Laurels are Poison (Mrs. Bradley) Read online

  Deborah knelt on the hearthrug, removed ash from the fire, and began to toast the scones which were lying in a bag, a plate beside them, on the hearth.

  “Debating within oneself is an unprofitable pastime,” she pronounced seriously. Miss Topas took her feet down and put slippers on them, hitched her chair closer to the fire, flung away the stub of her cigarette, and observed:

  “We are all attention. Unveil your past. Is the choice to be made between Tom and Dick, or is it complicated by the introduction of Harry?”

  “You’re as bad as the students,” said Deborah. “That’s the only way their minds work.”

  “Rebuke noted and digested. Go on. Tell me all. By the way, how are the Athelstan Horrors?”

  “That’s the point. We’ve had nothing since that hair-cutting business at half-term, and, you know, Cathleen, I still think Miss Vincent did that herself. You know what a light sleeper Mrs. Bradley is.”

  “Is she?”

  “Yes, and she was sleeping in my sitting-room opposite the Guest Room where this girl lay, and yet she didn’t hear a sound.”

  “That does seem odd if she really is a light sleeper, unless the person climbed in through an open window, or knew the house very, very well. Even then…is Mrs. Bradley certain Miss Vincent didn’t do it herself?”

  “She seemed perfectly certain, I thought, but these people get bees in their bonnets. Then, take the first affair—would you like to butter these as I do them?—that stupid rag. We didn’t find the student she dragged out of the circle, but it doesn’t seem to me that it’s necessarily the same girl each time. Of course, she did say herself that two different people were at work.”

  “I agree. Piling up the jerries and getting some young men to do a war-dance round them doesn’t tally with cutting off a sick person’s hair with the possible intention of frightening her into a fit. I think I’m with you both so far. Of course, we must remember that Mrs. Bradley thinks there is a scheme to make Athelstan too hot to hold her, and, if that is the case, then the thing does hang together. But go on. And you might blacken one or two of those scones a bit more for me. I’m rather partial to charcoal.”

  “Well, how would you account for the snakes in that Demonstration lesson Miss Harbottle gave? Granted that they were intended to upset me and not her, I can’t see in that affair anything more than another rather stupid and malicious rag. Can you?”

  “Well, there, don’t you see,” said Miss Topas. “I say, you’ve done enough, I should think. Come on. Let’s eat ’em while they’re hot. Can’t understand people who don’t take sugar. If I don’t get my three lumps per cup I become depressed—I was saying that that’s where Mrs. Bradley scores, it seems to me. Stupid and malicious. Doesn’t fit students’ ragging, you know. I was at a big mixed training college before I came here, but it was just the same. The men, particularly, ragged a good deal, but it was seldom stupid, and as for malicious—not a bit. As a matter of fact, girls, particularly, don’t like to hurt one’s feelings. And the misses like you quite a lot, you know. They wouldn’t want—but don’t let me interrupt you. Proceed with the evidence.”

  “Well, those tins of disinfectant. Wasn’t that malicious?”

  “Yes. Makes the argument even more sound. It simply was malicious, unless it was something Much Worse. You’ve read some morbid psychology, I suppose?”

  “Yes, of course. But isn’t it a boy’s or a man’s trick—that stabbing business?”

  “Yes, it is. Connects up with Jack the Ripper, of course. You could connect the hair-cutting in the same way, you know, and that coat-slashing, too.”

  “You don’t think it could have been a man that Mrs. Bradley pulled out of that dancing lot on the first night, when she said it was a girl? The rest were men, you know.”

  “No, I don’t. Besides, the voice. Although possibly that could be faked. But I should imagine that it was a woman all right. Mrs. Bradley wouldn’t make that kind of mistake. I shouldn’t myself. The queer thing is—where did the wretched person get to?”

  “This Hall,” said Deborah, laughing. “At least, Mrs. Bradley says so.”

  “Does she, by Jove!” Miss Topas put a buttered finger on the bell. “Elsie,” she said to the maid, “bring me the Hall list from the Senior Common Room notice-board. I’ll brood over the question,” she went on, when the maid had gone, “and get out a selection of felons for Mrs. Bradley to choose from. Of course, in a Hall like this, where all the students are well over the average age and so forth, an ill-disposed person could hide under the spotted, unless she was unlucky enough to run into somebody who already knew her.”

