“Oh!” said Harriet. “Look here, Padgett. I don’t want anything said about this. I know Miss Hillyard does sometimes take a stroll in the Fellows’ Garden at night. Perhaps the person who sent the telephone call saw her there and went away again.”
“Yes, miss. It’s a funny thing about that there telephone call. It didn’t come through the Lodge, miss.”
“Perhaps one of the other instruments was through to the Exchange.”
“No, they wasn’t, miss. I ’ad a look to see. Afore I goes to bed at 11 o’clock, I puts the Warden, the Dean, and the Infirmary and the public box through, Miss, for the night. But they wasn’t through at 10:40, miss, that I’ll swear.”
“Then the call must have come from outside.”
“Yes, miss. Miss ’Illyard come in at 10:50, miss, jest afore you rang up.”
“Did she? Are you sure?”
“I remember quite well, miss, because of Annie passing a remark about her. There’s no love lost between her and Annie,” added Padgett, with a chuckle. “Faults o’ both sides, that’s what I say, miss, and a ’asty temper-”
“What was Annie doing in the Lodge at that hour?”
“Jest come in from her half-day out, miss. She set in the Lodge a bit with Mrs. Padgett.”
“Did she? You didn’t say anything about this business to her, did you, Padgett? She doesn’t like Miss Hillyard, and if you ask me, I think she’s a mischief-maker.”
“I didn’t say one word, miss, not even to Mrs. Padgett, and nobody could ’ave ’eard me on the ’phone, because, after I couldn’t find Miss Lydgate and Miss Edwards and you begins to tell me, I shuts the door between me an’ the settin’room. Then I jest puts me ’ead in afterwards and says to Mrs. Padgett, ‘Look after the gate, would you?’ I says, ‘I jest got to step over and give Mullins a message.’ So this here remains wot I might call confidential between you an’ me, miss.”
“Well, see that it stays confidential, Padgett. I may have been imagining something quite absurd. The ’phone call was certainly a hoax, but there’s no proof that anybody meant mischief. Did anybody else come in between 10.40 and 11?”
“Mrs. Padgett will know, miss. I’ll send you up a list of the names. Or if you like to step into the Lodge now-”
“Better not. No-give me the list in the morning.”
Harriet went away and found Miss Edwards, of whose discretion and common-sense she had a high opinion, and told her the story of the ’phone call.
“You see,” said Harriet, “if there had been any disturbance, the call might have been intended to prove an alibi, though I don’t quite see how. Otherwise, why try to get me back at eleven? I mean, if the disturbance was due to start then, and I was brought there as a witness, the person might have wangled something so as to appear to be elsewhere at the time. But why was it necessary to have me as a witness?”
“Yes-and why say the disturbance had already happened, when it hadn’t? And why wouldn’t you do as a witness when you had the Warden with you?”
“Of course,” said Harriet, “the idea might have been to make a disturbance and bring me on to the scene in time to be suspected of having done it myself.”
“That would be silly; everybody knows you can’t be the Poltergeist.”
“Well, then, we come back to my first idea. I was to be attacked. But why couldn’t I be attacked at midnight or any other time? Why bring me back at eleven?”
“It couldn’t have been something timed to go off at eleven, while the alibi was being established?”
“Nobody could know to a moment the exact time I should take coming from Somerville to Shrewsbury. Unless you are thinking of a bomb or something that would go off when the gate was opened. But that would work equally well at any time.”
“But if the alibi was fixed for eleven-”
“Then why didn’t the bomb go off? As a matter of fact, I simply can’t believe in a bomb at all.”
“Nor can I-not really,” said Miss Edwards. “We’re just being theoretical. I suppose Padgett saw nothing suspicious?”
“Only Miss Hillyard,” replied Harriet, lightly, “sitting in the Fellows’ Garden.”
“Oh!”
“She does go there sometimes at night; I’ve seen her. Perhaps she frightened away-whatever it was.”
“Perhaps,” said Miss Edwards. “By the way, your noble friend seems to have overcome her prejudices in a remarkable manner. I don’t mean the one who saluted you in the quad-the one who came to dinner.”
“Are you trying to make a mystery out of yesterday afternoon?” asked Harriet, smiling. “I think it was only a matter of introductions to some man in Italy who owns a library.”
“So she informed us,” said Miss Edwards. Harriet realized that, when her own back was turned, a good deal of chaff must have been flying about the History Tutor’s ears. “Well,” Miss Edwards went on, “I promised him a paper on blood groups, but he hasn’t started to badger me for it yet. He’s an interesting man, isn’t he?”
“To the biologist?”
Miss Edwards laughed. “Well, yes-as a specimen of the pedigree animal. Shockingly overbred, but full of nervous intelligence. But I didn’t mean that.”
“To the woman, then?”
Miss Edwards turned a candid eye on Harriet.
“To many women, I should imagine.”
Harriet met the eye with a level gaze.
“I have no information on that point.”
“Ah!” said Miss Edwards. “In your novels, you deal more in material facts than in psychology, don’t you?”
Harriet readily admitted that this was so.
“Well, never mind,” said Miss Edwards; and said goodnight rather brusquely.
Harriet asked herself what all this was about. Oddly enough, it had never yet occurred to her to wonder what other women made of Peter, or he of them. This must argue either very great confidence or very great indifference on her own part; for, when one came to think of it, eligibility was his middle name.
On reaching her room, she took the scribbled note from her bag and destroyed it without re-reading it. Even the thought of it made her blush. Heroics that don’t come off are the very essence of burlesque.
Thursday was chiefly remarkable for a violent, prolonged and wholly inexplicable row between Miss Hillyard and Miss Chilperic, in the Fellows’ Garden after Hall. How it started or what it was about, nobody could afterwards remember. Somebody had disarranged a pile of books and papers on one of the Library tables, with the result that a History Schools candidate had arrived for a coaching with a tale of a set of notes mislaid or missing. Miss Hillyard, whose temper had been exceedingly short all day, was moved to take the matter personally and, after glowering all through dinner, burst out-as soon as the Warden had gone-into a storm of indignation against the world in general.
“Why my pupils should always be the ones to suffer from other people’s carelessness, I don’t know,” said Miss Hillyard. Miss Burrows said she didn’t see that they suffered more than anybody else. Miss Hillyard angrily adduced instances extending over the past three terms of History students whose work had been interfered with by what looked like deliberate persecution.
“Considering,” she went on, “that the History School is the largest in the College and certainly not the least important-”
Miss Chilperic pointed out, quite correctly, that in that particular year there happened to be more candidates for the English School than any other.
“Of course you would say that,” said Miss Hillyard. “There may be a couple more this year-I dare say there may-though why we should need an extra English tutor to cope with them, when I have to grapple single-handed-”
It was at that point that the origin of the quarrel became lost in a fog of personalities, in the course of which Miss Chilperic was accused of insolence, arrogance, inattention to her work, general incompetence and a desire to attract notice to herself. The extreme wildness of these charges left poor Miss Chilperic quite bewildered. Indeed, nobody seemed to be able to make anything of it, except, perhaps, Miss Edwards, who sat with a grim smile knitting herself a silk jumper. At length the attack extended itself from Miss Chilperic to Miss Chilperic’s fiancé, whose scholarship was submitted to scathing criticism.