The Paper Chase (12 page)

He was standing at the bus stop from Bramley when he felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned to see the ginger moustache of Inspector Murray. “Mr Applegate,” the Inspector said, “can you spare me a few minutes, eh?”

In spite of the interrogative
eh
he did not consider this really a question – or thought it at least a question permitting only one answer. There was, after all, a bus in another hour, it was raining, and after his encounter with Eileen and her organisation there was something comforting about the presence of a police official at his side. He wondered mildly where the Inspector would take him for their little chat. Did Murdstone boast a Lyons? Or would it be a slightly seedy Graham Greene-ish pub? If a pub, was Murray a bottled or draught beer man? He was a little disconcerted when the Inspector turned briskly into a dung-coloured brick building that said “Kent County Constabulary” on a lighted lamp outside. The sight of a sergeant sitting at a desk, and of constables who straightened up respectfully at sight of the Inspector was not after all as comforting as it might have been. Nor was the bristling of the Inspector’s ginger moustache exactly reassuring, when they sat opposite each other in a little, bare room. As Applegate remembered, that moustache had formerly not bristled but drooped.

“I thought you’d like to know Winterbottom has been found.” The Inspector seemed able to put a questioning note into the simplest remark. “At home,” he continued. “It seems the knife was the last straw to him, as you might say. He felt his dignity was hurt, he’d had enough of life at Bramley, he wanted to go home. He hadn’t money for fare, hitch-hiked his way back. His father doesn’t intend to send him back to the school after what has happened. Can’t say I blame him. Now, I’ve talked to the boy. I’ve checked his story and it seems all right. He’s either a better actor than I’ve seen on the stage this year, or he had nothing to do with killing Montague.”

It was unwise, a legal friend had once told Applegate, to say anything at all to the police, and it was almost fatal to offer statements. Nevertheless, there was something about the Inspector’s interrogative air – his last sentence had ended on a characteristic upward inflection – that positively demanded answers. Fighting down an inclination to ask the number of actors the Inspector had in fact seen on the stage that year, Applegate asked instead whether any link had been traced between Winterbottom and Montague.

“None. I don’t believe there is any link.” Applegate was mute. “Eh?”

“Perhaps not.”

“We may have been led up the garden, eh? So we come back to two questions. Who took the knife away from you, and when?”

“It might have been any time after I put it in my pocket,” Applegate said lamely. “I thought nothing more of it.”

“Careless, Mr Applegate. And who knew Montague before he came to the school. You didn’t, eh?”

“Certainly not. I met him for the first time when we got out at the station and Miss Pont picked us up.”

“Miss Pont, eh? That’s a fine figure of a girl,” the Inspector said irrelevantly. “So you had no contact with Montague beyond a little casual conversation, at suppertime and such.” The way in which the Inspector’s moustache bristled, and in which he almost said “leetle” for “little” alarmed Applegate. He shook his head.

“No little private conversation, never unbuttoned himself to you, said he wanted to get something off his chest, as you might put it in a manner of speaking.” A rabbit conscious of impending doom, Applegate found nothing to do but shake his head again at this gingery fox.

“Then what were his fingerprints doing in three different places in your bedroom? By the light switch, on the wardrobe, and on the back of a chair?” Applegate gasped. Then, conscious of his open mouth, he smartly snapped it shut. He had remembered to remove the prints in Montague’s room, but had entirely forgotten that Montague’s prints were present in his own room. A fine detective story writer you are, he told himself gloomily. The Inspector had been waiting with an air of immense forbearance, but now he let loose a brisk “Eh?”

“No idea,” Applegate mumbled. “Simply can’t explain it.”

“One very simple explanation. Montague came in to talk to you after you’d left the Ponts. Then you went over to his room, there was a quarrel, you stabbed him, took whatever it was you were quarrelling about. Simple, straightforward. What’s wrong with it?”

