Laurels Are Poison mb-14

by Gladys Mitchell

  ‘Miss Morris,’ said Mrs Bradley without preamble, ‘you are a Second-Year Student?’

  ‘Yes, Warden.’

  ‘Did you put on a pair of dark-coloured trousers and dance round the bonfire in front of Hall last night?’

  ‘No, Warden.’

  ‘Thank you, Miss Morris. Are you the only Miss Morris in Athelstan?’

  ‘Yes, Warden.’

  ‘And in College?’

  ‘There is a Miss Morris in the Second-Year in Bede.’

  ‘Thank you, Miss Morris.’

  ‘Anything more, Warden?’

  ‘No, child. I hope you didn’t hurry over your tea?’

  ‘Oh, no, not at all, thank you.’

  The student retired to collect her books for a lecture, and Mrs Bradley picked up the telephone and established contact with Bede.

  ‘Athelstan speaking,’ she observed. ‘Have you a student named Morris?’

  ‘Yes. A Second-Year.’

  ‘Is she likely to wear trousers and dance around bonfires at eleven o’clock at night?’

  ‘You’d better ask her,’ replied the voice at the other end of the line. ‘Half a minute, and I’ll ask the Warden of Bede to bung her over. I’m answering the phone under false pretences. I’m only a visitor here. My name’s Topas. I really live at Rule — at Columba. I’m the Sub. Do come over this evening and bring your baby girl.’

  ‘To Columba?’

  ‘Yes. But I’ll see you get your Miss Morris. Is it true you had a Walpurgis Night at Athelstan?’

  ‘You shall know all,’ said Mrs Bradley.

  Chapter 5

  INTRUSION OF SERPENTS

  « ^ »

  MISS Morris of Bede proved to be a chubby, ingenuous student with a Midlands accent, and Mrs Bradley acquitted her at the end of her second sentence.

  Rightly interpreting the reference to her baby girl, she took Deborah along to Columba Hall after dinner, and received her first impression of, according to Kitty, ‘the live-est wire at Cartaret.’

  Miss Topas made the coffee herself, explaining that she always made her own, that the Warden, fortunately, liked it made that way, and that, anyway, they hadn’t a maid in the place who had any ideas beyond boiled water poured on to chicory, and that she had heard they had had a very fine first-night rag at Athelstan. She added that Mrs Bradley was to be congratulated, and that she wished she had been there to see.

  In short, she babbled on until the Warden of Columba, a grey-haired, slightly deaf lady of nearly sixty, excused herself on the plea of two references to look up for her divinity lecture next day, and departed.

  ‘And now,’ said Miss Topas, coming back to the fireside after closing the door behind the Warden, ‘let’s hear all about poor Miss Murchan.’

  ‘I don’t think there’s much I can tell you,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘The police are going on the assumption that the grandfather of the child is the person responsible for Miss Murchan’s disappearance. He went into a mental hospital after the inquest, you know, but he came out, apparently cured, about midway through last term — actually on the eighth of May.’

  ‘Still vowing vengeance?’

  ‘Well, the police don’t claim that’

  ‘What about the man himself?’

  ‘He has gone away for a rest and change.’

  ‘Still, I don’t see how he spirited Miss Murchan away at the end of a College dance.’

  ‘You don’t? I was hoping I should be able to find some evidence of how that could have been done.’

  ‘Frightfully difficult. You see, that particular dance is different from the other end-of-term dances, because the students can invite men friends. The result is — or was, last term, as I can testify — that the whole of the College grounds are crawling with couples after about nine o’clock. You sit on them on the benches, you bump into them by the rockeries, and you tread on them on the field. Horribly embarrassing, poor things.’

  ‘And you think that Miss Murchan, attended by a cavalier, would have excited attention?’

  ‘Not a doubt of it No man alive could have got Miss Murchan out of the College grounds on such a night without at least two dozen witnesses coming forward to testify to it. Either she left the grounds of her own accord and alone, or else the man had a — what do they call it — a female accomplice.’

  ‘That is very clear,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘By the way, would you mind giving me a description of Miss Murchan? I’ve seen her photograph at the school she came from, but I never think people look themselves surrounded by thirty children.’

