"You and I will go to the gymnasium, Froken," Henrietta said, and they went out together, the rest of the Staff trailing after them but not following them out to the gymnasium. It was only on the way upstairs to make her bed that it occurred to Lucy to think: "I could have told them that she wasn't in the gymnasium. How silly of me not to think of it." She tidied her room-a task that the students were expected to perform for themselves and which she thought it only fair that she likewise should do for herself- wondering all the time where Rouse could have disappeared to. And why. Could she suddenly have failed again this morning to do that simple boom exercise and been overtaken by a crise des nerfs? That was the only explanation that would fit the odd fact of any College student missing a meal; especially breakfast.
She crossed into the "old house" and went down the front stairs and out into the garden. From the office came Henrietta's voice talking rapidly to someone on the telephone, so she did not interrupt her. There was still more than half an hour before Prayers; she would spend it reading her mail in the garden, where the mist was rapidly lifting and a shimmer had come into the atmosphere that had been so dead a grey. She went to her favourite seat at the far edge of the garden overlooking the countryside, and it was not until nine o'clock that she came back. There was no doubt about the weather now: it was going to be a lovely day; Henrietta's «tragedy» was not going to happen.
As she came round the corner of the house an ambulance drove away from the front door down the avenue. She looked at it, puzzled; but decided that in a place like this an ambulance was not the thing of dread that it was to the ordinary civilian. Something to do with the clinic, probably.
In the drawing-room, instead of the full Staff muster demanded by two minutes to nine o'clock, there was only Miss Lux.
"Has Rouse turned up?" Lucy asked.
"Yes."
"Where was she?"
"In the gymnasium, with a fractured skull."
Even in that moment of shock Lucy thought how typical of Lux that succinct sentence was. "But how? What happened?"
"The pin that holds up the boom wasn't properly in. When she jumped up to it it came down on her head."
"Good heavens!" Lucy could feel that inert log crash down on her own skull; she had always hated the boom.
"Froken has just gone away with her in the ambulance to West Larborough."
"That was smart work."
"Yes. West Larborough is not far, and luckily at this hour of the morning the ambulance hadn't gone out, and once it was on the way here there was no traffic to hold it up."
"What dreadful luck for everyone. On Demonstration Day."
"Yes. We tried to keep it from the students but that was hopeless, of course. So all we can do is to minimise it."
"How bad is it, do you think?"
"No one knows. Miss Hodge has wired to her people."
"Weren't they coming to the Dem.?"
"Apparently not. She has no parents; just an aunt and uncle who brought her up. Come to think of it," she added after a moment's silence, "that is what she looked like: a stray." She did not seem to notice that she had used the past tense.
"I suppose it was Rouse's own fault?" Lucy asked.
"Or the student who helped her put up the thing last night."
"Who was that?"
"O'Donnell, it seems. Miss Hodge has sent for her to ask her about it."
At that moment Henrietta herself came in, and all the vague resentments that Lucy had been nursing against her friend in the last few days melted at sight of Henrietta's face. She looked ten years older, and in some odd fashion at least a stone less heavy.
"They have a telephone, it seems," she said, continuing the subject that was the only one in her mind, "so I shall be able to talk to them perhaps before the telegram reaches them. They are getting the trunk call for me now. They should be here before night. I want to be available for the telephone call, so will you take Prayers, Miss Lux. Froken will not be back in time." Froken was, as Senior Gymnast, second in rank to Miss Hodge. "Miss Wragg may not be at Prayers; she is getting the gymnasium put to rights. But Madame will be there, and Lucy will back you up."
"But of course," said Lucy. "I wish there was something more that I could do."
There was a tap at the door, and O'Donnell appeared.
"Miss Hodge? You wanted to see me?"
"Oh, in my office, Miss O'Donnell."
"You weren't there, so I-"
"Not that it matters, now that you are here. Tell me: when you put up the boom with Miss Rouse last night-It was you who helped her?"
"Yes, Miss Hodge."
"When you put up the boom with her, which end did you take?"
There was a tense moment of silence. It was obvious that O'Donnell did not know which end of the boom had given way and that what she said in the next few seconds would either damn her or save her. But when she spoke it was with a sort of despairing resolution that stamped what she said with truth.
"The wall end, Miss Hodge."
"You put the pin into the upright that is fixed to the wall?"
"Yes."
"And Miss Rouse took care of the upright in the middle of the floor."
"Yes, Miss Hodge."
"You have no doubt as to which end you attended to?"
"No, none at all."
"Why are you so certain?"
"Because I always did do the end by the wall."
"Why was that?"
"Rouse is taller than I am and could shove the boom higher than I could. So I always took the end by the wall so that I could put a foot in the rib-stalls when I was putting the pin in."
"I see. Very well. Thank you, Miss O'Donnell, for being so frank."
O'Donnell turned to go, and then turned back.
"Which end came down, Miss Hodge?"
"The middle end," Miss Hodge said, looking with something like affection on the girl, though she had been on the point of letting her go without putting her out of suspense.
A great wave of colour rushed into O'Donnell's normally pale face. "Oh, thank you!" she said, in a whisper, and almost ran out of the room.
"Poor wretch," said Lux. "That was a horrible moment for her."
"It is most unlike Miss Rouse to be careless about apparatus," Henrietta said thoughtfully.
"You are not suggesting that O'Donnell is not telling the truth?"
"No, no. What she said was obviously true. It was the natural thing for her to take the wall end where she would have the help of the rib-stalls. But I still cannot see how it happened. Apart from Miss Rouse's natural carefulness, a pin would have to be very badly put in indeed for it to be so far not in that it let the boom come down. And the hoisting rope so slack that it let the boom fall nearly three feet!"
v "I suppose Giddy couldn't have done something to it accidentally?"
"I don't know what he could have done to it. You can't alter a pin put in at that height without stretching up deliberately to it. It is not as if it were something he might possibly touch with his apparatus. And much as he prides himself on the strength of The Abhorrence there is no suction that will pull a pin out from under a boom."
"No." Lux thought a little. "Vibration is the only kind of force that would alter a pin's position. Some kind of tremor. And there was nothing like that."
"Not inside the gymnasium, certainly. Miss Rouse locked it as usual last night and gave the key to Giddy, and he unlocked it just after first bell this morning."