Laurels Are Poison mb-14

by Gladys Mitchell

  The two young men lifted the box and the girls formed up and took it from them.

  ‘When’s the rag?’ asked Laura.

  ‘Saturday week, but we wanted a rehearsal of some of the effects, so thought we’d have Dirty as soon as possible. Thanks for looking after him so nicely. Toodle-pip.’

  ‘Bye-bye,’ said Miss Cartwright. ‘Oh, Lord, my shoulder’s cracking in two. Nighty-night, ducks,’ she added to her brother.

  ‘Don’t miss your step,’ said he. As the six students began the long and awkward journey back to the sports pavilion they heard the car drive off.

  ‘Can’t see that it was much of a rag to change them in the first place, really,’ said Miss Cartwright, after a pause, ‘although I lent the affair some slight assistance. But what does puzzle me is how the lads got into that Science Room cupboard. The door’s always locked, and yet they got Twister out and put Dick in.’

  The twins, stoutly bearing the hinder end of the box, merely giggled, as usual. Kitty grunted. Only Laura was silent. But then only Laura was suspicious of the bona fides of Twister Marshmallow. She feared that that hero lay elsewhere, and that the occupant of his box was ‘no less a Yorick’, in her own phrase, than poor Miss Murchan.

  ‘Gentlemen on my right,’ said the president of the Students’ Common Room at Wattsdown, ‘will act as Guard of Honour to the skeleton, who will be referred to during this meeting, by his full and correct title of Richard Cœur de Lion, and not by his more usual sobriquet of Dirty Dick. Agreed, gentlemen?’

  There was a chorus of approval.

  ‘Messires Abbot, Paldock, Rees and F. J. Smith will be responsible for nobbling, disconcerting and generally putting out of action any Robert or Roberts on horseback,’ pursued the chairman, ‘and Mr D. R. Smith will look out for yokels throwing stones. Step out here, gentlemen, please.’

  Five rubicund and large-limbed youths, forwards in the College Rugby fifteen and one of them also the College heavyweight boxer, stepped out and bowed to the Chair.

  ‘And, lastly, gentlemen, two words of warning. If arrested, do not resist. That’s the first and greatest commandment. We don’t want anyone to land up in the jug. Secondly, nothing whatsoever is to be thrown on to the stage. After all, those poor blighters of actors have got their living to earn, the same as we have, and…’ On this note of chivalry the meeting ended.

  Cartaret students were not invited to the theatre rag by mutual arrangement between the Principals of the two colleges, for it was thought better that the disorderly proceedings should not be complicated by the presence of girls. The men themselves subscribed so heartily to this view that it was a law of the Wattsdown Common Room that no attempt was ever to be made by the members to ‘smuggle, inveigle, entice, invite or deploy’ the members of Cartaret into the theatre on Rag Night.

  In spite of this, however, Cartaret students had been known to attend. There was no embargo, authoritative or brotherly, on their turning up for the Meet, which was held half a mile from Wattsdown at the bus stop. There was no reason, either, if they could get on the public bus — the men hired private buses to take their large party to the theatre — why the Cartaret students should not accompany the procession through the streets of the town. Bold spirits, defying the Cartaret law of late leave, which had to be signed for, and was never granted on Rag Night except in case of family illness or on some such compassionate grounds, had even been known to penetrate the fastnesses and book seats in the theatre, but since the men’s college invariably booked the whole of the circle, whether they could fill it or not, there was not as much excitement in going as the bold spirits would have liked to pretend.

  Laura and Kitty, well within the law and proposing to remain so, went into the town on the bus to see the procession form up and move off towards the theatre. The four gentlemen to whom had been delegated the task of occupying the attention of the mounted police found their solitary victim round the second turning. Dressed as fairies in ridiculous ballet frocks which the College housekeeper and maids had been wheedled into ‘making over’ to fit the bulging torsos of the football-playing sprites, and wearing flaxen wigs, fairy crowns with long antennae, gauze and silver wings and carrying fairy wands tipped with lop-sided, outsize stars, the four skipped solemnly round and round the embarrassed officer, giving him no chance to do anything except manage his horse. When he stopped they joined hands in a straight line in front of him and began to sing. When he rode on again, they broke the hold and re-formed their circle.

