make a check…’
‘I can’t, superintendent. At least, not until ten o’clock. The boys are allowed to be out with their parents this evening, and they’re not due back before then.’
Stagge squared his shoulders and picked up his hat. ‘Well, I shall have to do what I can. I hope you’ll let me know, sir, if anything more that’s unusual happens here – anything at all, however harmless it may seem. One can never be sure what one’s up against.’
And with this nebulous threat he departed. The headmaster relapsed into a chair.
‘This would happen just before speech day,’ he muttered. ‘Heaven help us.’
‘Heaven help the girl,’ said Fen rather grimly. ‘I don’t believe in this elopement. It’s the sentimental who elope, and according to you Brenda Boyce is anything but sentimental.’
‘You mean—’
‘I mean that she’s been either abducted or killed.’
The headmaster stared incredulously. ‘But why, my dear Gervase? Why?’ And when Fen shook his head and remained silent, ‘It’s incredible…I don’t know what’s going to happen about the play. I must tell Mathieson.’ He got up and went to the window, whence he was lucky enough to observe that pedagogue slowly receding on a bicycle. ‘Mathieson!’ he called. ‘Mathieson!’
Mathieson braked violently, wobbled, dismounted, and led his machine back to the window. The headmaster hurriedly explained matters to him.
‘Well, headmaster,’ he said eventually, ‘the girl who’s playing Isabella knows the part of Katherine, and is more or less capable of taking it. That means I shall have to spend the whole of tomorrow drumming Isabella’s part into someone fresh…Fortunately there’s very little of it.’
The headmaster agreed that this was indeed fortunate; he seemed almost inclined to congratulate Shakespeare on his prescience in the matter. After a little further discussion Mathieson went away, and Fen drove the headmaster back to his house, where they bathed and dined. Over coffee, the headmaster said, ‘I’m afraid I shall have to neglect you this evening. I’ve got to go back now and interview one or two of the more importunate parents, and after that there’s a Fasti meeting.’
‘What in God’s name is a Fasti meeting?’
‘It’s to settle the school calendar for the rest of the term, and make sure that the various arrangements don’t clash.’
‘Are they likely to?’
‘Very likely. There are sixteen different school societies, all with their meetings. There are sports fixtures and prize examinations and supernumerary chapel services. There are lectures, concerts, recitals, cinema shows…Never a dull moment, I assure you.’
‘That’s all right,’ said Fen. ‘I shall go on working at my detective novel.’
‘At your what?’
‘I’m writing a detective novel.’
‘Indeed,’ the headmaster remarked non-committally.
‘It’s a very good one,’ said Fen with great simplicity. ‘You see, it all begins on a dark and stormy November night in the Catskill Mountains…’
‘Yes,’ said the headmaster, rising hastily. ‘Well, later, my dear fellow. I must be off now.’
‘And in a log cabin there’s a beautiful girl sitting shivering by the fire. She’s shivering, you understand, not because she’s cold, but because,’ said Fen dramatically, ‘she’s afraid.’
‘I see,’ said the headmaster, sidling towards the door. ‘Well, you must tell me all about it when I’ve time to do it justice. In the meanwhile, make yourself at home. There’s whisky in the drawing-room sideboard.’ He hurried out.
Darkness was falling when he left the house, climbed into his car and drove back to the school site, and it was still oppressively hot. But the parents proved less refractory than usual, and the Fasti meeting, though lengthy, less productive of acrimony. Shortly before a quarter to eleven it broke up, and the headmaster was just preparing to depart when Galbraith appeared. He had returned to his bachelor home shortly before four that afternoon, but now trouble had arisen over the chapel tickets and he needed advice. Seating accommodation in the chapel was very restricted, and tickets for parents who wished to attend the speech day service had to be stringently rationed. Some misunderstanding had arisen between Galbraith and the Chaplain, and more tickets had been issued than could possibly be honoured…The headmaster had had a tiring day, but he discussed ways and means with as much enthusiasm as he could muster.
He was still discussing them when, at two minutes past eleven, the telephone rang. Virginia Love’s voice was so blurred with hysteria that he hardly recognized it. He listened in stupefaction to what she had to tell him.
‘Very well,’ he said, and stumbled over the words. ‘This – this is a most tragic business, Mrs Love. I don’t know what to say…my utmost sympathy…I’ll get in touch with a doctor and with the police…Yes…Yes, of course…Goodbye.’
He rang off, controlling himself with difficulty, and turned to Galbraith.
‘It’s Love,’ he said. ‘Shot.’
Galbraith looked bewildered; his professional competence seemed incapable of coping with anything like this. ‘Shot?’ he echoed foolishly. ‘You don’t mean killed?’
‘Yes. Killed.’
‘Suicide?’
‘I don’t know. His wife was too upset to say very much. But in any case—’
The telephone rang again. The headmaster took it up; listened, incredulous and appalled.
‘All right,’ he said at last. ‘Stay there, and don’t touch anything. I’ll make the necessary arrangements.’ He replaced the receiver. ‘That was Wells, speaking from Hubbard’s Building. He’s just found Somers in the common room…’
He put out one hand to brace himself against the back of a chair. His face for a moment was livid.
‘Somers is dead, too,’ he said. ‘Shot through the eye.’
‘You arrived opportunely,’ said the headmaster, and Fen, sprawled in one of the leather-covered armchairs, nodded sombrely. ‘I’ve no doubt Stagge will welcome your help; certainly I shall. Things are going to be very difficult. Of course, everything possible must be done, but I can’t help wishing this hadn’t happened on the evening before speech day. It’s callous, no doubt—’
‘No, no,’ Fen interrupted. ‘Your principal responsibility is to the school…I suppose it’s too late to cancel anything?’
‘Far too late. The programme will have to go through as arranged. I only hope we can hush things up until at least tomorrow evening. But I foresee the most appalling complications. Publicity of that sort…’ The headmaster gestured expressively and fell silent.
Beyond the oblongs of light from the study windows there was a darkness so thick as to seem almost palpable; yet the flowers – the roses and verbena – seemed to welcome its embrace, for their scent was sharper and more vivid than it had been during the daytime. A moth fluttered round the lamp on the desk, its wings beating a rapid, intermittent tattoo against the buff-coloured parchment of the shade. Pools of shadow lay in the corners, but the light splashed glittering on to the brass andirons which stood sentinel to the unlit fire, and on to the cut glass tumbler which Fen was pensively rotating between