The Poisoned Crown: The Sangreal Trilogy Three. Jan Siegel

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      ‘Mrs Ward,’ said Brother Colvin, laying some emphasis on the title, ‘is a very sweet person who would never dream of doing such a thing. A year or so ago Nathan had a problem with Damon Hackforth – he was a bit of a delinquent, we’d had a lot of problems with him – and Annie was quite amazingly kind and understanding about it. The whole business could have been very serious, both for the Hackforths and the school. If she hadn’t shown truly Christian forbearance …’

      ‘I see,’ said the headmaster. ‘I hadn’t realised Nathan had a track record as a troublemaker.’

      ‘Nathan wasn’t the one making trouble,’ Brother Colvin said. ‘I told you—’

      ‘No, no, Brother, say no more. He never makes trouble, he’s just caught up in it. That’s the danger with these scholarship boys: we all feel obliged to bend over backwards for them, no matter how badly they behave. They come to us from questionable homes – I gather Mrs Ward is a single parent – no discipline, no moral standards, and they’re thrown in the midst of decent kids from good families, and thanks to political correctness we have to make heroes of them. Well, I won’t have it. I infer Nathan fancies himself as a “tough guy” – he’d probably call himself streetsmart – and that sets a very poor example to the others. And word gets around, believe me. Many parents of prospective pupils could be discouraged by that sort of thing. I intend to see that Nathan’s scholarship entitlement for next year is going to be reconsidered.’

      ‘He’s very bright,’ Brother Colvin pointed out with deceptive mildness. ‘His results make an important contribution to our position in the league tables.’

      ‘Well, well. We’ll see. Perhaps Mrs Ward may be offered some kind of subsidy, providing she can come up with the bulk of the fees. This is a prestige establishment, not a charity school. I see no reason why she should freeload when other parents are prepared to dig into their pockets – often to make sacrifices – for their children’s welfare.’

      Brother Colvin blinked. He wondered fleetingly what sacrifices bankers, stockbrokers and oil millionaires had to make to pay for their sons’ education. Living half the year in a tax haven, perhaps?

      He said, still fighting his corner: ‘Nathan’s also an accomplished athlete. He’s on the school team for both rugby and cricket.’

      ‘No doubt,’ said the head, with a thin smile. ‘I don’t believe in favouring a boy for such reasons. This isn’t Cambridge, where they tolerate almost anything if a student can wield an oar.’ In his youth, he had been turned down for Magdalene, and still bore a grudge.

      ‘Father Crowley had a very high opinion of Nathan,’ Brother Colvin persisted.

      A tactical error.

      ‘Father Crowley,’ said the head loftily, ‘was, I am sure, a naïve and trusting soul, as befits a man of the cloth. I, alas, am expected to take a more worldly view. The governors installed me as his successor since they needed someone with secular experience and the people skills that come from a life lived in the rough-and-tumble of the wider world.’ (He’s quoting from the speech he made when he first came here, Brother Colvin thought with a sinking heart.) ‘Trust me: I understand these boys. I can sense a bad apple even before I bite into it. Besides,’ he added, obscurely, ‘we have a good ethnic mix here.’ Belatedly, Brother Colvin realised this was a reference to Nathan’s dark complexion. ‘Think of Aly al-Haroun O’Neill – Charles Mokkajee – just the sort of pupils we need.’

      ‘If the corruption charges against Mr Mokkajee senior stick,’ Brother Colvin said rather tartly, ‘he’ll be spending a long time in a Bombay jail. Hardly the most desirable parent.’

      ‘Now, now,’ said the head, with a tolerant smile. ‘He’s innocent until proven guilty: we mustn’t forget that. Anyhow, I gather the case will be bogged down in the Indian legal system for some years. And by the way, it’s Mumbai, not Bombay. We don’t want to offend Charles’ ethnic sensibilities, do we?’

      ‘No – of course not,’ said Brother Colvin. Seething with frustration and other, still more unchristian, emotions, he took his leave.

      On Thursday night Annie stood over Nathan while he took the painkillers. He tried not to be glad about it. He wasn’t yet ready to face the sea again.

      In Thornyhill woods, it was raining. Water drizzled out of the sky and dripped through the trees with the peculiar persistence of English rainfall. Hazel, peering out of a latticed window, thought the weather could keep it up all night and all the next day and probably right through the following week. It was that kind of rain. Although it was barely seven, she felt as if it had been dark for hours. Evening had set in midway through the afternoon with no real daylight to precede it, just the grey gloom of overcast skies and general Novemberitis. Bartlemy had cheered her up by allowing her to abandon maths for supper – wild rabbit roasted in honey and chestnuts, creamed spinach, home-grown apple tart – and now they were discussing the shortcomings of Hamlet and why too much thinking was bad for you.

      ‘He was stupid, wasn’t he?’ Hazel insisted. ‘Not stupid like me, but clever-stupid, if you see what I mean.’

      ‘I see exactly what you mean,’ Bartlemy said. ‘He used thought as a substitute for action, and when he did act, it was in the wrong place at the wrong time – a common failing of highly-strung, over-sensitive adolescents. Of course, he was only sensitive to his own feelings, not other people’s, or he would have been less prone to commit haphazard murders. As it was, the native hue of resolution, got sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought.’

      ‘That’s what I said,’ Hazel averred.

      ‘However,’ Bartlemy resumed, ‘I didn’t know you were stupid. This is hardly a stupid conversation.’

      ‘My teachers say I am,’ Hazel mumbled, caught off guard. ‘Anyway, my mum’s not that smart – nor’s my dad. To be clever, you have to have clever genes. That’s right, isn’t it?’

      ‘Don’t underrate your mother. Or your father, for that matter. Everyone has brains. The question is whether they choose to use them. How will you choose?’ Hazel was silent, briefly nonplussed. ‘Pleading bad genes is a very poor excuse for unintelligence,’ Bartlemy concluded.

      That was the point when she wandered over to the window, evading a response, staring darkly into the dark.

      Neither of them saw the figure on the road nearby: little could be distinguished through the rain curtain and the November gloom. Only Hoover lifted his head, cocking an ear at the world beyond the manor walls.

      The man on the road wore jeans that flapped wetly round his calves and a heavy-duty sheepskin jacket without a hood. Raindrops trickled down his hair inside his turned-up collar. His face was invisible in the dark but if it hadn’t been a passer-by would have seen lean, tight features clenched into a lean tightness of expression, grimmer than the grim evening – grim with determination, or discomfort, or something of both. But there were no passers-by. The road was empty and almost as grim as the man.

      He had left his car more than a mile back, close to the Chizzledown turning, when the slow puncture became too hazardous for driving. No one would want to change a wheel on such a night, but he was a chief inspector in the CID, on more or less official business: he could have rung a subordinate to pick him up, or called the AA, or a local garage whose owner owed him a favour after he had prevented a robbery there. Instead, he chose to walk through the woods, wet and СКАЧАТЬ