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At least they had eggs at the restaurant, so Jacques cooked us an omelette apiece, and made the vinaigrette dressing for the accompanying tossed green salad. We ate in one of the booths at the back of the ABC, then said our goodbyes and left them to it.
We spent most of Sunday morning in bed, making love and making plans—Jerry wanted to call the decorators in prior to Christmas—before I got up and made breakfast. I wrangled the vacuum cleaner around the house, fought with the laundry, and vowed to get myself a cleaning lady. Like red dresses, domesticity doesn’t really suit me.
After a week with more questions than answers and a difficult weekend, it was a relief to drive out to Bishop Lea on Monday morning to resume my ‘real’ job.
KD, resplendent in a sleeveless yellow kimono over a little black dress wished me a bright “Good morning”, as I stepped through the front door. She clutched an armful of purple chrysanthemums which she carried into the office and placed in a vase on the window ledge behind her desk.
I returned her greeting, dumped my bag on my chair, and poured coffee for both of us. I might have remarked that she looked more properly attired for a day at Ascot or the Henley Regatta than a day behind the keyboard, had she not told me long ago that working from home did not mean slumming it. KD was not the sort of writer who got up early and wrote two chapters in her pyjamas before having breakfast.
Instead, I asked how she’d got on in London.
“Oh, it was the usual thing. The book signing went well and I had a couple of good lunches with my publisher and my agent. What about you? Have you discovered who killed that teacher, yet?” She took her seat, picked up her coffee, and sat back.
“I suppose you want a full report, do you?”
“Of course.”
I’d suspected she would and had gathered my thoughts and rehearsed what I would tell her, on the drive from home. As always, it proved a useful exercise. KD only wanted facts, not theories or opinion, when I reported the results of my researches and, from the moment she’d taken me on, had taught me how to present my findings in a succinct and accurate manner. Leaving aside all reference to the time I’d spent worrying about my assistant, and the conversation where I’d told Jerry I didn’t want the wretched job, I filled her in on my week.
“Well,” she said, when I’d finished, “she does seem a most unlikeable character. Still, that’s no reason to murder her. Are you likely to uncover who did it, do you suppose?”
That’s my KD, I thought sourly. She was never one to overestimate my investigative abilities or give praise before it was due, although she could be fulsome when she thought it merited. Besides, she did raise an interesting question.
“I don’t know. I don’t have long to prove myself or whodunit. Neither the Board or the Headmistress will put up with me being there much longer.”
“Didn’t you say this was all because the Assistant Chief Constable wants his granddaughter to become a pupil there?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Then with any luck he’ll find a different school and you’ll be off the hook.”
With that less than encouraging thought, she turned to her computer and left me to open and sort the mail.
“Thank you,” she said, when I carried the pile of letters to her desk. “Get your pad, will you, please. I had an idea for my next story on the way back from London. It’s provisionally titled Priests in Peril, and there will be a ton of research.”
This was more like it.
I went back to my desk and waited, pen poised, while she stood up and started tramping backwards and forwards behind her chair in the bow of the conservatory. She marshalled her thoughts and began speaking.
KD wanted as much information as I could gather on priest holes, including how, where, and when they were built. She also wanted me to find the floor plan of a building that contained one, and if said building was open to the public or in private hands. If it were the latter, she required the contact details of the owner, so that she might, if they were willing, pay them a visit.
I scribbled all this down, mentally rubbing my hands in glee, eager to get on with the task. I looked up.
“Anything else?”
KD roared with laughter. “I’ve never known anyone enjoy their work as much as you do. You look like a quivering retriever anxious to go hareing after ducks.”
“I’m not sure that’s the most flattering compliment I’ve ever been paid.” I scowled at her. “If it was a compliment, that is.”
She bowed her head. “You may take it as such, yes.”
“Oh, er...thank you.”
Her face straightened, the moment of levity over. “I do understand that your other work must take precedence. There is a real killer out there” — she waved a hand toward the garden and beyond — “not the fictional one I shall soon be wrestling with, so I’m not in any great rush for the information. Just give me what you can, when you can.”
It was on the tip of my tongue to tell her that I would love to return to working for her full time, but she resumed her seat at that point and the moment was lost. There would be time to return to it once the Emily Rimmer case was over and done with, so the sooner I solved that the better. In the meantime, I had some research to do.
