Blue Murder (5 page)

Smith added insult to injury by appearing in the breakfast room nearly five minutes before the gong sounded, and was as boisterously cheerful as a Master of Foxhounds before a promising day's run.

Hardstaffe growled a salutation at him, greeted the breakfast dish with a scornful “Sausage again!” and, with his meal half-finished, slammed down his napkin, pushed back his chair, and set off for the short walk to school half-an-hour before his usual starting-time, thereby missing his matutinal glimpse of Charity Fuller's shapely legs moving deliciously before him across the school yard. He meted out an aggregate of five thousand lines to the children who were playing five minutes too soon in the asphalt playground at the back of the school, reprimanded the caretaker for having allowed them to go in, and strode through the front door, to sulk in his study until the clock's fingers pointed to five minutes to nine.

As he mounted the rostrum to conduct the customary prayers, staff and pupils alike regarded his expression with dismay, knowing from experience, that the day was likely to be a difficult, if not a disastrous one.

A smile from Charity might have softened somewhat the gathering tempest of his mood, but, remaining true to the new standard of behaviour which she had set for herself, she resolutely averted her head.

“Everyone's hand is against me,” he thought in some bitterness.

Even the Scriptures seemed to mock at him, for the reading for the day was the thirteenth Chapter of St. Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians.

After this, only the slightest touch was needed to set his fury ablaze, but after the final prayer, he dismissed them without incident. The teachers marshalled their pupils out of the packed forms, their feet marking time with the beating of their hearts.

Half the children had dispersed to their various classrooms when it happened.

“You, boy!” shouted Hardstaffe, pointing his finger at a tall, ragged-looking boy in Charity's class. “Pick up your feet! Don't be slovenly!”

“Yessir. Nosir.”

The child's bright, mischievous eyes gave the lie to his tone of respect.

The headmaster turned back to his desk. Then, thinking perhaps to catch Charity's belated smile, he turned, and saw instead, the boy whom he had just reprimanded sticking out a full tongue at him, while making an expressively suggestive gesture with his fingers.

Before any of them had realised what was happening, Hardstaffe, his face livid with rage, had flung himself forward, pounced on the boy, and dragged him by the back of his coat collar into the space in front of the desk.

“Come back, all of you!” he shouted. “Bring all the children back here! Come along, quickly now!”

He waited in silence while, with frightened faces, they obeyed.

“So! Now I will show you what happens to boys who make fun of me behind my back! This boy is an evacuee. He has come from one of the bombed areas, and we have taken him into our home and showed him every kindness. And this—this!—is how he repays our kindness.” He took the cane from its hook on the wall over the desk. “I will teach you to be grateful to those who are kind to you!” he shouted at the panic-stricken boy.

The cane rose and fell, rose and fell, and fell, and fell, and fell... The boy, at first blubbering, began to scream, and, falling to his knees, tried to fend off the merciless strokes.

But it was too late. The schoolmaster was oblivious to boys, cane, school, teachers—to everything except that everyone's hand was against him, and that his own hand, of its own volition, was levelling the score.

The only other male teacher on the Staff, a man named Richards, looked intently at the Head's suffused face and staring eyes, then moved forward, wrenched the cane from his hand, and gave a quick order.

“Two of you take this boy to the caretaker. The rest of you get the children to their rooms. Hurry!”

Hardstaffe stood for a moment, arms and legs trembling. Then he jerked up his head.

“Richards! How dare...!”

“The boy's fainted,” said Richards shortly. “You can thank your God that these town boys are tough. If he dies, it will be murder, and I'll see you hanged for it. If he doesn't, I'll finish you off myself,
Mr Squeers
!”

He tossed the cane into the fire which burned brightly in the barred grate.

Hardstaffe took a menacing step forward, but all the bluster had gone out of him, and he compromised by a half-hearted attempt to regain his lost authority.

“You will take my Form with your own, Richards,” he ordered. “I am going to my study to write my report upon this shocking incident. If there wasn't a war on, I should certainly demand your suspension.”

