Laurels Are Poison mb-14

by Gladys Mitchell

  ‘You’re to come back with me,’ she said. ‘I don’t want you to do any more snooping about in the dark! It’s dangerous!’

  Jonathan held both her hands and looked at her gravely.

  ‘Listen, Deb. There’s no danger. And you can’t come out in that frock. But I’ve got a little job to do. It’s nothing much. You go back, and in about ten minutes I’ll be there. You have saved me the last dance, haven’t you?’

  ‘If you’re going across the grounds again, I’m coming with you,’ said Deborah.

  ‘All right. But run and get a wrap, there’s a good girl. It’s cold. Bring my silk scarf if you can see it, as well, will you?’

  He waited until she had reached the opposite end of the corridor, then he went into the adjoining room and changed his coat for a lounge jacket which he buttoned closely, turning up the collar. Then he went noiselessly down the steps and walked briskly along the path towards Athelstan. But, instead of going up to the front door this time, he walked along until he came to the covered way connecting the Hall with the bakehouse next door to it on the west.

  He crouched down and strained his ears. After a short time he heard an owl hoot twice. He gave a low whistle. The owl hooted again, but only once this time.

  Chapter l8

  IDDY UMPTY IDDY UMPTY IDDY

  « ^ »

  Deborah came back with a wrap and with Jonathan’s scarf and looked out into the blackness of the grounds. She did not dare to call out, for she knew that the reason he had come was to assist his aunt in her machinations against murderers, and she supposed that he was in process of carrying out instructions.

  She had no intention, however, of allowing him to get rid of her at what was, presumably, a moment of danger, and was about to step out into the inky pall which clothed the College demesne when Miss Topas, followed by Laura and Alice, came up.

  ‘What’s up, Deborah? Come out for a breath of air?’ inquired Miss Topas.

  ‘No. I’m looking for Jonathan. The wretch sent me back for some wraps and now he’s taken the chance to disappear.’

  ‘Out there?’

  ‘Yes, I think so. You didn’t see him just now inside the hall, I suppose?’

  ‘No. Well, come on in. It’s cold out here, and the senior student is about to propose a vote of thanks to Mrs Bradley before the proceedings terminate. Where is Mrs Bradley, by the way?’

  ‘I don’t know. With Jonathan, I should think. At any rate, I’m going over to Athelstan. That’s where he was going, I’m fairly certain,’ said Deborah. Miss Topas laid a restraining hand on her arm.

  ‘You can’t go chasing about in the grounds while a vote of thanks is being passed,’ she pointed out. ‘Besides, you may queer the pitch. There’s a peculiar do on tonight’

  ‘Well, when I do find him I’m going to tell him what I think of his manners,’ said Deborah crossly.

  ‘Plenty of time for that after you’re wed,’ observed Miss Topas reasonably. ‘Come on in. You can’t remain in this doorway, silhouetted against the light. It isn’t healthy.’

  Deborah observed that Laura, grinning, and Alice, looking faithful and determined, were closing in on her. She laughed, and went in with them.

  Neither Jonathan nor Mrs Bradley came back, although, all the time she was dancing, she watched the door, and at five minutes to eleven came the announcement of the last waltz.

  ‘Take young Alice, and make her happy for life,’ muttered Laura in Deborah’s ear. It seemed as well to make somebody happy, even though she was far from happy herself, so Deborah took Alice’s hand, smiled at her, said ‘Shall we?’ and swung her into the dance.

  The general opinion that it had been ‘jolly decent of the Prin.’ to consent to the inclusion of Wattsdown College in the festivities, together with the necessity for the young gentlemen themselves of returning to their own territory some time before dawn, precluded any attempt to get Miss du Mugne to extend the time for the dancing, and by half past eleven the good-byes had been said, a last kiss or two snatched by the more enterprising, and lights had begun to appear in the uncurtained windows of the various Halls to guide the Cartaret students to their beds. The Athelstan contingent remained behind, having received word that they were to wait for Mrs Bradley. They stood about the hall in little groups, surprised and, at first, amused by the order. Deborah was talking to Miss du Mugne and Miss Crossley, and the three of them were glancing continuously at the door.

