Well-Schooled in Murder Read online

  CONTENTS

  TITLE PAGE

  DEDICATION

  EPIGRAPH

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ALSO BY ELIZABETH GEORGE

  COPYRIGHT

  For Arthur, who wanted to write.

  TIMSHEL

  I have shot mine arrow o’er the house,

  And hurt my brother.

  HAMLET

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Although there are many independent schools in England, Bredgar Chambers is the product of my imagination and should not be confused with any existing educational institution.

  I am, however, extremely grateful to a number of schools, headmasters, staff members, and students who played a large part in allowing me to gather information that provided such useful background material for my book. I must particularly thank Christopher and Kate Evans of Dauntsey’s School in Somerset and Christopher Robbins of the same; Robin Macnaghten of Sherborne School for boys in Dorset; Richard and Caroline Schoon Tracy of Allhallows School in Devon, as well as John Stubbs and Andy Penman whose classes I spoke to; Simon and Kate Watson of Hurstpierpoint College in Sussex; Richard Poulton of Christ’s Hospital in West Sussex; Miss Marshall of Eton College in Berkshire; and most of all the students who opened their lives to me with such engaging candour: Bertrand, Jeremy, Jane, Matt, Ben, Chas, and Bruce. My time spent with all these people in England enriched my understanding of the independent school system more than any other sort of research I might have done.

  In the United States, I thank Fred VonLohmann for generously carrying out the initial stages of research for me at Stanford University; Blair Maffris, Michael Stephany, Hiro Mori, Art Brown, and Lynn Harding for fielding questions on a variety of topics; and Santa Barbara criminalists Stephen Cooper and Phil Pelzel who kindly opened their laboratory to me.

  Most especially I am grateful to my husband Ira Toibin who has borne all things well, and to Deborah Schneider who has been my Gibraltar.

  1

  The rear garden of the cottage in Hammersmith’s Lower Mall was set up to accommodate artistic endeavours. Three slabs of knotty pine stretched across six battered sawhorses to function as work stations, and they held at least a dozen stone sculptures in varying stages of completion. A dented metal cabinet near the garden wall contained the artist’s tools: drills, chisels, rifflers, files, gouges, emery, and a collection of sandpaper with differing degrees of abrasion. A colour-splodged painter’s dropcloth—smelling strongly of turps—made a dispirited lump underneath a partially broken chaise.

  It was a garden completely without distractions. Walled in against the curiosity of neighbours, it was thus also protected from those insistent and largely mechanical noises of river traffic, of the Great West Road, of Hammersmith Bridge. Indeed, the high walls of the garden were so expertly constructed, the cottage’s position on the Lower Mall so well-chosen, that only an occasional waterfowl in flight overhead broke into the superb stillness that the site afforded.

  Such protection was not without one disadvantage. Since cleansing river breezes never found their way through the walls, a patina of stone dust covered everything from the small oblong of dying lawn, to the crimson wallflowers that bordered it, to the square of flagstones that served as a terrace, to the cottage windowsills and the building’s pitched roof. Even the artist himself wore fine grey powder like a second skin.

  But this pervasive grime did not bother Kevin Whateley. Over the years, he had become quite used to it. Even if he had not been accustomed to operating perfectly well in a cloud of grit, he would not have noticed it while he laboured in the garden. This was his haven, a place of creative ecstasy in which convenience and cleanliness were not required. Mere discomfort meant nothing to Kevin once he gave himself over to the call of his art.

  He was doing so now, taking his latest piece through the final stage of buffing. He was particularly fond of this current effort, a reclining nude rendered in marble, her head raised on a pillow, her torso twisted so that her right leg was drawn up over her left, her hip and thigh an unbroken crescent that ended with her knee. He ran his hand down her arm, round her buttocks, and along her thigh, testing for rough spots, nodding with satisfaction at the feeling of stone like cold silk beneath his fingers.

  “You do look a bit daft, Kev. Don’t believe I ever once saw you smiling like that over me.”

