Read Online The School of English Murder by Ruth Dudley Edwards - Free Book Online Page B

attraction of Rich. He might seem on the surface to be a fatuous old fool, but to a lot of people, from decent old Ned Nurse through to the jaded cosmopolitan Galina, he supplied an infectious joie de vivre . Amiss was beginning to feel that Rich deserved every penny he could wring out of these desiccated people.
    It was Rich who called a halt at three. ‘Come on, darlings. Beauty sleep.’ And he overrode Davina’s objections with a hug and a private joke that had her whooping with laughter on her way to collect her furs.
    ‘When ees it you wish us in the school?’ asked Galina coquettishly.
    ‘Since the whole group is here, lunchtime will do. Tell you what, darlings. Let’s meet at twelve thirty where we started out tonight. We won’t want much more than oysters for lunch, will we? Oh, Bob, do your usual day like a love. But then let’s you and I have a little drinkie round about — when are you finished? — five or nine?’
    ‘Five.’
    ‘Well come along to the Wednesday cocktail party at five and then we’ll go on somewhere afterwards, just the two of us. For a chinwag.’
    ‘A chinwag would be triff.’ Their eyes met and they commenced their job of organising their group ready for the approaching taxis.
    ‘So he gave me the low-down on the finances. Or what he said was the low-down.’
    Amiss climbed out of the cavalry twill trousers. ‘No good. You’re appreciably longer in the leg than me.’
    ‘They can be turned up. Here, try this.’ And Pooley tossed him a magnificent brown tweed suit.
    ‘For heaven’s sake, Ellis, we can’t start having your clothes altered to fit me.’
    ‘Why not. Might as well do this thing properly. Try it on. You might have to take a princess on a country weekend.’
    ‘Too true I might,’ said Amiss, clambering into a suit that Jeremy Buckland would have envied and finding to his delight that apart from the leg length, it fitted him perfectly. ‘Rich tells me that weekend escorts are in strong demand.’
    ‘Hat!’ And Pooley threw across a deerstalker.
    ‘It’s too small. My head’s bigger than yours.’
    ‘Quite,’ said Pooley. ‘Now why don’t we leave all this for a while, have a drink and you can finish filling me in.’
    ‘It’s primarily an escort agency with English lessons thrown in. He was quite open about it. It’s for people who want some fun in London but need to be able to justify the time and the expense by claiming to be learning English. So spouses lie to spouses; children lie to parents; employees lie to bosses; bosses lie to employees; training directors lie to exchange-control authorities. Rich charges in the region of two thousand quid a week and does a roaring trade. Most of the clientele hears about it by word of mouth.’
    ‘But don’t they get found out?’
    ‘There’s really nothing to give them away. It is a proper English school. They do learn English one way or the other. After all, the escorts are all English speakers and the students come from a variety of countries and hence have English as the lingua franca. And if they want to have it off with one of the escorts, well, I guess that’s been known to happen with a teacher at a normal language school.’
    ‘Well, surely the extra activities cause comment?’
    ‘Again, on the face of it they’re no different in kind from the norm. So instead of having occasional theatre trips and gatherings in the pub, they go to Le Gavroche and Annabel’s. The central difference is that these students are at the school to enjoy themselves, and Rich is a genius at making that happen. I imagine he also lays on rather more esoteric entertainments for those with unusual tastes.’
    ‘You’re being uncharacteristically delicate, Robert.’
    ‘In deference to you, Ellis.’
    ‘And why keep on the prefab business?’
    ‘It’s the bread and butter. They may be only paying a couple of quid an hour, but it mounts up. He reckons the school makes a profit of a couple of thousand a week on