Miss Waterhouse was accustomed to devote a whole quarter of an hour every night to the brushing of her hair. She had once read that the conscientious girl will never spend less than a quarter of an hour in brushing her hair, and it was a pity that more girls were not more conscientious. As a conscientious girl Miss Waterhouse therefore knew exactly what to do.
Hair-brushing is to a girl what shaving is to a man, the very best opportunity of the day for thinking out one’s problems. Miss Waterhouse had her problems to think out. The present one was what line to take up over this curious business which had arisen between Amy Harrison and Gerald Rice, which threatened to become a good deal more important than the usual end-of-term squabble between two people with frayed nerves. It looked very much as if the whole of the staff was going to be drawn into it before the week was out, to support one combatant or the other; and if that was the case, just what was Miss Mary Waterhouse going to do about it? And that meant, just how could the affair be turned to Miss Mary Waterhouse’s advantage? Miss Waterhouse was not one of those foolish virgins who allow their emotions to sway their reason; with Miss Waterhouse reason dictated and emotion fell into line.
To the slow, steady sweeps of her brush she began to forecast the inevitable developments.
On one side already were Amy and Mr. Parker; on the other Mr. Rice and Mrs. Harrison. Both Leila Jevons and Mr. Duff would automatically take anyone’s side against Amy, through the instinct of simple protection; almost certainly Mr. Wargrave, if he took a side at all (and it was conceivable that Mr. Wargrave alone of all the staff might not take a side) would range himself under Amy. Elsa Crimp could be depended upon to throw herself into the fray, and on principle against Amy. Neatly Mary saw the sides arranged in her mind like the boys’ matches pinned by Mr. Rice on the school notice-board, with Mr. Harrison between the two in the position of umpire.
Mr. Harrison (Umpire)
Whites
Colours
Mr. Rice (capt.)
Amy Harrison (capt.)
Mrs. Harrison
Mr. Parker
Mr. Duff
Mr. Wargrave
Leila Jevons
Elsa Crimp
Yes, on paper the Whites looked the stronger team; but Miss Waterhouse knew that the captain of the Colours was worth half a dozen.
About the result there could be no possible doubt whatever.
Without hesitation Miss Waterhouse added herself to the Colours.
She would have liked to nominate herself for Assistant Umpire, but saw difficulty in obtaining the agreement of the others, particularly of the captain of the Colours.
III
Roland House went to bed early. Mrs. Harrison therefore went to bed, when possible, late. To-night Mr. Harrison would be working late in his study. Mrs. Harrison therefore went to bed early. At the precise moment when Miss Jevons was turning her attention from her eyebrows to her mole, Phyllis Harrison was already taking off her dress.
She undressed slowly, pottering about her bedroom between each garment that she removed, and thinking. Her mind moved in little bird-like hops from one thought to another.
“Gerald and Amy! Whoever would have expected to see a row between those two? What fun!—Dear Gerald. . . . But I do pity his wife, though. I wonder whom he’ll marry. And when.—Well, thank goodness I’m safe to-night, at any rate.—Damn! There’s a ladder in these stockings. I wish I’d noticed that earlier.—Cecil’s working late to-night. . . . Hurrah for the last week of term. But oh, my goodness, the holidays.—Why did I marry him? Oh, well, I suppose I might have done worse.—Would he be jealous if he knew? Really jealous? I suppose he would, because all men are so possessive, but . . . Thank goodness I’m not possessive, whatever I may be.—I’m sorry Mary Waterhouse is going. She’s a prig, but I can’t help liking her. She’s useful, too. Amy will miss her.—Dear Amy.—Yes, I do like this Mille Et Une Fleurs scent.