This reconstruction was in some points so truthful that Applegate felt admittance of any part of it would be equivalent to admitting the whole. “Motive,” he said, with a gulp. “What motive?”

The Inspector brushed up his ginger moustache. “Bit of a problem. But Montague wasn’t a teacher by profession, you know that. He was a bit of a crook. Did a term in prison during the war. He was part of a drug distributing ring, and got caught. Always the little fellows who get caught. Smoke?”

Applegate accepted the tube, placed it in his mouth, and carefully lighted it. The Inspector stuffed tobacco into a curved pipe.

“Thing is he may have been going straight, but what did he want to take this kind of job for when he’d been selling cars in Warren Street?”

So he
was
a Warren Street car salesman, Applegate thought with a small feeling of self-congratulation. “Perhaps business was bad.”

“Wasn’t bad enough to make him choose school-mastering for a living. Tell you another thing. Ever heard of Eddie Martin, eh?”

The bigger the lie the better the chance. “No.”

“He was the kingfish of the drug ring – biggest fish we caught anyway. He came down to Murdstone not long ago. Got drowned, accident. Coincidence, I suppose you’d call it.”

“I suppose so. I don’t see what it’s got to do with me.”

“Now, you’re not a qualified teacher either. What are you supposed to be doing down here, eh?”

Here at last Applegate could give an answer that, however improbable it seemed, was true. “I’m a detective story writer, you’ve found that out.”

The Inspector took out from the drawer of his desk a book, on the dust jacket of which donnish figures disported themselves like satyrs, with their goat feet dancing the antic hay. Applegate recognised
Where Dons Delight.

“Have you read it?”

“Very clever,” the Inspector said, without committing himself to a definite answer.

“I came down here to get local colour for my next book.”

“And then you got mixed up with this, eh?” He walked up and down the room, puffing at the pipe and flinging out sentences between balloons of smoke. “Tell you something to make you laugh. I believe this story of yours, most of it. I’m just showing you the possibilities. Want you to understand one thing, though. You’re in a mess, young man. You and that girl of yours. Up to the neck. Better tell me about it.”

Had Applegate still possessed the letters and the note he had taken from Montague’s wallet he would have felt strongly inclined to accept this suggestion. But he had not merely committed the offence of concealing material related to the crime, but had been stupid enough to lose it. He shook his head.

“I won’t pretend to see my way through this,” said the Inspector. Puff puff. “But I understand enough to know that you’re in danger.” Puff puff. “And Miss Pont, too, if that interests you.” He took his pipe out of his mouth and stood staring at Applegate, suddenly foxily amiable. “Eh?”

Applegate felt a sudden resurgence of confidence. “Nothing to say, Inspector. About Montague’s prints, has it occurred to you that he might have been in my room in the afternoon or evening, soon after we arrived?”

“Yes. But I don’t fancy that’s the way it was.” Ginger eyebrows drew together with a slightly frightening effect. “All right. You can go.”

“I’m not being detained?” Applegate asked jauntily.

“Why should I keep you in safety when you want to make a fool of yourself? But your blood’s on your own head – or I fear it will be. I hope your head’s a thick one.”

He got back to Bramley Hall at suppertime, but there was no sign of supper. He went out to the kitchens, found them deserted, and carved off for himself a hunk of slightly dampish home-made bread and a piece of cheese. Bread and cheese in hand, he wandered out of the Gothic hall and sat down in one of the classrooms in the modern addition. On the blackboard was written in a slightly shaky hand that he recognised as Pont’s,
Rats live on no evil star,
and beneath it
Palindrome.
Round the walls were a variety of paintings ranging from
collages
to linocuts. Among them was a motto, neatly lettered in sans serif capitals,
To learn freedom is to be on the threshold of a creative act.
Applegate sat at one of the rickety desks and ate his bread and cheese. Words were deeply carved into the desk:
Old Jerry Pont’s a fool.
A creative act, Applegate wondered? He stuffed the last of the bread and cheese into his mouth.

