“Good Lord! How on earth did you find the words? Did he understand what you were getting at?” Joe wanted to know.
“I try not to be deliberately mystifying. I used words a nine-year-old uses. And they have a surprisingly wide vocabulary. Jackie’s no fool. And he’s honest. He gives you a straight answer. If he doesn’t understand, he expects an explanation.” She smiled. “Come to think of it, he probably learned more from me than I did from him in our little chat.”
“Dorcas, have you been trained to.…”
A scathing look cut him off. “No. I’m not concerned with psychiatry. I’m not and never intend to be a meddler with people’s minds. I use my common sense to find out what they’re thinking. That’s all.”
“So you established that no master laid an evil hand on him?”
“Yes. Sexually speaking, no advances whatsoever. There’s the usual skirmishings between pupils in the dorm after lights out, but Jackie didn’t seem to be worried by this. He puts it down to the temperature.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s been very cold. You must have noticed. Joe, their dormitory would have challenged Captain Scott of the Antarctic! The radiators go off in the afternoon and they have to sleep under quite inadequate bedding. Do you know what they’re reduced to? They pick up their bedside mats from the floor and put them on top of their coverlets to keep the cold out. Sometimes the littlest ones cry all night and can’t get to sleep for shivering. Often a boy will creep into his friend’s bed and snuggle up for warmth. Jackie hasn’t got a best friend. And he arrived late at the school, so he got the last vacant bed. You can guess where that is! Right at the end under the window. And Matron makes them keep the window open all day and all night.”
“If I’d thought about it I might well have guessed as much, Dorcas. That’s the usual practice in English schools,” Joe said. “Jackie hadn’t brought it up as a reason for flight. He was rather more concerned with the bleeding corpse that he found he had on his hands.”
“Well, he wouldn’t complain—not for himself. He may look as soft as a marshmallow, but I suspect young Jackie is made of stern stuff. He’s more worried about the lads less able than he is to withstand the rigours. They seem to go down like ninepins with flu, measles, ear infections and even pneumonia. And he assumes, like all the other poor mites—because that’s what his elders and betters have always told him—that this bad treatment will toughen him up … make a man of him, don’t you know.” Dorcas shuddered. “The last goal any reasonable human being would be working towards!”
“Dorcas, we’ve all survived such schooldays,” Marcus began to say gently. “Joe and I have, each in our own time, been the new bug under the window.”
“Marcus, if you say ‘It didn’t do me any harm,’ I shall be obliged to reveal exactly what harm it did do!” Lydia threatened.
“I agree with Dorcas for once,” Joe broke in to avert the revelations and to keep his promise to strive for a peaceful household. “The British public school can be a bit Spartan. But most survive. Those who don’t go about shoving stolen foxes up their jumpers, that is.”
“Well, I mention it because Jackie tells me you’re going down to St. Magnus with him and you’re staying on to sort things out. While you’re down there, you might be able to work your way through to acquiring a position of leverage with the Headmaster and you might be able to use your weight to do some good.”
“Oh, a little moral and physical coercion you mean? ‘Look here Farman, old chum,’ I snarl in a sinister way as I twist his arm a further inch up his back. ‘Which is it to be? Either I reveal you’ve been caught with your left hand in the till and your right up Matron’s skirt or you turn on the heating in the junior dorm’?”
“I think that’s blackmail but it will do very well.” Dorcas beamed over the table at Lydia. “So good to hear the old bruiser’s not lost his edge. I wouldn’t want to be letting myself in for a week of boredom down in Sussex.”
LYDIA’S SUDDEN NEED to bustle off and attend to the drinks tray alerted Joe to the conspiracy that had gone on behind his back, though a glance at Marcus’s astonished face exonerated him at least.
“Hang on, Dorcas!” Joe managed to say lightly. “You’ve turned over two pages at once. In fact I think you’re reading from a different script altogether. The wrong script, if I understand what you’re saying.”
“No she’s not, Joe.” Lydia, returning, had refreshed her gin and tonic and recovered her aplomb. “A sensible arrangement for all concerned. I’m frightfully busy at the moment. I can hardly spare the time to trim my nails, let alone go swanning off down into Sussex to sit by you while you interview schoolmasters.” She blushed as she told the lie, knowing she was deceiving no one. “Dorcas is free for the coming week, and she’ll agree to accompany you if you ask her nicely. It’s just her sort of thing.”
“That at least I will accept. Though these days what I used to call ‘meddling’ is dignified with the word ‘research.’ No! I’m sorry you’re suddenly not available, Lydia, but.…” He looked at the clock. “Not too late. I’ll ring Cottingham at the Yard and tell him to send down a lady policeman which is what I ought to have done in the first place.” Joe searched his memory. “Constable Huntingdon! Efficient officer and known to Jackie. I’ll request her.”
“A uniformed presence? An overtly Metropolitan presence? Is that a good idea?” Dorcas asked. “I can’t imagine the local Plod will be pleased. Out of uniform, you can pass very well as a concerned uncle, Joe, but a lady in blue serge with a bowler hat and boots trotting two paces behind you with a notebook might just give the game away.”
“She would arrive with some authority at least. And she’d take her orders without quibble. A young, female, bolshy non-relative, on the other hand, would be harder to account for.”
“We’ve thought about that.” Dorcas and Lydia exchanged looks. “Dorcas doesn’t want the indignity of pretending to be someone she’s not.”
A thing Dorcas had been doing for the whole of her life. The child had been a consummate actress. Joe hoped his features hadn’t expressed the sour thought.
“We had the notion that she could be parachuted in from on high—isn’t that the phrase? Sent in to the school on the highest authority for the most respectable of motives. It occurred to us that she could be welcomed with open arms by the headmaster if.…”
As Lydia ran into the buffer of Joe’s stony glower, Dorcas took over. “I could ask Sir James to telephone the head and tell him he’s to accommodate me as his representative. A psychologist interested in child welfare. An emissary from his government department if you like.”
“The Ministry for Mischief?” Joe’s exasperation was evident. “The man’s found a girl after his own heart, I think.”
Dorcas grinned.
“And how were you proposing to set this up? Busy man, as you point out. He’s promised me full cooperation in this affair, but I’m not sure I could find the words to plead for the inessential presence of an unconnected busy-body.”
She shrugged at the slight and sighed. “I wouldn’t expect you to try. Look, it’s not late. I’ll ring him up and speak to him myself. I think I can find the words.”
Joe groaned. He took out his notecase and selected a card. “Eight o’clock. He’ll be just going in to dinner. If they pick up at all, you’ll get a cross butler. Tell him to ask Sir James to ring you back in the morning. His home telephone number is the one written in pencil on the back.”
Dorcas held up a hand, smiling gently, and waved the card away. “That’s quite all right, Joe. I’ve got his number.”