Laurels Are Poison

Chapter 4

A MULTIPLICITY OF PROMISCUOUS VESSELS

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‘You know,’ said Kitty, sitting up in her narrow bed and yelling over the partition, ‘the old girl was up to something last night. What do you suppose was the object of all that third-degree velvet-glove stuff she pulled?’

There was no reply from Laura, but Alice put her head over and observed: ‘I didn’t know what she meant, and I don’t now.’

‘But I do,’ said Laura, appearing in the doorway of Alice’s cubicle. ‘On the excuse, if asked, of losing my way to the bathroom — not that you can lose your way anywhere in this geometrically-constructed loose-box — I’ve been down and had a snoop at those doors. I fig-ew-er that the Duchess of Main put on burglar’s gloves and undid those knots with a hairpin. The cords still lie in statu quo, or very nearly so, my loves, and the staples are still fixed firmly in the doors. Ergo, there is going to be one devil of a fine pow-wow-plus-fight; referee and timekeeper that vicious and unstable Old Maid of the Mountains Principal du Mugne, plaintiffs Old Mutt and Young Jeff, defendants our humble selves. What say you, comrades?’

‘Oh, I do hope not,’ said Alice, who was now doing her hair. ‘I don’t want any more questions. It’s horrible. It makes you begin to wonder whether perhaps you did do it, after all.’

‘Well, did you?’ asked Laura. ‘Personally, the orange-skin banana-peel jest, ripe though it may be, has never appealed to yours truly. It’s unsubtle.’

She went into her own cubicle, and the other two could hear drawers being flung open and thrust in again to the accompaniment of a considerable amount of blasphemous comment.

‘What have you lost, Dog?’ inquired Kitty, who retained her comfortable attitude in bed.

‘Belt,’ replied Laura. ‘I received a nasty hint yesterday that we’re supposed to wear stockings to go over to College, and I’ve got nothing to hang mine on to.’

‘Coming over,’ said Kitty obligingly. ‘I can wear my evening one.’

‘Oh, thanks. Mine’s sure to turn up later on. It may be in my trunk. Where are our trunks, by the way?’

‘Down in the basement,’ said Alice, who, they soon discovered, was able to obtain this kind of information, apparently by clairvoyance. ‘We’re supposed to unpack them down there, I think, and carry our things up bit by bit. I’ve got to get a few things out of mine, so if you’d like to give me your keys I’ll bring you up anything you want if you can tell me where to lay hands on it without turning everything else upside down.’

‘I shouldn’t know, love. My mother always does my packing. She says I can’t pack properly, and, so far as I can see, if she persists in that view, I never shall. I’ll come down with you. As for you, Kitty, you’d better get up, or you’ll get no breakfast, if I read the book of words aright.’

On the first-floor landing they met Deborah in her dressing-gown. She was coming out of her bathroom.

‘Isn’t she lovely!’ said Alice, flushing a little.

‘Not bad,’ Laura responded. ‘But she must be at least twenty-five.’

‘Do you think she thinks we did it?’

‘Did what? Oh, the screamingly funny string joke? No, I don’t In fact, she knows we didn’t. So does Aunt Glegg.’

‘The Warden isn’t in the least like Aunt Glegg.’

‘She is to me.’

‘But she can’t be. Aunt Glegg — oh, I don’t know how to put things, but she definitely isn’t and never could be in the very least like Aunt Glegg. You, with your strong literary sense, ought not to talk such rot. You know, you’re like most very clever people — you’re lazy.’

‘Golly!’ said Laura, regarding her companion with such intentness that she almost fell down the stairs. ‘Are you, by any chance, a dark horse, young Alice?’

‘Good heavens, no! ’ said Alice blushing.

‘Well, I’ve been chewing over a few outstanding points during the night watches. I’m no sleeper, although you wouldn’t guess it. And I knew I’d placed our Boadicea aright Her name’s Bradley.’

‘Yes, I know.’

‘Mrs Bradley.’

‘Yes. I expect she’s a widow or something.’

