Was It Murder? Read Online Free PDF

Colonies.  His degree’s a medical one, by the way.  Bit of a bon viveur, too, and the very devil for being discreet.  All things to all men and to nearly all women, you know.”
    “He makes a good Head, though, I should think.”
    “Oh, first rate.  Organising ability and all that.  Quite a war-time discovery, in fact.”
    “He was in the War, then?”
    “Of it more than in it, though I’m not suggesting he didn’t risk his life once or twice.  Ran so many hospitals and things that when he took it into his head to want to run Oakington, the governors snapped him up with joy.”
    Something in his tone provoked Revell to a question which, in normal circumstances, he would have been least likely to ask.  “Were you in the War at all?”
    “Oh yes.  Decidedly.  But I didn’t organise anything.  I just got gassed and shell-shocked—that was all.”  He added, with a faint smile:  “I don’t quite know why I’m telling you all this—I don’t gossip about my own affairs as a rule.  Really, I suppose it’s because Daggat put me in the mood—it always gets on my nerves to hear him explaining how Providence does this, and that, and the other in this best of all possible worlds. . . .  By the way, to change the subject, are you the author of a novel?”
    Revell, for whom this was rare and priceless flattery, admitted that that was so.
    “I thought it must be you,” Lambourne rejoined.  “I think I read it when it came out.  The usual sort of thing that people do write just after they leave Oxford.  Still, rather better than most, I remember.  Done anything since?”
    Damned patronising, Revell thought, yet more in disappointment than anger.  And there was undoubtedly something in Lambourne that appealed to him.  “Odd journalism,” he replied, briefly.  But he would not confide in him—not yet, at any rate—about the Don Juan epic.
    They talked on for a few more minutes, but the slowly dying fire made Lambourne less and less happy.  “Really,” he said at length, rising from his chair, “I MUST go and do some work.  I think I shall take a hot-water bottle to bed with me and mark exercise-books until dinner-time.  Midday dinner, you know, on Sundays—cold meat and beetroot. . . .  Come along and have tea with me one afternoon, if you can spare the time.  So long.”  It was the pleasantest, politest, and most effective way of saying:  “Don’t bother me any more just now”; and Revell, who himself specialised in just such pleasant, polite, and effective methods, appreciated the other’s technique.
     
     
    Revell found Oakington a rather depressing place, as he wandered about the familiar corridors amidst silences unbroken save by the echo of his own footfalls.  It was raining heavily outside; otherwise he would have more gladly strolled about the grounds.  He even half-wished that he had gone into chapel, except that to attend the evening service and two chapels in one day seemed more than could be expected of anyone who was not still a public schoolboy.
    Things were still pretty much the same, he reflected, despite Roseveare’s uplifting influence.  There were the same spluttering hot-water pipes in the corridors; there was the same curious smell of dust and ink in the deserted classrooms.  From the ground floor he descended to the basement bathrooms; these, however, had been considerably modernised since his time.  Everywhere, too, there were new and rather ugly electric-light fittings.
    He next visited the two dormitories, in each of which he had slept as a schoolboy.  School House had five floors, including basement and attic; the first and second floors contained the senior and junior dormitories respectively.  Each dormitory was approached by a corridor leading from the staircase landing, and on both sides of these corridors were the private rooms of the masters.  Ellington had a room on the second floor, immediately above Daggat’s.
    It was rather melancholy,