The School of English Murder Read Online Free PDF

introduced himself.
    ‘Oh, Robert Amiss, very good, very good. I always find it helpful to repeat my students’ names when I meet them first. You can remember them better then. Now what can I find to offer you?’ And he cast his gaze round helplessly.
    ‘And you are…?’
    ‘Oh my dear fellow, my abject apologies. I am Ned Nurse. I’m the principal here.’ He rushed towards Amiss, who leaped to his feet. They shook hands with great ceremony and Nurse headed off towards a corner of the room. ‘Would you like some coffee? Oh, dear no. I remember now, the machine has broken down.’
    ‘Honestly, I’m fine.’
    ‘Oh, I’m sure you could do with something.’
    Amiss tried to remember if Pooley had said anything about Nurse having suffered concussion. Surely to God he couldn’t be like this normally? It was like trying to have a job interview with a cross between Lord Emsworth and the White Rabbit. Nurse was now wrenching helplessly at a cupboard door that refused to open.
    ‘I think it’s locked, Mr Nurse.’
    ‘Oh, not “Mr Nurse”, please. Call me Ned and I’ll call you Roger. You’ll find us very informal here, that is to say if you join us. What did you say? Oh yes, the cupboard. Oh you’re so right. It is locked. And I have the key.’ He pulled out a heavily laden key-ring, and to Amiss’s bewilderment instantly found the right key and opened the cupboard with a flourish. ‘There’s only whisky here, I’m afraid. Now wait a minute. I’m sure there’s more somewhere else. Now where would that be, I wonder? Where would that be?’
    ‘Whisky’ll be fine,’ said Amiss, who by this stage would have accepted hemlock if it would have speeded things up.
    Nurse poured an enormous measure into a tumbler and handed it over. ‘You must forgive me if I don’t join you. Poison to me. Poison.’
    ‘Whisky or alcohol in general?’
    ‘Alcohol, dear boy. I can’t handle it at all. Behave most peculiarly. But we don’t want to talk about me. Let’s talk about you. Let’s talk about you.’
    An hour later Amiss felt quite wrung out. He had been through what felt like his entire life history with Nurse very much in the style in which he imagined he must conduct his classes. He seemed to want information almost in essay form. ‘Tell me, my dear boy. What used you to do on your vacations?’ or ‘Does an Oxbridge education make one a better man, eh? Tell me what you think. Tell me what you think.’ If the object of the exercise was to establish if he could speak English fluently, then it was well conducted. Amiss’s gratuitous thrusts at the expense of the Prime Minister had elicited squeaks of approval, but he was at a loss to see what it had to do with testing his ability to teach.
    He was emboldened to ask a question about the job, thus sending Nurse into a state of agitated guilt. ‘Oh, my dear boy, my dear boy, I’ve been most remiss. Of course that was what we were really here to talk about in the first place. Come with me and I’ll show you round.’
    He rushed out of the room, throwing a cascade of only intermittently audible information over his shoulder as he went. He was obviously uninterested in architecture or decoration and hence the tour was undertaken at whirlwind speed. Amiss’s initial reaction to the interior of the house was bafflement. It consisted of six rooms, four of which were furnished as classrooms. Only what Nurse had called the lounge could comfortably accommodate more than eight. The décor throughout was luxurious if slightly flash, conjoining oddly with the low student fees. ‘Do you teach most of your students in the lounge, then?’ he asked Nurse hesitantly as they said goodbye in the hallway.
    ‘Oh, my goodness no, dear boy. This is only for what dear Rich calls the beautiful people. The others are taught in the prefabs in the garden.’
    ‘The beautiful people?’
    ‘Rich’ll explain all that to you in the morning. You will come and see us both then, won’t