Laurels Are Poison

‘For thieving?’

‘Yes, if you want to know.’

‘Well, William, thank you very much for your information. I suppose you can’t remember the date when you built the fireplace for the lady?’

‘I might, but not for you.’

‘Oh, that means last summer, then.’ She wrote again. ‘Where were you at school?’

‘London.’

‘Really? That seems a good way to go.’

‘Lived with my aunt and uncle.’

‘And liked it, I know. Pity you messed up your chances, wasn’t it?’

‘I don’t want that from you.’

‘No, I can tell that. How did it happen, William?’

‘Foreign stamps.’

‘Oh, yes. Wouldn’t they have kept you if you’d made restitution? Or did you sell the stamps?’

‘No, I didn’t sell them.’

‘I see. There were others in it.’

‘I didn’t say so, any more than I said you were right about the lady.’

‘You have said so now. Well, good-bye William. I’m afraid the police will come, but not about the bricks as such. I should answer their questions, if I were you. Where is your stamp collection now?’

‘Burnt it.’

‘You did?’

‘Dad did. I don’t blame him for that.’

A curious and interesting household, thought Mrs Bradley, returning to the College, not by the footpaths and fields, but by the motor roads which a murderer burdened with a corpse would have had to take in order to arrive at the quarry. She reached the lane which ran past the wall of the College grounds at a quarter past five, stopped to speak to the Chief Engineer as she passed his house and met him coming out of it, and then encountered Kitty and Laura.

‘Did you get any tea?’ she inquired.

‘We only scraped in at the death, but managed to grab a couple of cups and some rolls. Oh, and Kitty spotted an old zinc bath in another quarry, but we didn’t stop,’ responded Laura. ‘Did you have any luck at the farm, Warden?’

‘Yes. More than I expected. The son, a boy of fifteen, helped build the brick fireplace. Of course, it is most likely that the person he assisted is not the person we are after, but some investigation is called for, and I have asked the police to undertake it.’

‘And the receptacle thing you wanted to find?’

‘No sign of anything of the sort, but it may have been your bath. If it can be found, the police will find it, but not yet, because I haven’t mentioned it.’

‘What is this receptacle thing you both talk about? Not really that bath?’ inquired Kitty, as the two students walked over to College for a late lecture in English.

‘No; the pot thing, whatever it was, that the murderer used to boil the flesh off the bones, I think,’ answered Laura. Fortunately for her own peace of mind, Kitty, who had never heard of the unsavoury details of the behaviour of certain murderers confronted by the bodies of their victims, did not believe what she said, and merely murmured reproachfully: ‘Oh, Dog, don’t say such beastly things.’

It was just as they reached the steps that Laura, lingering a moment to tie up her shoe-lace, spotted an unfamiliar car coming slowly along the back drive. But for their recent activities in the quarries, she would have thought nothing of it.

Alice, who was in their group for English, was already in her place in the lecture room, and had kept two front row seats.

‘Why front row, chump?’ grumbled Kitty, seating herself, and looking round for Laura.

‘Because it’s the Deb.,’ replied Alice.

‘And Alice can’t bear anybody else’s fat head to come between them,’ jeered Laura, joining them. There was a fair amount of noise in the room, into which, looking, as usual, thoroughly frightened (in Mrs Bradley’s view) or ‘damned superior’ (in the words and view of Miss Cartwright, who, however, approved of this attitude), came Deborah, carrying her lecture notes, a large Shakespeare with dozens of little bits of paper marking her references, the Group Roll (which she called, on principle, at late lectures because people, she thought, were disposed to cut them), and an ‘acting copy’ of Richard of Bordeaux, a play which she was going to suggest to the First-Years that they should produce in the summer.

‘Good evening,’ said Deborah, laying her books on the desk and dropping the copy of the play. ‘Oh, thank you, Miss Boorman.’ For Alice, from the middle of the front row and with a nippiness which was the product of the gymnasium and the net-ball court, had leapt upon the small, paper-backed volume and returned it.

‘What was it?’ whispered Laura. Alice wrote on the top of her English notebook the title.

‘Glory!’ commented Laura, rudely, and rose with languid grace. ‘Am I in order in asking a question which probably does not have a direct bearing on the lecture, Miss Cloud?’ she inquired.