  Following the mounted policeman came a large horse, removed from the College playing-fields, on which a horse-mower was still used. On his back, sitting sideways with both legs over the left side of an embroidered table-cover which served as saddle and saddle-cloth, and held in position by iron supports specially forged in the College workshop and carried by the attendants who were dressed as devils, was the magnificent skeleton of Dirty Dick, until recently an inmate of the Science cupboard at Cartaret. He was conspicuously labelled, to the delight of the local populace, Lady Godiva.

  The Theatre Rag itself passed off in traditional style and without unexpected incident

  Chapter l6

  BONE

  « ^ »

  George and the Chief Engineer went down to the sports pavilion to collect the skeleton left there by the six students. They went during the students’ dinner time, and no one except Mrs Bradley and the two men themselves knew when the box was transported to the College. Except that the Science Room was closed to all students for a couple of hours next day (greatly to the annoyance of Second-Years of the Advanced Group), there was no intimation that anything extraordinary was going on, except for the presence in the drive of three large saloon cars. One belonged to the police, one to a famous surgeon and the third to Miss Murchan’s dentist.

  The police had come ‘in case there was anything for them’ as the elliptical phrase goes, the surgeon and Mrs Bradley, in consultation, were going to determine, if they could, the age of the bones in question, and the dentist had been invited because upon his evidence would depend the important question of whether the bones were all that remained of Miss Murchan.

  The dentist was given the first innings. Twister Marshmallow (or his deputy) was taken carefully out of his box. Mrs Bradley had sealed up the box in the presence of the Principal, the Assistant Principal, Miss Rosewell and Miss Crossley, and, those four ladies having sworn to the fact that the seals had not been tampered with, they were politely but firmly shown out, the door was locked behind them, and the fun began.

  The dentist did not take very long.

  ‘This isn’t Miss Murchan’s skull,’ he pronounced. ‘At least, they’re not her teeth.’

  He produced chapter and verse in support of this last statement, and Mrs Bradley cackled.

  ‘Murderers have limited minds,’ she said. ‘There’s always something they don’t know, or forget or can’t be bothered with.’

  When the dentist had gone, she and the surgeon got down enjoyably to their own part of the job. Shorn of technicalities and rendered, therefore, into English, the sum total of their conclusions came to the facts that the skeleton was female, therefore it was not Twister Marshmallow, that the body of which the skeleton had formed part had been alive not more than a year previously, that the bones had been boiled to get rid of the flesh upon them, that the right arm had sustained a fairly serious fracture at one time, that death had probably followed concussion, that the fracture had been suffered previous to the damage suffered by the skull, and, finally, that the way in which the skeleton had been put together and articulated was clumsy and amateurish.

  ‘And very nice, too,’ said Mrs Bradley, taking the surgeon off to have a wash. ‘If the police can’t find out where that skeleton came from, I shall be greatly surprised.’

  ‘But where do we begin, madam?’ the stolid inspector inquired.

  ‘Locally. The body can’t possibly have come in from far away.’

  ‘But nobody’s been repo
rted missing, madam.’

  ‘No. The graves give up their dead, but they don’t advertise the fact by radio,’ said Mrs Bradley, with unusual tartness. The inspector’s face, however, cleared.

  ‘Robbed a grave, did they?’ he said.

  ‘She,’ corrected Mrs Bradley. ‘And what you want is news of a woman of about sixty, who had broken her right arm, and who died from concussion following a very nasty fall. Looks as though she fell off the top of a house, as a matter of fact’

  ‘Fell off the top of a house?’ said the inspector. ‘Well, Maggie Dalton might fit the bill. I don’t know about breaking her arm, but it’s true she fell off a window-sill four storeys up. Would sit on the sill to clean the outside. They begged her to have a window cleaner, but not she. Preferred to do it herself, she always said, and one day she overbalanced and down she came. Accidental death, of course.’

  ‘And when did this happen?’ Mrs Bradley inquired.

  ‘Last June twelve-month.’

  ‘Providential,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘And who was Maggie Dalton?’

  ‘Nobody knew. She was brought up in the Orphanage at Betchdale, so I heard.’