“How I hate this place. Really, sometimes I wish Gerald would take me away. Why did I marry Cecil? This isn’t the sort of life I ought to be leading at all. I want lights, and music, and witty talk round me. I’m wasted here. Shall I chuck it, and clear out? I wish I could make up my mind. And yet in some queer way I should miss Cecil. Talk about women being mysterious; men are fifty times more so. I’ve been married to Cecil—what is it? Oh, my gods, four years!—and I don’t feel I really know him yet. I know Elsa Crimp thinks he’s a dark horse. Perhaps he is. Supposing if he did find out about me and Gerald. Does that frighten me? Yes, it does; it terrifies me—terrifies me, really. And yet I like playing with fire. I like being terrified. But what would he do? I wonder. Those weak men—at least, the kind that seems weak in small things of everyday life—when they do take the bit between their teeth they’re fifty times worse than the blusterers. Yes, I can see Cecil doing—well, almost anything!—Damn, I’ve got a pag-wamp coming on my cheek. That was the salmon.”
Mrs. Harrison then spent five and a half minutes examining her incipient pag-wamp from every possible angle.
She began to cream her face.
“Well, I wish she’d marry him and hurry up about it. Though anyone wanting to marry Wargrave . . . Well, I suppose an accent doesn’t put everybody off. Thank heaven I’m fastidious. I wonder if it really will make her any more human. Marriage ought to, for a woman; but Amy. . . . My goodness, does he realise what he’d be letting himself in for—does he realise? Perhaps he does, and that’s why she hasn’t brought it off yet. But she will. I bet she does. Heaven help the man! No wonder he’s got that worried look. His number’s up.—Bother this pag-wamp. It’s going to be a real brute. Just when I wanted to look particularly nice, too. Ah, well, these things are sent to try us, as Mary would probably say. One does one’s job. My job will be to look nice in spite of pag-wamps.—Dear Gerald. I really am getting disgracefully fond of that conceited young man. Curse him!—Where’s that towel? Oh, why can I never find anything in the place I’m perfectly certain I left it in last?
“Gerald, yes. I must pull his leg about Amy to-morrow. Keep him up to the mark. I’m going to have some gorgeous fun out of this. Well, it’s about time I did have a little fun. It’s nearly a fortnight since we had that dinner and show in London. A fortnight! My goodness, why did I marry Cecil? Yes, I know I might have done worse. But I might have done such a lot better. I wonder if anyone’s ever thrown themselves away quite so completely as I have. Well, we shall see; we shall see.
“Oh, curse this pag-wamp!”
IV
Amy Harrison stood at her bedroom door, listening, noiselessly she edged it an inch open, and stood without moving, her ear to the crack. Then an expression of disappointment passed over her face, and she closed the door again. She thought she had heard a movement in the passage upstairs, when no movement should be.
She walked on bare feet across the room and got back into bed, but her ears were still alert. Amy trusted nobody.
In her bed she lay flat on her back, her hands crossed behind her neck, and stared into the dark. She had a good deal of thinking to do, and it was always easiest to think in bed at night.
Mr. Rice’s resignation must be accepted. That she had already decided. It was a pity in a way, because he was a real asset to the school, temporary though his stay was. But he had got too big for his boots, and the probabilities were that he could not be reduced again to his correct dimensions; in any case the risk could not be taken. Amy’s thoughts played round the scene in her father’s study after lunch, and she was annoyed to find that she was still young enough to burn again with anger at the mere memory of Mr. Rice’s words and behaviour; she would have liked to be able to recall them only with contempt.
Mr. Rice must go.
M
iss Jevons must go.
Somehow Miss Jevons had managed to get round her father that morning, but Amy was not worried about that. With Miss Jevons’s person out of the way Amy knew that she could deal adequately with Mr. Harrison. A letter would be sent to that young woman within the first week of the holidays. Amy would see to that. A term’s salary would have to be sacrificed, which was a nuisance, but that could not be helped. Miss Jevons would have had to go in any case, as a matter of mere efficiency, but her cajoling of Mr. Harrison that morning made her dismissal for Amy a personal point of honour. So much for Miss Jevons.
Miss Jevons, Miss Waterhouse, and Mr. Rice. Quite a minor exodus. Amy began to turn over the plan that had been forming in her mind during the day. In the darkness her thin eyebrows lowered themselves ominously over her cold eyes. An exodus of any sort is the starting-point. It is easy to turn a minor exodus into a major one.
Amy had almost decided already that now was the heaven-sent opportunity for the purging of Roland House. Now was the time to pluck all weak growths up by the roots and re-plant with the hardy shrubs of efficiency.
