Laurels Are Poison mb-14

by Gladys Mitchell

  ‘Yes,’ said Miss Giggs, as she blew her nose, ‘that’s all very well, Miss Cloud, but if it wasn’t intended for me, why should somebody have run up the back stairs just in front of me? If I hadn’t stopped to take my shoes off, I should have seen who it was.’

  ‘Oh, dear! Have you any idea?’

  ‘No. I sort of felt it was someone I’d seen before, but whoever it was had on quite a long dress, I saw it swish round the bend of the stairs as she ran.’

  ‘A lie,’ thought Deborah, grimacing as the door closed behind the student’s back.

  ‘She didn’t do it,’ she said to Mrs Bradley, after she had detailed the conversation. Mrs Bradley grinned, but offered no other comment. She touched the bell, and Lulu appeared.

  ‘Ask Miss Trevelyan to come and see me,’ said Mrs Bradley; adding, when Lulu had gone, ‘You’d better sit in on this. We must look horribly official.’

  ‘Oh, dear!’ said Deborah, who was very much attached to Kitty. ‘You’re going to chew her up.’

  ‘Duty must be our watchword,’ said Mrs Bradley, with a fiendish, anticipatory grin. Kitty entered nervously.

  ‘Warden?’ she said.

  ‘And Sub-Warden,’ said Mrs Bradley, indicating Deborah, who was sitting on the very edge of a chair and was looking thoroughly scared.

  ‘How do?’ said Kitty, clearing her throat. At this Deborah had a sudden desire to giggle, and, to conquer it, she reverted to the formula of her youth, that of thinking about her dead grandmother whom, incidentally, she could not remember at all clearly.

  ‘Miss Trevelyan,’ said Mrs Bradley, ‘you had better sit down.’

  ‘Yes, Warden.’

  ‘Now, Miss Trevelyan, what have you to say for yourself?’

  ‘I — I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘Don’t you try those schoolgirl gambits on me! ’ said Mrs Bradley, more bolt-upright than before. ‘Search your conscience, Miss Trevelyan, search your conscience! When you have done so, excuse yourself if you can.’

  ‘Oh — breaking and entering,’ said Kitty, giving way at once in this battle of nerves. ‘Yes, I — I did do that. It seemed sort of necessary at the time.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘Well, I can see why I did it’

  ‘So can I,’ said Mrs Bradley deliberately. ‘You were actuated by what, for want of more original wording, I can only call sheer, vulgar, spiteful curiosity.’

  ‘Oh, no, Warden!’ wailed Kitty, stung to the quick by this uncompromising view of her detective faculties.

  ‘How dare you enter another student’s room without her permission?’

  ‘Oo, Warden!’

  ‘I say nothing about prying,and probing into her private affairs…’

  ‘Oh, I say!’

  ‘Abstracting her property…’

  ‘Oo, but…’

  ‘As to the hiding-place you chose in order to get rid of the evidence of your crime…’

  ‘Oh, I object to crime, Warden! No, honestly, I do call that a bit thick, I mean! No, really, dash it, Warden, I say!’

  ‘What exactly did you think you were doing?’ concluded Mrs Bradley mildly. Kitty looked at her, gulped, and then grinned.

  ‘I knew you were kidding,’ she said. At this ingenuous statement Deborah broke into a sudden squeal of laughter. Mrs Bradley stared at her disapprovingly, with a look which Deborah, with an absurd little shiver of anticipation, translated as ‘I will deal with you later.’ All that Mrs Bradley said was: ‘Come on, Miss Trevelyan. If you can give me any sort of reasonable explanation, I am prepared to overlook your really outrageous conduct.’

  ‘O.K., Warden. Well, you see, it began with that string. I knew, and Dog knew — I don’t know about Alice — that when you came in and busted us that first night, you knew we jolly well didn’t know anything about it. Well, Dog put two and two together, as you know she’s fairly well given to do…’

  ‘Yes. I do not underrate Miss Menzies’ intelligence,’ Mrs Bradley admitted.

  ‘Good old Dog. Well, she said if we hadn’t done it, who had? Because you’d hardly put that kind of thing down to the servants, and as for suspecting the senior student — well, that’s all rot, whatever you may say.’

  ‘I have never suspected the senior student, Miss Trevelyan, of tying pieces of string across doorways.’