  ‘No relatives?’

  ‘Not as far as anybody knew. That all came out at the inquest.’

  ‘And where was poor Maggie Dalton buried?’

  ‘The local cemetery here. The one you see over on the right when you get to Collard Swing Bridge.’

  ‘You’ll have to get permission to exhume her,’ said Mrs Bradley.

  ‘You don’t mean — she couldn’t have been murdered, madam,’ said the inspector confusedly.

  ‘No, I know she wasn’t. She died accidentally, just as you have described. I meant that you will have to get permission to open the grave.’

  ‘Ah, now you’re talking,’ said the inspector. ‘That’s no Home Office job. Ted Parker, at the Cemetery, is my wife’s second cousin. If I can’t do a bit of digging in the cemetery with no questions asked, one night when we get a decent moon, call me a South Sea Islander.’

  ‘I should like to be present,’ Mrs Bradley observed.

  ‘And welcome,’ said the inspector heartily. ‘I’ll just have a word with Ted, and let you know.’

  The moon was in its third quarter. Digging a grave, Mrs Bradley reflected, was a grisly kind of business, but un-digging it, as her grandson Derek might have said, was weird and ghostly indeed.

  The inspector and his wife’s second cousin were the only gardeners. Mrs Bradley, half-hidden in the shade of a yew tree, brooded upon their employment whilst damp clay transferred its clammy coldness to the soles of her shoes, and its chill communicated itself to her bones.

  At last the diggers struck upon the coffin and lifted it out. It lay, strange husk, upon the heap of upturned soil.

  ‘Nought in it. Too light,’ said the wife’s second cousin. He prised off the lid with a crowbar he had brought with him. The coffin stank, but was empty.

  Reverently, to Mrs Bradley’s sardonic amusement, the men re-buried it. Mrs Bradley left them to their task — the reward to the wife’s second cousin for his kindly cooperation had been agreed upon beforehand — and went back to Athelstan.

  She walked quickly through the College grounds, especially the part near the main gate, and, by a shrubbery, ran as fast as she could, and zigzagged from side to side of the drive. The ambush came just by the rockery, as she was about to ascend the steps which led from the grounds to the gravel.

  Mrs Bradley dropped to earth, sheltered in the shadow of the rockery, and, very cautiously, began to stalk her antagonist. The quarry, however, either knew the grounds much better than Mrs Bradley did, or could see in the dark, for Mrs Bradley did not find him or her, and the moonlight was of no assistance whatever. She crawled back to the point at which she had been attacked, picked up the missiles which had been thrown — they were easy enough to see, for they lay far out in the moonlight on the soaking grass of the lawn — and took them into Athelstan with her, two half-bricks, which had been hurled with considerable force.

  As she entered the house, stepping quietly and having used her latch-key to get in, she was aware of faint stirrings down in the basement.

  She tested the door at the top of the basement stairs, found it locked, as usual, smiled contentedly and then stopped short as a thought struck her, not a pleasant thought, either.

  ‘Goodness me,’ she said to herself, ‘it’s Lulu’s job to see that that door is locked. I suppose the maids forgot it in the half-term week-end, and that’s how she managed to get up here and cut that poor girl’s hair!’

  Chapter 17

  NYMPHS AND SATYRS

  « ^ »

  ‘You know, there’s a lot of fetishism in the preparation of vegetables — in fact, in all cooking,’ said Laura, roaming about the Athelstan kitchen (against all College regulations, needless to say) in quest of what she might devour.

  ‘That there isn’t!’ said Bella, promoted to cook. ‘And I wonder at you, Miss Menzies, using language like that!’

  ‘But — well, take brussels sprouts,’ for example,‘ pursued the educationist, discovering a jar of raspberry jam and helping herself to it by spreading it on a biscuit she had previously purloined. ’Now I bet you anything you like that when you do brussels sprouts you cut up each little stalk in the shape of a cross. Don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, so does everybody else, miss, and I hope you know that these here provisions have got to last the month. There’s been trouble already, the way they’ve disappeared. I don’t know what the Warden would think if she was to come in here now this minute and find you eating biscuits and jam and sultanas, the way you are.’

