‘Well, yes,’ agreed the fair-minded Miss McKay. ‘I’d better telephone Highpepper and ask which of their students is missing. Oh, dear! How tiresome these children can be! And just when we’ve got these wretched thefts on our hands! I suppose there’s no connection?’
‘Miss Paterson would not care to hear you suggest it.’
‘Well, more of her students have missed money and valuables than people in other hostels.’
‘But she says this missing girl is rich. Are you suggesting we are harbouring a kleptomaniac?’
‘No. Everything that gets lost is an article of intrinsic worth—watches, a ring, a bracelet, jewelled earrings, money. I wish to goodness the little idiots would leave their boyfriends’ presents at home instead of flaunting them here.’
‘But where would be the fun in that? Rivalry is the spice of life when you’re young. Oh, here’s Miss Paterson back again.’
It was not the custom at Calladale for lecturers to knock formally on the door when they wished to consult their Principal, Miss McKay regarding this as an unnecessary waste of time. Miss Paterson, therefore, came striding in, and announced, with an air of triumph:
‘There’s no need to telephone Highpepper, unless you wish.’
‘Not Highpepper? Why, where else would one of our students find a man romantic and foolish enough to run off with her?’ demanded Miss McKay.
‘I didn’t mean that. I meant that if a Highpepper youth is involved, the students in my hostel will be certain to know who he is. You could then attack from that angle.’
‘Something in that.’ But Miss McKay was not wholly convinced. She decided to telephone Highpepper, only to learn that none of the student body was unaccounted for.
‘Staff?’ demanded Miss McKay, resolved to leave no stone unturned.
‘Come, come,’ said Mr Sellaclough, soothingly. ‘All the same, if you’ll hold on, I’ll send round. Well, it will take some time. Suppose I ring you back?’
Miss McKay agreed to this, thanked him and added that, naturally, she was rather worried. This was not the attitude she took at the high table that evening at supper, to which Carey had been invited.
‘It isn’t a Highpepper thing,’ she announced to the table at large. ‘There is nobody there unaccounted for. It means, in my experience, that the girl is in a pet, or is feeling worried about her work, and has slipped off home. I haven’t telephoned her people because it is up to them to let me know she is there. Of course, if they haven’t telephoned by noon tomorrow I shall have to contact them. If nothing is known of her there, I shall get in touch with the police, but that should hardly be necessary. It would be such a boring thing for the college if anything got into the papers. You remember the case of that Miss Diggins we had?’
Murmurs from the senior members of the staff could be taken as agreement that they did remember the case of Miss Diggins.
‘The little silly who ran off to her married sister because she couldn’t face her preliminary “Perennials” viva,’ translated Miss Considine helpfully.
‘That’s the girl.’
‘Yes, that was scarcely very sinister,’ said Miss Paterson. ‘So you think she has just run home? Yet I shouldn’t have thought it, you know. She certainly wasn’t the type to worry about her work, although I will admit that, so far this term, it hasn’t come up to standard. Still, I believe it to be quite good. Oh, it will all turn out to have a perfectly ordinary explanation, I’m sure. It’s quite a mistake to panic.’
‘I wouldn’t care to state that it will turn out to have an ordinary explanation,’ said Carey. ‘I don’t know much about the psychology of girls, but, taking into consideration all the facts, I should call this whole business rather odd. Of course, there may be no connection between the three things, but— what have we experienced already this term? First, there was that outbreak of hooliganism, about which we still know nothing. Then we have the headless ghost seen by Miss Good. Now—a missing student who isn’t being run off with by one of the lads at Highpepper, and who has been gone longer than seems reasonable. If you don’t want to call in the police, why don’t you call in my aunt? She’s the soul of discretion, and will sort it all out in no time.’
‘But Dame Beatrice could not possibly be interested,’ protested Miss McKay.
‘Why not? Look here, you call her in. I’ll guarantee she’ll come like a shot unless she’s tied up with some conference or lecture programme or something.’
‘I could hardly hope…’
‘Would you like me to call her?’
‘Well…’
‘She’ll do a lot for a favourite nephew.’ He liked and respected Miss McKay. ‘I can understand that you don’t want the police butting in until we know there’s real cause. After all, the girl’s of age. There’s nothing to stop her going off with a man, which is what I, personally, would rather bet she’s done. What kind of girl is she?’
Miss McKay repeated what she had been told by the various lecturers and then added:
‘You’ve only had her in your pig-keeping classes for a week or two, I know, but I should be interested to hear what you made of her.’
Carey wrinkled his brow.
‘She seemed rather a self-contained sort of girl, I thought, and rather more mature in her outlook than some of them. She was quiet and worked well—seemed to take her training very seriously indeed. I got the impression that she was trying to learn all she could as quickly as she could. In fact, I used to wonder whether she hadn’t a stronger motive than some of them for taking the course at all.’
‘I don’t think her people were very keen. She was acting partly in opposition to them, I believe. I’m glad to hear on all sides that she was such a keen student, except that it makes her absence from the college all the more unaccountable. If you really think Dame Beatrice would come…’
‘I’ll telephone her at once. No, come to think of it, I’ve a free afternoon tomorrow because of that film show you’re putting on in the lecture hall. I’ll go over and see her, and bring her back with me, unless, as I say, she’s dated up.’
His aunt, as usual, was delighted to see him, invited him to dinner and to stay the night, and promised to go back with him to Calladale in the morning. Carey telephoned Jenny to let her know where he was, and settled down to enjoy his evening.
After dinner he gave the elderly, quick-eyed and beaky-mouthed Dame Beatrice, psychiatrist and consulting psychologist to the Home Office, an account of the several happenings at Calladale since he had joined the staff there. She listened without interruption until he had finished.
‘Well?’ he said, after a lengthy silence had succeeded his remarks. Dame Beatrice shook her head.
‘I think we may discount the original work of destruction,’ she said. ‘It was almost certainly carried out by a gang of louts. In putting matters to rights, the students, you say, came across alien matter in the form of rhubarb crowns and the decomposed carcasses of rats. These, you believe, may have represented a long-term (so to speak) bit of ragging on the part of some men-students from Highpepper. There follows the appearance of this ghostly figure on horseback seen only by Miss Good…’
‘But testified to by the dumb mouths of Miss Gonsidine’s brussels sprouts, don’t forget…’
‘… coupled with the disappearance of Miss Palliser.’
‘We don’t know that it was coupled with it, you know. There’s a considerable time-lag between Saturday and Thursday. Besides, if anybody wanted to spirit the girl away, it was surely a damn’ silly way to do it?’
‘I don’t see that. A motor-car or motor-cycle would have been noisy.’
‘Do you suppose the girl was a consenting party to being carried away?’