A Javelin for Jonah

chapter

4

The Whale’s Belly

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Surely he can’t have slung his hook without a word to anybody,” added Henry to Hamish, as they left the building, following their after-lunch coffee, Henry bound for the field and Hamish to meet his men’s and women’s relay squad for a coaching-session in the covered pool. Ordinarily he preferred the outdoor fifty-metre swimming bath, but the drill on this particular afternoon was to be the practice of starts, take-overs and turns, and for such the indoor pool was more satisfactory than the other.

He was able to make use of it because there was no diving practice that day, Celia being on duty at the municipal baths in the town. She had first claim on the indoor pool when she was at the College, for its boards were of standard height and there were no swimmers to get in the way of her divers. These also preferred a covered bath because there was no wind to upset their balance and concentration. The upland pastures which surrounded Joynings were always breezy, they complained.

Neither Hamish nor Henry had hurried over coffee, for the students took no part in sports or swimming for at least an hour after lunch, but by the time Hamish entered the covered bath-house his squad were changed and ready for him. It was while they were resting after the first work-out that he received what he interpreted as a hint. It seemed that the whereabouts of the missing Jones was known to some members of the College, if not, in fact, to all. It began when the end door opened and an attendant, bearing clean towels, entered. He deposited these and went out again, whereupon one of the girls exclaimed, “Goodness! I thought it must be Jonah sneaking in! The divers say he often creeps in here to study form!” She ended with a giggle.

One of the boys said, “Jonah would have a job to sneak in here today. And you keep your little trap shut, darling.”

“Oh! Oh, yes.” She giggled again. “I forgot the whale’s belly.”

“Less of it.” The boy jerked his head towards Hamish. “It’s not only walls that have ears.”

Hamish affected to take no notice. He felt that he had picked up a clue, but also that it would be of no use to probe too deeply into the girl’s disclosure, although she had made it clear that his students knew where Jones was, and probably had put him there.

“Well, come on,” said Hamish crisply. “Two lengths each, medley teams, remembering what I’ve told you about the turns and the take-over. Get in, back-strokes. Bunch up more, Phyllis. You want to try for the devil of a shove-off at the start. Get into your stroke as your head is coming up. That right arm should be out of the water as you surface, ready to pull. And you, Ken, throw yourself back when you start. Think of a dolphin and emulate its tactics.”

“Sure you don’t mean a whale, Jimmy?” said the boy, grinning. So, wherever Jones was, it seemed unlikely that the students intended his incarceration to be anything but a rag, deduced Hamish.

“On your marks,” he said. The medley relay teams consisted of four swimmers each. It was the custom, since, on the whole, the men were faster than the girls, for Hamish to mix the teams. The back-stroke swimmers had to be a man and a girl respectively, but a man took over from the girl on the butterfly leg, a girl from him on the breast-stroke, and a man completed the team by swimming the last two lengths on free-style. The other team followed the same plan, but in reverse.

Hamish was accustomed to pace the teams himself by swimming the eight lengths on free-style, and did so on this occasion. The exercise kept him in trim and spurred on the teams, who were determined some day to beat him.

When the training session was over, Hamish went straight to Henry, who was entertaining Rixie, Richard and a couple of girl discus-throwers to tea.

“Sit down, Jimmy, and have a cuppa. Plenty in the pot,” said Henry cordially.

“Oh, I didn’t come to gate-crash your tea-party,” said Hamish. “Just official business. It will keep.”

“Somebody been throwing out hints about Jonah?” asked Richard. “Is that the official business?”

“As a matter of fact, yes, in a vague sort of way.”

“There’s an arrangement for feeding rattlesnakes,” said Rixie. “I can tell you that much, if you want to know.”

“It was the mention of whales which intrigued me,” Hamish explained. “Is there any chance of history repeating itself? Is it arranged for Jonah to be spewed up before he perishes?”

The students remained silent.

