A Midsummer Night's Death by K M Peyton

Author:K M Peyton [K. M. Peyton]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Random House Children's UK
Published: 2014-06-30T00:00:00+00:00

5

‘PARSONS, MEREDITH ISN’T in his room. Do you know where he is?’

‘He’s in here, sir, asleep.’

‘Oh. Good. I was worried . . . as long as he’s . . .’ Fletcher yawned and sighed. ‘He’s behaving very strangely, but it can wait till morning. Good-night.’

‘Good-night, sir.’

Long silence.

‘You’re not asleep, are you?’

‘No. Thanks, Parsons.’

‘Iris Webster was looking for you.’

That was all he needed.

Silence. All night to think about it. Hugo in love with Robinson’s wife, murdering Robinson. Ashworth’s joke diagnosis, after the inquest. True. Impossible! Hugo . . . calm, honest, fair, intelligent, courageous . . . perfect . . . a murderer. A perfect murderer. Nobody knew, suspected, save himself, and Ashworth. Hugo knew he knew. He didn’t know about Ashworth. Ashworth mustn’t say anything. The exercise book was missing, eased out of his back pocket by the current and by now a pappy indecipherable mess somewhere in the river: the vital evidence was destroyed. It was merely in the mind. All in the mind. And Ashworth needn’t ever know the truth. He never saw Hugo’s face, never saw the moment’s panic in the steady, blue, mountaineering eyes, the horror, the wild pain at the consequences of discovery . . . did he ever see it himself, truly? Or was it a figment of the imagination? But Patsy in Hugo’s arms was no figment of the imagination. And if Fletcher said anything about finding Meredith dripping wet with water-lilies in his hair at ten o’clock in the evening, Hugo would know that he had seen him with Patsy . . . Jonathan, adrift in the storm of his own anguish, never knew whether he slept or not, remembered only crawling into his own room sometime around dawn to collect his clothes while Ashworth still slept, then oblivion for an hour until Parsons stirred him with a foot and said, ‘Action, Meredith. Morning is broken and all that rot.’

He awoke to an instinctive conviction that his world was quite destroyed, before he even remembered all that had happened. Remembering, he knew that one’s instincts were pretty reliable, and opened his eyes bleakly to what should have been one of the best days of his life.

‘You’re off on this Wales lark at lunch-time, is that right?’ Parsons was standing at the window shaving with an electric razor. ‘Looks like the weather is breaking.’

The room was grey and hot.

‘Thunderstorms, I’d say. Just your luck, eh?’

‘Luck’s not my thing lately.’

‘Poor boy. I can see you get shot of Ashworth next year, if that’s any consolation. You’re on the short-list for house-prefect, so you might get in here if you’re lucky.’

Jonathan didn’t call being made house-prefect lucky, any more than he found it possible to look forward to next term. Hard even to see his way through to lunch-time, avoiding all the people he particularly did not wish to meet. Hard to see beyond that, too. Not to think . . .

‘Fletcher thinks you’re behaving very strangely. So do I.’

‘Yeah. Bad material for a house-prefect.’

How could he avoid Ashworth at breakfast? Avoid breakfast.

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