‘That seems to have been unkind in the wife, does it not? Well, Miss Paldred, I must thank you again for your help, and for answering my questions. I’d like to ask just one more. Have you any idea where Miss Paynter-Tree went when she left here?’
‘Yes; to Northern Ireland. She wrote to me once from Belfast — a letter-card from the post office to say that she had arrived, and promising to send me an address as soon as she was fixed up permanently.’
‘Did you know which school she was going to?’
‘No; and I did not hear from her again. After all, we had not known one another for very long, you know. She was in her fifth term here when the accident happened. I suppose she really saw no reason…’
‘No,’ said Mrs Bradley thoughtfully. ‘There was not, I suppose, any scandal connected with her in any way here? Before the child’s death, of course, I mean.’
‘None that I ever heard. What makes you ask such a thing?’
‘I am still trying to account for the child’s death. It wasn’t accident. Gymnasium ropes don’t “wear through” in the manner suggested at the inquest. Besides, some odd things have happened since I went to Cartaret College, and if they are not connected, through Miss Murchan, with what happened here, I do not know how to account for them.’
She proceeded to give Miss Paldred details.
‘And you are sure the cook was murdered?’ asked Miss Paldred. ‘It doesn’t seem to me there was much to go on.’
‘Enough,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘She really would not have thrown her own corsets into the river and then thrown herself after them over the bridge, you know. She wouldn’t like to think of people finding her uncorseted body.’
‘Do people really consider such things at such a time, I wonder?’
‘Emphatically they do. Besides, to drown her in the Athelstan basement bathroom would have been so easy, under cover of the sound of the bath-water running out. If people thought anything of it, they would only think it was Miss Cartwright.’
‘What do you make of the ghost-noises, then?’
‘Two things. First, I think someone wanted to stampede the Athelstan students into panic, and secondly, I think they were made to bring to our notice the fact that some unauthorized person was on the premises. They were altogether interesting.’
‘But what could the cook have known, which made her dangerous, do you suppose?’
‘Beyond the feeling that it must have been something about Miss Murchan’s disappearance, one cannot tell at present. Ah, well, we shall live and learn, I hope. Oh, one more question. You said that Miss Paynter-Tree had been with you only five terms. How long had Miss Murchan been with you?’
‘Three years. Another reason I was sorry I felt obliged to make her Senior Assistant, of course.’
The child’s name had been Muriel Princep, and the maid who opened the door to Mrs Bradley said that Mrs Princep was at home.
Mrs Bradley, left in the hall whilst the girl went to speak to her mistress, gazed about her with polite curiosity. The house gave evidence that there was no lack of money on the part of the owners. It was handsomely furnished, warm, clean, polished and smelt unobtrusively of roast meat and furniture cream nicely intermingled.
Mrs Princep was a bony woman with haggard eyes. She looked sixty, but might have been younger. She greeted Mrs Bradley with a nervous smile.
‘I don’t think…?’ she said.
‘Quite so,’ Mrs Bradley replied. ‘It was thought that you would prefer me to call rather than a policeman.’
‘Norah!’ called Mrs Princep.
‘It’s of no use to order me out of your house,’ said Mrs Bradley, who had formed her plan of campaign. ‘I am sorry if I was abrupt, but I have very little time. It’s like this, Mrs Princep. You may or may not have heard of the strange and, so far, unaccountable disappearance of Miss Murchan, who used to teach at the school here. In association with the police, I am investigating the causes of that disappearance. Will you hear what I have to say?’
‘You’d better come into the drawing-room,’ said Mrs Princep. ‘Miss Murchan,’ she added, when they were seated and she had switched on an electric heater, ‘was suffering from a guilty conscience, I suppose. Some of those people didn’t tell the truth at the inquest.’
‘Not a guilty conscience; an overburdened one.’
‘You know about our trouble?’
‘Yes. I know your granddaughter died as the result of an accident in the school gymnasium. That is why I have come to you.’
‘I can tell you nothing about Miss Murchan. I had no idea she had disappeared, and I don’t care, anyway.’
‘No, but you can tell me something about your husband, if you will,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘Is he better now?’
‘I won’t have my husband reminded of the affair.’
‘I don’t want to have him reminded of it, any more than you do, but I would like to know the address of the hospital to which he was sent’
‘It was at a place in Berkshire called Millstones. I don’t know the exact address. I never went there.’
‘You didn’t go to visit him?’
‘No.’ She looked so uncompromisingly fierce, with her thin, pursed lips and large eyes lidded like those of an eagle or even (thought Mrs Bradley) a giant vulture, that it was not easy to know exactly how to continue the