“It isn’t their pigeon,” said Henry. “They have explained to me that they are not listed among the storm-tossed mariners who threw Jonah overboard, and therefore are loth to muscle in on somebody else’s casting of lots. Have another piece of cake, Dick, old son.”

“Thanks,” said Richard, cutting himself a generous slice. “Fact is, we can’t very well interfere, but we think the thing has gone far enough. The bloody so-and-so has been put away since early on Wednesday afternoon and now it’s Thursday tea-time. We think it’s time to call it off. Solitary confinement isn’t much fun, you know, is it?”

“He’s somewhere on the premises, then?”

“Can’t tell you any more. There’s a syndicate involved. We don’t want to be roughed up by a pack of rude boys. I don’t mind two or three, but I don’t care for the idea of four of them sitting on me while two more get to work on my features with a razor-blade,” said Richard.

“Same goes for me,” said Rixie, “so—enough said. It’s up to the beaks now. We’ve tipped Henry off. We can’t do more.”

“There appears to be a vestige of human feeling about you blokes, after all,” said Hamish. “Are our features likely to be similarly decorated if we turn the place upside-down to look for the egregious Mr. Jones?”

“Couldn’t say. Thanks for the tea, Harry boy. No leakage of how you came by your information, eh?” said Rixie.

“So far as I’m concerned, I have received no information. I shall announce at dinner tonight that there will be no gym for the men until Mr. Jones decides to return to his duties, then I shall lock the gym doors against unauthorized entry and suggest the gym blokes take to other activities, that’s all,” Henry promised him.

“Does ‘the whale’s belly’ give you any ideas?” asked Hamish, when the students had gone.

“Not a sausage. I fancy it was the girls who nagged those two huskies into saying as much as they did.”

“Yes, that might be so,” said Hamish, “although I wouldn’t have thought the girls had that much influence in what Damon Runyon would call this ‘man’s town’.”

“Scarcity value,” said Henry. “Eighteen of them as against eighty-two of the grosser sex, you know.”

“Granted. All the same, doesn’t it strike you that there are two rather rummy aspects to all this?”

“Students are bound to break out occasionally.”

“Yes, I know.”

“Then how do you mean?”

“Oh, well, I told you, when first we met, that I had a suspicious mind, but look at what you told me.”

“Can’t remember. What was it?”

“You said that the students don’t gang up on us. Well, it seems to me that they’ve ganged up on Jones, you know, and they ganged up on my predecessor, didn’t they?”

“Only a few of them. Barry reports that he’s been discharged from hospital—Merve, you know. Gassie won’t have him back, though. He’s persuaded Merve’s uncle to give him a job in his steelworks. As for Jonah, well, he’s been asking for trouble for years.”

“Granted. But, having ganged up on him, why are some of the students so uneasy? I mean, you wouldn’t say that my swimmers have much in common with Richard, who is a muscle man and operates the shot and occasionally the hammer, and Rixie, who’s a discus man, would you?”

“I don’t quite get your point.”

“Look, it’s what Celia is always getting at. The various squads here are not only in competition with other colleges and the big clubs and so forth; they are very much in competition with one another. That’s why there’s no real cohesion in Joynings. The College doesn’t add up.”

“So?”

“Well, it makes for our convenience in a great many ways, but it means that, in this case, the probable parking of Jones in something they refer to as the whale’s belly has gone outside all their normal behaviour.”

“I’ve answered that one. What the virtuous, such as you and me, couldn’t have brought about—i.e., the complete fusion of all the warring sects in College—the egregious Jonah has accomplished simply by being just that shade above the odds which, even to our delinquent flock, makes all the difference.”

“Possibly. I grant you that, but I return to my first point: why, having decided to banish Jones in this way, are some of them so uneasy? Apart from Richard, who’s a sentimentalist, these kids are tough nuts. They must therefore have reason to be afraid of something. I really think we’d better find Jones, you know.”

There was a long pause. Hamish, who had learned from Dame Beatrice, his mother’s employer and his own best friend, the value of silence, waited while Henry thought over what had been said.

