'Oh, the private coaching job? I don't think you'll get much there, Dame Beatrice. Besides...' he grinned... 'I thought you were out to exonerate Mr Richardson, not to push him further into the red. We've got it on pretty good authority that he got the sack from there.'
Dame Beatrice cackled. She got up from her comfortable armchair. The Superintendent also rose, unlocked the door, which they had fastened against intruders, took down the notice marked Private which the manager had put up, refused Dame Beatrice's offer of hospitality and went out to his car.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
HEADMASTER AND STAFF
'He made also ten tables, and placed them in the temple, five on the right side, and five on the left. And he made a hundred basons of gold.
'Furthermore he made the court of the priests, and the great court, and doors for the court, and overlaid the doors of them with brass.'
2nd Chronicles 3, Authorised Version
The preparatory school at which Richardson had taught proved to be a show place on which, it was obvious to Dame Beatrice, (who, in her capacities as mother, grandmother, aunt, honorary aunt, great-aunt and godmother, had visited many preparatory and public schools), a great deal of money had been spent. She suspected that mulcted parents had been compelled to contribute to the splendour. However, it was easy enough to see where the money had gone.
The Headmaster, who appeared to know her not only by reputation but who claimed to have been present at a dinner where she had been the principal guest, welcomed her with the utmost cordiality. He received her in a large, beautifully furnished study whose windows overlooked the playing fields, and he insisted upon showing her over the school before he heard on what errand she had come.
They visited the swimming bath, the chapel and the library. To Dame Beatrice's satisfaction, after they had looked in upon the various classrooms and the woodwork and metalwork rooms, they visited the laboratories. There were two of these, both equipped as though for post-graduate research. One was for biology, the other for chemistry.
Dame Beatrice affected great interest in the first, despite her repugnance to the animals and birds, stuffed and defunct, which, exhibited in glass cases, appeared to be a prominent feature of the room.
'Outside, of course,' said the Headmaster, 'we keep our rabbits. The caretaker looks after them during the holidays. So good for the boys to learn to look after animals and it reduces sex instruction to the minimum.'
He seemed about to enlarge upon this when he received an urgent message from someone who urgently desired his presence elsewhere, so, pausing only to apologise to Dame Beatrice for leaving her, and to promise to 'send Stevens' to look after her, he departed.
Stevens turned out to be the head boy, an extremely good-looking, scrupulously well-groomed child of about thirteen. He introduced himself.
'Please, Dame Beatrice, I'm Stevens. The Head said to show you the chemistry lab. I don't think you'll find it very interesting. It's only bottles and Bunsen burners and test tubes and beakers and retorts and those sort of things.'
'I feel,' said Dame Beatrice, 'that I might hurt the Headmaster's feelings if I left it out. Is a class going on in there, I wonder?'
'Almost bound not to be. It isn't much used because we haven't got a proper stinks master since the last one left.'
'Dear me! How long ago was that?'
'Soon after Mr Richardson went.'
'So I suppose a laboratory boy is no longer employed here.'
'Well, actually, he still is. It isn't easy to get a good lab. boy, you see, because they're not paid enough, so I think that's why the Head has stuck to Borgia. He potters about in there, keeping things dusted, and he's got to make a list of the stock, and things like that, and he keeps the two labs, clean and feeds the rabbits and the aquarium fish and all that, so I suppose he's worth his wages.'
'I must make the acquaintance of this man of many parts. What is his name?'
'Well, we call him Borgia. It's rather apt, you see, because, well, his job is mostly in the stinks lab. and, well, he does keep on about poisons. I don't know his real name.'
The chemistry laboratory was on the other side of a stretch of well-tended lawn and took up the first floor of a two-storied building of modern design.
'The ground floor is a sort of drill-hall for chaps who've been sentenced,' Dame Beatrice's guide explained. 'If chaps cheek the prefects, or don't come in quickly enough from games, and things like that, they get sentenced to run so many times round the drill-hall. A master is on duty to see they do their proper stint. If they slack, he has authority to speed them up with a cane. Otherwise we don't, on the whole, get beaten. I mean, you have to do something really pretty bad. The only chap who's really had it since I've been here was a rather sporting type who gave a pretty ripe adjective in an English lesson and, when asked to explain, said he was only quoting from Lady Chatterley's Lover. Obvious, we all thought, but he still got a stroking. Rather a dim shame, actually, to cane chaps for quoting the classics. I mean, look at the Latin authors, my father says.'
'Indeed, yes,' Dame Beatrice solemnly agreed, 'but written Latin, one surmises, was sometimes intended as a matter for mirth, rather than as an instrument for special pleading. What is your own opinion?'
'I thought Lady Chatterley howlingly funny. You had to skip the dull bits, of course, which were most of it.'
They left the drill-hall by mounting a staircase. Swing doors opened on to the chemistry laboratory. Dame Beatrice prowled around and was examining one of the cupboards when the Headmaster reappeared.
'Ah, boy,' he said, to Stevens, 'run along now.'
'Good-bye, Dame Beatrice,' said Stevens.
'A good boy-a very good boy,' said the Headmaster, when the child had disappeared. 'I hope he has shown you round. He is up for Charterhouse. He should do very nicely, I think. Well, now!'
'Yes,' said Dame Beatrice. 'He tells me that you have lost your science master.'
'True, true, unfortunately only too true. An excellent teacher, but, of course...'
'Yes?'
'Industry, you know.'
'Oh, he has gone into a factory, has he?'
'Longer hours, shorter holidays, but with far more money and no necessity to keep school discipline. Keeping discipline, dear lady, is the bugbear and the despair of many science masters and some of the French teachers of French. The average boy seems to be inimical to French and to be several steps ahead of the teacher of chemistry. But I have a new man coming very soon, I hope.'
'You had a young man named Richardson on your staff some time ago, I believe.'
'Richardson? Richardson? Ah, yes, of course I had. A promising teacher, in his way, but he left us to go into private practice-a tutoring job, you know.'
'You regretted parting with your chemistry master. Did you feel equally sorry to see Mr Richardson go?'
'I gave him a very good testimonial.'
This professional gambit was not lost on Dame Beatrice. She cackled.
'The man you want to get rid of gets the best testimonial,' she said. The Headmaster looked pained.
'No, no, really,' he protested. 'Of course, an Arts man is always very much easier to replace than a Science or Maths, man.'
('Culture's two a penny these days,' remarked Laura, ungrammatically but truly, when she heard this.)
'I see,' said Dame Beatrice. 'Did you ever think of him as a possible murderer?'
The Headmaster did not attempt to pretend that he misunderstood her.
'I have asked myself the question since the crisis to which you refer became local knowledge,' he said. 'My answer is that Mr Richardson, no matter what the provocation, is quite incapable of delivering the coup de grace. More's the pity,' he added. 'One really ought to be a better man than Gunga Din, you know.'