Well-Schooled in Murder (27 page)

“Why?”

“Because when he got to Tinsley Green, Sarah was unconscious. He got her to hospital just in time.”

The information explained Orten’s reticence this morning. But even if the veracity of Elaine Roly’s story was sustained by a few quick telephone calls, Lynley saw that the matron of Erebus House had inadvertently added another twist to the events of the past weekend at Bredgar Chambers. For Tinsley Green was not more than two miles from the M23 and the great system of highways that led to Stoke Poges.

“Have the children been here with him since Saturday night?”

Innocently, she blackened him. “Not exactly. Directly after he sent for an ambulance, he phoned me from Sarah’s cottage and asked if I would fetch the children from her neighbour. She’s an elderly woman—very fond of Sarah—but she couldn’t be expected to see to the boys overnight. So I went for them myself and kept them in my flat in Erebus until Sunday afternoon.”

“You went to Tinsley Green yourself?”

“Yes. That’s right.”

“How did you get there?”

“In my car.” She added hastily, “The Headmaster didn’t…Mr. Corntel knew. I went to his rooms. I told him everything. He’s a fine man, Mr. Corntel is, and he gave me leave to go straightaway as long as the house prefect and the senior boys knew so that they would be available should any of the younger boys need me. Not that giving Brian Byrne additional responsibility is ever a wise idea, as far as I’m concerned. But as this was an emergency…” She lifted her shoulders in a regretful shrug.

“It sounds as if it was no secret that you were going off campus. How did Mr. Orten hope to keep his trip to Tinsley Green from the Headmaster if you were being so above board about your own?”

“Frank didn’t intend it to be a secret, Inspector. He was going to tell Mr. Lockwood eventually. He still intends to do so. Except that when Matthew Whateley disappeared, it hardly seemed the time or the place to bring up a few hours of absence. I expect you agree with that.”

Lynley sidestepped her request for reassurance. “When he saw that the rubbish fire had been rekindled Saturday night—early Sunday morning, really—I imagine he’d only just then returned from Tinsley Green.”

“Yes. But you see, he didn’t want to tell you that. With everything else that’s happened…Mr. Lockwood doesn’t look upon shirking one’s duty with a very pleasant eye. And he does seem to be on the cutting edge right now. So in a few days, when Frank feels the time is appropriate, he’ll tell him.”

“What time did you leave for Tinsley Green?”

“I’m not certain. After nine. Half-past. Perhaps a bit later.”

“And you returned at what time?”

“I do know that. It was eleven-forty.”

“You drove directly there? Directly back?”

Her fingers climbed from her chest to her throat, touched her lace collar delicately. There was a formality to her answer that indicated she understood the meaning and the suspicion behind Lynley’s questions. “I did. Directly there. Directly back. I did stop for petrol, but that’s reasonable, isn’t it?”

“And Friday afternoon? Friday night?”

There was no mistaking the fact that Elaine Roly now read the questions as an affront. “What about them?” she asked coolly.

“Where were you then?”

“Sorting laundry in Erebus in the afternoon. Watching television at night, in my flat.”

“Alone?”

“Quite alone, Inspector.”

“I see.” Lynley paused to study the building they were passing.
Calchus House
was carved above the door. “What odd names these houses have been given,” he remarked. “Calchus, who persuaded Agamemnon to sacrifice his own daughter in exchange for fair wind. The herald of death.”

It was a moment before Elaine Roly replied. When she did, her voice was once again friendly, as if she’d made a decision to overlook the effrontery of Lynley’s previous questions. “Herald of death or not, Calchus died of mortification when Mopsus proved himself the better man.”

“A lesson to be learned everywhere one looks at Bredgar Chambers?”

“It’s part of the philosophy of the school. It’s worked well.”

“Nonetheless, I should think I’d be far happier in Erebus House than Calchus. Rather primeval darkness than the herald of death. You said you’ve been there eighteen years.”

“Yes.”

“How long has John Corntel been housemaster?”

“This is his first year. And a
good
job Mr. Corntel has done. A very good job. And he would have continued to do a good job had not…” She stopped. Lynley looked at her, saw how her face had settled.

“Had not Matthew Whateley happened on the scene?” he enquired.

She shook her head. “Not Matt. Mr. Corntel was doing a fine job with Matt, with all the boys, until he got distracted.” She said the last word like an execration, and she needed no prompting to continue. “Miss Bond. She’s had her eye on Mr. Corntel since the day she arrived on this campus last year. I noted that the minute I saw her. He’s marriage material as far as she’s concerned and she means to have him. Make no doubt of that. Little witch wants to turn him inside out. And has done so, if you want the truth from me.”

“But you say that in spite of Emilia Bond, Mr. Corntel has managed to do a fine job. No troubles with Matthew?”

“None at all.”

“Did you know Matthew yourself?”

“I know
all
my boys, sir. I’m matron. I do my job.”

“Is there anything special you can tell me about Matthew, something you noticed that others might have overlooked?”

She thought about this only a moment before saying, “Just his colours, I suppose. All those tags that his mum used to help him with his colours.”

“The numbers in his clothes? I noticed them. She must have worried about his appearance a great deal to take that kind of trouble. Most lads, I imagine, don’t bother to notice what they’re putting on from one moment to another. Did Matthew actually follow his mother’s directions when he dressed?”