  Kevin chuckled, straightened, and looked at his wife who had come to stand in the cottage doorway. She was drying her hands on a faded tea towel, laughter drawing deeply at the wrinkles round her eyes. “Then come right ’ere and give it a try, girl. You just weren’t paying attention last time.”

  Patsy Whateley waved him off with, “You’re crazy, you are, Kev,” but her husband saw the pleased flush appear on her cheeks.

  “Crazy, am I?” he asked. “Not what I recall you saying this morning. That was you, wasn’ it, sneaking up on a bloke at six A.M.?”

  “Kev!”

  She laughed outright, and Kevin smiled at her, studying her dear, familiar features, admitting the fact that although for some time she had been surreptitiously colouring her hair to preserve a semblance of youth, her face and figure were decidedly middle-aged, the one lined and no longer firm at jaw and chin, the other filled out in places where once he had found the most delicious curves.

  “You’re thinking, aren’t you, Kev? I can see it on your face. What?”

  “Dirty thoughts, girl. Enough to make you blush.”

  “It’s these pieces you’re working on, i’n it? Looking at naked ladies on a Sunday morning! It’s indecent and that’s all there is to it.”

  “What I feel for you’s indecent and that’s a fact, luv. Step over here. Don’t mess me about. I know what you’re really like, don’t I?”

  “He’s gone mad,” Patsy declared to the heavens.

  “Mad the way you like.” He crossed the garden to the cottage door, took his wife into his arms, and kissed her soundly.

  “Lord, Kevin, you taste all of sand!” Patsy protested when at last he released her. A streak of grey powder tinted the side of her head. Another smeared against her left breast. She brushed at her clothing, muttering with exasperation, but when she looked up and her husband grinned, her face softened and she murmured, “Half crazy. Always was, you know.”

  He winked and went back to his work. She continued to watch from the doorway.

  From the metal cabinet, Kevin brought out the powdered pumice that he used to condition the marble prior to signing his name to a finished piece. Mixing this with water, he smeared it liberally onto his reclining nude and worked it against the stone. He gave his attention to legs and stomach, breasts and feet, taking the greatest care with the delicate work upon the face.

  He heard his wife move restlessly in the doorway. She was, he saw, looking behind her into the kitchen at the red tin clock that hung above the stove.

  “Half-ten,” she said reflectively.

  It was a statement she intended to sound self-directed, but it didn’t deceive Kevin with its pretence of detachment. “Now, Pats,” he soothed her, “you’re just making a fuss over nothing. I c
an see it dead clear. Leave off, can’t you? The boy’ll ring home as soon as he can.”

  “Half-ten,” she repeated, regardless. “Matt said they’d be back by Eucharist, Kev. Eucharist surely would’ve ended at ten. It’s half-past now. Why’s he not rung us?”

  “He’s busy, no doubt. Unpacking. There’s schoolwork to be faced. Tales to be told about the weekend’s fun. Then lunch with the rest of the boys. So he’s forgotten to ring his mum for the moment. But he’ll do it by one. Wait and see. Not to worry, luv.”

  Kevin knew that telling his wife not to worry about their son was as useful as asking the Thames to stop rising and falling every day with the tide just a few steps away from their own front door. He’d been offering her variations of that admonition for the last twelve and a half years. But it rarely did the slightest bit of good. Patsy would worry herself over every detail of Matthew’s life: over whether his clothing was correctly matched; over who was cutting his hair and seeing to his teeth; over the polish on his shoes and the length of his trousers; over his choice of friends and the hobbies he pursued. She studied each one of his letters from school until she had it memorised, and if she didn’t hear from him once a week, she worked herself into a state of the jitters that nothing could quell save Matthew himself. He usually did so, which made his failure to telephone after his weekend adventure in the Cotswolds all the harder to understand. This was something that Kevin would not admit to his wife, however.

  Teenagers, he thought. We’re in for it now, Pats. The boy’s growing up.