  ‘No, of course not. Well, then, who are we left with? The lecturers, etc.,’ concluded Kitty dramatically. ‘So Dog said: “How about some silly — some lecturer who’d hoped to be made Warden of Athelstan, and hadn’t clicked?” Some women are very funny, you know.’

  ‘Yes, I had noticed it,’ Mrs Bradley drily agreed. ‘Go on, Miss Trevelyan, please.’

  ‘Well, then, the — er — the What-Names, all piled up during the Second-Year rag… Remember?’

  ‘Perfectly, Miss Trevelyan.’

  ‘Well, that was another case of Oo-dun-it. Or was it?’

  ‘It most certainly was, if I understand your idiom correctly.’

  ‘So said all of us. Well, there’s one thing I can tell you, Warden. It’s this: those What-Names were abstracted before dinner. I know, because we’d investigated ours, and — er — ’

  ‘Yes. I seem to remember an impromptu game of Rugby football,’ said Mrs Bradley, ‘in which one of the promiscuous vessels figured as the ball. Am I right or wrong in supposing that Miss Menzies scored a try with her vessel at the top of the students’ staircase?’

  ‘Perfectly right, but — well, anyhow, I can swear to it they were there at five-fifty-five, pip emma. And nobody came into any of our three study-bedrooms while the Second-Year rag was in progress. That means those things were sneaked out of the rooms just before dinner. Was anybody absent from dinner?’

  ‘No, child. I am prepared to swear to that, and so is Miss Cloud.’

  ‘Me, too. Miss Mathers came round with a Hall list, and ticked off all the names. Well, what are we back to, again? The Staff. Q.E.D.’

  ‘Or some outside person or a servant. It’s not a very good point, Miss Trevelyan. All the same I can’t see why you suspected poor Miss Giggs.’

  ‘Oh, well, that was kind of by the way,’ said Kitty. ‘But, Warden, you remember the snakes? You do, anyway, Miss Cloud. You know, the snakes in Miss Harbottle’s Dem.’

  ‘What about them?’ said Deborah, shortly. The snakes were still an uncomfortable subject for her.

  ‘Don’t you see? The Dem-room being next door to the Staff Common Room…?’

  ‘Oh, nonsense!’ said Deborah sharply. ‘The snakes were just a silly rag, and came out in the wrong lesson.’

  ‘That will do, then, Miss Trevelyan, very nicely,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘You will, of course, apologize to Miss Giggs for any annoyance or inconvenience you may have caused her. And you might return her shoes. And now,’ she said to Deborah, when Kitty had gone, ‘what makes you so certain that there is no connexion between the snakes and the activities in the boxroom, child?’

  ‘Well, I can see the point of snakes in a Demonstration lesson, and, dimly, that some idiots might think the — the First-Night rag screamingly funny. I mean, there is a school of thought — but the coat-slashing and the disinfectant seem quite different, somehow. Of course, I’m not a psychologist,’ she added.

  ‘Oh, yes, you are,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘There are two sets of rags being carried on. You are perfectly right’

  Chapter 7

  REVENGE UPON GOLDILOCKS

  « ^ »

  ‘And how does it go?’ asked Miss Topas. ‘I hear you had a Common Room meeting of an unusual kind this afternoon.’

  ‘Yes. Some students were out, but it seemed unfair to expect the poor things to lose their Sunday pleasures for the doubtful privilege of hearing me address the whole of Athelstan for the first time.’

  ‘About the disinfectant?’

  ‘Yes. We made it clear — I think, Deborah, don’t you? — that we suspected nobody in Hall of having performed such a childish trick as stabbing cans of dis
infectant so that the stuff ran out and made a mess…’

  ‘And Laura Menzies was sharp enough to ask us whom we did suspect, then,’ said Deborah.

  ‘And what did you say to that?’

  ‘We told her — and all the rest — that their lectures in psychology ought to supply the answer, whereupon Miss Menzies took it upon herself to observe “Tut, tut, Warden,” ’ said Mrs Bradley, cackling. ‘I like that child. She is intelligent.’

  The next Athelstan incident took place at the beginning of the half-term break. This lasted from a Thursday evening until the following Tuesday evening. Most of the students left College during this time, and only one of the five Halls was kept open to accommodate those who remained.

  Kitty saw the notice-board first.

  ‘I say, it’s Athelstan’s turn to be Half-Term Hall,’ she said.

  ‘Nothing to me. I’m going to see my relations in Scotland,’ said Laura.

