‘What you have to understand, Lord Powerscourt, is how much these schools cost to run. There are the staff to pay. The fabric of the buildings is in almost permanent need of repair. The grounds are another drain on resources. Just before you came in I was given an estimate for repairing the cricket pavilion that, at present, we cannot afford. There was a suggestion that the Silkworkers Company might like to re-endow the school to enable us to carry out repairs and to embark on a new building programme which would open a new chapter in the long history of Allison’s.’
‘Might I ask who made this suggestion, Headmaster?’
‘You may. It was my suggestion.’
‘And was the quid pro quo that the votes of the school would go Sir Peregrine’s way?’ Don’t mention blackmail, Powerscourt said to himself, don’t even think about it.
‘It was,’ said the headmaster.
‘Sir Peregrine must have been pretty desperate for votes if he was prepared to spend all that money on rebuilding and so on. I suppose it wasn’t his money, mind you, not his personal fortune. And what did your bursar think of all this?’
‘That was part of the problem, Lord Powerscourt. That was why Sir Peregrine came all this way to see us. Roderick was opposed to the scheme, to all of it. He said that if the Silkworkers Company effectively dissolved itself, there would be no guarantees of any Silkworker money coming to the school ever again. He was unmoved by all the talk of new buildings. He used to describe them as being promises made with fool’s gold. We should stay the way we are, he would say. It’s much safer. Sir Peregrine tried his hardest but Roderick wouldn’t budge. Sir Peregrine got rather cross, actually.’
‘I’m afraid I have to ask you this, Headmaster. Which way did you and your colleagues vote in the end?’
‘We voted for Sir Peregrine, all of us, all of our votes. I sent the paperwork off this morning. We voted for change, a change that will do much to restore the fortunes of the school.’
‘So you voted against the advice of your bursar, Headmaster?’
‘It was the first time I had ever disagreed with Roderick on a question of finance, Lord Powerscourt.’
‘But Mr Gill, the bursar, was actually dead by the time the rest of you cast your votes, was he not? He couldn’t have a vote where he’d gone, could he?’
‘That is correct.’
‘Thank you for telling me all of this,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Is there anything you would wish to add?’
‘I don’t think so. I will give the matter some thought. I wouldn’t like to feel you had not been kept in the picture a second time. I can find you at the Crown, I presume?’
As Powerscourt strolled back towards the police station he felt that another name had been added to the list of suspects. There were the two sons of Mrs Maud Lewis, lying about their chess game. There was Sir Peregrine Fishborne and his chauffeur who drove him everywhere, there might be shadowy members of the British or German secret service, there might be unknown opponents of Sir Peregrine’s schemes, and now another late entrant in the Fakenham stakes, the headmaster himself, keen to remove the last opposition to his grand schemes of expansion and glory.
15
Inspector Grime was astonished when Powerscourt told him the details of his conversation with the headmaster of Allison’s School.
‘I thought I was doing well, my lord, with this new witness confirming that Sir Peregrine’s great black car has been seen in Melton Constable. But the headmaster, that’s virtually blackmail. You build me a new school, I’ll give you my votes. Pity the bursar didn’t stay around to hold his ground.’
‘I think we have to include him on the list of suspects, the headmaster I mean, but I don’t think he’d have carried out the murder. He had far too much to lose. Did you say you were coming to London tomorrow, Inspector, for further conversations with the Lewis sons? I could give you a lift, if you like. I hope to have a summit meeting with all three of you Inspectors at my house late tomorrow afternoon if that sounds convenient for you?’
‘Thank you, my lord. That would be most helpful. I have been wondering about whether to interview the Lewis boys in a police station or in their homes. Would you have any advice?’
‘Talk to them in their homes, that would be my suggestion. That way, they won’t suspect anything. Call them into the police station and they’ll think they’re on their way to the Old Bailey.’
‘I’ll give that further thought, if I may, my lord. Tomorrow morning we have the last of the colonial gentlemen coming in to the school to see if anybody remembers their accents.’
The amount of noise generated by some hundred and fifty boys trying to make their way up or down the principal corridor of Allison’s School was deafening. Inspector Grime, sheltering in a side corridor, thought a hundred and fifty policemen, even wearing their best boots, would not be able to equal it. Odd snatches of homework questions floated past him on the morning rush.
‘Who was prime minister after Peel, for heaven’s sake?’
‘Alea jacta est. What’s the alea? Do you know?’
‘Who was Elizabeth the First’s spymaster?’
Then he saw him. Today’s colonial was a burly man with black curly hair who looked as though he might be a prop forward in rugby. He elbowed his way past a number of boys, including David Lewis, saying sorry as he went. For the boys, bumps and collisions en route to the first lessons of the day were nothing new. It was just part of the daily routine. They had been warned beforehand that another stranger would be in their midst this morning. One or two of the naughtier ones made it their business to crash into their visitor, but his bulk ensured that they came off worst.
‘Well,’ said Inspector Grime to David Lewis when the visitor had passed through the corridor into the Inspector’s temporary quarters in the Officers’ Training Corps room, ‘what did you think?’
‘I’ll tell you that in a moment, sir. Could the gentleman read something for me so I could be sure?’
‘Of course,’ said Inspector Grime. The visitor began to read in a clear voice from the current school prospectus. When he reached the section about the high quality of the meals provided, David Lewis held up his hand.
‘That’s enough, sir,’ he said. ‘What a pack of lies about the school food, mind you.’
‘Do you recognize the accent, David?’
‘I do, sir. That is the accent of the man who bumped into me as I was walking along the corridor on the day of the murder, sir.’
‘Do you know where the accent comes from, David?’ asked Inspector Grime.
‘Well, sir, we know from the previous riders and runners that he wasn’t Canadian or Australian or New Zealander. So he must have been South African. Is that right?’ He addressed his question to the visitor.
‘Yes, I am South African,’ said the prop forward.
‘God help us all,’ said Inspector Grime, and he wished for a moment that he had paid more attention to the maps on the walls of the geography classroom where he had interviewed the boys. Even those bloody globes would have helped, he said to himself, if I’d taken any notice of them. Where exactly was South Africa? And how far away was it?
Lady Lucy thought you would not have known that the three men all belonged to the same profession. A two-day exercise for the OTC involving all the boys in Allison’s meant there was a break from Sherlock Holmes in French in Fakenham. She had wondered in her time up there if Holmes would have liked Fakenham. On the whole, she thought, probably not. Irregular supplies of cocaine would not be acceptable. She welcomed the Inspectors to the Powerscourt family home in Markham Square. The twins, Christopher and Juliet, peeped down at the visitors from the landing on the top floor. They had been mightily impressed to learn that there would be no fewer than three police Inspectors in their house. Their behaviour had taken a brief turn for the better but, as Powerscourt remarked to Lady Lucy, he did not expect it to last.