Laurels Are Poison

Chapter 17

NYMPHS AND SATYRS

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‘You know, there’s a lot of fetishism in the preparation of vegetables — in fact, in all cooking,’ said Laura, roaming about the Athelstan kitchen (against all College regulations, needless to say) in quest of what she might devour.

‘That there isn’t!’ said Bella, promoted to cook. ‘And I wonder at you, Miss Menzies, using language like that!’

‘But — well, take brussels sprouts,’ for example,‘ pursued the educationist, discovering a jar of raspberry jam and helping herself to it by spreading it on a biscuit she had previously purloined. ’Now I bet you anything you like that when you do brussels sprouts you cut up each little stalk in the shape of a cross. Don’t you?’

‘Yes, so does everybody else, miss, and I hope you know that these here provisions have got to last the month. There’s been trouble already, the way they’ve disappeared. I don’t know what the Warden would think if she was to come in here now this minute and find you eating biscuits and jam and sultanas, the way you are.’

‘Being a sensible woman, duck, she’d suppose, correctly, that I was putting to the proof the College memo. on the subject.’

‘What’s that, miss?’

‘Well,’ said Laura, poking interestedly underneath the top layer of a large tin, ‘don’t they call this stuff consumable stock?’

‘Now, look, Miss Menzies,’ said Bella, removing the Bovril bottle out of reach, and firmly handing Laura a clean damp swab on which to wipe sticky fingers, ‘if you’ll promise to leave the things alone and go back and get on with whatever you’re supposed to be doing, and stop hindering me and getting in Lulu’s way with that tray for the Warden’s elevenses, I’ll tell you a secret, so be you won’t let it get round.’

‘I’m on,’ said Laura, wiping busily and finishing off on a clean handkerchief. She seated herself on a corner of the table. ‘Spill. Half a minute, though. Can’t I tell anybody at all?’

‘Well,’ said Bella, ‘I suppose you could tell Miss Boorman. She’s a quiet little thing. But don’t you go telling Miss Trevelyan. I know her. It’ll be all over College before you can say Jack Robinson.’

‘Not if I swear her to silence, Bella. Come on. Just those two and no more.’

‘Well, if you think…’

‘I do think. Go on. You know you want to tell someone. Is it about your boy friend?’

‘Go on with you!’ said Bella, delighted. ‘And me been married these thirteen years, going on!’

‘Go on, you’ve not. I don’t believe it! You wouldn’t have a resident job if you were married! Who makes his evening cup of cocoa?’

‘I’m sure I don’t know, miss. He’s a sailor.’

‘Oh, I couldn’t stick that! Well, go on. What’s this yarn?’

‘You’ll never guess, so I’ll tell you. You know the end-of-the-year summer dance, when the young gentlemen get invitations, and the young ladies’ brothers and their other friends can come?’

‘Yep. Though I haven’t experienced it yet.’

‘Well, you’re going to, miss. The Warden has made a very special point with Miss du Mugne, and it’s to be held at the Half-Term, or, rather, the Saturday night after, young gentlemen, cousins and all.’

‘Well!’ said Laura, jumping off the table. ‘Well, what do you say! Hot dog, Bella! I’ll have the Warden chaired from the bakehouse to Rule Britannia’s! Well, well, well! I never did! And they say the age of miracles is past! When’s the good news to be spread?’

‘That’s for Miss du Mugne to say, miss. Now don’t you go blurting it out and saying I told you, mind!’

‘Trust your Auntie! And — Bella! Grub?’

‘Ices and all, miss. Yes, the Warden said special as all the food was on her.’

‘The Warden said that all the food was on her,’ repeated Laura thoughtfully. ‘Hm! Knowing the Warden’s very sound attitude towards food, I am inclined, in no conservative spirit, to say Whoopee!’

Mrs Bradley had had some initial difficulty in convincing the Principal that the Half-Term Dance, as it was called as soon as tidings of it were broadcast to a surprised and enraptured College, was a necessity in helping to forward the ends of justice.

‘I’ve got to know how Miss Murchan was decoyed,’ she insisted, ‘and as I can’t imagine the circumstances I must attempt to reproduce them.’

‘But it will turn College upside-down,’ wailed the Principal. ‘And, after all,’ she added, with the first gleam of humour which Mrs Bradley had seen in her, ‘you’ve already gone outside the scope which was to be allowed you. We asked you to investigate privately a College mystery — the disappearance of Miss Murchan. You would never have been asked, nor given any scope at all, if we had dreamed you were going to find a murderer, and let us in for all the horrible publicity of a trial.’