‘ “Or something” about whangs the old nail on the clock, snout or beezer. She is, in short (and in full, see Timothy Shy’s special news-service, copyright in all languages including Sanskrit), Mrs Beatrice Adela Lestrange Bradley, with degrees from every University except Tokio. And she chooses to come here! What I keep asking myself is — why ?’

‘But — then she’s a detective!’ said Alice.

‘And what a detective,’ said Laura. ‘Do you know what I suspect, young Alice?’

‘No. At least, I hope not’

This subtlety was lost on Laura, who replied: ‘Is it a dagger that I see before me, its ’andle to my ’and? No, but it is that same circular saw with which Hawley Harvey carved up his spouse, et voici la plume de ma tante. Goroo! Goroo! (Dickens — or thereabouts.) Stop me if you’ve heard it before. Young Alice, there must be a murderer on the premises!’

All that day, from about eleven in the morning onwards, students continued to arrive. Every train disgorged them, until by seven-thirty the whole College was assembled in the various Halls for dinner. After dinner, on this first day of term, there was a short meeting of all students in the College Hall, but by half-past eight students in couples, groups, platoons, or, in a few cases, singly, were walking across the lawns, through the orchard or upon the gravel paths, back to the various Halls of Residence.

The Athelstan contingent was made up equally of First-Years and Second-Years. There were no Third-Years. These were housed, together with the One-Year Students (practising teachers of some years’ experience who had come to College to obtain a Board of Education Certificate) in Columba, which thus differed from any other of the Halls, and was referred to by the rest (for no reason that Mrs Bradley ever discovered) as Rule Britannia’s.

From their time of arrival until dinner-time most of the students in Athelstan had been occupied in greeting their Warden, meeting their tutor, re-arranging (to the confusion and irritation of Deborah and the senior student) the allotment of study-bedrooms, meeting and greeting one another on the stairs, in passages and even whilst opening and shutting the doors of the W.C.s, and in general creating so much pandemonium that even Deborah, accustomed as she was to the beginning of term at a girls’ school, felt, by the time that dinner was over, as though she had added long, heavy years to an already over-burdened existence.

‘What you want,’ said Mrs Bradley, joining her as she came out of the dining-room, ‘is a drink. Come along, child. And let us find out whether Lulu can make coffee. She says she can. Shall we risk it?’

‘One thing,’ said Deborah twenty minutes later, sipping Lulu’s remarkably good black coffee and eyeing with friendly interest Mrs Bradley’s old brandy, ‘I suppose these wretched kids will go to bed soon? They ought to be completely fagged out.’

‘Be yourself, child,’ said the Warden, who had learned the expression from Kitty that afternoon. ‘I am credibly and respectfully informed by the senior student (whose name, by the way, is Hilda Mathers and whose home is in Middlesex), that the Second-Year Students always rag the rooms of the First-Year Students on the first night of term, and that she hopes I shall not be disturbed by a little extra noise.’

‘Heavens! What do we do?’

‘Nothing, child. As far as possible the local customs should be respected. That is the first law of government.’

‘Tell me,’ said Deborah suddenly, ‘aren’t you bothering much about being Warden? I mean, don’t you care particularly what they do? Do you — I mean — well, aren’t you —?’

‘You know, you’re tired,’ said Mrs Bradley kindly. ‘You’ll feel better than this in the morning.’

She began to cackle. Deborah laughed, and then found that she could not stop. The parlourmaid, Lulu, an American negress, came in to collect the coffee-cups, and finding ‘the madams’ — a curious traditional name for Hall Wardens and Sub-Wardens — in this silly but helpless condition, she flung back her sooty head and yelped with primitive enthusiasm. This disgraceful scene was interrupted by the senior student.

‘I’m sorry, Warden,’ she said (looking, as, indeed, well she might, poor girl, said Mrs Bradley afterwards when Deborah canvassed her opinion upon ‘what Miss Mathers must have thought,’ somewhat startled at the sight of the Warden, the Sub-Warden and the parlourmaid all having hysterics together in the Warden’s private sitting-room), ‘but there seems to be some water overflowing somewhere, and I think it must be the ball-cocks out of order, as the ragging hasn’t really started yet.’

