“Conscientious objector in the war, were you, sir?” Madsen asked, making no move to leave.
“How did you know—” But it was obvious that the police had already looked into his background. “If you’ve seen my record, you’ve also read that I served in France driving an ambulance. I didn’t want to kill, that’s all. But I could do something about the suffering.” He gestured toward the dead man. “And I’ve seen far worse than this poor devil, so making me stand here isn’t going to help you.” His voice had risen just a little, and he tried to get himself under control again. But it was hard. His temper these days was uncertain at best, and his wife had urged him to speak to someone about it. He wondered what Madsen would make of that if he’d learned of it.
But the inspector had already decided there was nothing to be gained here by trying to push the schoolmaster into betraying himself in the face of his victim. He nodded to the doctor and led the way out to the street.
Crowell felt himself sweating. A cold sweat that seemed to bathe him. “Am I free to return to my classroom, Inspector? I don’t care to leave my wife alone with the older boys any longer than need be. They tend to rowdiness after a while.”
“We shall have to speak to Mrs. Crowell. I’ll take you back myself.”
And so it was that Inspector Madsen found himself alone and face-to-face with Alice Crowell in the school’s small office.
“How did you come by that scar?” he asked before he could stop the words. “You didn’t have it when I knew you.”
“It’s not your concern.” Her voice was husky, but he couldn’t be sure whether it was fear or nerves.
There was a silence, fraught with what was not said.
“Did he do that to you?” Madsen pressed. “You may as well tell me, I’ll find out in the end.”
“What did you wish to see me about?” she asked. “Are you going to take my husband into custody?”
“Should I?” Madsen countered.
She made an impatient gesture. “Don’t play with me, Harry. I saw your face when you took Albert away. Whatever has happened, it isn’t just a matter of a truant student.”
“Is there one? A truant student?”
“You know there isn’t. I meant—never mind. What did you wish to see me about?” she repeated.
She had a very mobile face, her feelings clearly expressed. The scar seemed to alter with her emotions, emphasizing them in some fashion he couldn’t understand. He wanted to run his finger along it, and tell her she was still beautiful. But he knew she could lie too. She had lied to him about her parents and how they had felt about a policeman in the family. That, he tried to tell himself in the face of his bitterness, was a kind lie. And she had told him another, that she hadn’t loved him. He believed it then, but later convinced himself that it was to cover the first lie.
Madsen took a deep breath. This wasn’t the place to open up the past. “Where was your husband last evening?”
Her expression changed. “Here. At the school. He was finishing going over papers that he’s submitting for an award. Mrs. Scott’s prize for the best essay on Richard III.”
Mrs. Scott was the widow of the former rector of St. Stephen’s, in Elthorpe. She was something of a local historian, having written a small pamphlet on the architecture of the village church and another on the abbey. Both were available for sale on the table in the church porch. Madsen had seen them. It was typical of her that she’d asked Crowell to read the essays. Like to like. The schoolmaster in Elthorpe was an upstart from Liverpool. Well enough at what he did, but not the sort one invites to present prizes in a social setting.
“And you were here with him? Sitting in his office?” It brought such a cozy domestic scene to his mind that Madsen clenched his fists.
“No, I was at home, sewing the fringe on a shawl I was making for my mother’s birthday.”
“Then no one can actually prove he was here?”
“Of course he was here. Why would he lie to me about where he was? Where else would he go?”
To meet a man he planned to kill and whose body he intended to leave in the ruins of Fountains Abbey, to throw off the police. Madsen hadn’t explained the presence of that book yet, but in time he would.
He found he was staring at her. “I’m married now, myself,” he said. “Did you ever love me? Truly love me?”
She stood up. “I take it you have no more professional questions to ask me, Inspector. And I shan’t answer personal ones.”
But he stayed where he was, between her and the door. “There’s a man dead. Didn’t your husband tell you that this morning when he asked you to carry on in the schoolroom for him? A man dead, with one of your husband’s books lying at his feet.”
She drew in a breath. “Who was it?” she asked. “Who is dead?”
As if that were more important than the book. “We don’t know. Your husband can’t identify him, there is nothing in the man’s pockets to tell us who he is, and all we can be certain of is that he didn’t live in this part of Yorkshire. Else one of my men would have known him. And more to the point, no one has been reported missing.”
“Well, then, if you don’t know who the dead man is,” she said tartly, “there’s no reason to keep me penned up in here or to take my husband away. Meanwhile, there’s the school to be seen to.”
Her words stung him. “I haven’t kept you penned up, Alice—Mrs. Crowell. I was doing my duty.” He stepped aside and she swept out of the door as if he were invisible.
He watched her walk down the corridor, and he felt an urge to clap her husband up and throw away the key.
At the door of a classroom a boy stood watching him, wary and uncertain.
“What are you staring at, then?” Madsen snapped, and the child disappeared as if by magic, shutting the door softly behind him.
Hugh Tredworth was waiting for his friends at the end of the school day. One glance at his face made Bill distinctly uneasy as he came up to join Hugh, and Johnnie, trailing him, stopped to study his boots at a little distance, as if uncomfortable in Hugh’s presence. Then Tad came through the door, starting at the sight of them standing together in silence.
“What’s happened?” he asked anxiously.
“Where’s Robbie?” Hugh demanded accusingly. “He wasn’t at school today.”
“Sick,” Tad answered shortly. “Couldn’t keep his breakfast down this morning.”
“He’s not telling, is he?” Bill wanted to know. “We swore an oath!”
“Of course he’s not telling,” Tad replied with more force than he’d intended. But he couldn’t hold their eyes.
“Remind him,” Hugh urged. “Remind him his tongue will turn black if he’s not in school tomorrow.”
“Leave him alone,” Johnnie spoke up, and they all wheeled to stare at him. “You’ll only make it worse,” he said, “trying to frighten him. Why were the police here? What did they want?”
“I couldn’t hear.” But Hugh had seen the book in the constable’s hands, if no one else had, and he had had to swallow hard to keep his own breakfast down, the shock was so great. “It was Mr. Crowell they wanted, wasn’t it? Nothing to do with us.”
“Why did they come for him?” Bill persisted. “All the way from Elthorpe. And then take him away.”
“They brought him back, didn’t they?” Hugh pointed out.
“Someone found the candle we dropped,” Tad said. “It’s a matter of trespass. None of us missed school, so there’s nothing to point at us. Not counting Robbie, but they’re not to know that, are they?”
The four of them had been walking down the road as they argued, earnestly trying to assure themselves that there was nothing to show they’d summoned the Devil and succeeded in raising him.