I found the subject of priest holes fascinating and well-referenced and served on the internet, so for an hour or so, I surfed and browsed contentedly. Every now and again I would stop and make extensive notes, bookmarking websites to return to if my boss decided she needed a deeper level of information. I was busy making a list of books on the subject when my mobile rang.
“Verity Long,” I announced after I’d dragged it from my bag and clamped it to my ear.
“This is Mrs Parr at Crofterton Girls’ College. Are you coming in today?”
I glanced at my watch—nearly twelve o’clock, already. “Yes, I did plan to. Why? Would you rather—”
“No, no” Her voice was tight and pitched higher than normal, as though she controlled it only with difficulty. “I’d like you to come as soon as possible, please. There has a been a dreadful accident and I’m afraid, yes, I’m afraid...”
Her voice trailed off, and though I wanted to ask her what had happened, what sort of an accident, she sounded as if she might snap at any moment.
“I’m on my way.”
“Thank you. Please come directly to my office.”
She ended the call and I put my phone back in my bag and stood up.
“Trouble?” asked KD, as I did so.
“Yes, that was the Headmistress at the college. She says there’s been an accident. She wants to see me.”
“Ah!” She sounded like a Delphic oracle. “Just as I thought. Your ability to look under all the right rocks has got the killer worried. Perhaps this is the break you needed. Be careful.”
I bristled at her description of me, then brushed it aside.
“I’ll let you know the score as soon as I know it myself.”
She nodded. “Are you going to inform the Chief Inspector?”
“It’s a bit early for that, don’t you think? For all I know it’s just a pupil that’s injured herself.”
“I hardly think Mrs Whatsername would have called if that were the case. This has to do with the murder you’re investigating, you mark my words.”
Thinking she was probably right, I put on my jacket and picked up my bag. “I shall soon find out. I’ll be in touch.”
It took me twenty-five minutes to drive from Bishop Lea to the college and I ran Mrs Parr’s words through my head over and over as I did so.
‘I’m afraid’, she’d said, and it was easy to see why. A killer was stalking the corridors and classrooms of Crofterton Girls’ College and, until such time as they were caught, that fear would remain, hanging over them all like a shroud over a coffin.
However she might have phrased it, I reckoned my boss was right when she implied that my probing into the events of the previous year had caused this accident—whatever it might prove to be.
I turned onto the Crofterton ring road, racking my brains over the murderer’s identity. Despite the alibi his lover had given him, I still suspected Wilford of knowing more than he was letting on, and I also wanted to speak to Mrs Liversedge again. The wasp-tongued Science teacher was my main bet for the killing of Emily Rimmer, if only I could uncover her motive.
The more I thought about it, the more imperative it became to discover everyone’s motive and match them up with their alibis. Joanna Sutcliffe had talked about Rimmer collecting secrets, and I had little doubt that they all had them. Like Wilford, the things they kept hidden were probably insignificant in this day and age.
Somewhere within the haystack of misinformation, prevarication, and downright lies that the teachers had fed me, lay a kernel of truth. And, if I put my hand in, would I find it? Or merely prick my finger on the proverbial needle in its midst?
An ambulance pulled out of the college car park as I arrived and raced off, siren wailing. I parked and got out of the car. So, here I was again, about to enter a nest of vipers and without a weasel to my hand.
* * *
Little knots of subdued pupils with tearful faces hung around the lower floor as I walked in, the soft murmur of sobs and comforting words following me up the stairs to Mrs Parr’s sanctum.
She did not look pleased to see me, but I was getting used to that.
“Come in a moment, Miss Long.”
Next door in the Staff Room muted voices rose and fell as I took the seat she indicated.
“I saw the ambulance. What’s happened?”
“That’s what I want you to find out. Miss Thompson fell down the stairs. No bones appear to be broken, but she is unconscious. They’ve taken her to the General Hospital.”
A muscle jumped in her cheek and she clamped her jaw, chin jutting forward. Every line of her body was rigid, as if her backbone were made of steel and she feared to relax in case she crumpled.
“You don’t believe it was an accident, do you?”
“I don’t know what to think, but no, in my heart I believe this was a deliberate act of malice.”