‘It hasn’t come to that yet,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘But there it is,’ she concluded. ‘I want you to ask in the Staff Common Room for a volunteer to take the part of Miss Murchan. Please don’t select Miss Topas. She’s far too intelligent and enterprising. What I want is a good stupid horse that will eat his oats, as I feel that Miss Menzies would say. Miss Harbottle might do, and Miss Crossley would be excellent, so if either of them volunteers, please snap her up at once and ask her to come and see me.’

Miss du Mugne, although giving no impression that she was entering into the spirit of the thing, said she would do what she could, and next morning, the Wednesday before that Saturday on which the dance was to be held, a dignified but apprehensive victim, in the person of Miss Crossley, the Bursar, presented herself in Mrs Bradley’s sitting-room at Athelstan and announced that she had come to be instructed.

‘That’s very nice indeed of you,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘I hope you don’t mind, but a particularly graceless nephew of mine is going to assist in the proceedings. I want someone very strong, so I had to get a young man, for I don’t think we have another woman in College with the vigour and muscular control of Miss Cornflake.’

‘Not the P.T. people?’ inquired Miss Crossley.

‘They might, but then, they’ve no imagination,’ replied Mrs Bradley.

‘I feel flattered!’ exclaimed Miss Crossley. As it was kinder not to disabuse her of the notion that the same quality was required in the passive as in the active partner in the experiment, Mrs Bradley made no comment on this exclamation and invited the guest to have some sherry. Miss Crossley preferred coffee, she said, in the morning, so, with this and some biscuits to assist them, they got down to the plan of campaign.

‘Don’t bother about anything at all until ten o’clock,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘Enjoy the dance, have supper with the students, and try to keep your mind off our little reconstruction of Miss Murchan’s disappearance.

‘At ten we shall have the twilight waltz. During it somebody will tweak your hair, and as soon as the lights go up a student will come up to you and ask you whether you know that your hair is coming down. That is your cue. Go at once to the hall door, as though you were going along to the Staff cloakroom.’

‘Yes?’ said Miss Crossley. ‘And then?’

‘Your part is over, except so far as you may be directed by my nephew, to whom, by the way, I will introduce you if you would care to come to dinner this evening. By the way, you will scarcely need to be told that you need fear no violence, either from my nephew or from anybody else. I say this, in case you thought there would be a struggle. There will be nothing unpleasant.’

‘Oh, thank you for the assurance, but, really, I shouldn’t have minded in the least,’ replied the Bursar, surprisingly.

Jonathan presented himself before his aunt at a quarter past five, whilst the students were having tea. Deborah, who always had tea with the Warden unless they decided that one of them ought to be on duty, had not been informed that he was coming and nearly jumped out of her chair when he was announced.

Jonathan kissed his aunt between her brilliant black eyes, kissed the tip of Deborah’s nose, took the lid off the teapot, sniffed, said: ‘Lapsang? All right, I’ll have some,’ took the plate of cakes to the light and selected the largest, and generally behaved in the idiotic but attractive manner adopted by young men in front of affectionate women.

‘But what are you doing here?’ asked Deborah, when Mrs Bradley, by providing her nephew with the lowest chair in the room, had made it easier for him to remain seated in it than to attempt to get up and torment either of them.

‘Come to take up my new appointment, please, ma’am,’ replied her swain, stretching out his long legs and looking at them with great satisfaction. ‘I’ve been given a job at this College.’

‘I don’t believe it! And, if you have, I shall resign. I can’t bear the thought of having you all over the place all the time,’ said Deborah decidedly.

‘And to think we’re going to be married in a couple of months! Still, never mind that now. How much of the terrain have I got to encompass this evening?’ he demanded, turning to his aunt.

‘None, dear child. Tomrrow morning you can walk round with George, who will show you the grounds and paths and the possible pitfalls you will encounter after dark, and then in the afternoon Deborah can show you all over the College buildings, including the best way to get to the Halls from College itself.’

‘Including Columba?’ inquired Jonathan. ‘I must see Columba again. It represents the scene of my most ill-conceived and misdirected action. Deborah’s hated me ever since she accepted me! Haven’t you, Deb?’

‘I’m not going to take him over College tomorrow,’ said Deborah firmly. ‘I refuse to be seen about with him. Until he knows how to behave, you can take him over College yourself.’

‘I can’t. I’m going to the mental hospital to visit Mr Princep,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘And don’t forget,’ she smiled, favouring Deborah with a slight lowering of the left eyelid, ‘that the Principal will expect to be introduced to him.’

‘Good idea,’ said Deborah, brightening up. ‘Then he’ll have to ask her for at least one dance on Saturday. That’ll learn you, my lad,’ she added triumphantly.