‘Dear, dear,’ said Mrs Bradley, recovering herself and eyeing the senior student solemnly, ‘I had better see about them, then. Is this what usually happens before the Second Years “really” rag the rooms of the First-Year Students?’

‘No, indeed, Warden,’ said the senior student, as they went out into the passage. Lulu, also restored to gravity, rearranged the tray and went out with it. Deborah, a little hazy as to the precise nature of ball-cocks but having a horrid presentiment that they. were something to do with the plumbing, and therefore were hideously unmanageable and important, followed Mrs Bradley and Miss Mathers towards the stairs.

‘Oh, Miss Cloud,’ said a breathless student, waylaying her before she could catch up with the other two, ‘did you know? There’s water coming through the Common Room ceiling.’

‘Well, you’d better come upstairs and help mop up,’ said Deborah, immediately, bundling her up the stairs, where the Warden swung round upon them both.

‘Student,’ said Mrs Bradley, who had discovered that Athelstan’s members answered readily to this optimistic and convenient appellation, ‘do you understand the nature and function of the ball-cock?’

‘N-no, Warden,’ replied the girl, looking thoroughly alarmed.

‘Good,’ said Mrs Bradley, thoughtfully taking her arm in a firm grip. ‘Roll up your sleeves as we go. I will teach you all about them. Don’t you bother, Miss Cloud. The student and I will manage.’

Word of what was in the wind with regard to the ragging had come to the omniscient Alice.

‘I say,’ she confided timidly to Kitty and Laura, as they seated themselves on her bed and produced food with which to supplement the dinner they had just eaten in Hall. ‘I’ve heard that the Seniors are going to rag our rooms.’

‘When?’

‘This evening. We’ve all got to go to a Common Room meeting called by the senior student, and while she’s got us there talking to us about the rules, and that sort of thing, they’re going to rag our rooms and make apple-pie beds and things.’

‘Lor’! Boarding-school stuff?’ said Kitty.

‘Not up here they’re not,’ said Laura, firmly. ‘They can’t renew their youth at our expense.’ She produced a coin. ‘Heads or tails, K.?’

‘Tails, Dog, but I’m sure to lose, so why toss?’

‘You have lost. Can you manage?’

‘Bob’s your uncle,’ replied her friend, apparently intelligibly. Laura, satisfied, stuffed a last tomato sandwich into her mouth, cut herself a generous piece of jam sponge and another for Alice, took that shrinking member of the expeditionary force by the arm, and together they went down the stairs to attend the meeting, which was called for nine o’clock.

Left alone, Kitty went into her own room, locked the door, climbed over into Laura’s room and locked that, and then did the same for Alice’s room. She returned, via the partition, to Laura’s room, took off her shoes and her frock, got into Laura’s bed, as that room was the middle one of the three, and immediately fell asleep. The sounds of revelry woke her twenty minutes later, and she smiled serenely, listened whilst all the three locked doors were tried in turn, waited whilst a whispered consultation, punctuated by giggles, took place on the landing, and then heard the other four rooms on their side of the landing receiving attention from the wreckers.

She arose when the gang had gone, made her own depositions — the seven study-bedrooms on the opposite side of the corridor had all been allotted to Seniors — and retired to rest again, this time not to sleep but to finish the sponge sandwich and read a detective story.

So absorbed was she that she did not hear the timid voice of Alice until it had called her name for the third time.

‘I say,’ said Alice, ‘the rag’s over, but somebody’s gone too far, and there’s been a lot of water through ceilings and things. The Warden is doing a tour, so I thought I’d let you know.’

‘Many thanks. Where’s Dog? In the cooler?’

‘Oh, no,’ said Alice, who apparently understood this reference. ‘She’s helping the Warden. We’ve all been helping the Warden.’

