A (Very) Public School Murder Read online

  The group sat in stunned silence.

  ‘Now let’s take a couple of hours’ break,’ said Jamie, calming. ‘Go out and get some fresh air in your lungs – and I’ll see you back here at five.’

  ‘Could I have a word?’ said Ferdinand.

  ‘If it’s quick,’ said Jamie. ‘Doesn’t sound like good news.’

  ‘It’s not good news, Headmaster.’

  And when they were alone, in a corner of the empty common room, the chaplain explained the situation, presuming it needn’t go any further . . .

  It wasn’t going well for Tamsin.

  She’d imagined this request would be a shoo-in with the chief inspector. She wanted to have Abbot Peter on her team – a formality, surely? Such was her reputation at the police HQ in Lewes – grudgingly bestowed by both lecherous and jealous males – she tended to be left alone, allowed her own way. Only this morning, Chief Inspector Wonder was blocking her path.

  ‘Tamsin, I don’t want to be difficult.’

  ‘Then don’t be.’

  They were in his office, a rather soulless affair. On the wall, a large certificate detailing success for the nick at the 2011 Sussex Gun Show, taking second place in the pistol shooting category. And that was it.

  ‘But, I ask you – the abbot chappie again?’

  ‘Where’s the issue?’ said Tamsin.

  She remained standing, with Wonder wedged behind his large desk, his stomach filling the space.

  ‘Where to begin, Tamsin?’

  ‘I don’t know. Where are you beginning? I’m not sure you know – with respect.’

  ‘A monk!’

  ‘A monk with a one hundred per cent clean-up rate – so obviously that isn’t bothering you.’

  ‘No, no, well . . .’

  ‘Oh, I get it – he’s making the rest of the dross employed here feel inadequate.’

  Wonder laughed away this absurd statement.

  ‘We’ve got good coppers here, Tamsin, and you know it.’ He leaned back, relaxing a little, happy to engage in banter with such a pretty lady. ‘A good copper is nosy – and there’s a lot of nosy so-and-sos around here!’

  Tamsin had no time for the banter and bonhomie.

  ‘A good copper fears failure,’ she said, bringing Wonder up short. ‘And so should you.’ He reassessed the situation.

  ‘This is not a war, Tamsin.’

  It was a war; it was clearly a war and had been for a while now with the stakes getting higher by the day.

  ‘No, it’s a farce, Chief Inspector – and I certainly wouldn’t pay for a ticket.’

  ‘But a monk, Tamsin – really? A monk!’

  ‘He’s an ex-monk.’

  ‘Can you be an ex-monk?’

  ‘It appears so.’

  She hadn’t a clue . . . and wasn’t interested.

  ‘Well, whatever the niceties of his present position, Tamsin, he dresses like a monk. And I mean, you must see – modern police force and all that.’

  He’d already decided to say no to her request. He’d decided to say no before Tamsin even entered his office this afternoon. It was time – and how to put this politely? – that Tamsin was shafted, put in her place, reined in a little. It was all slightly awkward obviously. There were issues here, Wonder was well aware of that . . . issues around his behaviour. He’d messed up at Mick Norman’s leaving do a couple of years back – of course he had. It had been inappropriate behaviour, that was a possible view – from the women’s brigade at least. But really, it was something and nothing . . . and he was drunk, for God’s sake! It hadn’t meant anything – he was a married man and had been for thirty-two years.

  But she was an attractive woman, so who wouldn’t have hopes? And with a few too many glasses of wine inside him, he’d simply misread the signs, which anyone can do . . . especially at a leaving do, when boundaries are put aside for the night, and rightfully so. But ever since then, in some manner or other, she’d held it over him . . . and had been allowed a very long lead in return.

  No longer, though! This is what he felt, sitting behind his big desk with its leather inlay. Today, Wonder was beginning his fight back. He was going to pull the lead in a little . . . he’d remind her that this bitch had an owner.

  ‘The answer’s “No”, Tamsin.’

  ‘What do you mean, the answer’s “No”?’

