David Dickinson: Death at the Jesus Hospital

‘He loved the mountains,’ Joshua Peabody said. ‘When I was younger and my eyes were better I was always climbing whenever I could. Roderick, too, had been a fine mountaineer in his youth. Now we’re not so young we used to go on walking holidays in Scotland or in the Alps. He always used to say that he wanted to see the Himalayas before he died, though I don’t think he ever did anything about it. He and I were planning a trip to the Dolomites in the Easter holidays.’

None of this, Powerscourt reflected, was likely to draw a killer to Allison’s School and murder its bursar at his desk. ‘Did he have any enemies? Do you have any suspicions about something in his past perhaps that could have led to his terrible end?’

‘As I said,’ Peabody had taken his glasses off and was rubbing them carefully on a large and rather dirty handkerchief, ‘I don’t know very much about his past. There is one thing I should tell you, Lord Powerscourt. It only started about two weeks ago, maybe less.’ There was a pause while the handkerchief was restored to its pocket and the glasses replaced. Peabody looked more than ever the absent-minded professor, wondering where he has left his books. ‘Over the last week or two,’ he went on, ‘Roderick Gill changed. He became a frightened man. He would stare anxiously at strangers when the two of us were walking into the town for a drink. I think, but I’m not sure, that he had been burning a lot of documents in the school incinerator and in the grate in his own rooms. Whether those were papers relating to his past or to the school or something else altogether I do not know.’

Two small boys kicking a football dashed past them on their way to the goal with the broken netting.

‘Roderick would wait for the post in the morning with a look almost of terror on his face. One of the English teachers said he knew the cooked breakfast in the staff dining room was bad, but that was no reason to be afraid of it. I know that Roderick had asked for, and been granted, the option of two weeks of compassionate leave to begin the Monday after next. He had refused to tell anybody, not the headmaster, not even me, his closest friend in Allison’s, where he proposed to go. And now this.’ Peabody waved his hand back in the general direction of the school. ‘All this fuss. Policemen. Anxious mothers. Special investigators from London. The headmaster fretting about the future of the school. All of this Roderick Gill would have found very hard to bear. Whatever it was he was afraid of,’ Peabody stopped and looked Powerscourt in the eye for the first time during their talk, ‘he never told me. He never told me what it was. Roderick Gill was a very frightened man in the last days of his life. Whatever or whoever it was he was frightened of, he was quite right to be terrified. They’ve got him in the end.’

Powerscourt found Inspector Grime staring wearily at a large map of North America on the wall of the geography classroom. Grime was grey haired now, with lines etched on his face and on his forehead. He had the air of a man who had seen as much as he wanted of crime and most other human activities. He was one of those unfortunate people who give the impression that they really enjoy being miserable.

Powerscourt told him of his conversation with Peabody and the fear that had gripped Roderick Gill in his last days.

‘Peabody?’ he said. ‘That the one who teaches maths and wears those strong glasses? It’s a wonder he can read his own equations when he writes them on the blackboard.’

‘The same,’ said Powerscourt. ‘I’m sure some schools wouldn’t employ him because he looks so scruffy. Bad example to the pupils, that sort of thing. Shoes polished, blazer middle button fastened, tie straight, that’s what they like.’

‘That’s as may be,’ said the Inspector, ‘but the boys say he’s a brilliant teacher, especially with the ones who don’t like mathematics. Anyway, he’s told you more about the dead man than I’ve learnt from these boys all afternoon. Only thing we’re sure of is that Bursar Gill died somewhere between eight and nine thirty in the morning. I don’t know if you’ve noticed that corridor where his office was. It’s the main thoroughfare of the school, with classrooms and offices off it, including the dining hall at one end and the chapel off a side corridor at the other.’

‘Would there be lots of boys moving about between those times?’ Powerscourt asked.

‘Breakfast is at eight o’clock, my lord. By about twenty past lots of them are going back to their dayrooms or their studies to get the books they need for morning lessons. By a quarter to nine they all charge up the corridor again for morning prayers. By nine o’clock they’re back in it again en route to the first lesson. Somebody must have seen something.’ The Inspector gave an aged globe a vigorous shove and the continents of the world whizzed round on their axis. ‘They’re so young, these boys, and so innocent most of them, even the older ones, they leave you feeling quite exhausted and very old, very old indeed.’

‘What did they tell you?’ asked Powerscourt.

‘Well, I don’t know if somebody told them to say as little as possible or not. It certainly sounded like it. I’ve heard burglars in Norwich in my time who were more forthcoming than some of these lads. Basically, they didn’t know the bursar at all. He didn’t teach them, he didn’t do any coaching at games. They hardly ever saw him. The only thing they knew about him was that he had dismissed the previous head cook for overspending his budget and fiddling the figures. The new man, apparently, is terrible. One cheeky monkey suggested one of the boys might have killed him because the food is now so bad they’re hungry all the time. A couple of them said he looked worried. One of the senior years said Gill had been spotted in the town drowning his sorrows in The Poacher’s Catch with the maths teacher Peabody. He didn’t say how he came by this information, mind you. The rogue must have been skulking in the public bar — the staff here use the lounge, always have.’ The Inspector gave the globe another spin. ‘I’ll have to interview the rest of them tomorrow and maybe the next day, though I don’t have much hope of anything very useful. The headmaster insisted I interview every single pupil, probably so they can tell their parents. You’ll be wanting to see the body, my lord, down at the hospital in the town.’

Powerscourt wondered how many years these maps had been on the walls. The colours were going. Central Canada, he observed, had faded to a dull pink while the two coastlines at opposite ends of the country were still red. ‘Have you ever seen anything like that mark on his chest before, Inspector?’

‘I’ve never seen anything like it in my life,’ replied Inspector Grime, ‘not even up here in the wilds of Norfolk.’

Later that evening Powerscourt met the headmaster in his study. Davies had his feet on his desk and was nursing a very large glass of whisky.

‘I don’t normally drink in the term time at all, but that governors’ meeting was terrible,’ he said, grimacing at the memory. ‘They virtually accused me of having carried out the murder. There’s one very old governor who was at the school about the beginning of the last century, and he’s been on the governing body for years, certainly far longer than I’ve been headmaster here. Discipline, he always goes on about discipline. In his day, I expect, a boy was flogged for anything at all, shoelaces not properly tied, running in the corridor, that sort of thing. He claimed lack of discipline caused the bursar’s death, though he couldn’t explain how.’

Powerscourt saw that the headmaster’s study was more or less what you would expect in a place like this. There was an enormous desk, virtually guaranteed to intimidate nervous new teachers or schoolboy criminals. The walls were lined with school photographs. There was an oar from the First Trinity Boat Club, the rowing arm of Trinity College, Cambridge, behind the headmaster’s desk. Powerscourt noticed that a recently appointed bishop of the Church of England and a junior member of the cabinet had rowed on the Cam with the headmaster. There were bookshelves, one shelf full of a volume called The Future of the Public Schools, written by the headmaster himself. A selection of vicious-looking canes were prominently displayed next to the oar to strike fear into the hearts of malefactors.