The English School of Murder Read online

  ‘Sounds as if you’re a choosy one.’

  ‘Bighead. No, you should’ve seen them. God! Well, you know Ned. And then there were a couple of women—Cath’s still here. She’s a stuck-up bitch.’

  ‘No other men?’

  ‘Oh yeh. There was a young spotty one and an old geezer who got done for indecent exposure in Hyde Park. And Gavs is still here—much good he is.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Well, he’s you know,’ and she treated Amiss to a poor imitation of a camp gesture. She paused for thought. ‘Oh, yeah. ’Course there was Wally. Was he well-named!’ She fell into a fit of merriment.

  ‘Who was Wally?’

  ‘He was the sort of deputy principal. Here for years. Before Rich came. He went and electrocuted himself in the language lab.’

  ‘Good God. When? How?’

  ‘Oh, only about a month or two back. And it happened ’cos he was an old idiot. Always showing off. “Let me demonstrate this, Jenn.” “No, no, Jenn. Not that way. This way.” Used to get his rocks off showing how clever he was about everything. Sort of fella if you said you was going to Green Park by the Piccadilly line, he’d want to sit you down to tell you why you should go by the Victoria line instead. Pain in the butt.’

  ‘So what did he do in the language lab?’

  ‘Search me. Mucked around with some wires. Anyway what do you want to know about him for? He’s dead.’

  ‘Well, it was the language lab I was concerned about. I don’t want to end up electrocuted.’

  ‘Oh, you never have to use it with the wogs. It’s only for the beautiful people.’

  ‘You must feel at home with them.’ Amiss was finding it increasingly exhausting to be sufficiently flirtatious to keep her happy while not storing up future trouble. ‘Is it because of them you haven’t done another glamorous job like the ones you were telling me about in the pub?’

  ‘Well, it’s fairly glamorous with the beautiful people. You get round a bit. That’s why I took the job when Rich suggested it. I don’t have to do much with your lot.’

  Amiss was encouraged to hear her slur her words slightly. He helped her to some more wine. ‘Get on well with them then?’

  ‘Some of ’em. But some of ’em’s right bastards and bitches.’

  Amiss was finding all this maddeningly imprecise. ‘What is it you do with them?’

  ‘That’d be telling.’ She looked at him coquettishly.

  There was nothing for it. She was clearly a lady who drove a hard bargain.

  ‘Pudding?’ he asked, through clenched teeth. ‘Coffee? Brandy? And then I’ll take you home.’

  Chapter 8

  The normally serious-minded Pooley was shaking with laughter. ‘And then?’

  ‘The taxi-driver intervened. Said he wasn’t having that sort of carry-on in the back of his cab. That gave me a breather to light a cigarette and interpose it between us. Whether he knew she was sexually assaulting me or thought I was attacking her I’ve no idea. I was too embarrassed to ask after we’d decanted her.’

  ‘You mean you didn’t go in with her? You cad.’

  ‘I don’t think I’d enjoy being raped.’

  Pooley looked solemn again. ‘It’s a bit worrying, though, Robert.’

  ‘What in particular?’

  ‘Isn’t she going to feel rejected? And doesn’t that bode ill?’

  ‘I suppose in my shoes you’d have sacrificed your body for the cause. I always knew the police were corrupt.’

  ‘No, no, seriously, have you thought how you’ll handle it? After all, if she’s that thick with Rogers she could get you fired.’

  ‘All in hand, all in hand, dear boy. What’s for dinner?’

  ‘Roast beef.’

  ‘Lead me to it. And don’t fret. I’ve already sorted things out. I rang her up this afternoon.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘She was a bit reserved. Of course I’d no way of knowing what she remembered, but I decided to assume everything. “Jenn,” I said, “help, I’ve a confession to make.” Spun her a line about how I was terrified my fiancée would find out—she being madly jealous. I had been unable to resist Jenn’s charms and had behaved like a swine in not telling her I was an engaged man. Only mitigating factor that I had resisted temptation, almost overwhelming though it was. Very hard to be well-behaved with someone so madly attractive around. I’d have to keep well away, etc. etc. etc.’

