Elementary Murder Read online

  Miss Gadsworth moved away from the front of the classroom and began to walk between the rows of desks. She raised a hand and pointed to a small girl seated halfway along.

  ‘Name?’

  ‘Elizabeth Paxford, miss,’ the girl replied in a faint voice.

  ‘Elizabeth. I want you to tell me what you want to be when you grow up.’

  The girl looked at her curiously.

  ‘Do you understand me, girl?’

  ‘Miss?’

  ‘Well? What do you want to be?’

  It was clear that the girl was under great pressure, for her cheeks reddened and she looked down at her desk.

  Undaunted, Miss Gadsworth pointed to a young boy seated at the back of the class, a few feet away from Mr Tollet.

  ‘You. What is your name?’

  ‘Albert Parkinson.’

  ‘Miss,’ she added as a reminder of his manners.

  ‘Miss Albert Parkinson,’ came the instant reply to an accompaniment of sniggers.

  The hopeful applicant took a deep breath, glanced to the rear of the classroom where the headmaster and school inspector sat with expressionless faces.

  ‘And what do you want to be when you grow up, Albert?’

  The boy looked at a red-haired boy near him and said loudly, ‘A carrot, miss. Just like Billy.’

  There was general laughter, which threatened to reach a riotous crescendo until Mr Weston stepped forward and gave the joker a resounding slap around the head.

  The headmaster gave a paternalistic sigh.

  ‘She made two basic mistakes, Sergeant. After the lesson – which went off quite well after that wicked boy’s attempts to derail it – I told Miss Gadsworth that she must always remain at the front of the classroom, either seated at her table or standing behind it. That provides a commanding focus of attention, and she can see at a glance any child who fidgets or otherwise misbehaves. A lighthouse, I told her, never moves but shines its light in all directions. A warning and a guide. That is what she must be. Secondly, a teacher must never try to make conversation with the children. They aren’t her friends, they are her charges. A lighthouse may benefit all within its compass, shall we say, but it never encourages vessels to sail close. I mean, asking them what they wish to be? It encourages dissatisfaction. Besides which, the question was superfluous.’

  ‘Why?’ Brennan asked.

  ‘For the simple reason that there is very little doubt about these children’s futures. Mapped out, Sergeant. The girls will work in the mills and get married and have children of their own, or they’ll work on the pit brow screening coal and wearing those ridiculous trousers. The boys will go down the mines or work at the iron works. One or two might even run away to join the army. Why encourage flights of unreachable fancy?’

  Brennan had a fleeting image of his own six-year-old son Barry and the dreams he had spoken of.

  ‘She should have made them recite their times tables,’ the headmaster went on. ‘Much more productive. And harmonious.’

  Brennan shifted in his chair. He wasn’t here for a lesson on lessons.

  ‘You said Miss Gadsworth fainted?’

  ‘Yes, indeed. After her lesson I left her in the staffroom and asked Miss Rodley – whose class she would have been taking over – to speak with her and give her some words of encouragement. Miss Mason and Mr Edgar were already there – they are in charge of Standards 1 and 5 respectively – and they made a very pleasant table fortified by tea and coffee. By this time it was playtime and all the children were outdoors. The boys in their playground and the girls in theirs, of course. Miss Gadsworth seemed to be getting along with everyone. So I left to have a word with our school manager Reverend Pearl, who had arrived a few minutes earlier and whom I had left looking after Mr Tollet.’

  ‘And who’s Mr Tollet in charge of?’

  Mr Weston gave a wry smile.

  ‘I suppose in a way the answer is all of us.’

  Brennan frowned, so Mr Weston explained.

  ‘Mr Tollet is our school inspector. Occasionally we’re graced with an inspection. It was just unfortunate that poor Miss Gadsworth chose the moment we entered the staffroom to faint. Mr Tollet was most gracious – indeed, most concerned for her welfare. He ordered her to be laid flat on the floor of the staffroom and the windows opened. She recovered enough to ask if she might be excused for half an hour to take some air.’ He gave a half-smile. ‘She hadn’t spent much time in this town, obviously.’

