‘No, you may not,’ said his aunt.
‘I beg pardon. Lead on, Patrick Mahon.’ Mrs Bradley cackled, and no more was said until they had left Athelstan with ‘the luggage,’ as Jonathan termed it, and had mounted to the second floor of the College building.
‘Now,’ said Mrs Bradley, producing the Principal’s key, and unlocking a cupboard.
The skeleton was in a long box, coffin-like, and yet with the indefinable austerity of hospitals rather than that of morgues. The three of them gazed upon it in silence. Jonathan, characteristically, broke this silence.
‘Indubitably male,’ he said. ‘Pass, skeleton. All’s well.’
‘Hm!’ said Mrs Bradley.
‘Are you disappointed?’ asked Deborah.
‘No. One and one make two,’ replied Mrs Bradley, ‘not to speak of two and one making three.’
‘Once aboard the lugger, and the girl is mine,’ said her nephew, whose quotations were apt to follow the line dictated by his immediate preoccupations.
‘The trouble will be to find some reasonable excuse for obtaining eye-witness’s information about the girl in question,’ said Mrs Bradley. ’There is no doubt now where she is.’
‘Where, then?’ asked Deborah, startled.
‘Cast your mind back to our first-night rag,’ Mrs Bradley replied. ‘I suppose they have a new lecturer in Science, or perhaps in Physical Training, at Wattsdown College. At any rate, I think that rag is now seen in its true perspective.’
‘But — ’ said Jonathan. His aunt silenced him by cackling and shaking her head. Then she locked away the College skeleton, picked up the Athelstan bones and led the way out. Her nephew relieved her of her burden, and the three of them went back to Athelstan.
‘Please tell me what you’re going to do during the holidays,’ said Deborah, before they parted.
‘I shall carry out my original plan of visiting Miss Murchan’s former school,’ said Mrs Bradley. She watched the car as far as the first bend, and then put through a long-distance call to the school at Cuddy Bay. It was the dress rehearsal of the Christmas play, she was informed. She arranged to go on the Monday, and ordered the car for one- fifteen.
Chapter 12
IN AND OUT THE WINDOWS
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The Cuddy Bay Secondary School for Girls was a second-grade establishment compared with the High School of the same resort. The latter had a splendid position on the cliff-top, with views of sea and moorland; the former was back in the town.
Mrs Bradley was directed wrongly at first, but one glance at the notice-board beside the front entrance decided her that this was not the place she sought, and she then found the Secondary School without difficulty.
It was half-past two, and a practice game of hockey was being carried on in the school field, and was being coached by a short, broad young woman in a gymnasium tunic and heavy sweater, the latter bearing an impressive badge. Mrs Bradley watched the game for a few seconds, and then rang the front-door bell of the school.
‘I have an appointment with Miss Paldred at half-past two,’ she said to the prefect who answered the door. ‘My name is Bradley.’
‘Oh, good afternoon, Mrs Bradley. Will you come this way, please? Miss Paldred is expecting you. I’ll tell her you are here.’
The headmistress’s room was simply but very beautifully furnished. The headmistress herself was of medium height, freckle-faced, grey-eyed and very charming.
‘This nasty business,’ she said, when they had shaken hands. ‘Have you found out any more about poor Miss Murchan?’
This propitious beginning to the conversation made Mrs Bradley’s carefully-prepared opening gambits unnecessary. She agreed that it was a nasty business, and said that she had come to ask a good many nasty questions… ‘even more than last time,’ she concluded.
‘Yes, I expect you have,’ Miss Paldred agreed. ‘What do you want to see first again — the gym?’
‘Thank you. Not that it will make any difference, I’m afraid. I think we explored its possibilities fully last time I was here.’
They saw the gym., which was like all other gyms., except that it had a long gallery running lengthwise instead of being, as at the College, at one end. Mrs Bradley evinced little interest, except in this gallery, which led from one set of classrooms and a corridor to another similar set and another corridor.
‘Is it possible,’ Mrs Bradley asked, ‘that a person passing along this gallery would be unobserved by the people below?’
‘It is probable,’ Miss Paldred replied with a slight smile. ‘I myself have been a frequent passenger when the girls have been quite unaware of my presence. If one keeps alongside the wall there is no reason whatever why one should be observed.’
‘I see. Yes. There seems reason to suppose, then, that Miss Murchan could have seen what happened here in the gymnasium if she had happened to walk along the gallery at some time after seven o’clock on the evening the child was killed?’
‘Yes, but…’
