3

“The man who set this puzzle,” said Peter, “must have been brought up on a diet of Thackeray and Trollope. ‘Pointed heroine’. That must be ‘Sharp’.”

“Of course,” said Stewart, who was not really listening to him.

It was early evening in the first week of the summer term. Stewart was reading an Army & Navy Stores catalogue and Peter was struggling with the crossword in the Guardian, which he used to purloin from the reading-room. He could normally finish The Times crossword in thirty minutes, the Guardian in twenty. This one seemed to be causing him some trouble.

‘”Downhill cleric’, looks like ‘Slope’. Was there a clergyman called Slope?”

“Search me,” said Stewart.

“It might be ‘Slips’.”

“Toss for it. Do you think Alvin would object if I bought a drill and plugged it into the electric light?”

“He’d blow a fuse at the very idea.”

“I’m afraid you’re right. All the same, I think I’ll take a chance on it.”

“What do you want it for?”

“It’s got a metal-filing attachment. Just the thing for my key collection. Come in. Don’t trouble to knock. Ives and Dolamore keep open-house.”

This was to a cheerful bulldog called Henry Bear. He was head of the house. He looked worried.

He said to Peter, “Brindy wants a word with you, Dolamore. Better hurry along. He’s not in a very good mood.”

“So what?” said Peter. “I’m not in a very good mood myself. Do you think Brindy reads Trollope?”

“The only novels I’ve ever seen in his study are Agatha Christie and Edgar Wallace.”

“I feared as much. With a housemaster like that, are you surprised that the intellectual standard of the house is so abysmal?”

He departed. Bear sat down, looked at the nearly completed crossword and said, “Peter’s a bit of a brainbox, isn’t he?”

“He’s adequately furnished in the top storey, yes.”

“I wish you and he would take life more seriously.”

“My dear Henry, I was telling Peter only the other day that I devote many of my waking thoughts to the question of what we are going to do when we leave school.”

“I’m not talking about leaving school. It’s now I’m worried about. Do you know what Brindy wanted to discuss with me? House prefects; there are two vacancies. I suggested you for one of them.”

“I don’t imagine our Alvin fell over backwards with pleasure.”

“He said you were a disruptive influence.”

“Did he though?” said Stewart. He sounded delighted. “What was discussed next in your tête à tête?”

“He said that his choices were Measures and Whitlock.”

“Measures and Whitlock. It sounds like the name of a shop doesn’t it? A rather superior chemist’s. I’m sorry. I diverted you. What did you say?”

“I said that Measures was all right. But that Whitlock was a wimp.”

“I would guess that he’s got about as much backbone as a stick of spaghetti. Boiled spaghetti. I hope you told Brindy that.”

“Of course I didn’t. I just said I’d rather have you. Then he stumped me by asking if I’d discussed the idea with you and I had to say that I had and you’d turned it down. ‘Just as I thought,’ said Brindy. ‘He takes nothing seriously. He could be a good athlete if he took the trouble. But I never see his name in any house team.’ I had to remind him that you represented the school at racquets. ‘Exactly,’ said Brindy. ‘A selfish game which gives him the maximum opportunity for showing off.’”

“O wad some power the giftie gie us, to see ourselves as others see us,” said Stewart who may not have known much about the Victorian novelists, but was able to find a quotation from Burns for most occasions.

“He’s right, you know. You could be a useful cricketer if you gave your mind to it. You’ve got a good eye, a strong wrist and sound nerves. Must have, to play racquets the way you do.”

“But why should I devote these talents to futile games like cricket and football? Flannelled fools and muddied oafs.”

“You’re mad,” said Bear. The way he said it, it sounded like a compliment. He knew that Ives was not someone to provoke. As one of the editors of the Chelburian, the school magazine, he exercised considerable power in the school. This publication appeared half-way through each term and, under its current directors, had been so outspoken that the headmaster had been forced to censor one of the items in the last issue. This had not prevented the unauthorised version from obtaining a large and much treasured circulation.

Peter came back as Bear departed. He said, “Well that’s that. It looks as though this is my last term.”

“An ultimatum, was it?”

“Pretty well. A slight improvement in Latin. Nothing to write home about. History, results appalling.”

“And all the History reports written by the Reverend Alvin Brind himself.”

“That’s right. Even if I did succeed in producing some decent work, it’d be easy enough for him to pick holes in it.”

