"Most of the staff are new to me," Mrs. Bradley remarked. "But of course, it is ten years since I was here. The housekeeper you have now, for instance——"
"Yes, they are all new except the man who takes the woodwork, and the physical training instructor."
"The kitchen staff, I see, has been augmented."
"Yes. I believe that, before my time, besides the housekeeper, they had no one but a kitchen-maid, which left the unfortunate housekeeper responsible for all the cooking. But now we have two cooks and a scullery maid as well. They all live 'out,' however, except the housekeeper and one of the cooks. Those two have to be on duty for breakfasts."
"Interesting," said Mrs. Bradley. "I wonder whether, the authorities would encourage me in making a minor psychological experiment? I should like to take a house from the beginning of May until the end of September and have some of the boys to visit me there. If I had three boys each week for twenty or twenty-one weeks, that would give a short holiday to about two-thirds of your numbers, would it not?"
"The authorities would never allow it; and I should not like it myself," replied the Warden frankly. "We dare not spoil these boys. Sentiment, unfortunately, does not do. I am afraid they would take every possible advantage of such a scheme."
"Including making their escape. I know. That is what makes it interesting," said Mrs. Bradley. The Warden shook his head.
"It would never do. It wouldn't be good for them. After all, they're here as a punishment, you know."
"I am afraid so, yes. A terribly immoral state of affairs."
"And for guidance as well; and for the protection of society."
"I know. If I were a caged tiger, do you know the people who would have to be protected against me if ever I made my escape?"
"Yes, yes, all very well. I admit these boys have a grievance against society. But what can we do?"
"I told the Government of ten years ago what we could do," said Mrs. Bradley. "Well, I shall look about for my house at the seaside, and when I find it I shall come to you again."
The Warden felt that he could afford to smile, and therefore smiled. He even attempted light humour.
"I could tell you of the very place," he said. "I have the address in my desk here. It once belonged to the aunt of the former housekeeper. Perhaps you remember her from your previous visit? She would still have been here then. About six years ago she retired, having inherited her aunt's money, but was dead within the year. Tried for murder, acquitted, and then committed suicide, poor creature, because people were so unkind. Sounds like something on the films, but it's perfectly true. The house belongs to an old servant now, I believe, who is glad to let it in the summer."
"Boys or no boys, I should like to have that address," said Mrs. Bradley.
"'No boys,' is more likely to be correct," said the Warden, almost good-naturedly. He could afford to be pleasant to the somewhat terrifying old woman, he concluded. She had brought back his truants for him, and, in any case, she was leaving the Institution in the morning.
"Cynical old thing!" said Caroline Lestrange, looking up from Mrs. Bradley's letter.
"No," said Ferdinand, glancing at their son, Derek, aged seven, who was advancing purposefully to the table with a set of the game called Tiddleywinks. "No, indeed she isn't. If mother says they ought to be put out, she is probably perfectly sincere and perfectly right. They must be the most unhappy little devils on earth, those delinquent kids. You can't really do anything for most of 'em. They're a mess, like Humpty Dumpty when he fell off the wall. She goes on to ask whether we'd care to lend her Derek for a bit. I'm all for it. She needs him, I expect, to get the taste of the others out of her mouth."
His son came up and planted the game on the table. Then he surveyed his parents sternly.
"You can both choose your colour," he said, "and I'll have what's left. There's blue and green and red and yellow and purple and white. I don't use the white. I only use the green and purple and yellow and blue and red. I don't like white. Do you like white, mother?"
"No, thank you, darling," Caroline replied.
"I'm not going to play," said his father, basely. "I've got this letter from Gran and I'd better answer it."
He fled, pursued by the joint maledictions of his wife and son, who, thereafter, forgot him, and settled down to Tiddleywinks until it was Derek's bedtime.
"Would you like to go and stay with Gran at the seaside for a bit?" asked Caroline, when she went in to say good-night. Her son's reply was brief but warm, and so by the middle of the following week all arrangements had been made.
The house which Mrs. Bradley had rented was about a hundred yards from the sea, and was, from the child's point of view, admirably situated. Mrs. Bradley had fitted up her dressing-room for him, and there he had a camp bed and a chest of drawers. On the top of this antiquated but useful piece of furniture he placed the model of a Viking ship made for him by a cousin. This was so much his most cherished possession that it could not be left at home.
The house was that of which Mrs. Bradley had heard from the Warden. Unattractive from the outside, and furnished in accordance with the taste of an earlier period, it was comfortable and convenient enough, and grandmother and grandson enjoyed one another's company and the pleasures of the sea and the shore. Permission had not, so far, been granted for any of the Warden's boys to join them.
George, Mrs. Bradley's chauffeur, one of the servants she had brought with her, had become mentor to the little boy, and introduced him to the wonders of the internal combustion engine and to the vocabulary of the mechanically-minded. The weather, on the whole, was fine, and although Mrs. Bradley deplored the ostrich-outlook of the authorities in refraining from granting their blessing to her holiday scheme for the Home Boys (as they were euphemistically entitled), she enjoyed the sea air, the old-fashioned house, and, until the last week of the child's visit, the innocuous gossip of the village.
During this last week, however, she was surprised and annoyed when the little boy said suddenly, one evening when he was having his supper, and only an hour before his bedtime,
"Gran, what lady was murdered in this house?"
"Murdered?" said Mrs. Bradley. She had no time to prepare an answer. "Oh, I expect they mean poor old Aunt What's-it. I've forgotten her name."
"Does her ghost walk?"
"Why should it?"
"Somebody told me it did."
"Had this person seen it?"
"No. What would it look like, Gran?"
"Exactly like the person, I suppose."
"I don't want to see it, Gran."
"No such luck. I've tried hard to see them, many and many a time. It isn't a scrap of good. I've come to the conclusion there are no such things. People are such liars, unfortunately."
"Do you think Miss Peeple was telling me lies, Gran? She said Miss Bella killed Aunt Flora, and Aunt Flora's spirit can't rest."
"Well, she's a funny old thing, and not very sensible, you know——"
"George says she's batty and sees double. Is it the same thing, Gran?"
"Exactly the same thing," said Mrs. Bradley, paying her usual mental tribute to her chauffeur.
"Yes ... but I think I'm glad I'm sleeping in the next room, Gran. Do you think I could move my bed in beside yours?"
"I think it would be great fun," said Mrs. Bradley. In the morning she said to the postmistress, in the course of a conversation engineered to lead up to the question: