03. Well-Schooled in Murder by Elizabeth George

Author:Elizabeth George
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2012-01-13T06:44:57+00:00

14

“This thing tastes like sawdust, Inspector! It’s disgusting. Must’ve been made last week. Fresh sandwiches! Ha! Someone ought to put that bloke in the nick for false advertising.” Crumbs from her cheese sandwich powdered the front of her maroon pullover. Sergeant Havers brushed at them with a scowl, distributing them generously onto the fl oor of Lynley’s car. He said her name in useless protest. She shrugged.

“We could’ve stopped. We could’ve gone to that pub. Fifteen minutes to eat wouldn’t exactly put us in the dock for dereliction of duty.”

Lynley inspected his own selection, roast beef and tomato, and saw that both were rather too green to be considered wise for con-sumption. “It seemed a good idea at the time,” he said.

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410 ELIZABETH GEORGE

“Besides,” Havers groused now that she had his agreement, “we’ve not exactly got a reason to go rushing back to the school, have we? As far as I can tell, working through this fl aming case is like stepping into quicksand. We’re up to our necks now, and all it’s going to take is one more blasted detail that creates one more blind alley and down we go. Suffocating.”

“Rather a lot of mixed metaphors, Havers.” She scoffed. “ You tell me what we’ve got.

We started out with class differences. Matt Whateley running off because he couldn’t fi t in with the la-di-da types at the school. Then we decided it was bullying, with Matt running off because he was afraid of some tough who was pushing him about. Then we went in for homosexuality and perversion. And now we’re playing with racial bigotry. Not to mention someone being out after curfew. Now, there’s a fi ne motive for murder.” She pulled out her cigarettes and lit one defi antly. Lynley lowered his window. “I don’t know where we’re heading with this muck any longer, and I’m getting to the point that I don’t even know where the hell we’ve been.”

“The Bonnamys confused the issue, didn’t they?”

WELL-SCHOOLED IN MURDER 411

Havers blew out a stream of smoke. “Chinese. Chinese? It’s not a go, Inspector. We both know that. We’ve a sick old man with an over-active imagination and a heart back in Hong Kong. And in the same house a lonely spinster daughter with fancies of her own. They see a dark-haired little boy who reminds them of the past and without any questioning, they assume he’s part Chinese.”

Lynley did not disagree. “It’s pushing things. But there’s something more to evaluate here, Sergeant.”

“What?”

“The Bonnamys don’t know Giles Byrne.

They don’t know that he was once devoted to a Chinese student at the school—Edward Hsu. Is it mere coincidence that out of the blue they would tell us they’re sure Matthew Whateley was part Chinese?”

“Are you saying that the fact that Matthew was Chinese—accepting that as truth for a moment, which I don’t, by the way—was what attracted Giles Byrne to him in the first place?”

“It’s a thought, isn’t it? Because isn’t it peculiar that both Edward Hsu and Matthew Whateley

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