The matron looked at him in some surprise. “He had to, Inspector. He didn’t know his colours.”

“Didn’t know—”

“Colour deficient, they call it. He couldn’t see colours properly at all. Especially the school colours. He had the most trouble with them. His mum told me as much on parents’ day during Michaelmas term. Worried that when his clothes were laundered the tags would fall off and Matt would be in a dither about what to put on in the morning. Evidently they’d used the number system for years at home, with no one the wiser.”

“And anyone the wiser here?”

“Just myself, I should guess. Perhaps the boys in Matt’s dormitory if they took note of his dressing in the morning.”

And if they had…The boy’s problem with colours could have been a source of painful teasing, the sort of ragging that cuts even as it wears the guise of camaraderie. It was just one more detail that made Matthew Whateley different from his peers. But surely, Lynley thought, not different enough to kill.

12

“John, we must talk. You know that. We can’t go on avoiding one another like this indefinitely. I can’t bear it.”

John Corntel didn’t want to look up. He didn’t want to respond to the tentative pressure of her hand upon his shoulder. He was sitting in the student memorial chapel and had been doing so since the end of the morning service, hoping its stillness might act as a surrogate for inner peace. It had not happened. Instead, he felt only a numbness that seemed to grow from within his body, having nothing to do with the frigid air of the chapel. He said nothing in response to Emilia Bond’s words. Instead, he let his eyes drift from the marble angel atop the altar to the heartfelt memorials that lined the walls.
Beloved student
, he read.
Edward Hsu, beloved student
. What a marvel it was to read those words, to recognise in them the connection that could exist between two people when one wanted to teach and the other to learn. He could not help thinking that had he himself loved his students more, had he given them the devotion he had mindlessly directed elsewhere, he would not be in such turmoil now.

“I know you’ve no lesson until ten o’clock, John. We must talk.”

Corntel realised that there was no way to avoid it. This final confrontation with Emilia had been brewing for days. He had only hoped to put it off a bit, to have more time to marshal the thoughts and the words that would serve to explain the inexplicable to her. In a week, he might have managed to gather the resources he needed to carry the conversation off without breaking. But he knew that he should have realised earlier that Emilia was not the type of woman to wait placidly for him to come to her.

“There’s no place for us to talk right now,” he told her. “We can’t talk here.”

“Then we’ll walk. There’s no one on the playing fields at this hour of the morning, and no one to overhear.”

Her manner seemed determined, but when Corntel looked at her—standing in her oversized black gown next to the pew in which he was sitting—he saw that the natural colour of her face was gone, that her eyes were bloodshot, that the skin round them was swollen. Seeing this, he felt something beyond himself for the first time in days, a vague pinprick of empathy that momentarily pierced his armour of despair. But then that feeling faded, leaving the two of them much as they had been before, separated by an abyss that words alone could not bridge. She was so young—too young. Why had he failed to realise that before?

“Come with me, John,” she said. “Please. Come with me.”

He supposed that he owed her at least a brief conversation. Perhaps it was ridiculous to assume that a few more days of preparation—a few more days of avoiding her—would make this final time together any easier or more bearable for either of them.

“Very well,” he said, and got to his feet.

They left the chapel and crossed the quad, passing beneath the statue of Henry Tudor, nodding to members of staff and to the occasional pupil, walking through the far west doors.

Corntel saw that Emilia had been right, as usual. Aside from a groundsman trimming the grass at the trunk of one of the chestnut trees at the playing field’s edge, there was no one else about. He wanted to make the conversation easier for them both, but it had long been his curse to be incapable of starting a sensible conversation with any woman. So he struggled for a question, for a comment, for anything. He found nothing. Instead, she was the first to speak, but the words she said did nothing to ease the strain between them, even though they might well have done so had she spoken them to a different sort of man.

“I love you, John. I can’t bear to see what you’re doing to yourself.” Her head was down, her eyes on the ground, watching her feet scuff messily through the grass. The top of her head did not even reach his shoulder, and looking at her pale, soft hair, Corntel was reminded of the delicate spun glass that his mother brought out at Christmastime to make into clouds round the angels that she always hung on a twisted piece of driftwood.

“Don’t,” he replied. “It’s not worth it. I’m not worth it. You know that now, if you didn’t before.”

“I thought that was the case at first,” she agreed. “I told myself that you had duped me for a year, that you’d been pretending to be a different man altogether from…Friday night. But I’ve not been able to convince myself of that, John, try as I might. I do love you.”

“No.”

“I know what you’ve been thinking. You think I believe you killed Matthew Whateley. After all, it fits, doesn’t it? What could fit better? But I don’t believe you killed him, John. I don’t believe you even touched him. In fact”—she looked at him and then smiled gently—“I’m not altogether sure you were aware of Matthew at all. You’ve always been a bit absent-minded, you know.”

She was attempting to alleviate the heaviness and tension. But her words rang false.

“It makes no difference,” Corntel said. “Matthew was my responsibility. I may as well have killed him. Once the police find out the worst about me, I’ll be rather hard pressed to convince them of my innocence.”

“They won’t find out from me. I swear it.”

“Don’t. You may find that promise impossible to keep. Thomas Lynley’s no fool. He’ll be talking to you soon enough, Em.”

They had come to the centre of the playing fields. Emilia stopped walking and faced him squarely. A light wind played in her hair.