  ‘Excellent. Lovely face-saving job. Mind you, she won’t leave you alone until she has her way with you.’

  ‘I hope I’ll have finished with the school before that happens. I don’t want to get AIDS.’

  ‘Gets around, does she?’

  ‘If my deductions are correct, part of her job with the beautiful people is as a highish-class tart.’

  Pooley’s eyes gleamed. ‘Now we’re getting somewhere. Come on into the kitchen and let’s get stuck into dinner. And you won’t mind, will you, if I take notes?’

  ***

  ‘Definitely a fifteen-cigarette problem,’ remarked Amiss, stretched sensuously while rocking gently in Pooley’s favourite chair. He watched with interest as his host flicked through his copious notes, highlighting parts with the help of two different coloured markers and putting large question marks in the margin.

  ‘What did you say?’ Pooley looked up.

  ‘I said it was a fifteen-cigarette problem.’

  ‘Oh, stop being an idiot, Robert.’

  ‘Well, I’m bored. Come on. Let’s see you put the tips of your fingers together and run through all the evidence.’

  Pooley smiled. ‘In the manner of whom?’

  ‘Umm. Holmes? No. You’re not a drug-addict. Poirot? No. Too Belgian. Lord Peter Wimsey? Too languid. I can’t play this game, Ellis. I hardly ever read crime novels.’ He paused for a moment, clearly in deep thought. ‘Ah! I have it!’

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Miss Marple.’

  Pooley threw a cushion which caught Amiss unawares and spilled his drink over his sweater. ‘Serves you right,’ said Pooley. ‘The trouble with you is not just that your humour is infantile—but you bring your associates down with you to nursery level.’

  ‘Well, it’s one form of egalitarianism. All right, I’ll be sensible for a while.’

  ‘Good.’ Pooley got up and embarked on his customary walk up and down his Persian rug. ‘Right. I’m putting together what I’ve had from my mate in Central as well as what you’ve picked up during the last week from Ned and Jenn. Interrupt if anything germane comes to mind that I haven’t mentioned. Now let’s start with what we definitely know.

  ‘The Knightsbridge School of English has been in existence for twelve years. Ned Nurse set it up by himself when he inherited the house from an aunt. Up to then he’d been employed at a series of schools round Tottenham Court Road. They were all much alike, usually a few rooms above a shop. Clientele attracted by fly-sheets in the street. The students were generally over-crowded and badly taught but in no position to argue. They were usually desperate to acquire very cheaply the basic English necessary to survive.’

  ‘Tarts and waiters, in fact.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Poor sods.’

  ‘And that’s how Ned felt about them too.’

  ‘Yes. I didn’t tell you that he described to me a horrid experience he’d had a year or two before his aunt died. He’d gone to work one morning to find the place closed down. No information, just a locked door. He told the students to come back the next day and tried to find out what had happened. Turned out the school’s owners had done a midnight flit with the term’s fees. Ned had to break the news to a hundred or so students and he said it broke his heart. Lots of them were in tears.’

  ‘Right. So when he decided to set up his own school it wasn’t to make money: he wanted to perform a public service.’

  ‘More or less. And also earn a reasonable income for doing the only thing he could do. Clearly he’d been exploited too. My g
uess is that what Jenn described as “proper” schools wouldn’t have looked at the poor old devil. He’s intelligent, and I think he’s possibly not a bad teacher, but he’s too batty and messy-looking to put in front of discerning punters.’

  ‘This is where it gets hazy,’ said Pooley. ‘We know how and why he started up on his own, but we don’t know what happened then.’

  ‘My strong guess, and I’ve nothing to go on beyond the odd throwaway remark, is that for several years he made just enough to cover his overheads, pay one other full-time teacher and some part-timers, and scrape a living himself. “Of course before dear Rich we didn’t have so many, dear boy, not so many.” I interpreted this as meaning that Rich has been responsible for student overcrowding in the prefabs. Not that Ned would have intended to give that impression. As you’ll have gathered, he’s so passionately loyal that he wouldn’t allow himself to see the truth if it reflected in any way on dear Rich.’

