THE BOY DETECTIVES

by Adrian Wright

  ‘I don’t fancy taking a lot of girls on an outing,’ said Gordon. ‘Imagine the noise on the coach!’

  ‘That’s not the idea. He doesn’t want the girls to feel isolated, and thinks they ought to get more involved in activities with other people in the area. His theory is that St. Mildred’s has become too isolated, too much of an all-female establishment. Perhaps, if there had been some male members of staff, the spying would never have stood a chance of happening at all. No, he thinks St Mildred’s would benefit by having some sporting fixtures with our school, and he wants us to suggest it to her.’

  ‘Girls versus boys, you mean?’ asked Gordon. ‘St. Mildred’s against St Basil’s Grammar?’

  ‘Especially as a new headmistress has just been appointed, to ensure that the school can start off on a new footing. The Reverend Challis said we would be acting as ambassadors.’

  ‘Well, at least that makes a change from being boy detectives,’ said Gordon. ‘As a matter of fact, I think I may already have met the new headmistress. I was riding past the gates of St Mildred’s on my way back from a brass-rubbing the other day when this little Austin 7 whizzed round the corner to turn into the school and nearly knocked me into the hedge. The woman driver was most concerned. Got out of the car and made sure I was in one piece. A small grey-haired woman in a russet suit.’

  ‘Yes, that would have been Miss Frobisher,’ replied Francis. ‘Just as well you’ve met her before. You can introduce me to her when we call at the school tomorrow morning. We have an appointment for 10.30!’

  *

  St Mildred’s School for the Advancement of Deserving Girls comprised a fine Georgian house standing in six acres of pastoral seclusion, with various additional structures erected in later years with impeccable taste. Francis and Gordon rode up to the school’s gates five minutes before they were due to meet the headmistress.

  ‘My goodness,’ said Francis. ‘You must have been cutting along this road at a rate, if you almost collided with Miss Frobisher’s car. The road is so wide here, you must have been wandering all over the place. You should be more careful.’

  ‘Yes, I must,’ said Gordon.

  The sun had come out, a welcome brightness after the recent dull days. St. Mildred’s was a gracious building, primly neat as it sat in the midst of the playing fields, woods and pastures that made up the surrounding grounds. Today because the school was at half-term, the boarders had all been sent home, and not a whisper of the croquet mallet or happy cry of the netball court could be heard as the boys wheeled their bicycles around the side of the main house, leaving them in cycle racks at the rear of the tuck shop. It was then that a terrible cry cracked the stillness.

  ‘Stop that!’

  The boys turned to where an elderly man in dirty corduroys tied up with string, a fisherman’s smock, gumboots and a battered trilby was waving a pitchfork in their faces.

  ‘Don’t leave them there lawnmowers there!’ he shouted through blackened teeth.

  ‘Lawnmowers?’ It was no wonder the boys spoke in unison, as well as disbelief.

  ‘Can’t trust young roustabouts nowadays,’ the old man muttered. ‘Them there lawnmowers is to be delivered to the potting sheds, per Miss Frobisher’s orders.

  ‘I’m sorry, sir’ said Francis, who had earned one of his scout medals for attending a course on dealing tactfully with the elderly and feeble-minded. ‘I think there’s been a misunderstanding.’

  ‘Don’t use that tone with me,’ said the old man, with another dangerous wave of the pitchfork. ‘Whippersnappers, the lot o’ you.’

  While Gordon was trying to suppress boyish giggles, Francis smiled gently at the deluded member of St. Mildred’s School’s staff.

  ‘We have an appointment to see Miss Frobisher,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Gordon, ‘and we haven’t brought her any lawnmowers either!’

  ‘We were just parking our bicycles,’ said Francis.

  ‘Well, bless my soul!’ said the old man. ‘My missus is always sayin’ I need my eyes examined. I wondered why them there lawnmowers had bells on them. This way, young gentlemen.’

  The old man led them across a courtyard until they reached the imposing front entrance of the school, where a middle-aged woman, crisply dressed in a blue and white sailor boy jacket and skirt, appeared smilingly in the doorway.

  ‘They ain’t brought the lawn-mowers,’ said the old man.

  ‘Thank you. That will be all, Parsons.’ She dismissed the employee with an exasperated gesture. ‘You must be Francis and Gordon Jones,’ she said, extending a hand in welcome. ‘The Reverend Challis told me you would be calling. Do come in, please.’