“How long did the prototype remain in the whale’s belly?” asked Henry suddenly.

“Three days and three nights, or so I seem to remember.”

“Oh, well, then, we need not worry unduly. Jonah won’t come to harm in that time if we don’t manage to find him before Saturday morning. I expect they will count Wednesday, so that leaves the rest of today and all of Friday. They say they’re feeding him, and that’s the main thing. I think, you know, we may assume that Jonah will be at breakfast on Saturday morning or even at dinner, if he’s lucky, tomorrow night.”

“But supposing they’ve shut him up in some place where the oxygen is liable to give out? They may not have thought of that. I wonder who started the rumour that he’d resigned? Of course, I know it’s a coverup by the students to account for his absence, but nobody has really swallowed it, so it didn’t get them far.”

“That’s true enough, but you know what cuckoos they are. Well, your panic-warning about lack of oxygen has impressed me more than a little, so I do think perhaps it behoves us to look for the wretched fellow.”

“When do we begin?”

“After lights-out. We’ll give the halls of residence a good hour and a half, I think, before we up with our electric torches and have a scout round. You realize when all this must have taken place, don’t you?”

“During the film, I suppose.”

“I’m afraid so. Attendance at the show was optional, in any case, but, apart from that, it would have been easy enough for two or three of the chaps to slip out. The hall was in darkness and, anyway, people do drift in and out during a longish film, if only to visit the loo.”

“Is it certain that Jones was in College during the film?”

“Well, he was present at lunch, if you remember, so I imagine he was on the premises later. At any rate, he helped me (to my great surprise, I must say) to supervise the clearing of the dining-hall and the setting-out of the chairs ready for the film-show, and that would have made it rather late for him to get to the pub. Besides, I think he had some plan to sit next to Lesley at the film, because I heard her telling him in no uncertain tone that she would be in the gym with her competition squad while the show was on, and wouldn’t be attending it.”

“Well, there’s no doubt some of the hearties know where he is and have pressurized the lesser brethren into keeping quiet. I’m not concerned about his diet, and if they’re keeping him fed, they must be letting in a little air, but I do hope the lunatics haven’t overdone the thing in other ways. He’s a powerful chap, although he’s gone to seed a bit, and I think they may have had to rough him up before they could get him put away,” said Hamish.

“More than likely,” Henry agreed. “Oh, well, I’ll meet you outside your room at half-past twelve.”

They separated. At half-past ten that night, Hamish, with two hours to get through before zero hour, composed a letter to his mother. In it he mentioned Jones’s disappearance, putting this down to a students’ rag, and added that he thought the College and its inhabitants would interest Dame Beatrice. Having addressed the letter and stamped it, he strolled downstairs to the College collecting-box which was just outside the front door, and put in his letter. Every member of staff possessed a front-door key, so, having closed the door behind him, he decided to go for a walk in the grounds, and began by taking a path towards the sports field.

He skirted the running-track and strolled towards the men’s changing-rooms. He had been wondering where the students could have hidden Jones if he were still somewhere on the premises and, although he thought the choice of the changing-rooms would have been an unlikely one, he decided to make a reconnaissance.

It was dark by this time, but the summer night was full of stars. As he walked across the turf—for the changing-rooms had been put up on the side of the grounds furthest from the house but nearest to the halls of residence—he thought about the Warden and wondered, not for the first time, what that enigmatical man was really like. From Gascoigne Medlar his thoughts turned again to Jones. Even allowing for all the claims which close relationship—and was a brother-in-law so close a relative, after all?—it seemed strange that such a single-minded egoist as he judged Medlar to be should tolerate, at close quarters and for so long a time, the only person on the College staff who seemed bent on sabotage. How many of Jones’s exploits could be put down to sheer but well-intentioned idiocy became more and more doubtful, but of his drinking-habits and the even more reprehensible actions to which his self-indulgence committed him, there seemed no reasonable doubt. Medlar’s continued toleration of him seemed remarkable enough to be mysterious unless (again it occurred to Hamish) Jones was in a position to blackmail the Warden.

