Tom Brown's Body

He had taken the head in his own hands and so presented it to Mr Wyck. Mrs Bradley was not on view. She spent most of the day and took all her meals in the little upstairs study which Mrs Wyck allotted to her. She would have liked to be present when Mr Loveday brought along the idol's head, but she was dependent upon what Mr Wyck could tell her of the interview. According to Mr Wyck the meeting had produced a conversation which he reconstructed (verbatim, he thought) for Mrs Bradley's benefit.

'Ah, good afternoon, Headmaster.'

'Good afternoon, Loveday. Good heavens! You haven't found it?'

'Well,' said Mr Loveday, pleased at the Headmaster's tone. 'It does begin to look a little like it. We shall need to display it to the boys who saw it, I imagine.'

'But where did you find it?'

'Of all places,' Mr Loveday replied gaily, 'in my furnace-hole – the Roman Bath, you know.'

'Really! But the – but that had already been searched.'

'Anyhow, there it was, and I have my knife-and-boot-boy for witness.'

'Oh, really!' said Mr Wyck, laughing. 'I see no need of a witness for your statement, my dear fellow. Of course, had it not been for the dastardly attack on Mrs Poundbury, an assault which appears to have been committed by this person who wore the mask, the affair could be dealt with differently. As it is, I must at once get in touch with the police, and hand your fact over to them.'

This he did, and Gavin came immediately. His first response was to ask for Issacher and little Ingpen again. Both were reassured and were informed that they were helping the police. Then the conditions under which they had seen the horror were reproduced. The School Hall was reduced to darkness, the stage lighting went on, and the idol's head, on top of the bamboo safety hook borrowed from the School bath, was placed in the wings where Issacher said he had seen it. Then Ingpen was shown the head. Both boys declared, independently, that it was the one they had seen at the School Concert.

Mrs Bradley carried out her plan of affecting to leave Spey a few days before the end of term, and she went so far as to go to London after she had made her farewells. She came back immediately, however, and smuggled herself into the Headmaster's House under cover of a particularly black December night.

Mr Wyck, she thought, seemed distrait, and Mrs Wyck's almost over-warm welcome was a sign of overwrought nerves. It soon came out that a governor's meeting had been fixed for the first day of the Christmas vacation, and that some searching questions would be asked to which Mr Wyck would be unable to make any reply which would be even remotely satisfactory either to himself or to the governing body.

'I shall attend that meeting,' said Mrs Bradley, 'and you had better refer the questioners to me. What line do you expect the governors to take?'

Mr Wyck looked astounded, but Mrs Wyck said quickly:

'General school discipline, of course. It's a sitter for Christopher's opponents. Some of the governors, Beatrice, as you already know, are very jealous and reactionary. They don't like Christopher's reforms and they think he is much too gentle and moderate. They would be glad to give him a setting down about the discipline. They couldn't do much about Gerald Conway's death, as it is not possible to prove that it even occurred on School premises, but this business of Carola Poundbury will be so much meat and drink to the brutes! They'll be bound to point out that all the evidence we've been able to accumulate points to an attack on her by one of the boys. And, also, of course,' she added, with the naive candour which Mrs Bradley found so helpful, 'if any of the other nonsense comes out, we're sunk, and Christopher will resign.'

'But Christopher can scarcely be held responsible for the fact that Mr Conway was the cat among the pigeons,' Mrs Bradley observed, correctly interpreting 'the nonsense' and regarding the gloomy Mr Wyck with compassion, 'particularly since he was not pleased at Mr Conway's appointment.'

'Pleased!' snorted Mr Wyck. 'I was against it from the first, and I told the governors so. An 18B man has no place, in my opinion, in a school of any type, but particularly he has no place in a school where boys are resident and are largely divorced from outside interests and preoccupations. Nevertheless, as Grace says, if the scandal he seems to have caused should really come out, I should have no option but to resign. I thought it was coming out at the last meeting. It would all sound much worse now.'

