Tana French: The Secret Place

Conway said, ‘Classrooms, hall, offices, all the school stuff, they’re in the main building. That’ – the near wing – ‘that’s the nuns’ gaff. Separate entrance, no connecting door to the school; the wing’s locked up at night, but all the nuns have keys, and they’ve got their own rooms. Any of them could’ve snuck out and bashed Chris Harper. There’s only a dozen of them left, most of them are about a hundred and none of them’s under fifty; but like I said before, it didn’t take a bodybuilder.’

‘Any motive?’

She squinted up at the windows. Sun flashed off them into our eyes. ‘Nuns are fucked up. Maybe one of them saw him stick his hand up some girl’s jumper, figured he was a minion of Satan, corrupting the innocent.’

She headed across the smooth lawn at a diagonal, away from the building. Nothing said keep off the grass, but it looked it. Two heads like us in a place like this: I was waiting for a gamekeeper to burst out of the trees and chase us off the grounds, attack dogs chewing the arses out of our trousers.

‘The other wing, that’s the boarders. Locked down tight as a nun’s gee at night; the girls don’t have keys. Bars on the ground-floor windows. Door at the back there, but it’s alarmed at night. Connecting door to the school on the ground floor, and that’s where it gets interesting. The school windows don’t have bars. And they’re not alarmed.’

I said, ‘The connecting door isn’t kept locked?’

‘Yeah, course it is. Day and night. But if there’s something important, like if some boarder forgets her homework in her room, or if she needs a book from the library to get some project done, she can ask for a key. The school secretary and the nurse and the matron – I’m not joking you, there’s a matron - they’ve got one each. And January last year, four months before Chris Harper, the nurse’s key went missing.’

‘They didn’t change the lock?’

Conway rolled her eyes. Not just her face was on the edge of foreign; something in the way she moved, too, in the straight back and the swing of her shoulders, the quickfire expressions. ‘You’d think, right? Nah. The nurse kept the key on a shelf, right above her bin; she figured it’d just fallen off, got dumped with the rubbish. Got a new one cut and forgot the whole thing, tra-la-la, everything’s grand, till we came asking questions. Honest to Jaysus, I don’t know who’s the most naïve in this place, the kiddies or the staff. If a boarder had that key? She could go through the connecting door into the school any night, nip out a window, do whatever she wanted till she had to show for breakfast.’

‘There’s no security guard?’

‘There is, yeah. Night watchman, they call him; I think they think it sounds classier. He sits in that gatehouse we passed coming in, does the rounds every two hours. Dodging him wouldn’t be a problem, though. Wait’ll you see the size of the grounds. Over here.’

A gate in the hedge, wrought-iron curlicues, long soft squeak when Conway swung it open. Beyond it was a tennis court, a playing field, and then: more green, this time carefully organised to look that bit less organised; not wild, just wild enough. Mishmash of trees that had taken centuries, birch, oak, sycamore. Little pebbled paths twisting between flowerbeds mounded with yellow and lavender. All the greens were spring ones, the ones so soft your hand would go right through.

Conway snapped her fingers in my face. ‘Focus.’

I said, ‘What do the boarders sleep in? Dorms or single rooms?’

‘First- and second-years, six to a dorm. Third- and fourth-years, four to a room. Fifth- and sixth-years, two to a room. So yeah, you’d have at least one roommate to worry about, if you were sneaking out. But here’s the thing: from third year up, you get to choose who you share with. So whoever’s in your room, chances are they’re already on your side.’

Down the side of the tennis court – nets loose, couple of balls rolled into a corner. I still felt the school windows staring at my back. ‘How many boarders are there?’

‘Sixty-odd. But we narrowed it down. The nurse gave some kid the key on a Tuesday morning, kid brought it straight back. Friday lunchtime, someone else asks for it and it’s gone. The nurse’s office is locked when she’s not there – she swears she managed to get that right, at least, stop anyone from mainlining Benylin or whatever she keeps in there. So if someone nicked the key, it was someone who was in to the nurse between Tuesday and Friday.’

Conway shoved a branch out of her way and headed down one of the little paths, deeper into the grounds. Bees working away at apple blossom. Birds up above, not rattly magpies, just little happy birds getting the gossip.

‘The nurse’s log said there were four of those. Kid called Emmeline Locke-Blaney, first-year, boarder; she was so petrified of us she practically wet herself, I don’t see her being able to keep anything back. Catríona Morgan, fifth-year, day girl – which doesn’t rule her out, she could’ve passed the key on to a mate who boarded, but they clique up pretty tight; day girls and boarders don’t really mix, don’tchaknow.’ A year on, every name off by heart, easy as that. Chris Harper had got to her, all right. ‘Alison Muldoon, third-year, boarder – one of Heffernan’s little bitches. And Rebecca O’Mara.’

I said, ‘Holly Mackey’s gang again.’

‘Yeah. See why I’m not convinced your little buddy’s telling you everything?’

‘Their reasons for going to the nurse. Did they check out?’

‘Emmeline was the only one with a verifiable reason: sprained her ankle playing hockey or polo or whatever, needed it strapped. The other three had headaches or period cramps or dizzy fits or some bullshit. Could’ve been legit, or they could’ve just wanted to get out of class, or…’ A lift of Conway’s eyebrow. ‘They got a couple of painkillers and a nice lie-down, right by the shelf with the key.’

‘And they all said they didn’t touch it.’

‘Swore to Jesus. Like I said, I believed Emmeline. The rest…’ The eyebrow again. Sun through the leaves striped her cheeks like war paint. ‘The headmistress swore none of her girls would yada yada and the key had to have gone in the bin, but she changed the lock on the connecting door all the same. Better late than never.’ Conway stopped, pointed. ‘Look. See that over there?’

Long low building, off to our right through the trees, with a bit of a yard in front. Pretty. Old, but all the faded brick was scrubbed clean.

‘That used to be the stables. For my lord and lady’s horses. Now it’s the shed for their highnesses’ groundskeepers – takes three of them, to keep this place up. In there’s where the hoe was.’

No movement in the yard. I’d been wondering for a while now; wondering where everyone was. Few hundred people in this school, minimum, had to be, and: nothing. A thin tink tink tink somewhere far away, metal on metal. That was it.

I said, ‘Is the shed kept locked?’

‘Nah. There’s a cupboard inside, where they keep the weedkiller and wasp poison and whatever; that’s locked, all right. But the actual stables? Walk right in, help yourself. Never occurred to this shower that practically everything in there is a weapon . Spades, hoes, shears, hedge trimmers; you could wipe out half a school with what’s in there. Or get good money from a fence.’ Conway jerked her head away from a cloud of midges, started moving again, down the path. ‘I said that to the headmistress. Know what she said? “We don’t attract the type who think in those terms, Detective.” With a face on her like I’d shat on her carpet. Fucking idiot . Kid’s lying out here, bashed to death, and she’s telling me their whole world’s made of frappuccinos and cello lessons and no one here ever has bad thoughts. See what I mean about naïve?’