  How could Wonder say ‘No’ to her?

  ‘Have you noticed that we don’t use alchemists at the crime scene any longer – we use forensics! Science rather than charlatans! I’m not having some bloody monk, some mentally sick throwback, trampling over my crime scenes here in East Sussex. End of story!’

  ‘I wonder if I could say something?’ said Abbot Peter, who had appeared in the room, unnoticed.

  ‘Who the hell allowed him in?’ said Wonder, spinning round in his expensive office chair.

  ‘So what makes you think

  it wasn’t a suicide?’ Peter asked the question both out of interest and to take his mind off Tamsin’s reckless driving. It was like being back in Cairo, only without the random camels. ‘I mean, it’s a popular suicide spot, Stormhaven Head – and really quite a public place for a murder.’

  ‘Well, the first thing is, there’s no phone by the body.’

  ‘It might have been washed away.’

  ‘The water never reached him . . . he was found before high tide. And he always carried his phone apparently, never without it. He joked that he didn’t want to be out when Eton called.’

  ‘He speaks for us all there.’

  Tamsin smiled. She couldn’t imagine a more uncomfortable setting for the abbot than the hierarchical and entitled world of private education in England.

  ‘So where is his phone?’ she asked, rhetorically.

  ‘Reckoned too dangerous by the murderer?’

  ‘It’s a strong possibility.’

  The first mention of a murderer and the abbot couldn’t help but feel a twinge of excitement. Suddenly there was a target, a figure on the horizon to pursue – instead of vague talk of an investigation. But he’d still have to question the assumption.

  ‘Perhaps he just wanted a break from human contact during his final walk. It’s windy up on Stormhaven Head – a phone conversation is a difficult thing up there. And Eton might not have been his major concern if he was about to kill himself.’

  ‘His phone cannot be found at home either.’

  ‘OK. Well, that’s interesting.’

  That was very interesting.

  ‘And there’s something else,’ said Tamsin. ‘There are fibres on his back where one might imagine a pushing hand being placed. A rubber glove – or something similar. Just there – nowhere else.’

  ‘Clever forensics.’

  ‘I had told them what to look for.’

  ‘I’m sure they’d never have thought of that themselves . . .’

  Tamsin took one hand off the wheel, and shifted her body, to press Peter’s back causing the car to swerve on a tight bend.

  ‘Careful!’ said Peter, quite terrified. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘I’m just proving a point – that there was a killer. That’s where the fibres were on his back.’ But Peter’s heart was racing. ‘You’re just a rather precious passenger, Abbot . . . too long in the sand.’

  ‘Or not long enough.’

  ‘But the fact is, we have the touch of rubber.’

  ‘Ah, thank God for the first law of forensic science,’ he said.

  ‘Quite.’

  ‘Or Locard’s Exchange Principle as it is more technically called, stating that “every contact leaves a trace”. One of my monks was a former forensics bod in the Met.’

  ‘Bully for you.’

  ‘I’m not claiming it as an achievement.’

  ‘But more important than dull nostalgia is the fact that we have a murderer.’

  ‘It does appear so.’

  ‘So read me what we have about Stormhaven Towers.’

  Tamsin was
driving too fast on the small and curvy road to Newhaven. Coming the other way, at regular intervals, were large lorries off the cross-channel ferry. The abbot was aware they were not missing by much; he winced with each passing.

  ‘I’m not fond of reading in the car; it makes me feel sick.’

  ‘Welcome to the real world.’

  ‘And I prefer to look out of the window. I so rarely have a lift in a car.’

  ‘Do you want this job?’

  ‘You were quite close to that petrol tanker,’ he said, trying to sound as casual as he could, given the inner scream.

  ‘Just read the printouts,’ said Tamsin. ‘We need to be right up their noses from the word “go”.’

  ‘We also need to be alive.’

  Tamsin wasn’t happy with Wonder. She’d won the battle – but had been excluded from the fight, a mysterious mano-a-mano between chief inspector and abbot. What had happened back there? She wanted to know . . . but would have to wait. She needed to learn more about the school and had told Carter to print out the necessary information.

