Cat Among the Pigeons

by Agatha Christie

  I’m starting Art with Miss Laurie. She comes twice a week and takes us up to London to see picture galleries as well. We do French with Mademoiselle Blanche. She doesn’t keep order very well. Jennifer says French people can’t. She doesn’t get cross, though, only bored. She says “Enfin, vous m’ennuiez, mes enfants!” Miss Springer is awful. She does gym and P.T. She’s got ginger hair and smells when she’s hot. Then there’s Miss Chadwick (Chaddy)—she’s been here since the school started. She teaches mathematics and is rather fussy, but quite nice. And there’s Miss Vansittart who teaches History and German. She’s a sort of Miss Bulstrode with the pep left out.

  There are a lot of foreign girls here, two Italians and some Germans, and a rather jolly Swede (she’s a Princess or something) and a girl who’s half Turkish and half Persian and who says she would have been married to Prince Ali Yusuf who got killed in that aeroplane crash, but Jennifer says that isn’t true, that Shaista only says so because she was a kind of cousin, and you’re supposed to marry a cousin. But Jennifer says he wasn’t going to. He liked someone else. Jennifer knows a lot of things but she won’t usually tell them.

  I suppose you’ll be starting on your trip soon. Don’t leave your passport behind you like you did last time!!! And take your first aid kit in case you have an accident.

  Love from Julia

  Letter from Jennifer Sutcliffe to her mother:

  Dear Mummy,

  It really isn’t bad here. I’m enjoying it more than I expected to do. The weather has been very fine. We had to write a composition yesterday on “Can a good quality be carried to excess?” I couldn’t think of anything to say. Next week it will be “Contrast the characters of Juliet and Desdemona.” That seems silly too. Do you think I could have a new tennis racquet? I know you had mine restrung last Autumn—but it feels all wrong. Perhaps it’s got warped. I’d rather like to learn Greek. Can I? I love languages. Some of us are going to London to see the ballet next week. It’s Swan Lake. The food here is jolly good. Yesterday we had chicken for lunch, and we had lovely homemade cakes for tea.

  I can’t think of anymore news—have you had anymore burglaries?

  Your loving daughter,

  Jennifer

  Letter from Margaret Gore-West, Senior Prefect, to her mother:

  Dear Mummy,

  There is very little news. I am doing German with Miss Vansittart this term. There is a rumour that Miss Bulstrode is going to retire and that Miss Vansittart will succeed her but they’ve been saying that for over a year now, and I’m sure it isn’t true. I asked Miss Chadwick (of course I wouldn’t dare ask Miss Bulstrode!) and she was quite sharp about it. Said certainly not and don’t listen to gossip. We went to the ballet on Tuesday. Swan Lake. Too dreamy for words!

  Princess Ingrid is rather fun. Very blue eyes, but she wears braces on her teeth. There are two new German girls. They speak English quite well.

  Miss Rich is back and looking quite well. We did miss her last term. The new Games Mistress is called Miss Springer. She’s terribly bossy and nobody likes her much. She coaches you in tennis very well, though. One of the new girls, Jennifer Sutcliffe, is going to be really good, I think. Her backhand’s a bit weak. Her great friend is a girl called Julia. We call them the Jays!

  You won’t forget about taking me out on the 20th, will you? Sports Day is June 19th.

  Your Loving

  Margaret

  Letter from Ann Shapland to Dennis Rathbone:

  Dear Dennis,

  I shan’t get any time off until the third week of term. I should like to dine with you then very much. It would have to be Saturday or Sunday. I’ll let you know.

  I find it rather fun working in a school. But thank God I’m not a schoolmistress! I’d go raving mad.

  Yours ever,

  Ann

  Letter from Miss Johnson to her sister:

  Dear Edith,

  Everything much the same as usual here. The summer term is always nice. The garden is looking beautiful and we’ve got a new gardener to help old Briggs—young and strong! Rather good-looking, too, which is a pity. Girls are so silly.

  Miss Bulstrode hasn’t said anything more about retiring, so I hope she’s got over the idea. Miss Vansittart wouldn’t be at all the same thing. I really don’t believe I would stay on.

