The School of English Murder (17 page)

‘I’ll be there at seven. Perhaps we can manage something longer over the weekend?’

‘Well, I’ve got Ellis coming to dinner on Saturday night, Jim. How would you feel about joining us?’

‘Good question. I’d like it very much but I’m not sure that I should do it.’

‘The three of us really need to talk things over sometime, don’t we?’

‘Yes. We do. But I had assumed we’d be in more formal territory.’

‘You know all this officers and gentlemen stuff is very difficult for me to accept, Jim. I think I understand why the police have to be run on quasi-military lines. But I find it hard to believe that I can’t invite two friends to dinner because one of them has the power of life and death over the other.’

‘You’re right, Robert. I’m being ultra-cautious. It’s really Ellis I’m trying to protect.’

‘And Ellis is trying to protect you. Do you know he always refers to you as the Super even when he’s talking to me in private? He’s terrified that if he thought of you as Jim he’d let it out some day in public and your career would be compromised.’

‘It is ridiculous, really, when you look at it from the perspective of outside. Bugger it. Of course I’d like to come. And Ellis is just going to have to learn two modes: public and private.’

22

«
^
»

There were very few English people at Ned’s funeral: apart from Amiss, Gavs and Rich, there were no more than a dozen. The only BP to turn up was Gunther, who explained to Amiss that it was proper to pay respect to the principal. What was heartening was the sight of a substantial contingent of the tarts and waiters: clearly Ned’s gift for inspiring affection penetrated the language barrier.

The church was small and elegant; the flowers discreet but exquisite; the organ music — mainly Bach — was splendid; the hymns were nobly sung, for Rich, perhaps anticipating a small turn-out, had hired a quartet of singers; and the vicar was well-briefed and talked about a Ned that Amiss recognised. Above all, Rich read with great dignity a lesson that suited gentle Ned Nurse very well, the passage from St Paul to the Corinthians that ends, ‘So faith, hope, love abide, these three ; but the greatest of these is love.’

The entire congregation melted away after the service and Rich went off alone with the vicar to bury Ned. Amiss and Gavs walked together towards the tube.

‘What are you doing for lunch, Gavs?’

‘Hadn’t thought. And you?’

‘Same. How about trying the pub beside the station?’

‘Sure.’

It was a theme pub, a phenomenon of the 1980s that Amiss particularly deplored. This one had a library theme, which meant that a corner of it had subdued lighting, darkish wallpaper, a couple of button-back leatherette sofas, two similar armchairs and four rows of books that looked as though they were a job lot from a jumble sale. The rest of the pub was laid out more like an aircraft hangar; under strong white lights, ten people occupied a space that could have fitted a hundred with ease.

‘What’s yours?’

‘Gin and tonic, please, Bob. I’ll get a table, shall I?’

Amiss brought the drinks over to Gavs, who had commandeered the whole library corner by cleverly strewing his raincoat, briefcase and newspaper over all available surfaces.

‘Cheers,’ said Amiss, raising his pint of bitter. ‘To Ned.’

‘Ned.’

‘Lunch?’ Amiss inclined his head towards the glass and plastic food counter positioned what seemed like fifty feet away. They walked across and silently surveyed a display that gave pride of place to slices of processed cheese and rubbery ham. Around these were scattered lettuce, parsley, green and red peppers and tomatoes, all constructed out of plastic.

‘Can I help yew?’ The girl looked impatient.

‘Er… is this it?’

Her irritation at their ignorance was barely contained. ‘There’s a menew.’ She pushed over a red plastic folder. ‘Everything hot’s off except the sausage.’

‘I’ll have two Scotch eggs with chips,’ said Gavs.

Amiss stifled a grin. ‘And I’ll have the sausages and beans.’

They paid and returned to their drinks.

‘Progress!’ said Gavs. ‘I can’t wait to get out of this fucking country.’

‘Where to?’

‘Kenneth — that’s my partner — and I, we’re buying a place in Morocco. We’ll run it as a small high-class hotel.’

‘Do you know Morocco well?’

‘Sure. Been two or three times a year for the last four or five. Kenneth can’t stay away from Arabs.’

Amiss was rather nonplussed by Gavs’s directness. ‘Oh, really?’ was the only response he could think of.

