‘It begins to look like it. She is known to have taken parcels from Hagford to a small shop kept by a man named Tomson, who does not appear altogether to be persona grata with the police.’
‘Oh, dear! This is worse than I thought. It will be very bad for the school if all this comes out, as I suppose it is bound to do.’
‘I don’t know. Miss Faintley may have been a cat’s-paw. That is the theory at present.’
‘Then it doesn’t say much for her brains and character. Well, as I cannot be of further assistance…’
She smiled, to terminate the interview, and opened the door. Mrs Bradley collected Laura and informed her of the fate in store.
Chapter Eight
KINDLEFORD SCHOOL
‘And the treason, too long pent,
To his ears was evident.
The young deities discuss’d
Laws of form and metre just,
Orb, quintessence, and sunbeams,
What subsisteth and what seems.’
ralph waldo emerson – Uriel
« ^ »
The first person Laura noticed as she entered the school playground was Mark. She had not bargained for this. She would have to teach Mark; she might have to rebuke or even punish him; she would have to forget their previous alliance and the easy and confidential fabric of which it had been built, and, above all, she would have to forget (and, what was much more difficult, see to it that Mark forgot, too) that she and he had been together when she found Miss Faintley’s body.
Slightly to her resentment, it appeared that Miss Golightly had foreseen these complications and was prepared to deal with them in what Laura deemed to be her characteristic fashion.
Laura had acknowledged Mark’s salute and shy grin with a nod, and had gone straight to the head teacher’s room to report that she had arrived and was prepared to begin her duties. Miss Golightly greeted her charmingly, produced the school time-table, explained Laura’s part in it shortly and comprehensibly, showed her a list of school duties which included keeping a milk and dinner list, officiating in the playground during break, taking her turn at dinner duty, supervision of the cloakrooms, the banning of chewing-gum and strip-cartoon papers (for all), facial adornment (for the girls), lethal weapons (for the boys), fountain-pens (for both sexes), and likewise personal bottles of ink. There was also the more debatable matter of gymnastics on the cloakroom bars and pegs, and the shoo-ing off of all children from the school premises when school was over except for such as claimed to be (a) going to the lavatory because they were being put in detention; (b) required for choir practice, dramatic club, games practice or any other recognized out-of-school activity; or (c) waiting (a nuisance this, but unavoidable, it appeared) for the bus to take them to the outlying villages from which they were separated each school day.
‘Fun and games, in fact,’ commented Laura cheerfully. ‘All right, Miss Golightly. Fair enough. What a ghastly life kids lead, when one comes to think of it! Harried, chivvied, overruled and put upon! I’m glad I’m as old as I am. How do you feel about it?’
Miss Golightly smiled sourly, but Laura, accustomed to Mrs Bradley’s leering, intimidating grins, was not impressed. Miss Golightly sensed this, and her smile altered and became amiable.
‘I entirely agree with you, Miss Menzies,’ she replied.
‘Grand! Now, touching a matter of some slight embarrassment to himself and me —’
‘I shall see Street,’ said the headmistress. ‘You need anticipate no difficulty there. You get his form once a week only. Out of school there will naturally be no contact.’
‘Unless the police case calls for it,’ said Laura. ‘That seems to sum things up,’ she added brightly. ‘And now, what about the botany syllabus?’
Miss Golightly opened a drawer and handed over a typescript. Laura glanced at it.
‘Can do,’ she said. ‘How do you like it taught? – “How doth the little busy bee?” – or a list of natural orders, with appropriate information attached, all done out nice and proper in our little notebooks?’
‘You’ll soon see!’ snapped Miss Golightly, and, with this intensely human reaction, she gained a place in Laura’s affections which she was destined not to lose. ‘And it’s ten minutes to nine,’ she added. ‘Time you were in your little classroom! At break I will introduce you to the rest of the staff.’
She conducted Laura to a room on the ground floor of the school, introduced her briefly to a mixed class of twelve-year-old children and left her. Laura was equal to the situation.
‘All right,’ she said. ‘Who’s the form captain?’
Two children, a boy and a girl, stood up amid comments from the rest of the class.
‘Right,’ said Laura. ‘After break I shall want to know who are the window monitors, the milk monitors, the dinner monitors, the door monitor, the cupboard monitors, the general scavengers, the fort-holder, the flower monitor, the blackboard monitor, the hymn-book monitor, the teacher’s yes-man, the teacher’s pest, the liaison monitor, and the person who wrote the words on the outside window-ledge of this classroom.’
A girl put up her hand. Laura looked at her sourly.
‘Please, miss,’ said the girl, ‘what’s a fort-holder?’
‘Ah, that,’ said Laura. ‘I’m glad you asked me that. I gather that you are teacher’s yes-man, so that’s one problem solved. A fort-holder, as you ought to know, and probably do know, at your age, is the stooge who stands at the classroom door when teacher has gone out of the room, remains on guard during the consequent chaos, and sings out at the appropriate moment, “Shut up, you twerps! She’s coming!” And upon the strength of my personality,’ Laura concluded, ‘depends whether the twerps shut up or whether they don’t… a point which will soon be established. And now you can all get down to the hall for morning assembly, and heaven help the one who is out of line by the time that I get down there.’
The allocation of text-books, stationery, pens, ink, blotting-paper, rulers, compasses, protractors, set-squares, and copies of the form time-table occupied the time pleasantly and noisily until break. Laura saw the class out and went in search of the staff-room. She was almost run into at one end of the corridor by a stout, florid, middle-aged man in a suit of shiny-seated navy-blue, who said:
‘Hah! The new recruit, eh? My name’s Tomalin. English master and so forth. Let me guide you towards the coffee and biscuits.’
‘My name is Menzies,’ Laura responded. ‘Thank you very much. But I thought,’ she added, as they walked along the corridor towards the staircase which led to the staff-room, ‘that somebody called Cardillon took English.’
‘Oh, well, actually, yes, of course, she does. That’s to say, we run a G.G.E. course here and so have to take on these young lady B.A.s. Unfortunately, in my opinion. They may have been to a university, and all that, but when it comes to a spot of honest spade-work, there’s nobody like the good old choked-in-the-chalk-dust practitioner to ram it home good and solid. Up here, and look out for boys rushing round corners and jumping down eight stairs at a time. They’re not supposed to, but they will do it. Miss Golightly’s too soft. Now, if I were a headmaster… as I should have been, years before this, if kissing didn’t go by favour, which, in this blasted job, it does, and always will do… well, here we are.’
He gave the partly-open door a push with his foot, and Laura found herself in a biggish, square room with a fireplace, a gas-oven, a large table and three small ones, a Dutch wardrobe, two bookcases, several armchairs and even more small chairs, a chaise-longue, a large waste-paper basket, a nest of lockers, and a photograph of the Roman Colosseum. Enamel trays covered most of the surface of the large table and, when Laura entered, the coffee was being poured out by two schoolgirls whilst a third carried round the filled cups.