16. Missing

Matters connected to Brumpton Academy, are escalating

DC Amelia Pincher had something on her mind. There had been a fistful of murders if you included the poor little boy buried in haste in the garden that she and her useless Inspector had discovered yesterday, and he showed no signs of getting anywhere with the investigation. And she wasn’t happy with that. She had a little brother and if he ended up being dumped in someone’s back garden deep enough for it to be unlikely that anyone merely difgging the garden would find him, well, she’d want the killer discovered and, if she had the chance, having his balls thoroughly kicked in by herself.

There was one possible culprit that D.I Glumpy seemed to want to discount and that was the darned teacher, Mr Rozelle, and as far as she could see a great deal of the evidence seemed to point at him. To the DI, the nab being a teacher and a representative of a noble profession would never murder anyone, least of all a little boy still in short trousers.

And today was meant to be a day off. Her one and only day off this week and she just felt like doing a bit of enquiring all of her own. And the DI hadn’t so much as breathed that she’d have to forget her day off because they had a whole series of murders to solve, which she’d been more than half expecting. And to make sure there was no increased chance of that happening she kept quiet on the subject. She even had something made mental note of what she would say on the subject of domestic chores which had piled up. Knickers that needed to be washed or she wouldn’t have any clean ones some day soon. Fortunately the subject wasn’t broached so her lies about underwear were kept safely on a mental shelf.

And she set off to make enquiries of her own, hoping that her path and the DI’s didn’t merge.

Her first port of call would be the school. Brumpton Academy. The name made it sound posher than its appearance did. Apparently Mr Rozelle had been reported as having gone missing and the DI was pretty sure that his body, with a knife sticking out of it, would be reported any day soon, found in some dark corner somewhere. It would, he had said in the closing comments before the staff all went home, be worth while them keeping their eyes open for the deceased teacher.

“The boy’s body may have been found at the bottom of a hole that he dug, but that doesn’t mean that he put it there,” he added with a knowing expression on his face, “This whole affair has a female feel to it. It smells of knickers and make-up...”

Amelia went to the school as soon as she thought it would have settled down after morning registration and decided that her first port of call ought to be the secretary’s office. The DI, she guessed, will have discussed the matter of a vanishing teacher with the headmaster, but she was also aware that the person who really knows what’s going on in any office environment like a school is the secretary.

She found that the secretary, Miss Johnson, was a pleasant women with a great deal of knowledge about the school and its personnel together with personal opinions based loosely on that knowledge.

“Ah, Mr Rozelle,” she sighed, “if I had been a bit older then he might have suited me down to the ground. But I’m of the age that I am and wise enough to know that not everything was right with the man.”

“What do you mean?” asked Amelia curiously.

“Well, more than once I caught him wracked with misery, with tears streaming down his face. I never did see a man who could weep as much as he could, and seemingly over nothing, and I was suspicious!”

“Why? What did you suspect?” asked the DC.

“I wondered if he had an unnatural and perverse liking for the children,” she replied nervously. “I don;t want you to think that was the case and there never was a rumour, just what all the crying suggested to me.”

“Yet you suggested you might have had a fling with him if your ages matched,” Amelia reminded her, “and now that he seems to have disappeared off the face of the Earth, have you any other thoughts?”

Miss Johnson thought for a few moments and then nodded. “He moved house recently,” she said, “moved in with a couple so that he could keep an eye on them. Said it made him feel useful. He always looked out for his parents, you know. At least he said that he did, and after they disappeared he felt part of his life was being wasted.”

“They disappeared? That’s odd!”

Miss Johnson nodded. “You can say that again,” she murmured, “and it struck me that he may have returned to his old address where they lived. He may have decided to track them down and repair old ills or whatever it is that made them skedaddle.”

“Or,” breathed Amelia, “he may have done away with them. Let me tell you about my auntie’s bees. She doesn’t keep bees, of course not, she’s not as young as she was, but recently she found that quite a lot of bees were buzzing around inside her house. Big fat ones, they were, and she started off catching them in a glass jar and opening a window to let them fly away. She did that loads of times and then she lost her patience with them and decided enough was enough. So instead of releasing them back into the wild she killed them, squashed them flat, when they annoyed her. Might Mr Rozelle have felt that about the children in his care? Might he have started killing them? I believe there’s a girl who’s gone missing, too...”

Mr Johnson looked truly shocked. “What are you saying?” she asked, “that you think poor Mr Rozelle was a murderer? That he would dream of doing any such thing?”

Amelia shook her head sadly. “I know it’s hard for us to imagine,” she said sympathetically, “but you’d be shocked at the number of deaths that have turned up recently, and all connected in some way to this school. To Mr Rozelle, unless you can think of anyone else who might be involved?”

Miss Johnson shuddered. “No. No I can’t,” she whispered. “And Mr Rozelle must be in a truly bad way if he’s caused the death of poor little Shaun. He was such a sweet kid.”

“So have you Mr Rozelle’s parents’ address on record? I ought to check out whether he’s there or not,” asked Amelia.

Miss Johnson consulted a staff list and then scribbled one of the addresses onto a post-it note. “Here you are,” she said, “but if he’s there, you will go gently with him, won’t you? He’s such a sensitive soul.”

“Have no fear,” the DC told her, “he’ll be all right with me. Just hope that my DI doesn’t get there first!”

When she arrived back in her car with the address on the post-it nore stuck to her dashboard her phone rang. It was the DI.

“Where are you, constable,” he barked, “stop what you’re doing and return to the station. That woman, the one who killed those people, has done a runner! We can’t trace her anywhere, and I need her yesterday!”

© Peter Rogerson 04.06.24