Read Unlikely Graves (Detective Inspector Paul Amos Mystery series) for Free Online Page B

whether to raise it at all until he was sure there was a connection with this particular school. He had dreaded confronting the issue, hoping that his worst fears were unfounded. Why would Randall keep a list of victims that might come to light at any time?
    Yet the girls’ names in the dead man’s diary seemed to point only one way, especially the references to sports activities with exclamation marks. Was Jackson about to confirm the abuse of children under the age of 11, albeit by denying it?
    ‘Joan is completely above reproach,’ Jackson responded. ‘She loved the children here as if they were her own. She never married. This was her life.’
    And in her lifetime, women didn’t get pregnant outside marriage, Amos thought. Not respectable ones, anyway.
    However, he did not voice his views on matrimony and motherhood, pointing out instead: ‘You speak in the past tense, Mrs Jackson. When are we talking about?’
    ‘Christmas ’89 . How could I forget?’ Jackson went on bitterly. ‘It was my first nativity service as deputy head. That wretched woman.’
    ‘I don’t mean Joan,’ she added hastily. ‘It was that wretched Thelma Vernon.’
    ‘Did she have a lot of children, this Mrs Vernon?’ Amos asked. Could she account for all the Vs in the diary after all?
    ‘Just two, and that was two too many. They were real pains.  I mean real pains. We had to handle them with mega kid gloves. They swore at the playground helpers and when we called Mr and Mrs Vernon in they accused us. They said their children never swore at home and couldn’t possibly have learnt the words there so they must have learnt them at school.
    ‘They said if it wasn’t the teachers then it must be the council house children and we really ought to keep them under control. What a nerve.’
    ‘So what happened?’ Amos prompted.
    ‘Nothing for the rest of the term. The Vernons were friends of the chairman of the school governors. He wouldn’t back us up. We just had to try to keep a lid on their children’s behaviour but the other children started using bad language when they saw that the Vernon boys could get away with it. So the other parents weren’t happy. I just didn’t see how we could get through the next two years before both boys went to secondary school.
    ‘We struggled on to the end of the autumn term, heaven knows how, then we had the incident you obviously know about,’ Jackson assumed erroneously. ‘It killed Mr Smith, you know. Although we were completely exonerated, and Mrs Vernon removed her little brats, he never got over it. He took early retirement at Easter and died two months later. But you know all that.’
    ‘Tell me about the contretemps. The accusation by the Vernons,’ he added hastily on realising that Jackson had no idea what a contretemps was.
    The headmistress eyed him suspiciously. She was not sure what he was implying. However, after a short pause, she explained.
    ‘Well, as I said – and you obviously already know – it was at the nativity service on the last afternoon of term. A lot of parents were there and those who weren’t were supposed to come at the end of the service to take their children home.
    ‘It was a great relief for all of us, I can tell you, that we had got through another term. Just two more terms to go before we got rid of the eldest Vernon child. Perhaps the youngest one wouldn’t be so difficult on his own, though he was worse than his brother. He tried to live up to the family reputation.’
    Elder, not eldest, Amos noted mentally. Younger, not youngest. How can they teach English when they don’t know the language themselves?
    ‘Mrs Vernon was there,’ Jackson went on, unaware that Amos was mentally correcting her English. ‘We had to give her eldest boy a part in the service to keep him – and his mother – quiet. Unfortunately even that backfired.
    ‘While the eldest was spouting on about the shepherds in the fields the youngest stood up to see him and was