'By the way,' said Mrs Bradley, without contesting this, 'there is a small, a very small, feature of the case which preys on my mind to a rather uncomfortable extent. Did you ever hear of the lampoon which was launched, some little time ago, at Mr Kay?'

'Oh, you mean Louis the Spiv,' said Mrs Wyck. 'Yes, we did hear it. Carola Poundbury told it me. Why?'

'Well,' said Mrs Bradley, 'Issacher claims authorship.'

'He would!' exclaimed Mrs Wyck. 'I detest that boy! He's a rat!'

'Your views interest me. Am I to understand, then, that the author is neither anonymous nor Issacher?'

'The doggerel in question,' said Mr Wyck, with a faint smile, 'was composed and disseminated by Micklethwaite, of the Fourth Classical.'

'All his own work, do you suppose?' Mrs Bradley enquired.

'You mean the sophisticated wit would indicate a mature mentality?' asked Mr Wyck, laughing outright. 'The boy, as a matter of fact,' he added at once, 'is not without gifts. Some of his more sober and reputable efforts have appeared in the School magazine.' He went out of the room and returned with a portfolio. 'I've kept a copy of each number,' he continued. He sorted through the magazines and soon came upon the one he wanted. 'This is his best effort, up to date. I think it, really, rather good.'

'A sonnet?' Mrs Bradley exclaimed. 'He flies high!' She read the poem slowly through. 'If one of us should die and that one me – addressed to his mother, I see.'

'She is a widow,' said Mr Wyck, 'and he is the only child. His father was killed at El Alamein.'

'Hm!' said Mrs Bradley. 'She breaks our beauty-bond who grieves; More than a prince's pall have I, Who lie beneath the lovely leaves' She handed back the magazine and repeated softly: 'Louis the Spiv, Had not the right to live; Like every other skunk, He stunk. Rather a morbid preoccupation with death, wouldn't you say?'

'Good heavens, no!' cried Mr Wyck violently. 'That's the worst of you psychiatrists. Even a joke indicates morbid preoccupations to you!'

'It often does indicate morbid preoccupations,' said Mrs Bradley mildly, 'particularly if it is a practical joke.'

'I do not regard what is called a practical joke as a joke,' said Mr Wyck. 'It is often cruelty very thinly disguised, and it is always stupid. Take this last example we have had –'

'Yes, I wanted to,' said Mrs Bradley, meekly.

'Detective-Inspector Gavin is hoping to be able to take a statement from Mrs Poundbury to-morrow,' said Mrs Wyck. 'I am hoping that she will be able to tell exactly what happened and when.'

'I will prophesy,' said Mrs Bradley, 'that she will only be able to tell us when it happened. She will not, in my opinion, have the slightest idea of the identity of her assailant, or, if she has, she will not confide it to us.'

This melancholy prophecy proved true. Mrs Bradley remained in strict seclusion all next day, and at four in the afternoon Gavin came over to the School House to report that, according to Mrs Poundbury, she had been struck on the head from behind just as she was going down to the property cupboard for the pail which was required in the last play and which had been forgotten. She had gone herself because all her stage-hands were at that time in the auditorium, and her husband, who acted as stage manager, was not available, either, because he had been making up the lad Cooke a little more heavily than Mrs Poundbury had already made him up.

'So that's that. And she didn't see the second idol,' said Gavin. 'In other words, we've lost a couple of days waiting for a statement which doesn't get us any further forward.'

'It gets us further forward if by any chance Mr Poundbury was not engaged in making up Cooke,' said Mr Wyck. 'I suggest that we see Cooke at once.'

'How many of the Housemasters live in their Houses during the vacations?' asked Mrs Bradley, most obviously changing the subject.

'None of them. My wife and I will be here for part of the time, but nobody else except the servants.'

'Doesn't look as though it will help to see this boy Cooke,' said Gavin, thoughtfully. 'The chances are, he's like Issacher, and won't give Poundbury away.'