Mr. Duff. . . .
Mr. Duff must join the exodus. That was quite certain. Mr. Duff had been at Roland House six years, and it had been six years too long. Mr. Duff was hopeless. He could not teach, he could not keep order, the boys laughed at him openly. Mr. Duff was about as much use in the scheme of Roland House as a split pea. For twenty-four months now Amy had been insisting to her father that Mr. Duff must go, and though Mr. Harrison had agreed that it was inevitable, Mr. Duff still remained. Now Mr. Duff was going.
How could Mr. Duff be forced out of the place?
That Mr. Harrison could be brought to the point of handing Mr. Duff his dismissal during the few days that remained of the term, Amy did not believe. Mr. Harrison detested dismissing people. Mr. Duff had been in the place six years. That, to Mr. Harrison, seemed to constitute a good enough reason for his remaining there another six. Amy coldly thanked heaven that she was not so soft. What would become of the school if she were? What, indeed?
No, somehow or other Mr. Duff must be driven, or exasperated, or shamed, into resigning. How, Amy had as yet no idea. That must await the inspiration of a future moment.
Elsa Crimp. . . .
Amy did not like Elsa Crimp. That was quite sufficient reason for Elsa Crimp to go. But there were more plausible ones too. Miss Crimp was not a good music teacher, and still less of a good teacher of dancing. Able to play only indifferently herself, and to dance not even so well as that, she had not the gift, as has the born teacher, of imparting more knowledge than she possessed. She did not even bother to try to impart what she had. Laughter and badinage proceeded as a rule from those rooms in which Miss Crimp was supposed to be instructing the young. Laughter and badinage.
Miss Harrison re-knitted her lowering brows. That sort of thing must be stopped.
Music and dancing are not important items in a school’s curriculum. It is very doubtful whether parents will even enquire into their offsprings’ progress in those subjects. The shortcomings of Miss Crimp had therefore been held hitherto to be outweighed by her advantages. Amy herself had found it extremely useful to be able to say, in those bland, earnest tones which were employed only upon the parents of prospective boarders: “And for music and dancing of course we have Miss Crimp. The daughter of Reginald Crimp, you know. The R.A. Yes, the man who paints those delightful portraits of the Royal Family. Oh, yes, they live in Allingford. Such a charming man. Of course, she has no need to do anything; she just can’t bear to be idle. Just like her father. Oh, yes, you must meet him. Perhaps if you came to see little Richard you’d come to lunch one day, and I’d ask him. He’d be delighted. He’s always in and out of here.” That Mr. Crimp, as Miss Harrison well knew, would rather be condemned to paint for the rest of his life without flake-white than go to lunch at Roland House, and had never set foot in the place except once when he came in a towering fury to collect his daughter who had forgotten that the President of the New American Art Club was coming to lunch that day during a brief visit to England, was quite outside the circle.
But now Amy did not like Miss Crimp.
For one thing Miss Crimp was a young woman of character, and Amy had long ago decided that there is room for only one woman of character in a preparatory school. Then it was not at all certain that Miss Crimp, besides being a young woman of character, might not be a young woman of bad character. Amy would not say as much to anyone in the world; would not even hint as much; but really, the things Miss Crimp sometimes said. One cannot be too careful about the tone of a place like Roland House. But in any case Amy had noticed (and Amy had a sharp eye for that kind of thing) that during this term whenever Amy had had cause to administer some small reprimand to a member of the staff, Elsa Crimp had always been loudly in sympathy with the delinquent. And how can one maintain discipline if that sort of thing is to go on, thought Amy now, with a tightening of her thin lips.
Elsa Crimp must go.
Mr. Parker. . . .
This was going to be awkward. Hitherto Amy had carefully avoided anything that might even remotely be understood as sympathy with any action, word, or thought of Mr. Parker’s. Now, owing to the heat of those few minutes in the study, she found herself and her authority committed to his support. But Amy was not the person to allow a small accident like that to blind her to the real facts. Mr. Parker was an incompetent old bungler; by chance, in a rather underhanded attempt to get the better of Mr. Rice, he had put himself in a position in which he had to be supported by authority. Amy was perfectly just. She knew precisely why Mr. Parker had done what he had done, and she knew that Mr. Rice’s subsequent indignation, so far as it was directed against Mr. Parker, was perfectly well founded. She knew too that Mr. Parker remained an incompetent old bungler; and therefore Mr. Parker must go.