  The abbot dutifully started to read: ‘Bleak House, a novel by Charles Dickens, was first published as a serial between March 1852 and September 1853, and is considered to be one of Dickens’ finest novels, containing vast, complex and engaging arrays of characters and sub-plots . . .’

  Tamsin sighed.

  ‘He’s an idiot.’

  ‘Dickens?’

  ‘Carter. I asked him to do a printout on the Bleake Foundation – Stormhaven Towers is one of their schools.’

  ‘He obviously has a literary bent.’

  ‘Something’s bent.’

  ‘He heard “bleak” and thought of Dickens.’

  ‘Whereas I hear “bleak” and think of his future. I mean, why do we call them support staff, when in fact they make life more difficult?’

  There was a short pause until Peter decided to risk it: ‘You can be quite minimalist in your instructions, Tamsin – quite terse. You may not have explained yourself as clearly as you wished – or thought you had. It’s possible.’

  ‘It’s also possible he’s an idiot,’ she replied, fuming at the wheel.

  ‘Stay concentrating on the road,’ he said. ‘Rage does not a better driver make.’

  ‘Pay peanuts, get monkeys,’ she said sulkily. Peter looked out on the passing fields and wondered if she was referring to Carter or to him. His desire right now was to calm her down – she drove more slowly when calm, when she seethed less.

  ‘I do know a little about the Bleake Foundation myself, if it helps.’

  ‘You do?’

  ‘I mean, I’m not encyclopaedic . . .’

  ‘What do you know?’

  When Peter said he wasn’t encyclopaedic, it generally meant he comprehended the matter in its entirety. But then, for the abbot, an expert was simply someone aware of how little they knew.

  ‘Well, it was started by Nathaniel Bleake,’ he said. ‘He was a nineteenth-century philanthropist. I don’t know what he made his money in . . . probably child labour of some description. He had seven children himself, though I suspect they didn’t work in his factories. There are a few Bleakes still living in the county . . . and five schools in the Foundation, strung across the rolling greens of Sussex. Stormhaven Towers is perhaps one of the lesser performers.’

  ‘Why do I always get to work with losers?’

  ‘Shall I continue?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The schools were originally meant for the education of children of impoverished clergy – but with fees for the year now standing at thirty thousand pounds, the impoverished are less involved these days. Decent headmaster, of the driven variety – and of course now I think about it, I met him once.’

  ‘You met him?’

  ‘Some charity event I got dragged along to. Jamie King – a man of energy and professional charm, no question of that. Though whether he was a saint or not, I don’t know. I remember he smoked a great deal, drank a great deal, and as far as I could see, always had to be doing something . . . one of those people who look like they’re going to explode any minute . . . restless. You wondered where he found peace. ’

  ‘And now he has.’

  ‘Of a sort.’

  Silence.

  ‘Do you know anyone else at the school, by any chance?’ asked Tamsin. For someone who was supposed to like solitude, she’d discovered Peter did get around. If he was a hermit – which he kept on insisting upon – then he was a notably failed one.

  ‘Well, strangely enough, his wife is my doctor, Cressida Cutting – she kept her maiden name.’

  ‘Is that a problem, Abbot?’

  ‘Don’t let feminism make you stupid, Tamsin.’ She pulled a face. ‘I state it as a matter of record. Just as I also state she has an appalling bedside manner, cold as the February sea.’

  ‘You don’t seem to like her.’

  ‘On the contrary, she is everything I need in my GP. Appalling bedside manner – but a very sharp eye for the correct diagnosis and I’ll settle for that. Bedside manner is overrated, so there’s hope for you yet . . . which reminds me, I’ve also met Father Ferdinand Heep, the school chaplain.’

  ‘So what’s the dirt on him?’

  Peter looked disappointed.

  ‘It’s not dirt, Tamsin. Why does information have to be dirt?’

  ‘Because it usually is. The more you discover about someone, the less impressive they become. People present a virtuous facade; but as more and more information is discovered, there’s not much left of the facade, believe me.’