“Which particular period of history is he expounding to your form at the moment?”

“Charles the Second and James the Second.”

“Rather an interesting period to have lived in, I always thought. If you could avoid being killed by the Great Plague or burnt to death by the Great Fire. Look at Pepys. Having it off at the back of the church during the sermon.”

“We don’t get that sort of thing from Brindy. Just politics and treaties and dates.”

“Cheer up,” said Stewart. “I had a letter from Father Elphinstone this morning. Copies of the earlier mission accounts and other material of interest. The wheels are beginning to turn. Listen hard and you will hear them grinding.”

 

Mention has been made, in describing Peter’s visit to the Château de Lambrécie, of the fact that its proprietor, Joseph Wellborn, did not entirely approve of his elder sister, Mrs. Shilling. This disapproval stemmed from her marriage.

In Joseph’s opinion there had been one point only in favour of Frederick Shilling as a husband. The fact that he was a very wealthy man. The debit side massively outweighed the credit. Frederick was German, was Jewish and had notoriously made his money from trade.

His grandfather, Hermann Schilling (the ‘c’ was dropped later) had come to England in the golden nineties of the last century. The principal product of his firm was buttons. (‘Buttons! I ask you!’ said Joseph). However, this was a period in which ladies wore a great number of buttons on their dresses and Hermann flourished. Later he turned to more general drapery products. But the buttons were neither forgotten nor forgiven. They cost him the chance of membership of more than one London club.

Hermann’s son, Walter, had restored the family reputation by performing creditably on the western front as an infantry soldier and by confining his connection with the family business to pocketing its profits. He had married a very minor member of the aristocracy. His son, Frederick, had lived entirely on inherited wealth. Lisa was the only offspring of his union with Constantia Wellborn.

When Frederick had died of a cardiac aneurism, whilst attempting a difficult putt on the thirteenth green at Sunningdale, Joseph had proposed that his sister and her nine-year-old daughter, Lisa, should come to live with him at Lambrécie. He pointed out the advantages of a girl being brought up in France and dilated on the superiority of the French educational system and his own capacity for acting as a substitute father. He did not mention the additional consideration, that it would have suited him very well to have had a finger on the Shilling fortune. He was a rich man himself, but the expenses of keeping up the château were considerable and were getting no less.

His sister would have none of this. She had no opinion of French education and valued her independence. For the next seven years Lisa had lived at home and attended a desultory succession of small private schools. Mrs. Shilling was in some ways a stupid woman, but she had enough sense to realise that her daughter had inherited a lot of her father’s shrewdness and, as she would add when discussing her with her friends, his obstinacy.

When Lisa was sixteen and some more formal education had to be considered, a number of reasons had led Mrs. Shilling to consider Chelborough. It had been one of the first boys’ public schools to admit girls to its sixth form and had by now attracted a sufficient number (‘of the right sort,’ said Mrs. Shilling) to form a separate house for them. Moreover, she had approved of the woman in charge of the girls’ establishment, a Mrs. Marble (‘not quite a lady, but very nearly, and motherly, but firm’). Since she only met Mrs. Marble on the single occasion that she visited the school she cannot be blamed for misreading her character. Lisa, from daily contact, was able to form a more accurate opinion.

“She’s a bitch,” she said when discussing her with Stewart. “Only she manages to hide her bitchiness under layers of oily charm.”

Stewart said, “A fausse bonne femme in fact.”

Mrs. Marble controlled the eighty pubescent females who formed her unruly household with the help of an assistant, a Miss Troop, known to all as Troop the Snoop. This lady instructed in swimming and eurhythmics, kept her eyes open and acted as Mrs. Marble’s spy.

She had already reported that she found the conduct of Lisa questionable. She had not been able to put a finger on any particular act of insubordination. It was her general attitude to authority.

“She’s a proper little bolshie,” said Miss Troop.

“I don’t think,” said Mrs. Marble, with one of her professional smiles, “that we can found a complaint on such general grounds. What does she do? Does she talk a lot with the boys, or with any particular boy?”

“They all talk to each other before class and after class.

And in some cases, no doubt, during class. I have suggested that the girls should sit apart from the boys in the form rooms, but my suggestion has not been listened to – as usual.”