  In a minute or two Jonathan came in. He nodded, and Miss du Mugne, raising her voice a little, invited Athelstan to ‘go home’ and wished them good night. Mrs Bradley still had not appeared, and just as she was leaving the hall, Miss Mathers, the senior student of Athelstan, was called back.

  ‘Not very pleasant for you, my dear,’ said Miss du Mugne, ‘but we want you to help us. Miss Cloud, you had better return to Athelstan, I think, with the students. Somebody ought to be over there. Perhaps, Mr Bradley, you would accompany Miss Cloud, and I will see that Miss Mathers returns as soon as possible.’

  Miss Mathers, her sensible, homely countenance not even having an expression of surprise, went with the Principal and Miss Crossley to the Board Room, next door to the Secretary’s office.

  Miss Rosewell was in the Board Room, looking thoroughly ill-at-ease, and there also were Mrs Bradley and a faded-looking woman with fair hair going grey and an expression of intense malice lighting her grey-green eyes. It was the senior student who spoke first.

  ‘Miss Murchan!’ she exclaimed. Then she looked suddenly horrified, for Miss Murchan’s wrists were tied together and her thin ankles were similarly confined.

  ‘Yes, Miss Murchan,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘At least…’ she looked at Miss du Mugne, ‘so I supposed. Do you, too, identify her?’

  ‘Without a doubt,’ the Principal replied, ‘but I cannot believe my eyes.’

  That I can imagine,‘ said Mrs Bradley. ’My nephew and I had some difficulty in bringing her over here, but that is nothing compared with the difficulty I have had in accounting for her disappearance, locating her hiding-place, and bringing her back to the world. Miss Mathers, my dear, go back to Hall, and not a word of this to anyone. You understand?’

  ‘But — but what made you do it, Miss Murchan? What were you afraid of?’ inquired the Principal, gazing perplexedly at the one-time member of her staff, as soon as Miss Mathers had gone. ‘Surely it was not like you to give us all so much anxiety!’

  The greyish woman in the chair began to laugh. It was not the laughter of hysteria, but it had such an odd, unnatural sound that the Principal recoiled from it as she might have recoiled had someone spat at her. She recovered herself in an instant, and went up to Miss Murchan and laid a hand on her shoulder.

  ‘Please tell me all about it,’ she said steadily, with her air of authority.

  ‘Tell you all about it?’ said the prisoner. ‘Yes, I’ll tell you. I lectured in English, didn’t I? Didn’t I?’

  ‘Yes, certainly, but…’

  ‘Then I can tell you all about it.’

  ‘Is she mad?’ whispered the Principal. Mrs Bradley shrugged.

  ‘In your view and in mine, certainly,’ she replied. ‘According to the law, poor soul, I strongly doubt it.’

  ‘According to the law? But, surely, there’s no question of that?’

  It was impossible to proceed, for Miss Murchan, fixing her eyes on a cupboard in the corner of the room, an unused cupboard which had one door swinging open as though to display the emptiness within, was already declaiming, in a horrid monotone, some stanzas from Swinburne.

  ‘Swallow, my sister, O sister swallow,

  How can thine heart be full of the spring?

  A thousand summers are over and dead.

  What hast thou found in the spring to follow?

  What hast thou found in thine heart to sing?

  What wilt thou do when the summer is fled?

  ‘Swallow, my sister, O singing swallow,

  I know not how thou hast heart to s
ing.

  Hast thou the heart? Is it all past over?

  Thy lord the summer is good to follow,

  And fair the feet of thy lover the spring:

  But what wilt thou say to the spring thy lover?

  ‘O swallow, sister, O rapid swallow,

  I pray thee sing not a little space.

  Are not the roofs and the lintels wet?

  The woven web that was plain to follow,

  The small slain body, the flower-like face,

  Can I remember if thou forget?

  ‘O sister, sister, thy first-begotten !

  The hands that cling and the feet that follow,

  The voice of the child’s blood crying yet,

  Who hath remember’d me? Who hath forgotten?

  Thou hast forgotten, O summer swallow,

  But the world shall end when I forget.’

