Mrs. Bradley could see that the girl was worked to death. She could hear it in the high-pitched, over-loud voice, so different from the “professional” tones in which she had given her lesson. Her eyes were dark-circled and she blinked them rapidly as she talked.
“I’ll have a word with Mr. Cliffordson,” she said.
“I wish you would,” said Miss Camden. There was something about Mrs. Bradley which forced her hearer to the conclusion that if she had a word with the Headmaster something would very likely come of it. “Well, I must be off. I can hear the girls out there, and they are right underneath the Old Man’s window.”
She hurried away, an athletic figure in her beautifully-cut tunic, and disappeared through swing-doors at the farther end of the gymnasium. Mrs. Bradley, baulked of her prey, wandered into the grounds.
It was a pleasant day for December, sharply cold, but filled with thin, pale golden sunshine which lay along the bare twigs, giving them significance and beauty. Fourteen girls, all dressed exactly alike in navy-blue tunics, white sweaters, long black stockings and white rubber-soled shoes, were passing a football up and down the length of the asphalt netball court with an ease, vigour and accuracy born of frequent practice. Miss Camden, a blazer with an impressively-decorated breast-pocket distinguishing her from the players, blew occasional sharp blasts on a whistle. Mrs. Bradley, who did not understand the game, watched with considerable interest until she found herself—hatless, coatless and gloveless—becoming rather cold. She was about to re-enter the building when she saw the boy Hurstwood. He was walking towards her up the long side of the school field, kicking a large fir-cone as he walked. Mrs. Bradley waited for him.
“Ah, child,” she said. Hurstwood, who, as most young people did, had taken a liking to the queer little old lady, grinned at the nominative of address and waited for her to continue. He had himself completely in hand once more, for, upon leaving the Headmaster’s study, he had not returned to his form-room, but had spent the rest of the lesson in walking round the field.
“ Go up to the women’s common-room and bring me” —Mrs. Bradley checked off the items on her yellow fingers —“one coat, dark green, one hat from the same peg, one silk scarf in divers colours—”
“I bet they are!” thought Hurstwood, who had imbibed sufficient sense of colour from Mr. Smith to realize that Mrs. Bradley’s conception of appropriately-blended hues would be gruesome in the extreme.
“—and two gloves—heaven knows where I put those, child, but they fit exactly”—she extended a skinny claw— “this hand.”
Hurstwood, realizing that she was cold, cast Sixth Form dignity to the winds and cantered off. He took the staff-room stairs three at a time, going up, and five at a time coming down, and returned in a few moments with the required garments.
“Tell me,” said Mrs. Bradley, as he helped her on with them, “do you box?”
“No,” replied Hurstwood. “Like to. Never had the chance.”
“I have a theory,” said Mrs. Bradley, “that Mr. Poole boxes.”
Hurstwood grinned.
“I don’t know about boxing,” he said; “but he must be a lad in a rough-house.”
“Really?” said Mrs. Bradley, pricking up her ears. “Give time, place and circumstances, child.”
“Summer holiday, Marseilles, a row in a pub.,” replied Hurstwood, readily and intelligently. “He was telling us about it in form a week or two ago. Whenever we get a sticky bit of maths, we switch Poole on to his holidays. It always works. He and Smith sail a boat about nearly every summer holiday and seem to have a jolly good time. I expect Poole tells lies—well, embroiders, you know— but, even allowing sixty per cent. off for that, they must have done all sorts of jolly decent things in the hols.”
“When did you learn to sift evidence, young man?” demanded Mrs. Bradley.
Hurstwood grinned.
“Oh, it’s only historical evidence,” he said. “I matricked with Distinction, so old Kemball rather decently gives me extra-tu., and… he’s pretty hot,” he concluded. “I owe him the Distinction, really.”
“H’m!” said Mrs. Bradley. She looked at the boy curiously, and an idea came, quite unbidden, into her mind. Mrs. Bradley distrusted sudden flights of fancy, and, to do her extremely well-disciplined mind full justice, she was very seldom afflicted by them. She tried to dismiss this one, but it persisted. She said to Hurstwood suddenly:
“I wonder whether anyone at school could put my portable wireless set right? I suppose anyone with an elementary knowledge of electric lighting could do it, couldn’t he?”
There was a long pause. Then Hurstwood said awkwardly:
“I daresay several of the Lower Fifth Scientific could manage it. They’ve done a lot of work on electricity this term.”
“Oh, yes. Thank you, child. The Lower Fifth Scientific.” She began to walk along the cinder-track. It skirted the netball court and then wound serpent-wise round the school field. Its surface was trodden flat and hard, for it formed the school promenade except at the end of the spring term, when it was forked over by the groundsmen in preparation for Sports Day.
“I say, Mrs. Bradley,” said Hurstwood, when they had almost circumnavigated the field, “are the police going to be brought into this?”
Mrs. Bradley did not attempt to pretend that she did not understand him. She pursed her thin lips into a little beak and replied:
“Not at present, certainly. But at any moment, possibly. Again, possibly not. It depends partly on what we discover.”
“Suppose,” said Hurstwood, pursuing a train of thought which had been in his mind for some days, “a person is wrongly accused of murder?”
“Yes?” said Mrs. Bradley encouragingly.
“What chance does he stand of getting—of being acquitted?”
“Every chance in the world,” said Mrs. Bradley confidently. “But why these morbid theses, child?”
“Oh, I don’t know. My father wants me to be a barrister,” said Hurstwood.
“Does he? And what is your own choice of a career?” asked Mrs. Bradley.
“Oh, I shouldn’t mind. Young Lestrange says his uncle has got more murderers off than any other defending counsel in England.”
“Yes. A depraved nature, Ferdinand’s,” said Mrs. Bradley. “Ferdinand Lestrange is my son by my first husband,” she explained in response to the boy’s glance of inquiry.
“Oh, really? How topping,” said Hurstwood, conventionally. “Then young Lestrange is your nephew?” he added, with considerably more interest.
“He is. Younger than you, of course?”
“Yes, a good bit, I think. He’s sixteen, isn’t he? I’m eighteen in April. Only just within the age-limit for the schol., in fact.”
“The Balliol scholarship? What chance do you think you stand?”
“Pretty good, I believe,” replied the boy. “But this death business has put me off, I think.”
“These contretemps are bound to have some immediate effect on a sensitive nature,” said Mrs. Bradley. Hurstwood grinned and invited her to refrain from pulling his leg. Having walked round the field three times in all, they returned to the building, where the bell had just been rung for lunch. Miss Camden blew her whistle to indicate that netball practice was at an end, and she, Hurstwood and Mrs. Bradley walked into the hall together.