Laurels Are Poison

Chapter 15

RAG

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‘I say,’ said Laura with surprising diffidence, ‘sorry I chipped in and all that, you know, but the fact is, I was expecting her.’

‘Whom do you mean? Not Miss Cornflake?’ asked Deborah, accepting the apology in the spirit in which it was rendered.

‘Yes. I saw a strange car and deduced things. I knew you’d sling me out if I kept on long enough, and it seemed the best way to manage. I didn’t want a lot of sympathetic goats offering to accompany me if I’d said I felt ill or anything, and one puts away childish things like asking to go to the what’s it when one leaves school. So I thought I’d better rag. No evil intentions.’

‘All right,’ said Deborah.

‘Many thanks. And now, Polly, to your affairs, for matters must not be left as they are. How safe are you as a confidante, I wonder?’

‘About Miss Cornflake?’ asked Deborah, who realized that it was her status and sense of responsibility and not her ability to keep a secret which Laura was questioning.

‘Well, that’s the trouble. If I said yes to that, you’d be absolved officially from having to blow the gaff, I suppose, wouldn’t you?’ said Laura. ‘Oh, heck, it makes my head ache, trying to think. On the other hand, I don’t like lying unless it’s absolutely necessary, and it might not concern Cornflake at all. Have the police checked up on her yet?’

‘Oh, yes. She’s the Miss Paynter-Tree of the Secondary School,’ said Deborah, who had been told this by Mrs Bradley.

‘Has she come clean?’

‘She hasn’t confessed anything, and she insists that she was carrying the revolver in self-defence, a thin story which nobody believes. Still, she’s wriggling pretty hard, and she hadn’t actually attacked anybody when you tackled her, you see, so she claims she’s being wrongfully detained. Still, she’d have to be kept in the Infirmary for a time, in any case, as Mrs Bradley told her.’

‘I say, they won’t let her go?’ demanded Laura, sitting up in bed with a jerk which caused her to wince.

‘Not a chance. Don’t worry. Mrs Bradley is perfectly safe,’ Deborah replied. ‘We are all much obliged to you,’ she added, assisting the patient to lie down again.

‘We spent part of the afternoon with her, you know,’ said Laura. ‘With Mrs Bradley, I mean. And I had the feeling we were being watched all the time. Kitty and I kept our eyes skinned, but couldn’t spot anyone, but then, that isn’t surprising. And I never believed that yarn about Cornflake having the measles. We found the quarry where she did some of the fell work. I wish we could prove it on her, and have done with it. And that brings me full circle, by the way. Made up your mind yet?’

‘What about?’ inquired Deborah, who had forgotten the opening of the conversation.

‘Whether I’m to trust you to keep your mouth shut,’ said Laura bluntly.

‘Oh, that! Well, I can’t promise. How can I?’

‘How can you? No, it’s awkward. However, between friends, here goes! Cartwright has received a rummy communication from the lads, and has asked my advice. She went just before you came. They want to swap College skeletons with us. I’d tell Mrs Croc. — Mrs Bradley — only I’m afraid she’d have to go all official. I thought perhaps you needn’t.’

‘What lads?’ asked Deborah. ‘Do you mean the students over at Wattsdown? If so, I should tell Mrs Bradley. That’s my advice. Where is the letter now?’

‘Cartwright’s still got it, I hope. But don’t you see, darling, that if I break these tidings to Mrs Bradley, she’ll immediately jump to the conclusion that old Cartwright was mixed up in the Great Receptacle Rag which took place, if you remember, at the beginning of last term.’

‘Well, but would that matter? If Miss Cartwright was not involved, she’d only have to say so.’

‘Trouble is,’ said Laura, ‘she was in the thick, you see.’

‘Oh? That does seem awkward. Was she in collusion with Miss Cornflake, then?’

‘Oh, no. She merely saw that the going was good, and charged in with her quota of the devilment, that was all. Sorry I can’t spill details.’

‘I don’t believe Mrs Bradley would care twopence about the rag as such,’ said Deborah. ‘After all, it’s all over and done with, as far as that goes, and Mrs Bradley always thought there were two lots of ragging going on. But is Miss Cartwright certain who sent the letter? It couldn’t be a hoax, or — or something unpleasant again, could it?’

