“Not to run it. To sell it.”
Jonas thought of what Dan had said to him in that room less than a month ago. He said, “I suppose you realise that there’s nothing in all this that adds up to anything like proof. No one could begin to base a charge on it.”
“I didn’t imagine you could,” said Pamela. “Once she’s out of the way I’ll be happy to forget all about her.”
She looked at Tim, who smiled his agreement.
“I’m not sure that you
can
get rid of her.”
“But—”
“When Tim becomes headmaster he can stop her from interfering with the school. But that doesn’t mean he can turn her out of the house. The law is very protective of widows and their rights in the matrimonial home.”
“Let her stay on?” said Tim. “It would be an impossible position for all of us, quite impossible. It just would not work.”
“Has it occurred to you that there may be some method in Laura Cullingford’s madness? She’ll have been told what her legal rights are. If she really can make it impossible for you to carry on, you’d have to sell the place. Which is exactly what she wants.”
Tim and Pamela looked at each other. The idea had obviously never struck them.
“I may be quite wrong,” said Jonas. “Anyway, there’s no point in crossing that bridge till we come to it. The next few days are going to be critical. We’d better keep in touch.”
After they had gone Jonas sat for a long time in his office. In forty years of legal practice he could hardly remember a more difficult situation, or one with more unpleasant possibilities. Suppose what Pamela had suggested was true. Suppose Laura had planned to kill her husband. If so, she had done it in such a way that the law could not touch her.
“Thou shalt not kill,” he quoted to himself, “but needst not strive officiously to keep alive.”
And what was Laura going to do now? With a woman of her temperament it was impossible to guess, except that it would certainly be unexpected and possibly violent.
The street outside was very quiet. Faintly he heard the clock in the market square striking the hour. Ten o’clock. He’d no idea it was so late. He switched out the light in the office and went upstairs to his flat. Tomorrow was Saturday. Nothing much could happen before Tuesday, after Appleby had got back. That should at least give them a quiet weekend.
He was still thinking this when the telephone in his bedroom rang at seven o’clock on the following morning.
“Sorry to wake you up,” said Superintendent Queen.
“I am awake. I’m just putting on my shoes.”
“Good. Well the fact is, Mr Pickett, that I think I ought to warn you that you’ll be getting your first clients at eight o’clock.”
“Who?”
“One of ’em’s my son James. T’other’s a friend of his at the school, Vincent Sambrooke.”
“At Clifton House?”
“Right. They’re the two senior boys. In fact they’re leaving at the end of the term. They’ve both got places at Brighton College.”
“Were they the two boys I saw at the funeral standing in front of the bishop?”
“Right. And what I wanted to say is that they’re both sensible kids. Much more grown up than I was at their age.”
“Children grow up faster now,” agreed Jonas. “What do they want to talk about?”
“Jimmy wouldn’t tell me.”
“Why?”
He heard the Inspector chuckle. “He told me he’d heard me say that if people knew their rights they’d always have a word with their solicitors
before
saying anything to the police.”
Jonas said, “Good heavens. I hope whatever trouble they’re in it’s not serious.”
“I got the impression,” said Queen, “that it wasn’t them that was in trouble.”
The boys arrived promptly at eight o’clock, and sat down in the two chairs which Jonas had placed opposite his desk. James looked at Vincent who was clearly to be the spokesman.
He said, “We’ve come to report a murder, sir.”
“Of whom, by whom?”
Vincent faced this without flinching. He said, “Of Mr Cullingford, by his wife.”
There was a long pause while Jonas made up his mind what to say. Laugh at them? Impossible. Get angry with them? Equally impossible. In the end he simply said, “I suppose you realise that what you’re saying is extremely serious?”
Vincent had taken off his glasses to clean them on his handkerchief. Having replaced them he looked quite steadily at Jonas and said, “Yes, sir. We know it’s serious, but it’s true. We were in the gym, quite close to where it happened. We both heard Mrs Cullingford say, ‘Go on, Dan, be a big man. Show the boys how to do it.’ We didn’t think he wanted to, but she kept at him. She said, ‘Shall I get Pamela – that’s Miss Ricketts – to show you how to do it?’ That seemed to annoy him, so he took off his coat and started up. Then—but you know about that, sir.”