That was the most difficult of all the tasks that faced Amy. Her father would never give Mr. Parker his consent. There was a mist of romance surrounding the burly form of Mr. Parker, encouraged, Amy more than suspected, by Mr. Parker himself. Mr. Parker had been at Roland House as long as Mr. Harrison himself. He had been a junior master under Amy’s grandfather. He had nourished a hopeless passion for the first Mrs. Harrison. With acute judgement the first Mrs. Harrison had not chosen him, and Mr. Parker had lived on the fact ever since. Everyone had treated him kindly, the sympathy of Mr. and Mrs. Harrison had enveloped him in a warm cloud, it had been perfectly understood that he was unable to tear himself away from Roland House, he had suffered very visibly; it was all most touching. Mr. Parker had become something of a legend. Not until the advent of iconoclastic Mr. Rice had he been dislodged from a single one of the niches in which he had seated himself so firmly.
Amy was grateful to Mr. Rice. She was not yet sure how the unseating process was to be continued, but now that the lever had once been inserted under Mr. Parker she felt quite competent to handle the other end of it successfully. Mr. Parker was to go.
Next term, Amy was resolved, of the present staff of Roland House there should remain no one but Mr. Wargrave. It would be a grand upheaval, and Amy would have a busy holiday; but it would make things easier all round.
Mr. Wargrave. . . .
Amy’s stern young face did not relax in the least; if anything, an expression almost of exasperation passed across it. Well, Amy was exasperated. What on earth was the matter with the man? Amy thought she had summed him up quite competently: a determined worker, ambitious, who would marry where hard sense led him, not love. Amy knew quite well that Mr. Wargrave did not love her in the least; no more, in fact, than she loved him. But she had thought that he would have seen at once, just as she had, that they could be of very great service to each other. Ever since her mother died Amy had more or less consciously been looking about for a consort with whom she would share the throne of Roland House; and now that she had decided on one, was the young man s
o foolish as not to realise his luck? Amy’s look of exasperation deepened.
No. She knew Mr. Wargrave. He was not foolish in the least. There was something behind this. Could it be—could it possibly be that he had been so ineffably foolish as to contract some obligation of absurd honour elsewhere? Men were so childish about that sort of thing. She would not have thought Mr. Wargrave one to bother about anything so abstract, but one could never be certain with men.
Well, in such cases frankness paid. She would tackle Mr. Wargrave about it the very next morning. And perhaps that might. . .
Was that a noise in the corridor upstairs?
Amy jumped out of bed and hurried, a white, avenging angel, to the door.
V
Elsa Crimp sat alone in her drawing-room, smoking a cigarette. At her elbow was a glass of whisky and soda. She did not like whisky, but one owes something to oneself. In the studio at the bottom of the garden her father, under a strong daylight bulb, was putting the high lights on the jewels of a stout merchant-peeress.
Miss Crimp wore an evening dress of bright scarlet velvet, but in spite of that she looked dissatisfied. One hand ran every now and then through her rather untidy brown hair. She pitched the end of her cigarette petulantly into the empty fire-place. Miss Crimp was in love; and as befits a young and independent woman of to-day, was exceedingly annoyed about it.
But then Miss Crimp really had something to be annoyed about. She was in love with a curate. It was humiliating.
The Rev. Michael Stanford had lived in Allingford for three years now. Miss Crimp had known him for less than one of them. She had met him at Roland House, where he attended for an hour on Monday mornings to take the sixth form in scripture and the catechism, and had fallen in love with him at sight. Miss Crimp was not a person to hide her feelings. By hints less subtle than bludgeon-like Mr. Stanford had been made aware of the devastation he had wrought. His delight had not been perceptible. Miss Crimp had shared his regrets, but had continued to press her suit.
Murder in the Basement Page 9
