Free The Last Pleasure Garden by Lee Jackson

shepherds her daughter inside.
    â€˜Lor!’ she exclaims, once the front door is bolted. ‘Who’d have thought it?’
    Jane Budge shakes her head. ‘What will we do? You heard him. He won’t just let it go, not now he’s out.’
    â€˜I didn’t think he’d have the nerve to come round here, pestering you,’ says Mrs. Budge, standing in front of the fire, a rather worried look upon her face.
    â€˜Where did you get that?’ says Jane, looking at the gun.
    â€˜Your Pa won it – must be ten year back; made a wager with a commercial traveller. Thought I’d best keep it safe.’
    â€˜It ain’t loaded, is it?’
    Mrs. Budge shakes her head, placing the pistol on the wooden mantel. She does it rather too casually, however, and the gun falls from the shelf as she lets go of it, landing on the stone floor – with a terrific noise and a sudden explosion of smoke.
    Both women instinctively freeze. When the smoke has dissipated, a small china tea-cup that rested decoratively above the fire-place is smashed into half a dozen pieces.
    â€˜Bless me!’ exclaims Mrs. Budge. ‘It was an’ all.’
    From the rear of the room comes the sound of a crying child.

C HAPTER TWELVE

    â€˜S o, another clue falls into our laps, courtesy of your clergyman,’ says Decimus Webb in a tone that would extinguish the enthusiasm of the most eager detective sergeant. ‘But we do not know what it is?’
    Bartleby, however, refuses to be quenched. ‘It’s just that the wife was quite insistent you turned out and talked to her husband, sir. Inspector or nothing. I think she thought we weren’t taking her seriously last time.’
    â€˜I hold you responsible for that misapprehension, Sergeant.’
    The cab carrying the two policemen pulls up outside the Fulham Road entrance to St. Mark’s Training College.
    â€˜If you met the lady, sir,’ says Bartleby, ‘you might understand.’
    â€˜I will admit,’ replies Webb, paying the driver, ‘that any female that sends you away with a flea in your ear has my utmost respect.’
    Bartleby adopts the resigned smile he reserves for such exchanges and seeks directions from the gate-keeper. The two policeman are directed to a peculiar stone octagon that nestles inside the college walls. Two storeys high, it is in a similar Italianate style to the college’s principal buildings, even down to a miniature eightsided campanile that forms the summit of its tiled roof.
    â€˜Apparently it’s the Practising School, sir,’ says Bartleby. ‘The Reverend should be there this time of day.’
    If anything, it seems to Webb that the building has the look of some obscure chapel, rather than any school with which he is familiar. The interior does nothing to dispel the impression: a cruciform space within the octagon, with boys on various benches and forms in each arm of the cross, both on the ground floor and in a gallery above. The scholars themselves receive attention from individual monitors, pupil-teachers learning the art of pedagogy, but all of the boys face the centre. And there, seated on a tall chair, is the Reverend Featherstone, his eyes roving around the room. The clergyman’s field of vision is not quite three hundred and sixty degrees, for at the heart of the room is a multi-sided chimney, extending up to the roof, with four substantial fire-places at its base. And yet, there is undoubtedly something of the prison panopticon in the unusual design and, although not given to sentiment, Decimus Webb feels a stab of pity for the pupils in St. Mark’s model school.
    â€˜Ah, Sergeant,’ says the Reverend Featherstone. ‘My wife said you might call.’
    â€˜This is Inspector Webb, sir,’ replies Bartleby. Webb, however, seems a little distracted, leaning over the shoulder of one of the nearby pupils.
    â€˜Sir?’ says Bartleby.
    â€˜Ah,