“Yes,” said Jonas. “I know about that. If what you’re implying is true – and I say if, because I can see no certainty in it at all – can you think of any reason why she should do such a thing?”
“Oh, we know that, sir.”
Jonas stared at him.
“If we didn’t know that, we wouldn’t have come along. It was what young Russell told us yesterday evening that made us certain we were right. He’d seen Mrs Cullingford in Mr Price’s BMW. It was parked up a lane near his house, but he could see them quite clearly through the hedge.”
“Did he say what they were doing?”
For the first time Vincent seemed to have lost a little of his remarkable poise. He said, “What he said, sir, was that they were snogging.”
“And what did he mean by that?”
“He’s only eleven,” said Vincent apologetically. “I don’t think he knows a lot about that sort of thing. I mean it was getting dark, and he couldn’t see much. What I expect he meant was heavy petting.”
Jonas was wondering what a judge and counsel would make of this sort of evidence. He said, “If it was dark, mightn’t Russell have been wrong about the car?”
“Oh no, sir,” said Jimmy, speaking for the first time. “He may not know much about sex but he knows
all
about cars. He says it was a red four-door six-cylinder BMW 520i with one of those black spoilers. Price is the only man in these parts who’s got one of those.”
“I see,” said Jonas. This sounded a little more like hard evidence. “What about the people in the car? Of course he’d know Mrs Cullingford, but how did he know the man was Price?”
“He said they’d bought their new house through Price and Westbury. He’d seen Price talking to his father more than once.”
Vincent, who had recovered his poise, said, “Jimmy and I talked it out. We knew Mr Price had been shopping round for building land. At one time he asked my father to come in with him on a deal. Dad wasn’t keen, because, he told me, he didn’t trust Price. But if Mr Cullingford was out of the way, he could pick up Mrs Cullingford
and
the land. It seemed quite obvious.”
By this time Jonas had decided on the line he must take. He said coldly, “Things may seem obvious in a sort of detective story way, but we’re dealing here with real life. There could be all sorts of explanations of what you’ve told me. Meanwhile, I’ll give you some advice. I imagine you came to me for advice?”
The two boys nodded.
“Then you are to say nothing to anyone until I let you. If you do, you may cause untold harm. You haven’t spoken to your fathers?”
Two heads were shaken.
“Good. Then keep your mouths buttoned. You’d better hurry, or you’ll be late for school.”
As the boys were leaving the office Vincent said, “Did you see that, Jimmy?”
“No. What?”
“In the BMW Mr Price.”
“Did he see us?”
“Yes, I think he did. Ten to one he’ll sneak to Mrs Cullingford.”
James thought about this as they trotted along. They couldn’t stop to talk about it. They were going to have their work cut out to get to school in time.
“Don’t see she can do much about it,” said James. “It isn’t as though we’d done anything wrong.”
They were a minute late, but scudded up the drive and slipped into their places as the short service which started the day’s routine was about to begin.
On Saturdays there were two periods of work followed by a half-hour break at eleven and one more work hour before lunch. Since no games had been arranged for the afternoon, once lunch was over everyone was free to go home.
It was during the break that the message came round. Everyone was to be in the big school room at half past eleven.
“Does everyone mean us?” said the visiting master who taught mathematics.
“Apparently not,” said Tim. “Just the boys.”
The master said, “Good show.” He himself had no further class to take and was planning to catch the eleven forty to London. “What’s it all about anyway?”
“No idea. Orders from the head lady.”
The boys shuffled into the schoolroom and sat down. Laura mounted the platform where the master’s desk stood and stared down at them. She was breathing heavily, as though she had been running. There was a white patch along each cheekbone.
She said, “Sambrooke and Queen, come out here.”
The two boys came and stood in front of the desk.
“You were both late for prayers this morning.”
“I thought we were just in time, Mrs Cullingford,” said Jimmy.
“There’s no such thing as being just in time. Either you’re in time or you’re late.”
“Yes, Mrs Cullingford.”
“What made you late?”
So Price
has
sneaked, thought Jimmy. Now for it. He said, “I had a message from my father for Mr Pickett.”
“A message? Why couldn’t your father have delivered it himself?”