The changing-rooms, brick-built and commodious, stood out against a background of glimmering sky and the pale wreaths of the stars. Hamish walked up to the window and called Jones by name. There was neither answer nor any sound of movement from within the building. He walked all the way round it, tapping on the walls and doors and continuing to call out, “Jones! I say! Are you there, Jones?” But, like the lonely traveller in the poem, he called out in vain. In the starlight the building stood silent and apparently deserted. The men-students had keys to the cupboards, but the only key to the outside doors must be with the head groundsman. Hamish trotted back to the main building to keep his appointment with Henry.

“I’ve tried the changing-rooms,” he said, when they met. “It was a pretty long shot, but I just thought they might have shut him up in one of those big cupboards. I hadn’t a key, but I walked all the way round and hammered and shouted. I didn’t get any reply, but, of course, if he was shut away like that, he might have passed out, I suppose.”

“Oh,” said Henry, “I shouldn’t think he would. All those cupboards have ventilation holes in the doors. He wouldn’t suffocate. No, if you didn’t get any reply, he isn’t there. It would be too obvious a hiding-place, anyway. Besides, the groundsman has a cupboard and a locker there. He’d have found him and let him out before this. Well, have you any other ideas? You’re nearer in age to the students than I am. Where would be a likely place to start? What are they likely to have thought of?”

“The whale’s belly,” said Hamish. “You know, Henry, I seem to think that must be more than merely a fanciful way of describing Jones’s prison. Can’t you think of any place which might fit the reference? To my mind, under the ground seems likelier than above it. Isn’t there a cellar, or something of the sort, attached to this house?”

“A cellar…” Henry considered the suggestion. “There’s a wine-cellar, but nobody except Gassie and the butler have access to that.”

“Well, it’s not an old enough house to have a priest’s room or secret passages, so there’s no problem there.”

“I’ll tell you what there is, now I come to think of it,” said Henry. “There’s the underground installation for the central heating. I wonder whether they can have thought of that? It’s known to the College as the stoke-hole. That might fit the bill if they could get hold of the key.”

“How does one get to it?”

“Well, there’s a kind of janitor who looks after it. Access to it is by what looks like a half-door, with a tiny round-headed window, in the wall round by the kitchens, It’s down a steep step. I went in once with Jackson—that’s the janitor fellow—and he showed me round. I believe you may have hit on the very place, although I’m surprised the students should have known how to gain access to it. Well, one thing: if Jonah is down there he’ll be all right. It’s warm and dry, and there must be plenty of ventilation because Jackson has a sort of cubby-hole down there and uses it quite a lot in winter weather, he informed me. There’s an armchair—basket-work, with cushions—and a primus stove and a food cupboard—all modern conveniences, so to speak.”

“Well, shall we go and take a look?”

“Have to wait until I can get the key off Jackson tomorrow morning before we can get in, I’m afraid, but we could go to the doorway and speak. I don’t suppose the door is soundproof, so at least we may be able to establish whether Jones is there or not.”

“Could Jones have been down there for a couple of days without Jackson finding him, though?”

“Oh, yes. Jackson wouldn’t go down there in this weather. Let’s make a recce and take a butchers.”

As they had keys to the front door, they let themselves out that way and walked round the side of the mansion towards the kitchen regions. When they were under the pantry window, Henry switched on a torch and played the spotlight from it over the surrounding brickwork. A couple of yards further on, Hamish saw the round-headed glass in the half-door which Henry had mentioned. They pushed at the door and tried to rattle it, but it was well-fitted and did not budge. Hamish descended the step, knelt on the narrow stone doorsill, put his lips close to the key-hole and called out Jones’s name, but there was no response. Then Henry tried. His voice boomed back at him, but that was all.

“There’s no supervision in the halls of residence, is there?” asked Hamish, as Henry stood up.

