‘At any rate, I know what you make of it, inspector,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘She received half the payment before she performed some task, and the other half when the task was satisfactorily completed.’
‘Question is, what was she bribed to do?’ inquired the inspector. Mrs Bradley would have enlightened him if it had been in her power to do so.
‘A woman like Cook,’ argued Laura, ‘would have put her stays on, chance what.’
As there was no dissenting voice, she glared militantly round her small circle of listeners and then lit a cigarette and smoked it half through before she continued her argument.
‘So what do we get?’ she went on. ‘I’ll tell you.’’
‘Bad teaching, Dog,’ observed Kitty. ‘If you ask a question, you shouldn’t answer it yourself.’
‘I’ll tell you,‘ repeated Laura firmly. “”We get this: somebody drowns poor old Cook in the bath; the other servants, used to the goings-on of that idiot Cartwright, don’t take any notice; the body is then dried and clothed, but the murderer, like a chump, doesn’t put on the corsets.’
‘Why not?’ Kitty inquired.
‘Ass! Can you imagine Cook without them? I bet the murderer gave one goggle-eyed look at the mass of adipose tissue, then took a despairing flip at the corsets, decided two into one won’t go, and slung the corsets into the river after the body, never dreaming that they’d fetch up where they did. You see, allowing for drift, current, prevailing winds, seasonal variations, present height of river, mean annual rainfall and the character of the local vegetation, that garment ought to have floated down ever so much farther than the body; instead of which, it got caught in weed, and hardly drifted at all. So when the police found the body at Spot A, they didn’t bother too much to search the bank at Spots A minus x, x being the unrecorded distance between the bridge and the body. Do I make myself clear to the lower division of the class?’
‘You’re an ass, Dog,’ said Kitty.
‘I see what you mean. I wish I could work things out,’ said Alice.
‘Old Dog made up most of that,’ said Kitty. ‘What a hellish day Sunday can be. Let’s go out and sweat at something, shall we?’
‘Let’s go into the gym,’ suggested Laura, who was still childish enough to delight in forbidden pleasures.
‘May we?’ inquired Alice. Her friends regarded her anxiously, and Kitty felt her pulse.
Entrance (unofficial) to the gymnasium was gained by means of the gallery, for the wall-bars prevented ingress by the lower windows. It was not a difficult matter to obtain possession of the groundsman’s ladder, and Laura and Alice soon reared it against the gallery end of the building. The long windows of the gallery were always open, and even if the groundsman came up in search of his ladder and removed it, it was possible (for Alice, the most agile of the three, had tried it as a test exercise once, under the eye of the lecturer) to leave the building by one of the downstairs windows behind the wall-bars. It was tricky, and required, besides a certain amount of careful judgement, the sinuousness of a cat, a monkey or a little boy. Nevertheless, it could be done.
‘Better not make a row going in,’ said Laura, as they eyed the ladder before commencing the ascent, ‘because you never know when Miss Pettinsalt isn’t in there, having a private practice. I suppose these lecturers have to keep up to scratch, and maybe they find Sundays boring, too.’
She led the way, but, upon gaining the window-sill, she signalled the others to be silent. She herself stepped cautiously over the ledge, and made an almost soundless landing on the wooden boards which formed the gallery floor. There was certainly somebody practising in the gymnasium. If it was another student, they could proceed without fear, but if it should prove to be the india-rubber Miss Pettinsalt, then it would be better to give up the attempt and find some other way of getting through the day until tea-time.
She crept to the gallery rail. There was the performer; pretty agile, too, thought Laura, watching the smooth work and beautiful timing.
‘Golly, she’s pukka,’ she thought. She could not, however, recognize the figure, although Miss Topas would not have hesitated. It was not, at any rate, a lecturer. Laura crept back to the window and beckoned her henchmen to mount.
‘Somebody here,’ she whispered. ‘I don’t know who it is, but it ain’t Staff. You have a look, Alice. Don’t let her hear you, if you can help it.’
Alice went forward with the stealth usually associated with Red Indians, gave one glance, and then returned.
‘Oh, that’s Thingummy,’ she remarked. ‘Wizard, isn’t she?’
‘What, that —?’
‘It’s only that woman from Rule Britannia’s. The one at our Practice School. Cornflake. She looks different without her glasses.’
They watched Miss Cornflake as she finished her wall-bar exercises.
‘She’s coming up a rope,’ said Laura. ‘We don’t want to give her a fit of the vapours when she looks along and sees us all parked here like Tom Sawyer at the funeral. Might fall and break her neck. Better get on down.’
This humane suggestion was immediately carried out, so that when Miss Cornflake came level with the gallery it was empty, the Three Musketeers having descended by way of the staircase which came down at the left-hand side of the gymnasium.
Miss Cornflake did not notice them until she reached ground-level. Then her eyebrows shot up and her lip curled back like that of a snarling dog. Her whole demeanour thoroughly alarmed Alice, for whom the wrath of authority had always held that peculiar terror which is the hell of the law-abiding when, by chance, they fall from grace.
‘And what are you people doing here?’ demanded Miss Cornflake.
‘Well, I’m damned!’ said Laura, with a round frankness which astonished two of her hearers and was silently approved of by the third. ‘And who on earth might you be?’
Miss Cornflake was visibly taken aback by this spirited challenge. She appeared to be confused.
‘You startled me. You see, I haven’t permission to be here.’
‘Neither have we, so that’s all right,’ said Laura, climbing out of her skirt, beneath which she was wearing her gymnasium shorts. She climbed the rope which Miss Cornflake had just left swinging, slapped the metal fastening at the top, reversed slowly and gracefully and came down head-first until she was within five or six feet from the floor. Then she reversed again, and dropped to the floor.
‘Good,’ said Miss Cornflake, condescendingly. ‘Well, I’ll just have a short skip and a shower, and then I’m through. I take it you people don’t want your presence advertised?’
‘Up to you,’ said Laura coolly. ‘Our hands are clean.’
This odd expression appeared to disconcert Miss Cornflake. She opened her eyes wide, then opened her mouth as though to reply, but walked off, in the end, without a word. Laura, still holding the rope, gazed after her and watched her take a skipping-rope from the box under the gallery. Miss Cornflake, with lowered gaze, walked past her, and, going to the far end of the hall, began to skip to a measured rhythm and with the automatic concentration of an athlete in training.
Laura, without saying anything more, walked over to the ‘horse’ and began to push it out into the middle of the floor. Alice and Kitty went to her assistance. Miss Cornflake put back her skipping-rope and went off to have her shower.
Laura, however, was thoughtful. When she and her companions had taken their showers, put their towels in the drying cupboard, and gone back to Hall for tea, she would not listen to the chatter about her, but sat with hunched shoulders and ate large quantities of bread, butter and fish paste, obviously brooding so darkly that no one dared interrupt her thoughts.