School for Murder by Robert Barnard

Author:Robert Barnard
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scribner

CHAPTER 10

THE MORNING AFTER

‘Through the night of doubt and sorrow

Onward goes the pilgrim band,’

sang the boys of Burleigh School. Presiding from the centre of the dais, Mr Crumwallis looked as if he had told wearily over every second of every minute of the watches of that night. Gowned, dark-suited, he ought to have looked fitting, impressive. But no boy could fail to notice the hollows of his cheeks, which seemed to have been scooped out in deep, dark channels, or his eyes, which were ringed round with black, and bleary, and haunted.

‘Brother clasps the hand of brother,

Stepping fearless through the night . . .’

Even the boys didn’t sound convinced. The news had spread like the Great Plague as they gathered for Assembly, and underneath the frank, animal sensationalism of their reception of the news there was uncertainty, and fear. Death happened—they were old enough to have acknowledged that. But not to people they knew. Not to friends. Not to people of their age. And that sort of death . . . One of the boys in 2B with a good memory had suddenly quoted ‘Alas, regardless of their doom the little victims play.’ The boys around him had looked at each other, one had laughed uncertainly, another had said, ‘Shut up.’ Then Mr Crumwallis had walked in.

Edward Crumwallis knew he ought to say something. Say something about the death, about Hilary’s death. The thought hovered over him like the onset of a nightmare. What words could he find? What mere formulation could convey his feelings? What if he should break down?

The memory hammered in his head of the dreadful phone call he had made to Dr and Mrs Frome. Both had been at the hospital until after midnight, though they had understood from the moment they arrived that their son was dead. When they had returned home they had disconnected the phone. Now, this morning, Edward Crumwallis had finally spoken to Hilary’s father, and the doctor’s words rang in his ears:

‘I wish to hell I’d never sent him to your school.’

An influential man, Frome. Doctors were always in some way or other community leaders, much more so than lawyers or bankers. And Dr Frome was clearly not willing to smooth over the terrible event, to refrain from raking over the coals. He sounded, indeed, vindictive. Perhaps somewhere in the back of Edward Crumwallis’s brain there ran a murmur telling him that Dr Frome had every right to be.

Now, if ever, between hymn and prayer, something ought to be said about Hilary. Something brief, dignified and reverent. Something to raise the spirits of the boys, to still speculation.

‘Then, the scattering of all shadows,

And the end of toil and gloom.’

Mr Crumwallis cleared his throat. It was no good. Nothing would come.

‘Let us pray,’ he said.

It was his first capitulation of the day.

• • •

Dr Frome said exactly the same thing, sitting beside his wife, in the living room of Deauville, Maple Grove, when he was interviewed by Mike Pumfrey and Fenniway.

‘I wish to hell I’d never sent him there.

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