Death at Hallows End Read Online Free Page B

Monday, the day on which Duncan Humby had left his partner in order to go to Hallows End, had been a clear September afternoon, he remembered, and later as he walked home from a friend’s house, Carolus had noted a bright sky with the stars unhidden by clouds. Wherever Humby had been that evening, his movement had not been concealed by the weather, unless it was very different at Hallows End.
    He reached his comfortable little house to find Mrs. Stick, his housekeeper, in some agitation.
    â€œWherever have you been, sir?” she asked. “I’ve phoned everywhere likely and couldn’t get word of you anywhere. The Headmaster’s been ringing up every half hour or so. He sounds as if he’s in a state.”
    Carolus, whose position as Senior History Master at the Queen’s School, Newminster, had never yet prevented him from undertaking an investigation, nodded calmly.
    â€œIf he phones again, tell him I’ve come in.”
    â€œThere it goes now,” said Mrs. Stick, a small resolute-looking woman with steel-rimmed glasses and a thin mouth. “That’s him, for certain.” She hurried to the receiver. “Yes, sir. He’s just come in. No, I’m sure he’d be pleased. Five minutes? All right. I’ll tell him.” She turned to Carolus. “He’s coming round at once,” she said as though she was announcing Nemesis herself.

C HAPTER T HREE
    C AROLUS D EENE WAS AN odd kind of schoolmaster and it was his conscience, or something very like it, which kept him to the grindstone. A commando officer during the war, he had lost his young wife in an air raid and had returned to what at first seemed a lonely and meaningless existence. He had inherited a large private income, but he did not attempt to live on it idly. He decided to teach, thus filling his empty days with timetables and textbooks, tiresome pupils and breaks in the common room, a routine which he varied only when a chance came to exploit his flair for the investigation of crime.
    He had discovered this flair in himself by writing a book called
Who Killed William Rufus? And Other Mysteries of History,
in which he applied the methods of modern criminal investigation to certain historical events with lucid and sometimes startling results. From this academic diversion he had been drawn to look into a local murder which a friendly CID officer was investigating, and from there he had never looked back. Slight, taut, rather good-looking and elegantly turned out, he was a well-known figure in Newminster. As a schoolmaster he was more popular with the boys than with other members of the staff who were inclined to resent his wealth and the Bentley Continental he drove.
    The Headmaster, a large portly man named Hugh Gorringer, appreciated Carolus’s ability as a teacher but was frequently alarmed by his involvement in sordid crime that he feared would bring Carolus’s name unpleasantly into newspapers and “smirch,” as he put it, “the good name of the Queen’s School.” Mr. Gorringer’s own redundant and cliche-ridden speech had become familiar to Carolus who found it, if anything, rather endearing. He treasured many of Mr. Gorringer’s more resounding pomposities.
    This evening Mr. Gorringer was breathless as he entered Carolus’s sitting-room, and his large hairy ears were crimson with cold or dyspepsia, Carolus frequently wondered which. His protuberant eyes were wide.
    â€œAh, Deene,” he said. “I am relieved to find you have returned. Alarming news, my dear fellow, alarming news. Duncan Humby has not been seen for four days.”
    â€œThree,” said Carolus.
    â€œYou know, then? It is more than distressing. He was not only the father of one of our Old Boys, but had recently joined the Board of Governors. Any scandal that touches him touches the school.”
    â€œDo sit down, Headmaster. What will you drink?”
    â€œYou know I seldom