Then why hadn’t she called the police? That seemed the obvious, the natural, thing to do, when you believed a member of staff had been attacked, but when I asked she gave a sharp shake of the head.
“I spoke to the Chair of Governors first and let him know. We agreed not to involve the police until I had had the chance to speak to you.”
“But I’m not the police.”
“No, but you are here investigating, so you can carry on. There’ll be time to bring in the police if you fail to find the culprit.”
Hell’s teeth! I wasn’t having this. Mrs Parr and her chum might think themselves a law unto themselves, but I wanted no part in it. I gritted my teeth while rapidly forming a plan of campaign, aware that I had an ace up my sleeve. His name was Detective Chief Inspector Jeremy Farish.
“Very well. Have you any idea who might have attacked Miss Thompson?”
She shook her head. “No, I was in here drafting an email to parents about the Christmas concert. I heard the bell go for the end of break and, almost immediately after, screams and shouting. I went out to see what the hullaballoo was all about and...and...saw Miss Thompson at the bottom of the stairs. She looked like a rag doll. Oh!” She stifled a sob, covering her face with her hands.
I waited for her to regain her normally inflexible control while my mind teemed with questions.
“Did you speak to Miss Thompson this morning? How did she seem?”
“I said good morning to her when she arrived, although I did think she appeared distracted during the staff meeting. Normally she pays close attention to what I have to say, but I twice had to repeat myself for her benefit.”
“Would you say she was worried about something?”
“Yes, that might account for the way she kept frowning, as if she were trying to work something out in her mind.”
Why were people so averse to telling what they knew? If, when we’d bumped into each other on Saturday, Christine Thompson had passed on what she remembered, would she now be on her way to hospital? I mentioned nothing of these thoughts to Mrs Parr; I needed time to mull over the implications myself first.
“When you heard the screams and went out of your office, were any other members of staff in the vicinity?”
“Um...yes, most of them, I think.” She paused a moment “Yes, that’s right. A group, including Mrs Liversedge, Miss Dixon, Miss Sproston and Mr Wilford were standing at the top of the stairs. Mr Purcell was by the Staff Room door, while Mrs Alton and the janitor were at the foot of the stairs.”
“Doing what?”
“Um...Mr Houston was kneeling by Christine and Mrs Alton was dealing with the pupils. They’d have been on their way to one or other of the classrooms when Miss Thompson fell. Naturally they were very upset, and she was moving them away and sending them to their lessons.”
“So, Miss Thompson lay at the very bottom, not on the landing?”
“Yes.”
The landing was a long one and I couldn’t see Christine Thompson falling down one flight and then rolling along to the top of the next before tumbling down that set of stairs as well. She either fell, or was pushed, from the landing, or she’d plummeted down the stair well after being tipped over the banisters outside the Staff Room.
“If all the staff are next door—”
“They are.”
“Then I’ll go and talk to them. I’d like you there as well, please. First though, I need to check something.”
I got up and walked out of her office and quickly down the stairs. I took my time going back up, looking to left and right, satisfied when I rejoined Mrs Parr that I knew what had happened to her English teacher.
Now for the lion’s den.
My arrival in the Staff Room abruptly silenced the hubbub of conversation. Hostility radiated from every one of the teachers; only the janitor gave me a wan smile of greeting and I was pleased to see him there, sitting next to Mrs Liversedge at one end of the rough semicircle of chairs. It saved me the job of searching for him later.
I glanced about me and took a deep breath. It was time for some home truths and a lot of plain speaking. That, at least, was something I was good at. I ploughed right in.
“Good afternoon. Mrs Parr has asked me to investigate the tragic events of this morning when one of you launched a murderous attack on Miss Thompson.”
“Nonsense!”
“Wasn’t it an accident? I thought it was an accident.”
“How dare you! You can’t accuse us.”
“That’s a ridiculous thing to say.”
“She just tripped and fell, didn’t she?”
“Just a minute, just a minute.” Peter Purcell calmed down his colleagues, after they’d all begun shouting at once. “Miss Long, if you are suggesting this is attempted murder, isn’t this a job for the police?”
“I am, and it is.” I agreed with him. “Mrs Parr will explain.”
The Head glared at me as I lobbed her a high ball. I didn’t care. Someone in this room was a killer and I had every intention of calling Jerry and letting him know about Miss Thompson’s so-called accident just as soon as I’d finished with them.