  Ignoring the condescending attitude to his town, Brennan asked, ‘She left the school?’

  ‘And returned within the half hour, looking a little more composed. Mr Tollet later assured me that the incident would form no part of his report. Out of respect for his position I asked if he wished to sit in on the interview later in the day. I would have welcomed his views on the girl. But he pleaded a prior engagement. Of course by that time …’

  The headmaster spread his hands open and left the rest of the sentence unspoken.

  ‘By that time, what?’

  ‘Well, considering she was an applicant for a position here, it would have been unseemly to confirm her appointment.’

  ‘Why?’

  Weston seemed to take umbrage at the question. ‘Apart from her initial lack of firmness in the classroom, and although she acquitted herself quite ably for the remainder of the lesson, it would have been folly itself to appoint someone who fainted in front of a school inspector. What would that say about our judgement of character, Sergeant? The Lord Himself knows what she would have done if he had agreed to stay for the interview. Perhaps a more histrionic attack of the vapours?’

  Brennan, who found himself now feeling a certain sympathy for the deceased, shook his head. Mr Weston took that as an affirmation.

  ‘I would be grateful if you could give me a list of all those staff who came into contact with Miss Gadsworth.’

  ‘Might I ask why, Sergeant?’

  ‘Because I wish to speak with them.’

  The headmaster flushed. ‘What I meant was, why do you wish to speak with them?’

  ‘Because I have a desire to,’ Brennan replied with a smile.

  The expression on Mr Weston’s face contained elements of shock, outrage and protest. Clearly, he was unaccustomed to such prevarication in his own office. When he spoke, his lips barely moved.

  ‘I shall furnish you with a list, Sergeant. Of course. Though as to why you should wish to prolong this unfortunate incident … However, may I ask that you speak with my staff when school finishes for the day at five o’clock? The school is already facing disruption.’

  Brennan considered the request and gave a nod. ‘And the address of the school inspector, Mr Tollet.’

  Mr Weston stood up. ‘Is that really necessary?’

  ‘Part of the investigation. No stone unturned.’

  ‘But an investigation into what, for goodness’ sake? The poor woman was obviously distraught at failing her interview and came back here to take her own life. There is absolutely no need to bring Mr Tollet into this. No need whatsoever.’

  Brennan, too, stood up. ‘We’ll see. And now I’ll set about my business while you set about yours. I can hear the children getting restless.’

  As he opened the door he paused and turned. ‘Just one more thing, Mr Weston. Out of interest.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Once your caretaker found the woman’s body and reported his gruesome discovery to you, why didn’t you close the entire school? It would have made our job all the easier.’

  The headmaster smiled at last. ‘My responsibility is to look after the pupils in my charge, Sergeant, not clear the way for what appears to be unnecessary officiousness. Besides, letting them loose at nine in the morning would create far more work for you and your constables than you could ever imagine. Think of a pack of monkeys swinging around the market hall, not to mention the howl of anger from parents who’d got rid of them till midday. I took the decision with the full support of Reverend P
earl who was here this morning.’

  ‘So I gather. He took the staff back to the staffroom.’

  ‘Yes. The sight of that poor girl was most distressing.’

  ‘The reverend didn’t stay?’

  ‘Why should he? Once we’d secured the room, there was no reason for him to stay. He had only come to discuss the inspector’s visit, and we could hardly do that with a dead body down the corridor. Besides, he had parish duties to perform.’

  Brennan grunted and stroked his moustache. ‘This afternoon will do, Mr Weston.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘The list of people who met Miss Gadsworth. If you could ask your staff to remain behind when school ends.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh, and that will be a good time to pick up Mr Tollet’s address.’

  Brennan could see the man’s hands were now shaking as he leant on his desk for support, and he was almost through the door when the headmaster called out, ‘You never answered my question. An investigation into what?’

  ‘The circumstances of Miss Gadsworth’s death.’

