Reginald Hill - An Advancement of Learning

Cursing now he mopped up the mess with an antimacassar and pulled the phone towards him. This time it was his mail which fell to the carpet.

He swore again, looking down at the colourful display.

Threepence off this; half-price subscription to that; win half a million for a farthing. (Could you legally wager a non-legal coin?) It wouldn’t be so bad if he ever got any of the sexy stuff people were always complaining about. Still, he supposed it all brought revenue to the Post Office.

It was time he reported in. Not that he had anything to report. He might as well send a letter.

It came to him as he lifted the phone. He had known the answer all along. The mail! Fallowfield had gone to the college to post his note.

Not for him the last letter confiscated by the police and read by the coroner. No, this was one note which was going to reach the addressee.

And with the thought came another, almost instantaneously. Someone else had been a lot cleverer than he was. A lot cleverer and a lot quicker.

Someone had broken into the college posting boxes last night. But whoever it was wasn’t just quick. Breaking into the boxes, looking for a letter in Fallowfield’s hand (he’d bet that all the letters opened had typed envelopes), this meant, could mean, probably meant, he knew that there was no letter in the cottage and no letter in the lab. How? The first was easy; the person who wrecked the house before Disney would have known, been fairly sure. But the lab? Sandra — it had to be Sandra.

She must have gone through the sequence of events with any number of people, students and staff, before going to bed. Damn!

So much for the letter then. If it had been in one of the boxes, then it was gone for ever. Anyone who was so keen to get it would surely have destroyed it instantly.

“But was it in one of the boxes?’ asked Pascoe aloud. Three had been opened. Fallowfield would certainly have used the one nearest the lab block which was the one outside the bar. Or if not wishing to be seen, and it must have been after opening hours when he arrived at college, he would use the one by the side of the Old House. But he would never have bothered to walk over to the Students’ Union. So why all three? A blind perhaps. Or perhaps desperation; it wasn’t in the first, or the second; could it be in the third? And if it wasn’t, then perhaps there was no need to wish it goodbye. Perhaps it still did lie somewhere, waiting to be picked up… waiting… “It might just be!’ said Pascoe and dialled the telephone so rapidly he made a mistake and had to do it again.

If he wanted Superintendent Dalziel, the college switchboard girl told him, he wasn’t in the study, he was in the registrar’s office (though what he was doing there, she didn’t know, the voice implied) and she would put him through there.

“Where the hell have you been?’ snarled Dalziel.

Pascoe didn’t waste time on apologies but tumbled out his theory as rapidly as he could.

“And,’ he concluded, ‘ reckon it might still be there somewhere. It’s so obvious, perhaps he missed it. The staff must have somewhere they collect mail, pigeonholes or something.”

“Yes, they do. In the Senior Common Room. I remember seeing them.”

“Well, perhaps that’s what Fallowfield did. Put it straight into someone’s pigeonhole. It could still be there.”

“Right. I’ll look. You get yourself back over here as quickly as possible. And here’s something to chew on while you’re coming.”

“Sir?”

“Franny Roote is an old boy of guess where? Coltsfoot College. And he was interviewed for entry to this college on the Friday before the Monday when Girling died.”

The phone went dead. It was nearly thirty miles to the college but Pascoe did it in just over twenty minutes. Even then he was nearly too late.

The headmaster of Coltsfoot College had been most helpful once he had made clear his displeasure at being removed from a bid of seven diamonds at the bridge table.

He had been very cautious at first until Dalziel had told him of Fallowfield’s death.

The poor man! Why did he — ? I never thought — he seemed stable enough, very much so, but in that kind of person ‘

“What kind of person?’ Dalziel had asked.

“He was a giver, involved, you know. Dedicated to teaching and to learning. And not just his subject.” “No,’ said Dalziel drily. ‘ seems to have had very wide interests. We found books on witchcraft, magic — ‘

“Oh yes. Of course, he didn’t believe, you understand. But he saw all these things as explorations of the human spirit, its heights, its depths, its potentials. Anything which extended the boundaries of our self-knowledge caught his interest.”

“Like taking drugs?”

“I have often heard him put a case for the licit use of certain drugs,” said the headmaster cautiously. ‘ as for taking them himself, I have no reason to suspect — ‘

“No,’ said Dalziel. ‘ did he leave you?”

“For a new post. Career advancement. You know.”

“No, I don’t. Was that all? Nothing more?”

There was a moment’s pause as though the man at the other end of the line was balancing conflicting ideas in his mind.

“This is a serious matter,’ reminded Dalziel in his best conscientious official voice.

“Of course. There was no real reason for Fallowfield to leave us. No quarrel or anything like that. We’re a progressive school and the freedom we try to give the boys extends as far as the staff-room. Which is not always the case in modern education. But the situation did have its tensions. It’s like in politics, or even in your line of country, Superintendent, I dare say; what really irritates the radical is not the reactionary; no, it’s the man who is still more radical and insists on treating the first radical as a conservative stickin-the-mud.”

“And that’s how Fallowfield reacted on your staff.”

To some extent. I’ve oversimplified, of course. A school like mine requires a unified team to run it, with no sacrifice of individuality, of course. But Fallowfield was a loner. And… “

“Yes?”

“I felt that many of our boys, even the eldest, were still too young, too naive if you like, properly to assimilate all the ideas that Fallowfield loved to play with. He was a stimulating man, a man gifted in dealing with the young., But I did begin to feel that the young had to be specially gifted to deal with him. I felt that the older young, if you take my meaning, students rather than pupils, would provide him with something more — er — suitable to get his teeth into.”

“I see,’ said Dalziel, noting the turn of phrase. ‘ he homosexual?”

The progressive headmaster answered very quickly so that there would be no pause to be mistaken for shocked silence. At least, so Dalziel read the situation.

“No more so than the rest of us in the profession. We’re all a bit queer I suppose,’ he said with an arch chuckle as though to prove the point. ‘ suppose all policemen in the same way are just a bit criminal.

But whether he was a practising homosexual, I really couldn’t say.”

“He didn’t practise with any of the boys then?’ said Dalziel, still hoping to pierce the man’s liberal carapace.

“No! Of course not.’ Very emphatic.

“I see. What can you tell me about a boy called Roote?”

“Francis Roote? Of course! He’s up there as well. A charming boy, but a real individual, an all-rounder. I think we achieved our aim of educating the whole man there.”