  Give my love to Dick and to the children, and remember me to Oliver and Kate when you see them.

  Elspeth

  Letter from Mademoiselle Angèle Blanche to René Dupont, Post Restante, Bordeaux.

  Dear René,

  All is well here, though I cannot say that I amuse myself. The girls are neither respectful nor well-behaved. I think it better, however, not to complain to Miss Bulstrode. One has to be on one’s guard when dealing with that one!

  There is nothing interesting at present to tell you.

  Mouche

  Letter from Miss Vansittart to a friend:

  Dear Gloria,

  The summer term has started smoothly. A very satisfactory set of new girls. The foreigners are settling down well. Our little Princess (the Middle East one, not the Scandinavian) is inclined to lack application, but I suppose one has to expect that. She has very charming manners.

  The new Games Mistress, Miss Springer, is not a success. The girls dislike her and she is far too high-handed with them. After all, this is not an ordinary school. We don’t stand or fall by P.T.! She is also very inquisitive, and asks far too many personal questions. That sort of thing can be very trying, and is so ill bred. Mademoiselle Blanche, the new French Mistress, is quite amiable but not up to the standard of Mademoiselle Depuy.

  We had a near escape on the first day of term. Lady Veronica Carlton-Sandways turned up completely intoxicated!! But for Miss Chadwick spotting it and heading her off, we might have had a most unpleasant incident. The twins are such nice girls, too.

  Miss Bulstrode has not said anything definite yet about the future—but from her manner, I think her mind is definitely made up. Meadowbank is a really fine achievement, and I shall be proud to carry on its traditions.

  Give my love to Marjorie when you see her.

  Yours ever,

  Eleanor

  Letter to Colonel Pikeaway, sent through the usual channels:

  Talk about sending a man into danger! I’m the only able-bodied male in an establishment of, roughly, some hundred and ninety females.

  Her Highness arrived in style. Cadillac of squashed strawberry and pastel blue, with Wog Notable in native dress, fashion-plate-from-Paris wife, and junior edition of same (H.R.H.).

  Hardly recognized her the next day in her school uniform. There will be no difficulty in establishing friendly relations with her. She has already seen to that. Was asking me the names of various flowers in a sweet innocent way, when a female Gorgon with freckles, red hair, and a voice like a corncrake bore down upon her and removed her from my vicinity. She didn’t want to go. I’d always understood these Oriental girls were brought up modestly behind the veil. This one must have had a little worldly experience during her schooldays in Switzerland, I think.

  The Gorgon, alias Miss Springer, the Games Mistress, came back to give me a raspberry. Garden staff were not to talk to the pupils, etc. My turn to express innocent surprise. “Sorry, Miss. The young lady was asking what these here delphiniums was. Suppose they don’t have them in the parts she comes from.” The Gorgon was easily pacified, in the end she almost simpered. Less success with Miss Bulstrode’s secretary. One of these coat and skirt country girls. French mistress is more cooperative. Demure and mousy to look at, but not such a mouse really. Also have made friends with three pleasant gigglers, Christian names, Pamela, Lois and Mary, surnames unknown, but of aristocratic lineage. A sharp old warhorse called Miss Chadwick keeps a wary eye on me, so I’m careful not to blot my copybook.

  My boss, old Briggs, is a crusty kind of character whose chief subject of conversation is what things used to be in the good old days, when he was, I suspect, the fourt
h of a staff of five. He grumbles about most things and people, but has a wholesome respect for Miss Bulstrode herself. So have I. She had a few words, very pleasant, with me, but I had a horrid feeling she was seeing right through me and knowing all about me.

  No sign, so far, of anything sinister—but I live in hope.

  Six

  EARLY DAYS

  I

  In the Mistresses’ Common Room news was being exchanged. Foreign travel, plays seen, Art Exhibitions visited. Snapshots were handed round. The menace of coloured transparencies was in the offing. All the enthusiasts wanted to show their own pictures, but to get out of being forced to see other people’s.