  The monotone moaned itself away, and the speaker appeared to have lulled herself asleep. Suddenly she straightened up, tried to make a gesture with her bound hands, managed to get them to her lips, swallowed, smiled, dropped her hands, gazed at them, it seemed perplexedly, and then dropped her head back against the padded head of the chair. Mrs Bradley went across to her and released her hands and ankles.

  There was a sound of heavy footsteps outside.

  ‘That will be the police,’ she said. ‘They will have to take charge of her now. She has given us the last clue, but it will, I think, mean nothing at all to them.’

  ‘Oh, dear, I do hate this! I do hope they won’t hurt her, poor thing,’ said the Principal, becoming suddenly and demonstrably human. Mrs Bradley again walked over to the still figure. She straightened herself and shook her head.

  ‘They won’t hurt her,’ she answered, ‘for she has disappeared again.’ Then, to the Principal’s surprise, she crossed herself, muttering what sounded like a spell but which must have been a prayer.

  Chapter 19

  ITYLUS

  « ^

  ‘Well, it seems,’ said Laura, ‘that although the skeleton not turning up trumps settled the thing more or less, Mrs Croc. had had her suspicions for some time previous to that that Miss Murchan wasn’t dead. She thought Cook being murdered proved it The only reason for murdering Cook seemed to be that she had recognized somebody she wasn’t supposed to recognize, and that couldn’t have been Cornflake because Cornflake could always pull that gag that old Cartwright produced among the Edgar Allans — say she was somebody else. That, being as how she was a student of the College, would more or less let her out. And, anyway, Cook couldn’t have had anything on her about former doings, because she didn’t know her.

  ‘Then, the disposal of Cook’s body, as discovered by the police, followed by us finding the corsets. The difficulty about bringing that home to Cornflake simply was — when could she have done it? I mean, I know, theoretically, we each have our own room, and all that, but it actually takes some doing to slide out at night from one of these Halls, even if you used the communal passage and hopped it on to the wide open spaces from a Hall not actually your own. And then you’d have the dickens of a job to slide back. Of course, it wasn’t impossible, but it had all the earmarks of wild improbability, says Mrs Croc.

  ‘In fact, if you go all through the rags and other things, you can pretty well deduce that only somebody very close at hand could have carried out most of the stunts. The snakes were one thing that didn’t seem to fit, but Cartwright has come clean about those, so they can be disregarded in the final summing-up. I mean, you can say what you like, but actually, as I once pointed out, it isn’t really feasible to suppose that Cornflake could have run the gauntlet of Hall after Hall like that, right along that passage. Much more likely to be somebody who had direct access to the bakehouse and could operate from there. And who so likely to have access as Miss Murchan herself? After all, she’d had all the keys in her possession when she was Warden.

  ‘Of course, she “disappeared” after she’d spotted Cornflake, in the previous summer term, coming up for interview with the Prin. She knew her number was up once Cornflake got on her track. She’d killed that kid at that school, you see, and Cornflake, it appears, had seen her do it, and…’

  The subsequent explanations, inadequate and, on the whole, ill-informed though they turned out to be, lasted the fascinated group for some time.

  ‘You’re perfectly right, Deb.,’ said Jonathan. ‘My manners are awful. But, you see, I do want to keep in with you until we’re married — after which, I ought to point out, I intend to put it across you in no uncertain spirit, you carping cat! — and, in the circumstances, it didn’t seem to me that you would view amiably a bloke of my size and weight scrapping practically all out with Miss Murchan, murderess though she may be. That’s all. We’ve got her, and she took some getting. Not a pretty do, and I’m glad it’s over.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Deborah, slipping her arm in his. ‘All right. I withdraw what I said. Shall we go into my sitting-room or into Mrs Bradley’s?’

  ‘Hers. I bet your fire’s gone out. Hers won’t have done, if I know her.’

  ‘I’ll bet you…’ said Deborah. Her fire was burning with a deep, red, comfortable glow. She put out her tongue at him.

  ‘Whisky?’ she said, going to the cupboard.

  ‘You having some?’

  ‘I loathe it. But you look as though you need something… Here you are. You can splash the soda in for yourself. You know, I’m all at sea about Miss Murchan. When did Mrs Bradley decide that she hadn’t disappeared after all?’

  ‘Why don’t you call her Aunt Adela?’

