day it had been built out of the fortune old Admiral Eden had picked up in prize money back in Nelson's time.
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'... to keep the locals out—Eden never trusted the lower orders after the Spithead mutiny. And that was what attracted the first headmaster when the house became a school back in '28; only he was more concerned with keeping boys
Butler ran his eye along the wall. It was all of ten feet high and crowned with a line of vicious iron spikes which reminded Butler of the
'... Except such a barrier only serves as a challenge to a particular sub-species of boy. It only looks unclimbable: in reality I believe there are three recognised points of egress and at least two well-used entrances ...'
He followed the track along the foot of the wall until he reached the rhododendron tangle.
'. . . Young Wrightson's favourite place—I beat him for using it too obviously back in '35—the boy was a compulsive escaper. I believe the Germans found that out too. I've no doubt the branches there will be strong enough now to bear your weight...'
Like the pathway, the rhododendron limbs bore the evidence of regular use—the appropriate footholds were scarred and muddy—but the top of the wall was lost in the luxuriant foliage of a clump of Lawson cypresses growing on the other side of it.
Butler wedged himself securely in the rhododendron and gingerly felt for the hidden spikes in the cypress.
Once again the old man's intelligence was accurate: one spike was missing and others were safely bent to either side or downwards, presenting no crossing problems. And on the garden side the cypress offered both cover and a convenient natural ladder to the ground.
It was all very neat, ridiculously easy, thought Butler as he skirted the evergreens on the neatly-weeded path which led towards the school buildings. True, if the lodge-keeper had been prepared to let him into the school in the first place, in the headmaster's absence, it would not have been necessary at all. But then he would never have known where the old school records were kept, and that in itself justified the encounter with Dingle.
Except that the whole business smacked of the ridiculous : to be required at his age and seniority illegally to break into a boys' preparatory school like some petty burglar in order to trace the childish ailments and academic progress of one of its old pupils! It might be necessary. His instruction indicated that it might even be urgent. But it was not exactly dignified.
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He sighed and squinted up at the tiny attic windows, each in its miniature dormer. At least he. knew where he was going.
And at least, thanks to Dingle, he would be entering rather than crudely breaking in. Here was the wood-shed beside the changing room; and here, reposing innocently on the rafters, was the stout bamboo pole with the metal loop on the end which generations of late-returning masters (and possibly boys too) had used to gain entry.
He pushed open the tiny window: sure enough, it was possible to see the bolt on the back door six feet away. He eased the pole through and captured the knob of the bolt with the wire loop.
The changing room contained an encyclopedia of smells: sweaty feet and dirty clothes, dubbined leather and linseed oil and linament—the matured smell of compulsory games on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.
Through the changing room into the passage. The smell was subtly altering now, from athletic boy to scholastic boy: chalk and ink and books and God only knew what—floor polish maybe, and feet still (or perhaps the feet smell was the characteristic boy smell). It was a combined odour Butler remembered well, but with elements he could not recall nevertheless. Obviously there would be ingredients in a private boarding school, which opened its doors when money knocked, different from those in his old state grammar school. David Audley and young Roskill would know this smell better— perhaps that was why they had wanted to put Roskill on this scent.
Butler shook his head angrily and cleared his thoughts. Turn right, away from the classrooms, Dingle had said.
Abruptly he passed from an arched passageway into a lofty hall, with a sweeping staircase on his left.
This was the main entrance of the Hall itself—and there, where the staircase divided, was the Copley portrait of Admiral Eden himself still dominating it—the old fellow's grandfatherly expression strangely at odds with the desperate sea battle being fought in the picture's background. Perhaps he was attempting to compute his prize money. . . he was likely happier presiding over middle class schoolboys here than being gawped at in some museum by the descendants of the men he had so often flogged at the gratings.
Butler's footsteps echoed sharply as he strode across the marble floor and up the staircase. On the left the battle honours of Eden Hall.. .
and on the right, among the academic honours...
Cautiously Butler climbed higher. From marble staircase to mahogany parquet flooring; from mahogany floor to the solid oak of the second floor stairway. Next the polished oak of the dormitories—and there, dummy2.htm
on the left, the door to the attic stairs.
This one was locked, as Dingle had said it would be. But he had also said that the door was a feeble one, secured with a cheap lock and opening inwards on to a small landing of its own. So for once brute force seemed to be the proper recipe. Butler examined the door briefly, to pinpoint the exact target area. Then he took one pace back, balanced himself on his left leg and delivered a short, powerful blow with the flat of his heel alongside the doorknob.
Beyond the door there was another change of atmosphere, not so subtle and unrelated to the school itself: the varnished woodwork was cruder and the plaster rougher under the dust of ages. This was the entrance to the servants' world, the night staircase by which they had answered calls from the bedrooms below. And somewhere at the other end of the house would be a second stair leading from the attics directly down to the kitchen and the
