“Does the High School know?” enquired Laura shrewdly. Young Mr Perse smiled.
“Not yet. I conceived the idea too late in the term—in the middle of G.C.E. and all that—to bother them, but I shall write to Miss Empson immediately after the summer holiday. She’ll be only too glad to allow her girls to take part. I shall need to hold auditions, of course, and to vet the girls for looks and height and so on, and that will take a good deal of my spare time, as it will all have to be done out of school hours, but I feel it’s necessary.”
“Your headmaster is aware of your project and approves of it, I imagine?” said Dame Beatrice. Young Mr Perse looked down at the drink in his glass. He frowned thoughtfully.
“Actually, neither—yet. But he’s bound to think it a thundering good idea. It will be entirely educational, you see, and, in addition, it should put an end, once and for all, to the Cold War.”
“What cold war?” enquired Laura; although she could guess the answer to her question and so was not surprised when it came.
“Why, the cold war between our scholastic establishment for the sons of not quite gentlemen and the High School for Girls, of course.”
“Oh, really?”
“Yes. There was a bit of tension about a year ago on account of the fact that a gang of our nit-wits kidnapped a couple of Fourth Form girls and shut them up in the groundsman’s tool shed, it being his afternoon off. There was no end of a hoo-ha. The girls, who, of course, complained, were brought into our Senior Assembly to identify the culprits. This they failed to do. The school itself stood firmly shoulder to shoulder, so that nothing the Head could think of succeeded in bringing the sinful boys to justice.”
“An unusual state of affairs, surely?”
“I would think so, but, as one would expect, there were wheels within wheels.”
“There always are. What inner wheels in this case?” demanded Laura.
“Well, I happen to be on terms of more than ordinary friendship (as they say) with the junior Maths mistress, and she confided to me that she was fairly certain the kidnapping was a put-up job and had had the full support and connivance of the two girls. It was an odd sort of coincidence, she said, that they should have been kidnapped and locked away on the very afternoon of her end-of-the-year Maths test, Maths being a subject at which they did not shine.”
“Didn’t she make them sit for it next day?” enquired Laura, reminded of her own delinquent youth.
“No. As it happened, the next day the end-of-term inter-House tennis tournament was staged and took all the time there was.”
“They could have missed the tournament for once.”
“That’s just what they couldn’t do. Both were playing for their House, and their housemistress happened to be the formidable Mrs Golightly (but she doesn’t), the senior physics mistress. Science women always seem to me to get it up the nose, and this one is no exception, so poor old Valerie didn’t dare chuck her weight about, and keep the blighters out of the tennis, for fear of offending this frightful woman.”
“How about after school?”
“Well, the school bus, a decrepit affair run by the local motor-coach people, is the sacred cow of the High School’s being, because, for some of the girls, there’s no alternative form of transport unless they come on bikes or (in the case of the privileged Sixth Form) in their own cars. So, as it would be manifestly unfair to keep back those kids who don’t use the school bus, it is an unbreakable rule that nobody is ever kept in after school under any circumstances. Even the school clubs and societies and games practices are all held in the dinner hour.”
“Oh, I see. No wonder the girls found themselves unable to identify your naughty lads. But why the ill-feeling between the two schools?” asked Laura.
“Bless you, there’s no ill-feeling between the two schools; it’s just between the two Heads, whose senior Staff, of course, feel bound to back them up. The High School lady accuses our Old Man of lax discipline, and the Old Man avers that her sexy little madams lead our pure young boys astray.”
“And you really think your pageant will effect a reconciliation? I shouldn’t like to bank on it,” said Laura.
“Oh, well, be that as it may,” said young Mr Perse, airily brushing aside criticism, “what about going and having a look at the spot where the body was found? The simplest, quickest and nicest way from here is to walk along the towing-path. It’s only about a mile, and quite easy going at this time of year. I’ll give your man directions where to pick you up, shall I?”
A lane bordered by trees and a hawthorn hedge led by the side of the public park to a river in which children were bathing. The party, led by Perse, walked along its bank until they came to an iron bridge where the river, at a sharp bend, flowed into the canal. The towing-path was broad and the going was firm. On the water’s edge there were meadow-sweet and purple loosestrife, and on the side next to the park were herb robert, common St John’s wort, bush vetch, silverweed and knotgrass. Quite a country scene, as Laura remarked.
A stroll of just over a quarter of a mile brought the party to a very high, stone-built, narrow, iron-railed bridge, where the towing-path came to an end on the north bank and continued on the opposite side of the canal. An overgrown but obvious path continued, however, along the north bank, and a tiny, rather spiritless weir carried some of the water alongside it. Laura stood and gazed. The overgrown lane looked far more attractive, she thought, than the towing-path they were about to follow on the opposite side of the canal.
“That bit of the stream runs past the lower end of Squire’s Acre, the wooded part,” explained Perse, halting by Laura and following her gaze. “Squire’s Arm they call it. It’s got a bend half-way along it, rather the shape of a slightly-bent elbow, if you’re fanciful. It’s no good going that way if you want to get back into Brayne, though. It joins the canal again, further on, it’s true, but there’s no way of getting back to the towing-path because there isn’t another bridge, so you have to retrace your steps.”
“Is that overgrown path on Batty-Faudrey land? Is it private, I mean?”
“If it is, they don’t bother about it any longer. The Batty-Faudrey woods are railed off against kids because some of them play along the path and pick the wild irises and the dog-roses. It’s true that there is an old picture in Brayne library showing a broad ride down through Squire’s Acre woods to a wooden footbridge, and there’s a stretch of open ground on the opposite side of the river with just a few oak trees and an elm or two. This seems to show that the estate was a lot bigger before the canal was cut than it is now.”
“Talking of oaks,” said Laura, as they crossed the towing-path bridge, “why on earth don’t the Council take down that tree which stands bang in the middle of the public park? It must get horribly in the way when you’re fielding at cricket.”
“Take down the Sacred Oak?—or Hangman’s Oak, as some call it? My darling Auntie Laura, it’s more than our lives would be worth. We’d all be slung out, lock, stock and barrel, at the next Council election! The thing’s holy! Besides, I need it for my pageant.”
“I thought your pageant was going to be held in the Town Hall.”
“So it is, some of it, but before that we’re going to do our Hocking and then dance round the oak to the music, played on recorders, of Mage on a Cree.”
“You mean Sellenger’s Round, a dance obviously intended to be offered to a sacred tree,” said Laura.