Authors: Gladys Mitchell
'In other words,' said Miss Loveday, who often embarrassed her brother by acting as his interpreter, 'your Housemaster means that Mrs Bradley is a psychiatrist and that she has come to interview Merrys.'
'You may perhaps wonder,' said Mr Loveday, resuming his position as head of the House, 'why I should take the responsibility of such proceedings. It is, of course, in connexion with Mr Conway's death.'
'Do you mean you think Merrys
knows
something, sir?' demanded Findlay; and the other prefects looked up, interested to hear Mr Loveday's reply.
'No, no. But the boy is in a nervous state, and I – Miss Loveday and I – think that treatment here might be better than sending him home. His parents concur in this view, and so Mrs Bradley has very kindly consented to examine him. She will place the boy under observation, and –'
'Is he – do you mean he's
insane,
sir?' blurted out Edgeley.
'No, of course not! It is merely –' Mr Loveday cast about for the most suitable words with which to remove an unfortunate impression.
'By the way, sir,' said Stallard, before his Housemaster could continue, 'that reminds me. I've never thought of it before, but I remember now that the week before Mr Conway's – before it happened to Mr Conway – Merrys came to me with some tale which caused me to give him permission to go round into your garden. I hope that was quite all right, sir?'
'My garden? But – Stallard, you don't think Merrys can have borrowed my bicycle? You know, it
was
borrowed.'
'I don't think anything, sir,' said Stallard uncomfortably, 'but I thought I ought to mention it, that's all.'
'And quite right, too!' said Mr Loveday emphatically. '
Quite
right! What do
you
think, Annette?'
'I picked on Merrys, and it looks as though I was not far wrong,' said Miss Loveday, with great satisfaction.
'You will therefore excuse Merrys from all attendance at football practice if Mrs Bradley finds that the football practice hour is a convenient time at which to interview the boy,' said Mr Loveday, eyeing Cartaris, whom he privately suspected of beating boys who cut football, 'and the rest of you must keep an eye on him without appearing to do so. You must exercise great discretion.
Great
discretion. I would not have the boy know for the world that he is being watched. Miss Loveday and I have felt considerable anxiety as to the possible effects of this dreadful business on nervous and sensitive boys.'
'Merrys walks in his sleep, sir,' said Findlay. 'He frightens the boys in his dormitory.'
Everybody stared at Findlay; his fellow prefects because they admired his nerve in introducing this (to their minds) extraneous subject of conversation, and the Lovedays because they were genuinely taken aback. Mrs Bradley stared because she was summing up Findlay, whom she suspected of having invented this tit-bit of information for her benefit.
'Really, Findlay? How do you come to know that?' enquired Mr Loveday, excitedly.
'He was being ragged about it, sir. I happened to overhear. I took no notice at the time, but now all this has been mentioned –'
'Well!'
said Miss Loveday, regarding Findlay with admiration. 'This is really uncanny, is it not? What do you say, Mrs Bradley, to Findlay's evidence?'
'Interesting, instructive, and misleading,' said Mrs Bradley emphatically. Findlay gave her a comical glance. He was an intelligent boy, Mrs Bradley decided, and when she needed help he should help her. He was likely to afford her more assistance than were the earnest Stallard and the ox-like Cartaris, she fancied.
*
She was not at all anxious to interview Merrys when he ought to have been playing football. Apart from the boy's own wishes – and he might be fond of football – she had an old-fashioned belief that games – even compulsory games – were not altogether bad for boys.
She had enjoyed meeting the prefects, but it did seem to her that the fewer people – certainly the fewer boys – who realized the purpose of her visit, the greater were her chances of success. She mentioned this to Mr Loveday on the following morning, after breakfast. She did not add, however, that the Headmaster was retaining her in another capacity – that of private detective.
'I tell my prefects everything,' said Mr Loveday. 'I find that it is the only way of inculcating a sense of true responsibility.'
'Who is Merrys's form-master?' Mrs Bradley enquired. It transpired that one Mr Lamphrey had now shouldered this onerous task. Mrs Bradley walked over to the School House to interview the Headmaster.
'Mr Loveday?' said Mr Wyck. 'Oh, yes, of course. His boys will be scattered in various forms, I am afraid. Merrys? Oh, yes, you may interview him when and where you please. If the boy knows anything about this unhappy business – the whole form? Well, of course, you
could.'
