An Incomplete Revenge (18 page)

“Dr. Cottingham, how very kind of you to see me this morning, and without prior notice.” Maisie extended her hand to greet the headmaster. She was surprised to find him quite young for such a post, and calculated that he must be in the region of forty-five. She had envisioned a rather crusty professorial character, with a balding pate and eyes narrowed by constant vigilance for the less-than-sterling behavior of his charges. Instead, Cottingham wore a tailored pin-striped suit, crisp white shirt, and silk tie. His shoes were polished to a shine, and his gunmetal-gray hair was swept back. The gown that a master usually wore had been draped across a chair, ready to be donned should a boy be brought to him for punishment or, less likely, praise. Clearly he had no need of such accoutrements to impress or intimidate parents. Yet he gave the immediate impression of being a fair man, which inspired Maisie to wonder how bullying could survive in any environment in which he worked. Or perhaps that first impression was a blind.

“It’s no trouble at all, Miss Dobbs.” Cottingham took her hand and smiled, then returned to his chair behind the polished oak desk. “Please, be seated.” He paused. “Now then, how might I assist you? I understand that you are”—he reached forward to take up her card from the desk—“a private investigator and a psychologist. Very impressive, if I might say so. Where did you study?”

“At Girton and at the University of Edinburgh’s Department of Legal Medicine.”

“Well, well, well.” He set the card back on the desk. “Please, go on.”

“Our conversation must be in confidence.”

“Of course.”

“I would like to ask some questions about a former pupil—and you will have to cast your memory back a few years, I’m afraid.”

“Who?”

“Alfred Sandermere.”

“Oh, lord!” Cottingham rolled his eyes. “Once seen, never forgotten. If I were to pick three or four boys from my days here who might attract the attention of either the police or a private investigator, Sandermere might be at the top of the list.”

“Really, why?”

“Dreadful boy, such a chip on his shoulder. Typical second-son behavior, but multiplied by ten. Possibly because his older brother was definitely a top-drawer scholar, with first-class performance on the sports field—multiplied by ten!” He looked at his watch. “If you will excuse me, I’ll have his file brought up.”

Cottingham left the room, leaving Maisie on her own. It was the first opportunity she’d had to be in wakeful solitude since Simon died, less than twelve hours earlier. She stood up and paced to the window, which overlooked a quadrangle where boys congregated between classes. To the right a stone wall marked the perimeter of the headmaster’s house, beyond which, she suspected, a walled garden gave the impression of being in the country, rather than in west London. Had Simon attended such a school? She frowned. It occurred to her that she had little knowledge of his life before they met, except, perhaps, the snippets shared by Priscilla, for he had been a family friend and a cohort of her three brothers. Maisie’s entire knowledge of him was, more or less, limited to their time together and to life since then, a life spent grieving for a man not yet dead but lost to war all the same. And now he
was
dead, except that the true mourning had already been done, and there was little more to do now, except respectfully wear black until after the funeral. How would she fill the place he’d occupied? How would she use such freedom, now that it was hers? It was as if she were a seeding ground that had lain fallow for years
and had now been freshly tilled. How, then, might she grow, now that he was gone?

“Ah, we’re in luck. My secretary found Sandermere, A.’s records with the greatest of ease. Terribly efficient, our Miss Larkin. Now then, let me see.” He resumed his place without questioning the fact that he had entered his study to find Maisie at the window. She sat opposite him once again.

“Not a terribly impressive academic record. Good at sports, but not what you would call a sportsman—he was a bad loser. Never could make him captain of the cricket or rugger teams, though he certainly had the physical accomplishment.” He turned a few pages.

“Can you tell me, specifically, about his suspensions?”

“That I can.” Cottingham reached for a sheaf of papers clipped separately into the folder. “I have the exact dates of suspensions, until, of course, his final expulsion from the school.” He unclipped the list in question and passed it to Maisie. “You may make a note of those dates. We released him to his father. As I understand it, he languished at his parents’ estate in Kent to consider his wrongdoings.”

“Bullying?”