“I don’t know, Mrs Cullingford.”
Laura, who had been standing, now stepped off the platform and stood beside Jimmy. She said, through her teeth, “I think you’re lying.”
“I’m not lying, Mrs Cullingford. You can ask my father. He knew I was going there.”
“I’ve no doubt he’ll support any lies you choose to tell. But you’re not going to get away with it.”
She swung her right arm, hand open, and hit him in the face. She was a powerful woman, and the blow was so unexpected that Jimmy toppled over sideways, clutched at one of the legs of the desk, and pulled it down on top of himself. It came with a splintering crash, spilling books, rulers and an open inkpot from which a black lake spread slowly on to the planks.
Laura took no further notice of him. She moved across to Vincent who guessed what was coming and whipped his glasses off. Her open hand hit him on the side of the face. Since he was ready for it he did not fall down but stood staring at her blankly. She hit him again, and then again.
The rest of the school stood watching her in horrified silence.
It was just after half past two that same afternoon when Superintendent Queen and Leopold Sambrooke arrived together at Jonas’s office. They were both very angry. They told Jonas what had happened, supplementing each other, and adding to each other’s fury.
“Vincent’s got a badly split lip, and the doctor thinks he may have a cracked cheekbone.”
“Jimmy’s had to have six stitches in a long tear in his scalp. That was when the desk fell on him.”
“They’re both pretty shocked, I can tell you.”
“They weren’t the only people who were shocked. A lot of the smaller boys were so scared they wouldn’t even stay for school lunch. They scuttled straight off.”
“There are no two ways about it,” said Sambrooke. “That woman ought to be in a home, under proper restraint.”
“And what we want to know,” said Queen, “is what we can do about it. Because we’re not letting her get away with it.”
“That’s right,” said Sambrooke. “What’s the position? The legal position?”
“Well,” said Jonas. “Mrs Cullingford was standing in, temporarily, as headmaster. The law about schoolmasters isn’t entirely clear, but it’s generally accepted that they have the right to give their pupils moderate punishment.”
“Moderate,” said Sambrooke viciously. “A fractured cheekbone and a broken head for being one minute late for school.”
“Only it seems that wasn’t their real offence,” said Queen.
“What was it, then?”
“Coming to visit you.”
“I see,” said Jonas. “Yes, I thought I saw that BMW parked outside. Price must have seen them leaving.”
“Look here,” said Sambrooke. “What we want—”
Jonas held up one hand. “I know what you want,” he said. “And please don’t misunderstand me. Of course what Mrs Cullingford did couldn’t be justified under any code of law. It was sheer spiteful rage. A totally unwarranted attack, in front of a hundred witnesses. No court would tolerate it. But the real point is this. If a case were brought which court would be hearing it?”
The two angry men stared at him. Queen seemed to have some idea what he was getting at.
Jonas said, “If Mrs Cullingford had not been in a position of authority – I mean, if she had just come up to a strange boy in the street and had done what she did to your boys – the right course would have been a simple charge of criminal assault. First offence. She would probably have been bound over. You follow me?”
Queen said, “Yes.” Sambrooke was too angry to speak.
“But where someone exceeds – grossly exceeds – an imagined right, the proper course is a civil action, which would certainly result in her being forced to pay costs and heavy damages.”
“Let’s hit her where it hurts most,” agreed Queen.
“Quite so. The trouble is that a civil action takes time. Certainly months, maybe years.”
“That’s impossible,” said Sambrooke. “She can’t be left in that school for another day. She’s not safe.”
Queen, who knew Jonas better than Sambrooke, said, “You’ve got some idea, haven’t you, Mr Pickett?”
“Yes,” said Jonas. “I’m not sure whether it’s a good one or a bad one.”
He spoke for some minutes.
“It’s going to mean a lot of hard work for you,” he said. “And you’ll have to move quickly. You’ve only got this afternoon and tomorrow.”
“You can do a lot in a day and a half if you give your mind to it,” said Queen. “One thing, we shan’t have to waste much time over explanations.”
Sambrooke said, “Might be a good idea to get the press in on it. Sammy Clayton’s father is sub-editor of the
South Coast Gazette and News
. It publishes bi-weekly, on Tuesdays and Fridays.”