The door opened behind him. Something hard pressed into his back. A voice said: “Stand up. Put your hands above your head.”

He stood, and then suddenly whirled round, to be confronted by the fat face of Maureen Gardner. He looked furiously at her podgy, outstretched finger.

“Scared you,” she said complacently. “I like you, you scare easily.”

Perhaps it was a good thing that Applegate’s mouth was full of bread and cheese. When he was able to speak he only said mildly: “Why do you do things like that? It would be much nicer if you didn’t.”

“I like to frighten people, it’s fun. I used to steal things, but frightening people is more interesting. Less anti-social, too. I was going to put some beetles and things in your bed if Derek hadn’t murdered Mr Montague.”

“Derek didn’t murder Mr Montague,” Applegate said absently. “He just got tired of progressive education and went home.”

“Almost all of them have done that. Gone home, I mean. There’s only Jerry and Janine and Hedda left. And that boy who came the other day, Deverell. His father lives in South America or somewhere, and hasn’t had time to hear about it.”

“And you.”

“Oh, well, of course my parents are…” She waved a beefy hand.

“Dead, you mean?”

“No. My mother’s Rita Revere.”

“Well.” He was impressed. Rita Revere had been a Hollywood star for years, and she had even managed to graduate from her original celebrity as the “X” girl (a label devised by an enterprising publicity agent when she appeared in four successive “X” category films), all breasts and temperament, into a reasonable simulacrum of an actress. Yet even as an aspiring actress Rita Revere might well be embarrassed by a daughter of such an age, and of such formidable fatness. “What about your father? But of course, I suppose your father was –”

“Roger Gardner, yes.”

“Well,” Applegate said again, very inadequately. He was slightly horrified. The marriage of Roger Gardner and Rita Revere had been a three-days’ wonder just before the war. Gardner was a playboy and racing motorist, noted for his Fascist sympathies. The outbreak of war found him in Germany. He stayed there and made many broadcasts from Berlin, on the lines that the Germans were jolly good sportsmen and the Russians were not. Rita Revere divorced him. He was listed as a war criminal, but never came to trial. He had been seen in Berlin when that city was captured by the Russians, but his subsequent fate was unknown. Whether Roger Gardner was dead or alive did not seem very important, but Applegate could not resist sympathy for a child who had had Gardner for a father and Rita Revere for a mother.

“Roger’s presumed dead, as you know,” the girl said calmly. “And Rita doesn’t want me any closer than a few thousand miles, she says I’ve got the seeds of Roger’s degeneracy in me. Do you think that’s so?”

“No.”

“Neither does Hedda. She’s smashing, isn’t she? You’ll find her upstairs if you want her.”

“What’s going to happen to you?”

“I shall go to the Anarchist Country Community. They’ll take me in. I’ve been an Anarchist for two years now.”

“The Anarchist Country Community,” Applegate repeated feebly.

“Yes. They’ve got a hundred acres in Essex, rather inaccessible. And an old country house. Everything’s communal, you know, all social activities. And no restrictions. Parents employ self-regulation for their children. Object of the community is to provide an example of living and also to release psychic energy. Generally we keep it bottled up.” She jabbed Applegate in the stomach. “You keep it bottled up.”

“I expect you’re right. Does – ah – Jeremy know of your Anarchist sympathies?”

“Yes. Approves of them. Would be one himself if he had the guts.”

“And will you go around the community frightening people?”

She looked at him with contempt. “Naturally not. I only indulge in anti-social behaviour under pressure of environment. But talking of anti-social behaviour, if Derek didn’t kill that man Montague, who did?”

“Your guess is as good as mine.”

“I might be able to help. I’m really very intelligent. I suppose it was something to do with you.”

“What makes you think that?” Applegate asked, startled.

“I happened to see him come out of your room.”

