“What shall you say to the caretaker?”
“That I am in urgent need of a daily woman, mornings only, and that I wonder whether one of his cleaners would like to undertake the work.”
“Suppose one of them would?”
“I think we may dismiss the supposition. To travel up to Kensington on six mornings a week will scarcely appeal to a person domiciled in Brayne.”
“Hardly. I wish I were going with you. It would be an education in itself to see you being inquisitive and eccentric.”
On the following Friday afternoon George drove his employer to Brayne Grammar School and in at the double gates. One or two cars were still drawn up on the asphalt and boys were still drifting out of school. Dame Beatrice got out of the car and enquired for the caretaker. His house was pointed out by a boy who raised his cap politely when Dame Beatrice thanked him, and she walked over to the small neat building and knocked at the door.
A woman opened it and said, in response to an enquiry, that the caretaker was “in the school somewhere, probably in the art room, which the cleaners have been creating about because the art master always leaves it in such a mess. First floor, at the bend of the stairs.”
Dame Beatrice found the art room and the caretaker without difficulty. There was no difficulty, either, about contacting the cleaners once she had stated her business. They were all about somewhere or other, the caretaker assured her. He was busily writing a report on the state of the art room, this, Dame Beatrice surmised, with a view to apprising the headmaster of the cleaners’ legitimate complaints.
Dame Beatrice made for the sound of voices combined with the clatter of domestic sweeping and the dumping of chairs, and, having run to earth a couple of the cleaners, she asked to be directed to the Staff Room. Here she found another woman. She was angrily picking up teacups and saucers from the floor and dumping them on to a large table littered with exercise books and ashtrays.
“Excuse me,” said Dame Beatrice. “I have spoken to the caretaker, so he knows that I am on the building. Would you mind telling me whether you are always responsible for tidying this room?”
“Oh, so it’s come to the ears of the Board of Governors, has it?” said the woman. “And about time, too, I reckon. If I’ve left a note once to ask these dratted teachers to clear away their cups and saucers and empty the teapot of an afternoon afore they goes home, I must have done it a dozen times or more. And what happens? The day after I leaves the note the place does get tidied up a bit, and, after that, not, till I leaves the next note. Sick and tired of it, I am. What their poor wives have to put up with I don’t hardly dare to think.”
“I understand that there have been complaints about the state of the art room, too,” said Dame Beatrice.
“Same with the woodwork room; same with the science lab. Really, call theirselves schoolmasters! Just look at this Staff Room! I never seen a pigsty in a muckier state nor this!”
“But don’t the masters who stay after school to mark books do a little clearing up? Surely they don’t attempt to work in this muddle!”
“Them do a little clearing up! Don’t make me laugh! Not as they often stay behind. The bell hasn’t hardly gone to finish school when half of ’em’s halfway down the drive and the other half revving up their cars. You don’t catch them putting in no overtime marking books. Oh, they’ll stop on and show films or rehearse a play or ref. a match or play tennis and badminton—oh, yes, they’ll do them sort of things, but put theirselves out in any other sort of way they will not, without they’re catching up on their exam. papers and report forms, and that’s only because the headmaster won’t have them sort of things took home for fear of ’em getting lost.”
“I had an idea that Mr Perse often stayed to mark books. The Chairman of the Governors seems to think so,” said Dame Beatrice, unblushingly taking that gentleman’s title in vain. The cleaner banged another cup on to a saucer and picked up an ashtray in each hand. She flung the cigarette ends into a bucket—most of the ash seemed to have been flicked on to the floor already—pushed an overflowing wastepaper basket into the corridor, clumped back into the Staff-room and seized the broom.
“It’s not for me to tell tales,” she said, “but I’ve no recollection of Mr Perse staying regular after school, not only the once or twice, no more than the rest of ’em. The only time he ever stops on to do any work is when there’s a Council meeting earlier than usual. On the Council he is, as I daresay you know, and very surprised I was when my husband told me. My husband keeps the Town Hall, you see.”
“Ah, yes, the last early meeting was held at some time near the end of June, I believe.”
“That’s right. I remember it because it was in the next week as they found a man teacher had been murdered. I was ever so upset, because my two children goes to that school—the Primary it is—and I didn’t want them to get to know about it, but, of course, they did. You can’t keep other kids from talking, and bad news soons gets round.”
“And Mr Perse was in school that evening? I wonder how long he stayed? I have to make a report, you see. Which day of the week would it have been?”
“Same as today—a Friday.”
“Oh, yes. Have you any idea how long he stayed?”
“I couldn’t say, I’m sure. Four times I looked in to see whether I could do the room out, that’s all I know. I got fed up with it in the end, and I sets to and cleans all round him. That got him out of it. Wished I’d thought of it sooner.”
“At what time do you finish work?”
“It all depends. We’re paid by the hour for two hours and we don’t reckon to stay longer nor that. On a good day we can get all round the school in an hour and a half. Mr Robbins don’t care, so long as the work gets done, but he’s a rare one for seeing as it is done. He’s fair enough, mind you, but he been a petty officer in the Navy, so it’s got to be all bull and bush or else you’ve had it.”
“And you do not remember at what time you finished work on that Friday in June when Mr Perse stayed late?”
“I couldn’t really say, not to ten minutes or so. I clocks on at half-past four, which is to say I puts my head in at the hall door—Mr Robbins always does the hall and the stage hisself—and then I ups to here and hangs up my hat and coat in the lobby next door and gets my overall on and fetches my things and starts in on the lobby before I comes in here. Well, I suppose I must have popped my head in on Mr Perse about every quarter of an hour, but that’s as near as I can tell you. I does my three classrooms and after I done each one I pops my head in here, this being one of the worst jobs, so I likes to get it over and done with. You can make up a bit of time in the classrooms if you happen to get a bit pushed, but there’d soon be a to-do if this room got neglected, for all they makes such a pigsty of it theirselves.”
“Yes, I see. Thank you very much. This will materially help my report. I hope I have not taken up too much of your time?”
“Oh, that’s all right. I’m glad the Board of Governors is waking up and taking a bit of interest. I can easy make the time up in the classrooms. As long as I gets the wastepaper baskets emptied and the chairs stood down (which the boys is supposed to stand them up on the desks to make the sweeping more easy), the rest can go.”
Dame Beatrice drove to the Town Hall and asked the caretaker at what time the early meetings of Mr Perse’s subcommittee took place. His answer checked with Julian’s own account and the caretaker, because of what he had read about Spey’s death, was able to recall that Julian had been present at the meeting on the Friday under review, that he had been in good time for it, and that it had gone on until half-past nine. If the caretaker felt any curiosity about being questioned thus, he did not betray it. He remembered Dame Beatrice perfectly well from her previous visit to the Town Hall, had decided that she was eccentric but harmless, and he answered her questions civilly and with good humour.