Dan Vyleta - Smoke

Then Cruikshank looks away and resumes his labours, and Charlie turns to run into the frozen night.

There is something objectionable about Swinburne. It goes beyond his overbearing boorishness; the wheeze of his voice; his massive, hulking, clumsy body, so much like a dead man’s brought back to life. I think it is his eyes, small, too-round eyes, tucked piglike under too many wrinkles. They are fixed on me now, studying me past the rim of the teacup he has lifted to his lips and then forgotten. His thoughts are easy to surmise. He is wondering why I asked him up here, at an unconventional hour, too hard on supper to call for tea. Other questions are churning in him, close to the surface. In the end he cannot help himself: it spills out without subtlety, the thing that bothers him most. It never ceases to surprise one how much like a schoolboy this old man really is, underneath the fire-and-brimstone bluster: a schoolboy in a cassock and a licence to spank. It is little wonder the pupils fear him so.

“It is impossible,” he says. “Out of the question. Absurd.”

I make him wait until I have dunked, bitten off, and chewed my mince pie, brushed crumbs from my lips and chin. The regret in my voice is sweetened by cinnamon and sugar.

“Cruishank tells me the girl spoke the name quite distinctly, and repeated it twice. There cannot be any mistake.”

“Then she is lying!” Swinburne scowls, looks around the room, then at the door that leads to my bedroom. “Is she here?”

“Yes. Sleeping. The poor thing is exhausted. We mustn’t wake her up.”

“Is it true she does not smoke?”

“Oh, she smokes a little. But no more than our sixteen-year-olds. Less than some. It is really quite remarkable. Renfrew ought to be congratulated.”

“Then you do believe her.”

I am amused to see how crushed Swinburne is by this notion: that his favourite pupil should be thought of as a killer. It would be touching if his concern wasn’t born entirely of vanity.

“It really does not matter what I believe. Young Spencer has been named, so he will need to be found and questioned. But there is a larger point to this. Julius is Lady Naylor’s son. He was staying with her when Argyle and Cooper were abducted. It gives the government an excuse to place Lady Naylor under investigation. And her husband, the baron. Officials will be arriving at their house this very night, with a warrant authorising a search.”

I pause, lean forward a little, making sure Swinburne takes note of what I am saying. The man has a thick skull. One has to be emphatic with him.

“You see, we had cause for suspicion before. A letter of Lady Naylor’s was intercepted some weeks ago. She was writing on behalf of the baron, communicating with a scientist on the Continent. As it turns out you know the man in question. I understand he was one of your pupils, what, twenty, thirty years ago?”

Swinburne blanches. “The apostate!”

I do my best not to laugh out loud at the word.

“No more than an errant sheep, surely? Should you not be trying to save him? Return him to the flock? As I understand he was a favourite of yours, once upon a time. You taught him Greek, I believe, at his special request.”

Swinburne’s face is bitter with rancour. “We should never have admitted a foreigner. He fooled me, fooled us all.” He adds, when his slow brain works its way from past to present: “What does the baron want with him?”

“Who can say? The letter was rather cryptic. And we have not been successful in placing a spy in the Naylor household, to provide us with information by other means.”

Swinburne seems unmoved by the idea of spies infiltrating the bosom of the families that rule the land. All he wants to know is: “How hard can it be?”

I shrug. “They have a good butler. Attentive chap.”

“Surely you could have bribed a chambermaid.”

“We would not dream of trusting anyone quite so common.” I ignore Swinburne’s wince. It is said his mother was a tanner’s daughter. There are words in his vocabulary that make the other teachers blush. “In any case, we will know more soon. The warrant was sent by special courier. The Crown is taking an interest, you see.”

At the mention of the Crown, Swinburne grows ponderous. Again it is almost comically easy to follow his train of thought.

What does fat Mr. Trout have to do with the Crown?

It nearly breaks his thick little head to puzzle it out.

“Headmaster Trout,” he ventures at last, almost shyly, “is it true that you used to be some sort of magistrate?”

“A justice of the peace.”

“A witchfinder , is what Master Barlow once told me, when he was in his cups. An inquisitor of crime.” He uses the words without reproach.

I laugh, pat my stomach. “Merely a servant of the state. I was more slender then.”

I think I have done enough to ensure that Swinburne will pass on whatever information his wooden skull can retain to his patron. He has long been the Tory Party’s ears within the school, just as Renfrew is the Liberals’. There is an interest, on the side of the Crown, in keeping the factions in balance.

“Now, if you will excuse me.”

“Of course, Headmaster.”

It is only now when he rises to leave that the thought occurs to Swinburne that he should have inquired about the victim of the assault, whatever his feelings about the man. It behoves him, as a Christian. Nonetheless, it comes out rather coarsely.

“Is Renfrew dead then?”

“Not at all. On the contrary, there is hope yet that he may live, though if he does he will be much changed. The surgeon had to remove several feet of his intestines. An Oxford man, he is, one of Renfrew’s party. I had him fetched.”

Swinburne frowns, wets his lips with the thick-veined tip of his tongue, lowers his voice to the whisper of insinuation.

“It’s unnatural. By rights he should be dead.”

“You are a suspicious man, Swinburne. We have no reason to believe that the man used any techniques or technologies he acquired illegally. And no reason to inquire. Surely you are pleased Dr. Renfrew is still with us.”

As I see the old churchman to the door, I catch a whiff of his breath. Atop the rotting smell of his dentures there sits another, cleaner smell, almost medicinal and carrying the sweetness of turpentine. My guess is that he never leaves his chambers without a sweet tucked into the pocket of his mouth. I wonder briefly how he justifies his consumption theologically. But then I realise that a man like Swinburne does not bother with justifications. Churchmen and teachers are allowed to use sweets. Other men are not.

For him, it is as simple as that.

ф

The girl is asleep when I enter the bedroom. There are some marks on the pillow and the bed-sheet, but they are light and grey, bad dreams become manifest. It would be churlish to call them sins. Slowly, not wishing to wake her, I lower myself onto the chair next to her, and tuck the duvet back up to her chin. She mutters something, and — still asleep — her little hand comes up to her chest and performs an odd, turning movement, as if she were placing her heart into a loosely formed fist and giving it a twist. It is a disturbing gesture, made by a mind that is disturbed. One can only guess at what the girl must have witnessed.

I did not enter Renfrew’s cottage until after he had been removed from the premises. Cruikshank had found him, he and the two stable hands he had roused in response to the girl’s warning. He’d armed them with stout clubs, he told me, and himself with an axe. They had found the door unlocked.

All three of the men had walked through Renfrew’s blood. That’s the first thing I saw coming to the cottage, bloody footprints leading away from the front door, growing fainter with every step until only their heels and bootnails showed pink upon the path from cottage to school. It had been snowing through much of the night. No other prints showed in the blanket of white.