Laurels are Poison (Mrs. Bradley) Read online

  When Monday dawned, students in various degrees of anxiety and nervousness arose (many of them before the rising bell had rung in the various Halls) and began to put ready the impedimenta (Laura’s carefully-chosen collective noun, much appreciated by Mrs. Bradley when she heard it) for the day.

  Of the Three Musketeers, Alice was the most nervous, Kitty the most ill-prepared. The latter set out at a quarter-past eight armed with her School Practice notebook, her time-table, a roll of large-scale paintings of various kinds of embroidery stitches, a stuffed fox (borrowed from the gardener’s drawing-room for a Nature lesson), and a twig of poplar. This last was in case the fox gave out on her half-way, she confided to the grinning Laura and the apprehensive Alice. She knew she couldn’t keep a lesson going for three-quarters of an hour, she concluded.

  “Old Kitty will break her own record if she keeps it going ten minutes,” said Laura philosophically, as she and Alice walked to the bus stop, half a mile down the moorland road. In this estimate of Kitty’s powers of entertainment she did her friend grievous wrong, however, for Kitty’s first lesson, delivered with that aplomb and explosive energy which only the last stage of desperate fright can produce, went particularly well.

  “And just my luck,” said Kitty, detailing the pleasures of the day when she encountered the others before tea, “not a Supervisor on the horizon, I bet I fluff next time, and someone is sure to walk in.”

  “We had the Deb,” said Alice, smiling happily. “She just walked into my Arithmetic lesson and said: ‘Cheer up, Miss Boorman. I’m twice as frightened as you are.’ And then she marked me—look!”

  A red star, mark of extreme approbation, blazed, albeit smudgily (for Alice had wept over it in secret joy during the major part of the dinner hour), on the front page of Alice’s notes.

  “She told me off,” said Laura. “Reminded me the teacher is the stage-manager, not the chief actor. Devastating, I call it. Besides, she’s a perfectly rotten teacher herself.”

  Her friends giggled unfeelingly, and neither they nor the recipient of Deborah’s uncharitable advice allowed it to interfere in the slightest with their tea.

  Between tea and dinner there were no lectures during School Practice. Some of the students commenced their preparation for the next day’s work; Alice was one of them. Laura took Kitty apart, and they walked up and down the gravel path between Athelstan and Beowulf deep in conversation.

  “But I’d be scared stiff, Dog,” Kitty protested, at the end of ten minutes’ earnest monologue by Laura. “Besides, there’s Alice. We can’t leave her on her own. And then, I’ve got P.T. tomorrow. I must swot a beastly drill table. What comes after Group Four?”

  “Lateral,” Laura replied. “But you’d better mug it up, in case I’m wrong. And don’t let ’em do Forward Punching. They only edge up and hit one another in the back.”

  “We’ve got a whale of a P.T. specialist in our school,” continued Kitty. “One of those hags from Rule Britannia’s. She must be at least thirty, but she’s marvellous. Name of Cornflake. I suppose she’s Uncertif. and has come for a year to get the doings.”

  “Name of what?”

  “Cornflake.”

  “Rot.”

  “But I’ve seen it written down.”

  “Then it can’t be pronounced as it’s written. You couldn’t be called Cornflake.”

  “I don’t see why not. Look at your name.”

  “Less about my name. I’d have you know, you wretched Anglo-Saxon, that the Clan Menzies was out in the Forty-Five, and on the right side, too!”

  “I’m not a wretched Anglo-Saxon,” said Kitty, wounded. “The Trevelyans are a very old Cornish family, as anybody but a halfwit would know.”

  “All the more reason why you should live up to your family traditions and assist me in my ghost-hunt. Don’t tell me a Trevelyan ever turned his back and neglected to march breast-forward.”

  “Oh, all right, but I shall be a rag tomorrow, I warn you. And I have got this wretched P.T.”

  “All right, don’t fret, then. I’ll hunt alone.”

  “No, you won’t. But I think we shall have to tell Alice.”