“Miss Long is attached to the police.” The Headmistress delivered a neat back-hander, putting me back on the spot.
“I guessed as much.” Mrs Liversedge’s top lip curled. “I always said you asked too many questions about Rimmer to be writing a report for the Governors.”
“Actually, I’m doing both. I work for the Crofterton Police Cold Case Unit.” There! That was that cat out of the bag, if it hadn’t been already. “The events of today, though, prove that this case is still active and I shall be speaking to my superiors before I leave here. Despite that, I haven’t lied to you and I am also writing a report for the Board.
“Now, I’d like to know what happened earlier. Mrs Dixon, may we start with you?”
“Me?” The History teacher looked surprised. “Well, yes, all right. I came in here not long after the bell for break. I got myself a coffee.”
Yes, I remembered her need for caffeine when first we’d met. “Who was in here at that time?”
“Um...” She looked around.
“I was here,” Wilford volunteered.
“Yes, Daryll was here, Libby and Sally, and Christine herself, of course. I think we all were, except Mary.”
“We were talking about the latest misguided pronouncements of the Secretary of State for Education,” said Peter Purcell. Everyone nodded and a couple of them give a derisive laugh.
“Christine didn’t say much, though, did she?”
Joanna Sutcliffe, her face so pale she might have been suffering from shock, spoke quietly, shaking her head as if she couldn’t bring herself to believe what had happened.
“No, she did seem preoccupied,” agreed Liversedge, patting Joanna’s arm. “Are you all right? Let me get you a cup of tea with some sugar in it.” The Science teacher made an unlikely nursemaid, I thought, as she got up and strode to the tea urn.
“I went out about then to give me time to get to the Sports Hall,” said Sally Sproston.
“Yes,” Purcell confirmed. “I held the door open for you.”
“When did Miss Thompson leave?”
They all exchanged glances, a few of them shrugged.
“Five minutes later, perhaps.”
“I heard her say she was going, then muttering about a man and a dog and a lion again. Don’t know what all that was about,” said Wilford. He ran a forefinger over his chin.
“Had she mentioned a lion before?”
He shrugged. “Not as far as I’m aware, but she did say ‘lion again’. To be honest, I didn’t pay her much attention, I was too busy listening to Purcell and Libby tearing into the Minister for Education.”
I turned my attention back to the others. “And the rest of you, except for Mrs Alton and Mr Houston, were in here until you heard the scream?”
“Yes. There were several screams.” said Purcell.
“Ah, but some of those were the girls, I think. They really were pretty shook up about it. Not surprising, really, so were we.” Libby Liversedge pushed a mug at Joanna Sutcliffe, then turned to Houston, her blonde head tipped towards his dark one. They exchanged a quiet word, too low for me to catch, and he smiled reassuringly at her.
“Did anyone see Miss Thompson fall?”
They shook their heads. Wilford and Miss Sutcliffe winced.
“No, thank goodness,” said Wendy Dixon. “It was bad enough looking down at her from up here. Quite turned my stomach.”
A ripple of assent went round the room. I pressed on.
“By that time Mrs Alton and Mr Houston were with her?”
“Yes.” The janitor spoke up for the first time. “I heard her scream, well, it was more of a gargle really, and then the thud.”
“Oh, don’t!” said Mrs Dixon as Joanna burst into tears.
“Then what?” I asked him.
“Well, I shooed a couple of tearful kids away and knelt beside her to...well...you know.”
Oh, I knew all right. It’s always better to make sure someone isn’t dead before you waste your time administering First Aid.
“Yes, go on.”
“Well, Mrs Alton came running up from the direction of the canteen. She got the girls out of the way.”
“That’s right, I did. I sent them back to their classrooms, asked Mr Houston what had happened, then when I heard the hubbub at the top of the stairs, I called out for them to phone for an ambulance.”
“Which I did,” said Mrs Parr.
“Thank you,” I said. I’d got most of it clear in my mind. Now I needed to make sense of it all.
When they’d all left to go back to their classrooms, I sat for a while making notes of what I’d learned, and pondering the one glaringly obvious anomaly in what I’d been told. Then, for the second time that day, I went down the main staircase before leaving the building by a side door.