He conducted Mrs Bradley to Mr Lamphrey's form-room. Mr Lamphrey, his gown standing off from his shoulders like the wings of the archangel of doom, was in the apt of inviting a boy called Billings to recite the second stanza of Keats's
Ode on a Grecian Urn.
Both he and the boy seemed glad to be interrupted.
'Mrs Bradley', said Mr Wyck, 'would be interested in asking your boys a few questions, Mr Lamphrey.'
'With pleasure, Headmaster,' said Mr Lamphrey, horrified, and gazing for support at his First Boy, who was, of course, the enviable although not universally envied Micklethwaite.
'Gentlemen,' said Mrs Bradley, addressing the form, 'I want you to take a clean sheet of paper, to write your names clearly, and then to put down the first word that comes into your minds when I say –'
'Binet-Simon
stuff!' muttered Micklethwaite. 'And about forty years out of date.' He said this to nobody in particular. Nobody in particular kicked him, as usual, and there was a slight shuffling as boys took up their pens.
'Right? Murder,' said Mrs Bradley succinctly. 'Blood. Sand. Rannygazoo. Aspidistra. Aunt. Bungle. Spiv. Oxen. South America. Cascara. Beast. Punitive. Matrix. Bicycle. Bluebells. Port Wine. Rabbit. Ink. Hieroglyphics. Dulcibella. Acid. Dogs. Egypt. Herrings. Dulcimer. Wallaby. Bath. International. Haemorrhage. Fitter. Cannibal. Cottage. Indicator. Merchant. Pens down.'
One boy, who had been writing a reciprocal to 'pens down' hurriedly scratched it out, and there was a clatter as of arms restored to an arm-rack. Mrs Bradley requested the first boy in each line of desks to collect the answers to her questions. She looked up at the form when she had looked through the papers.
'I want to speak to Mr Skene,' she said. Skene got up. Mrs Bradley motioned towards the door.
'Mr Skene,' said Mrs Bradley, when they were outside, 'I want the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. What say you?'
'I don't know,' said Skene. Mrs Bradley clicked her tongue. 'I mean, I don't know what you want to know.'
'Suppose we cast our minds back to the night of the murder?'
'Yes?'
'Mr Skene, confide in me. I am not so foolish as to suppose that you and Mr Merrys murdered Mr Conway, even if you did go out on Mr Loveday's bicycle. Believe me, you must be frank.'
'But we didn't use Mr Loveday's bicycle on the night of the murder!' said Skene, horrified. 'It was like this – but we don't want to be sacked –'
*
'And now, Mr Merrys,' said Mrs Bradley, waylaying the unfortunate youth after morning school, 'what is all this about a fountain pen? Had we not better search for it? Is it possible that it can incriminate us? Exactly where were we when the murder was committed, I wonder? And how vengeful were we towards our Mr Conway? What ill-will did we bear him, and for what reason?'
'We were – well, we weren't
vengeful,'
said Merrys anxiously. 'You see, it was a week before Mr Conway – before Mr Conway –'
'We broke out at night, did we not? And we borrowed our Housemaster's bicycle.'
'I say, you wouldn't tell anybody that?'
'We found ourselves outside a certain cottage.'
'We only wanted to know the way back. We were lost.'
'But at the cottage we found no one to direct us.'
'Oh, I say!' said Merrys, suddenly enlightened. 'It was
you
at that cottage?' Mrs Bradley cackled. 'But, you know, it had nothing to do with Mr Conway. We'd gone to the Dogs, and we couldn't – well, it didn't seem worth it to go in, and on the way back we lost our way, and – well, that's all.'
'Is it?' said Mrs Bradley severely.
'Yes.'
'Then what alarms us?'
'Nothing. We aren't. I mean –'
'We saw and heard.'
Merrys looked at her and saw that she knew it all.
'We
did
hear Mr Kay say he'd like to murder somebody, and we
thought
he put his fist through the window,' he concluded. Mrs Bradley nodded.
'And we know nothing more?'
'No. Honestly we don't.'
Mrs Bradley returned to Mr Loveday's House to receive coffee and a sandwich from Miss Loveday.
'Were Mr Lamphrey's boys discouraging?' Miss Loveday enquired. 'They are said to be difficult. Gerald Conway was their form-master, of course. My brother takes them for Divinity, which every boy is compelled to study, whether he is on the Modern or the Classical side. Even the Army class takes it, although, in their case, the Old Testament only, of course.'