  “I have other plans for that jolly old nurse of ninety years. She’s got to check up on the personnel of the students, to make certain it’s nobody in Athelstan playing silly tricks.”

  “We know it isn’t. Mrs. Croc. called the roll.”

  “Like hell she did! After giving plenty of time for everybody to assemble in the Common Room, no matter where they’d been. I know for a fact that Cartwright was having a surreptitious bath in the maids’ bathroom below stairs when the siren sounded.”

  “Was she?”

  “Of course she was. She said that from where she was it sounded like seventy devils whistling the ‘Soldiers’ Chorus.’”

  “Was she scared?”

  “Not a bit. Said she thought some fool was pulling a stunt. She just wrapped herself in her bathgown and toddled upstairs, prepared with explanations if asked for; which they weren’t. Now do you see what I mean?”

  “What did she have on her feet?”

  “I don’t know. What’s it matter?”

  “Mrs. Croc. is a detective, don’t forget.”

  “I’m not forgetting. Even Sherlock Holmes could slip up. She probably wore her rubber shoes, and put them out on the window-ledge to dry. That’s what I should have done.”

  “I don’t believe you could get away with it without Mrs. Croc. knowing, all the same. What’s the odds she knew all about Cartwright and her bath, anyway? Maybe she even gave her time to get to the Common Room in time for Roll-Call. Think that out.”

  “I have. Ad delirium tremens. So what?”

  “Well, she knows it was nothing to do with Cartwright, and she wasn’t going to let her get mixed up in any subsequent inquiry.”

  “Golly,” said Laura, respectfully. “Your own idea?”

  “You’re not the only person who can add up two and two,” said Kitty, with the sunny good temper which characterized her. “Anyway, if she was wise to Cartwright she’ll be wise to us if we go poking about down there. That’s my point.”

  “And, granted your premises, not a bad one,” said Laura thoughtfully. “Look here, then, I’ll tell you what we’ll do. We’ll give the ghost another chance, and if we hear that whistling row again we’ll go into action, young Alice and all. She’s game, all right, although her teeth are apt to chatter. How does that strike you?”

  “Alice wouldn’t tackle a ghost.”

  “Ghost your old galoshes. Have you seen young Alice play netball? If she can’t jump on a ghost from behind and bite pieces out of its neck, I’m a cow’s grandmother.”

  “That’s still in the future,” said Kitty, with happy inspiration.

  On the following morning, Tuesday, Miss Topas put on her coat and turned the collar up. Then she checked the contents of her attaché-case, added an extra fountain-pen, glanced regretfully at the neat files of her lecture notes on their shelves in the warm, cheerful room, and then looked out of the window.

  Students in groups were walking across the grounds. There was a thick autumn mist which might turn to fine weather later in the day, or might, Miss Topas gloomily concluded, turn to rain. At any rate, she did not want to go out into it.

  Her assignments for that morning were to supervise three history lessons; one by Miss Holt, a brilliant student in the Second-Year, a resident of Bede Hall; the second by Miss Pinkley, a doubtful stayer, also in her second year, and the third by a First-Year student from Athelstan, Miss Priest.

  Sandwiched between the second and third of these lessons came a physical training lesson by—for Kitty had read and pronounced the name aright—Miss Cornflake, a One-Year student from her own Hall, Columba.

  Like many of the lecturers, Miss Topas, as she had already indicated to Deborah, objected strongly to supervising lessons in physical training. She knew nothing about the subject, she protested—nothing at all.

  “You
used to play hockey for the County,” said Miss Rosewell.

  “And since when has hockey-playing become a qualification for judging neck rest and arms upward stretch?” Miss Topas demanded. Gently supplied with a copy of the Board’s syllabus, she refused to look at it.

  “If she keeps the little brutes on the move and cuts out Country Dancing she’ll be all right, so far as I’m concerned,” she said.

  “If the students can take P.T. they can take anything,” said the drawling voice of Miss Pettinsalt, throwing in a bone of contention at which she knew all the Common Room would snap.