‘As a matter of fact, her brother sent it. He’s her twin, and in his second year there, the same as she is here. She swears it came from him.’

‘Writing genuine?’

‘Oh, yes. And what’s more — I went into all this, I might tell you, from this bed of sickness just now, Cartwright having cut a couple of lectures in order to seek me out and obtain my invaluable advice — he addresses her in the letter by a name which no one outside the family, she declares, would ever be likely to get hold of.’

‘Well, really, Dog, my advice still is for you and Miss Cartwright to see Mrs Bradley, put the whole thing to her in confidence, as you have to me, and abide by what she says. I do think we must let her have all the facts we can.’

‘What did you call me?’ asked Laura.

‘Dog. A revenge epithet,’ replied Deborah. ‘And it’s not what I’d like to call you sometimes,’ she added. She rose to go.

‘Must you go?’ inquired Laura. ‘You’re rather soothing, you know, after some of the bull-nosed idiots with great big feet who’ve been bursting in here to condole with me. I wonder how much longer,’ she added, snuggling down, ‘I can fool the general public that I’m ill? It’s not a bad way of spending one’s time, and Mrs Croc.’s invalid diet is to be commended. No messes. All good nourishing food. Well, if you must go — but come again soon, there’s a love.’

‘Well, as a matter of fact, Warden,’ said Miss Cartwright, ‘it’s their annual theatre rag, and my brother complains that the skeleton they’ve got isn’t properly articulated, and they want to borrow ours.’

‘Very sensible,’ said Mrs Bradley, ‘particularly as I believe the skeleton at present in the Science Room cupboard is not College property. Now, Miss Cartwright, I wonder whether you can tell me how often the College skeleton has been used at lectures since you became a student here a year and a half ago?’

‘Once, Warden. First-Year physiology.’

‘Ah. And how often is the skeleton brought out at Wattsdown College, I wonder?’

‘Well, they had a mock funeral last term, when a man was sent down for — was sent down,’ observed Miss Cartwright.

‘Sent down for bribing a cat’s-meat man to call on Professor Mule and say that he’d heard the College had horse flesh for sale. I heard about that,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘Well, Miss Cartwright, I want you to arrange with your brother for this exchange of skeletons to take place. You will not, of course, involve me in any way whatsoever, but I will undertake to see that the exchange is completed without official interference. I have my own reasons for interesting myself in the affair. When did your brother propose to effect the exchange?’

‘He said that would have to depend upon us, Warden,’ replied the completely puzzled Miss Cartwright.

‘Very well, I will let you know later when it will be convenient for you to transport the College specimen to the rendezvous, and where you will find it,’ said Mrs Bradley, making a note. ‘When is the theatre rag to take place?’

‘I don’t know, Warden. Next week, I imagine. Teddie would have to give us time to switch — to obtain possession of the skeleton, and exchange it.’

‘Very well. Assure your brother of Cartaret’s willingness to cooperate. I suppose they have a new lecturer in hygiene this year?’

‘Yes,’ said Miss Cartwright, surprised. ’Warden,‘ she added, ’there’s something I ought to tell you. You know that rag with the j — with the — the — ’

‘The promiscuous vessels. Yes, child.’

‘Well, I was mixed up in that a good bit more than was thought. I had a challenge, sent me during the holidays — typewritten — I don’t know who it was from — daring me to change the skeletons over, and promising that ours would be ready, all boxed up, in the basement, and that certain of the lads would be along to collect it. As they were.’

‘Ah,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘Have a chocolate, child, I never eat them myself. I have known for some time that you were mixed up in the affair.’

Observing that half the top layer was gone, Miss Cartwright assumed, rightly, that the Sub-Warden probably had a better-educated palate than the Warden, and took a chocolate whilst she wondered how to reply. As her brain refused to assist her, she mumbled thanks, and immediately sought out Laura.

‘I say,’ she said, sitting down heavily upon the bed.

‘Oh, gosh, Cartwright! Have a heart,’ said the sufferer reproachfully. ‘Not the whole ton at once!’

‘Sorry,’ said Miss Cartwright. ‘No, but listen, Dog. First, the Warden is wise to our scheme for swopping Twister Marshmallow with their Dirty Dick — or, as I suppose you’d have to say, vice-versa —’

‘Granted. I told her,’ said Laura.

