‘What’s all this about, mum?’
‘I’m looking for Ingersoll Road School. Be so good as to direct me to it, will you? I warn you, I’m a friend of the Superintendent.’
The policeman put his finger in his mouth and sucked it, took it out and looked at it; inserted the fourth finger of his left hand into his right ear; blushed, said: ‘Just a minute,’ unbuttoned a pocket and pulled out a reference book, and said: ‘Ingersoll Road School, let me see.’
At that moment a taxi passed, and Asta Thundersley cried Hey! in a tone that stopped it like an invisible brick wall. As she ran towards the taxi she shouted over her shoulder: ‘And a fat lot of use you are, you parasite! You drain on the public money! You bloated creature! You wait! I’ll show you! Don’t talk to me!’ When she told the taxi-driver to go to Ingersoll Road School he said that it was a matter of a few yards up the road.
‘I wasn’t asking you what it was a matter of. I told you to take me there, didn’t I?’
‘O.K.’
He drove her two hundred yards and stopped in front of a building that stood in the middle of a black rectangle of asphalt surrounded by a red-brick wall, and said: ‘See?’
Asta gave him half a crown and went in at the entrance. under the sign that said GIRLS.
She was aware, first of all, of a smell of chalk. One of the teachers had arrived — a light-haired woman who looked older than her years and had no eyebrows. Asta Thundersley got hold of her and said:
‘Are you the headmistress?’
‘I am Miss Leaf. Is there anything I can do for you?’
‘Give me the headmistress.’
Miss Leaf said: ‘I don’t think she’ll be in for a few minutes. But if there is anything I can do for you —’
‘My name is Asta Thundersley.’
‘Oh yes?’
‘I want to speak to the headmistress. Who is the headmistress?’
‘Miss Handle. If there’s anything I can do … what did you want to speak to her about, if I may ask? I only want to help, you understand…’
Asta Thundersley had followed her into the class-room, hung with maps, educational pictures, and pinned-up pastel drawings of leaves, horse-chestnuts, and bananas. There was desk space for thirty-odd children. At the back of the room there was a big glass-fronted cabinet which contained a peculiar octagonal wheel used for unwinding the cocoons of silk-worms; several birds’ eggs, a walrus’s tusk, some specimens of raw cotton, several lumps of mineral ore, a stuffed sparrow, and a celluloid doll confiscated from a naughty girl who had been caught in the act of nursing it in the course of Long Division.
Asta looked about her. The blackboard was going grey. On the window-ledges there stood pots that sprouted leaves which, to Asta Thundersley, were completely uninteresting. There was also a little tank full of newts and a number of jam-jars containing tadpoles. She had been educated at a private school, a special sort of school, to which parents used to send their more ferocious and unmanageable children. She had never been to a school like this. The first thing she looked for was a safety exit, because her most recent mania had been concerned with exits in case of fire.
‘Say the place catches fire? What happens?’ asked Asta. ‘What’s the first thing you do?’
Miss Leaf said: ‘Save the Register.’
‘Save the Register! I’ve never heard of such a thing in all my life. What about the children?’
‘Oh, they have Fire Drill.’
‘What I wanted to ask you was this: what about Sonia Sabbatani?’
‘She was in my class. The poor little girl!’
‘Was she a good girl?’
‘Oh yes, a very good girl. A little high-spirited. Something of the tomboy. But a good girl, quite definitely a good girl.’
A door slammed. ‘That’ll be Miss Handle,’ said Miss Leaf in a hushed voice. Heavy heels thudded in the passage. Miss Handle came in. Looking at her, Asta observed that after all these years she had come face to face with her match.
‘Yes, madam?’
‘I am making certain enquiries relative to the death of Sonia Sabbatani,’ said Asta. ‘My name is Thundersley.’
‘Well, Miss Thundersley?’
‘Well,’ said Asta, ‘I’ll tell you. I am determined, madam, to get to the bottom of it.’
‘I think the police are best qualified to do that. I realize that individual effort can occasionally attain its ends, but I really do believe that this sort of thing is best approached through the proper channels. I am a very busy woman, Miss Thundersley,’ said Miss Handle, who had seen, in Asta, an adversary of her own calibre.
Asta mentioned the names of three or four well-endowed and influential charitable societies for the prevention of things, of which she was a representative, and said: ‘I’m determined to help dig out the man who killed Sonia Sabbatani. I know that the police are doing whatever police can do, God help ‘em. But you don’t understand how I feel about this.’
‘I think I understand only too well,’ said Miss Handle. ‘But what can you possibly do about it? Have you asked yourself that?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Asta. ‘There’s always a chance in a million that I might just happen to pick up something everyone else has overlooked. It’s been known to happen. Is there nothing you have in mind — you know, something so trivial that it didn’t seem worth mentioning — anything at all about the child or anyone connected with her? The police,’ Asta added, grimly, ‘have to go to work according to their proper procedure, or whatever they call it; but I haven’t got any proper procedure, I can assure you! I’ve only got improper procedure. So —’
‘Miss Thundersley, I believe it to be a fact that outside interference hinders rather than helps the police in such cases.’
‘How could I hinder the police? There’s nothing to hinder them about. They’re up a blind-alley — a blind-alley in a thick fog at that. There’s nothing to work on.’
‘Miss Thundersley, I fancy that the detectives at Scotland Yard are not in the habit of making public every shred of evidence upon which they happen to be working.’
This was unarguable. The headmistress continued: ‘And I have already answered more questions than I believed possible. A charming man, the chief inspector: although not quite like the detective of fiction.’
‘What questions did they ask you?’
‘That is not a proper question to ask, and I don’t think it would be proper to reply to it, Miss Thundersley.’
‘Did they talk to the little girl, Sonia’s friend, who was told by poor Sonia that a friend of her father’s was going to …’ the words stuck in Asta’s throat. ‘…going to Show Her A Secret?
‘Yes, they did talk to Violet Almack. I was there at the time. The chief inspector was most tactful and charming — he put the child quite at her ease at once. She could only repeat what Sonia had said to her: that a friend of her daddy … etcetera, etcetera. Nothing more. And in case you propose to ask Violet about it, I want to say in advance that I strongly disapprove.’
‘No, I don’t propose anything of the sort. Poor little things! Let them have a little bit of innocence while the going’s good! No, no — not for the world. But tell me one thing, Miss Handle. Which way would Sonia have gone home so as to pass by the place where that coal-cellar is?’
‘Well, Miss Thundersley, she might have gone by any of four or five different ways. She might have started in a wrong direction in order to make a game of skill of getting home. You know what high-spirited girls are, I dare say?’
‘I was one myself. But tell me — which way would Sonia have gone if she had been going directly home?’