‘I shall refer to you throughout as my girl friend,’ said Jonathan, with a leer which vied in malevolence with the best efforts of his aunt. But when Mrs Bradley had gone, and Lulu had cleared, he got up out of his chair, stubbed out his cigarette, stood by the table a minute or two, and then, stooping over Deborah, picked her up with a grunt and carried her over to the settee.

‘Don’t!’ said Deborah, who was still afraid of him.

‘Mean it?’ said Jonathan. Deborah, who realized that the question was rhetorical, did not answer.

The young gentlemen from Wattsdown, all washed behind the ears, as Kitty put it, arrived in private buses or in cars or on motor-cycles — the last-named carrying any number of passengers from two to five — at seven o’clock, to find the girls already in the College hall, for the proceedings had begun officially at half past six, following the usual Saturday high tea instead of dinner.

There was a programme of twenty-four dances, with space for extras, supper was to be at half past nine, and the party would be declared over at eleven.

There were banked flowers and evergreens on the front and sides of the dais, sitting-out corners had been devised with skill, taste and discretion, an orchestra, hired at Mrs Bradley’s expense from Leeds, was looming behind the potted plants, and except for the one or two students who had asked for week-end leave, the whole of the College was prepared to be en fête.

Mrs Bradley had bought a new frock, not for herself but for Deborah. She had sworn Kitty to secrecy, and, to the mystification of the whole Hall, had sneaked her out of Miss Topas’s lecture on Richard the Second with the full connivance and support of that enthusiast for Plantagenet kings, and had taken her, George driving, all the way to London, where they had spent the night at an hotel. Next morning they had gone out and chosen the frock, judging it for size and fit by one which Mrs Bradley had borrowed (on the excuse that she wanted to try it on?) and at nightfall on the Friday they made a triumphant return, pulled Deborah out of ‘a mess of English essays’, said Kitty, recounting the exciting story to an awe-stricken group, and put the frock on her.

Mrs Bradley had had no voice in the buying. Kitty knew exactly what she wanted, and dragged Mrs Bradley into and out of seven shops before discovering the object of her choice in the eighth.

‘But what’s all this about?’ asked Deborah, pardonably bewildered.

‘Birthday present,’ said Mrs Bradley calmly.

‘But — I can’t — you can’t give me a birthday present!’

‘Oh, yes, I can. You’re nearly a member of the family,’ replied Mrs Bradley, sitting down and watching the kneeling Kitty.

Kitty got up.

‘You’ll have to put your evening shoes on,’ she said. ‘I can’t see what anything looks like in those slippers. Where are they? I’ll get them… Ah, that’s it. Now see how it goes when you walk… Have a look at yourself in the long glass.’

She sat back on her heels, looked at Mrs Bradley and lifted her eyebrows.

‘Thank you, child,’ said Mrs Bradley.

Jonathan, meanwhile, had established himself solidly with both students and staff at the College. Athelstan, in fact, was the envy of every other Hall, not even excluding Columba, for having, as Miss Cartwright put it, an eligible male on the premises.

‘But he isn’t eligible. The Deb.’s hooked him,’ observed Laura, with neither gracefulness nor truth. Alice pointed this out by contradicting her immediately.

‘She didn’t hook him! What a thing to say!’

‘All right. All right. No offence. I merely intended to convey that his eligibility is all washed up and disconnected,’ replied the heckled one, scrubbing dirt out of an abrasion on her left shin with her tooth brush. ‘Some golfing fiend in the Second Eleven took a slap at me in a practice game this afternoon,’ she explained, when the others expostulated with her on the score of her activity. ’I must get the dirt out. I might get blood-poisoning.’

‘Not as likely as you’ll get it from that germy object,’ said Alice, trying to remove the tooth brush by main force from Laura’s grasp.

‘Look out, ass! You’ll break the handle. Leave me alone. I’m nearly through,’ said the surgeon, returning undeterred to her scrubbing. ‘Wonder when old Kitty will be back? The old scout is losing all the fun of being in a Mixed Hall, isn’t she?’

Jonathan enjoyed himself. He was not in the least bashful, took all his meals, including breakfast and tea, in public, under the eyes and on the tongues of forty interested girls who made inventories and laid bets respecting his likes and dislikes in the matter of food, was supplied with manly bottles of beer by Bella, to whom he made love in the kitchen, made idiotic and extremely well-camouflaged advances to Deborah, and was snubbed firmly, this to the indignation of Miss Cartwright, who had conceived a violent passion for the young man and talked openly in Hall of Deborah’s coldness and of how he must be breaking his heart in secret, to which challenging gambit Laura unhesitatingly, unanswerably and very coarsely replied.

