‘Thanks tremendously,’ said Miss Cartwright. ‘Do the same for you later. I must say,’ she continued, scanning her plate with an indulgent and even slightly enthusiastic eye, ‘that the old serpent does us a lot better in Hall than Miss Murchan used to. By the way, when you take your crockery back, look out where you put your feet. There’s a kind of creosote or something all over the box-room floor. I went there to get another frock out of my trunk… Why, what the devil has Giggs got on her feet?’ she added, staring at the retreating form of the friendless student as, having come out from the Servery, she walked along the passage towards the stairs.
Kitty, who often acted upon impulse, put down her plate and hurried after her.
‘The footwear,’ she said. ‘How come?’
‘Oh, my slippers?’ said Miss Giggs, looking at a pair of scarlet satin evening shoes in an embarrassed manner and tilting her full plate dangerously. ‘I — well, it was just to rest my feet while I did my Advanced English essay.’
‘Very tasty,’ said Kitty; and, before Miss Giggs knew what had happened, she had left her and was tearing up the front staircase as hard as she could go. She knew Miss Giggs’ room. It was on the same floor as her own. Miss Giggs occupied Number Thirty-three, next to the bathrooms.
Actuated, she stated later to the grinning Laura and the scandalized Alice, by the highest motive of all, that of pure detective fever, she burst into Miss Giggs’ room and dragged open her hat-box. These receptacles were large and square, and were made of wood, forming an extra seat in each study-bedroom. In Miss Giggs’ hat-box was a pair of shoes so sticky that the newspaper on which they had been placed came up with them. The smell given off by the hat-box was undoubtedly that of strong disinfectant.
Kitty knew that it would be some seconds before Miss Giggs, carrying a full plate, could reach the cubicle, so she stole, with her prize, back to the front staircase, and descended to the first floor. She knew that Mrs Bradley and Deborah were both out, so she nipped round the first corner she came to, entered the Warden’s bathroom, and placed the shoes, still on their newspaper, at the far end, underneath the bath. Then she descended the front stairs to the Servery, retrieved her plate, and went pensively into the Common Room. Once there, she ate the food as quickly as she could, did not go back to the Servery for cakes or a cup of tea, but paid a hasty visit to the boxroom.
At about half-past six Alice came back to Athelstan, and a quarter of an hour later Laura arrived. Both were tired; Laura disgruntled.
‘Got a goal; a beauty,’ she began.
‘Offside,’ concluded Alice and Kitty in chorus. Laura grinned.
‘Win?’ inquired Kitty of Alice.
‘Eighteen, three. Good game, though. Better than it sounds,’ Alice replied. ‘Have you enjoyed yourself?’
Kitty seized the opportunity.
‘Is Mathers back in Hall yet?’ she inquired.
‘No. Why?’ inquired Alice; but Laura, who had been acquainted with Kitty for some years, seized her by the sleeve and said: ‘Spill.’
‘Somebody’s been assing about in the boxroom again.’
‘What? Not more clothes chewed up?’
‘Not this time. At least, I don’t think so. I want to get hold of Mathers, though, and tell her to shove up a notice warning people not to go paddling about down there. It’s in the most frightful mess.’
‘Blood?’ asked Laura, rolling her eyes at Alice.
‘No; as a matter of fact it is that creosote stuff the odd man uses for disinfectant. Somebody has kicked a tin of it over, deliberately I should think, and what’s more, I know who, and she doesn’t want it known, so I’ve swiped her shoes as evidence.’
‘Be yourself, dear,’ urged her friend. ‘You befog me. Does she befog you, Alice?’
‘No, I don’t think so,’ replied Alice seriously. ‘She means someone’s been assing about again, and this time she knows who it is.’
‘Considering that in the Matric. paper she didn’t know Hamlet was the hero of Hamlet, I doubt that very much indeed,’ retorted Laura. ‘But, come on, K. Don’t leave us agonizing like this. Tell us all. Come on upstairs, anyway. Why are we wasting strength propping up this beastly Common Room?’
‘I can’t tell you anything upstairs, because it’s Giggs,’ returned Kitty. ‘Come closer. I don’t want to shout.’
‘But we ought to find out more about it,’ said Deborah. ‘After all, if it isn’t carelessness it’s some more of this horrible destructiveness, like those clothes belonging to the twins, and I do think we owe it to the innocent students to find out the guilty ones, don’t you?’
‘I suppose so,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘I want you to come with me to have another look at it, now that they’re all in bed — or, at any rate, upstairs.’
The inmates, as Laura preferred to call herself and her fellow-students, had been duly warned about the state of the boxroom floor, and had been particularly requested by the Warden not to tread the disinfectant about the house. The warning and the request had been observed, and the boxroom was in about the same condition as when Kitty had seen it.
‘And now,’ said Mrs Bradley, stepping delicately, ‘for our most interesting exhibit, which is not, as you seem to imagine, the dark and treacly fluid which is crawling over the floor, but the reason for its egress from the tins.’
The tins were large, green and rectangular. Each had a small handle on top, after the style of those on petrol cans. There were six tins. Each one had a small circular perforation in the middle of one side.
‘Quite deliberately done, you see,’ Mrs Bradley went on. ‘No fumbling; no having several shots, as many people do when they attempt to open a tin; just a neatly-drilled hole expressive of a determined and bold personality.’
‘Expressive of a man, not a woman,’ suggested Deborah.
