Death at St. Asprey’s School Read online

  “Matron? What on earth wash matter with the woman?”

  “Hysterics,” said Mrs. Sconer concisely. “She’s all right now.”

  “Shterish? There wash surely no need to make all that noish?”

  “Don’t be unimaginative, Cosmo. Someone had put a dead rat in her bed. Its enough to give anyone hysterics. I had to get Parker to remove it. They carry the most frightful germs, I believe.”

  “Bubonic plague,” said Mr. Sconer knowingly. “Who put the thing in Matronsh bed?”

  “What on earth’s the use of asking such an absurd question, Cosmo? Do you think I should be standing here quietly if I knew? I have a pretty good idea, but that’s another matter.”

  “You’re going to say it-sh Shime I sherpposhe? Where do you think Shime could have got a dead rat from? And why would he put it in Matronsh bed? Itsh not loshical.”

  “Oh go to sleep, Cosmo. It’s really no good talking to you. You’ll let the school be ruined before you act.”

  Chapter Two

  For some days there was no incident large enough to threaten the routine of St. Asprey’s, though several members of the staff looked as though they were sleeping badly, and Horlick, the gardener, complained that his beds were trampled by large feet during the hours of darkness. Then happened something which could no longer be dismissed, by even the most sceptical, as sick humour at work, or as anything less than a serious, nearly fatal attack on one of the staff which some did not hesitate to call attempted murder.

  The original building of St. Asprey’s had been the manor house of Pyedown-Abdale, a village in Gloucestershire, for St. Asprey’s, like every other preparatory school was situated in one of the healthiest positions in Great Britain. It was a very large house patched and added to at different periods and set among great whispering trees. Its nearest building was the church, a rather splendid piece of architecture which recalled by its size that Pyedown-Abdale, now a straggle of labourers’ cottages, had once held an important wool market. The Rectory was on the village side of the church, so that the school buildings with a cottage or two were isolated from human habitation and watched over by the church tower. If Matron’s story of Colin Sime was true, this fact had aided him in his observations, for she claimed that he climbed the tower with field glasses.

  The boys attended eleven o’clock service on Sunday mornings and there was close co-operation between church and school, the Rector, the Reverend Austin Spancock, giving weekly divinity classes at the school, and Jumbo Parker having been for more than half of his twenty years at St. Asprey’s organist and choirmaster at the church. A few terms earlier his tenure of this office had been threatened by Duckmore who was a far better organist but by dint of his years of past work he managed to retain it. A number of the boys, by special permission of their parents, democratically sang in the choir and attended choir practice.

  Jumbo Parker, a stout and happy-faced man, enjoyed playing the organ almost as much as he enjoyed sitting in the bar of the Windmill Inn over a pint glass of rough cider. He did not play very well but was lucky in his instrument for the last squire of Pyedown-Abdale, whose heirs had sold the manor house cheaply to Mr. Sconer, had endowed the village church with an unusually fine organ. Jumbo occasionally walked across the fields to the church to play for his own entertainment, and almost invariably practised on Saturday afternoons. It was on the occasion of one of these Saturday visits that the Thing happened which destroyed the last vestiges of peace at St. Asprey’s.

  Jumbo had to tell the story so often afterwards that it fell into a series of cliches. He went, he said, intending to spend an hour at the organ. On that Saturday afternoon there happened to be an Away match and young Mayring had gone by coach with the team to play St. Bensons, another Cotswold school. Mr. and Mrs. Sconer were receiving a visit from some prospective parents. Several of the staff and a married couple named Ferris, whose son was at the school had gathered on a lawn behind the staff bungalow to practise archery, for it was a craze among the adults that term. These were Jim Stanley the third assistant, a man named Kneller, and Mollie Westerly. Duckmore, the other assistant, was in charge of the boys on the cricket field. So Jumbo Parker was free to indulge in one of his favourite occupations—playing the church organ.