“What do you mean, happened? You’re supposed to be on the first floor.”

“I know, but I like to see what’s going on. It gives me a feeling of power.”

“I doubt if that will be encouraged in the Anarchist Country Community.”

“I need reorientation,” she said complacently. “But I can’t get it here. I saw Montague coming out of your room.”

“What about it?”

“Why should he have been talking to you if you didn’t know each other?”

“It didn’t occur to you that two new teachers might want to discuss their programme?”

“At a school like this, no. And that isn’t all. A couple of minutes later I heard somebody else coming along the passage.”

Applegate felt a certain tenseness. “Yes?”

“So I went downstairs. I knew there’d be trouble if I was found up there.” She wagged a fat finger at him.

“But I went on up again. And I heard voices.”

“Yes?”

“In your room. You had Hedda in there. I could hear her voice.”

Applegate had a vision of Maureen Gardner, in her pyjamas, crouched outside his bedroom door. It was both comic and pathetic. “Is that all?”

“No. There was someone in Montague’s room as well.”

“A man or a woman?”

“A man. At least, I’m almost sure. You see, I was more interested in you and Hedda.” Unhappily she added: “But I couldn’t really hear even what you were saying.”

“You’re getting in some good training as a private inquiry agent,” Applegate said sarcastically. “You’ll improve in time. So what it really comes to is that you heard Montague talking to somebody, and feel almost sure it was a man. You didn’t stay to see who came out of the room? And you don’t know where he came from?”

She said slowly: “I think he was hiding somewhere on your floor while you were talking to Montague. I heard somebody move then. But I couldn’t be sure.”

“Industrious snooping could hardly have had less successful results. Have you told the police?”

She shook her head. “It’s against my principles to help the police. But it means that whoever killed Montague came from inside the house.”

“I don’t think anyone’s ever doubted that.”

“They must have known all about him. Don’t you see the obvious person, the one who certainly knew about Montague? Why, Jeremy.”

“But he engaged Montague.”

“Precisely. Why did he engage somebody obviously unsuitable? Because Montague had a hold over him. Then when he got down here Montague tried to turn the screw in some way, and Jeremy killed him.”

“That’s the silliest theory I’ve ever heard advanced by a girl who calls herself intelligent. The murder has ruined the school, and if there’s one thing Jeremy has at heart it’s Bramley Hall and everything it stands for.”

She stood up. Her blubbery face seemed to fold into creases. “You only laugh at me. Everybody’s always laughed at me.”

He was sorry for what he had said, or the way he had said it. “I wasn’t laughing. I just don’t think you’re right. Hedda and I are working on another idea. Perhaps you can help. Shall we all have a council of war about it tomorrow?”

Her podgy hands were clasped tightly. “Oh,
yes.
What’s your idea?”

“It’s all to do with a man named Bogue.”

“What, Johnny Bogue? The man who used to live here.”

He was astonished. “How do you know anything about him? You were hardly born then.”

“He was a friend of my father. I found out as much as I could about Roger, you know. And Johnny Bogue was one of his friends. Roger used to come down here for weekends. That’s something I often think about. Would you like to see a picture of him?” She took out from a small, tartan bag two snapshots. One showed the platinum head of Rita Revere, the other a neat, dark, rather self-consciously handsome male profile. “Isn’t he handsome? Just like Douglas Fairbanks. Nobody knows for certain what’s happened to him. Perhaps one day he’ll send for me. You know, like Maclean sent for Mrs Maclean. If he did I should go. I don’t feel any allegiance to the Western democracies. Do you think I should?”

“I don’t know. Did you hear anything else about Bogue?”

“Only that he kept in touch with Roger somehow during the war. Rita told me that once. Of course that was before she decided she didn’t want me any more,” she added in a matter-of-fact way. “I don’t know how he kept in touch, but apparently Bogue had lots of friends in Germany, and he used to get messages through to Rita. But then she divorced Roger, and Bogue was killed. I don’t see how he can be mixed up in this. Do you mean there’s a kind of secret about Bramley Hall?”