  ‘Well, I shan’t be here, either. Wish I could, in a way, but the family would expire if I didn’t go home and tell them how I’m getting on, and let them see what a big girl I’ve grown in six weeks,’ replied Kitty. ‘You going home to London, Alice, my duck?’

  ‘No; to my aunt in Lincolnshire,’ Alice replied.

  Further inquiry proved that all the Athelstan students, except Miss Giggs, Miss Mathers and a First-Year South African student named Firth, would be out of Hall during the long week-end. Miss Giggs made her usual excuse of wanting to work when the Warden inquired, gazing like a benevolent snake at the assembled students on the Saturday evening preceding the half-term weekend, how many of them proposed to remain in Hall, but in her case, as in the case of Miss Mathers, it was a question of a heavy railway fare. Poor Miss Firth had nowhere to go. During the vacations she would inhabit a dreary little room in London and go to all the shows, visit the museums and picture-galleries and generally acquaint herself with the various resources of the capital city, but the half-term break was too short, she informed Mrs Bradley, for so long a journey. Deborah had once attempted to obtain some light on the colour problem in South Africa, but Miss Firth’s reply was so uncompromising that she had abandoned the attempt and had changed the subject of conversation.

  ‘Colour problem?’ Miss Firth had said. ‘There is no colour problem in the part I come from. If the blacks and ourselves don’t find the pavement wide enough, well, they just walk in the road.’

  Asked by Mrs Bradley how she proposed to spend the weekend, she revealed that she had purchased an Ordnance map of the district, had arranged to hire a car, and was going to explore ‘a few counties’ and embody her findings in an article for a South African paper.

  Contemplation of this enterprise left the Warden speechless with admiration. Miss Mathers, it appeared, was going to be ‘called for’ at College each day by one or another of the students who lived near enough, and would be taken out for the day. She was, in a quiet way, very popular. Mrs Bradley was glad that her senior student was going to have a good time.

  ‘That poor wretch Giggs!’ said Deborah, on Thursday night, when ‘the tumult and the shouting having died,’ as Laura Menzies expressed it, and those students who were not going to leave until the morning having been persuaded to go to bed, she and Mrs Bradley were enjoying a midnight peace in Mrs Bradley’s sitting-room. ‘I hate to think of her stewing here all alone.’

  ‘She won’t be all alone,’ retorted Mrs Bradley. ‘We are to expect five students from Bede, three from Edmund, two from Beowulf, and no fewer than eight from Columba.’

  ‘I say!’ said Deborah, dismayed. ‘Not much of a picnic for us! That makes twenty-one counting our own three!’

  ‘It will be a very great treat for me,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘You, my love, are going away for the week-end. The car will be here for you at half-past ten tomorrow morning.’

  ‘But — ’

  ‘My nephew, Carey Lestrange, is coming from Stanton St John, in Oxfordshire, to take you to his pig-farm. He has thousands of pigs, a son aged three, a daughter of twenty months, a nice, quiet, friendly, well-disposed, tractable, quite pretty wife, the best servants in England, and a heart of gold. Now don’t be rude about it. Besides, it’s not an invitation. It’s an order.’

  ‘But — ’

  ‘And Miss Topas is going as well. She can’t possibly go home for such a short time, and she says she has no money or she would go to Penzance. Now don’t argue, there’s a good child. I am not equal to quarrelling. And why Penzance I don’t know, so don’t ask. And Carey’s servants are called Ditch.’

  ‘Now look here,’ said Deborah. I’m not going to be packed off for a rest and change, as though I were an invalid or — or a baby or something. If you’ve got to stay, as this is our bad-luck term, I’m going to stay, too. You can’t turn me out. I won’t go.’

  ‘Well, you must please yourself, of course, child,’ said Mrs Bradley, solemnly wagging her head. ‘It is extremely awkward, because my nephew’s wife has invited two men, and I really don’t see that Miss Topas can be expected to take both of them off her hands. Besides, she told me she wouldn’t go if you didn’t, and I really think that young woman needs some sort of a break. She works extremely hard, and she has been looking forward to your company for the week-end. Still, of course, you must do exactly as you like. I am sorry I didn’t mention it sooner, but I had my reasons.’

  ‘I bet you had,’ said Deborah, setting her jaw.

  ‘There, there! Go to bed,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘I thought you might do me a favour, and go down with Miss Topas, whose young man, an archaeologist, is going to be there. She told me all about him last week. I don’t wonder she didn’t confide in you. You’re an unsympathetic hussy.’