On the night of the dance there was much speculation as to how he would be dressed. Jonathan had received definite instructions from his aunt on this point, and appeared, ‘white tie perfectly rendered’ as Laura observed to her circle, in tails and with his hair brushed.

‘All my own work,’ said Kitty, pleased with the murmurs of admiration which greeted his appearance, first in Hall and then on the dance floor. ‘I fluttered that butterfly tie of his with these two hands. But you wait till you see the Deb.’

‘Girls,’ she added, later, coming up to Laura and Alice just before the young gentlemen arrived from Wattsdown, ‘he’s asked me for my programme, and I’m having two with him, one in each half.’

‘You lucky thing!’ said Miss Cartwright. ‘Never mind, I bet I get him at least twice in a Paul Jones.’

‘I bet she does, too,’ said Laura, grinning. The entrance of the Wattsdown contingent, fingering their ties and otherwise preparing themselves for the fray, ended the conversation and gave rise to other, although not dissimilar, interests.

Miss Crossley sat with Mrs Bradley during a waltz and the foxtrot that followed it, and confessed that she felt very nervous.

‘Oh, you mustn’t do that. Don’t think about ten o’clock and after. I can scarcely recognize some of the students. Who is the dark girl in green, with gold shoes?’

‘That is Miss Milper, of Edmund,’ replied Miss Crossley. ‘I don’t suppose you would notice her in the ordinary way. She is what I call one of the two-year brigade.’

‘And by that you mean…?’

‘Well, she’s engaged now, and she will be married in two years’ time, I imagine. Then good-bye to all the time and trouble spent on her training. Now your Miss Mathers is the type I like — honest, downright, capable — ’

‘Yes, a pleasant, sensible creature,’ said Mrs Bradley, devoutly hoping that Miss Mathers was going to live up to that description later on in the evening.

‘Who’s the old girl like a lizard?’ inquired a vacant-looking Wattsdown youth of Laura.

‘Mrs Lestrange Bradley, the criminologist.’

‘What? Been having a crime wave at Cartaret?’

‘No, mutt. Psychology. Besides, she’s our Warden at Athelstan.’

‘Oh? I say, who is the girl over there? You might introduce me. Is she a Senior? — Third-Year, or something?’

‘That, pet, is our Sub-Warden. She bites. And I won’t introduce you. She wouldn’t like you. You’re not her type in the least.’

‘Judging by the bloke she’s talking to now — the Heathcliff specimen’, I mean — I should say you might be right. Who’s he?’

‘Her fiancé.’

‘Oh? Oh, really? Oh, I see.’ He dropped the subject, but a good many enterprising young gentlemen insisted upon being introduced and Deborah danced every dance in the first half except for two which she sat out with Jonathan, sedately, in full view of one and all.

Jonathan, finding himself paired with Miss Cartwright in a foxtrot during a Paul Jones, had time to tell her that there was something he wanted to ask her.

‘To settle a bet,’ he began; but the music changed before he could put the point, and he was not surprised when she flagrantly grabbed him the next time and said:

‘Go on. To settle a bet?’

‘Those snakes in that Demonstration lesson. Did you…?’

‘Yes, of course. But I daren’t confess to it because my record’s so rocky. How did you…?’ But the music separated them again.

Jonathan, to the joy of Athelstan, had the next dance with his aunt.

‘Listen,’ he said. ‘You were right about the snakes. She did it. She’s just told me. Don’t give me away for telling you, but I thought you’d like to be certain.’

‘Thank you very much, child. That clears away all doubt. A pity the little silly didn’t own up sooner.’

‘Still, your argument that it couldn’t have been part and parcel of the other works of art was perfectly sound. Who else ought I to dance with? I’ve done Miss du Mugne, Miss Butts, Miss Crossley, Miss Topas, Miss Harbottle and now you.’

Mrs Bradley took him off at the end of the dance to ‘team him up’ as Miss Cartwright disgustedly expressed it, with more of the staff, and half past nine seemed to come along very soon. Mrs Bradley, Miss du Mugne, Miss Topas, Miss Crossley, Jonathan and Deborah shared one of the small tables in the Demonstration Room, which had been turned into a refectory. The Science Room, the two Education Rooms, and the Students’ Common Room had been similarly treated, and parties sitting out on the stairs were ‘also a feature’, as Kitty gracefully and tactfully remarked.

‘Get rheumatism, silly little fatheads,’ said Miss Topas. ‘Most of ’em have got nothing on under those frocks except a pair of panties and a bust bodice.’