“Well,” Mrs. Marble had said, “if any particular instance should come to your notice—”

She would have been interested if she could have been in Stewart’s study at the conclusion of morning school that day. Enter, left, Bartlett, a precocious boy of fourteen carrying an envelope. Judging it by its deckle edges and light pink colour it could, without exaggeration, have been described as a dainty missive. He announced, with a leer, “I was slipped this by one of the girls to give to you.”

Stewart examined first the envelope, dispassionately, then Bartlett, with distaste.

“You’re a proper little procuress, aren’t you?”

“If you say so,” said Bartlett. He sidled out and made for the school library where he took out the POY – RY volume of the Greater Oxford English Dictionary and looked up ‘procuress’.

 

1.  A female advocate or defender. (Not very promising, but wait.)

2.  A woman who makes it her trade to procure women for the gratification of lust.

 

Bartlett said, ‘Coo’ and smacked his lips. Like most of the boys he greatly admired Stewart. He confided this titbit of information to his best friend who said, “Did you see what was in the note?”

“Of course I didn’t, you fool, it was stuck up.”

“Fool yourself, you ought to have steamed it open.” After which invigorating exchange they repaired to the school dining-hall to stoke up. For the last three years feeding by houses had been abandoned and a buffet system for the whole school had been introduced in its place, much to the general satisfaction.

When he had read Lisa’s note Stewart, who was careful about such matters, burnt it and deposited the ashes in the wastepaper basket. There was no need for a written answer. If he agreed with her proposal he would nod his head when they met in class that afternoon. If he disagreed he would shake it.

He considered the matter carefully. Getting out of the house after lock-up presented no difficulty. One of the sets of bars on the ground-floor windows had been carefully attended to and opened as smoothly as an unlocked door. More to the point was the fact that Brind would be out for the evening. He had been invited to dinner by the Archdeacon, a social occasion from which he was unlikely to hurry away. This piece of news came from Brind’s maid, Annie, a well-tried and reliable source of information.

Next he considered the suggested meeting place. The shed behind the pavilion was normally locked. Probably one of his keys would open it easily enough, but here, again, fate was on his side. Brind had recently procured the sacking of the young man who acted as assistant to the cricket professional, Tom Jennings. He was called Barker and was currently working out his month’s notice. The dismissal was not entirely unjustified. Barker was the possessor of a vocabulary which fascinated the boys and either amused or offended the staff according to their feelings about such matters. Brind, overhearing him in full spate, had been outraged. Also he suspected, although he had no actual proof, that it was Barker who had forced one of the boxes in the chapel and removed part of the Easter offering.

Barker was, naturally, one of Stewart’s allies. If asked to oblige he would certainly leave the shed unlocked. So far, so good. Yes, a nod was called for.

Lisa’s problem was not so easily solved. She knew that Mrs. Marble, after a good dinner and at least half a bottle of wine, would retire to her sitting-room with the port decanter. The view of the house was that she was usually more than three parts cut before she went to bed each night. This may have been an exaggeration, but she would certainly be far too sleepy to be making any rounds inside or outside the house. Miss Troop was another matter.

She had her own sitting-room and bedroom in the wing of the house, but these were rarely occupied until a later hour. The earlier part of the evening she would spend attending the meetings of one or other of the school societies – she was a member of all the reputable ones – or, if there was no meeting, in a general prowl around the premises.

A nuisance to one and all.

Since the discipline of the boys was not her concern she took no action with regard to the occasional all-male smoking or drinking parties which she encountered, but her sentry-going had made her acquainted with lying-up spots. On this particular evening she had visited the gym changing-rooms, the shed behind the armoury and the attics above Big School, which were full of the scenery and props of past theatrical performances. In none of these had she found anything except silence and solitude; though had she probed a bit further into the attics she might have discovered the captain of cricket under a backdrop of Elsinore Castle instructing one of the small boys in the facts of life.

Coming out of the hall she stood, for a moment, looking out over Big Field. It was a misty night of early May. Rugger posts had disappeared and the ground was getting ready for the sports. In one corner she could see a row of practice hurdles had been set up. She saw something else. At the far end of the field, where the heavy roller was parked beside the pavilion, a shadow had moved. Or was it her imagination? She paused to think about it.

To go straight across to the pavilion would involve traversing the whole length of the field, in which, as she knew, there were a number of traps, dangerous on a night of such poor visibility. She had no desire to break an ankle falling into the long-jump pit. But there was an alternative. If she retraced her steps and made her way to the front gate she could reach the rear of the pavilion via the main road. She had seen no further movement. If it had been someone there, they had either gone home or they had disappeared into the pavilion. Either way, no hurry.