‘Like hell you have,’ replied Kitty, with great appreciation of this jest. ‘Lend me a comb. Oh, I forgot. You can’t get in. Half a sec’

She climbed over and unlocked the doors, to confront a flushed and perspiring Alice, whose sleeves were rolled up displaying remarkably sinewy arms, and whose skirt was dripping water on to the polished boards of the floor.

‘Here, you’d better stand on a rug or something,’ Kitty observed, swiftly and in motherly fashion unfastening Alice’s skirt and slipping it down. ‘Step out, and I’ll go hang it in the bathroom. Stick something else on, or you’ll get a cold, with all that perspiration. What on earth have you been doing, to get in such a state?’

‘Racing about, trying to check up on the — the — ’ She struggled to find a word which should be polite, definite, and, if possible (although she suspected that this was out of the question), belonging equally to her own vocabulary and that of Kitty. Finding the attempt hopeless she abandoned it, and, pulling her dressing-gown round her, stooped to the small cupboard beneath the piece of combination furniture known to Athelstan as a Doris (after the Warden, Miss Murchan’s predecessor, who had introduced it into use from what was popularly believed to be her own design), and exclaimed, in a tone of relief which puzzled Kitty: ‘Oh, mine isn’t there, either!’

‘You’re what? Oh, the Jerry! Well, you don’t want it, do you?’

‘Of course not! Only, you see, it’s a mystery. See whether you’ve got yours, would you?’

Kitty investigated.

‘No,’ she admitted. ‘I haven’t. And I know it was there, before we went over to College, because Dog and I had a bet on whether they would be provided, and we investigated, and she won. Besides we — Lets see whether hers is still there. What’s all this about, anyway?’

‘You’d better come down and see,’ replied Alice. ‘And the Warden says that anybody good at mountaineering might be useful.’

‘Oh, Martyr’s Memorial stuff,’ translated Kitty. ‘Not for yours truly. Let someone else break their neck.’

There was the sound of hurried footsteps, and Laura appeared. She was even more dishevelled than Alice had been, and her face was wreathed in smiles which gave her, in collaboration with various streaks of grime and the beginnings of a black eye, an appearance as of devil turned chimney-sweep.

‘Good Lord, Dog! Your eye!’ exclaimed Kitty.

‘Ran into the edge of the Common Room door,’ explained Laura, dismissing the incident. ‘I say, girls, somebody must have collected a bevy of Edgar Allans while we were having dinner and — well, you’d better come. The Duchess wants it all taken down, and someone to volunteer to put the bonfire out. Personally, I’ve collected a perfectly good watering-can with which we ought to be able to irrigate a few Seniors as well as the fire, if all good men will come to the aid of the party.’

The noise inside the house had been so considerable that it was some time before the noise outside had attracted attention. In fact, Mrs Bradley said afterwards, it was doubtful, in her view, whether any mere noise, of itself, would have penetrated to ears already half-deafened by the sounds created by forty students, two officials, half a dozen servants, and the persistent rushing of overflowing water and emptying cisterns. It was the bonfire which had caused notice.

Deborah, having raced up the stairs to trace the origin of the water which was coming through the Common Room ceiling, was aware, on the first-floor landing, of another stream of water which had begun to pour out underneath her bathroom door.

The plug was in the waste-pipe, the bath was full, and the water was steadily overflowing at what seemed to be a geometric rate of progression. She pulled out the plug, turned off the taps, and then, swearing fiercely, went along to Mrs Bradley’s bathroom. Here she found the head of the house, with kilted skirts, engaged in mopping up the floor.

‘Was your bath full?’ she demanded.

‘Yes, child. Look in on the students’ bathrooms on this floor, too, will you? And I’ll mop up this one and yours.’

‘The little beasts! The destructive little beasts!’ cried Deborah. Mrs Bradley did not reply. Deborah went to the students’ bathrooms, but these were all in perfect order, so she went back to her own bathroom and began to mop up the water with towels and a bath-sheet, wringing them into the rapidly-emptying bath until the floor was no more than damp.