  ‘Miss Murchan? Well, she was about forty-two or forty-three, I should think. Rather a faded-looking person; fair hair going grey, withered skin, weak mouth, but rather arresting eyes — grey-green and alive-looking, which the rest of her certainly wasn’t. She was very reserved, and not very popular, either with the students or with us. But I was only here one term with her, you know.’

  ‘Demonstration lesson,’ said Miss Menzies impartially, ‘to Group A.1. on Poetry — capital P, by Miss D. K. St P. Cloud at 11.35 a.m. And very nice, too. Kitty, and thou, Alice, I think this merits our support and close attention.’

  ‘I’m not going to rag Miss Cloud,’ said Alice, mildly but with determination.

  ‘And who says otherwise?’ demanded Laura. ‘I say we ought to give Athelstan a good hand. And now, to change the subject to one of even greater importance: who’s got any money for the cakes and ale at break?’

  It was eight-fifty on the second Tuesday morning of term. Prayers (optional) were concluded, the Principal, and those lecturers who had elected to uphold her, had left the College hall, and the students who had attended the ten-minute ceremony were on the point of dispersal.

  Deborah had attended prayers and had no lectures that morning now that her Demonstration lesson was in view. This Demonstration lesson, wished on her at short notice by the Senior English lecturer who had contracted a severe cold, was, she knew, not sufficiently prepared, and the poem was not one which she herself would have chosen. Since, however, thirty hectographed copies of it, and of the aim, material and method of the lesson, had already been circulated to the students, she had no option but to do the best she could. This, she thought miserably, would be surprisingly below the general standard of the College. She had become aware, as the term got into its stride and the students settled down, that Mrs Bradley’s lectures in psychology and Miss Topas’s lectures in medieval history were always crowded, even by students who had no particular reason for attending them, whereas her own lectures in English literature were attended only by those students who had neither the effontery nor the bad manners to cut them. Her Demonstration lessons, she felt, would be equally uninspiring.

  She was feeling particularly depressed that morning, having had a passage-at-arms with a Second-Year student in Athelstan who had been discovered in the act of giving Lulu her shoes to clean, and whom Deborah had only been able to worst by threatening to report both her and Lulu to Mrs Bradley. The interview had left her feeling slightly like crying and with a notable diminution of her usual good-humour.

  However, there was the set lesson, there were the students, and soon there would be the children. It behoved her to pull herself together and readjust her mind. She thought of the poem, groaned, picked up her hymn book and went dispiritedly out of the College hall and along to the Staff sitting-room. This happened to be next door to the Demonstration Room in which she would give her lesson.

  Opposite this room was the cloakroom to which the children would be taken as soon as they arrived at the College. Deborah went out and had a look at it, and then she went into the Demonstration Room to see that everything there was in order. The room had been specially constructed and furnished for its purpose, and was a good deal wider than the other lecture rooms. At both sides there were benches to accommodate the students who would listen to the lesson, and between these two sets of benches were the desks for the children, so that the students were sideways on to bot
h children and teacher. At the back of the room was a long bookshelf, there were a cupboard, a gramophone and the teacher’s desk at the front, and the door was on the teacher’s left as she faced the class.

  Deborah fidgeted round this torture-chamber for five minutes or so, and then, having noted that the desks were supplied with pens, pencils and paper, for another Demonstration lesson which came before her own, she placed on the table some copies of the book from which the poem was to be taken, got a box of white chalk from the cupboard and then went back to the Staff sitting-room and tried to settle down to the business of correcting a batch of First-Year essays.

  At ten minutes to ten Miss Harbottle, the lecturer in Mathematics, came in, dumped down her books and observed loudly and cheerfully: ‘Thank God for an hour off. Nothing now until that stinking Dem.’

  ‘Oh, are you the other one?’ asked Deborah, who had been too much engrossed in her own troubles to think of those of other people. ‘Do tell me something about it, and how one begins. I’m absolutely terrified.’

