‘She’s not one of mine.’
‘No. I must seek her in Miss Considine’s house. What is the rule about visitors here?’
‘Students’ visitors?’
‘Yes. Is it ever possible, for example, for the college to put them up?’
‘Oh, yes, if there is any special reason.’
‘What sort of circumstances would furnish a special reason?’
‘At half-term, when most of the students take a long weekend, it is possible for a girl staying up to have a sister or friend to spend the weekend here to keep her company or to use the college as a base from which to go sightseeing.’
‘I was not thinking of holiday times.’
‘Oh, I see. Well, during term we can accommodate very few visitors. In fact, we don’t encourage them at all, except for tea on Saturdays and Sundays, and then they are expected not to arrive before three and to leave before eight.’
‘How many visitors could you accommodate here at any one time, apart from during half-term?’
‘Two only, unless any students have taken a weekend pass. I have two rooms with twin beds. College rules allow each student a room to herself because she has to use it for study as well as for sleep, so, you see, it would be possible for those two extra beds to go to visitors.’
‘Have you so allotted them at any time during this term?’
‘No, I have not been asked to do so.’
‘Suppose that a student in another hostel, or living in the students’ wing of the main college building, wanted to have a visitor for the weekend who could not be accommodated there, would it be possible for an exchange of rooms to be made?’
‘I should strongly oppose such an arrangement. In fact, unless Miss McKay made a personal approach to me over such an exchange, I certainly shouldn’t sanction it. The students get quite enough distraction here without dodging about from hostel to hostel, swapping beds.’ She grinned disarmingly.
‘I certainly sympathise with your point of view,’ said Dame Beatrice, returning the grin with an alligator leer which appeared to startle her companion.
‘Of course,’ Miss Paterson added, ‘what the students can contrive by means of private arrangements among themselves is another matter entirely.’
‘Ah!’ said Dame Beatrice, with a wealth of satisfaction in her tone. ‘May I have a word with Miss Bellman?’
‘Certainly, so far as I’m concerned. The trouble may be to find out where she is and what she’s doing, and it may be something that she can’t stop doing until she’s through with it. You know what this place is like! I’ll ring through to the secretary’s office and find out which group she’s in, and then the big time-table outside the Principal’s room will show where she’s most likely to be, or, at least, who’s supposed to be in charge of her.’
It turned out that Miss Bellman was in Private Study, which was (or should have been), by interpretation, in the library. She was not to be found there. This did not appear to cause Miss Paterson the least degree of surprise.
‘The little cormorants spend all their private study periods at the buffet counter,’ she explained. ‘I should have been surprised if we had found her in here. Still, one was bound to try. Come along. I could do with a coffee and doughnut myself. It’s astonishing how hungry one gets. It’s the very good air about these parts, I suppose. And the students do a great deal of really tough physical work, of course.’
The buffet counter was at one end of the college dining-room and was thronged with students, some of whom looked guilty, some smug (those who had a Free, Miss Paterson explained), some slightly defiant. They made way for the lecturer and her visitor, and Miss Paterson ordered coffee and doughnuts and then arrested the flight of Miss Bellman with a peremptory announcement that Dame Beatrice would like to speak to her and that she was to bring ‘that revolting repast’ to one of the dining tables so that they could obtain a little privacy away from the other students.
Miss Bellman, bearing two Cornish pasties and two cakes lavishly decorated with synthetic cream, followed her hostel head to a table and returned for a jug of cocoa and a large china mug.
‘For heaven’s sake, don’t stop eating,’ said Miss Paterson, herself dunking a doughnut, ‘and do try to answer Dame Beatrice intelligently. Now, Dame Beatrice.’
‘I think,’ said Dame Beatrice, ‘that Miss Bellman might prefer that my questions be put and replied to in private. Let us all refresh ourselves, and then, perhaps…’
‘Oh, I see. Yes. All right, Bellman. Rejoin the herd and then, by the time you get back here, I shall be gone.’
Miss Bellman, with a grateful glance at Dame Beatrice, made her two journeys back to the buffet counter with her provender, and Dame Beatrice, refusing sustenance in the form of the doughnuts, sipped coffee and listened to Miss Paterson’s comments on the mentality of students past and present whilst the lecturer disposed of two doughnuts and left the others ‘for Bellman, who’ll be sure to be able to gobble them up, however much food she’s had already.’
She had scarcely vanished through the swing doors when Miss Bellman, who, Dame Beatrice decided, must have been watching for this exit, came up to the table. Dame Beatrice presented her with the doughnuts.
‘You know P. G. Wodehouse,’ said Miss Bellman, seating herself and seizing one of the gifts. ‘Well, when he talks about starving pythons, it’s really nothing to what we get like in this place. Myself, I think we’re overworked and it’s nature’s way of ensuring that we don’t drop down dead. I never eat like this at home. Did you want to talk about Norah?’
‘Yes, of course. Miss Bellman, what sort of person was she? I know you’ve been asked this before, but is there anything you can add, I wonder?’
‘I’d call her the lone wolf type.’
‘Both lone and wolf?’
‘Eh? Oh, I see what you mean. Yes, I think she was a bit predatory. This boy Coles, you know. I bet, if you could find out the truth, that she married him, if you see what I mean. Otherwise, why an art student with no money? He can’t be much of a catch.’
‘How well did you know her?’
‘Well, we were at school together, and when we both planned to come here she suggested we tried to get into the same hostel. I wanted to be in the main building, but she wouldn’t hear of that. She said we’d be so much more independent in a hostel, and that she’d heard there was more chance of getting weekend passes and late leaves if you weren’t directly under the Prin.’s eye. So I gave way. You could have blown me over when she told me she was married. She never, in the ordinary way, told anybody anything. Of course, she swore me to secrecy and, as I couldn’t see any reason why I shouldn’t promise, I did. If I’d blabbed, it would have been all over the college grape-vine in no time, and the lecturers would have been bound to get wind of it. I don’t suppose the Prin. would have minded, in a way, but, of course, she’d have been bound to keep an eye on Coles to make sure her work wasn’t suffering, and that sort of thing’s such a bind! So I kept it to myself until, well, it sort of had to come out after we knew about the murder.’
‘Did her sister ever visit her in college?’
Miss Bellman, who had a mouthful of doughnut, choked.
‘No. I had heard at school that she’d got an older sister, but it seemed there’d been trouble at home and she never mentioned her after we got here,’ she said, as soon as she could utter.
‘Come, Miss Bellman! You know better than that! Please be frank.’
‘I can guess what you’re going to ask me, and there’s nothing I can tell you,’ said the student, very red in the face.
‘I see. Very well, Miss Bellman. I respect your loyalty, although I deplore your reticence—at least, on this occasion. Thank you for the help you have so far given me.’