  She shook hands with her visitors, and stared at Gordon for a moment.

  ‘Oh dear,’ she said. ‘I think we may have met before. I do hope you have had no after effects from our little collision.’

  Laughing, and stopping only to admire the vaulted wooden ceiling of the school’s ample vestibule, the boys were led into the headmistress’s study. A painted sign on its door read ‘Miss Maude Frobisher, RAC.’

  ‘It is so good of you to call,’ said Miss Frobisher. She ushered the boys to two comfortable armchairs and then sat, ramrod-backed, in the swivel chair behind her desk.

  Once seated, her tone became more confidential.

  ‘As you will know, the school has only recently dealt with a most serious matter. National security was being threatened by one of the staff, who was using her position for espionage purposes. Only Scotland Yard, MI5, the Reverend Challis and yourselves share this knowledge with me. That person has now been removed by the school and will be dealt with by the relevant authorities. It was also decided to appoint a new headmistress. The school may be said to be in a state of recovery. Which, as you will understand, is why I have been brought in. A new broom, so to speak. Nothing, of course, must be spoken of this outside these four walls.’

  ‘Of course not,’ said Francis.

  ‘We are still Boy Scouts,’ said Gordon.

  Miss Frobisher leaned even closer across the desk, speaking in almost a whisper.

  ‘I know of your reputation as detectives. The Reverend Challis has told me that more than once you have assisted in solving a mystery.’

  Francis almost said Mum’s the word, until he remembered her Bramley apple pie.

  ‘It must have been a very trying time for you, Miss Frobisher.’

  ‘Yes, indeed. To think that the school had been harbouring a spy in its midst! It’s just as well that the holiday has arrived, although I must admit that it feels very lonely now that the girls have gone down for the half term week. I had planned to have a few days with my sister on the Isle of Wight, but I’m afraid I have had to cancel.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Francis. ‘Is there anything we can do to help?’

  ‘How kind. No, nothing at all. One of the boarders was unable to return home for the holiday as she has a highly infectious condition. Matron had already booked a week’s tour of the lesser cathedral cities, but fortunately I worked as a nurse in earlier years.’

  ‘I do hope your patient improves soon,’ said Francis.

  ‘Oh yes. Nothing to worry about, but she has to be kept in complete isolation. Now, how may I help you?’

  Francis suggested his idea that St. Mildred’s might agree to a sporting fixture with his school.

  ‘My goodness!’ cried Miss Frobisher. ‘Boys and girls meeting together in that way. I can see that you go in for modern thinking, Francis.’

  ‘As a matter of fact, my cousin Gordon is really the sporting one. I’m sure you would find him willing to help in any ways you may suggest.’

  ‘It is certainly true that we pride ourselves on keeping our girls healthy at St. Mildred’s. Our netball team is one of the finest in the county, and hockey has quite overtaken maypole dancing as a highlight of our curriculum.’

  Gordon smiled encouragingly, and looked towards a pile of racquets in the corner of the room.

&nb
sp; ‘I can see by the quality of the racquets you have here that sport is taken seriously,’ he said.

  Miss Frobisher turned her eyes to where Gordon was looking.

  ‘Ah yes,’ she laughed. ‘If the girls are to be successful tennis players, they must have the very best tools.’

  Her face grew darker.

  ‘I am most grateful to you for bringing this idea to us. Quite a brilliant stroke, to bring the girls’ school and the boys’ school closer together in such a way. My only concern is that perhaps we should carefully consider the sort of activities they would be engaging in. Dominoes, perhaps, or tiddly-winks, might prove less eyebrow-raising. I do have the spotless reputation of St. Mildred’s to consider. But I am most grateful to you, and will be in touch.’

  ‘Well,’ said Gordon as he and Francis wheeled their bicycles towards the school gates, ‘Somehow, I don’t think our Miss Frobisher will be agreeing to a mud-wrestling match!’