  Miss Topas, picking up her traps preparatory to departure into the misty morning, went over points in the debate that had followed. Deborah, she remembered, had made one contribution only.

  “I never know why, with some of these students, the children don’t break their necks,” Deborah had observed.

  “They probably do,” Miss Topas herself had answered, “but it isn’t found out until later.”

  She left her door open for Carrie to clear away breakfast, and descended the front steps of Columba to cross the grounds in the direction of the garages. The school she was bound for was two and a half miles from college, and it was her practice to pick up two or three of the students in her car, for, although there was a bus service, it was infrequent, and those who caught the bus arrived either much too early or (as was already becoming the rule by which Kitty conducted her life during this trying period) slightly late. The headmistress had remonstrated with her on the point, but Kitty had remained firm.

  “I suffer from asthmatic wheezing,” she explained, “and the school is too cold for me at twenty-past eight. By five-past nine it is much safer.”

  “I don’t know how you dare be late on School Trac.,” Alice had remonstrated.

  “Well, the sooner I’m chucked out, the sooner I can begin hair-dressing,” argued Kitty. With the cussedness usually displayed by Fate, however, she was not chucked out, but was permitted, instead, to continue in her outrageous line of conduct.

  Miss Topas, who, beneath a flippant attitude, concealed a strong sense of duty and responsibility, was always at the school of her assignment in very good time. Sometimes she talked to the headmistress; sometimes she asked permission to see the “stock list” of history textbooks in use at the school; sometimes she inspected such things as the surface of the playground and, from the outside, the homes of the children.

  On this particular morning, however, she did none of these things, because she was held up by the police, and was forced to make a long detour to reach her destination. Her usual road ran south-east from the college, downhill and through the woods, until it met a major road at which Miss Topas turned almost due west for a hundred yards or so, and then south-west until the road crossed the canal. Once across, another hundred yards brought her to another main road, and this, turning north-east, ran alongside the river from which the canal had been cut.

  It was as she was driving, at a respectable twenty-eight miles an hour, along this pleasant bit of riverside road, that Miss Topas was held up.

  She prepared to show her driving licence, but the sergeant merely said politely, “Afraid you’ll have a good way to back, miss. Nobody allowed this way this morning.”

  “Oh, something wrong with the road?”

  “Be all right by lunch-time, miss. I should sound your horn as you go. The mist’s a bit tricky along here.”

  It was very thick alongside the river. Not more than a couple of yards of the silvery water could be seen from the edge of the bank. The haze of mist hung over the rest like teased wool. There was twenty yards’ visibility on the road. Miss Topas put the car in reverse, and, thankful that she had come, comparatively speaking, so short a distance off the main thoroughfare, backed carefully, sounding her horn.

  It seemed as though, on such a morning, most of the students had preferred to take the bus rather than to walk, for she passed nobody going her way, and arrived at the school at twenty-five to ten, for the first lesson, that to be given by Miss Holt.

  She allowed Miss Holt five minutes to get going, and then went in. Good notes, good illustrations, pleasant voice, attentive class—Miss Topas gave a very high mark, wrote a couple of lines of criticism, stayed in for the next quarter of an hour, and then drifted out.

  Miss Pinkley, in the crude but apt vernacular of the profession, had got the class round her neck. Miss Topas, who invariably rushed in where she had forbidden Deborah to tread, came a little nearer the front desk and began to “collect eyes.” The miserable and terrified student so far had not noticed her, but the gradual silencing of her tormentors gave her the clue, and she turned round, blinking nervously.

  “Carry on, Miss Pinkley,” said Miss Topas. “Don’t mind me. You’re the important person.”

  She remained with Miss Pinkley for the next eight minutes, sighed inaudibly, initialled Miss Pinkley’s notebook but added no comment, wrote a brief report, and then went into the next classroom. Here was Kitty, initiating such as permitted the process into the mysteries of decimal fractions.