‘But, dash it, Dog…’

‘Cease foaming. What’s that in your mouth?’

‘Chocolate. She gave me one to terminate the interview.’

‘And you selected the only hard one left, I bet. All right. Well, that doesn’t sound as though she bit you in the neck exactly.’

‘Well, that’s the odd part. She didn’t. She’s all in favour of the scheme, and is offering to help us do the swopping when the lads turn up with Twister.’

‘All to the good. Did you accept the offer?’

‘Look here, Dog, quit stalling. There’s something behind all this. Either Mrs Croc. is off her onion, which wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest, or else there’s something fishy going on, and I want to know where I stand.’

‘You don’t stand. You’re sitting pretty,’ replied Laura. ‘Have faith, old goggle-eyes. Trust your Auntie Laura, who’s never let her pals down yet, and you can’t go wrong. What did she tell you to tell your frère?’

‘Well, just that — just to carry on, and we’d do our part. Honestly, I can’t make head or tail of the woman. And what on earth made you tell her anything about it?’

‘Well, I put it up to the Deb. first. She said tell the Warden, so in an interview specially sought, I told her all.’

‘I suppose she knows you saved her life,’ said Miss Cartwright gloomily, ‘and thinks you’re allowed some fun on the strength of it. But you might think of me! I can’t afford to have my name sent up to Miss du Mugne again this term. I’m still only hanging on by my eyebrows, you know. And, like a fool, I’ve gone and confessed that I worked that All Hallows festival at the beginning of last term, and helped in the original swop-over of the skeletons.’

‘Fear nothing,’ said Laura, ‘and do exactly as the Warden tells you. I had to blow the gaff, dearie, for a reason which you’d be the first to appreciate if you knew it’

‘But what is her game, Dog?’

‘Murder,’ responded Laura. ‘I might tell you that you pulled more of a bone than you know when you swopped those skeletons last time.’

‘I must say that I am sorry to part with Dirty Dick,’ said Mrs Bradley, leering regretfully upon the cadaver before packing straw on top of him as he lay in his coffin-like box. ‘Now the rest I shall leave to you, Miss Menzies, and to your myrmidons. At what hour do you expect the young men?’

‘At eleven, Warden. They said they’d have to wait until after Lights.’

‘Well, you have your Lates, so you should be all right as long as they turn up to time. If they do not, you may give three sharp taps on my sitting-room window, and I’ll let you in by the front door. The box is heavy. Can you manage to get it as far as the sports pavilion? I’ve squared Miss Pettinsalt and the groundsman. It is supposed, as far as he is concerned, to be a case of croquet mallets which my son is going to call for and remove some time this week, and he has Miss Pettinsalt’s permission to leave the shed unlocked. There’s nothing in it except some tennis nets, anyway.’

The students, six of them acting as pall-bearers, carried the box away and down the stairs. The hour was seven-thirty, that magic period at Cartaret when everybody was at dinner and disturbance and interruption were less likely than at almost any other hour of the twenty-four. This was fortunate, since the games pavilion was in full view of the front windows of all the Halls and also could be seen from the College building.

The bearers put down their burden gratefully. They consisted of Laura, Kitty, Alice and Miss Cartwright and also the twin sisters Carroway, who were staunch and trustworthy and had received with a meek look of astonishment the Warden’s pronouncement that they were to hear, see and remember nothing of what passed between the hours of seven and midnight. They did not even ask, as Miss Cartwright had done, what the Warden’s game was. Beyond a vague and hopeful expectation of a moderate amount of entertainment, they seemed to require nothing from this odd business of carrying the College skeleton about the College grounds and presenting it, in due course, to another College.

‘There we are, then,’ said Laura, rubbing her forearms and wrists and looking down at the long box. ‘I told the Warden I thought we ought to mount guard, but she says it’ll be safe enough where it is. Oh, and she’s given me an electric torch, but we’re not to use it unnecessarily. Anybody got another?’

No one had, but Annet Carroway thought she knew where she could borrow one.

‘Better not,’ said Laura. ‘Secrecy is of the essence. We shall have to manage with the one.’

The conspirators separated when they reached the Athelstan dining-hall, and filled in the odd places which were left. Nobody questioned them, since neither Deborah nor Mrs Bradley was dining in Hall that evening, and therefore the fact that they were a few minutes late for the meal was of no account.

