Harriet Hughes ran a smoothing hand over her own rich red hair. She might be “matron” by title and she might be approaching forty, but she was not remotely matronly. Her tightly belted navy uniform dress with its white collar and cuffs emphasised a neat waist and bountiful bosom; the dark chestnut hair waved in a controlled way about her head, giving off an intriguing waft of Amami setting lotion. Her features, in contrast, were disappointing, quenched by the glory of the hair. She wore no makeup, as required by an educational establishment, but had taken the trouble to pluck her eyebrows into a fashionable arch.
“I expect you could be doing with a cup of tea after your morning on the road? I have the facilities.” Matron pointed to a kettle sitting on a gas ring by the hearth.
“How very pleasant this is,” said her guest politely, looking around the room. “I should love to have a cup of tea if it’s really no trouble.”
Matron lit the gas and reached for the pot and tea caddy.
The boy Drummond sighed and shuffled his feet.
Miss Joliffe launched into a conversation. “We’re on the ground floor, here, aren’t we? Don’t you find that a little inconvenient when your charges are two floors above your head?”
“Not at all. Glad to be out of earshot!” Matron confided. “In any case, I leave repression of noise and high jinks to the duty master. If there’s a medical emergency—night or day—someone pulls on the bell rope to summon me.” She gestured towards an old-fashioned row of bells, each one bearing an ancient name, fixed above the door. “A remnant of the old house. This place was built to be a nobleman’s country residence about two hundred years ago. It was turned into a school in Victorian times. Most of the fabric has been made modern and utilitarian. You know—the butler’s pantry is now the tuck shop and so on.” She smiled. “You find yourself in the old housekeeper’s room, which accounts for the bells. I’ve kept the connections in place for two of them. One is in the head’s study, the other one is on the second floor. The dorm prefect and the duty master only have the right to summon me. I have a small bedroom and bathroom adjacent to this room—a suite, I like to call it—and I always leave the door ajar at night when I’m on call.”
Miss Joliffe seemed fascinated by these humdrum domestic details. “Ah! The housekeeper’s room! The hub of the house. No small burden—the care of a hundred boys,” she murmured.
“It’s a hundred and twenty. Four dormitories. Plus the two sick rooms, of course. And it’s worse in the winter. But compared to my previous posting—I was a nurse at the military hospital in Brighton during the war years—this is a.…” Matron remembered the presence of Jackie and edited out the military phrase she had been about to use. “Look, Miss Joliffe, let me deal with young Drummond, and then we can settle down for a proper chat.”
Jackie, who was growing increasingly bored, chirped up with a helpful suggestion. “Matron! My form’s having library lesson now. It’s Silent Reading. My favourite!” he added for Miss Joliffe’s benefit. “I’m missing it. Am I allowed to go?”
“The library’s just down the corridor on this floor,” Matron said. And, seizing on the possibilities: “Silent Reading? If they can’t speak to each other, the other pupils can’t question Drummond or rag him. Perhaps a good way of getting him back into the routine? Yes, Drummond. You may go. I’ll have your bags sent up to the dorm. No illicit contraband in there I hope? No tooth-rotting sherbet fountains? No mind-rotting Comic Cuts? Well, as you’ve spent your time out in police custody, I think I may safely say—off you pop, then!”
Matron’s eyebrows arched in amused disbelief to see Dorcas Joliffe sink anxiously to her knees and deliver urgent instructions and advice to the boy. “Great heavens, Miss Joliffe! This is a prep school in Sussex, not an opium den in Limehouse!”
She appeared taken aback by the girl’s sharp response. “No stabbings reported in Limehouse this week yet. Can you say as much?” The Joliffe girl watched at the door as the boy scooted down the corridor and entered the library before she added, “He’s had a most upsetting experience, he was telling me, and could well be in danger himself. It’s no bother to keep an eye on him. Indeed, Sir James suggested that I should.”
Matron’s slate-green eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Ah, yes! Sir James. The name that opens a thousand doors. Are you by any chance a member of that family, Miss?”
“Not his family—his faculty.” The girl grinned. “I say his, but he doesn’t own the university quite yet. Though he does stump up most of the money that keeps our department afloat. There’s not much cash washing about in higher education these days, and a Cinderella subject like psychology needs all the support it can raise.”
Harriet Hughes had no time for Cinderellas. “Psychology? How to make a science out of common sense? Say it in Greek!” Her tone was scathing. “Knowledge of the soul. Sounds a teeny bit like hubris to me. Or gobbledegook. I’ve had too much experience of blood and guts to believe in the soul. I’ve seen exposed every organ you can imagine—and a dozen more—and never a glimpse of a soul.”
“I think you know as well as I do that it’s not to be found on a marble slab, Matron. But we may find it in a laboratory one day,” the girl said with a smile the Sphinx of Egypt would have envied.
CHAPTER 14
Martin unlocked the door of a room on the first floor of the main building.
“Rapson’s study. I thought we’d start here and work our way backwards. Nice little diggings he’s got here. Central. Handy. Most of the other masters are out in the Lodge buildings round the back—there’s a rear entrance that used to be more important when the place was a gent’s res. On the south side—that’ll be the way you came in—it’s all for show. The ‘domestic offices’ as the head calls them plus the staff and academic staff quarters are shoved away on the town side. Security nightmare. No thought to protect anyone inside the complex from anyone outside.”
“Or vice-versa,” Joe said thoughtfully.
“I expect it’s never been necessary. No reports of misdemeanours of any kind. I checked the records. One case of arson which was dealt with internally with utmost discretion.”
Joe nodded. “I see. Police excluded?”
“That’s right. The kid probably got six of the best and his Woodbines confiscated. A village lad would have been sent to the Scrubs and birched or put on the next boat to Australia. Nobody seems to lock anything in this place. Except me, of course. I’ve made the half square mile we’ll optimistically refer to as ‘the scene of crime’ as secure as I can in the circumstances.”
Joe peered into the room with appreciation. “Well if ever I tried schoolmastering, I’d hope for a retreat like this,” he commented. It was spacious and well lit by two bay windows. It was supplied with a substantial desk and sets of drawers and a filing cabinet. Joe sank into the black leather chair behind the desk and looked about him. “What’s behind that door?” he asked, pointing.
“Now wouldn’t we all like one of these?” Martin said opening it. “A walk-in filing room. All the storage space you could ever want.”
“This chap was—remind me—classics and form master? All this is rather grand isn’t it? Why, I wonder, does Rapson come in for such lavish accommodation?”
“I asked. There is a reason. The cupboard you see over there, more of a room really, is where the school records are kept. Rapson found himself chosen—or did he volunteer?—to compile a history of the school last year. He was given this pitch to facilitate his enquiries.” He nodded to the telephone on the desk. “Even has his own communications with the real world.”