In fact Lisa and Stewart were not in the pavilion, but in the shed at the back. They were lying side by side on an unrolled pitch cover and both of them were smoking. Whilst he enjoyed a cigarette, for once in his life Stewart regretted this. If Lisa had not been smoking it would have been much easier for him to roll over and start some serious petting. At the moment they were restricted to conversation.

“Of course Marble is butch,” said Lisa. “Look at the way she dresses.”

“If she’s butch,” said Stewart, “what’s her line in meat?”

“Usually some soppy junior girl. Certainly not the Snoop.”

They both had a giggle at the idea of Miss Troop being anybody’s petite amie.

“Snoop’s a sadist. Do you remember Peggy Ashford, two terms ago? She positively hounded her out. She’d like to get her teeth into me, too.”

“We’re both afflicted,” said Stewart. He described the manoeuvres by which the unspeakable Brind was trying to oust Peter and promote his own career at the same time.

Lisa listened with interest. Her feelings about Stewart were ambivalent. He was exciting to be with and fun to talk to. Streets ahead of other boys in that respect. (Her best friend, Virginia, had said about a boy they both knew ‘Driving me home in his car after the dance, Tom did nothing but talk. And you’ll never guess. He talked about cricket.’) Stewart would certainly not have talked about cricket and had a smooth approach to the opposite sex. He was a grown-up boy in some ways, surprisingly juvenile in others; but did she want him to demonstrate his technique on her? The cigarette was a useful prop. It was giving her time to make up her mind.

She said, “It makes it difficult to believe in religion, doesn’t it? I mean, when you meet clergymen like Brindy. Poor little Peterkin. Such a nice boy. He looks as though butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth.”

She seemed, thought Stewart, with a touch of resentment, to be more interested in Peter than in him. He said, “Don’t be fooled by his innocent appearance. Look what he got up to in France.”

It was a story worth telling and Stewart told it well. By the time he had finished Lisa was propped up on one elbow staring at him. She said, “He told you all that?”

“Yes.”

“In strictest confidence, I should imagine.”

“Well – yes.”

“Then why have you told me? How do you know I’m not going to repeat it to all the other girls in the house?”

“I don’t think you will.”

“But you don’t know.”

Until then they had been speaking in whispers. But Lisa was so indignant that she had forgotten caution. Miss Troop, who had reached the back of the pavilion, heard the voices. They were coming from the shed where nets and other accessories were stored. And one of the voices was a girl’s.

She did not hesitate. She was a muscular product of Bedford Physical Training College and unafraid of any likely opposition. As she strode forward the toe of her sensible shoe hit a stone and sent it spinning against the door a second or two before she got there.

The warning, though short, proved fatal to her plan. It gave Stewart time to get onto his feet. He saw the figure framed in the doorway and without a moment’s hesitation ran forward and butted with his head.

Miss Troop gave out a sound which was half-way between a gasp and a scream and fell over backwards onto the gravel path. She was winded, shaken and wildly indignant. It was several minutes before she could scramble to her feet.

Then she started to think furiously.

‘If the girl had been one of the members of the house, she had got such a start by now that she would have climbed back by whatever route she had got out. But she might not have had time to clear up all evidence of the escapade. Her clothes might be torn. She might be bruised or cut. She hoped she was.’

She had dropped her torch when she fell and it was no longer working. This meant that she had to go carefully until she reached the road. Then she broke into a vigorous canter. Speed was vital. Every second was important. When she burst into her sitting-room she found Mrs. Marble asleep in front of the fire with a half-empty decanter on the table beside her; and not only asleep, but snoring gently.

Miss Troop was in no mood for formality. She grabbed Mrs. Marble’s arm and shook it. Mrs. Marble opened her eyes, took one look at her assistant and said, “My goodness. What have you been up to?”

“Never mind about me. It’s the girls. Or one of them. We must go round all the dormitories and cubicles now.”

“Whatever for?”

Miss Troop was conscious that time was being wasted. This upset her and made her less coherent than usual. However, in the end Mrs. Marble seemed to have grasped the essentials of her story. She said, “What makes you think that one of our girls was involved?”

“I heard her speak.”