  ‘But I thought she had taken her own life. Surely the evidence …’

  ‘A possibility, of course. And from the blue colouring of her skin and lips I’d say it was poison of some kind.’

  ‘There you are then.’

  ‘But I have some questions first, Mr Weston. Before I can accuse the poor woman of suicide.’

  ‘Questions? What sort of questions?’

  ‘The sort that need answering. And if you’ll …’

  The detective’s sentence was left unfinished. There was a sudden commotion from outside. And in the midst of a tremendous cheering and screaming from what sounded like the hordes from hell, he could hear Constable Jaggery’s ferocious roar, threatening to rattle the arse of anyone who threw another thing.

  Albert Parkinson was ten years old. Along with the rest of the school, he’d watched as the policemen carried out a long wooden box with grim expressions on their faces. It was obvious what the box contained. Some of the girls had begun to whimper, prompting the lads to sneer at them and warn them that the body in the box would rise up any second and eat them.

  The girls had screamed and hugged each other for protection.

  Soft sods.

  Every Wednesday, instead of going to school, he helped his uncle deliver coal, heaving hundredweight bags from the back of the cart and dragging them along the back alleyways to make his delivery. It was grimy work, coal dust often billowing from the badly-tied bags, and gave him a cough which he never seemed able to get rid of. The work, though, gave him a sturdy physique, which, along with his usual surliness, meant the other pupils at George Street kept a wary distance from him, unless he saw fit to include them in his occasional bouts of mischief. In which case many of them became his temporary if reluctant allies, unwilling to endure his wrath if they refused him. He took particular delight in ridiculing Billy Kelly, who was the only one in the class with red hair, and who was also the only one to stand up to him. Not that it did him much good: such defiance usually ended with Albert triumphant and Billy in tears. But Billy had always been told by his dad to fight back if anyone picked on him, and he knew that any reports of cowardice would get back to him – Billy was much more afraid of his dad’s temper than Albert Parkinson’s thuggery. Sometimes he even gave a good account of himself. Trouble was, Albert’s strength far outweighed Billy’s courage.

  But Billy hadn’t shown up at school this morning, a fact that required some elaboration as they waited for permission to enter the school building.

  ‘Cos I snotted him Friday night. Ran off like a mouse, skrikin’. That’s why ’e daren’t show ’is face, the gingerknob bastard. That right, Joe?’

  In such scathing tones Albert dismissed his arch-rival’s absence: there was room for only one cock of the school.

  The other boys looked at Albert’s right-hand pal, Joe Marshall, a small ferret-faced child with a permanently glistening nose and a fierce temper. None of the others had witnessed the altercation, and it fell upon young Joe to offer confirmation.

  ‘Aye. Like a mouse. Albert snotted ’im all right.’

  There was a communal groan. It was a great pity they’d missed all the fun.

  With this most recent testimonial to his ruthlessness, Albert urged several of the boys to leave the school entrance, where the large policeman stood guard scowling at them like a gargoyle, and follow him to the rear of the building, to the trapdoor that led down into the cellar where the coal was stored for the classroom stoves. The lock on the door was faulty. Everyone knew that. The plan was simple: each boy was to fill his fists with lumps of coal and return to the front of the building where they would hurl their missiles at the uniformed bully stopping them from entering.

  He lifted the trapdoor and ushered them down. Once their clogs were crunching the coal beneath them, he gave his rallying call to his troops. ‘It’s our bloody school. He cawn’t stop us gooin’ in. Fat bastard.’

  Some of them nodded, more in agreement with his depiction of Constable Jaggery than their leader’s uncharacteristic desire to enter the building. Outside was much more fun.

  ‘Besides,’ Albert added, standing atop the mound of coal and now appealing to their sense of family loyalty. ‘Them bastards battered me dad in the lockout last year. Be bloody good if we clod some o’ these at ’em!’