He walked shakily to his study, and lighted a cigarette with trembling fingers. After a short time, he dozed in his armchair in front of the fire.

It was late afternoon before he saw Charity alone. To his eyes, she looked lovelier and more desirable than ever.

“How could you do such a thing?” she asked. “How could you lower yourself to do it?”

He gazed at her distressed face through the watering, bloodshot eyes of an old man.

“I lost my temper, my dear,” he said slowly. “One day I shall lose it with my wife.”

A picturesque account of the caning reached Smith's ears the same afternoon, and he reflected that, in truth, “Walls have ears and country folk have tongues.”

Leda made a point of referring to it openly.

“You mustn't believe all you hear in the village,” she said. “There's so little excitement here apart from whist drives, dances, or a Ministry of Information film show, that they dramatise everything that happens. Poor Daddy! Of course he caned the boy, but he couldn't allow insolence, especially from an evacuee, and these town boys are so cheeky.”

Smith, having had some experience of London gamins, was inclined to agree with her version of the incident. Nevertheless, he was relieved, after dinner, to find that Hardstaffe had to leave immediately to attend a Churchwarden's meeting so that he was spared the embarrassment of their usual tête-à-tête. Leda, too, was booked for one of her innumerable committees, and he found himself alone with Mrs. Hardstaffe for the first time since the day of his arrival.

He was genuinely pleased to be with her alone, for it gave him a chance to study her. And, ever since that little talk with Leda, he had not been able to make up his mind whether to murder her mother or not.

He wondered what Mrs. Hardstaffe would think if she could know what was in his thoughts.

Perhaps some inkling of it did reach her, for she seemed to feel uneasy in his presence, and continued to hover around the coffee table long after they had finished drinking.

At length, she must have realised that she was behaving in a strange manner, for she suddenly sat down on the chair nearest to him, and said with a smile,

“I'm afraid I'm very restless tonight: I do hope you'll forgive me. I'm worried about something, and don't know what to do about it.”

Smith said the obvious thing.

“Can I help in any way?”

“No. Oh no, I don't think so, thank you. It's very kind of you to ask. You may think it's nothing to worry about, but it means a lot to me... It's my sleeping-draughts. They haven't come from the Dispensary yet, and I've none left to take tonight. I know I shan't sleep a wink.”

“Perhaps an aspirin or two...” suggested Smith.

“Oh dear, no! They wouldn't be of the slightest use,” she smiled. “Besides aspirins
do
something to me. They upset my stomach, and affect my heart. These are special powders which my doctor makes up for me. They contain morphia, I believe. Oh, you needn't look alarmed, Mr. Smith. I shan't take too many of them, though I believe it would be extremely dangerous to exceed the dose. I can tell that they are very strong. Indeed, I have sometimes felt the temptation to take too many, and remove myself out of
their
way!”

She leaned forward, and gazed earnestly at him, while slow tears welled into her eyes.

“I'm not wanted in this house, Mr. Smith. Even my own daughter hates me. You must have noticed it. No one could live here without seeing how much they both loathe me. They do everything they can to humiliate me in front of other people, and, when there's no one here...! But it's no use talking about that. All they want from me is my money. If I were to die, they'd dance at my funeral!”

Smith felt uncomfortable.

If this is getting under the skin of my characters, he thought, I can't say that I like it.

He got up, and patted her shoulder.

“You mustn't talk like that, Mrs. Hardstaffe,” he said. “I'm sure they're both very fond of you. They just pretend to belittle your bad health, to keep you from worrying about it too much. You see,” he added helplessly, “I'm a guest in this house. It's—well—difficult to discuss them.”

Mrs. Hardstaffe blinked away her tears, and nodded at him.

He walked across to the opposite side of the room and, without thinking, seated himself at the piano and let his fingers stray rather clumsily, into the melody of Mendelssohn's
Duetto
.

But if he had hoped to cheer his companion, he had failed, for he returned to find her weeping bitterly.