“Could it not easily have been a boy. Until their voices break they sound quite girl-like.”

Miss Troop had not thought of this and it made her angrier than ever. She said, through clenched teeth, “I know it was one of our girls. When they – when I was knocked over – I heard her giggle as she ran past. It was definitely an upper-class giggle.”

Mrs. Marble considered this. She said, still showing no signs of stirring from her chair, “I would hardly regard that as conclusive. But even if it was, have you considered the effect you will produce if you go round the house looking like that?”

“Like what?”

“Have a look in the glass.”

This was the first time Miss Troop had thought about herself. She took a quick look and could not help agreeing. Her fall had not only torn the sleeve of her anorak, it had left a deposit of mud on her chin and a long scrape down one side of her face.

“You must clean yourself up first,” said Mrs. Marble. “And I should advise an application of disinfectant to that scrape. There may be bits of gravel in it.”

“And by the time I’ve done that,” said Miss Troop bitterly, “the girl will have tidied herself up, too, and will be pretending to be fast asleep.”

Mrs. Marble was a tactician. She said, “You’re right about that. I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll have a word with the headmaster first thing tomorrow morning and he’ll speak to the housemasters. They may have some idea who the boy was and that could lead, in turn, to the girl.”

With this Miss Troop had to be content.

 

“I agree with you,” said the headmaster. “If Miss Troop’s suspicions are well founded, it was a disgraceful episode. Involving a physical attack on a member of the staff.”

“Deplorable,” agreed Mrs. Marble. But she thought that the headmaster did not sound desperately upset.

“I will certainly ask the housemasters for the names of likely candidates. There are only a limited number of boys who are sufficiently mature to – er – date girls. Or,” he added, being a realist, “for the girls to wish to date them.”

“When Miss Troop spoke to me last night, headmaster, it did occur to me to wonder whether she had acted wisely in rushing straight in. If she had returned to the school for help it should have been possible to apprehend the culprits without difficulty. I didn’t say so at the time, because she was clearly upset. But it does seem to me that she behaved imprudently.”

“Indeed,” said the headmaster. “And if she raises the matter with you again, I think you should tell her so.”

That night he repeated the whole episode, in detail, to his wife. When she heard about the upper-class giggle she laughed so much that she almost rolled out of bed.

On the following morning the headmaster found an opportunity to speak separately to all of his housemasters. Apart from the Day Boys’ House and the Girls’ House there were seven boarding-houses at Chelborough. The heads of four of them thought about the matter and reluctantly scribbled down the names of half a dozen boys each who might be sufficiently attracted by the selection of females on offer to take the trouble to break out at night for an assignation. The head of the fifth, who was young and idealistic, denied that any of his boys would behave in such an unseemly way. The head of the sixth, who was elderly and disillusioned, said that the senior boys in his house were so busy chasing the smaller boys that they had no time to think about girls.

It was only the Reverend Alvin Brind who unhesitatingly nominated a single candidate. He said, “I have no evidence that anyone was out of the house that evening. Indeed, I make it my personal responsibility to see that all doors are locked at seven o’clock. Anyone who has a legitimate reason to be out has to come through the private part of the house and explain himself to me.”

“Quite so,” said the headmaster patiently.

“However, if it were shown that, despite my precautions, a boy had succeeded in breaking out I should not be at all surprised to find that it was Ives.”

“Stewart Ives,” said the headmaster. “You really think so?”

“I do.”

“A remarkable boy in many ways. One of the finest racquet players we have had in the school for years.”

“I would have more confidence in him if he devoted his talents to team games.”

“It’s a curious thing,” said the headmaster ignoring this, “that in every generation there seems to be one boy whose name is familiar to everyone from the youngest to the oldest. He may not be outstanding at work, or a cricket or football colour or one of the nominal ‘bloods’ in the school hierarchy, but he is what television would no doubt class as a ‘personality’. In Ives’ case it might be something to do with his editorship of the school magazine, although we’ve had enterprising editors before who have left no particular mark on the school. No. It must simply be a question of character. It did occur to me to wonder – although, as you know, I never interfere in these matters – why you had not made him a house prefect.”

Brind, who had listened with ill-concealed impatience to these remarks said, “You talk about character, headmaster. Surely the real point is whether it is a good character or a bad one. I find him a disruptive influence. And, for all his talk, one who accomplishes very little.”