  He held up the lumps of coal in his fists. They all nodded at the retributive fitness of such missiles, each one of them mindful of the darkest period in their lives the previous year when the five-month miners’ strike almost brought the town to its knees, and hunger ran rampant. Several of their fathers had been involved in various scuffles with the police, and they had long, vengeful memories. But it was the hunger they remembered the most.

  He watched the others clamber up the coal pile and into the bright morning air and followed them more slowly.

  He gripped the two lumps of coal and felt the black grit bite into the palms of his hands. As he strolled purposefully now towards the front of the school, a smile slowly spread across his face.

  The three men moved with exaggerated slowness, weighed down by the cumbersome protective clothing they were forced to wear. Each of them was clad in thick iron boots, barely visible beneath the wide leather aprons and the shin guards that restricted their movements as they approached the strangely-shaped puddling furnace. The heat in the large workshop at the Cartwright’s Rolling Mill was intense.

  Tommy Kelly, the principal shingler of the three, felt the ferocity of the furnace’s heat more than the others, not least because of how he was seething inside. He cut a large, almost superhuman figure beneath the clothing, an impression enhanced by the square mask of iron with its narrow slits for his eyes that made his head appear to sprout impossibly from his broad shoulders and bypass altogether the bull neck that lay beneath.

  It was Tommy’s job, now that the pig iron inside the furnace had finally become molten, to damp down the fire that had burnt with such ferociousness before stirring the iron with a puddling bar in order to allow as much air to reach it as possible, while at the same time ensuring it kept well clear of the carbon from the flames.

  He forced the bar into the well of the furnace with more than usual vigour and scuttled it around to disperse the molten iron, feeling the sweat pour down his forehead and into his eyes. He cursed out loud at his inability to wipe away the salty sting that blurred his vision.

  The two other men, standing a few yards behind him with their heads free of the stifling iron headgear, gave each other knowing glances. They knew better than to speak to Tommy when he was in such a mood, although they knew full well what was causing it. It had nothing to do with the heat, or the strained effort it needed to puddle the iron sufficiently. No, they’d been told at the beginning of their shift that morning what had put the big fella in such a ‘heat’.

  ‘Shithouses!’ he had said to them as they booked in at seven that morning.<
br />
  ‘Who, Tommy?’ one of them had asked in a voice that carried a slight tremble of uncertainty.

  ‘They’ll not speak to my missis like that again in a fuckin’ hurry! Sendin’ the bloody police round cos she made a stink.’

  The others had looked at each other with smiles of relief, happy in the knowledge that it would be the pig iron, and not they, who would suffer the big man’s wrath.

  Later, as the three of them sat in the small yard outside the workhouse and ate their snap, he seemed to have brought his temper under control.

  ‘Can be a little swine, our Billy, I know that. But yon bloody headmaster’s gettin’ too big for his boots. Needs choppin’ down.’

  ‘They’re all t’same,’ said Gilbert Barlow. ‘Put ’em in a suit an’ they reckon they’re a cut above the likes of us.’

  ‘Aye,’ Fred Dunn added. ‘He wipes his arse like the rest of us.’

  ‘I’ll wipe his arse wi’ me puddlin’ bar if he talks to my Edith like that again.’

  Then all three of them laughed at the vision big Tommy’s words had conjured up. After a few minutes’ silence, the big man spoke again, this time with a surprisingly low voice, as if he were afraid of being overheard.

  ‘T’wife reckons that’s why he’s done it, all this trouble at school.’

  ‘Done what, Tommy?’

  ‘Our Billy. T’wife reckons ’e’s ’ad enough.’

  ‘Aye, but what’s ’e done?’

  Tommy Kelly swirled a mouthful of cold tea around his mouth to clear the remains of his egg butty, spat it out and watched as it soaked into the ground.

  ‘Our Billy buggered off Friday night. Not seen the little sod since.’

  CHAPTER TWO

  One of the problems of meeting with the Chief Constable of Wigan, Captain Bell, was the unpredictability of his moods. Normally a stern, rather humourless figure who ruled the force with a military firmness, he nevertheless drifted off occasionally into a more reflective state of mind. Today was one such occasion.