The 'Cousins'

Part Fifty-Eight: Aftermath of the Interview

Part Fifty Eight

Timeline; 10:24 Friday 20th April, Principal’s Office, Community College

“Good Lord, are you all right Dr. Armstrong?” Cherie Patten’s fingers flew to her mouth, she dropped her notebook and gasped in alarm. The College Secretary had entered the Principal’s office to find him seated, but slumped forward over the desk, his chin had fallen to his chest: the part of his face visible to her, a worrying, deathly grey colour. She rushed over to him.

“Dr. Armstrong. Dr. Armstrong. Are you all right? Do you need a doctor?” The shriek in her voice told of near hysteria.

The ailing Principal raised his head slowly to smile uncertainly at his distraught  secretary in an attempt to console her alarm. He rubbed his chest and spoke with a forced confidence.

“Nothing to worry about Miss Patten … just a touch of indigestion, nothing serious.  A pill will put it to rights, if you will kindly fetch me a glass of water, please?”

She rushed out of the room to do his bidding and quickly returned with a glass of water, her hand shaking so much that the contents in the glass threatened to spill over the rim. 

"Can I get you anything else Dr. Armstrong?"

"No thank you Miss Patten. I will be fine in a few minutes, perhaps you can hold my calls and any visitors for ten minutes or so.” 

She was not convinced of his well-being and hovered around his desk until he waved her away with a flamboyant gesture and broad smile. " Shoo, shoo, don’t worry, I’ll be fine.”

He took a pill and sat still at his desk, while his body-system settled, to ponder the information that the interview with Jess had revealed. He felt a twinge of sympathy for the boy that a man of Colonel Stuart’s stature had drawn him into the dark world of closet homosexuality. He firmly believed that Stuart had taken an unfair advantage of the boy when they slept together. ‘Who would have believed it of him, such an outwardly moral and upstanding man?’ Armstrong mumbled, shaking his head in shocked surprise. 

The more he mulled over their conversation, the stronger became his belief that the boy’s story matched his own train of thought and that Jess had actually admitted prostituting himself with the Englishman. The College clock struck the half-hour for ten thirty and brought him out of his reverie. Pushing the empty water tumbler to one side he reached for his telephone and dialled the Sheriff’s office. 

Maisie Brooks took his call and told him the Sheriff was with the judge, but was reachable on his cell phone She talked mechanically, giving him the Sheriff’s number, even although she knew, if she had been thinking about what she was doing, that Armstrong had the number already in his 'phone from previous calls.

Armstrong was too preoccupied with his own thoughts to be irritated by Maisie's thoughtlessness; stroking his chin while he considered the repercussions that might fall on him and the College if he told Donovan his version of the interview with the boy in full. There was no way he could think of avoiding telling the Sheriff the whole story and better that he did so sooner, before Flik Donovan called him.

"Dammit, dammit!  Why’s this happening in my College?" he grumbled, punching Donovan’s number aggressively into the telephone keypad.

“ Hi Flik, it’s Chuck Armstrong, can you talk?”

“Sure thing Chuck, I’m just about leaving the Hapsburg, wait a second can you?”

Flik retraced his steps into the private bar, checking there was nobody present either side of the bar before picking up the conversation with Armstrong.