  Presently conversation became less personal. The new Sports Pavilion was both criticized and admired. It was admitted to be a fine building, but naturally everybody would have liked to improve its design in one way or another.

  The new girls were then briefly passed in review, and, on the whole, the verdict was favourable.

  A little pleasant conversation was made to the two new members of the staff. Had Mademoiselle Blanche been in England before? What part of France did she come from?

  Mademoiselle Blanche replied politely but with reserve.

  Miss Springer was more forthcoming.

  She spoke with emphasis and decision. It might almost have been said that she was giving a lecture. Subject: The excellence of Miss Springer. How much she had been appreciated as a colleague. How headmistresses had accepted her advice with gratitude and had reorganized their schedules accordingly.

  Miss Springer was not sensitive. A restlessness in her audience was not noticed by her. It remained for Miss Johnson to ask in her mild tones:

  “All the same, I expect your ideas haven’t always been accepted in the way they—er—should have been.”

  “One must be prepared for ingratitude,” said Miss Springer. Her voice, already loud, became louder. “The trouble is, people are so cowardly—won’t face facts. They often prefer not to see what’s under their noses all the time. I’m not like that. I go straight to the point. More than once I’ve unearthed a nasty scandal—brought it into the open. I’ve a good nose—once I’m on the trail, I don’t leave it—not till I’ve pinned down my quarry.” She gave a loud jolly laugh. “In my opinion, no one should teach in a school whose life isn’t an open book. If anyone’s got anything to hide, one can soon tell. Oh! you’d be surprised if I told you some of the things I’ve found out about people. Things that nobody else had dreamed of.”

  “You enjoyed that experience, yes?” said Mademoiselle Blanche.

  “Of course not. Just doing my duty. But I wasn’t backed up. Shameful laxness. So I resigned—as a protest.”

  She looked round and gave her jolly sporting laugh again.

  “Hope nobody here has anything to hide,” she said gaily.

  Nobody was amused. But Miss Springer was not the kind of woman to notice that.

  II

  “Can I speak to you, Miss Bulstrode?”

  Miss Bulstrode laid her pen aside and looked up into the flushed face of the matron, Miss Johnson.

  “Yes, Miss Johnson.”

  “It’s that girl Shaista—the Egyptian girl or whatever she is.”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s her—er—underclothing.”

  Miss Bulstrode’s eyebrows rose in patient surprise.

  “Her—well—her bust bodice.”

  “What is wrong with her brassière?”

  “Well—it isn’t an ordinary kind—I mean it doesn’t hold her in, exactly. It—er—well it pushes her up—really quite unnecessarily.”

  Miss Bulstrode bit her lip to keep back a smile, as so often when in colloquy with Miss Johnson.

  “Perhaps I’d better come and look at it,” she said gravely.

  A kind of inquest was then held with the offending contraption held up to display by Miss Johnson, whilst Shaista looked on with lively interest.

  “It’s this sort of wire and—er—boning arrangement,” said Miss Johnson with disapprobation.

  Shaista burst into animated explanation.

  “But you see my breasts they are not very big—not nearly big enough. I do not look enough like a woman. And it is very important for a girl—to show she is a woman and not a boy.”

  “Plenty of time for that. You’re only fifteen,” said Miss Johnson.

  “Fifteen—that is a woman! And I look like a woman, do I not?”

  She appealed to Miss Bulstrode who nodded gravely.

  “Only my breasts, they are poor. So I want to make them look not so poor. You understand?”

  “I understand perfectly,” said Miss Bulstrode. “And I quite see your point of view. But in this school, you see, you are amongst girls who are, for the most part, English, and English girls are not very often women at the age of fifteen. I like my girls to use makeup discreetly and to wear clothes suitable to their stage of growth. I suggest that you wear your brassière when you are dressed for a party or for going to London, but not every day here. We do a good deal of sports and games here and for that your body needs to be free to move easily.”

  “It is too much—all this running and jumping,” said Shaista sulkily, “and the P.T. I do not like Miss Springer—she always says, ‘Faster, faster, do not slack.’ I get tired.”