Then she went into her bedroom and changed her shoes, stockings and skirt. Not until then did she descend to inspect the Common Room. The damp patch was spreading over one corner of the ceiling. It glistened sweatily, and beads of moisture were ready to drop upon the floor. The meeting, however, was in full swing, being addressed by the senior student.

Deborah rang the bell and it was answered by the obliging Lulu, who, with the instinct of her race for the dramatic, was having a terrifying but satisfactory time, as her wide grin and rolling, frenzied eyes testified without the need of verbal evidence.

‘We better use my apron, Mis’ Sub,’ she announced. ‘Sho’ we hasn’t another dry swab in de house wid all dis water. Never knowed anyt’ing like it since Noah and de Flood.’

So saying, she got to work, removing her apron and using it as a swab with great and mostly superfluous energy, and, the water beginning to drip audibly on to the linoleum, the meeting was adjourned, and Lulu pelted away to wring her apron.

The overflow of water in various parts of the house had fused the electric light, which chose this moment to go out. The Common Room was not dark, however, for a lurid gleam, such as the eruption of Vesuvius may have shed upon the doomed cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum, flickered upon the discoloured ceiling and illumined the clean bare walls.

‘Holy smoke, Mis’ Sub!’ gasped Lulu, returning with the apron.

‘I should hardly think so,’ said Deborah.

She went to the window, pulled aside the curtain and looked out. Athelstan was proud of its frontage. It scarcely appeared to full advantage, however, as the repository of a pile of chamber pots built up — or so it seemed to Deborah’s possibly prejudiced and certainly startled intelligence — into a representation of the Grave of a Hundred Heads. Around the pile, but not touching it, a circular bonfire had been made, and dancing like dervishes round the whole erection were about a dozen young men.

‘Interesting, amusing and instructive,’ said Mrs Bradley’s voice in her ear. ‘I wonder what the Principal will say? Or is this also one of the local customs?’

Deborah began to reply, but the Warden had gone. Divining Mrs Bradley’s intention, Deborah went after her, and was in time to see the end of the affair. Mrs Bradley, standing in the front doorway of Athelstan, scanned the dancing figures for a full minute. Then she darted towards the bonfire, seized one of the dervishes by the seat of the trousers, and hauled him forcibly out of the circle. At the same instant the sound of a police whistle cut short the proceedings, and into the silence was projected a throaty, official voice.

‘Now, then, what’s all this?’ it said. The magic words worked with their usual charm. The trousered figures fled — all of them, Mrs Bradley noticed, in the same direction. She retained a fierce grip on her struggling prisoner, and hauled him inside the doorway.

‘For heaven’s sake, Warden, don’t report me! It was only a rag,’ pleaded the victim. ‘I shall be sent down for certain if you report me.’

It was a woman’s voice, but, in the darkness of the passage, it was impossible to see the victim’s face. Students, organized by Deborah and Miss Mathers, were already stamping out and scattering the bonfire, which had almost burnt itself through.

‘Are you an Athelstan student?’ Mrs Bradley demanded.

‘Yes. My name’s Morris.’

‘Well, Miss Morris, you had better assist in taking down that monument,’ said Mrs Bradley, ‘and you must report to me in my study in the morning.’

‘Yes, Warden.’

‘I shall require a full explanation.’

‘Yes, Warden.’

Mrs Bradley released her, and noted that the decontamination squad, as Laura named them afterwards, had been joined by the sturdy figure of her chauffeur George, who was directing operations in the best traditions of an ex-non-commissioned officer.

‘What happened to the police?’ asked Deborah, when, at midnight, she and Mrs Bradley, having made a last tour of inspection of bathrooms and lavatories, were seated before a small coal fire in Mrs Bradley’s sitting-room and were drinking more of Lulu’s coffee and were eating biscuits and cheese.

‘George was the police. He is a most intelligent man,’ responded George’s employer. ‘And now, I do hope you will be able to get some sleep, dear child.’

