Laurels Are Poison

‘She seemed perfectly certain, I thought, but these people get bees in their bonnets. Then, take the first affair — would you like to butter these as I do them? — that stupid rag. We didn’t find the student she dragged out of the circle, but it doesn’t seem to me that it’s necessarily the same girl each time. Of course, she did say herself that two different people were at work.’

‘I agree. Piling up the jerries and getting some young men to do a war-dance round them doesn’t tally with cutting off a sick person’s hair with the possible intention of frightening her into a fit. I think I’m with you both so far. Of course, we must remember that Mrs Bradley thinks there is a scheme to make Athelstan too hot to hold her, and, if that is the case, then the thing does hang together. But go on. And you might blacken one or two of those scones a bit more for me. I’m rather partial to charcoal.’

‘Well, how would you account for the snakes in that Demonstration lesson Miss Harbottle gave? Granted that they were intended to upset me and not her, I can’t see in that affair anything more than another rather stupid and malicious rag. Can you?’

‘Well, there, don’t you see,’ said Miss Topas. ‘I say, you’ve done enough, I should think. Come on. Let’s eat ’em while they’re hot. Can’t understand people who don’t take sugar. If I don’t get my three lumps per cup I become depressed — I was saying that that’s where Mrs Bradley scores, it seems to me. Stupid and malicious. Doesn’t fit students’ ragging, you know. I was at a big mixed Training College before I came here, but it was just the same. The men, particularly, ragged a good deal, but it was seldom stupid, and as for malicious — not a bit. As a matter of fact, girls, particularly, don’t like to hurt one’s feelings. And the misses like you quite a lot, you know. They wouldn’t want — but don’t let me interrupt you. Proceed with the evidence.’

‘Well, those tins of disinfectant. Wasn’t that malicious?’

‘Yes. Makes the argument even more sound. It simply was malicious, unless it was something Much Worse. You’ve read some morbid psychology, I suppose?’

‘Yes, of course. But isn’t it a boy’s or a man’s trick — that stabbing business?’

‘Yes, it is. Connects up with Jack the Ripper, of course. You could connect the hair-cutting in the same way, you know, and that coat-slashing, too.’

‘You don’t think it could have been a man that Mrs Bradley pulled out of that dancing lot on the first night, when she said it was a girl? The rest were men, you know.’

‘No, I don’t. Besides, the voice. Although possibly that could be faked. But I should imagine that it was a woman all right. Mrs Bradley wouldn’t make that kind of mistake. I shouldn’t myself. The queer thing is — where did the wretched person get to?’

‘This Hall,’ said Deborah, laughing. ‘At least, Mrs Bradley says so.’

‘Does she, by Jove!’ Miss Topas put a buttered finger on the bell. ‘Elsie,’ she said to the maid, ‘bring me the Hall list from the Senior Common-Room notice-board. I’ll brood over the question,’ she went on, when the maid had gone, ‘and get out a selection of felons for Mrs Bradley to choose from. Of course, in a Hall like this, where all the students are well over the average age and so forth, an ill-disposed person could hide under the spotted, unless she was unlucky enough to run into somebody who already knew her.’

‘Yes, I can see what you mean. As a One-Year anybody could take up residence here. Do let me know what conclusions you come to.’

‘Not a word to the Warden, then. She’d have a fit if she thought I was snooping into the antecedents of the students here, poor wretches. Imagine having spent a blameless and patriotic existence as an Uncertificated Teacher for ten or fifteen years, and then being hounded by the authorities into getting your Certificate, complete with College training, in twelve miserable, uncomfortable, fish-out-of-water months! Because, they are fish out of water, many of the poor wretches here — except the Third-Years, of course. They’re bred and born in the briar patch, but t’others hate every minute of it, and those who live near enough to go home leave us most week-ends, even if it means going back to digs and the motherly bosoms of their landladies. My heart bleeds for them. It does, really.’

Deborah giggled unfeelingly at this soulful picture, and then licked butter off her thumb.

‘By the way,’ she said, ‘I’ve been notified that I’ll have to do School Practice supervising. “What exactly does that entail?’

‘Fancy reminding me of what exactly it entails!’ said Miss Topas with a hollow-sounding groan, ‘but, if you must know, I’ll tell you. Bend closer.’

‘ “Come on my right side, for this ear is deaf,” ’ said Deborah. ‘Shades of Laura Menzies,’ she added apologetically.

‘And before I tell you about School Prac. I would say one word of warning,’ Miss Topas continued. ‘Your Mrs Bradley has a nice choice in words. She didn’t say girl. She said woman. Therefore, presumably, she meant woman.’

‘Yes. Well, your students here — ’

‘All right. Let it go, please. Now, then: School Practice…’

She leaned forward and poured into Deborah’s terrified but receptive mind the hateful and exacting nature of the task which would confront her during the ensuing weeks.

‘And don’t forget,’ she added earnestly, ‘that you are not responsible for keeping order. If you go into the classroom of a student who’s obviously got the class completely round her neck, you take care it stays there. Don’t help her. I recollect the case of a lecturer at my old shop who went into a Craft lesson — she was a geographer, by the way, and ought to have known better than to interfere in a mystery which was outside her scope, but some of these people are apt to be conceited — and found the usual howling mob and an unfortunate student trying to give out scissors. Not only did she end up by bringing the headmistress into the room to quell the disturbance, but it was discovered that one child had cut two other children’s frock’s, that two others had cut each other’s hair, and that another had been sick after eating most of the paste prepared for the lesson.’

‘Golly!’ said Deborah, laughing. Miss Topas wagged her head.

‘I’m speaking for your own good,’ she admonished her. ‘Never rush in where angels fear to tread. And never let yourself in for critting a P.T. lesson. You’ll probably have to watch one or two, but that doesn’t matter. Step stately out of it, and leave it to Pettinsalt or Betsy. They can’t bear having the uninitiated initialling their students’ notebooks.’