After dinner they pursued various occupations. The Carroway twins and Alice Boorman worked, Kitty sketched out a few new hairdressing styles she had thought of and wanted to try at some time, Laura wrote an article for the College magazine entitled ‘The Vote Against Women’, and Miss Cartwright wrote a letter to her young man in Canada.

At half-past ten, after a supper of bread and butter, biscuits and cocoa, it was the custom for students to be in their own rooms with the lights out. This custom was interpreted firmly by Deborah as a rule, and she went the rounds at twenty minutes to eleven each night with persistence and a sharp reminder to lawbreakers. She smiled at the six pall-bearers, however, as, fully clothed and carrying their outdoor shoes in their hands, they slipped past her down the front staircase.

‘All correct?’ whispered Laura, when they had changed their shoes and were upon the doormat. She received a giggling reply from the twins, a solemn one from Alice, who was looking rather pale, a grunt from Miss Cartwright and an earnest ‘O.K., Dog,’ from Kitty.

‘Out lights, then,’ whispered Laura. Miss Cartwright switched them off, and the students stood a moment outside the Athelstan front door to accustom their eyes to the darkness before they set out across the grounds. The night was intensely dark. There was no moon and the stars were hidden by low, black clouds.

‘Cheery sort of evening,’ muttered Laura, feeling her way cautiously down the steps. ‘For heaven’s sake, come carefully. Don’t break your necks.’

She led the way to the left for a few yards along the main drive which ran in front of all the Halls, and then shone the torch on to the steps leading down beside the rockery to the lawns and tennis courts. She switched it off as soon as the others had negotiated the steps, and they followed a path which led towards the College building. As soon as they reached the angle of the wall, which looked strange, a darker darkness against the black night, they turned off the path on to the games field, and, after stumbling on the edge of the bank, came to the pavilion.

Here it was safe to switch on the torch, for the bulk of the pavilion would hide the light from anybody who might happen to be looking out of any of the Hall windows.

‘Forward, the body-snatchers!’ observed Laura. ‘When it’s up and steady I’ll shove the torch in my pocket and take the front right. Ready?’

It had not been easy to make their way to the pavilion in the darkness with no responsibility but the elementary one of remaining on their feet, but the walk, bearing the skeleton in its box over grass, stumbling into borders, on to unsuspected gravel paths which seemed to have lost their bearings in the blackness and to be meandering over parts of the grounds where no path had existed previously, was a nightmare journey relieved from horror by the fact that its object was, to everybody except Laura, who thought she could guess the origin of the bones which they were to receive in exchange for Dirty Dick, sharply humorous.

After what seemed at least three-quarters of a mile of anguished walking, they stumbled on to the main drive in its south-eastern slant to the lane which bordered the College grounds on the south. There were four gates in the wall which formed the actual boundary of the College demesne, and the arrangement to meet the men at the main entrance had been the subject of much argument before it was agreed upon.

‘Suppose the Prin. happens to be out a bit late, and spots us?’ suggested Miss Cartwright.

‘She’d much better spot us at the main entrance than by the gate from the footpath,’ Laura reasoned. ‘Besides, the men will have a car, and they won’t want to carry the thing along the road, and neither do we. The main gates are never locked. They can bring the car to the bend and drive out with nothing showing.’

A cautious caterwauling — the signal agreed upon — directed the girls to where the young men were waiting.

‘Is that you, Teddie?’ asked his sister.

‘In person,’ replied Mr Cartwright. ‘What a row you made carting the thing! Here, Jeffries, lend a hand.’

The skeleton changed hands, and Dirty Dick was propped up against the seat beside that of the driver.

‘Where’s Twister?’ inquired Miss Cartwright.

‘Behind the bushes. Got a torch? Here you are.’ He switched on his torch and disclosed a box similar to that which had just been placed in the car. ‘Help you up with him, shall we?’

The two young men lifted the box and the girls formed up and took it from them.

‘When’s the rag?’ asked Laura.

‘Saturday week, but we wanted a rehearsal of some of the effects, so thought we’d have Dirty as soon as possible. Thanks for looking after him so nicely. Toodle-pip.’

‘Bye-bye,’ said Miss Cartwright. ‘Oh, Lord, my shoulder’s cracking in two. Nighty-night, ducks,’ she added to her brother.