It led out onto the sports field where a bunch of girls played hockey, the tall figure of Miss Sproston umpiring and occasionally blowing a whistle in the middle of them. I carried on past and around to the front gates.
Leaning against them, I called Jerry, told him what had happened and what I’d like him to do.
“All right,” he said. “I’ll send Sergeant Stott and a constable. What time does the school close?”
“I’m not sure, but the last lesson ends at five minutes to four, so this area will be full of kids and their parents in posh cars until at least ten past, I would think.”
“Fine, I’ll tell them to get there for quarter past.”
“Thanks. I’ll tell Mrs Parr to stay. There is one other thing...”
“Go on.”
“I would like a guard put on Miss Thompson, please. You mark my words, the bastard who did this will try again.”
* * *
I finished the call and got in my car, desperately worried about Christine.
What had she wanted to tell me when I ran into her on the High Street? I tried to recall her words, but only remembered that she’d rabbited on for some time before breaking off with a look of terror on her face, as though she had spotted the devil himself. I wanted to close my eyes and picture again the crowds on the pavement behind me. As I was driving out through the school gates at the time, this was not my most sensible idea, and I quickly opened them again.
I averted a collision and drove down Park Road, taking the ring road to the hospital. Judging by the number of cars in its car park, the entire population of Crofterton had gone down with something nasty and it took ages to find a space. Discovering that it would cost me three quid to leave the car there did nothing to improve my mood.
The information desk proved to be a bit of a misnomer, the receptionist behind it declining to even admit they had a patient by the name of Christine Thompson, let alone give me any information about her.
“Sorry,” she said, sounding nothing of the sort. “Unless you are a relative, I can’t help you. Patient confidentiality, and all that.”
I took out my card and slapped it on the desk in front of her. If she looked carefully at it and realised it wasn’t a warrant card, then I’d be sunk, but I thought it worth the risk.
“Miss Thompson has been the victim of a murderous attack. Please let me speak to a nurse.”
Asking for a nurse seemed a safer bet than pulling some overworked doctor away from his job and the patients who needed him.
The receptionist’s gaze stayed fixed on her computer screen. “It says accident here.”
“Yes, well, it wasn’t. Look, all I need to know is if Miss Thompson has regained consciousness and to arrange for her to have a police guard.”
The woman’s eyes widened and she picked up the phone. “I’ll see what I can find out.”
I waited, drumming my fingers against my thigh, listening in on only one side of the conversation. To my annoyance, the receptionist put the phone down without me speaking to anyone.
“I’m sorry but Miss Thompson is still unconscious. They are doing everything they can to make her comfortable.”
Damn the woman’s platitudes. I didn’t care whether the patient was comfortable or not as long as they kept her alive.
“Thank you. Did you tell the nurse that there’d be someone from the police coming to sit with Miss Thompson?”
“That would be me.”
I spun round. “Becky! Am I pleased to see you!”
The same could not be said for Constable Bowles, whose mournful face looked back at me as she took her warrant card from the pocket of her dark blue suit and placed it in front of the receptionist.
“Hi. What do I need to know?”
I swiftly filled her in on events at the college and my meeting with the staff, and drove away from the General happy that I had left the patient in good hands. With Becky at her bedside or outside her door, Miss Thompson would be protected if her assailant showed up wanting to finish the job. Once Christine came round, Becky would ask her what she remembered and call to let me know who had tried to silence her.
Not only tried, but succeeded. If the English teacher had suffered a severe head injury she might well lapse into a coma, or even die. I didn’t fancy hunting a double killer and sent up a fervent prayer for her complete and speedy recovery.
It was nearing four o’clock when I let myself into Fernbank. I grabbed a biscuit to replace my missed lunch and phoned Jerry to bring him up to date.
“It looks as though you were right,” he said. “No sign of tripwires on the stairs, so she likely went over the top. Stotty reckons it’s a twenty-foot drop or more, so she’s lucky to be alive. He spoke to the caretaker chappy —”
“Mr Houston, yes.”
“And given where he found her, which was not exactly at the foot of the stairs, he thought she must have gone over the balustrade.”
“Unless he pushed her down the last flight and then moved her.”
“Oh! So that’s your thinking, is it?”