  ‘Oh, Lord, so am I, my dear. After all, one can’t help knowing that the majority of the students could make a much better job of it than we do. I don’t see why the Mistress of Method can’t do all the Dems. After all, Maths may be my subject, but I don’t affect to be able to teach it to children of nine and ten. Arithmetic lesson, if you please, on simple areas! And to Second-Year students who’ve all given it on School Practice already!’

  ‘I’ve got to take a poem with them — the children, I mean — for Group A.1. And I didn’t even choose the poem myself, and I loathe it, anyway,’ said Deborah.

  ‘How come?’ inquired Miss Harbottle, taking out her cigarette case and handing it over. Deborah accepted a cigarette and explained. ‘Hard luck,’ commented Miss Harbottle, fiddling with a lighter. ‘Curse this gadget! Ah, that’s it. Look here, I’ll tell you what. Mine is supposed to come at five-past eleven, but I’ll let you have first innings if you like. Both children and students are very much easier to handle first go off, and the children are apt to hot up for the second Dem. I’ve often noticed it.’

  ‘Oh, I say!’ said Deborah gratefully. ‘Would you really change! If only I could wade in and get mine over, I’d be most terribly grateful. I’d be able to have the discussion directly afterwards then, shouldn’t I? You know, before the brutes have got together and swopped ideas.’

  ‘Righto. Look here, I’ll waylay Fish as she comes out of her lecture and tell her to let the students know we’ve swopped. There’s nothing more in it than that. It won’t affect the time-table, as it happens.’

  She lay back and finished her cigarette, then she went out to arrange with the Mistress of Method as she had promised.

  ‘I must just make sure the students don’t go giving out rulers until your Dem. is over,’ she said when she returned. ‘Children, even the mildest, always seem to think a ruler is a sort of animated drumstick. I have to have ’em out for my lesson, but you won’t need ’em for yours. Done any teaching?’

  ‘Oh, yes. I’ve done two years at the Elinor Gresham School in North London, and before that I was at Nixfield for a year.’

  ‘You don’t look old enough, but I suppose you are. By the way, you might invite me over to Athelstan when convenient. We poor tramps who aren’t Wardens or Subs, have to go the rounds of the Halls for our grub, you know, and are supposed to spend a week at each in turn. I’ve had a week at Edmund, and I’d love to meet your old lady.’

  ‘We’ve got Miss Murdoch at present,’ said Deborah, ‘but she moves on to Bede on Sunday afternoon. It seems an odd system to me.’

  ‘Yes. It’s supposed to keep us all in touch with one another or something. I know there’s some theory about its being a good thing. The only thing I’ve ever noticed is that it encourages the students to dig stuff out of the Staff instead of looking it up for themselves, the lazy little beasts. Still, why should we worry? Glad I’m not a Warden, anyway. Has the Principal asked you yet whether you find yourself overburdened? If not, she will. Take my advice and say you can manage. What sort of lot have you got at Athelstan? I hear you had a very impressive first-night rag.’

  They passed to happy and comfortable shop about the students until Deborah, coming to with a shock, realized that in ten minutes’ time she was due to stand before a class of children for the supposed benefit of a group of students, and give a lesson on When Cats Run Home and Night is Come, by Alfred Lord Tennyson.

  She could hear the children arriving. They had come by bus, and were cheerful and talkative. She took an apprehensive peep at them, but they looked nice little things and their teacher was young and pretty. The students, led, Deborah could hear, by Laura Menzies and Kitty Trevelyan, were helping them off with hats and coats and ushering them through the inner door of the cloakroom for the purpose referred to by their teacher as ‘visiting the offices’. So far as Deborah could determine, their efforts were meeting with very little success.

  ‘Silly, I call it, anyway,’ said Laura loudly. ‘After all, dealing with kids who shove their hands up in the middle of a lesson is all part of teaching, isn’t it?’

  ‘And deciding whether it’s genuine, or whether the little blighters are simply bored stiff and want a bit of a change,’ agreed Kitty. ‘Yes, that’s what I should think. Same with giving out pens and paper and apparatus and stuff. It’s all done beforehand here, and by us. Actually, I don’t see much use in these Dems. After all, any fool can get up and give a lesson. It is all the oddments that count.’