‘Yes. Fortunately I don’t mind. If he wants to bring them along to join us now and again that’s all right with me. The important thing is having no hanky-panky on the side.’

‘You’re happy with troikas, you mean,’ said Amiss, trying to sound like a man of the world.

‘Well, I can take them or leave them, but it’s important to keep Kenneth happy.’

‘Oh, yes, of course. Absolutely.’ As the girl arrived and slammed down their plates, Amiss speculated on how Rachel would react if he asked her if she would mind the occasional threesome. His imagination was not up to it.

‘Mind you, I wish it didn’t always have to be Arabs. The Moroccans are all right, but I don’t like the Saudis.’

Amiss murmured sympathetically as he tucked into his baked beans.

‘Ahmed was really rough.’

‘Ahmed!’

‘Oh, I thought you’d have known.’

‘But I’ve seen him all over women several times. And I’m sure he’s had his leg over with Jenn.’

‘Yeh, sure. He’s AC/DC. Probably does it with camels too. That boy just likes sensation.’

Amiss ate some more beans. He felt too dazed to think clearly about what other information Gavs might be able to give him. Finally he asked, ‘Lot of sex goes on with the students?’

‘Oh, sure. With and among. Most of them are in the mood and we’re pretty cooperative. A romance every second group would be about the size of it.
AIDS
is cutting down the fun more and more, mind you. Though you’d be surprised how many of them still don’t believe it can happen to them.’

‘I hadn’t thought Cath—’

‘Oh, very selective, very, very. Nobody gets that baby cheaply. In fact, I don’t know if anyone has in the last six months or so. She says she’s got a steady. You had much action yet?’

Amiss swung into the account of his rich, jealous girlfriend. ‘Cramps my style a bit, I can tell you. Galina’s not too pleased.’

‘I’ve heard. Another?’

‘Yes, please.’

Amiss collected his thoughts. He remembered he was supposed to be focusing on the supposed murders rather than getting lost in details of other people’s sex lives. When Gavs returned, he asked, ‘Will Rich manage OK without Ned?’

‘I don’t know. I think Ned was a lot more important to Rich than the others realise. But then I understand about partnerships. And even though I don’t think they were what I mean by gay, they were more than just friends.’

‘What do you think happened to Ned?’

‘Search me. The only thing I can think of is that one of the students played a joke that misfired. Or Jenn. It’d be just the sort of idiotic thing she’d do. But I doubt if she’d ever admit to it.’

‘One of the fuzz asked me if I’d heard anything about Wally Armstrong’s death. All I knew was what I’d heard from you and Jenn.’

‘Well now, if you were looking for someone to murder, Wally would have been a serious proposition. I couldn’t stick him. It was a mercy Rich kept him out of things as much as he did. Wally would definitely not have approved of some of our goings on. Fortunately, he was too thick to see anything that wasn’t handed to him on a platter.’ He took another sip. ‘Mind you, people don’t usually get murdered just for being annoying, do they? It must have been an accident.’

‘How did he get on with Rich?’

‘I think he resented him. I came after Rich took over, so I don’t really know how things were before. But certainly Wally’s nose seemed out of joint. Mind you, Rich was very generous to him. Cut him in on the BP profits even though he made no contribution to them.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Drink up. We’re due back at base in half an hour.’

In the tube Gavs asked casually, ‘Have you a heavy load of extra activities?’

‘Pretty bad. Three nights this week. And Sunday. It’s a bit much, but Rich seemed desperate.’

‘He’s having another picnic so soon? That’s unusual.’

‘I suppose it’s because of the nice weather.’ Gavs looked at him curiously. ‘I suppose it is.’ They got out at Knightsbridge and began the walk to the school. ‘Expecting Galina on Sunday, are you?’

‘God, I suppose so. She turns up everywhere.’

‘Well, if you want my advice, I’d be prepared.’ Amiss weighed up the importance of keeping up a cool façade against his urgent desire to know what the hell Gavs meant. The façade won.

‘
Che sera, sera
,’ he said carelessly.

‘You knew him well?’

‘I’d say as well as anyone. I lived beside them from the day they got married till the day they separated. More coffee?’

‘Thanks.’

Mrs Clarke topped up the three cups. She leaned back in her armchair, crossed her elegant legs and lit a cigarette.