  Next morning Carey came, and Mrs Bradley, to her great relief, was able to wave Deborah good-bye and go back into Athelstan grinning.

  The drive from the College to Carey’s place in Oxfordshire was a long one, and they stayed not for brake and stopped not for stone, as Laura Menzies would have observed, except for a brief halt at Leicester for lunch. They reached Stanton St John at six, and were welcomed by Jenny, Mrs Ditch and an enormous supper. Jenny was Carey’s wife.

  Seated at table with them were the two men referred to by Mrs Bradley. One, who immediately adopted Miss Topas, and, regardless of the rest of the company, talked archaeology to her in low tones until midnight, was introduced — or, rather, warmly introduced himself — as Professor Sam Dallas, lecturer in history at the State University of Corder, U.S.A. The other, a big, untidy, dark-haired man of thirty, turned out to be Mrs Bradley’s nephew — one of many, he explained to Deborah, over supper — and was named Jonathan.

  ‘In the morning,’ said Jenny, giving Deborah her candle, ‘you’ll be able to see the pigs and the babies.’

  ‘In that order of importance,’ said her husband, glancing amusedly at Miss Topas and her American professor, who were disagreeing about Cnossus.

  ‘In the morning,’ said Jonathan Bradley with finality, to Deborah, ‘all pigs and babies notwithstanding, you’re coming out with me to see Iffley Church. It’s the place I always wanted to be married in. It’s the duck-bills do it, I think.’

  Deborah laughed, said good night all round, and went out to ascend the dark stone staircase. She found her candle firmly confiscated by Jonathan, who escorted her to her door, and remarked, as he gave the candle back to her: ‘You’re nervous, aren’t you? You’ll hear lots of noises in this house. They don’t mean anything. Be sure to bring a hat in the morning. I know the cleaner at Iffley. I should like to kiss you good night, but I suppose you wouldn’t like it.’

  She did go with him to Iffley in the morning, and by the following Monday night was in the vortex of the most idiotic, exasperating, wholly unsatisfactory love affair that could be imagined. At least, she found it satisfactory up to, but not including, the Monday night. It became serious then, and she no longer knew what to make of it, of herself, or of Jonathan.

  Miss Topas enjoyed herself hug
ely. She and the American professor spent most of their time in the house, seated at Mrs Ditch’s enormous kitchen table, on which they spread maps and plans, sheets of cartridge paper purchased in Oxford, coloured pencils, rulers, dividers and books, books and more books. Thus equipped, they spated forth volumes of learned argument which caused Our Walt, Mrs Ditch’s son, to observe: ‘I say, young Our Mam, do ee thenk their brains, like, ull stand et? Tes like so much wetch-craf’t to I.’

  His mother agreed, brooded darkly awhile, and then said: ‘They do be getten on very noice, though; very noice endeed. But I do wesh I could do sommat to gev t’other uns a lettle bet of a shove up. Made for each other, they be. But the Mess Young-I-say, her hangs back. Shy, I reckon, poor maid. Mester Jonathan ded ought to make a bold bed there, and breng her to et violent. Tes the only way. Her’d gev en, easy enough, ef he act forceful.’

  When she had arranged for the students’ lunch, Mrs Bradley walked across the grounds to speak to George, who had been given temporary quarters at the Chief Engineer’s house, where he found congenial company, lavish and well-cooked food, and a boy of twelve whose idol he had become during the first week of his stay.

  ‘George,’ said Mrs Bradley, ‘would you have any objection to taking parties of students out during the week-end?’

  ‘Certainly not, madam,’ replied George respectfully.

  ‘Not on Sunday, or on Saturday afternoon, of course.’

  ‘I shall be pleased to take the young ladies out any day, madam. The car could do with a run. I haven’t driven her for weeks, except to bring up the young convalescent lady from the station.’

  ‘Ah, yes. Miss Vincent,’ said Mrs Bradley. This unfortunate student had been rushed to hospital on the fourth day of term to be operated on for appendicitis. She had been three weeks in hospital, a couple more in the College sanatorium and, to release the nursing sister for a short break, she was to be shipped over to Athelstan for a long week-end. She was to be brought along the communal passage from one extreme end of the building almost to the other in the wheeled carriage, and then the nurse was to go off duty until Tuesday afternoon. This arrangement had been made possible, said the Principal, because Mrs Bradley was a doctor, and had kindly offered to remain at Athelstan for the weekend.