The Happier Dead Read Online Free PDF Page A

concentration. She looked like a work experience student, somebody’s niece shadowing for the day in the office. Her attractive presence filled him with the need to make conversation, to defuse any lingering sexual tension by asking her how her exams were going, or what she was doing for the summer, something to fix them both in the formal attitude of receptive youth and disinterested age. Yet in her manner there was all the assurance of earned authority.
    She had sat at the back of the room during Charles’s little piece, and several times, whilst the portly man sweated and worked the bellows of his charm, Oates had noticed him glance nervously over the heads of his audience, looking for the silent approbation behind them.
    When the talk was done Miranda walked to the front of the room and waited for the men to fall silent. It was impossible to deny the certainty of her expectation. Six rowdy constables who had been singing and joking moments before went quiet, and when she spoke she did so in a voice so low that the men strained forwards in their chairs to hear it. She thanked them for their attention and for the cooperation she was certain would be forthcoming, and reiterated that all the facilities of St Margaret’s were at their disposal. Oates half expected her to finish with a clipped ‘dismissed’, but when she was done speaking she simply sat back down in the chair behind the desk, and it was Charles who came forward to guide them to the room where the murder had taken place.
    “Not you, Detective Chief Inspector Oates,” this slip of a girl said, raising her voice over the rustle of rising bodies, “I would be grateful if you could remain behind.”
    The command was so peremptory that had it been made by a man, Oates would have walked right past him. Issuing forth from that girlish physique however, he simply obeyed. As they filed out, he saw some of his more junior colleagues smile and nudge one another. Bhupinder lingered by the door and looked back at him, though whether he was being supportive, or simply hoping to be included in what he imagined to be the grown-ups’ conversation, Oates could not have said. He guided Bhupinder towards the door with a nod, and Charles held it open. Oates and Miranda were left alone in the schoolroom. From outside could be heard shouting, and the explosion of youthful laughter, as one person chased breathlessly after another through the shadowy stone cloisters.
     
     
    “I WANTED TO apologise for the manner of your greeting.”
    “No harm done.”
    “We will get to the bottom of the confusion, but you came in by the service entrance rather than the front, and it appears the guards in the gatehouse saw your car and understood you were already period appropriate.”
    Oates thought of his rusted Ford; it had been almost fifteen years since he had bought it, second hand. The thought made him smile. Clearly for all the historical accuracy and scientific sophistication of the spa, they were unprepared for the intrusion of the genuinely broken-down and old-fashioned. The Met had given Oates a robocar, but it was forever in the shop, and he didn’t much mind. As far as he was concerned, a car should have a steering wheel, and he hated sitting in the front seat with his hands in his lap whilst a computer did the driving.
    “Do you have any questions for me in private?” she said.
    “About the case? There are some things I need to see to before we begin speaking to witnesses.”
    “About St Margaret’s.”
    During Charles’s talk, Oates had been examining the desk at which he sat. It had the look of good old oak, impregnated with youth and boredom, scented with dust. Someone had scratched their name with the tip of a compass into the wood. Had it been a student, or one of the designers of the Great Spa straining for authenticity? It occurred to him that the figures he had seen carved into the banister posts of the stairs were not old headmasters at all. There were no old