'Gideon and his river-drinkers?' Mrs Bradley suggested, ignoring all other references, which seemed to her completely beside the point.
'A valuable chapter,' Miss Loveday agreed. 'There is nothing to beat the selected minority. King Edward the Third knew that. Crécy depended upon it. There is also the Third Programme of the British Broadcasting Corporation. An admirable thing in its way, although I sometimes think it falls between two stools.'
'In this school, a selected minority would include Mr Scrupe and Mr Micklethwaite, I presume?' said Mrs Bradley, ignoring a challenge.
'They are clever boys, I believe. Of Scrupe I know little except by hearsay, but Micklethwaite is one of our own boys, and it is too bad that he was done out of the Divinity prize by Mr Conway's meanness and treachery,' said Miss Loveday, speaking with warmth.
Mrs Bradley smiled benignly. She had mentioned the two boys' names at random.
'I heard rumours of this,' she said, mendaciously. 'But, surely, if a boy is entitled to a prize – ?'
'You might think so,' said Miss Loveday energetically, 'but, if you do, it means that you cannot appreciate the amount of petty jealousy that there is to be found in a school common room. Mr Conway, for reasons of his own, accused Micklethwaite of cheating in the last Divinity examination at which, most unfortunately (although one does not think, of course, of criticizing the Headmaster), Mr Conway had been appointed invigilator. The boy, touched in his honour, refused to take the prize, and –'
'Do I understand, then, that Mr Conway did not substantiate his accusation by removing the boy from the examination room?' Mrs Bradley pertinently enquired.
'He said nothing – except afterwards to the boy. Micklethwaite is a strange lad. There was no need for him to have made a public thing of it, but he was, it seems, very angry. He attended a co-educational establishment before he came here, and had absorbed odd notions as to his rights. He was much persecuted at first, but I soon put a stop to that. We are, after all, Christians in
this
House, although I would not go bail for some of the others. Well, at any rate, when Micklethwaite refused to accept the prize there was a great fuss, and the Headmaster threatened to cane him for Contempt of Authority.'
'Only
threatened?'
'Mr Wyck is weak,' said Miss Loveday in low tones, glancing at the window as she pronounced these treasonable words. 'There was a rumour that the boy had threatened to commit suicide as a protest against the injustice of the punishment, if it was administered, and Mr Wyck thought, I suppose, that he might do it. Commit suicide, I mean. The lad is brilliantly clever and rather overstrung. A pity. I like lads to be manly and only
technically
gifted. Aesthetics have no place in modern life. That is why ferro-concrete has come into its own.'
'I should not think his life here can have been easy,' Mrs Bradley remarked, 'even after you stopped his being bullied. I refer to Mr Micklethwaite.'
'He is a strange lad,' Miss Loveday repeated, 'and a lad of character. He is fearless of pain, and has become an expert in
Judo.
The boys have learned to leave well alone, I believe, and might have done so without my assistance.'
'I must cultivate this boy,' said Mrs Bradley.
'And what progress do you make with Merrys?' asked Miss Loveday, changing the subject. 'His behaviour improved yesterday. I noticed it. He had two helpings of the first course, and threw potato. We do not throw bread now, for motives of patriotism, and should not, for the same reason, waste potato, either. For one thing, there is not too much of these staple fillers for growing lads, and, for another, hunger is a wonderful disciplinarian.'
'So is fear,' said Mrs Bradley. 'You were quite right to deduce that Merrys was afraid.'
'Of what?'
'That is what I am here to find out.' She did not add that she had already found it out, because, although she had heard of the midnight exploits of Merrys and Skene, she had not decided how to make proper use of them. She had decided to go to the Headmaster with her tale before she went to the police, but she wanted further time to study Mr Wyck, and to work out his probable reactions to the tale she would have to tell. Meanwhile, she was not inclined to rely upon Miss Loveday's discretion.
'You have not told me yet of your experiences with the Fifth Scientific,' said Miss Loveday suddenly. 'Did you encounter Whittaker? His father is a platelayer on the London and Great Midland Railway, and Whittaker is one of the Guinea-pig boys. He is a great success. Did he threaten Springer? He loves to learn, and Springer, I think, confounds him.'
'Surely,' said Mrs Bradley, not troubling to explain that she had not yet encountered the Fifth Scientific, 'this School is unique in having boys who desire to learn? My sons never did. Their reports were uniformly scurrilous.'