Laurels Are Poison

‘Yes… yes, certainly, Miss Menzies,’ replied Deborah, who dreaded Laura’s end-of-the-day flights of fancy when she herself was tired and the indefatigable student apparently as fresh as paint.

‘Thank you. Then what, please, is your opinion of Gordon Daviot as a dramatist?’

‘Oh, well, rather good, I thought,’ said Deborah. That is…’

‘And do you base that opinion on Richard of Bordeaux, or on any other of the dramatist’s works?’ pursued Laura with relentless courtesy.

‘I was thinking only of Richard of Bordeaux,’ said Deborah, eyeing her interlocutor with a good deal of dislike. ‘And now sit down. I’m going to begin my lecture.’

Laura, with an audible remark about ‘the ship full fraught’, seated herself with easy grace. Deborah flushed, bit her lip, and then said sharply, in a ‘classroom’ voice:

‘Don’t make remarks, please, Miss Menzies. It is, to say the least, ill-mannered.’

‘I beg your pardon, Miss Cloud. I was making a quotation from Michael Drayton. I withdraw it,’ said Laura sweetly.

‘Keep your quotations for your essays,’ said Deborah, unwisely. ‘Oh, God!’ she thought, discerning an expression of rapturous amazement on Laura’s countenance. ‘Now what have I let myself in for?’

She shrugged, smiled at the rest of the group, and began to read her lecture. Laura sat, chin on hand, gazing at her for about five minutes. This steady, unwinking regard made Deborah nervous. She stumbled over a sentence, became involved in a — she discovered too late — slightly under-punctuated paragraph, and was roused to excessive irritation at hearing Laura’s voice murmuring delicately: ‘How men would love if they might, and how they would have women be.’

She stopped short, flushed angrily, scowled at the interruption and then said:

‘Miss Menzies?’

‘Eh? Oh, pardon, Miss Cloud. Am I in order if I ask a question at this point of your lecture?’

‘I suppose so,’ said Deborah hopelessly.

‘What is your opinion of Arthur Symon’s introduction to his collection of Elizabethan poetry?’

‘That question, unfortunately, has nothing to do with my lecture,’ replied Deborah, ‘and therefore I must decline to answer it.’

‘Thank you, Miss Cloud,’ replied Laura.

‘Thank you, Miss Menzies,’ said Deborah belligerently. Laura waved a languid hand for the lecture to proceed, but before Deborah had completed another paragraph she was on her feet again.

‘Miss Cloud!’

‘Oh, dear, Miss Menzies!’

‘Miss Cloud, do I understand you to say that Sidney was the greatest love-poet of the Elizabethan age?’

‘No, Miss Menzies, you do not. What I said was…’

‘I was afraid you’d forgotten Drayton, not to speak of Donne,’ said Laura. ‘I see I was mistaken.’

She sat down again. Deborah went on, slightly shaken, to her next paragraph. There was no interruption. The lecture went placidly on, the clock moved its hands towards the hour. There was no sound except Deborah’s quiet voice and the methodical noise of students scratching down notes. Suddenly this blessed peace was shattered once again.

‘Or, of course, Campion,’ said Laura.

‘Go out, Miss Menzies!’ said Deborah. ‘I shall report you to the Principal.’

‘Good for you,’ said Laura cheerfully. She edged out, and at the same instant the highly indignant Alice hooked her skilfully round the ankle so that she measured her length on the floor. There was some slight confusion whilst Laura picked herself up and dusted herself down, then, with a bow to Deborah and an apologetic smile, she withdrew and ran lightly down the stone staircase.

The English room was on the second floor. Laura ran on, descending from one landing to the next, and left the College building by darting past the large lecture theatre and the senior student’s room.

On the main drive opposite the front entrance stood the small dark-green saloon car she had noticed before the beginning of Deborah’s lecture. She stepped back so that the angle of the building screened her from view, and watched, automatically registering in her brain the number of the car.

A woman, neatly dressed in green mixture tweeds, got out and approached the front entrance.

‘Gotcher!’ observed Laura, sotto voce, and began very cautiously to stalk her. In spite of a greatly changed appearance, there was no doubt in her mind that the woman was Miss Cornflake.

Up the staircase she went, followed by Laura. On the first floor she halted, and, to Laura’s intense interest, took out of her handbag a small revolver. She then glanced furtively about her, through a heavy, old-fashioned veil.

The College was silent. Through the well-fitting doors came no sound of the quiet voices of lecturers intoning their information. Students in the building were either in attendance at lectures or working in the library, the laboratory or the small handwork room at that hour of the day. There seemed to be no casual going or coming. Miss Cornflake, if she was bent on mischief, had selected an excellent time.

Laura had no doubt about what to do. The only difficulty was to decide exactly when to do it. Temperamentally she was almost without physical fear, but common sense informed her that if Miss Cornflake were a murderess it would be madness to tackle her at an ineffectual moment, especially when she was armed.

She had little time in which to make a plan. If Miss Cornflake’s attitude and weapon meant anything, they