  Patsy’s response startled her husband, who thought himself not so easily read. “I know what you’re thinking, Kev. He’s getting bigger. Won’t want his mum fussing over him all the time. There’s truth to it. I know.”

  “So…?” he encouraged her.

  “So I’ll wait a bit before I ring the school.”

  It was, Kevin knew, the best compromise she would offer. “That’s my girl,” he replied and went back to his sculpture.

  For the next hour he allowed himself the bliss of complete absorption into the delights of his art, losing track of time entirely. As was usually the case, his surroundings faded into insignificance, and existence was reduced to the immediate sensation of marble coming to life under his hands.

  His wife had to say his name twice to return him from the twilight world he inhabited whenever he was called there by his particular muse. She’d come back to the doorway, but this time he saw that she held a black vinyl handbag in place of the tea towel, and she was wearing her new black shoes and her best navy wool coat. She had inserted a coruscating rhinestone pin haphazardly into the lapel—a sleek lioness with one paw raised and ready to strike. Its eyes were tiny specks of green.

  “He’s in the Sanatorium.” She spoke the last word on a high note of incipient panic.

  Kevin blinked, eyes drawn to the dance of light diffracting from the lioness rampant. “Sanatorium?” he repeated.

  “Our Matt’s in the Sanatorium, Kev! He’s been there all weekend. I’ve just rung the school. He didn’t ever go to the Morants’ at all. He’s sick in the San! That Morant boy didn’t even know what was wrong. He hadn’t seen him since Friday lunch!”

  “What’re you up to, girl?” Kevin queried shrewdly. He knew full well what the answer would be and sought a moment to ponder how best to stop her.

  “Mattie’s ill! Our boy! Lord knows what’s wrong. Now, are you coming with me to that school or planning to stand there with your hands on that woman’s flipping crotch for the rest of the day?”

  Kevin hurriedly removed his hands from the offending part of the sculpture’s anatomy. He wiped them down the sides of his work jeans, adding white abrasive cream to the dust and dirt already embedded along the seams.

  “Hang on, Pats,” he said. “Think for a minute.”

  “Think? Mattie’s ill! He’ll be wanting his mum.”

  “Will he, luv?”

  Patsy worked on this thought, her lips pressed together as if in the hope of keeping further words at bay. Her spatulate fingers worried the clasp of her handbag, snapping it repeatedly open and shut. From what Kevin could see, the bag was empty. In her rush to be off, Patsy had thought nothing about putting inside a single belonging—a pound coin, a comb, a compact, anything.

  He pulled a piece of old towelling from the pocket of his jeans and rubbed it along his sculpture fondly. “Think, Pats,” he gentled her. “No boy wants Mum flying out to his school if he’s got a bit of flu. He’s liable to be a bit choked over that, isn’t he? Red in the face with Mum hanging about like he needs his nappies changed and she’s just the one to do it.”

  “Are you saying I just let it be?” Patsy shook her handbag at him to emphasise her words. “Like I wasn’t interested in my own boy’s well-being?”

  “Not let it be.”

  “Then what?”

  Kevin folded his towelling into a small, neat square. “Let’s think this out. What did San Sister tell you’s exactly wrong with the boy?”

  Patsy’s eyes dropped. Kevin knew what that reaction implied. He laughed at her softly. “They’ve a nurse right there on duty at the school and you’ve not rung her, Pats? Mattie’ll have stubbed his toe and his mum’ll go running out to West Sussex without a thought given to ringing up to see what’s wrong with the boy first! What’s to become of the likes of you, girl?”

  Hot embarrassment was climbing its way up Patsy’s neck and spreading onto her cheeks. “I’ll ring now,” she managed to say with dignity and went to place the call from the kitchen phone.

  Kevin heard her dialling. A moment later he heard her voice. A moment after that, he heard her drop the phone. She cried out once, a terrified keening that he recognised as his own name wailed in supplication. He flung his ragged towel to one side and flew into the cottage.

