Love Lies Bleeding. Edmund Crispin

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СКАЧАТЬ the headmaster interposed with some severity. ‘Begin at the beginning, please.’

      ‘A theft,’ said Mr Philpotts emphatically. ‘Nothing more nor less than a theft.’

      ‘What has been stolen?’

      ‘That’s exactly the point,’ Mr Philpotts spluttered. ‘I don’t know. There’s no means of telling. I can’t be always stocktaking. There isn’t the time. And what with Common Entrance, and speech day, and the mid-term reports—’

      ‘Then something has been taken from the chemistry laboratory?’ the headmaster demanded after a moment’s rapid diagnosis.

      ‘A cupboard has been forced open,’ Mr Philpotts explained with indignation. ‘Forced open and rifled. I warn you, headmaster, that I cannot hold myself responsible. Many’s the time I’ve said the locks were inadequate. Many’s the time—’

      ‘No one is attempting to blame you, Philpotts,’ said the headmaster smoothly. ‘What does this cupboard contain?’

      ‘Acids,’ said Mr Philpotts with unusual directness and pertinence. ‘For the most part, acids.’

      ‘A good deal of poisonous stuff, in fact?’

      ‘Exactly. That is what makes the offence so serious.’ Mr Philpotts inhaled violently, by way of expressing his disapproval. ‘You see, no doubt, how serious it is?’

      ‘Certainly I see, Philpotts,’ said the headmaster with considerable asperity. ‘By some miracle, my judicial faculties are still functioning…You have no idea what, if anything, is missing?’

      ‘I presume that something is missing,’ said Mr Philpotts tartly. ‘Otherwise there would seem to be little point in breaking open the cupboard…The only thing I can say definitely is that no very large quantity of any substance has been taken.’

      The headmaster said, ‘Very well. I shall have to consider what’s the best thing to do. In the meantime, will you see to it that the chemistry laboratory is kept locked whenever it’s not actually in use? It’s rather late in the day for such precautions, but we don’t want to be caught out a second time…By the way, when did you discover this?’

      ‘Last period this morning, headmaster. I wasn’t teaching until then. I can guarantee, too, that the cupboard was all right at five o’clock yesterday afternoon, because I had occasion to put some apparatus away in it.’

      ‘All right, Philpotts,’ said the headmaster. ‘I’ll let you know as soon as I’ve decided what steps to take.’

      Mr Philpotts’ nodded importantly, left the room, and bounded away in the direction of the science building. As the headmaster returned to his window, the tolling of the school bell ceased, and such boys as were still on their way began running. A few moments later, as the clock struck two, the headmaster heard the distant trilling of the electric bell in Hubbard’s Building. A flushed and desperate latecomer scampered past, and in a last frantic burst of speed vanished from sight. There was peace.

      But the headmaster scarcely appreciated it. A theft of poison – even a conjectured theft – was, as Mr Philpotts had platitudinously observed, a serious matter. Moreover, it was far from easy to decide on any effective course of action. The guilty person was not necessarily a boy – indeed the headmaster inclined, in the absence of definite evidence, to dismiss this hypothesis. But there were the groundsmen, the members of the staff, the public (who could move with relative freedom about the school premises) and, of course, Brenda Boyce, who on Williams’ showing had definitely been in the science building on the previous evening…

      He bit irritably at the stem of his pipe. Though he was averse from informing the police, it was obviously his duty to do so. Very reluctantly he reached for the telephone.

      It was at about this moment that Mr Etherege left the masters’ common room with Michael Somers. And as both of them were going in the same direction, they fell into conversation.

      Somers was the youngest member of the Castrevenford staff – a slim, tall, wiry man, good looking but for a hint of effeminacy in the smallness and regularity of his features. He had smooth black hair, and a tenor voice whose agreeable modulations held a suspicion of artifice and self-consciousness. He taught English, and with conspicuous competence, but he was not popular with the boys, and the headmaster, who had a certain respect for the merciless perspicuity of the young, was inclined privately to distrust him on that ground. Experience had taught the headmaster that the principal, if not the only, reason for a master’s unpopularity was insincerity. Mere severity never affected the boys’ judgment unless it was associated with hypocrisy or cant; and leniency – Somers was notoriously lenient – was a bribe which by itself was incapable of winning their affection.

      Somers’ colleagues regarded him with mixed feelings; the current of his conceit, though subliminal, was strong enough to be perceived. But Mr Etherege, who reputedly was devoid both of morality and of human affections, assessed his fellow-beings solely by the criterion of their suitability as an audience for his own utterances; and since Somers was appreciative and attentive, Mr Etherege held him impeccable.

      ‘And what,’ Mr Etherege demanded, ‘is the matter with Love?’ He was referring not to the passion which drowned Leander, but to one of his senior colleagues.

      Somers looked surprised. ‘The matter?’ he said. ‘I didn’t know anything was the matter with him. How do you mean?’

      Clearly this reply was disappointing to Mr Etherege. In addition to his other eccentricities he operated as a kind of central clearing house for Castrevenford scandal. In some ineluctable fashion he managed to acquire the most intimate information about everyone and everything, and he was always prepared to pass it on. But now, a likely well-spring having dried up, he was slightly aggrieved. And certainly, if Somers was ignorant of Love’s temperamental disorders, there was not much enlightenment to be hoped for elsewhere. Love had been Somers’ housemaster at Merfield, and Somers was very much his protégé. Mr Etherege sighed.

      ‘I should have thought,’ he said reproachfully as they toiled up a flight of stone stairs, ‘that you would have noticed it.’

      ‘I’ve hardly seen him for the past week,’ Somers explained.

      ‘He seems to be consumed by some inner fury,’ said Mr Etherege. ‘He’s touchy, irascible and uncivil. Love, I freely admit, is not an exuberant man at the best of times, his innate puritanism is too strong. But this phase is quite exceptional. Obviously something has annoyed him very much.’

      ‘He tends to sulk,’ said Somers, ‘whenever things aren’t exactly to his liking.’

      This comment struck Mr Etherege as being too obvious and uninteresting to require affirmation, or indeed, an answer of any kind.

      ‘In fact,’ he proceeded, ‘the school is overburdened with mysteries at the moment…By the way, how is your wrist?’ He pointed to Somers’ right arm, which was protected by a sling.

      ‘Pretty well recovered, thanks. But what’s all this about mysteries?’

      ‘You’ve surely heard about the theft from the science building?’

      ‘Oh, that. Yes. Philpotts told me when I was on my way in to school this afternoon.’

      ‘And about the High School girl?’

      ‘No. СКАЧАТЬ