Orin at B.U.; punting; Joelle — "Charles Tavis—who at Avril’s urging that…"
Charles Tavis—who at Avril’s urging that fall cashed in his Canadian return ticket and stayed on as Assistant Headmaster to assist Orin’s father’s oversight of the Academy in a progressively more and more total capacity
Context
Three easily-missed words carry the collusion: "at Avril's urging." C.T. doesn't simply appear at E.T.A.; the wife is the one who talks her half-brother into cashing his return ticket and staying on, years before the death, to run more and more of the school as the founder drinks and disappears. So the succession isn't an accident of grief — the queen installs the brother while the king is still alive, and his authority grows "in a progressively more and more total capacity" by the same increments that hollow out Himself's. The Claudius machinery is running long before there's a corpse, and it runs on Avril's initiative.