  He told how he strolled across the meadows delighting in the sunlight and without the smallest foreboding of anything unpleasant. He entered the church and it seemed its usual self, the faint musky smell and the light coming through the stained glass windows just as he had known them so well all these years. At first there was silence then he was aware of a faint moaning which seemed to come from the West end of the church.

  Jumbo Parker described it afterwards as a somewhat eerie sound. His mind which had been easy during his walk, returned to the disturbing events of the last few weeks. He made his way towards the sound and realized that it came from beyond the oak door leading to the stairway to the tower. He opened this and to his alarm and horror released a human body which rolled to his feet. It was that of Colin Sime who was now unconscious.

  Parker acted quickly. He gathered at once that Sime had fallen down the staircase from the loft above in which the bell-ringers performed. He saw that he was not dead but gravely injured. He made him as comfortable as he could with his head on a hassock then rushed out to get assistance. ‘By the grace of God’, as he said afterwards, he found the Rector arriving in his old car. (Mr. Spancock explained afterwards that he had seen someone on the tower of his church and as this had happened several times lately he had hurried across to investigate.)

  The Rector was an elderly man with chin and forehead which both receded from the central and most prominent feature of his face, the tip of a large, almost triangular nose. He spoke in a throaty and hollow voice which lent itself to mimicry by choirboys and clipped his sentences to a minimum.

  He took in the situation at a glance, or enough of it to tell him how to act.

  “Stay here,” he said to Parker in the curt way he normally adopted. “I’ll get help.”

  Nothing more was said as the Rector drove hurriedly away. There were malicious suggestions afterwards that he might have gone to a nearby farm for the age-old expedient of a hurdle on which to carry the injured man, but that he preferred to make use of the members of his First Aid class who had to be gathered together in the village. The Rector was a keen believer in First Aid and this was his first chance to test the proficiency of his pupils. It was in fact more than half-an-hour before Sime had been placed, by the method prescribed in the book of instructions, on a stretcher. Only then was it realized that no one had phoned for a doctor or an ambulance. In these circumstances, the church being some distance from a telephone, it was decided to carry Sime across to the school and from there summon Dr. Cromarty. If it was necessary for Sime to go into hospital he could be moved from St. Asprey’s.

  The first words that Sime was heard to speak were brief and to the point.

  “I was pushed,” he said.

  The doctor examined him and decided that the injury to his legs should be X-rayed for which he must be taken to hospital. But Sime resisted this passionately. He wanted to stay where he was, in his own room at the school, and nothing would induce him to enter a hospital. He appeared to have recovered at least from the shock and after much dispute, in which Dr. Cromarty told him tartly what kind of a fool he was, he got his own way and was left in bed, impotent to move but able to speak his mind.

  The police were informed of the accident and of Sime’s exclamation—“I was pushed.” A cool and tactful Detective Sergeant named Haggard came to the school in a non-commital motorcar and saw Sime alone in his room on the very day of the accident, but this discretion did not prevent the story of Sime’s having been the victim of violence from reaching the boys and had it not been for the strictest censorship that Sunday’s letters would have begun: ‘Dear Father and Mother, Yesterday someone shuvved Mr. Sime down the stairs of the church tower in an a tempt to murder him.’


  At Mrs. Sconer’s urgent behest, her husband implored Sime ‘for the good of the school’ not to tell everyone that there had been a deliberate attempt to injure him, but Sime rejected this and when Detective Sergeant Haggard was with him gave a full account of the matter.

  “I felt it distinctly,” he said. “Just as I reached the head of the long spiral staircase down from the bell-ringers’ loft to the ground someone gave me a violent push and I lost my foothold. I feel I’m lucky to be alive.”

  Colin Sime was a hefty man, so hefty that all his clothes looked a little too small for him and one felt their seams might burst open to release the swollen flesh. His small eyes had the cunning of a pig’s eyes and his whole presence suggested a vulgar, grasping and untrustworthy personality. Yet this was ‘the most popular master in the school’.

  Haggard may have wondered as others had done at the curious trends of small boys’ hero-worship but he showed no sign of hostility.

  “You were about to come down, Mr. Sime?”