  “So you see,” said Kitty, “all you do—hey, you, in the back row, stop pulling that girl’s hair! No, dash it, you weren’t doing up her slide. You were pulling her hair; I saw you. Oh, don’t argue. You listen to me. Oh, hullo, Miss Topas. Take a seat, won’t you…Now, you perishers—that is children—look here, this is the point. No, not the decimal point, haddock! The point of my remarks. In other words, what I’m saying, Oh, all right, if you won’t listen, you won’t. Sit up, and we’ll do some Pence Table. Don’t know it? Don’t know Pence Table? How does your father make out his betting slips, then? Come on, all of you. Twelve pence are one shilling. Eighteen pence are half a dollar. No, I’m wrong, at that.”

  She got the class laughing. Then she rolled her eyes at Miss Topas, and went back to multiplying decimals. Miss Topas gave her an average mark, prayed inaudibly for her soul, and passed out, highly appreciative, but, she feared, wrong-headedly so, of Kitty’s capabilities as an instructor.

  At half-past ten a bell rang to denote that it was time for the mid-morning break. This break lasted for a quarter of an hour. The younger and the more frivolous supervisors (the terms were not necessarily synonymous) divided the Practice Schools into those that made coffee in the morning break and those that did not. Sometimes a school would make afternoon tea instead. One or two schools made hot drinks both morning and afternoon.

  Kitty’s school happened to have a headmistress who liked coffee and tea, so that there was always a good chance of being invited into the Staff-room and of being provided with coffee and even, possibly, a biscuit. The students were not invited in. Miss Topas could see them in the end classroom when she glanced through the glass top of the door.

  The headmistress also came into the Staff-room for the coffee. She was what Miss Topas, who had her own system of classification for the various professional types, called the White Knight sort of headmistress. She was elderly, kindly, and laid down minute rules and regulations with regard to duties and to the methods of teaching the various subjects, marking the books, punishing misdemeanours, keeping registers and records and dealing with consumable stock, and she always wore a black alpaca apron in school, and was festooned with little ornamental and useful gadgets of all descriptions.

  She fussed round Miss Topas who had supervised students at this school once before, and, applying the technique of doing and saying absolutely nothing, Miss Topas contrived to get the fussing over and done with in the minimum of time, got rid of her, and was able to hear a thrilling account of what had been happening down by the river from one of the teachers who had had it from a bus conductor, who had had it from the policeman who lived next door to him.

  “A woman found in the river—dead. Murdered, they think, although I don’t know how they knew. More likely to be suicide or accident, I should think, in a neighbourhood like this.”

  Lively discussion of this view was interrupted by the bell w
hich indicated that the break was at an end. Miss Topas went out into the playground. The school, except for the class which was to have physical training, led into the building. In charge of the class left outside was a lank-haired student in glasses. Her blue serge skirt hung badly, and dipped lower at the back than at the front. She had changed into rubber-soled shoes, but had made no other difference in her dress. She gave Miss Topas a sickly smile, and then took off her glasses and put them on a window ledge. She gave an order to the class and got the children running, then she took off her skirt, displaying well-cut shorts not of the College pattern. Then she gave one of the most interesting and remarkable physical training lessons that Miss Topas ever expected to supervise.

  “Why, Miss Cornflake, I had no idea you were such an expert! May I have your notebook, please?”

  Miss Cornflake, putting on her skirt, her glasses, and then a heavy coat, handed over her notebook.

  “Don’t star it, whatever you do,” she said. “It was, actually, rather dud. Didn’t you notice…”

  She proceeded with technicalities until Miss Topas, glancing at her watch, decided that she would never get in to Miss Priest’s history lesson. She was feeling slightly irritated with Miss Cornflake. She sat in on Miss Priest’s lesson on the Conversion of the English to Christianity and wrote a slightly acid and decidedly unfair report of it. Then she crossed that out and wrote a snappy comment in Miss Priest’s own notebook advising her to remember that a class does not consist only of the middle of the front row. Then she crossed that out, too, and gave Miss Priest a better mark than she deserved—or, at least, than the lesson warranted—to compensate herself for her evil feelings.