It was part of it, certainly, but I wasn’t prepared to commit myself just yet.
“Perhaps. Were there any marks on the balustrade? I don’t mean fingerprints. Most of the school must have touched it at some time or other, though I suppose the cleaners might polish it.”
“Clever girl,” he remarked. “Constable Perkins found a scrape in the wood.”
“Did he, indeed?”
Sergeant Stott and Constable Andy Perkins were good and intelligent officers. I knew and liked them both. They would have done a thorough job at the school.
“Yes,” Jerry went on. “It may not mean anything, though he said the scrape looked recent, so I’ve sent a couple of forensics guys along, just in case.”
“You are a wonderful man,” I said, and heard him chuckle. “Are you going to be late tonight?”
“No, I should be home about six. Be ready.”
He didn’t say what for and I laughed in return. “Later, you rogue.”
I said goodbye and went into the office. I needed a list!
It had been a busy day. Bone weary from all the driving and the rushing about, I stared at a clean sheet of my pad without a thought in my head. I’d been going to read through the notes I’d made at the college, but pain started to niggle behind my eyes and my lids drooped.
I tried to picture Christine Thompson coming out of the Staff Room, her round cheeks under the short, dark fringe. What was it she’d been heard to say? A man, a dog, and a lion? Then out onto the landing and the dive over the banister.
Was it only on Friday that I’d told Jerry I didn’t want to track down and uncover Emily Rimmer’s killer? How suddenly my mood had changed. Now, after what they had done to Christine, the most inoffensive and kindly of creatures, I was going for them all guns blazing.
I wasted no time on if onlys — if only Miss Thompson had spoken out, if only she’d told me what she knew. KD had often said that if people actually trusted each other, or told the police the full truth when answering questions, there would be a lot less unsolved crime, and far fewer books on the subject. In her case that would merely mean a huge dent in her bank balance, but it left me clueless.
At this morning’s meeting, one of the teachers had lied, one had been economical with the truth and a third had said nothing at all. I wrote the three names on the whiteboard, then stepped back and picked up the phone.
“Toilets and classrooms.”
Mrs Parr’s terse reply when I asked what lay at either end of the corridor that ran in front of her office and the Staff Room did not surprise me. She was under considerable pressure and still shaken up.
“Are the toilets closest?”
“What? Oh! I see what you mean. Yes. At the very ends of the corridor, there is a staircase down to the ground floor, then a classroom on either side. The Staff toilets are next to the Staff Room and toilets for the pupils beyond mine.”
“Would there have been girls in those classrooms during the break?”
“No, that’s unlikely. One is the Needlework room, the other is the Language lab. Girls have their form rooms on the ground floor. Is there any news, yet?”
I followed her verbal leap and checked my phone for a text from Becky.
“Not yet, I’m sorry.”
“I do hope Miss Thompson will be all right. I’ve arranged temporary cover, but she’s been at the college almost as long as I have. It won’t be the same without her.”
I offered my condolences and said I hoped for Miss Thompson’s speedy return to the college.
“Oh, yes, indeed. I’ve been in touch with her next of kin.”
Miss Thompson had a sister, Mrs Hill, who lived up in Newcastle. On hearing the news she had immediately agreed to travel to Crofterton to be at Christine’s bedside.
I put the phone down and considered what I’d learned.
Now that I had the ‘how’, I needed to work out ‘who’, a much harder task. I drew a quick sketch map of the upper floor as described by Mrs Parr and stared at it, willing it to reveal its secrets.
Frustrated, I shook my head, making the headache worse and went upstairs for painkillers. As I swallowed them down, I thought myself lucky—at least my headache wasn’t due to a murderous attack and a sudden impact on a tiled floor.
Wandering into the bedroom, I divested myself of my outer clothing and slipped between the sheets, intending to rest for the few minutes it took for the paracetamol to work. Then, I’d get up and prepare dinner.
Jerry’s kiss woke me.
“That’s what I like. A wife who does what she’s told.”
I opened one eye to see him standing at the side of the bed stripping off his shirt and tie.
“What?” I stared up at him, groggy with sleep.
“I did say ‘be ready’.” He grinned and reached for me.
I made a feeble attempt to fend him off, then, at the pleasure of his touch, stretched like a cat and surrendered to the inevitable.