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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.”