‘I know,’ said Laura sympathetically. ‘But life’s like that. You do a thing three hundred and ninety-nine times, and get away with it, and then, the four-hundredth time, you’re in the mud up to the neck. It was always like that at school with me, and there never seemed any real reason. Come on. Let’s get back. I want my elevenses. Besides, I can see a fair-weather crowd getting in, and I do hate sharing a raft with dozens of belly-flopping divers.’
The police interview, which was conducted by a quiet man in plain clothes, was not in the least distressing. Mark explained how he had been invited out by Miss Faintley and that he and his father had agreed (after some resistance on Mark’s part) that the invitation must be accepted. Asked whether he had been surprised when he received the invitation, Mark replied that he had, and he had not, and clarified this by adding:
‘I shouldn’t have thought a lady teacher would want to take boys out in the hols., although some decent masters take you to France and Switzerland and Iceland and all that, but I wasn’t much good at Miss Faintley’s subject and fooled about a bit in form, so I should think she’d rather go out by herself when she had the chance. All the same, she was sort of educational – always improving our minds and being cultural and a lot of rot – so perhaps, as we were fairly near Torbury, and it’s got a cathedral and some old city walls and a museum, she might have thought it a good thing to take me, although really I should have thought she’d rather have done some kind of a ramble and picked things for botany. That’s supposed to be her subject.’
‘In other words, you don’t really know why you were invited out, and you didn’t want to go.’
‘Fair enough,’ muttered Mark, shuffling a little and giving his father a half-glance.
‘It’s all right, son. I’m as sick as you are that I made you go,’ said Mr Street. ‘Will that be all, Inspector?’
‘I’d just like a detailed description from Mark of how Miss Faintley was dressed, sir. He may have noticed some detail which I didn’t get from the hotel porter who saw them go out.’
‘Grey skirt, light-green blouse, dark-green cardigan, green-blue tweed jacket, no hat, dark-brown suede shoes, thick sort of stockings, gold wrist-watch on a thick gold bracelet thing… oh, and she’d put a ski-ing club badge in her lapel, two crossed skis and a circle of laurel leaves, but I don’t think she was really entitled to wear it.’
‘Why not?’ asked the inspector. ‘You’ve given me a first-rate description, and this bit about the badge and the wrist-watch may be extremely helpful. But why don’t you think she was entitled to this ski-ing badge?’
‘Well, Jenkins, who’s rather gifted at getting the teachers to talk about their holidays when we’re all getting browned-off in form, once asked Miss Faintley if she’d ever been in Switzerland, and Miss Faintley said she had never been nearer Switzerland than England.’
‘She might have been in Norway,’ the inspector pointed out. ‘Now, one last question: has Miss Faintley any distinguishing mark? You see, she might lose her watch or this badge…’
‘Or even her wig!’ said Mark, by now at ease and beginning to giggle.
‘… but a scar or a mole or a birthmark isn’t so easy to lose,’ the inspector gravely concluded. Mark sobered down.
‘She hadn’t got a scar, exactly,’ he observed, ‘but she had a little bald patch at the left side of her head about an inch and a half square. It was rather noticeable. She told us once that it was done in an air-raid when she was on an ack-ack site in the blitz. It got burnt, and the hair would never grow there again. So we didn’t rot her about it, although Smalley told us afterwards that he betted Miss Faintley got it trying to rush into an air-raid shelter quicker than anyone else, and bumped her head.’
‘What little toads boys are,’ said the inspector, indulgently. ‘Well, thank you, son. No doubt Miss Faintley will turn up like a shining penny before the morning. We’re not really worried about her.’ He winked at Mr Street. ‘And if she had been a gentleman we shouldn’t worry at all.’
Mark did not see why they should worry about ladies. There was to him, at his age, one definitely redundant sex.
‘I’m sorry we lost each other,’ he blurted out, ‘but honestly, she wasn’t in the bookshop where she’d said she’d be.’
‘All right, sonny. We’ve got her home address. That’s in the hotel register. So we can soon get to work on her relations to find out whether she went back home or not.’
‘That is if anybody’s there,’ said Mark’s father. ‘So many of these single middle-aged women seem to live alone. But possibly she was in digs.’
‘We’ll soon know,’ said the inspector. ‘Meanwhile, don’t you worry, sir. It wasn’t the lad’s fault, and I expect she’ll turn up all right, although it was only correct of the manager here to let us know.’
Chapter Three
LAURA
‘Teach me to hear mermaids singing,
Or to keep off envy’s stinging.
And find
What wind
Serves to advance an honest mind.’
john donne – Song
« ^ »
Breakfast had been over for two hours and a half, and while the police officer had been questioning young Mark Street, Laura, and the sharp-eyed, yellow-skinned elderly lady with whom she had sat at table, had been for an exploratory walk along the cliffs and into the coves west of the bay where the two young people had bathed.
‘Mrs Bradley, I could do with my elevenses,’ observed Laura, when she and her employer came back to the eyrie of Cromlech village. ‘What about coffee and buns?’
‘Coffee for two, buns for one, and your valuable observations on the case of Street versus Faintley,’ said Mrs Bradley with a grim cackle.
‘That kid’s worried,’ said Laura. ‘I told him I’d go to Torbury myself and have a look round, but it didn’t really seem to ease his mind. I suppose that schoolmistress Faintley went off on a toot of some kind, but, if she did, it was hardly fair to take Mark along, do you think, to cover her questionable activities? Why will people try to remain respectable?’’
‘That question requires analysis, and, in any case, you mean respected, not respectable. Anyway, I have been talking to the boy’s father. He declares that Miss Faintley was the last kind of person to do anything rash or to prove herself unreliable. He pictures her as an essentially serious-minded woman, not popular with the boys, but extremely anxious to do her best for them, and, of course, for the girls, too.’
‘Parents often get weird ideas, though,’ said Laura, unimpressed. ‘I remember, when I was at school, we had a mistress whom everybody thought mousy and inoffensive in the extreme. There was an awful stink when it turned out that she had lifted all the school pots and shields and tried to pawn them. The pawnbroker brought them all back in a little handcart. She was found to be daffy, of course, but that only proves my point… that the parents and friends don’t know everything. Shall you accompany me to Torbury?’
‘No, child. The police will do everything in Torbury that is necessary. I shall take my knitting and sit on the cliff-top and enjoy the air.’
‘Not your knitting,’ said Laura. So Mrs Bradley went out for a walk, accompanied by a packet of chocolate, an ash-plant, and a Sealyham she did not know, but which elected to escort her on her way.