  ‘He didn’t just mean that Rich had brought in the beautiful people?’

  ‘Don’t think so. My impression is that pre-Rich the house was used for just slightly better-off students who could pay a bit more for the privilege of studying in groups of eight rather than twenty.’

  Pooley stopped pacing, sat down and poured himself a modest brandy. ‘Now from what we can gather, Rich arrived about three years ago, but we don’t know from where, and was quickly taken into partnership—to the disgruntlement of Wally Armstrong, who had been working with Ned for some years.’

  ‘I don’t know anything about that. It’s way before Jenn’s time.’

  ‘Central got this from one of Wally’s kids. It was very vague. The junior Armstrongs didn’t seem much interested in their dad.’

  ‘So Wally presumably had it in for Rich rather than vice versa.’

  ‘Well, yes. Although you reported Jenn as saying Wally was always trying to muscle in on the scene in the house.’

  ‘Rich would hardly have knocked him off for being a bore at their cocktail parties.’

  ‘Well, hardly. But it might have involved more than that. He sounds like the kind of man who could be an awful nuisance.’

  ‘Whatever Rich is,’ said Amiss, ‘I really don’t see him as the kind of raving psychopath that murders someone rather than sacking him. But then I’ve a vested interest in believing that.’

  Pooley was up and pacing again. ‘Christ, Ellis, don’t you ever relax?’

  ‘Later, later. Now Rich starts to attract a totally new kind of business and a kind of apartheid grows up between house and garden.’

  ‘You’re not kidding. I’m surprised us wog-teachers aren’t required to use the garden entrance along with the students. I think Rich really would murder one of them if they turned up in the house except at the time appointed.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘The publicity material is very specific about enrolments. Just the first Saturday morning of the month. Each course starts the following Monday and lasts for four weeks.’

  ‘Now according to Central’s information, the beautiful people—’

  ‘Let’s call them the BP’s, Ellis.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘—the BP’s are students from abroad who come to the school for highly intensive courses in conversational English. According to Jenn, most of them are here as much to have a high old time as to improve their English. At the moment they’re taught exclusively by Rich, Cath and Gavs, while Jenn stands in to show them videos, television programmes and that sort of thing. Her main work is as a kind of social secretary cum escort. And of course she’s a reserve teacher for the prefabs.’

  ‘That’s right. She went on about her important work in arranging what she termed “extra activities” and as I said earlier, the wink, nod and nudge she then produced led me to suppose she organises more than opera tickets.’

  ‘Although as you also said, she might well be a bit of a fantasist.’

  ‘I’d say exaggeration rather than fantasy.’

  ‘Right.’ Pooley picked up his notebook. ‘Now here are the questions I think we need to have answered. How did Rich get in on the act? How did he and Wally really get on? Did Rich have a serious motive for murder? What is the legal nature of the partnership between Ned and Rich? Are they lovers? Does Rich stand to gain if Ned dies? (We know he had an alibi for the night Ned was attacked, but of course he could always have hired someone.) What are these extra activities?—’

  ‘Stop, stop, for God’s sake,’ yelled Amiss. ‘How in hell am I supposed to keep up with all that?’

  ‘Oh sorry, Robert, I got carried away. I’ll write them all out for you before you go.’

  ‘And you’d like the answers after work on Monday.’

  ‘Well, you will have lots more time, won’t you?’ Pooley looked at him innocently. ‘After all you said that as a full-timer you only had to do twelve shifts a week.’

  ‘Quite true. The only snag is that I’ve very little access to information. I’ve no excuse to be in the main building except to see Rich or Ned. And I doubt if I’ll often be able to coax Ned out to lunch. He prefers to mess up his desk at lunchtime while he slurps yoghurt and eats organically-grown bean sprouts. And I wouldn’t fancy my chances of getting any more information out of Jenn—at least not until I can get her drunk again—which I refuse to do before I’ve invested in a chastity belt.’

  Pooley looked crestfallen.

  ‘Don’t worry, Ellis, I’ve got a few ideas up my sleeve.’

  ‘E.g.?’

  ‘I’d rather not talk about them yet, if you don’t mind.’