  “Yes, I can see what you mean. As a One-Year anybody could take up residence here. Do let me know what conclusions you come to.”

  “Not a word to the Warden, then. She’d have a fit if she thought I was snooping into the antecedents of the students here, poor wretches. Imagine having spent a blameless and patriotic existence as an Uncertificated Teacher for ten or fifteen years, and then being hounded by the authorities into getting your Certificate, complete with college training, in twelve miserable, uncomfortable, fish-out-of-water months! Because, they are fish out of water, many of the poor wretches here—except the Third-Years, of course. They’re bred and born in the briar patch, but t’ others hate every minute of it, and those who live near enough to go home leave us most week-ends, even if it means going back to digs and the motherly bosoms of their landladies. My heart bleeds for them. It does, really.”

  Deborah giggled unfeelingly at this soulful picture, and then licked butter off her thumb.

  “By the way,” she said, “I’ve been notified that I’ll have to do School Practice supervising. What exactly does that entail?”

  “Fancy reminding me of what exactly it entails!” said Miss Topas with a hollow-sounding groan, “but, if you must know, I’ll tell you. Bend closer.”

  “Come on my right side, for this ear is deaf,” said Deborah. “Shades of Laura Menzies,” she added apologetically.

  “And before I tell you about School Prac. I would say one word of warning,” Miss Topas continued. “Your Mrs. Bradley has a nice choice in words. She didn’t say girl. She said woman. Therefore, presumably, she meant woman.”

  “Yes. Well, your students here…”

  “All right. Let it go, please. Now, then: School Practice…”

  She leaned forward and poured into Deborah’s terrified but receptive mind the hateful and exacting nature of the task which would confront her during the ensuing weeks.

  “And don’t forget,” she added earnestly, “that you are not responsible for keeping order. If you go into the classroom of a student who’s obviously got the class completely round her neck, you take care it stays there. Don’t help her. I recollect the case of a lecturer at my old shop who went into a Craft lesson—she was a geographer, by the way, and ought to have known better than to interfere in a mystery which was outside her scope, but some of these people are apt to be conceited—and found the usual howling mob and an unfortunate student trying to give out scissors. Not only did she end up by bringing the headmistress into the room to quell the disturbance, but it was discovered that one child had cut two other children’s frocks, that two others had cut each other’s hair, and that another had been sick after eating most of the paste’ prepared for the lesson.”

  “Golly!” said Deborah, laughing. Miss Topas wagged her head.

  “I’m speaking for your own good,” she admonished her. “Never rush in where angels fear to tread. And never let yourself in for critting a P.T. lesson. You’ll probably have to watch one or two, but that doesn’t matter. Step stately out of it, and leave it to Pettinsalt or Betsy. They can’t bear having the uninitiated initialling their students’ notebooks.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. Always something a bit inverted about these P.T. wallahs. I don’t know why it is, but they always get it up the nose, with a few exceptions I could quote you. There’s something horribly unn
atural about physical training. Too much muscle warps the intelligence, I expect.”

  As though this were her last word, she consumed the last piece of toast at a gulp, kicked off her slippers, put her feet up, lay back, and closed her eyes. Deborah prodded her suddenly and painfully with the toasting fork.

  “Wake up, slacker, and continue your idiotic but, possibly, invaluable remarks,” she said.

  “No, no. You tell me why you’ve turned down your young man,” said Miss Topas firmly.

  The ghost of Athelstan commenced operations on the following Friday night—a well-chosen time, Mrs. Bradley was compelled to admit, taking into consideration both day and hour.

  It had been an exasperating Friday. Deborah had had a very full time-table, and to add to it and to her troubles, she had been compelled to deputize at six-thirty for the Senior English lecturer, who had contracted another of what Deborah called, unjustly, to Miss Topas, one of her “useful colds.”