  ‘Well, she isn’t.’

  ‘Not yet, but it’s only a question of time.’

  ‘A good long time. I must stay on here until the end of the summer term. I’ve got to get these girls through their examinations.’

  ‘Oh, no, you haven’t. We’re being married some time within the next six weeks. It’s simply up to you to say when.’

  ‘But…’

  ‘None of it. I know you’re sorry you ever consented to the match, but as a woman of honour I don’t see how you’re going to get out of it now.’

  ‘There’s Mrs — there’s Aunt Adela,’ said Deborah. ‘I’ll let her know where we are.’

  ‘No need, child. I saw the light,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘In fact, I saw lots of lights, not only from this room, but from almost all the rooms.’

  ‘Aren’t the students in bed?’ asked Deborah. ‘I’d better go the rounds, I suppose.’

  ‘Oh, the students, bless them, will sit up until all hours,’ replied the head of the house comfortably. ‘Leave them alone, and relax, child, or, better still, go to bed. I want to talk to Jonathan.’

  ‘Can’t I listen, then? I promise I won’t interrupt.’

  Mrs Bradley said nothing for a moment, but leaned forward and put coal on the fire. Her nephew watched her. Then, as she leaned back in her chair, an unusual relaxation in her, he caught her eye, and framed a question with his lips. Mrs Bradley nodded.

  ‘Suicide,’ she said. ‘Cyanide of potassium. I thought perhaps she would, and it is much the best way out for the College.’

  ‘How did you know we should get her tonight, if you’d never set eyes on her before?’

  ‘I guessed she would take advantage of the fact that the house was empty to get into the kitchen to steal food. Most of the servants go over to the College entertainments, and the coast would be perfectly clear, once Lulu had gone to bed. I didn’t want a public fuss if it could be avoided. On the other hand, I didn’t want to lose her, by coming across here too late.’

  ‘Has she really been living in the bakehouse?’

  ‘Yes. It is used only twice a week for baking bread, cakes, and pastry for the whole College. Knowing the routine, she could always hide in the Hall when the bakehouse was in use. She then used the large cupboard on the top floor, the one built over Deborah’s bathroom, I expect. From a point of vantage like that, she could annoy and disturb us as much as ever she
liked.’

  ‘But that’s what beats me. Why did she want to disturb you? Why all that childish ragging?’

  ‘Oh, that has been plain all along. She simply wanted to get rid of me. She did not want me following her trail. She was desperately afraid of being found. She did not care whether she frightened me away, or whether I was dismissed for mismanaging the discipline of the Hall. Having attempted to injure me by tying strings across doorways at the beginning of last term, she then got ideas from Miss Cartwright, who organized the bonfire rag. The most interesting thing about the other ragging has been the way her mind worked over it. I knew that couldn’t be students.’

  ‘No; malice all through. Wicked stuff, some of it, too; that girl’s hair, for example.’

  ‘Quite.’

  ‘How do you know, by the way, that it wasn’t Miss Cornflake who tied the string across our doors?’ asked Deborah.

  ‘Because I don’t think Miss Cornflake was in College that night. She travelled from London the next morning, and could not have made the double journey in the time. The trains don’t fit.’

  ‘What about a car?’

  ‘Yes, that would have been a possibility. But I don’t see how Miss Cornflake could have gained admittance to the building at that time. She couldn’t have had any keys. Besides, I don’t see how she could have known that I was to be in residence that day. There are all sorts of reasons against its having been her doing. And then, how can one account for the first exchange of skeletons unless Miss Murchan worked it? She knew Miss Cartwright from the previous year, remember; knew her home address; knew what would be the effect on her of a challenge.’

  ‘What about slashing the clothes and punching holes in the disinfectant?’ asked Jonathan.

  ‘That was Miss Murchan, I am sure, and it gave her state of mind away. As soon as those things happened, I knew that we had to look out for a person of a type familiar to all students of the morbid psychology of sex. I knew there was no one of the type among the students or servants, and as soon as I became acquainted with Miss Cornflake I knew that she was not the type either. From that point I deduced that Miss Murchan was not dead, but it was the murder of that poor, stupid, greedy cook that made my theories into certainty.’