“Somebody in the grounds?” Clare repeated slowly. “Last Friday night? It couldn't have been.”
“That's what I said to myself,” Reenie nodded. “But I put my spectacles on immediately and had another look and there was no doubt about it. Somebody was walking up to the school from the direction of the big beech−tree by the wall. But you don't have to rely on just my evidence. I was so surprised—I must admit I was frightened too—it moved, you know, furtively—I woke Elsie up. Elsie Butterfield, you know. We share a room.”
“And Elsie saw it too?”
“Yes. Yes, well...” Reenie was a little less confident. “Just a glimpse, I think, because it had got to the corner of the building by then, and it sort of slunk round, close to the wall. But Elsie did say she saw it just before it disappeared, and she was quite awake then.”
“I think the pair of you must have been dreaming,” Clare said flatly. “There's nowhere where anybody can possibly get into the grounds except perhaps by the gardener's cottage, and then Williams's dog would have raised Cain.” Clare could assert that with confidence. They had always given the gardener's cottage a wide berth in their night prowlings long ago. “Have you asked Williams whether he heard anything that night?”
“No,” Reenie replied. “We haven't said a word to anybody yet. We discussed whether we should report it to Miss Linskill, but I thought it ought to be done through you as Head Prefect, and Elsie agreed.”
Clare was relieved. “That was sensible. After all, there's probably a perfectly simple explanation. I can't believe anybody would be trying to burgle Paston Hall.”
“That's what Elsie said. Though there is the tennis cup in the Hall. But I don't think this was a burglar, you see, it was the figure of a girl!”
“A girl!”
Reenie looked very gratified at the astonishment in Clare's voice. Clare had been preparing herself to hear the description of a man—the one man who had his night rambles on the other side of the wall and who, Reenie's tale had made her fear, might have extended them now. But a girl—
“Yes,” Reenie said, “a girl, or a woman. But I think it was a girl because she had a grey coat on, just like a school coat, and she was bare−legged, unless she was wearing flesh−coloured stockings—I couldn't be sure of that; but it was a short coat. She hadn't a hat on and I think her hair was light, though the moonlight may have made it look like that. It was short, anyway. I wish I could give a better description, but being so surprised, you see, and not having my glasses on at first, and then her slinking round close to the side of the building...”
“Which way did she go?” Clare asked sharply.
“Round the end of the East Wing, you know, turning round the corner of the gym, towards the Prefects' Room....”
Clare jumped suddenly to her feet.
“Good Lord!” she cried in dismay. “What a fool I am!”
Reenie goggled up at her blankly and Clare recovered her wits.
“Look here,” she said, lowering her voice and throwing all the importance she could into her tone. “I've suddenly remembered something that may have a bearing on this— something that had clean gone out of my mind until just now. Will you and Elsie keep absolutely quiet about this? Not mention it to another soul for a day or two? Just let me see if my idea's right or not. We may make asses of ourselves if we blab it out before doing our own bit of sleuthing.”
“You mean you've got a clue?” Reenie asked.
Clare was already moving away. “It may be—of a sort; I must check it first.”
She hurried back to the school building, ran up to her room, slammed the door and threw open her cupboard. There she began hunting through an untidy pile of papers, old exercise books, loose notes and letters—letters from her mother and father and from old friends departed from Preston Hall. She could not help exclaiming with impatience as she searched, accusing herself fiercely of her own negligence and stupidity. It took her ten minutes to find what she was looking for: five or six pages of a letter stuffed back into the envelope and left largely unread.
She had received it soon after the beginning of term, from Helen Gray who had left school at the end of the previous summer term. Helen had written a gossipy letter about her Christmas holiday in Switzerland and about her settling down to a job in London. It had all seemed a little remote and unreal to Clare then, dwelling as she was, heart and soul, in Brackenbine, and she had not persevered in deciphering all the vile scrawl of ill−shaped, uncertain characters sloping in every possible direction. She had meant to read it all at greater leisure, and she had simply forgotten it. Now, one passage through which she had skimmed, picking out the more legible words, had come vividly back, shocking her like the blow of a hand on her cheek.
She looked quickly over the pages to find the passage:
“Simply marvellous time at [illegible]... last holiday for donkey's years ... drudging in an office now... bookkeeping. Me!!!” Clare dropped the pages on the floor. Now she had it, on the last page.
“Should have told you we met Judy at [quite illegible]. Great fun, she and I and our cousin Harry, and of course, three of us all from Paston Hall, because Jennifer was with us too, we spent a lot of time reminiscing about the Prison House and the Ghoul. Do you know we both said the best things we ever did were those midnight picnics we used to go on, with you and Pamela and the rest of our gang. Jennifer said she couldn't believe you ever did such things because you were such a serious and dignified person. It seems nobody ever discovered our way out. Jennifer didn't know about it till I told her....”
Clare spelled all this passage out now carefully for the first time. She pushed the pages back in the envelope. Clearly the secret of the Prefects' Room window had been blown wide open since Christmas.
She considered Jennifer Gray, Helen's younger sister. She was in the Fourth Form and would be fifteen now, she supposed. Clare knew her by sight because she was a conspicuously good−looking girl among a uniformly dowdy lot of Middle School kids. She had naturally−curling, light−brown hair bobbed short, large blue eyes, and a figure that had somehow escaped the gawky stage of development and passed straight from baby chubbiness to a soft and supple grace. Of her character Clare knew next to nothing; she had only an impression, from remarks overheard among the Prefects, that Jennifer was pert, rather spoilt and insubordinate. She might Well be adventurous enough, also, to put to the test what Helen had told her about the ease with which one could climb out of school.
If that were so, Clare sympathised and was inclined to do nothing about it. She might persuade Reenie Ford that the shape she had seen at an eerie hour of the setting moon was a ghost, or—with sudden inspiration—Miss Geary. There was no reason why one of the teachers shouldn't walk in the grounds at any hour she chose, and Miss Geary was known to sleep badly. That would carry conviction. But then, regretfully, she saw that she would have to do something about the incident. While she remained at Paston Hall a private exit would have its uses. If Jennifer and a whole gang of Fourth Formers took to using it they would sooner or later be found out; there would be the father−and−mother of a row, and the end of it would be that Miss Sperrod would have the Prefects' Room window barred as all the other ground−floor windows, except those in the Sanatorium, were. Clare saw nothing for it but to catch Jennifer or her friends in the act and somehow put a stop to their excursions without letting the secret spread any further than it had done.