  This lecture, which was the third and last of a series on King Lear, lasted until twenty-past seven, and left Deborah exactly ten minutes in which to get back to Athelstan, wash, change, and arrive in the dining-room. She was, of course, late. Mrs. Bradley looked sympathetic and ordered her to avoid the cottage pie and to concentrate on soup and fish. Deborah, determined to be contrary, asked for cottage pie, did not care for it, left more than half, and got up from table hungry and irritable.

  At half-past nine she went to bed; not because she wanted to, but because there was no alternative except to sit up and correct English essays, which she was determined not to do.

  She went to sleep remarkably quickly, and was awakened by the ghost at precisely two-fifteen in the morning.

  She did not realize, at first, what sound it was that she had heard. All she knew was that she had been dreaming about pigs, and that one must have been killed. She started up, sweating with the horrible heaviness of nightmare, and, to her extreme horror, heard the sound again. To her credit, terrified though she was, she leapt out of bed, switched on the light, and, opening the door, called out: “What’s the matter? What’s going on?”

  Mrs. Bradley’s voice replied in comforting accents, and the head of the house appeared, electric torch in hand, just as more than half the students came crowding on to the landings, asking, as they huddled together, what was the matter, what had happened, who was it, and making other and similar useless and irritating inquiries. Even as they were asking the questions, the horrible sounds came again.

  “Disconcerting,” remarked Mrs. Bradley. At this inadequate comment Deborah began to protest, but her observations were terminated by a banshee wail which put all the previous disturbances in the shade. Deborah unashamedly clutched Mrs. Bradley’s dragon-strewn dressing-gown, and there were excited and frightened exclamations from the students.

  Mrs. Bradley, alone among those present, seemed entirely unimpressed by the manifestations.

  “Put on coats or dressing-gowns, and come down to the Common Room,” she said. “If there are any students still asleep, please wake them and bring them with you.”

  There was some laughter at this, and the students came trooping down. Mrs. Bradley called the House Roll when the assembly was complete, found that there were no absentees from the muster, and then gave instructions that no one was to go out of the room on any pretext until she herself had returned and granted permission.

  Deborah followed her to the door, but Mrs. Bradley whispered to her that one of them had better remain in the Common Room. Leaving Deborah, she descended alone to the basement. Outside the servants’ rooms she stood and called the maids by name.

  “We’re all here, madam,” said the cook, opening one of the doors and appearing in curlers in the doorway. “The girls didn’t like the sounds, so we all collected ourselves in here. Did you wish to speak to anyone, madam?”

  Her tone was not definitely impudent, but it was not, on the other hand, that of the trusty domestic, whether alarmed or otherwise. Mrs. Bradley was interested.

  “I should like to speak to you alone, Cook,” she said loudly, knowing that Cook was rather deaf. “Come out here, please. Shut the door. Now, are the maids alarmed?”

  “We was all frightened out of our seven senses.”

  “Where did the noise seem to come from?”

  “Right outside these very doors. You’ll get my notice in the morning. I’m not stopping on in an ’aunted ’ouse. There was none of these goings-on when poor Miss Murchan was here.”

  Nothing more was heard of the ghost that night. By the following midday, however, the story was all over college, and “the ghost of Athelstan” was freely discussed. Various explanations were offered by students from the other Halls, but each, as it was presented to the Athelstan students, was rejected by them as being out of conformation with the facts.

  “You ought to have heard it! I thought I should have fainted!” was the burden of the Athelstan chorus. The talk during the daylight hours was amused, speculative, and ribald, but when dinner was over in Hall and the sun was beginning to set, there was a marked disinclination among the students to go about the house, or to remain alone in study-bedrooms. The group which assembled in Miss Mathers’s room was typical of others on both floors. It consisted of the senior student herself, two or three of her year, three First-Years, and even the ostracized Miss Giggs, the mild Miss Morris, and the ticket-of-leave Miss Cartwright.

  “What do you think the Warden will do if it happens again?” asked Miss Morris.

  “I can tell you one thing she’s done already. Sacked Cook,” volunteered Miss Cartwright. Like a great many of the more adventurous spirits, she was extremely popular in the servants’ hall, and so was in receipt of this bit of, so far, exclusive information.

  “Sacked Cook? But who cooked dinner?” demanded Miss Morris.