“No, and to those I do have a key. We shan’t be popular if we go invading them at this time of night, though. Much better wait until the huts are empty tomorrow morning. Not that I think they’ll have hidden him there. Servants go in to clean up and make the beds and collect the laundry, you know, and there’s an odd-job fellow who empties waste-paper baskets and cleans boots and shoes.”

“The servants could be squared, perhaps.”

“By penniless students?”

“Well, scared into keeping quiet, then.”

“Possibly. All right, we’ll take a look round while the chaps are having breakfast. Is there anywhere else you can think of?”

“Well, he would hardly have been hidden in the room of one of the girls, but what about trying the attics?”

“The girls’ rooms?” said Henry thoughtfully. “You know, you may have hit on something there. It’s quite clear that the women students are in on the rag. It’s also fairly certain that they’re nervous about it. It’s true that most of the lasses hate old Jonah like poison, but there are one or two types who might take a pop at him and think the fun and games worthwhile. His prowess with Bertha may have given the hussies— and we’ve got our share of them—a bit of a kick.”

“Isn’t there the same objection, though?”

“How do you mean?”

“The servant problem.”

“No, as it happens, there isn’t. The girls are supposed to make their own beds and keep their rooms tidy.”

“What about their laundry, though?”

“They wash and iron their own bits of frippery and just chuck their bed-linen and so forth outside their bedroom doors every Thursday morning. I believe Miss Yale does an occasional inspection of rooms, but she always gives warning of her visits, so the girls are never taken on the hop. I really think, you know, James, that I’ll go and rake her out and suggest she does a round-up. If there’s anything scandalous going on, I think we should nip it in the bud.”

“I should think Miss Yale would nip us in the bud, if we go disturbing her at one o’clock in the morning.”

“Not she. Come along. Let’s chance it.”

Miss Yale’s large bed-sitter had a fanlight over the door and they could see that her light was on. Henry tapped and they waited. There was no invitation to them to enter, but after a few moments Miss Yale opened the door.

“Oh, it’s you two,” she said. “Come in. Sorry to have kept you waiting, but thought I’d better hide my chunk of porn in case it was one of the hussies. What can I do for you? If you’re looking for Jonah, try elsewhere. I haven’t got him.”

“How did you guess we were looking for Jonah?” Henry enquired, closing the door behind himself and Hamish.

“Spotted you snooping round the house. No luck, I suppose?”

“We’ve tried the changing-rooms and the stoke-hole,” said Hamish, “but haven’t found him.”

“I suppose you’ve tried his own room to make sure they haven’t trussed him up and bundled him into his own wardrobe or somewhere?”

“We wondered,” said Henry, with some diffidence, “whether, while we do that, you could make sure that none of your young ladies is giving him her hospitality.”

“Think it’s likely? I don’t. I’ll go the rounds, if you like, but it won’t be any help. Good thing I hadn’t gone to bed. You push along to Jonah’s quarters, then, and I’ll give the girls’ rooms the once-over. They are three to a room, so it won’t take me all that long.”

“Not much privacy for the girls, then,” said Hamish, when they had inspected Jones’s two splendid rooms and had assured themselves that he was not in residence or captivity there.

“Oh, they can curtain all the rooms into cubicles, I believe,” said Henry. “They probably like it quite well. Lots of delinquent girls are definitely gregarious, curiously enough. In fact, I would say that our young women are far more homogeneous than the men.”

Miss Yale returned at the end of twenty-five minutes.

“Nothing doing,” she reported. “A few cases of incipient lesbianism, but nothing more. They get lonely, you know, and as they can’t co-habit with the men, what can you expect? After all, they’re in prison here, poor little stinkers.” With this sympathetic pronouncement she said goodnight and closed her door.

“Now for the attics,” said Henry. But in the attics they drew blank once more. “Well, we shall have to give it up for tonight,” he added at last, “but in the morning I’ll inspect the halls of residence, just to leave no stone unturned, and get keys to the changing-rooms. I’m beginning not to like the look of things, and that’s a fact.”