A Javelin for Jonah
Gladys Mitchell
Beatrice Adela Lestrange Bradley 47
1974
A 3S digital back-up edition 1.0
click for scan notes and proofing history
Contents
chapter 1: on your marks
chapter 2: long jump with casualties
chapter 3: blots on a copybook
chapter 4: the whale’s belly
chapter 5: interviews
chapter 6: joynings jumps the gun
chapter 7: talk
chapter 8: recalling the runners
chapter 9: speeches off the record
chapter 10: gascoigne medlar
chapter 11: medley relay
chapter 12: richard takes over the baton
chapter 13: a shot in the dark
chapter 14: coasting round the bends
chapter 15: the finishing straight
chapter 16: breasting the tape
By the same author
dead man’s morris
come away death
st. peter’s finger
printer’s error
brazen tongue
hangman’s curfew
when last i died
laurels are poison
the worsted viper
sunset over soho
my father sleeps
the rising of the moon
here comes a chopper
death and the maiden
the dancing druids
tom brown’s body
groaning spinney
the devil’s elbow
the echoing strangers
merlin’s furlong
faintly speaking
watson’s choice
twelve horses and the hangman’s noose
the twenty-third man
spotted hemlock
the man who grew tomatoes
say it with flowers
the nodding canaries
my bones will keep
adders on the heath
death of a delft blue
pageant of murder
the croaking raven
skeleton island
three quick and five dead
dance to your daddy
gory dew
lament for leto
a hearse on may-day
the murder of busy lizzie
First published in Great Britain by Michael Joseph Ltd 52 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3EF
march 1974
second impression may 1975
© 1974 by Gladys Mitchell
All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the Copyright owner
isbn 0 7181 1193 1
Set in ten on twelve point Times by Thomson Press (India) Ltd, and printed in Great Britain by Hollen Street
Press on paper supplied by P. F. Bingham Ltd and bound by James Burn at Esher, Surrey.
To
Jehane, with love
I wait for thee in thine own garden.
I tune the lute for thee.
Edward Carpenter
chapter
1
On your Marks
^ »
Of course, we have to be on Christian name terms here,” said the Warden.
“Have to be, sir?” said Hamish Gavin.
“It promotes confidence and mutual esteem between students and staff.”
“I see, sir.”
“Gassie, my dear fellow.”
“I beg your pardon, sir?”
“Not ‘sir’, but ‘Gassie’.”
Hamish remembered that the Warden’s name was Gascoigne Medlar.
“I beg your pardon, sir. I did not understand,” he said. “By the way, is it true, sir, that entry to the College—to Joynings—is restricted to people who show aptitude for athletics and swimming?”
“And gymnastics, of course. Well, roughly, yes. It is so much easier to keep such types out of mischief, you see. Now, as to your own name…”
“Yes, sir?”
“Perhaps you will not take it amiss if I suggest that Hamish is a little unusual so far south of the Border.”
“I am not sure that it is so very usual north of it either, sir.”
“Well, not to beat about the bush—it is not my habit to creep all round a subject—could we perhaps call you James while you are with us?”
“Certainly, sir, if that will ease my stay.”
“Right. Fine. Well, now, James, I hope you realise that this place is not altogether what one is accustomed to think of as a college, not even in the way some of our great public schools use the term.”
“Indeed, sir, I am under no illusion. Your letter was most explicit. I understood from it that Joynings is a privately-owned Borstal institution.”
“It would be going to extremes, James, thus to describe my creation—I may say, my life-work,” said the Warden coldly. “None of our students has ever been in contact with the police. We have the sons and daughters of some of the highest families in the land, people of excellent social standing, people who—oh, well, no matter. We house and educate, among others, young men who have been expelled from their public schools, often for quite trivial offences, and young women similarly uprooted. We also take students who are, for one reason or another, out of parental control and unfitted to govern their own lives…”
“Drug-pushers? Lay-abouts? Sleepers-around?” asked Hamish helpfully.
“Victims of circumstance. Products of broken homes. Misfits in the great mosaic we call life, James. Unfortunates who possess false or insufficient clues to the Great Crossword Puzzle. That is the way to describe the majority of our students, I think. Ours, we like to believe, is a work of rehabilitation and of healing. We are sociologically viable. We…”
“Yes, sir, I quite understand. And what part am I to play? My time-table, perhaps—?”
“Oh, you had better ask Henry,” said the Warden. “Henry will know. He sees to all that kind of thing. It is regrettable that you are to be with us for so short a time. You take up residence abroad at the end of October, I believe.”
“Yes, sir, to brush up my languages.”
“I am told that you are expecting to enter the diplomatic service. Do you really think it a wise choice?”
“I have no idea, sir. I believe my mamma made it for me, and I dislike to hear her criticized adversely.”
“You have already interrupted my discourse twice in order to interpolate remarks which I should hardly describe as diplomatic. That is all I meant, James,” said the Warden, giving Hamish, this time, a wintry smile. “To pass on; to pass on. I hope you will settle down here, even for so short a stay. We like people to grow roots. Roots, you know, make for the total stability of the plant or tree.”
“Alas, sir, I fear that the rain will pass over me and I shall be gone and the place hereof will know me no more.” Hamish spoke these flippant words aloud, but added mentally, “And a good thing, too.” He already slightly disliked the Warden and he had a feeling that the Warden already more than slightly disliked him.
“You have a great deal of self-confidence, I perceive, James,” went on Gascoigne, ignoring the picturesque scriptural allusion. “I imagine that you are highly qualified in other directions, too.”
“For life, sir, or for the diplomatic service?”
“I was thinking, strangely enough, of your duties here, James, I have a parochial outlook, I fear. Still, however unworthily I may sustain the role, I do happen to be the head man of my little domain.”
“Oh, quite, sir. After all, it is better to be first in a small Iberian town than second in Rome.”
“I fail to detect the relevance of that remark, James.”
“I understood that you were once the second master of Isingtower School, sir.”
“Oh, that! Past history, my boy. A great deal of water has flowed under the bridge since my Isingtower days.”