‘A bright lad,’ said Laura.
‘Yes, one with a future in the writing of horror films,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘Let us follow still further the workings of the Herodian mind of this Master Alan Prouding.’
‘I wonder who Empty is?’ said Laura.
‘In due course we may be able to find out. I deduce that he has a classmate whose initials are M and TV.
‘As simple as that?’
‘The minds of villains are often much simpler than we think. They learn as soon as they can walk that the shortest distance between two points lies along a straight line.’ The essay they were reading went on:
‘If its wet in the hols I shall write some annimos letters these are good fun and stir people up no end because everybody has got a skeleton of some sort in their cubbard which they would not like anybody else to know about and people who are always bumming about seeing the school murderer are just asking for it.’
‘Empty? M and T,’ said Laura. ‘Two boys, not one. Maycock and Travis, don’t you think? And this young beauty did write them an anonymous letter purporting (if my instinct for spotting youthful depravity has not deserted me) to come from the murderers of Mr Pythias. It looks as though Prouding waited until the two boys were going off to their camp before he posted or otherwise delivered the letter. I think Maycock and Travis have taken fright at the anonymous letter and scarpered, don’t you?’
‘Yes, I do. I think we must ask the headmaster to allow us to have a word with Master Prouding. He appears to be a practical joker of some magnitude,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘It looks as though this essay may disperse any fears that the two boys have been kidnapped or murdered. All the police have to do now is to find out where they have gone. If they have run away, where would boys of that age be most likely to make for?’
‘Oh, the docks at Southampton. I expect they would prefer to make it an airport and smuggle themselves on to a plane, but they would be old enough to realise that to get on board a ship would be much easier.’
‘Is there a painting to accompany Master Prouding’s essay?’
‘Yes,’ said Laura, turning it up, ‘but it’s only a skeleton with a balloon coming out of its mouth saying, “Dead men do tell tales”. Rather a disappointment after Prouding’s fascinating book of words.’
‘Well, we had better look at the work of Maycock and Travis before we go to the headmaster. I expect little help from their essays, for words are often but the wrapping papers of truth. Art is a window to the soul.’
‘Through a glass darkly,’ said Laura.
Travis’s written account was dull and made no mention of the proposed camp. His painting, boldly executed, depicted a Red Indian settlement of teepees and totem poles. In the foreground were Red Indian braves flourishing their tomahawks in a war dance. They wore brilliantly coloured feathered head-dresses which reached almost to their heels and fringed shirts which somewhat ineffectively disguised the fact that the artist knew little of the technique of sketching the human body. He had also attempted to portray a chief on horseback, but with very little success. The caption appeared to be of no significance. It read, ‘Waiting for Paleface woman with papoose at Blackstone Creek’.
Maycock’s work was of no more assistance. His essay had almost ignored the set subject and concerned itself only with Maycock’s theory about the best use to be made of the atom bomb.
‘This leethal weppon,’ wrote Maycock, ‘could be used for a good cause which is to break up the polar ice at North and South Poles and get furtile land so all the Third World and anybody else who is starving can grow their rice and have something to eat it only needs waterlogged ground and you would have plenty of that at the Poles if you melted the ice and got the salt out. I shall spend most of my holiday working out this idea which nobody else seems to have thought of and might win the Nobel Prize. Of course you would have to rescue all the polar bears and seals and pengwins and things before you let off the bomb and then wait for the fumes to die down and this might take some time.’
His painting was of the blessing which was to be wrought for the benefit of the Third World. A violent explosion lit up a helicopter from whose safety-line an animal dimly recognisable as a polar bear was dangling. The caption on the reverse side of the half-sheet of drawing paper read, ‘I do not have time to paint more animals in the picture but the polar bears and seals and pengwins and things would be rescued before the bomb was let off that is only commonsense’.
‘Thank goodness for one humanitarian,’ said Laura. ‘It’s a change from young Mohawk Prouding, anyway.’
‘A young gentleman with whom, if Mr Ronsonby will permit it, we must now talk. It looks as though Travis, if not Maycock, had intended to camp on the moor and had told his classmates so.’
Laura had formed two mental pictures of young Prouding. One was of a cunning, furtive child with eyes which never met those of a questioner; the other of a cherubic, baby-faced youngster, the prototype of a fallen angel. Master Prouding resembled neither of these visions. He was a slant-eyed faun with the lascivious lips of the Sphinx in the Acropolis museum. His mouth, when he entered the headmaster’s office, wore a propitiatory half-smile, as of one who anticipates trouble and is anxious to avoid it.
‘Please, sir, you wanted me, sir?’ he said.
‘In point of fact, I can do without you very nicely,’ said Mr Ronsonby. ‘You seem to be a very silly little boy. These ladies would like to put a few questions to you concerning the non-appearance of Travis and Maycock this term.’
‘I don’t know anything about that, sir.’
Dame Beatrice produced a sheet of paper.
‘This document appears to bear your signature,’ she said.
‘Oh, please, sir!’ said Prouding, appealing to his headmaster. ‘It was only a lot of rot, sir. I never meant a word of it.’
‘Address yourself to Dame Beatrice, boy.’
‘Yes, sir. Please, madam, I don’t live with my aunt and I never have to take babies out in prams and truly I have never drowned one or buried people alive or anything.’
‘Oh, as to that, Mr Prouding, we are in sympathy with most of the views you have expressed in your essay. What we should like you to explain is the passage which reads, “I shall write some anonymous letters. People who are always bumming about seeing the school murderer are asking for it.” Please tell us what you meant by “asking for it”.’
‘I didn’t mean anything.’
‘Well, retreat into your shell if you think it best,’ said Dame Beatrice, ‘but to confide in us may save a great amount of time and trouble later on.’
‘We got a bit sick of being told they’d seen the murderers when we knew jolly well they hadn’t. If they had, the murderers would have murdered them before this. Murderers always murder people they think might recognise them.’