‘Tell me about Wally.’

‘The trouble with Wally was that when he saw anyone doing anything, he knew he could do it better. That included running the country, the London Zoo, the local newspaper shop and obviously, most of all, the place where he worked. People didn’t have the heart to ask the simple question: why, if he was so bloody smart, was he working in a tenth-rate, two-man language school as the second in command?

‘Celia put up with his self-importance for all those years when she was bringing up the children and then she went back to work. Her new perspective helped her to see that she was suffering the double disadvantage of being married to a failure who behaved as if he were a success.’

‘You liked her?’

‘Very much. Still do. Mind you, I think she bears a lot of the responsibility for the way Wally carried on. Through a combination of sheer good nature and naïvety, she took him at his face value for years. It was ’Wally this’ and ‘Wally that’. If Wally pronounced on monetarism, the space race, the right colours for a bedroom or whether women should breastfeed in public, Mrs Wally quoted him. No wonder he came to believe he was right about everything. When he talked about his boss’s inadequacies as a businessman, she took him as seriously as if he were a senior Cabinet minister shaking his head over the Prime Minister’s latest errors of judgement. Some women make fools of their husbands, and she was one of them. But then she had the right material to work on.’

‘It must have been a shock to him when she changed her tune.’

‘It was, but he managed to rationalise it easily enough. Decided she had fallen in with feminists who had addled her brain. Wally had a very thick hide.’

‘Did he talk about Rich Rogers, the fellow who became Ned Nurse’s partner?’

‘Sorry, I can’t help you there. He left next door before that happened and I never heard from him afterwards. I think he’d put me down as one of the wicked feminists.’

‘From what you’ve said, Mrs Clarke, would it have been in character for Armstrong to have decided to pre-empt the electrician?’

‘Completely.’

‘And also in character to have succeeded in electrocuting himself?’

She leaned her cheek on her hand and gazed at the floor for a full minute. ‘I’m sorry, Superintendent. I can’t give you a clear opinion. You see it’s my vague impression that he was less bad at dealing with electrical matters than he was at a lot of other things. I’ve known their house flooded out because Wally did something stupid with the plumbing. But I can’t remember any electrical disasters. Have you checked with Celia?’

‘She was asked that after he died. Said he might have mucked it up, but it would be slightly surprising.’

‘That’s about the size of it. Good luck. If he was murdered, I hope you get whoever did it. For all I’ve said about Wally, he was essentially on the side of decency. He wouldn’t walk away if he saw someone in trouble.’

‘What was he like as a colleague?’

‘Superior. Wally was the original tuppence ha’penny looking down on tuppence. You were a part-timer: he was the deputy principal, a man worn down with the weight of his responsibilities. I swear to God if the Vice Chancellor of Oxford carried on the way Wally did, people would say he had got too big for his boots.’

‘He had no natural talent for the job, but he was very conscientious with the students, I’ll give him that. Worked hard preparing lessons and would help with questions after hours. He was a kind man. Sadly, half the things that maddened one most were caused by kindness. It was his efforts to help me and turn me into a teacher like him that caused me to leave. He couldn’t help me become a better version of me; he had to try to make me in his image.’

‘Was he right in his criticisms of the school the way Ned ran it?’

‘Yes and no. Under Ned the teachers got paid and the students got taught. Of course as Rich saw later, the building and its location had lots of unrealised potential. But Wally never had any ideas for increasing profits that went further than increasing fees by four per cent or slightly reducing the length of classes and hence the fees of teachers.’

‘So how did he respond to Rich?’

‘Couldn’t believe what was happening. This little upstart, “the pipsqueak”, Wally always called him. He was inordinately proud of being tall; indeed he appeared to be proud of being fat. The pipsqueak just appeared one day and turned everything upside down with Ned’s full endorsement. And worse than that, it worked. And worse again, Rich wouldn’t let Wally come in on the BPs. He tried to be tactful, but he was firm. Wally kept pushing at the door and it was always shut. Rich even rationed his attendance at parties to the big end-of-course ones. “Sorry,” Rich said, “it’s a young man’s game, Wally.” And when Wally pointed out he was the same age as Rich, Rich laughed that funny laugh of his and said, “I’m the exception that proves the rule.” ’