  Peter couldn’t disagree . . . though he had met the occasional soul who’d become more wonderful through the knowing, rather than less . . . but that was back in the desert, not in Stormhaven.

  ‘I did notice,’ said Peter, ‘that he was caught up in his own little battle with someone called Bart.’

  ‘That’s dirt.’

  ‘A slightly grubby truth, perhaps. He really didn’t like Bart, who was the school’s Director of Wellbeing.’

  ‘Director of Wellbeing?’ Tamsin almost veered off the road in amazed disdain. ‘Tell me you’re making that up.’

  ‘Bart Betters is his name.’

  ‘It’s getting worse.’

  ‘He likes woodcraft, mindfulness, ancient England, that sort of thing. And he sings folk songs, long ones – which is probably where I part company with him.’

  ‘So you’ve heard him sing? You’re not Simon Cowell in disguise, are you?’

  ‘There’s a farm in the village of Spithurst.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘It’s well known for its nightingales.’

  Nightingales would calm Tamsin.

  ‘Can we stay with the murder?’ she said. ‘We’ll be at the school soon.’

  ‘I bought a ticket for an event there. I was part of a group that came in search of the nightingale and its marvellous song.’ This was not a group Tamsin would ever join. ‘We didn’t have them in the desert, being so far from Berkeley Square.’

  ‘Berkeley Square?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’ Another failed joke in the history of the universe. ‘It was a night event, part of Brighton Festival. We arrived at the farm at nine and sat round a large and rather engaging fire enjoying herbal tea and oatcakes while darkness fell and the stars appeared.’

  ‘Sounds like a complete nightmare.’

  ‘And the thing was, our leader for the night was Bart Betters.’

  ‘Is that his real name?’

  ‘He spoke a little about nightingales; he’d obviously read up on them. They fly to Africa for the winter, apparently, and have an unusual larynx.’ Tamsin sighed . . . not far now to the school. ‘But he seemed most interested in singing folk songs. I wouldn’t have minded one brief one, but these came one after the other, each with eighteen endless verses – possibly more – about young love in ancient England –

  A country boy did espye a maiden,

  And in his heart,
she made her claim,

  Beneath the oak, he wondered dearly –

  ‘That’s probably enough,’ said Tamsin.

  ‘Be grateful for the power of edit – because there was none that night, I can assure you. We left the camp fire at about eleven after more songs and walked on into the forest, a silent troupe listening to the night silence.’

  ‘I prefer to do that from my bed.’

  Tamsin had recently moved into an expensive flat near Hove station, which was both Brighton – yet not Brighton. Hove was a community of its own, while just a few minutes away from the ‘happening’ metropolis. It was sometimes called ‘Hove, actually’ from the oft-used response by people when asked where they lived. ‘I live in Brighton – well, Hove, actually.’

  But Peter was still in the forest, in search of the nightingale.

  ‘And then finally, at midnight, after a further walk, we reached the Promised Land: a nightingale singing! It does it to mark its territory, apparently – but we could pretend it sang in sadness or delight. And we were just standing in holy awe at the sounds – so much variety of tune and tone – when Bart gets out his guitar and insists on singing again! “It’s like a duet with creation, guys!” he said – though we didn’t hear much of the nightingale after that. It was mainly Bart and his long dirges written for a time when no one had anything else to listen to.’

  ‘You don’t like folk music, do you?’

  But before Peter could respond, Stormhaven Towers was upon them – and their hearts jumped in unison.

  ‘Look lively,’ said Tamsin as they drove through the large school gates. They featured two stone seagulls, looking down from their perch like disapproving Caesars, eager to swoop on new arrivals with their cruelly curved beaks. The grey flint buildings appeared calm in the sunshine, untouched by recent upset; and the mowed lawns lay immaculate, much tended. A gardener was clipping their edges even now.

  ‘A gardener died here last year,’ said Peter as they drove past the bent figure. ‘I remember reading about it. Something of a mystery, as far as I remember.’