‘I feel half dead, so I’m sure I shall,’ replied Deborah.

‘Let us light one another to bed, then,’ said Mrs Bradley, picking up one of the candles. Deborah lifted the other and they tiptoed upstairs.

The rising bell was rung at seven o’clock. Breakfast, an informal meal spread over about an hour, began at a quarter to eight. The Warden and Sub-Warden breakfasted in their own sitting-rooms at eight, and by about eight-thirty the majority of the students had finished breakfast and had gone up to make their beds. By ten minutes to nine Miss Morris had not appeared at Mrs Bradley’s door. This did not surprise the Warden; she had her own reasons for being content to wait. She had been out at just after seven to inspect the remains of the bonfire, only to discover that George, aided by the odd-job man, whom he had pressed into service, had cleared up almost all traces of the incident. There might be rumours round the College of the goings-on at Athelstan on the first night of term; there was, Mrs Bradley noted gratefully, no evidence.

As she had no lectures to deliver that morning, she settled the household affairs in Athelstan, and then walked in the direction taken by the young men who had fled from the sound of George’s voice on the previous night. From Athelstan past the bakehouse ran a wide gravel path, which, skirting on one side the garages and on the other the gymnasium, the laundry and the engine-room, passed the Chief Engineer’s house and led into the lane which was bordered by the south wall of the College grounds.

‘Easy enough, madam,’ said George, joining her as she stood looking over the gate. ‘That was the way they came in, and that was the way they went out. Over the top.’

‘Yes. I wonder, George, who and what they were?’

‘Gentlemen from Wattsdown College, three miles over towards Wattsdown Hill, madam. They had a challenge by post from the young ladies, and accepted it.’

‘Ah, yes, of course,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘I have to thank you for your timely assistance, George. We had to scatter them somehow. It would never have done for me to have caught one of them. I should have been obliged to report him, and then the fat would have been in the fire.’

‘But I thought you did apprehend one, madam?’

‘No, George, that was one of the young ladies. A very different matter, and one which I can deal with without troubling the Principal.’

The students lunched in their halls of residence at a quarter past one, and during the afternoon there were very few lectures until about half past four. Nobody turned up to interview Mrs Bradley after lunch, so she waited until tea-time and then sent Bella, the head servant, into the dining-room, to request that Miss Morris would favour the Warden with a visit as soon as she had finished her tea.

Not at all to Mrs Bradley’s surprise, a tall, thin, spectacled student responded to the invitation to come in, and stood respectfully awaiting the Warden’s remarks.

‘Miss Morris,’ said Mrs Bradley without preamble, ‘you are a Second-Year Student?’

‘Yes, Warden.’

‘Did you put on a pair of dark-coloured trousers and dance round the bonfire in front of Hall last night?’

‘No, Warden.’

‘Thank you, Miss Morris. Are you the only Miss Morris in Athelstan?’

‘Yes, Warden.’

‘And in College?’

‘There is a Miss Morris in the Second-Year in Bede.’

‘Thank you, Miss Morris.’

‘Anything more, Warden?’

‘No, child. I hope you didn’t hurry over your tea?’

‘Oh, no, not at all, thank you.’

The student retired to collect her books for a lecture, and Mrs Bradley picked up the telephone and established contact with Bede.

‘Athelstan speaking,’ she observed. ‘Have you a student named Morris?’

‘Yes. A Second-Year.’

‘Is she likely to wear trousers and dance around bonfires at eleven o’clock at night?’

‘You’d better ask her,’ replied the voice at the other end of the line. ‘Half a minute, and I’ll ask the Warden of Bede to bung her over. I’m answering the phone under false pretences. I’m only a visitor here. My name’s Topas. I really live at Rule — at Columba. I’m the Sub. Do come over this evening and bring your baby girl.’

‘To Columba?’

‘Yes. But I’ll see you get your Miss Morris. Is it true you had a Walpurgis Night at Athelstan?’

‘You shall know all,’ said Mrs Bradley.