Tom Brown's Body

Inspector?'

Everybody looked astounded, for this was not the Poundbury they knew. Mr Reeder went so far as to enquire of Mrs Bradley in a stage whisper:

'What's all this? Have you been playing one of your tricks on him, as you did on young Takhobali?'

'No, no,' Mrs Bradley replied. 'His nerves have had a rest and a change, that's all.'

'If you're talking about my hitting my wife over the head, you're an old ass, Reeder,' said Mr Poundbury genially. 'Now, then, someone, give me my cue.'

'Very well,' said Mr Loveday, breaking the strange silence which succeeded Mr Poundbury's remarks. 'Here it is, so far as I can remember: 'It's time we thought of some better way of managing boys than by beating them and putting them in Detention.' Then I think I said something rather insulting about poor Conway's form-room methods and he retorted by mentioning Mr A. S. Neill, the progressive schoolmaster whose life-work, as you probably know, has revolutionized what we are pleased to call discipline. Nobody who has read his enlightened books . . .'

'Oh, no, Loveday! That was a much earlier conversation!' cried Mr Semple. Mr Loveday looked annoyed and then confused.

'Yes, yes,' he said feebly. 'Yes, so it was. Oh, dear!'

'What you said was something about wasting time in term which ought to be devoted to the interests of the School. You said –'

'My turn,' said Mr Poundbury. 'Here you are: 'Go and work it off somewhere else, Loveday, old dear. I can't help it if your wretched puppies . . .''

'Whelps,' amended Mr Johnson, grinning. 'And then Loveday knocked the system of evening prep, as usual, didn't you, Loveday, and –'

'And talked about 'competent teaching' again. You were damned rude, you know,' said Mr Reeder.

'Was I! I know he mentioned bats and moles,' said Mr Loveday. 'Not that I bear the poor fellow any malice now, of course, but he used to try me high. He talked about my Roman Bath, too, in a most improper and, sometimes, a most indelicate manner. You were all witnesses,' he added. 'I remember, on one occasion . . .'

'Yes, it must have been most provoking,' said Mrs Bradley. 'Go on, Mr Poundbury.'

'Not until I get my cue,' said Mr Poundbury. 'Come on, Loveday. You must remember what you said next.'

'I think I do. I expect,' said Mr Loveday, with a nervous and propitiatory smile, 'that I mentioned my Roman Bath once more.'

'Mentioned it! I should think you nearly drowned the fellow in it!' said Mr Reeder. 'Oh, Lord! Sorry! Tongue running away with me, as usual.'

'It certainly is,' said Mr Mayhew. 'And I should like to say, in this connexion, that I personally consider these proceedings to be farcical. We can gain nothing by this muckraking . . .'

'Except some useful pointers to Conway's murderers,' said Gavin.

'Murderers!' The plural was passed from one master to another until it came to Mr Kay, who was standing in a very inconspicuous position just inside the doorway, almost hidden behind the massive and Olympian Mr Semple.

'Of course it was the work of more than one person!' said Mr Kay. 'Anybody but an idiot would have seen that from the beginning.'

'Hullo, Kay!' said Johnson. 'What axe you doing here? You don't usually favour us with your company after dinner.'

'I've as much right in the Common Room as you have!' was Mr Kay's angry retort. 'Some of you clean-run Englishmen think everybody stinks except yourselves!'

'Gentlemen, please!' said the Bursar urgently.

'All right, I've got my cue, I think,' said Mr Poundbury. 'I'm afraid I can't repeat the whole speech verbatim: it amounted to a description of Loveday's House by Conway. He said Loveday's boys ran out and about at nights exactly as they pleased, stole his property – his bicycle I suppose was meant – and, as usual, said that his House were lazy, dirty, and slack, and finished up . . .'

'No, no!' cried Mr Loveday, in great agitation. 'I won't listen to that again! It cannot and must not be repeated. I cannot have my sister insulted!'

'But it wasn't his sister who was insulted. It was Loveday himself,' said Mr Semple. 'And, anyway, that was the former time again, wasn't it?'

Mr Loveday rushed out of the room. There was no sound for a moment but the embarrassed shuffling of the younger masters' feet and Mr Reeder's dry cough.

'Go on, Mr Poundbury,' said Mrs Bradley.

'I think that was about all. After that, the conversation broke out generally.'

'And then?'

'Oh, well, Loveday didn't rush out, of course. There wasn't any worse row between them than usual. It was just that the conversation turned on to Scrupe and the cockerel –'

'Yes, I began that bit,' said Mr Reeder proudly, 'and Loveday said that he didn't believe in fisticuffs, and Conway took that up. And soon after that, Pearson walked in with his champagne and startled us all into a fit.'

'How did Conway take the champagne and compliments?' enquired Gavin.

'Well, that's the strange part,' said Mr Reeder, in his gossiping way. 'The chap seemed completely at sea. Didn't seem to know what the congratulations were about. However, he rallied himself, more or less. Old Pearson seemed a bit queer, though, I thought. Looked like a walking corpse trying to laugh at its own death, if you can follow me.'

'Interesting,' said Mrs Bradley, in mild understatement, when the Common Room meeting was reported to her.

'Oh, yes, there's no doubt about Pearson,' said Gavin seriously, 'except that I can't see why Mrs Poundbury had to be knocked on the head and the note taken from her.'

'We should have to see the note to know why she was knocked on the head,' said Mrs Bradley. 'And the note, of course, has been destroyed.'

'I'd like to know what was in it,' said Gavin wistfully.

'Well, arrest Mr Loveday, or some other innocent person, and see what happens,' suggested Mrs Bradley carelessly. Gavin looked at her.

'You've got an idea about the note, haven't you?' he said. 'What is it?'

'It is not about the note. I can guess what that was about. I think the boy Micklethwaite knows more than he has told us, though, about the night of the murder.'

'Do you, by Jove!'

'Yes.'

'What would loosen his tongue? Any good springing it on him, and demanding that he tell us?'

'Would that have worked with you when you were fifteen or sixteen?'

'No, it wouldn't. I was shockproof. Most boys are.'

'Then we must bluff. Let us look at the facts of the death once more. The body was found at some distance from the water. The man had been drowned. He had also been knocked on the head. We have assumed – and the medical evidence at the inquest bears us out – that Conway was stunned –'

'Probably never even knew who hit him –'

'And then his unconscious body was dumped into water. By the other marks it seems likely that a heavy weight was tied round his neck to keep him under. Now what we have to look for and to find is a swimmer sufficiently accomplished to remain under water long enough to release the dead body from the weight and to bring the body and the weight severally to the surface.'

'Then comes the business of transporting the body to Kay's cottage garden, though,' said Gavin. 'We still don't know how that was done, and he was lying right on a flowerbed, you know.'

'I do know. I have turned the question over in my mind from the very beginning. What do you say to those stilts?'

'Eh?'

'The appurtenances used to give height to the second idol.'