  Pooley hid his disappointment. ‘Oh, yes, of course.’

  ‘Now, from your end—’

  Pooley put up his hand. ‘Let me guess. You want me to try to locate some people who worked at the school round about the time Rich Rogers came on the scene and have them discreetly pumped.’

  ‘Got it in one, Ellis.’

  Amiss looked at his watch, saw that it was after one and got up to go.

  ‘Why don’t you come to me next Saturday? Though I have to warn you it’s a small flat and if you want to pace you’ll have to do it outside.’

  ‘Great. And obviously if anything much comes up, we’ll try to get together during the week.’

  ‘One last thing,’ said Amiss, as he put on his coat. ‘I’m having dinner with Jim Milton tomorrow. What do I say? It’s really very difficult being friends with both of you at a time like this.’

  ‘What would you normally tell him?’

  ‘Everything.’

  ‘Then that’s what you have to do,’ said Pooley. ‘Leave it to him to do the worrying about how to handle this three-cornered relationship. He’s the Super, and he’s used to making decisions. We have to trust him not to come the heavy.’

  Chapter 9

  Bloody young fools, thought Milton. He accelerated into the fast lane, where he remained until he noticed his speedometer was registering almost 85 m.p.h. Guiltily, he joined the law-abiding motorists in the middle lane.

  But come to think of it, were they bloody young fools? After all, he had given his tacit approval to getting Amiss involved in the first place. Why had he poured so much cold water on his ideas the previous night, simply because he had been talking about mysterious foreigners rather than about tangible evidence? This was a friend of his who had been a doughty ally in the past, strong on useful information and sound deduction and rarely if ever given to flights of fancy. That was more Pooley’s style. Then he remembered that it was Pooley’s flights of fancy that had led only a couple of months before to the arrest of the BCC murderer.

  Was he old at thirty-nine? Or sliding imperceptibly into the caution of the senior man? He tried to find some distraction on the radio, but the news programmes had nothing that held his attention. He saw the signs for a service station coming up, looked at his watch and pulled into the slow lane.

  ***

  Amiss jumped out of his shower and dripped over the telephone.

  �
��Hello, Robert. It’s Jim.’

  ‘I thought you’d be on your way to Bramshill.’

  ‘I am. I stopped on the way to apologise.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For being a middle-aged stick-in-the-mud. I don’t know if you two are on the right track, but what you’re doing sounds worth a try, and if you ever need to call on me, don’t hesitate.’

  ‘Jim?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I never thought I’d be reduced to saying “You’re a pal,” but I’m feeling inarticulate.’

  ‘That’ll be the day,’ said Milton cheerily and he rang off.

  ***

  Amiss’s reluctance early on Sunday morning to expose his ideas to Pooley’s eager gaze had had little to do with the slight unspoken rivalry between them. It had had much more to do with a sudden embarrassed realisation that they were threadbare in the extreme. Idea One: Charm Rich into giving him a job with the BP’s. Idea Two: Hang around Jenn’s office pretending to be a bit struck on her. Terrific. Especially since he had no idea how to proceed with One, and was afraid of the consequences of proceeding with Two.

  He mulled over the Rich problem on his walk to school. In a whole week he had seen the man only twice. Once to be sent chucklingly to the salt mines and once to be told with a mighty guffaw that he had ‘earned his spurs’ and was now ‘one of the little family’. At that rate it could take weeks to build up any kind of relationship and he did not have weeks. If murdering Ned was on someone’s agenda, there was no time to lose.

  Amiss knew himself to be a better than average judge of character, and he felt fairly confident he had the measure of Rich. What was imperative was to get the proportions of flattery and cheek right. And, of course, on the assumption that Rich was running some kind of shady outfit, an absence of curiosity and scruple could only be bonuses. Of course, he also needed something to sell him.

  He caught him just before nine. ‘Excuse me, Rich. Could we have a brief chat sometime today?’

  ‘What about, my dear man? Thought we’d fixed things up to your satisfaction.’

  ‘Yes, sure, but I need some advice.’

  ‘Not on matters of the heart, I trust,’ and the ‘har…har…har’ resounded around the building.