“I'm sorry,” he faltered. “I'll go up to my room. You'd rather be alone.”

“No, please don't go, Mr. Smith,” she said. “I shall be all right again in a minute.”

She dried her eyes, blew her nose noisily, and turned again to him.

“I must apologise,” she said. “I feel that I owe you an explanation. That piano has not been played for years, although I have it tuned regularly. It belongs to my son. I gave it to him when he was twenty-one. We were the only musical ones in the family.”

“It's I who must apologise,” replied Arnold. “I had no idea you had a son. Of course, the grief of losing him...”

He left the sentence unfinished.

“Oh, but he's not dead,” said Mrs. Hardstaffe with more animation than she had displayed throughout the evening. “He's alive, thank God, and as long as that is so, I have one person in the world to love me. That is one happiness left to me.”

“Then...?”

Smith looked puzzled.

“His father won't have his name mentioned. They quarrelled—terribly—about me. Mr. Hardstaffe turned him out of the house, and forbade me to see him again. But I'm not entirely without strength of mind, Mr. Smith, whatever
they
may think. He's married now and has a darling little son.” A mischievous smile curved round the down-turned corners of her mouth for a second. “Oh yes, I've seen him several times. How
they
would hate to know that!... Well, no one has played on that piano since he left, but it's always been a whim of mine to leave it open. He used to play the
Songs Without Words
too, so I'm sure you'll forgive an old woman for behaving so foolishly. I'm sorry I have had to tell you all this, but I owed it to you. And, it would be dreadful if you were to start playing when Mr. Hardstaffe was here. I shudder to think what might have happened if he had walked in tonight!”

“I don't see what he could have done about it,” remarked Smith, feeling not at all happy to receive these confidences.

“No, of course you don't,” was her unsatisfactory reply, and their conversation moved on to less emotional topics.

Suddenly they were both startled by a prolonged banging on the door, then Frieda entered the room, carrying a small, sealed box in one hand, and a silver salver in the other.

“Oh dear, Frieda,” sighed Mrs. Hardstaffe, “when will you learn how to do things properly? The box goes on the salver, so. Do you see? And you must walk in quietly without knocking.”

“I see. Gut,” grinned the maid. “Now I go to bed.”

She trotted out of the room.

“Oh dear!” Mrs. Hardstaffe exclaimed again. “Now she's left the salver here. I really do think Leda ought to pay a little more attention to training her instead of going off to run something or other in the village every day. She neglects everything so. This house used to look so pretty when I arranged it all. I wish I could still look after it myself, but I always feel so
ill
and
tired
.Yet I don't sleep well. Isn't that strange?”

“Well, you have your sleeping-draughts now, haven't you? There's no need to worry about a sleepless night.”

“No.” She smiled. “I shall sleep soundly to-night.”

Nevertheless, it was Arnold who went to bed first. Mrs. Hardstaffe, who usually drifted palely to bed immediately after the nine o'clock News, showed an unwonted desire to sit up and talk—a desire which he did not share.

He felt strangely bewildered by this close contact with the woman whom he had every intention of making his chief character. It was as if he had put out a hand to touch a ghost, and had felt, instead, a creature of flesh and blood.

But although he went to bed early, he could not sleep.

At last, feeling hot and restless, he put on his dressing gown and slippers, and, lifting the blind in the darkness, went to smoke a cigarette in the cool air at the open window. When he first looked out, he thought that the moon was shining, but soon he realised that the broad beam of light which struck across the smooth lawn came from the uncurtained window of the study, the room immediately beneath his own.

His first reaction was a desire to yell, “Put that perishing light out!” But the night air was still and silent, free from the throb of aeroplane engines, and he resisted the impulse, and peered down over the low sill.

It must be burglars, he decided, and, having selected one of his steel-shafted golf clubs from the bag in a corner of the bedroom, he crept on to the landing, led by the light from his pocket torch which glimmered bravely through its regulation layers of tissue paper.