The School of English Murder Read Online Free PDF Page A

for their Sunday lunch. Only the prevalent good humour compensated for the sheer physical demands of the job. So far Amiss had had no dispute with customers except over his refusal to allow them all to buy drinks for him and by now he had perfected a line of banter that disarmed all but the most truculent troublemaker. His evident enjoyment of superficially anti-English leg-pulling had won him great support among the regulars, so he could always count on one of them stepping in to tell off a compatriot who was making a nuisance of himself.
    When the last customer had left mournfully for home, Amiss helped to clean up, was fed a hearty plate of beef, cabbage and potatoes by Mrs O’Hara, and had cash pressed into his hand by her husband with a request to help out the same evening. Only the previous night he had been moaning to Pooley about the impossibility of avoiding entanglement in the black economy: all casual bar work he knew of was cash in hand. His choice was simple: refuse the job or take the cash. The alternative course — to shop the O’Haras to Inland Revenue — failed to appeal.
    When he left the premises at four, he decided on a walk. He felt resigned rather than surprised when he realised he was heading towards Knightsbridge.
    It didn’t take him long to find the address Pooley had given him. The Knightsbridge School of English was in a quiet side street about five minutes from Hyde Park. Amiss was surprised at the pleasantness of the location and the excellent state of repair of the beautifully-proportioned Georgian building: it seemed seriously out of keeping with the image he had formed of an ageing leftie, bike-riding principal.
    He stood reading the two notices on the neat, glass-covered board outside. One invited students to take English courses on a shift-system: 9.00-12.00, 2.00-5.00 or 7.00-10.00. Each course ran for ten weeks and to his surprise seemed to work out at only about two pounds an hour. The second notice stated simply that there was a vacancy for a teacher of English as a Foreign Language.
    As he was about to turn away, the front door of the building opened. A balding man with a wispy beard emerged, struggling to manoeuvre his bicycle through the door without injuring the paintwork, the machine or himself. Shit, thought Amiss, if he sees me now he might recognise me if I turn up tomorrow and it’ll seem odd. Without any further pause and stifling the temptation to say ‘Ned Nurse I presume?’, he stepped forward and called ‘Excuse me.’
    The man jumped and barked his shins on the front mudguard with such force that Amiss winced sympathetically. He waited until the agony seemed to have abated slightly and said, ‘I’m awfully sorry to have startled you. Are you all right?’
    His victim summoned up as friendly an expression as pain would allow and said, ‘Oh, I’m fine, fine. Not your fault at all. On the contrary, dear boy, all mine. Completely mine. Can I help you?’
    ‘I was just wondering if the English teacher’s job was still vacant.’
    ‘Well, my dear boy, unless my partner has filled it without telling me — and I’m sure he wouldn’t do that — I believe it is. In any case, now that you’re here, would you like to come in and talk it over? It might save you a wasted journey if you find you don’t like us.’ And taking Amiss’s ‘Oh please, I don’t want to put you out’ for consent, he began to pull the bicycle backwards through the front door. Amiss followed apprehensively.
    ‘Come in, come in, dear boy,’ he bleated. ‘Come into the lounge and let’s have a chat. Now… mmm?’ and his brow furrowed. ‘Oh, dear. What can I find to offer you?’ He looked distractedly at Amiss, who kept up a steady mutter of I’m fine, honestly, thank yous which failed to alleviate his host’s distress. ‘Here, here. Do sit down here. I think you’ll find it the most comfortable of the chairs. Or maybe this is.’
    Amiss sat down firmly on the nearest and