  “That will do, Shaista,” said Miss Bulstrode, her voice becoming authoritative. “Your family has sent you here to learn English ways. All this exercise will be very good for your complexion, and for developing your bust.”

  Dismissing Shaista, she smiled at the agitated Miss Johnson.

  “It’s quite true,” she said. “The girl is fully mature. She might easily be over twenty by the look of her. And that is what she feels like. You can’t expect her to feel the same age as Julia Upjohn, for instance. Intellectually Julia is far ahead of Shaista. Physically, she could quite well wear a liberty bodice still.”

  “I wish they were all like Julia Upjohn,” said Miss Johnson.

  “I don’t,” said Miss Bulstrode briskly. “A schoolful of girls all alike would be very dull.”

  Dull, she thought, as she went back to her marking of Scripture essays. That word had been repeating itself in her brain for some time now. Dull….

  If there was one thing her school was not, it was dull. During her career as its headmistress, she herself had never felt dull. There had been difficulties to combat, unforeseen crises, irritations with parents, with children: domestic upheavals. She had met and dealt with incipient disasters and turned them into triumphs. It had all been stimulating, exciting, supremely worthwhile. And even now, though she had made up her mind to it, she did not want to go.

  She was physically in excellent health, almost as tough as when she and Chaddy (faithful Chaddy!) had started the great enterprise with a mere handful of children and backing from a banker of unusual foresight. Chaddy’s academic distinctions had been better than hers, but it was she who had had the vision to plan and make of the school a place of such distinction that it was known all over Europe. She had never been afraid to experiment, whereas Chaddy had been content to teach soundly but unexcitingly what she knew. Chaddy’s supreme achievement had always been to be there, at hand, the faithful buffer, quick to render assistance when assistance was needed. As on the opening day of term with Lady Veronica. It was on her solidity, Miss Bulstrode reflected, that an exciting edifice had been built.

  Well, from the material point of view, both women had done very well out of it. If they retired now, they would both have a good assured income for the rest of their lives. Miss Bulstrode wondered if Chaddy would want to retire when she herself did? Probably not. Probably, to her, the school was home. She would continue, faithful and reliable, to buttress up Miss Bulstrode’s successor.

  Because Miss Bulstrode had made up her mind—a successor there must be. Firstly associated with herself in joint rule and then to rule alone. To know when to go—that was one of the great necessities of life. To go before o
ne’s powers began to fail, one’s sure grip to loosen, before one felt the faint staleness, the unwillingness to envisage continuing effort.

  Miss Bulstrode finished marking the essays and noted that the Upjohn child had an original mind. Jennifer Sutcliffe had a complete lack of imagination, but showed an unusually sound grasp of facts. Mary Vyse, of course, was scholarship class—a wonderful retentive memory. But what a dull girl! Dull—that word again. Miss Bulstrode dismissed it from her mind and rang for her secretary.

  She began to dictate letters.

  Dear Lady Valence. Jane has had some trouble with her ears. I enclose the doctor’s report—etc.

  Dear Baron Von Eisenger. We can certainly arrange for Hedwig to go to the Opera on the occasion of Hellstern’s taking the role of Isolda—

  An hour passed swiftly. Miss Bulstrode seldom paused for a word. Ann Shapland’s pencil raced over the pad.

  A very good secretary, Miss Bulstrode thought to herself. Better than Vera Lorrimer. Tiresome girl, Vera. Throwing up her post so suddenly. A nervous breakdown, she had said. Something to do with a man, Miss Bulstrode thought resignedly. It was usually a man.

  “That’s the lot,” said Miss Bulstrode, as she dictated the last word. She heaved a sigh of relief.

  “So many dull things to be done,” she remarked. “Writing letters to parents is like feeding dogs. Pop some soothing platitude into every waiting mouth.”

  Ann laughed. Miss Bulstrode looked at her appraisingly.

  “What made you take up secretarial work?”

  “I don’t quite know. I had no special bent for anything in particular, and it’s the sort of thing almost everybody drifts into.”