At ten the Twilight Waltz was announced, and Jonathan and Deborah danced it together. The lights were lowered gradually until only the two over the dais and the one over the door were left shining. By the time the hall was fully lighted again, Miss Crossley had begun to carry out her share of the arrangements by giving her partner, a student named Pettinger, the excuse that she must tidy her hair. She then hurried out. As soon as he saw her go, Jonathan went after her, and scarcely had he caught up with her outside the Education Room, which was next to the Staff Cloakroom, when Mrs Bradley joined them.

‘Did you manage it?’ she asked. The two stopped short.

‘No, I didn’t,’ confessed Jonathan. ‘I marked her position in the hall very carefully when the dance began, then, as the lights were lowered, I pushed along to where I supposed she would be, but by that time the hall was almost in darkness and I don’t believe I could have found even Deborah to pull her hair, much less a lady whom I met for the first time on Wednesday.’

‘Splendid,’ said Mrs Bradley.

‘I mean,’ pursued her nephew, ‘one can scarcely make the round of a dance floor pulling people’s hair at random.’

‘Quite,’ said his aunt, who seemed subtly pleased about something. ‘Well, carry on.’

Jonathan offered Miss Crossley his arm, and they proceeded to the outer door.

‘Now,’ he said, ‘we’ve got to get to Athelstan without being spotted. I say, it’s plaguey dark. And — er — hadn’t you better have a coat?’

‘I have my silk scarf. Poor Miss Murchan wouldn’t have had more on a summer night, I imagine,’ replied Miss Crossley.

‘This way, I think.’

They followed, stumbling, the gravel path which led past the grass tennis court to the steps beside the rockery which fronted BedeHall.

‘Left now,’ said Miss Crossley. She led the way at this point, and mounted to the front door of Athelstan, where she inserted Mrs Bradley’s latch-key in the door. The door swung open. They closed it as quietly as they could and waited outside.

‘We have to count forty,’ said Miss Crossley. Long before forty was up, however, a quick step in the hall, and the gleam of a light informed them that one of the maids was at home.

‘Who dar?’ asked Lulu’s voice, as she came to meet them.

‘Mrs Bradley wants a clean handkerchief, please,’ said Miss Crossley. ‘Aren’t you at the dance?’

‘Oh, no, mam,’ replied the maid, ‘Ephraim don’t like it.’

‘Well, that’s that,’ said Jonathan. ‘I don’t see how we could have shut the door more quietly, but, you see, she heard us all right. Aunt Adela said her hearing was abnormal.’

‘Well, if we couldn’t sneak in by the front door, we certainly couldn’t at the back,’ said Miss Crossley, who seemed to have shed her nervousness, and was enjoying herself. Jonathan agreed.

‘Now I’m to escort you back to the dance floor,’ he said, ‘and I do hope you’re not booked for the next one, whatever it turns out to be, because I think we ought to dance it together.’

‘I’m not booked up really after the Twilight Waltz at all,’ Miss Crossley confessed, ‘because I didn’t know when I should be able to return, and I didn’t want to disappoint anybody of their dance, or, of course, to excite suspicion by being noticeably absent. Your aunt pointed out that it was essential to arouse no suspicion.’

‘Quite,’ Jonathan agreed; and they went back to the revels. He watched the clock, however, and at twenty-five minutes to eleven he went into the corridor, rather obviously displaying his cigarette-case and lighter. Scarcely had he reached the door of the room where the pottery oven was housed, when there was the sound of flying footsteps and Deborah came running up to him.

‘You’re to come back with me,’ she said. ‘I don’t want you to do any more snooping about in the dark! It’s dangerous!’

Jonathan held both her hands and looked at her gravely.

‘Listen, Deb. There’s no danger. And you can’t come out in that frock. But I’ve got a little job to do. It’s nothing much. You go back, and in about ten minutes I’ll be there. You have saved me the last dance, haven’t you?’

‘If you’re going across the grounds again, I’m coming with you,’ said Deborah.

‘All right. But run and get a wrap, there’s a good girl. It’s cold. Bring my silk scarf if you can see it, as well, will you?’

He waited until she had reached the opposite end of the corridor, then he went into the adjoining room and changed his coat for a lounge jacket which he buttoned closely, turning up the collar. Then he went noiselessly down the steps and walked briskly along the path towards Athelstan. But, instead of going up to the front door this time, he walked along until he came to the covered way connecting the Hall with the bakehouse next door to it on the west.

He crouched down and strained his ears. After a short time he heard an owl hoot twice. He gave a low whistle. The owl hooted again, but only once this time.