  *

  A week went by without further communication from Miss Frobisher. Gordon had nursed dreams of having a chess tournament between St. Basil’s and St. Mildred’s, with the hosting school putting on a slap-up tea of sandwiches and cakes, but as the days passed Gordon put the scheme to the back of his mind. There was plenty to occupy him at Bundler’s Cottage. He hinged some Samoan stamps into his collection, pasted some cuttings about a new steam locomotive into his scrapbook, made progress with the balsa-wood assembly kit of the Champion Junior Glider aeroplane that Uncle Billy had given him at Christmas, attended choir practice, re-organised his fossil cabinet, bought the latest Biggles adventure, listened to a thought-provoking edition of The Brains Trust on the wireless, constructed a wooden frame for his Arthur Mee Writing Certificate, read that week’s Eagle, and sponged his school blazer.

  At Red Cherry House, Francis’s life went on much as usual, although he often stared from the windows at the still dismal weather, longing to be out on his bicycle in the clean English air. Each day he expected to hear that Gordon had exciting news about St. Mildred’s, but nothing happened.

  Towards the end of the week, his father was sitting in the Windsor chair after lunch (or dinner as Mr Jones would insist on calling it). He was scanning the Hatch, Match and Despatch section of the newspaper, and Francis was bowed at the kitchen table bent over an algebraic problem that needed solving before he returned to school the next week, when the blissful quiet was interrupted by the banging of the front door. Mrs Jones entered, her cheeks rudely pink as she had driven her Raleigh the two miles from Strutton-by-the-Way to where one of her customers lived.

  ‘I’ve never known such a thing,’ Mrs Jones said, even more rudely pink as she spread herself before the range. ‘All that way. A complete waste of time. Good afternoon, says Mrs. Robinson, and very grateful I’m sure but I won’t be requiring that circular stitched bra I ordered from you after all. You could have knocked me down with a feather. She’s bought one of those new bullet bras. Brought it out, bold as brass, to show me. I don’t know what corsetry is coming to, really I don’t.’

  ‘You’ve been over-peddling, Doris,’ said Mr Jones. ‘I’ll put the kettle on.’

  With the tea poured, and a slice of her very own Victoria sponge brought to her, Mrs Jones visibly brightened.

  ‘And I just remembered,’ she said, ‘there’s that slimline Arabian Doublet brassiere that should have been posted off yesterday.’

  ‘I’ll pop down to the post office and send it on its way,’ said Francis.

  ‘Oh, that would be good of you, dear. The nuns will be thinking it’s got lost.’

  Although it meant driving through the drizzling mist that seemed to have escaped from some desolate fen, Francis was glad to be in the open countryside, and it was pleasant to step into the village post office, the tinkle of the bell above its door somehow welcoming him to another, enclosed, world. Miss Simms, as always, was pleased to see him.

  ‘Why, Francis, what brings you out on a day like this?’ Her eyes twinkled over her crescent spectacles. ‘Are you here to investigate a mystery?’

  ‘Unfortunately not,’ said Francis. ‘Mysteries seem very thin on the ground just at the moment. I’ve brought one of mother’s parcels to post.’

  Miss Simms busied herself with the necessary processes, which involved careful weighing, forensic examination of the label, the selection of the appropriate stamps, a severe licking of the adhesive gum, much noisy pummelling with rubber stamps, and curious scratching in leger books.

  ‘And didn’t I see you the other day going up to St. Mildred’s?’ asked Miss Sims between a fourpenny and twopenny stamp. ‘I thought as much,’ she said, before Francis had spoken. ‘Such a delightful lady. A Miss Frobisher. She came in here, you know, several weeks ago, on the day she came to the school for her interview. She was just on her way there, and I said to Joyce, didn’t I Joyce?’

  Miss Simms’s assistant managed to murmur agreement as she was stocktaking the Basildon Bond.

  ‘A most genteel person,’ continued Miss Simms, ‘and I would have been quite flabbergasted had she not been appointed as the new headmistress. And such a friendly soul. She must have stood there chatting away for an hour or more - mustn’t she Joyce? - before she had to hurry away to appear before the school board. And when you’ve finished with that gentleman’s postal order, Joyce, you can get on with mopping out the telephone box with Jeyes Fluid.’

  Rather than straight home to Red Cherry House, Francis decided to cycle the extra mile or so to Bundler’s Cottage, where Gordon was just waving off his uncle, who sat cosily wrapped against the cold in the driving seat of his Ford Anglia.

  ‘Uncle Billy looks as if he’s off on a mission,’ said Francis

  ‘Well, he is, in a way. You know he likes to take a drink sometimes at the Bull and Parakeet? He meets up with some of his old army friends. One of them works at the Northcrack Staithe power station as a night watchman, and he’s been telling Uncle Billy he’s unhappy about going on with the job.’