“I wish it were as simple as that. It was intimidation, really. Rather sophisticated, even for a boy like Sandermere. There wasn’t much I would put past him. Mostly it was to do with money—it’s not as if he needed it—but he would find out what other boys had been getting up to, you know, their petty little infractions, and demand money.” He looked at Maisie. “Yes,
with menaces
, as they say in police parlance.”

“Did he harm anyone?”

“That’s what a menace such as Sandermere does. Hard if you fight back, hard if you don’t.” Cottingham looked at his watch. “Can I help you with anything else, Miss Dobbs?”

Maisie gathered her notebook and placed it, along with her pen, into her black leather document case. “No, you’ve been most kind.”

Cottingham walked her toward the door and held out his hand, which she took, asking a question at the same time. “What about the Partridge boys? They’re being bullied here, and understandably they’re fighting back. How will you deal with that?”

“I think
bullying
might be too strong a term for the Partridges’ teething problems here at St. Anselm’s. If we give it time, they’ll deal with the occasional ribbing themselves, Miss Dobbs. Staff step in if it looks as if the damage will really hurt someone. But every boy gets a black eye or a split lip now and again. Do bear in mind, the rugger field is a far more dangerous place than the dormitory.” He frowned. “The thing is, they’re different. When they fit in a bit more, the teasing will stop—they’ll be part of the pack. You see, they can be whoever they want to be at home, or back in France, but here in school it’s like an army. Everyone has to march to the same drum.”

“Thank you, once again, Dr. Cottingham.” Maisie left the office and shivered.

“
GOOD HEAVENS, WHAT’S
happened here?” Maisie looked at Priscilla, who raised an eyebrow and shook her head, then looked again at the three boys seated beside their mother outside the Head’s office. The eldest, Timothy, was sporting a black eye, the middle son, Thomas, a nasty graze to the cheek, and the youngest, Tarquin, was running his tongue back and forth through the gap where four front teeth used to be.

“At least they were his milk teeth, Maisie. Can you imagine what I would do trying to find a dentist to make a plate for a boy who had just lost his adult teeth? I really don’t know whether to bang their heads together or just pull them out of here.”

“But, Maman—”

“Not a word, Tarquin, not
one
word.” Priscilla held up her index finger as she spoke.

The youngest slumped in his chair. “Wasn’t my fault, Tante Maisie. That boy picked on me first.” He continued his explanation in English peppered with French, as if he had no conception of the point at which one language ended and the other began.

“Yes, but you didn’t have to slug him back, did you?” Priscilla raised an eyebrow as she looked sideways at her son.

Maisie smiled and whispered, “Yes, he did, Pris.”

“Don’t encourage them, Maisie, unless you want to come and live with us and teach them instead of being an investigator.”

Maisie winked at Tarquin, then smiled at Priscilla. “I think I’ll have a walk around, while you’re in with Dr. Cottingham.”

“Probably for the best. Then you won’t have to listen to a screaming mother on the other side of the door.”

Maisie stepped away. When she looked back, she saw Priscilla draw her glove from her hand, lick her fingers, and try to slick down each boy’s unruly fringe. She heard the door open and close behind her, and suspected the meeting might only be a short one. Nevertheless, she walked around the entrance hall, stopping to look at various plaques commemorating the school’s achievements.

One huge marble engraving held the names of each headmaster since the school’s founding in 1640, and another a roster of sporting achievements since the century began. Then another, with a single red poppy placed on top, a list of boys from the school who had given their lives in the Great War—boys who had left school to join Kitchener’s army and had, most likely, lied about their age. She ran her finger down the list of names until she came to the one she wanted: First Lieutenant Henry Arthur Crispin Sandermere, V.C., July 1916.

“
WELL, THEN, THAT’S
that.” Priscilla marched toward Maisie, her face flushed, her arms outstretched around her boys, like a mother hen shielding her young with her wings. “We’re off to the
Dorchester now. The boys will
not
be coming back to St. Anselm’s. I’ll send a driver for their trunks and tuck boxes later.” She feigned a glare at her sons. “Not one giggle, one comment. This is only the end of this school, not of your education. Come along, let’s go to Tante Maisie’s motor car.”