‘Don’t miss your step,’ said he. As the six students began the long and awkward journey back to the sports pavilion they heard the car drive off.

‘Can’t see that it was much of a rag to change them in the first place, really,’ said Miss Cartwright, after a pause, ‘although I lent the affair some slight assistance. But what does puzzle me is how the lads got into that Science Room cupboard. The door’s always locked, and yet they got Twister out and put Dick in.’

The twins, stoutly bearing the hinder end of the box, merely giggled, as usual. Kitty grunted. Only Laura was silent. But then only Laura was suspicious of the bona fides of Twister Marshmallow. She feared that that hero lay elsewhere, and that the occupant of his box was ‘no less a Yorick’, in her own phrase, than poor Miss Murchan.

‘Gentlemen on my right,’ said the president of the Students’ Common Room at Wattsdown, ‘will act as Guard of Honour to the skeleton, who will be referred to during this meeting, by his full and correct title of Richard Cœur de Lion, and not by his more usual sobriquet of Dirty Dick. Agreed, gentlemen?’

There was a chorus of approval.

‘Messires Abbot, Paldock, Rees and F. J. Smith will be responsible for nobbling, disconcerting and generally putting out of action any Robert or Roberts on horseback,’ pursued the chairman, ‘and Mr D. R. Smith will look out for yokels throwing stones. Step out here, gentlemen, please.’

Five rubicund and large-limbed youths, forwards in the College Rugby fifteen and one of them also the College heavyweight boxer, stepped out and bowed to the Chair.

‘And, lastly, gentlemen, two words of warning. If arrested, do not resist. That’s the first and greatest commandment. We don’t want anyone to land up in the jug. Secondly, nothing whatsoever is to be thrown on to the stage. After all, those poor blighters of actors have got their living to earn, the same as we have, and…’ On this note of chivalry the meeting ended.

Cartaret students were not invited to the theatre rag by mutual arrangement between the Principals of the two colleges, for it was thought better that the disorderly proceedings should not be complicated by the presence of girls. The men themselves subscribed so heartily to this view that it was a law of the Wattsdown Common Room that no attempt was ever to be made by the members to ‘smuggle, inveigle, entice, invite or deploy’ the members of Cartaret into the theatre on Rag Night.

In spite of this, however, Cartaret students had been known to attend. There was no embargo, authoritative or brotherly, on their turning up for the Meet, which was held half a mile from Wattsdown at the bus stop. There was no reason, either, if they could get on the public bus — the men hired private buses to take their large party to the theatre — why the Cartaret students should not accompany the procession through the streets of the town. Bold spirits, defying the Cartaret law of late leave, which had to be signed for, and was never granted on Rag Night except in case of family illness or on some such compassionate grounds, had even been known to penetrate the fastnesses and book seats in the theatre, but since the men’s college invariably booked the whole of the circle, whether they could fill it or not, there was not as much excitement in going as the bold spirits would have liked to pretend.

Laura and Kitty, well within the law and proposing to remain so, went into the town on the bus to see the procession form up and move off towards the theatre. The four gentlemen to whom had been delegated the task of occupying the attention of the mounted police found their solitary victim round the second turning. Dressed as fairies in ridiculous ballet frocks which the College housekeeper and maids had been wheedled into ‘making over’ to fit the bulging torsos of the football-playing sprites, and wearing flaxen wigs, fairy crowns with long antennae, gauze and silver wings and carrying fairy wands tipped with lop-sided, outsize stars, the four skipped solemnly round and round the embarrassed officer, giving him no chance to do anything except manage his horse. When he stopped they joined hands in a straight line in front of him and began to sing. When he rode on again, they broke the hold and re-formed their circle.

Following the mounted policeman came a large horse, removed from the College playing-fields, on which a horse-mower was still used. On his back, sitting sideways with both legs over the left side of an embroidered table-cover which served as saddle and saddle-cloth, and held in position by iron supports specially forged in the College workshop and carried by the attendants who were dressed as devils, was the magnificent skeleton of Dirty Dick, until recently an inmate of the Science cupboard at Cartaret. He was conspicuously labelled, to the delight of the local populace, Lady Godiva.

The Theatre Rag itself passed off in traditional style and without unexpected incident