  ‘That’s not surprising, is it?’ asked Francis. ‘We know that the power station was targeted by the spy from St. Mildred’s, so it must have been very worrying for a night-watchman. But the problem has been sorted. Somehow, you need to let Uncle Billy know, so that he can reassure his friend.’

  ‘I’m not sure it’s as simple as that,’ said Gordon. ‘I don’t think it is all over. Apparently, the nightwatchman heard strange noises in the power station last night just after midnight, when he was doing his hourly round. He was quite shaken up. That’s why Uncle Billy’s driven over to see him.’

  ‘It’s probably his imagination. Having once heard such things, he thinks he can hear them again. If you’re not careful, you’ll have us thinking there’s some sort of mystery about the whole thing, when we know jolly well the mystery has been cleared up.’

  ‘Do you think it might be a good idea to speak to the Reverend Challis again? Surely he will know what’s going on.’

  ‘Exactly what I’ve been thinking,’ Francis replied. ‘I called in at the vicarage yesterday. His housekeeper answered the door. Apparently, he’s been called away on an urgent episcopal matter and she couldn’t say when he would be back.’

  ‘He’s deserted us.’ A slight shudder ran through Gordon. ‘That means we’re quite alone.’

  Then, Francis noticed the almost completed model of the Junior Glider, and before long all thoughts of Uncle Billy’s worried night-watchman friend were replaced by the boys’ eager perusal of the Comet balsa wood catalogue.

  *

  ‘Wake up, Francis!’

  Francis stirred in his sleep. He had been dreaming about a night-watchman in a lonely, desolated factory building (very like a power station), and had just got to the moment when the night-watchman opened a creaking door and came face to face with a giant cuckoo clock, when the sound of something at his bedroom window startled him awake. Surely that was someone throwing stones? He walked to the window and looked down. Through bleary eyes, he saw som
eone in the garden below, someone who looked rather like Gordon. And then he realised it was Gordon, astride his bike and wrapped up in a woolly hat and scarf and thick jersey coat.

  ‘Gordon! What on earth?’

  ‘Come down,’ said Gordon in a hoarse whisper. ‘Quick as you can.’

  ‘It’s one o’clock in the morning,’ said Francis. ‘What’s so urgent?’

  ‘It’s the end of half term tomorrow, that’s what’s urgent,’ replied Gordon with as much emphasis as he could manage without disturbing Mr and Mrs Jones. ‘I’ve got your bike ready, and there’s hot coffee in this Thermos.’

  Not waiting to remove his pyjamas, Francis quickly pulled a polo-necked sweater over his head and clambered into his favourite fawn trousers and shoes. Pausing only to leave a note (‘Gone detecting!’) on his abandoned pillow, he tiptoed downstairs. Opening the front door as noiselessly as he could, he saw Gordon at the ready for off, his bicycle aslant and his left foot on the pedal. He had already retrieved Francis’s bicycle from the garden shed. The two boys silently manoeuvred their way into the road before setting off at a brisk pace, but to where Francis had no clue. The night was as black as ink, with a low mist swirling across the hard ground, making it seem as if they were moving above a cloud. Only the occasional sound of a wild bird, and the whining complaint of the East wind travelled at their side. Francis was about to demand of Gordon where they were headed, when the gates of St. Mildred’s came into view. Gordon signalled to Francis to slow down, and dismounted.

  ‘Let’s get the bikes off the road before anyone spots us,’ said Gordon. ‘Leave them behind the wall.’

  ‘You haven’t told me what this is all about,’ said Francis.

  ‘No,’ said Gordon, ‘because I don’t quite know myself.’

  Francis was about to complain about being dragged out of his warm bed on such an inhospitable night. He was freezing cold, his face was damp, his feet were almost numb, and his eyes couldn’t adapt to the sudden complete darkness of the school’s grounds, for not a light could be seen. Somehow, however, although Gordon was two years younger, he knew that his cousin must have good reason for this midnight escapade. He supposed for a moment he had been a little jealous of the fact that on this occasion it was Gordon who seemed to be leading whatever mission it was they were on. Jealousy was a most unpleasant thing, he knew. It was then he caught a glimpse of the glistening excitement in Gordon’s eyes, and gave himself up to whatever his young cousin was planning.