Best Kept Secret (The Clifton Chronicles, #3)(74)

The headmaster didn’t even glance at his speech as the train sped through the countryside towards the capital.

Should he go and look for the boy and demand an explanation? He knew Clifton’s housemaster had supplied him with a third-class single to Bristol, so what was he doing in a first-class carriage bound for London? Had he somehow got on the wrong train? No, that boy always knew in which direction he was going. He just hadn’t expected to be caught. In any case, he’d been smoking, despite having been explicitly told that school rules would apply until the last day of term. The boy hadn’t even waited an hour to defy him. There were no mitigating circumstances. Clifton had left him with no choice.

He would announce at assembly tomorrow morning that Clifton had been expelled. He would then phone the admissions tutor at Peterhouse, and then the boy’s father, to explain why his son would no longer be going up to Cambridge that Michaelmas. After all, Dr Banks-Williams had to consider the good name of the school, which he had nurtured assiduously for the past fifteen years.

He turned several pages of his speech before he came across the relevant passage. He read the words he’d written about Clifton’s achievement, hesitated for a moment, and then drew a line through them.



Sebastian was considering whether he should be the first or the last off the train when it pulled into Paddington. It didn’t matter much, as long as he avoided bumping into the headmaster.

He decided to be first, and perched on the edge of his seat for the last twenty minutes of the journey. He checked his pockets to find he had one pound twelve shillings and sixpence, far more than usual, but then his housemaster had reimbursed all his unspent pocket money.

He had originally planned to spend a few days in London before returning to Bristol on the last day of term, when he had absolutely no intention of handing the headmaster’s letter to his father. He removed the envelope from his pocket. It was addressed to H.A. Clifton Esq.: Private. Sebastian glanced around the carriage to check that no one was looking at him before he ripped it open. He read the headmaster’s words slowly, and then reread them. The letter was measured, fair and, to his surprise, made no mention of Ruby. If only he’d taken the train to Bristol, gone home and handed the letter to his father after he returned from America, things might have been so different. Damn it. What was the headmaster doing on the train in the first place?

Sebastian returned the letter to his pocket and tried to concentrate on what he would do in London, because he certainly wouldn’t be returning to Bristol until this had all blown over, and that might not be for some time. But how long could he hope to survive on one pound twelve shillings and sixpence? He was about to find out.

He was standing by the carriage door long before the train pulled into Paddington, and had opened it even before it had come to a halt. He leapt out, ran towards the barrier as fast as his heavy suitcase would allow and handed his ticket to the collector before disappearing into the crowd.

Sebastian had only visited London once before, and on that occasion he’d been with his parents, and there had been a car waiting to pick them up and whisk them off to his uncle’s town house in Smith Square. Uncle Giles had taken him to the Tower of London to see the Crown Jewels, and then on to Madame Tussaud’s to admire the waxworks of Edmund Hillary, Betty Grable and Don Bradman before having tea and a sticky bun at the Regent Palace Hotel. The following day he’d given them a tour of the House of Commons, and they’d seen Winston Churchill glowering from the front bench. Sebastian had been surprised to find how small he was.

When it was time for him to go home, Sebastian had told his uncle that he couldn’t wait to come back to London. Now he had, there was no car to pick him up, and the last person he could risk visiting was his uncle. He had no idea where he would spend the night.

As he made his way through the crowd, someone bumped into him, nearly knocking him over. He turned to see a young man hurrying away – he hadn’t even bothered to apologize.

Sebastian walked out of the station and into a street crammed with Victorian terraced houses, several of which displayed bed-and-breakfast signs in their windows. He selected the one with the brightest polished door knocker and the neatest window boxes. A comely woman wearing a floral nylon housecoat answered his knock, and gave her potential guest a welcoming smile. If she was surprised to find a young man in school uniform standing on her doorstep, she didn’t show it.

‘Come in,’ she said. ‘Are you looking for accommodation, sir?’

‘Yes,’ said Sebastian, surprised to be called ‘sir’. ‘I need a room for the night, and wondered how much you charge?’

‘Four shillings a night, including breakfast, or a pound for a week.’

‘I only need a room for one night,’ said Sebastian, having realized he would have to search for cheaper accommodation in the morning if he intended to stay in London for any length of time.

‘Of course,’ she said as she picked up his suitcase and headed down the corridor.

Sebastian had never seen a woman carrying a suitcase before, but she was halfway up the stairs before he could do anything about it.

‘My name’s Mrs Tibbet,’ she said, ‘but my regulars call me Tibby.’ When she reached the first-floor landing, she added, ‘I’ll be putting you in number seven. It’s at the back of the house, so you’re less likely to be woken by the morning traffic.’