  “Yes.”

  “May I ask what had taken you to the church tower that afternoon?”

  The question seemed quite unexpected.

  “That has nothing to do with it,” said Sime sharply. “Someone tried to murder me.”

  “Nevertheless I should like to get a complete picture. You must have had some reason for climbing the church tower.”

  “Architecture,” said Sime impatiently.

  “I see. Is the church tower here an interesting example of some period?”

  “It has some gargoyles on it,” said Sime, fortunately remembering a fact he had been told.

  “And you wished to make a study of them?”

  “That’s it.”

  “Had you ever been up there before?”

  “May have. Once or twice. What’s that got to do with it?”

  “A pair of field glasses was picked up at the foot of the stairs.”

  “Was it?”

  “Were you carrying field glasses, Mr. Sime?”

  “I daresay I was. Lovely view from the tower.”

  “You did not have them in order to make any particular observation?”

  “No. No. The view.”

  “And the gargoyles. I see. You didn’t suspect anyone’s presence in the tower that afternon?”

  “Certainly not. Do you think I’m a fool? Whoever it was must have been hiding when I got there.”

  “Or perhaps followed you in?”

  “Can’t say. All I can tell you is I felt a violent shove and found myself falling down the stairs. Very unpleasant sensation. The next I knew was the Rector and Jumbo Parker staring down at me like a couple of owls.”

  “I see. You perhaps know that you have been seen going to the tower on previous occasions, Mr. Sime? There seems to have been some resentment about it. People supposed you were watching them.”

  “Ridiculous,” said Sime.

  “You know how people feel about that sort of thing. Is there anyone you suspect of wanting to injure you?”

  “Injure? Whoever pushed me was trying to kill me. It’s only by a miracle that I’m alive.”

  “Well, to kill you?”

  “I daresay a lot of people would. This school’s a hotbed of jealousy.”

  “Anyone in particular?”

  “That’s for you to find out. I don’t know who it was shoved me down those steps. That’s all I can say.”

  The Detective Sergeant after making a few more routine enquiries from Sime sought the headmaster and obtained certain details of everyone’s movements that afternoon. Then, with a few pages of his notebook filled, he returned to his headquarters at Woldham. It may be safely guessed that in his report he conjectured fairly confidently that Sime did in fact know, or suspect, the identity of his assailant. If he had been quite in the dark about it, he would surely have been nervous and anxious to help the police to discover the truth. It was probable that he knew and was not afraid of any further attempt on his life. But why he should be so sure that he was not in danger was a mystery.

  Perhaps the person most noticeably affected by all this was Mrs. Sconer. It was now, she informed her husband. Touch and Go.

  “All I have done here,” she said forcibly, forgetting Mr. Sconer’s minor part in the effort, “is in danger. If this Gets Out it will cause a scandal which may close the school. You know what parents are.”

  Mr. Sconer had good reason to know what parents were but did not choose to argue.

  “Do you realize, Cosmo, that there is a murderer at work? Don’t you see that he may strike again, and this time successfully? You should have got rid of Sime as I told you long ago. And please don’t tell me he’s a good teacher. I warned you and you ignored my warning.”

  “We don’t know he was pushed,” said Mr. Sconer. “He may have made that up.”

  “To injure the school? Far more reason to wish him clear of the place! Such disloyalty. I should like to know what you intend to do before it’s too late.”

  Mr. Sconer sounded sulky and cross.

  “I have not the slightest idea.”

  “What about that man who solves mysteries?” asked Mrs. Sconer suddenly.

  “Which man?”

  “Don’t be obtuse, Cosmo. You know the man. Your friend Gorringer was telling you about him.”

  “Gorringer? Oh, ah, yes.” said Mr. Sconer dubiously. He had been at the university with Hugh Gorringer, now the headmaster of a small public school, the Queen’s School, Newminster. Gorringer had told him about one of his assistants, Carolus Deene, whose hobby was the investigation of crime at which he had been preternaturally successful.