  At first he thought his wife was having an attack of some sort. Her face was grey, and the fist at her lips suggested that a shrieking-out in pain was being withheld by an act of will. When she heard his footsteps and swung to face him, he saw that her eyes were wild.

  “He’s not there. Mattie’s gone, Kevin. He wasn’t in the San. He’s not even at the school!”

  Kevin struggled to comprehend the horror that those few words implied and found he could only repeat her own statement. “Mattie? Gone?”

  She seemed frozen to the spot. “Since Friday noon.”

  Suddenly that immense stretch of time from Friday to Sunday became a breeding ground for the sort of unspeakable images every parent must confront when first acknowledging a beloved child’s disappearance. Kidnapping, molestation, religious cults, white slavery, sadism, murder. Patsy shuddered, gagged. A faint sheen of perspiration appeared on her skin.

  Seeing this, fearing she might faint or have a stroke or drop dead on the spot, Kevin grasped her shoulders to offer the only comfort he knew.

  “We’ll be off to the school, luv,” he said urgently. “We’ll see about our boy. I promise you that. We’ll go at once.”

  “Mattie!” The name rose like a prayer.

  Kevin told himself that prayers were unnecessary at the moment, that Matthew was only playing the truant, that his absence from the school had a reasonable explanation which they would laugh about together in the time to come. Yet even as he thought this, a vicious tremor shook Patsy’s body. She said their son’s name beseechingly once again. Against all reason, Kevin found himself hoping that a god somewhere was listening to his wife.

  Thumbing through her contribution to their report one last time, Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers decided that she was satisfied with the results of her weekend’s labour. She clipped the fifteen tedious pages together, shoved her chair back from her desk, and went in search of her immediate superior, Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley.

  He was where she had left him shortly after noon that day, alone in his office, blond head cupped in one hand, his attention directed towards his own section of the report which was spread across the top of his desk. T
he late Sunday afternoon sun threw long shadows against walls and across the floor, making perusing typescript without artificial light next to impossible. And since Lynley’s reading spectacles had slipped disregarded to the end of his nose, Barbara entered the room noiselessly, certain that he was fast asleep.

  That would not have surprised her. For the past two months Lynley had been burning the candle not only at both ends but right through the middle. His presence at the Yard had been so unceasing—generally requiring her own reluctant presence as well—that he’d been jokingly christened Mr. Ubiquitous by the other DI’s in his division.

  “Go hame, laddie,” Inspector MacPherson would roar when he saw him in a corridor, in a meeting, or in the officers’ mess. “Ye’re black’ning the rest o’ us. Hearkening aifter a super’s position? Canna rest on the laurels o’ promotion if ye’re deid.”

  Lynley would laugh in his characteristically affable fashion and sidestep the reason behind this sixty-day stint of unremitting toil. But Barbara knew why he remained on the job long hours into the night, why he volunteered to be on call, why he took other officers’ duty at the first request. It was all represented in the single postcard that lay at the moment on the edge of his desk. She picked it up.

  It was five days old, badly creased from a hard journey across Europe from the Ionian Sea. Its subject was a curious procession of incense bearers, sceptre-wielding officials, and gold-gowned, bearded Greek Orthodox priests who carried a bejewelled sedan chair upon their shoulders, its sides made of glass. Resting within the chair, his shrouded head leaning against the glass as if he were asleep and not more than a thousand years dead, were the remains of Saint Spyridon. Barbara turned the card over and unabashedly read its message. She could have guessed before doing so what the tenor of the words would be.

  Tommy darling, Imagine having your poor remains carried through the streets of Corfu town four times a year! Good Lord, it does give one pause to think about the wisdom of dedicating one’s life to sanctity, doesn’t it? You’ll be pleased to know that I’ve made my bow to intellectual growth with a pilgrimage to Jupiter’s Temple at Kassiope. I dare say you’d approve of such Chaucerian endeavour.