The strange thing for me,’ said the abbot, changing the tone from bemused ridicule to sympathetic enquiry, ‘was how much the bags resembled a church collection. Did you not think that?’

  ‘Oh, well . . .’

  ‘I mean, it’s a mad idea, I grant you, because why would various church – or perhaps chapel – collections be sitting in your wardrobe?’ He made a smilingly puzzled face. ‘It makes no sense at all. And perhaps you looked inside, thought the same . . . you just couldn’t work it out?’

  A bridge back to the truth was offered and cautiously Holly placed a foot on it.

  ‘Maybe. Can I talk with the abbot alone, please?’ She looked at Tamsin and then Peter. ‘I have a confession to make.’

  ‘You can trust DI Shah,’ said Peter, not believing his own words. ‘And often confession is the best thing to do.’

  And now she was crying, tears breaking down her young face in faltering rivulets.

  ‘I’m really sorry!’ she mumbled, ‘sorry for what I did! I shouldn’t have done it.’

  Tamsin’s phone rang. She got up and answered it, indicating with her free hand that she needed to take the call. She left the room with another wave, which said, ‘Carry on with the confession . . .’

  ‘It was stupid, really,’

  said Holly, in the stillness of the school waiting room.

  On the table, her beautiful face smiled out from the cover of the school brochure, all gloss and colour. No one was in any doubt that she’d been an excellent marketing tool for the school . . . not that it had been that cynical, of course. But, well, you don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. And Holly’s face was a gift . . . a gift for the school publicity which said, ‘Attractive and rich – join the club!’

  But now the face was struggling, soaked in tears and recalling how it had all started, all this ‘nonsense’.

  ‘I was thinking about how I’d survive, mainly,’ she said, pushing a blonde hair back from her damp eyes. ‘My parents were all over the place at the time – and still are – a complete nightmare. And I didn’t want to be with them. Absolutely no way did I want to be with them. But then how would I survive? I had to earn money. I had to be independent.’

  ‘I quite see,’ said the abbot. ‘Your situation was difficult.’

  ‘Total, like, nightmare.’

  ‘So what did you do?’

  ‘It wasn’t what I did – it was what someone else did.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘They’re on the review team, you’ve met them. And you’ll be surprised when you hear who it is.’

  ‘Aconite,’ said Tamsin.

  ‘Jennifer was killed by aconite, applied to the head wound after blunt instrument trauma.’

  ‘What blunt instrument?’

  Tamsin had returned to the interview room.

  ‘A piece of old concrete – but no prints on it. The body had been there for eight to ten hours.’

  She spoke with frustration. You have to move quickly with forensics; something is lost with every hour of delay – and they’d lost too many already. And Peter remembered the conversation in the kitchen with Mrs Docherty that morning . . . and the fate of poor Gerry, the gardener.

  ‘I did suspect aconite,’ said Peter, which rather threw Tamsin. ‘The manner of death did suggest it. And bleakly appropriate in a school of learning.’

  ‘Why so?’

  ‘It’s a poison for the classicists, really.’

  ‘You mean we’re looking for someone who speaks Latin and wears a toga? That narrows it down a bit.’

  She both did and didn’t like it when Peter knew things. At present, she didn’t.

  ‘I mean, Ro
man history tells of its effectiveness,’ said Peter. ‘Agrippina murdered her husband, the Emperor Claudius, by mixing aconite into a plate of mushrooms.’

  ‘He may just not have liked mushrooms.’

  ‘While the Greek writer Ovid believed the herb came from the slavering mouth of Cerberus, the three-headed dog that guarded the gates of Hell. And one can see why – its effects can look a little like rabies.’

  ‘So Jennifer didn’t die happy?’

  ‘Nausea, vomiting and diarrhoea are the initial symptoms.’

  ‘The scene of the crime was messy, I’m told.’

  This was making sense.

  ‘It’s a poison readily available from the wolfsbane plant,’ continued Peter. ‘Purple or yellow in flower and so called, as you’ll know, because it was used to kill wolves; arrows were tipped with it.’ Tamsin did not know this. How could she ever have come across information like that? It was hardly what you would call ‘relevant’ – until now. ‘It’s powerful stuff . . . you don’t need much if you can get it into the bloodstream. The Aleuts used it to stun whales in Alaska. And it’s quickly absorbed through the skin – especially if the skin is broken or if applied to a sensitive area . . .’ the abbot paused for a moment ‘. . . such as the female genitalia.’

  Tamsin made a face.

  ‘Do I need to know this?’

  ‘Marcus Caelius accused Calpurnius Bestia of using it to kill his wives in their sleep. The prosecutor spoke of the defendant’s finger as the murder weapon.’

  ‘That’s quite gross, really. ’

  ‘I’m surprised you didn’t cover it on the inspectors’ course.’

  ‘We focused mainly on the twenty-first century.’

  ‘To your detriment, obviously.’

  ‘Have you finished?’

  The abbot shrugged, aware he’d shown unacceptable superiority of knowledge . . . but then the poison had always intrigued him. Tamsin decided on a change of direction, to a place of greater supremacy.

  ‘So you finally got rid of Miss Tearful?’

  ‘Holly? Interesting conversation. We must talk about that.’