  “Why not ring him up immediately?” suggested Mrs. Sconer. “Tell him we must have his man here at once, A case of life and death.”

  “I very much doubt if Gorringer would be interested. You may remember that during his last visit when he suggested we might send him some of our boys, you told him we only prepared boys for the more important public schools and had never gone lower than Hurstpierpoint. He was deeply offended.”

  “Nonsense. He must be made to see that the case is too urgent for him to quibble about the status of his school.”

  “Gorringer has big ideas of his own and his school’s importance. Besides, how do we know that even if he would consider his Senior History Master coming here in the middle of term, this man Deene would not just add to the confusion and upset the Men?”

  “Upset the Men! We need desperate remedies, Cosmo. Please telephone Mr. Gorringer immediately.”

  “My dear. I hardly think…”

  “I know” said Mrs. Sconer, leaving her husband no alternative.

  Thus it was that Carolus Deene, in another and very different school more than a hundred miles away, was called out of class on the Wednesday after the attack on Sime. He went casually to answer a summons from his headmaster. The two confronted one another across the vast desk behind which Mr. Gorringer liked to sit as one enthroned. Mr. Gorringer was a large and somewhat pompous man with a fine stock of old-fashioned cliches and a pair of large hairy ears. Carolus, in his forties, was slim and rather adolescent in appearance, an ex-officer of the Commandos, a widower and the owner of a large private income, who taught because he could not live idly.

  “Ah, Deene,” said Mr. Gorringer, using one of his more genial forms of greeting. “I wanted a word with you. I have received by telephone a most pressing appeal from an old friend of mine of university days.”

  He did not specify the university. Carolus nodded.

  “He is the proprietor of a preparatory school in the Cotswolds and is in great trouble.”

  “Financial?”

  “No. No. At least I have no reason to think that. He seems to have no difficulty in collecting the most exorbitant fees from the parents of his pupils. No. The trouble is more, I gather, in what I think I may call your line. There has been an attempted murder on his staff.”

  “I often wonder that school murders are not more frequent,” put in
Carolus.

  “This is not a matter for levity,” Mr. Gorringer said sternly. “One of his assistants was impelled by an unknown assailant down the staircase of a church tower and survived by a miracle.”

  “The boys, you think?”

  “No, Deene, I must ask you to be serious. There have been other manifestations of a disturbing nature.” Mr. Gorringer gave some details which he had received from Mr. Sconer. “I am really sorry for my friend,” ended Mr. Gorringer. “His life-work is threatened.”

  “You think it worth saving? I don’t care much for preparatory schools.”

  “He has come to me with the most extraordinary proposal. It is nothing less than that you should spend a short period, ostensibly as one of his assistants, on the staff of his school and attempt to elucidate the matter before scandal and ruin overwhelm him.”

  “In the middle of term?” asked Carolus incredulously.

  “It is, I know, a most unconventional suggestion. A more hidebound headmaster than I would have dismissed it out-of-hand. But the friendships of our young manhood, Deene, create a strong bond and I felt it my duty at least to put the matter to you.”

  “What about my Upper Fifth? I’ve just got some inklings of history into their thick pates.”

  Mr. Gorringer raised his hand.

  “Take no thought of that,” he said. “I myself will fill your place for a week or two if you should decide to go to my friend’s rescue.”

  Carolus, for once in his life, was astounded.

  “I don’t know what to say,” he admitted.

  “I must warn you of one thing,” said Mr. Gorringer. “While Sconer is the best of fellows, he has a wife who … In a word, he is not his own master. Mrs. Sconer is what in the crude but expressive parlance of today is known as a battle-axe. During my only visit to St. Asprey’s School she found occasion to insult me.”

  Carolus smiled.

  “I think I’ll take this on,” he said.

  “With a full sense of responsibility I say I am glad, Deene. Glad. You will realize, of course, that what we hope, what we expect of you is a solution of the mystery before anything worse may befall. I say that because all too often when you investigate a case—though in the end your sagacity triumphs—there seem to come more disasters. We want no murders here, Deene.”