‘Well, come out, pig, and let somebody else have a go,’ suggested Kitty. ‘There’s still Alice after me to have her turn.’
‘And two more,’ said Alice’s voice from the landing. ‘Oh! Hi! Let me in! Here’s the Warden!’
Kitty obligingly unlocked the door. Alice slipped in, and the ‘two more’ scurried hastily into study-bedrooms.
‘Good night, students,’ said Mrs Bradley primly. This benediction was followed by a distinctly masculine laugh.
‘Golly!’ said Laura coarsely. ‘She’s taking a man to bed!’
‘I bet it’s the Deb, not her,’ said Kitty, antedating by a mere couple of months an interesting and, to Deborah, a dreaded ceremony. ‘Wonder what Mrs Croc. has been doing with herself all the evening?’
Laura, who knew, had too much loyalty and discretion even to look wise.
‘Come on, young Alice,’ she said. ‘You’d better just take a shower. The bath water makes such a hell of a row running out.’
This order was well received by Alice, and the three were soon in their adjacent cubicles and in bed.
‘What happened to Cornflake?’ asked Kitty suddenly. ‘I didn’t seem to spot her at the revels.’
‘Didn’t you? Who cares, anyway?’ said Laura, sleepily. Kitty took the hint, and turned over. Miss Cornflake was, as a matter of fact, in her own study-bedroom at Columba, having pushed under the Warden’s door an ultimatum to the effect that she wanted an interview in the morning on a question of serious ragging.
The Warden granted the interview, and Miss Topas, brought into an affair with which the Warden of Columba felt incapable of dealing, observed that the matter was already under consideration by the Principal, the students concerned having confessed their crime.
‘They were Athelstan students,’ she added, soothingly.
‘I am sorry for Mrs Bradley. There seems to be a most undesirable element in Athelstan this year, from what one can gather,’ said the Warden, when Miss Cornflake, protesting still, had been ushered out of the presence, and bidden to catch her train.
Laura and Kitty watched her go. The students and their suitcases were all allotted to buses, and theirs was the fourth to go off, Miss Cornflake’s the second.
‘So that’s that,’ said Laura, climbing into the bus. ‘What’s the date we come back on, again?’
‘Twenty-fourth of Jan.,’ replied Kitty. Alice, whose train went a good deal later than theirs, was on bus fifteen. ‘Happy Christmas, and all that.’
‘Incidentally,’ said Kitty, before they parted at the station, ‘does it strike you that there is a certain sort of fat satisfaction on Mrs Croc’s face this morning?’
‘It hadn’t struck me,’ said Laura, torn between two loyalties, and therefore lying boldly. ‘Don’t forget the twenty-seventh at Charing Cross. District Station, mind, and the Embankment entrance. Bung-ho!’
During College vacations the servants stayed up for two or three days to clear up and scrub through, as Kitty put it, and then were put on board wages until three days before the return of the students. The Chief Engineer and the Infirmary Matron, having their own quarters, often stayed up all the time. The Principal usually stayed up for an extra day or two after the students had gone, and Mrs Bradley had decided to wait until the College was empty before communicating to Miss du Mugne her discovery. With this aim, she waited until the Saturday before producing her evidence. Then, with George’s assistance, she carried up to her sitting-room the damaged trunk of the younger twin, Miss Annet Carroway.
‘Let’s lock the contents up in here, George,’ she said, indicating a large cupboard. ‘Then you can take the trunk down again.’
The contents surprised George, although he had been in Mrs Bradley’s employment for some years. They comprised human bones.
‘Pretty work, George, don’t you think?’ she asked, taking them out one by one. ‘See how beautifully they were articulated before somebody took the skeleton to pieces.’
She showed him the ingenious wiring.
‘Then I take it this is not the remains of the missing lady, madam?’ George inquired.
‘No. This is the skeleton of a man. Look at the length of leg, the magnificent jaws, the size and strength of the bones. Besides, this person has been dead for a good many years, by the look of him, and has been used, I should say, for demonstration lessons to students.’
‘A kind of doctor’s piece, madam?’
‘Well, something of that sort; or possibly for physiology lessons to students in training here. If so, we shall soon get some information about him, I’ve no doubt.’
This information she sought immediately, by going to the Principal with her news. Miss du Mugne ordered coffee and talked about College affairs until it came. When the maid had gone she said:
‘What exactly has happened, then?’
‘I’ve found the wrong skeleton,’ said Mrs Bradley; and proceeded to explain.
‘It sounds like another of those silly practical jokes which have been perpetrated in Athelstan all this term,’ said the Principal. Mrs Bradley agreed, with disarming meekness, that it did sound exactly like that. ‘I suppose you’ve no suspicions of anyone?’ the Principal continued. ‘I know you don’t like the suggestion, but I still think Miss Menzies, of your Hall, could be watched with advantage. She came up with a bad reputation.’
‘For ragging,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘And Miss Cloud came with a bad reputation for not being able to keep order. I’ve seen no evidence yet to support either contention. Besides, the disturbances of one kind and another which we have suffered at Athelstan since September have been directed chiefly at me, and in such circumstances that Miss Menzies can scarcely come under suspicion.’
‘Well, you know your students better than I do, of course,’ said the Principal, in a tone which indicated that she did not believe this, ‘but such a business as purloining and breaking up the College skeleton certainly seems to me like a stupid, would-be joke on the part of some of the students.’
‘Even so,’ said Mrs Bradley, ‘it would help considerably if we could prove that the bones I have found are those of the College skeleton. Would you be able to recognize them?’
‘Oh, good gracious, Mrs Bradley!’ said the Principal, losing her calmness entirely. ‘You — you’re not suggesting —? I thought you said just now —?’
‘Not suggesting that these are Miss Murchan’s bones? No, I am not. The skeleton is not only that of a man, but the bones have been wired to give articulation — so necessary in demonstrations to a physiology group, for example.’
The Principal sat down again. Her face took on a look of regret struggling with its customary expression of benign conceit. The look of regret — to the credit of her intellectual conscience — won fairly easily.
‘I am sorry to say that I could not possibly undertake to recognize the College skeleton except as a skeleton,’ she said. ‘I mean that if you offered me a collection of well-articulated skeletons to choose from, I could not possibly pick out the one used here in the physiology or physical training classes.’
‘Oh — you use the skeleton for the physical training classes, do you?’
‘Certainly.’
‘Let me congratulate you,’ said Mrs Bradley, poking her in the ribs with a remarkably bony forefinger, and thus obtaining unintentional but indubitable revenge for the slights proffered, earlier in the interview, towards her students. ‘But tell me,’ she added, as the writhing Miss du Mugne eluded her torturing hand, ‘when can I see the College skeleton and how unlock the cupboard in which it is kept?’
‘I have a key.’ The Principal, smiling wanly, produced it. Mrs Bradley thanked her, and rose to go. As she came out of the Principal’s office she saw Deborah.
‘Why, what on earth are you doing here, child?’ she asked. ‘I thought you went home two days ago, and took my nephew with you.’