  ‘Being a sensible woman, duck, she’d suppose, correctly, that I was putting to the proof the College memo. on the subject.’

  ‘What’s that, miss?’

  ‘Well,’ said Laura, poking interestedly underneath the top layer of a large tin, ‘don’t they call this stuff consumable stock?’

  ‘Now, look, Miss Menzies,’ said Bella, removing the Bovril bottle out of reach, and firmly handing Laura a clean damp swab on which to wipe sticky fingers, ‘if you’ll promise to leave the things alone and go back and get on with whatever you’re supposed to be doing, and stop hindering me and getting in Lulu’s way with that tray for the Warden’s elevenses, I’ll tell you a secret, so be you won’t let it get round.’

  ‘I’m on,’ said Laura, wiping busily and finishing off on a clean handkerchief. She seated herself on a corner of the table. ‘Spill. Half a minute, though. Can’t I tell anybody at all?’

  ‘Well,’ said Bella, ‘I suppose you could tell Miss Boorman. She’s a quiet little thing. But don’t you go telling Miss Trevelyan. I know her. It’ll be all over College before you can say Jack Robinson.’

  ‘Not if I swear her to silence, Bella. Come on. Just those two and no more.’

  ‘Well, if you think…’

  ‘I do think. Go on. You know you want to tell someone. Is it about your boy friend?’

  ‘Go on with you!’ said Bella, delighted. ‘And me been married these thirteen years, going on!’

  ‘Go on, you’ve not. I don’t believe it! You wouldn’t have a resident job if you were married! Who makes his evening cup of cocoa?’

  ‘I’m sure I don’t know, miss. He’s a sailor.’

  ‘Oh, I couldn’t stick that! Well, go on. What’s this yarn?’

  ‘You’ll never guess, so I’ll tell you. You know the end-of-the-year summer dance, when the young gentlemen get invitations, and the young ladies’ brothers and their other friends can come?’

  ‘Yep. Though I haven’t experienced it yet.’

  ‘Well, you’re going to, miss. The Warden has made a very special point with Miss du Mugne, and it’s to be held at the Half-Term, or, rather, the Saturday night after, young gentlemen, cousins and all.’

  ‘Well!’ said Laura, jumping off the table. ‘Well, what do you say! Hot dog, Bella! I’ll have the Warden chaired from the bakehouse
to Rule Britannia’s! Well, well, well! I never did! And they say the age of miracles is past! When’s the good news to be spread?’

  ‘That’s for Miss du Mugne to say, miss. Now don’t you go blurting it out and saying I told you, mind!’

  ‘Trust your Auntie! And — Bella! Grub?’

  ‘Ices and all, miss. Yes, the Warden said special as all the food was on her.’

  ‘The Warden said that all the food was on her,’ repeated Laura thoughtfully. ‘Hm! Knowing the Warden’s very sound attitude towards food, I am inclined, in no conservative spirit, to say Whoopee!’

  Mrs Bradley had had some initial difficulty in convincing the Principal that the Half-Term Dance, as it was called as soon as tidings of it were broadcast to a surprised and enraptured College, was a necessity in helping to forward the ends of justice.

  ‘I’ve got to know how Miss Murchan was decoyed,’ she insisted, ‘and as I can’t imagine the circumstances I must attempt to reproduce them.’

  ‘But it will turn College upside-down,’ wailed the Principal. ‘And, after all,’ she added, with the first gleam of humour which Mrs Bradley had seen in her, ‘you’ve already gone outside the scope which was to be allowed you. We asked you to investigate privately a College mystery — the disappearance of Miss Murchan. You would never have been asked, nor given any scope at all, if we had dreamed you were going to find a murderer, and let us in for all the horrible publicity of a trial.’

  ‘It hasn’t come to that yet,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘But there it is,’ she concluded. ‘I want you to ask in the Staff Common Room for a volunteer to take the part of Miss Murchan. Please don’t select Miss Topas. She’s far too intelligent and enterprising. What I want is a good stupid horse that will eat his oats, as I feel that Miss Menzies would say. Miss Harbottle might do, and Miss Crossley would be excellent, so if either of them volunteers, please snap her up at once and ask her to come and see me.’