“Something like that. It’s too late to talk about it tonight. Let’s go to bed.”

“I like you.” They walked up the stairs together. “I wish I had a proper mother and father. It’s a bore in many ways, but on the whole, I think it’s a good thing to have them, don’t you?”

“On the whole,” Applegate agreed gravely. He left her on the first floor and went farther up. At the door of his cubicle he halted. From farther down the corridor he heard a tuneless, metallic voice singing:

“You’ve got that look, that look that makes me shriek,

You with that lay me in the stable technique.”

He went in pursuit of the voice, knocked on a bedroom door and went in when a voice called “Come.” Hedda sat at her dressing table in a dark blue dressing gown, brushing her hair. She raised a hand. “Come and do this. I’m bored with it.”

Applegate brushed the hair which crackled electrically under his touch, while he told her about the events of the day. She was inclined to treat his adventures with a light-heartedness of which he could not altogether approve. He had not yet understood that what happens to other people may seem to us tragic, pathetic or wonderful, but can never seem wholly real. We reserve rights in absolute reality for what happens to ourselves.

“What
do
you suppose they’re after? And what
can
they be waiting for? I do feel you might have found that out. You don’t seem to emerge from these trials of strength altogether triumphantly, do you?”

“I thought I’d done rather well. I certainly ploughed a deep furrow between Jenks and Eileen Delaney.”

“Oh. That hurt.” He had given her hair a vicious downward brush. “I know who they’re waiting for. Geoffrey.”

“Geoffrey?” He was momentarily confused.

“The son. Johnny gave him the key to the fortune, or left it for him in some way. They can’t do anything without Geoffrey and the key, and they’re waiting for him to turn up.”

“You may be right.” He put down the brush, pulled her head backwards and kissed her upside-down face. She responded in an absent-minded sort of way, and pushed him away.

“That’s enough of that. The really baffling thing is, what can this treasure possibly be? Remember what Bogue said to old Anscombe, that he’d be the richest man in the world – and then he wanted the loan from Fish. I’ve got a feeling we ought to make something out of that. It’s as though he were going to steal the Crown Jewels or something.”

He stroked her hair thoughtfully. “It seems to be implied that whatever it was would be in some way a sort of a joke.”

“Yes. He must have been a great charmer, that Johnny Bogue.” She looked at him quizzically in the glass. He gave her hair a sharp tug. “Mustn’t he now?”

“I think he was one of the nastiest characters I’ve heard of for a long time.” Conscious that he must sound priggish, he told her about his conversation with Maureen. “Gardner was a nasty type too, even nastier than Bogue. Odd, isn’t it, to think how this place is connected with it all, that it could tell us everything we want to know?”

She got up. “Don’t be commonplace. I’m going to bed. I’ve had a frightful day. Parents calling for children, complaining about everything, as good as calling Jeremy a murderer. He took no notice of them, don’t bother me with these trivial details, I’m worrying about the future of progressive education. You know the line. Janine’s been soaking all day, glassy-eyed by the afternoon, wouldn’t go and lie down, made the worst possible impression on the parents. Fortunately, the children themselves behaved pretty well. That boy Deverell was a help in a quiet way, and so was Maureen. It’s a pity she’s so fat.”

“She thinks a lot of you.”

“I admire her taste. And now, good night.”

Rather unwillingly he moved to the door. “You don’t seem very ardent tonight.”

She slipped off the dressing gown, and he had a vision of round, white arms. Then she was in bed. “A girl just can’t be ardent all the time. Will you turn out the light? Good night.”

“Good night.” He turned out the light.

“Do you know the most fascinating thing of all?” Her voice came from darkness.

“What’s that?”

“The face peering from the tower. And the man with the lobe missing off his ear. Positively too John Buchan for words.”