Maisie walked briskly alongside Priscilla. “Pris, it’s a two-seater. I don’t think I can fit—”

“Nonsense. These two can squeeze behind the seats, and this one will sit on my lap. Somehow, we will all get into your MG.”

Not wanting to contradict her friend, Maisie acquiesced, rolling back the roof to better accommodate her passengers. Fortunately, the sun was shining as they drove along, slowly, so as not to lose a boy. The two older boys were seated precariously on the collapsed roof, while Tarquin Patrick sat on Priscilla’s lap, still poking his tongue through the gap in his teeth. Not being able to stop herself, Maisie began to laugh.

“Don’t laugh, you’ll start them off,” said Priscilla, the corners of her mouth twitching as she endeavored to counter the urge to giggle. It was a battle lost within seconds.

Maisie delivered the Partridge family to the Dorchester and went on her way, smiling. She was glad the boys were no longer at St. Anselm’s. She didn’t like a place where prejudice was tolerated, and violence between boys, who would one day be men, explained away as the result of not hearing the drumbeat of one’s peers.

CHECKING HER WATCH
as she entered her flat, Maisie decided to add a few notes to the case map before collecting her bags and setting off for Kent. Once more she would stay with Frankie this evening, and then at the inn until the end of the week, by which time, she hoped, her work would be done and some sort of explanatory report could be submitted to James Compton.

She logged the dates of Alfred Sandermere’s boyhood suspensions from school alongside a list of dates germane to the case, then read through the notes taken shortly after her visit to meet him. He had made a point of informing her that he was away at the time of the Zeppelin raid on Heronsdene, yet according to the tally of dates, he was very much at home, as Cottingham had said, “languishing at his parents’ estate” soon after the term had begun. She wondered what a boy of fifteen, almost sixteen, might do with time on his hands in a place where there was little to amuse him. Some boys were joining up at this age, and even younger, though it appeared that Sandermere, A. was not one of them.

Maisie worked for a short while longer, making plans to meet more of the villagers in the days to come, taking into account that she was waiting for additional information from Beattie Drummond. The reporter was an interesting woman, thought Maisie, someone who searched high and low for news and who worked ten times harder than her fellow newspapermen to get the story. And of course Beattie wanted the big story, the scoop that would jettison her to
The Daily Express
or even
The Times.
As she packed up the case map and gathered her belongings for the trip, Maisie wondered to what lengths B. T. Drummond might go to get what she wanted.

She was about to leave, when she set down her bags and went again to the dining table at which she’d been working. She drew a box of fine vellum and matching envelopes toward her and took out her fountain pen, tapping the end of the barrel on the blotting paper as she mentally composed her letter. Once satisfied she had the words in her mind—though she would eventually compose and discard several versions of the letter—she began:
Dear Margaret . . .

IT WAS AGAIN
suppertime when Maisie arrived at her father’s cottage at Chelstone Manor and, as before, Frankie had prepared
a hearty repast for his daughter. Maisie remained concerned about her father’s health, though his recovery from an accident some eighteen months earlier had been considered excellent by the local doctor. But he was getting on in years. It had often occurred to Maisie that, with the exception of Priscilla, those closest to her were in their twilight years, and she dreaded the losses that might come in quick succession. Her attempts to broaden the scope of her friendships were, in part, due to such fears.

Frankie dished up dinner almost as soon as Maisie walked in the door.

“Been a man here asking for you.” He ladled a hearty helping of stew into the broad-lipped soup bowls, while Maisie cut and buttered bread in the thick slices her father favored.

“Me?” She held the knife suspended above the bread.

Frankie nodded. “Not what I would call a nice chap, either. What was that man’s name? S . . . Son . . . San—”

“Sandermere?”

Frankie pointed the ladle at her. “That’s it. Sandermere. The one you asked about the other day, and I said I’d heard of him. Well, he came here on a big bay hunter. Fair sweating it was. I offered to walk the horse around, cool it down while he had a cup of tea—don’t like to see a horse in a state like that—but he just went off again, cantering down the road like a highwayman. I thought to myself,
Who does he think he is?
Coming in here like he’s Dick Turpin, all steamed up and having had a few, if I’m not mistaken.”