Ahead of his Time by Adrian Cousins (read novels website .TXT) 📗

office. The start to this school day was significantly worse than I feared. Surely it couldn’t get any worse.

“Morning, Miss Colman. Can I introduce you to Martin? He’s our stand-in caretaker.”

“Oh, good morning, Mr …. err …  Mr—”

“Bretton,” said Martin, holding out his hand to Miss Colman.

“Mr Bretton, that’s lovely. I’m delighted to make your acquaintance.”

“You too, Miss Colman. I hope I’ll be able to complete all my tasks satisfactorily whilst holding this position. I’m sure the school will miss the caretaker whilst he’s off, but I’ll work hard at living up to his standards,” Martin replied, still shaking Miss Colman’s hand, with a broad smile engulfing his face. Miss Colman seemed mesmerised by him.

Jesus, this bloke had every woman on the planet eating out of the palm of his hand.

“Miss Colman. Hello Miss Colman?” I interjected.

She held his gaze, then patted her hair bun, checking it was all in place. An involuntary action which I’d only previously witnessed when she was talking to Clive. Bloody hell, what’s the matter with everyone? Yes, Martin was, I presumed, handsome, but he seemed to have a magnetism that made females go all silly.

“Miss Colman, hello.”

She slowly turned her head as she appeared to try to continue to gaze at Martin. “Yes, Mr Apsley, how can I help?”

“I’m going to give Martin the grand tour, but firstly is Roy in?” I nodded to his office door.

“Mr Apsley, please address our headmaster as Mr Clark. I’m fed up with telling you we don’t use Christian names. Really, you must address the teaching staff correctly. And yes, he is.”

My bollocking over, she scowled at me, then turned and smiled at Martin, whilst I rolled my eyes.

“Martin, let’s introduce you to MR CLARK,” I boomed, at no one in particular.

“Mr Apsley, please don’t get silly now,” said Miss Colman. She settled down at her desk, peering over the top of her glasses whilst adjusting the paper in her typewriter.

After a whiz around the school, which Martin already knew well, I hunted down my work colleagues to complete the introductions. I deposited Martin in the boiler room, leaving him to get acquainted with his screwdrivers and the list of jobs Clive had prepared before going in for his operation.

Fortunately, Martin didn’t know any of the teachers as they’d all moved on or retired when he’d attended school at the time of the millennium. Based on his gawping performance this morning when he’d spotted his mother, I wasn’t sure he’d have coped with seeing his old teachers in a much younger form. I was secretly delighted that Jayne Hart didn’t swoon over him. She was polite but immune to his magnetic charms – I could have kissed her.

With time on my hands before my first lesson, I checked out the school library as I was on a mission to hunt down textbooks on police investigations and criminality. Although the school library was extensive, I wasn’t sure such a book would exist and feared I might need to visit the main library in town to get the answers I needed.

Luckily, I discovered two well-thumbed books, one written in the ’30s and a more recent publication from the ’50s. The first book yielded nothing, but the second confirmed my fears that fingerprints could be lifted from a porous object years after. My only hope was those envelopes had been thumbed through many times during the sorting and posting process, resulting in my fingerprints being smudged beyond all recognition.

The letters were a real problem, although I knew my fingerprints couldn't be on file as I wasn’t yet born. As long as I had different fingerprints from other Jason, they couldn’t pin it to me without organising an extensive fingerprinting operation of all pupils and teachers. I decided it was unlikely the police would take that course of action for some random anonymous letter. I returned the books and was about to nip off to the staff room when Miss Colman poked her head around the door.

“Mr Apsley … you’re a difficult man to find.”

“Yes, Miss Colman,” I replied a little stiffly after my bollocking she’d given me earlier.

“Mr Clark has asked if you could pop through to his office.”

I strode back through the marbled floored corridors with Miss Colman trotting by my side. I could tell she was itching with excitement and desperate to gossip, so I decided to help her along as we neared the school office.

“Do you know what Mr Clark wants?” I asked, knowing full well she would blurt everything out.”

She stopped, grabbed my arm, and beckoned me closer with a furtive nod of her head as she glanced around the empty school foyer. “Those two policemen who were here last week have come back to see Mr Clark. From what I overheard …” Miss Colman had another scan around the empty foyer and then continued. “They’re retaining the typewriter for evidence in their investigations into some serious offences. I must say that’s very irregular. How on earth could one of our school typewriters have anything to do with a crime committed in Yorkshire!”

Feeling myself sweating and becoming dizzy, I grabbed hold of the door frame to the school office. This was a disaster, and it seemed my fears had now been realised. The police had confirmed the typewriter was a match for the letter I’d sent; now they were closing in on me.

“Oh, Mr Apsley, are you quite alright? You look rather pale. I hope you're not coming down with this flu that’s going around. We have a lot of the children off at the moment, and I know Mr Waite has been quite unwell.”

I composed myself and dragged my hand across my face as I tried to prepare to meet the two police officers. I knew a confident performance was required. I was aware Jon Waite had been off last week with a flu virus and wasn’t surprised he’d caught it as the size of his nose could hoover up anything floating around in the air.

“No,