  “The ghost,” Miss Cartwright answered frivolously. “No, as a matter of fact, Mrs. Croc. has promoted Bella. She ‘knows the apparatus,’ as Mrs. Croc. puts it.”

  “She made a very good job of the dinner,” said Miss Mathers critically. “And now, if it’s all the same, I’ve got to get out some notes of lessons for next week.”

  The guests departed unwillingly, keeping close together. Miss Giggs came back.

  “I wish you’d let me sit in here until supper,” she said abruptly. Miss Mathers got out her notebooks and then looked up.

  “All right,” she said. “To be perfectly truthful, I’m not over and above anxious to be left alone, any more than you are.”

  “What do you think it was?” asked Miss Giggs, lowering her voice and speaking hoarsely.

  “An owl caught up in one of the chimneys, or something of that sort, I fancy.”

  “Has the Warden said anything more?”

  “No, but I happen to know she thinks it was some of the Wattsdown men playing the fool. I heard her telling Miss Cloud so.”

  “What did Miss Cloud say?”

  “Oh, I think she agreed.”

  “It would be a good thing if it could be proved, though, wouldn’t it? Did she think Cook was bribed to open the door or something?”

  “Yes. Cook was rude to her this morning.”

  “I shouldn’t have thought anyone would dare.”

  “Yes. She told Mrs. Bradley that there had been none of these disturbances until Miss Murchan’s illness.”

  “Where is Miss Murchan? Is she at her own home?”

  “I think she must be, but she is forbidden to have letters, Mrs. Bradley said, so it isn’t any use our writing, and Mrs. Bradley won’t give the address.”

  In the study-bedroom apportioned to Kitty, the Three Musketeers were seated on the bed.

  “So you can’t take it, young Alice?” said Kitty. “And, to tell you the truth, Dog,” she added, before Alice could reply to this derogatory estimate of her powers of endurance, “I don’t blame her. Where’s the sense, anyway, of losing our beauty sleep? Suppose it is some of those silly goops from Wattsdown playing the fool,
ten to one they won’t risk it again tonight, or ever any more, come to that. They might not get away with it another time.”

  “I didn’t sleep a wink last night,” said Alice.

  “Don’t see how you could, with three of us trying to share your bed,” said Laura. “So don’t make that an excuse. Now I’ve got my hockey stick, you’ve got a cricket-stump each, and if we can’t manage, between us, to knock any ghost for six, I shall be surprised.”

  “Don’t you believe in ghosts, Laura?” Alice inquired. Laura grinned.

  “I don’t, but my Highland blood believes with its every drop,” she confessed. “Nevertheless, reason still holds sway.”

  “Yes, until it gets round about midnight,” said Kitty pointedly. “What I say is, I’m going to bed and to sleep, and you’ll see there’ll be no disturbance.”

  She proved to be perfectly right, and by the following Sunday night the fears engendered by the ghost had given place to the less nebulous and more reasonable fears of School Practice.

  Unlike some training colleges, Cartaret believed in getting School Practice over for all the students at the same time of year so far as this was possible, and for the last fortnight of the Christmas Term each student was assigned to a school.

  Laura and Alice had been assigned to an establishment named immediately by the former Village Institute.

  It was an old-fashioned Church School, consisting of one main building with an annexe. The main building had been divided into classrooms by the expedient of putting partitions, mostly of glass, at intervals across the width. Thus the original three east and two west windows still lighted the whole of the building. The annexe consisted of a brick-built classroom and a cloakroom. Physical training, when the weather was too bad for it to be taken out of doors, took place in the Church Hall, on the opposite side of the playground.

  Kitty’s lot was both more and less enviable. She had been assigned to the Council School from which children were brought to college for the Demonstration lessons. What she gained upon the roundabouts was lost upon the swings, for the Church School came under the heading, in Supervisors’ notebooks, of Special Difficulty, whereas the Dem. School, as the students called it, was given a mark of Alpha, and those unfortunates who were allotted to it for School Practice were expected, in the words of Miss Cartwright, to make good or bust. She herself had busted, she told an apprehensive and interested audience, on the Sunday night before The Terror (Laura’s name for School Practice) began.