  Deborah trembled. It was going to be even worse than she had supposed. She crawled back into the Staff sitting-room, but the Mistress of Method, who came bustling along the passage at that moment, saw her and grabbed her.

  ‘I hear you’ve changed round with Miss Harbottle,’ she said. ’I’ve told the students. Oh, and there’s a wretched child with adenoids who will ask unintelligible questions. I thought I’d warn you. And if you don’t mind my saying so, you won’t snap at the children, will you? So bad for the students. Patience and gentleness, gentleness and patience, are what I try to inculcate.’

  Deborah thought of saying that she was taking a cane in with her, but she did not want to make an enemy of the Mistress of Method, who, although excessively irritating, was one of the senior lecturers and had been at Cartaret longer even than the Principal, so she merely smiled weakly, and walked to the table on which was another copy of the book which contained the poem.

  She picked it up and then walked as steadily as she could into the Demonstration Room. The children, unnaturally quiet, and as upright and stiff as little statues, gave her the unwinking attention of savages. The students whispered and rustled. The Mistress of Method said: ‘Oh, someone give out the books.’ This was done. Everyone then settled down. Deborah’s mind was a blank.

  ‘Good morning, children,’ she said in a husky voice. One or two children giggled, but the others replied: ‘Good morning, madam,’ with the horrid automatic intonation of musical-boxes, and fixed her with their disconcerting gaze.

  ‘We’ve come here this morning,’ said Deborah, clearing her throat, ‘we’ve — we are — I mean I would like you all to think about something very beautiful this morning before we begin, so that we — so that you — I mean I would like you — perhaps flowers, or the lovely trees, or — perhaps some of you can think of something even more beautiful for yourselves.’

  She tried to smile, and felt that her face had twisted itself into some horrible grimace.

  ‘Can — can you think of something beautiful?’ she said nervously, addressing a child at the end of the front row, whilst she racked her brain to remember the beginning of the lesson as she had prepared it. “What was the poem she was supposed to be taking? On what page of the book could she find it? She looked helplessly at the book as it lay on the table, and began to turn over the pages. Surely, surely she had put a marker to show the-page? Surely she hadn’t been such a fool — What was the damn silly poem, anyway? To her horror she
discovered that she had not the faintest idea.

  She looked in hunted fashion at the class. One or two hands had come up. What had she asked them? She had not the slightest recollection. Or did they want to go outside already, goaded by the suggestions of the students? Or was one the dreadful child with adenoids? She pointed to a child in the centre of the class.

  ‘Biscuits,’ said the child.

  ‘I beg your pardon? I didn’t quite…’ said Deborah, glancing helplessly at the students, who were beginning to look thoroughly uncomfortable. Hastily she pounced on another child. This one, to her horror, proved to be the one with adenoids. She got up and made a long and possibly important contribution of which Deborah followed not one single word. A mist gathered in front of her. Her eardrums pounded.

  ‘What the hell shall I do?’ she wondered; and, wondering, was suddenly conscious of the heartening voice of Laura Menzies, speaking loudly, clearly and sanely.

  ‘I don’t see why they want to think about beauty, Miss Cloud, when they are really thinking about cats running home and night is come, and a lot of bally owls and things,’ she was saying.

  ‘Oh, dry up, Dog,’ said Kitty. ‘You can talk all that rot afterwards. You’re not supposed to butt in on the lesson.’

  Deborah’s brain cleared. She smiled at the children who were all staring at Laura, and said, in her ordinary tones:

  ‘I wonder whether you can find the poem for yourselves in the books? Come on. You heard it’s about cats and the night coming and the owl, and I believe…’

  But by that time every child was searching feverishly, and an outbreak of calling out, argument and self-justification set the lesson triumphantly on its feet, where to Deborah’s dizzy relief, it remained.

  She sent for Laura after lunch.

  ‘I think you ought to know, Miss Menzies, that you saved my bacon,’ she said, with her shy, very charming smile. Laura nodded, and grinned.

  ‘It was Group B.2. who had the fun,’ she said. ‘Did you hear about the snakes?’