It's Murder at St. Basket's (15 page)

“Officer,” she boomed out, “frightfully good of you to bring this outrageous boy back. I'm terribly sorry he's been such a bother.”

“No trouble, M'am,” he said. “I got this ‘ere warrant for search of these premises,” and just as he got about that far two more police cars pulled up and a bunch of bobbies got out. She just stood there with her mouth open, staring at me like she'd wished she could kill me, her face puffing out and getting redder and redder as if it were going to swell up and burst like a balloon. And the next thing I knew, Leslie was coming out trying to act casual, but about to cry, and Margaret was just behind him sobbing like mad. And then when they carried David out on a stretcher, his eyes closed, and very sick, but still breathing, I began to cry myself. It was weak, but I couldn't help it.

So that was the end of it. They dug up poor old David's brother's bones from behind the carriage house, right where Mrs. Rabbit said they'd be. And of course they hauled the Grimes and Jaggers off to jail—the lockup, they call it in England—and the newspapers got onto the story, and finally there was a trial, and the whole thing came out.

What happened was that years before, Mr. Grime had lost a lot of money playing the stock market. To get even, he'd taken some of the school's money, but he had lost that, too. Well, they were desperate, they knew they'd have to close the school if they didn't get a lot of money somewhere; and once they closed the school it would all come out and they'd be in a lot of trouble and disgrace. So they decided to kidnap David's brother, because his father was rich. They hired Jaggers to do it, who wasn't really a games master at all, but an ex-con who'd been in jail a couple of times for stealing cars. Jaggers blindfolded David's brother, drove him around for a while and brought him back and hid him in the stable. Then one day he lost his temper the way he did, and hit David's brother with a stick or something and killed him. So then they gave out this phony story about David's brother running away. Mr. Choudhry trusted them, and when they asked for money to help with the search he gave it to them. When they'd got enough to pay off some of Mr. Grime's debts, they took some of David's clothes down to Margate and worked up the suicide story.

But
David didn't believe it. He told me later, “I knew my brother wouldn't commit suicide. I just knew it. He would never do anything like that. So I decided I would go to St. Basket's and find out. My father didn't want me to go, he hated the idea, but I told him if he sent me to some other school I would run away, and I would keep running away from schools until he sent me to St. Basket's. So finally he said I could try it for a year.”

So David signed up at St. Basket's under the name of Choudhry, which was one of his father's names, and began doing detective work. The trouble was that the Grimes suspected him. They had Jaggers keep a watch on him, and only a couple of weeks before all of this, Jaggers saw him go out behind the stable and start poking around with a stick.

That was enough for them. So Jaggers deliberately broke David's leg so he couldn't go to the police or run away and get his father or anything. Oh, they were clever. They were waiting until he got into a coma and couldn't talk and was about to die, and then they were going to take him to the hospital and let him die there: and nobody would know a thing. That was the reason why David didn't want to leave the school. He was afraid they'd kill him if he got to somewhere he could tell his father.

And you know how David found out where his brother was—of course you do. Mrs. Rabbit told him. After agonizing over it all those years, she decided to tell him to relieve her conscience. And then when she realized she'd gotten him into trouble, she told me, in hopes I would call the police. So she was the real hero of it, next to David, of course, and the papers made a big fuss over her. They had headlines like,
COULDN
'
T KEEP HER AWFUL SECRET ANY LONGER
, and naturally they got most of the facts wrong, the way the English papers always do. Right in the first story, it said, “Two brave English school children helped reopen a six-year-old murder case this morning, when they grew suspicious of activities at their school, and urged the father of one, Philip St. John Plainfield, stockbroker, of Kent, to go to police. The school children, Lester Plainfield and Margaret Barrows, were aided in their feat by a young Canadian visitor.” That was all there was about us in the whole thing.

But to tell the truth, I didn't much care. Mr. Plainfield took me down to Kent with Leslie, and called my father; and he flew over the next day. And I suppose you think that was the end of St. Basket's School for me? You don't know my father. I'm right back at the old stand—football, maths, and all the rest of it. Of course, there are a few changes, which help a lot. Jaggers is in jail for life so we've got a new games master called Smasher Fitz-Bircher. And of course the Grimes
are
in jail, too. Guess who's the new head? Shrimpton, of all people. He loves being head, too. He says things like, “Quincy, I am going to make a gentleman of you if it costs you your life,” and “Quincy, you blithering Yankee sod, I have never known a boy to rouse my sadistic nature so satisfactorily,” but it's all talk.

David didn't come back to school. You can't blame him. He goes to some school in Paris now. He came over to London once during the summer, but I was in New York on vacation, and didn't see him. He wrote me a letter, though, inviting me to visit him in Paris on the next Bank Holiday. Probably we'll get more champagne.

My campaign to get Margaret to stop being good all the time is beginning to work out. The way I explained it to her was, “Look here, Margaret, the Grimes were breaking all kinds of rules, and so was Jaggers. Why should we obey the rules when they don't?” That kind of got her, and I noticed that a couple of days ago she got into an argument with Shrimpton about the math homework. She didn't win, but at least she argued.

We've got two new kids in the dorm now, but otherwise everything's the same. That's the thing you've got to understand about the English: they don't let anything change. They can have a war or a murder or go broke or any kind of trouble you can name, and still they go on the same. So here Leslie and I are in the same dorm, with our stuff dumped all over the place in our traditional way. We've just come up from supper, which was the usual slop, shepherd's pie and pale peas and some buns that weren't much good for eating, but weren't too bad for throwing purposes. Leslie and I got up a contest to see if we could throw a bun so the other person would have to catch it on the butter side, but Mrs. Rabbit waddled out and said, “ ‘Ere, you lot, stop it or no sweet. Poor Mrs. Rabbit.”

And now I'm sitting at my same old desk, with my same old ancient St. Basket's textbooks junked around, writing this. I'm glad it's finished, too. I hope you don't think I'm doing this for fun? Shrimpton told me I had to write something as a punishment, and so I decided to write about what a wreck St. Basket's was; but it got too long. It's pretty tough writing this much stuff, even when it's about yourself and you can throw in a few boasts. And now at last I can put

THE END

Oh yes, I forgot. David's father bought me a Swiss Army knife—the kind that costs five
pounds,
tenpence.

THE END