‘Well, what are you doing here?’ demanded Deborah. ‘I made him bring me back. What are you doing?’
‘Oh — just clearing up,’ said Mrs Bradley, vaguely, waving a skinny claw. ‘What have you done with the young man?’
‘He’s in the lane with the car.’
‘If Jonathan’s there, go and get him. I may be able to give him a job, and you, too. Fancy coming back, after all the trouble I had to smuggle him off the premises that Wednesday morning without the students’ knowing.’
‘Poor lambs! It would have given them the thrill of their lives!’ said Deborah, with the wicked, unamused glint which Mrs Bradley was interested to think of in connexion with her nephew Jonathan, whose conception of life from childhood, so far as she had ever been able to determine, was that he should have his own way in everything. She began to hum.
‘I don’t like you when you sing,’ said Deborah, who recognized the tune as that of a light-hearted sea-shanty called ‘The Drummer and the Cook’, ‘and I shall be obliged if you won’t refer to Jonathan as the young man.’
‘Well, go and get him, anyway,’ said her aunt-in-law to be, with a propitiatory smile which gave the unfortunate impression of being a lewd and evil grin. Deborah hesitated, then said:
‘Please tell me why you’re staying up. If you’re still hunting murderers we’re going to stay and help you. I’ve absolutely made up my mind, and Jonathan agrees, so you needn’t argue about it.’
‘Now, don’t be naughty,’ said Mrs Bradley, placidly. ‘Go and fetch Jonathan, and tell him I want him to carry a bag of bones across to College.’
‘Not — not —?’
‘No, not Miss Murchan’s bones. Quite accountable bones, in fact.’
‘What’s the argument?’ inquired Jonathan, who had left the car in the lane and had come up to the building to find out what was keeping Deborah so long. ‘I say, Aunt Adela, we’ve come to be your bodyguard. Deb’s going to stand outside the bathroom door listening to somebody lifting up your feet and submerging you, and I’m going to stand outside on the gravel with a hatchet, waiting to bean the murderer when she crawls out over the sill.’
‘So I understand,’ replied his aunt graciously. ‘Meanwhile, I want you to come over to Athelstan and help me with a skeleton. Comparisons are odious, but two sets of bones have to be compared, and I want witnesses to prove that I don’t change over the skeletons when I’ve compared them.’
She took the two over to Athelstan, and, to her observant nephew’s interest, stood for a second at the top of the basement steps before she descended. Deborah began to ascend to the first floor to get a book she wanted from her sitting-room.
‘Come back, Deborah,’ said Mrs Bradley. For a moment Jonathan thought that Deborah was going to disobey, and he leapt up to catch her, but she turned and they met face to face on the stairs.
‘All right,’ she said. ‘I’m well trained.’ She followed him down, and Mrs Bradley nodded.
‘I don’t want anybody to walk about alone in this house,’ she said quietly, when the two had rejoined her. ‘It isn’t too safe.’
‘Miss Cornflake?’ asked Deborah.
‘What do you know about Miss Cornflake?’ retorted Mrs Bradley. She led the way down the basement steps, listened again at the bottom, and then pushed open the door which led into the box-room. ‘There!’ she said to Jonathan. ‘That badly-battered trunk, if you don’t mind. The bones are in my sitting-room cupboard.’
‘I see.’ Another thought came to him. ‘By the way, you don’t expect to find poor old Miss Thingummy locked up in the Science Room, do you? Because, if so…’ He gave an eloquent glance in the direction of Deborah, who was looking out of the window.
‘Don’t be oafish, dear child,’ retorted his aunt. ‘Deborah is quite as capable of seeing a skeleton as you are.’
‘A skeleton, yes, granted. But…’
Deborah turned round.
‘You don’t really suppose the College Science Room could have housed a corpse all this term without somebody complaining, do you?’ she demanded coldly. ‘Our students are not all idiots.’
‘Oh, granted. I see. Then, in that case, may I ask…?’
‘No, you may not,’ said his aunt.
‘I beg pardon. Lead on, Patrick Mahon.’ Mrs Bradley cackled, and no more was said until they had left Athelstan with ‘the luggage,’ as Jonathan termed it, and had mounted to the second floor of the College building.
‘Now,’ said Mrs Bradley, producing the Principal’s key, and unlocking a cupboard.
The skeleton was in a long box, coffin-like, and yet with the indefinable austerity of hospitals rather than that of morgues. The three of them gazed upon it in silence. Jonathan, characteristically, broke this silence.
‘Indubitably male,’ he said. ‘Pass, skeleton. All’s well.’
‘Hm!’ said Mrs Bradley.
‘Are you disappointed?’ asked Deborah.
‘No. One and one make two,’ replied Mrs Bradley, ‘not to speak of two and one making three.’
‘Once aboard the lugger, and the girl is mine,’ said her nephew, whose quotations were apt to follow the line dictated by his immediate preoccupations.
‘The trouble will be to find some reasonable excuse for obtaining eye-witness’s information about the girl in question,’ said Mrs Bradley. ’There is no doubt now where she is.’
‘Where, then?’ asked Deborah, startled.
‘Cast your mind back to our first-night rag,’ Mrs Bradley replied. ‘I suppose they have a new lecturer in Science, or perhaps in Physical Training, at Wattsdown College. At any rate, I think that rag is now seen in its true perspective.’
‘But — ’ said Jonathan. His aunt silenced him by cackling and shaking her head. Then she locked away the College skeleton, picked up the Athelstan bones and led the way out. Her nephew relieved her of her burden, and the three of them went back to Athelstan.
‘Please tell me what you’re going to do during the holidays,’ said Deborah, before they parted.
‘I shall carry out my original plan of visiting Miss Murchan’s former school,’ said Mrs Bradley. She watched the car as far as the first bend, and then put through a long-distance call to the school at Cuddy Bay. It was the dress rehearsal of the Christmas play, she was informed. She arranged to go on the Monday, and ordered the car for one-fifteen.
Chapter 12
IN AND OUT THE WINDOWS
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The Cuddy Bay Secondary School for Girls was a second-grade establishment compared with the High School of the same resort. The latter had a splendid position on the cliff-top, with views of sea and moorland; the former was back in the town.
Mrs Bradley was directed wrongly at first, but one glance at the notice-board beside the front entrance decided her that this was not the place she sought, and she then found the Secondary School without difficulty.
It was half-past two, and a practice game of hockey was being carried on in the school field, and was being coached by a short, broad young woman in a gymnasium tunic and heavy sweater, the latter bearing an impressive badge. Mrs Bradley watched the game for a few seconds, and then rang the front-door bell of the school.
‘I have an appointment with Miss Paldred at half-past two,’ she said to the prefect who answered the door. ‘My name is Bradley.’
‘Oh, good afternoon, Mrs Bradley. Will you come this way, please? Miss Paldred is expecting you. I’ll tell her you are here.’
The headmistress’s room was simply but very beautifully furnished. The headmistress herself was of medium height, freckle-faced, grey-eyed and very charming.
‘This nasty business,’ she said, when they had shaken hands. ‘Have you found out any more about poor Miss Murchan?’
This propitious beginning to the conversation made Mrs Bradley’s carefully-prepared opening gambits unnecessary. She agreed that it was a nasty business, and said that she had come to ask a good many nasty questions… ‘even more than last time,’ she concluded.