“Good Lord! Faces from the past!” Godwit put on a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles and examined the exhibits with all the care they could have wished. “I can hand you seven out of the nine,” he said after a while. “Who’s taking notes?” He rearranged the order of the photographs to his satisfaction. “Numbering from the left and furthest back in time. I’ll suggest their intake year.
“Number one: Not known to me.
“Number two: Jefferson. Pre-war. 1910ish.
“Number three: Murgatroyd major … 1914. Distinctive, if unfortunate, features. The only son of his mother. His rather … elderly … mother. She died shortly after her son. Both victims of influenza. Murgatroyd remarried, and there have been a further two boys here after this one. Both successfully completed their spell at St. Magnus. Their father was a most generous benefactor in his day.
“Number four: Hewitt-Jones. 1916. Ghastly little tick! Never thought I’d set eyes on him again.
“Number five: Sorry, not a face I remember, but I’m placing him here because the tie’s changed, do you see? So he’s postwar.
“Number six: Pettigrew. That’s Pettigrew the London grocer. Made a fortune in the war. He had four sons, but I’m happy to say he only sent us the first. Clarence, I believe. Horrid boy! Quite horrid! A fighter. Transferred at the head’s request. In other words: expelled. The remaining brothers went elsewhere to trouble others. Let’s say 1920.
“Number seven: Peterkin. 1921 or ’22. Sad little chap, but clever. Yes, clever. Knew his Herodotus on arrival, I remember. Runaway, I’m afraid. Bullied by the other boys, they said.
“Number eight: Houghton-Cole. 1929. Ah! He went out in a blaze of glory. Set the cowsheds on fire.
“Number nine: Renfrew. Transferred to Templemeadows just last year. We weren’t good enough for Papa, apparently. 1932. Will that be all, gentlemen?”
“Just one more thing, sir,” Joe said. “Your first impressions of this group.… Does any common characteristic strike you? What is it that these boys have in common?”
Godwit fell into puzzled silence. “It’s rather hard to tell. It’s more a case of what they don’t have that defines them. None of these has gone down in the annals of the school. I don’t remember any one of these making it into a school team. No academic prizes won, either, though I had great hopes of Peterkin. Some didn’t stay long. Nothing special about that of course,” he added swiftly. “Many of our pupils are from families serving abroad, or moving about the world stage. Boys come and go, you know. And some parents are never satisfied. They must always feel they are getting the very best educational opportunities for their offspring and, if those parents are not blessed with a family tradition of education, they are apt to shuffle their unfortunate children about the country, always seeking better.
“Now, if that’s all, gentlemen? It’s our coffee time, you know. Young Gosling is preparing a tray for you. I’ll tell him to bring it in, shall I?”
“That would be kind of you, sir, and thank you for your help,” Martin said politely.
“Gosling, eh?” Martin remarked when the door closed on Godwit. “He seems to have appointed himself some sort of go-between. In the head’s pocket, I’d say. Always there at your elbow making helpful noises when you turn around. Creepy bastard! Have you had him up your jumper?”
“Yes, I have.” Joe smiled. “It could be just good manners and management of course. But detailed by the headmaster would be my guess, to keep an eye on the interlopers. Make sure we don’t wander from the path they’ve chosen for us.”
Joe stopped talking, then passed a finger over his mouth in the soldier’s signal for silence. Martin nodded and grinned and looked towards the door.
“Good God, Martin!” Joe’s voice rang out. “What the hell are you telling me? That your men have found the sledgehammer that crushed Rapson’s skull? And the bloodied handle is covered in fingerprints? And those prints belong to … the headmaster?”
“You’ve got it, sir.” Martin’s voice was equally loud. “Open-and-shut case. Will you shake out your manacles or shall I oblige? Now, didn’t someone say there was coffee on its way?”
He strode to the door and flung it open. An innocently smiling Gosling was a step or two away down the corridor. “Perfect timing, sir,” he said. “I was wondering how on earth I could knock with this in my hands. I found you some digestive biscuits-in Langhorne’s tin. I hope you like them.”
He bustled in, set the tray on a side table, and began to pour out the coffee with the exaggerated ceremony of a Savoy waiter. Joe watched his hands, noting the slight tremble and hearing the clang as he hit the sugar bowl with a spoon. “How are you getting on? One lump or two? Any developments?” Gosling was trying for a casual tone, but his voice emerged an octave higher than its usual pleasant growl, Joe thought.
“No lumps for me, thank you. Just a drop of milk.” Joe reached eagerly for his coffee. The real stuff, judging by the aroma.
“Two lumps please,” said Martin. “We’ve hardly got started, and we wouldn’t be able to tell you if we had,” the Inspector said pleasantly. “All we can say is, we may just have a little surprise for Mr. Farman before the end of the day. That’ll be all, thanks, Mr. Gosling. You can leave us to get on.”
Left alone again, they grinned at each other.
“Gotcher?” said Martin.
“Oh, I think-gotcher! But what exactly have we got?” Joe wondered. “Further and better particulars required, I believe. I’ll get some. Now, shall we proceed?”
“Of course. Look, as you seem to have taken to this room so well, why don’t you adopt it as your base? The staff will find it very convenient having you close by, and they’ll stop traipsing all the way down to the basement to bother me in the old equipment room. My men can come and go down there without taking their boots off all the time. How long are you staying, by the way? Nobody’s told me.”
“Possibly because I haven’t told anyone. I’ve set no time limit. The head clearly thinks he’s getting rid of me by the end of the day. He doesn’t know that I’ve booked rooms for me and my companion Miss Joliffe down at the old coaching inn in the village.”
“The Bells?”
“That’s the one.”
“Well, that can be the little surprise for the head, in case he asks. Sandilands is taking up residence. Right then, I’ll lock the door behind us, and we’ll retrace the footsteps of old man Rapson, shall we? Now why, if you’d just been stabbed, would you flee back up here? Wouldn’t you try to find Matron? Ex-nurse-she was probably the only one who could help. Have you seen the woman? She could stop a blood flow at ten paces. I’d put myself in her hands any day.”
“Telephone?” Joe suggested. “Something he had urgently to deal with … hide … pick up from his desk? He had an appointment to beat a boy at six, but I don’t think that would loom large in the circumstances, do you?”
They moved along the corridor and down the back stairs, now closed to traffic and neatly roped off with warning police notices on display. The hand rail was covered in graphite fingerprinting dust, and smudges of blood were still in place. Joe thought with concern of the small boy and his grisly encounter halfway down as Martin unemotionally pointed out the tiny prints. At the bottom of the stairs was a dried brown patch where the blood had ponded under Rapson’s belly.
“He lost a lot of blood. Heart wounds needn’t spout much, I know, but the pathologist says he’d suffered more than one blow. Now, we can get him as far as the door and beyond that into the rear yard. By the time we got here, the whole place was covered in snow and it was pitch dark. We lost the trace. Didn’t like to do much sweeping-might destroy sign. Thought it better to wait a bit and pray for a thaw. They say there’s one on its way.”
Joe stood with Martin shivering in the backyard, getting his bearings. Martin produced a plan of the school and handed it to Joe. “They give these out to the new bugs. I’ve marked the dying man’s progress on it in red as far as it goes.”