‘And when did this happen?’ Mrs Bradley inquired.
‘Last June twelve-month.’
‘Providential,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘And who was Maggie Dalton?’
‘Nobody knew. She was brought up in the Orphanage at Betchdale, so I heard.’
‘No relatives?’
‘Not as far as anybody knew. That all came out at the inquest.’
‘And where was poor Maggie Dalton buried?’
‘The local cemetery here. The one you see over on the right when you get to Collard Swing Bridge.’
‘You’ll have to get permission to exhume her,’ said Mrs Bradley.
‘You don’t mean — she couldn’t have been murdered, madam,’ said the inspector confusedly.
‘No, I know she wasn’t. She died accidentally, just as you have described. I meant that you will have to get permission to open the grave.’
‘Ah, now you’re talking,’ said the inspector. ‘That’s no Home Office job. Ted Parker, at the Cemetery, is my wife’s second cousin. If I can’t do a bit of digging in the cemetery with no questions asked, one night when we get a decent moon, call me a South Sea Islander.’
‘I should like to be present,’ Mrs Bradley observed.
‘And welcome,’ said the inspector heartily. ‘I’ll just have a word with Ted, and let you know.’
The moon was in its third quarter. Digging a grave, Mrs Bradley reflected, was a grisly kind of business, but un-digging it, as her grandson Derek might have said, was weird and ghostly indeed.
The inspector and his wife’s second cousin were the only gardeners. Mrs Bradley, half-hidden in the shade of a yew tree, brooded upon their employment whilst damp clay transferred its clammy coldness to the soles of her shoes, and its chill communicated itself to her bones.
At last the diggers struck upon the coffin and lifted it out. It lay, strange husk, upon the heap of upturned soil.
‘Nought in it. Too light,’ said the wife’s second cousin. He prised off the lid with a crowbar he had brought with him. The coffin stank, but was empty.
Reverently, to Mrs Bradley’s sardonic amusement, the men re-buried it. Mrs Bradley left them to their task — the reward to the wife’s second cousin for his kindly cooperation had been agreed upon beforehand — and went back to Athelstan.
She walked quickly through the College grounds, especially the part near the main gate, and, by a shrubbery, ran as fast as she could, and zigzagged from side to side of the drive. The ambush came just by the rockery, as she was about to ascend the steps which led from the grounds to the gravel.
Mrs Bradley dropped to earth, sheltered in the shadow of the rockery, and, very cautiously, began to stalk her antagonist. The quarry, however, either knew the grounds much better than Mrs Bradley did, or could see in the dark, for Mrs Bradley did not find him or her, and the moonlight was of no assistance whatever. She crawled back to the point at which she had been attacked, picked up the missiles which had been thrown — they were easy enough to see, for they lay far out in the moonlight on the soaking grass of the lawn — and took them into Athelstan with her, two half-bricks, which had been hurled with considerable force.
As she entered the house, stepping quietly and having used her latch-key to get in, she was aware of faint stirrings down in the basement.
She tested the door at the top of the basement stairs, found it locked, as usual, smiled contentedly and then stopped short as a thought struck her, not a pleasant thought, either.
‘Goodness me,’ she said to herself, ‘it’s Lulu’s job to see that that door is locked. I suppose the maids forgot it in the half-term week-end, and that’s how she managed to get up here and cut that poor girl’s hair!’
Chapter 17
NYMPHS AND SATYRS
« ^ »
‘You know, there’s a lot of fetishism in the preparation of vegetables — in fact, in all cooking,’ said Laura, roaming about the Athelstan kitchen (against all College regulations, needless to say) in quest of what she might devour.
‘That there isn’t!’ said Bella, promoted to cook. ‘And I wonder at you, Miss Menzies, using language like that!’
‘But — well, take brussels sprouts,’ for example,‘ pursued the educationist, discovering a jar of raspberry jam and helping herself to it by spreading it on a biscuit she had previously purloined. ’Now I bet you anything you like that when you do brussels sprouts you cut up each little stalk in the shape of a cross. Don’t you?’
‘Yes, so does everybody else, miss, and I hope you know that these here provisions have got to last the month. There’s been trouble already, the way they’ve disappeared. I don’t know what the Warden would think if she was to come in here now this minute and find you eating biscuits and jam and sultanas, the way you are.’
‘Being a sensible woman, duck, she’d suppose, correctly, that I was putting to the proof the College memo. on the subject.’
‘What’s that, miss?’
‘Well,’ said Laura, poking interestedly underneath the top layer of a large tin, ‘don’t they call this stuff consumable stock?’
‘Now, look, Miss Menzies,’ said Bella, removing the Bovril bottle out of reach, and firmly handing Laura a clean damp swab on which to wipe sticky fingers, ‘if you’ll promise to leave the things alone and go back and get on with whatever you’re supposed to be doing, and stop hindering me and getting in Lulu’s way with that tray for the Warden’s elevenses, I’ll tell you a secret, so be you won’t let it get round.’
‘I’m on,’ said Laura, wiping busily and finishing off on a clean handkerchief. She seated herself on a corner of the table. ‘Spill. Half a minute, though. Can’t I tell anybody at all?’
‘Well,’ said Bella, ‘I suppose you could tell Miss Boorman. She’s a quiet little thing. But don’t you go telling Miss Trevelyan. I know her. It’ll be all over College before you can say Jack Robinson.’
‘Not if I swear her to silence, Bella. Come on. Just those two and no more.’
‘Well, if you think…’
‘I do think. Go on. You know you want to tell someone. Is it about your boy friend?’
‘Go on with you!’ said Bella, delighted. ‘And me been married these thirteen years, going on!’
‘Go on, you’ve not. I don’t believe it! You wouldn’t have a resident job if you were married! Who makes his evening cup of cocoa?’
‘I’m sure I don’t know, miss. He’s a sailor.’
‘Oh, I couldn’t stick that! Well, go on. What’s this yarn?’
‘You’ll never guess, so I’ll tell you. You know the end-of-the-year summer dance, when the young gentlemen get invitations, and the young ladies’ brothers and their other friends can come?’
‘Yep. Though I haven’t experienced it yet.’
‘Well, you’re going to, miss. The Warden has made a very special point with Miss du Mugne, and it’s to be held at the Half-Term, or, rather, the Saturday night after, young gentlemen, cousins and all.’
‘Well!’ said Laura, jumping off the table. ‘Well, what do you say! Hot dog, Bella! I’ll have the Warden chaired from the bakehouse to Rule Britannia’s! Well, well, well! I never did! And they say the age of miracles is past! When’s the good news to be spread?’
‘That’s for Miss du Mugne to say, miss. Now don’t you go blurting it out and saying I told you, mind!’
‘Trust your Auntie! And — Bella! Grub?’
‘Ices and all, miss. Yes, the Warden said special as all the food was on her.’
‘The Warden said that all the food was on her,’ repeated Laura thoughtfully. ‘Hm! Knowing the Warden’s very sound attitude towards food, I am inclined, in no conservative spirit, to say Whoopee!’
Mrs Bradley had had some initial difficulty in convincing the Principal that the Half-Term Dance, as it was called as soon as tidings of it were broadcast to a surprised and enraptured College, was a necessity in helping to forward the ends of justice.