Deborah, thinking of the tea Mrs Bradley had provided, could not find herself in complete agreement with the Principal, at any rate upon the first of these points. She made a non-committal noise, and was about to take her leave, as she felt that she had been dismissed, when Miss du Mugne added suddenly:
‘By the way, the students know
‘Oh, no, of course not,’said Deborah.
‘The police have been very discreet, very discreet indeed; but, unless Mrs Bradley can help matters, something must come out soon.’
‘Yes, quite. I quite understand. I’ll do everything possible to help.’
‘I am sure you will.
Deborah left the Principal’s room with mixed feelings. Prevalent among these, however, was the desire — she recognized it with a certain amount of surprise — to return to Mrs Bradley’s disquieting, yet, paradoxically, reassuring presence. ‘I know; and spit the Principal out of your mouth,’ said Miss Topas, who seldom minced her words.
Deborah walked round towards the back of the College this time, and took the path which led directly to Athelstan. On her left was a shrubbery which gave place, when the path joined another, to an orchard. On her right was a lawn with a grass tennis court. The rockery, which fronted Athelstan and beside which steps led up to the main gravel drive which connected all the Halls, was her demarcation line.
‘Home,’ she thought involuntarily. Suddenly, to her surprise, and, she had to admit, to her pleasure, out from the cover of a bush darted Laura Menzies.
‘Hullo,’ she said in cheerful tones. She had by the arm the scared and diffident Miss Boorman. ‘Come into the Common Room with us. Or are you going into a huddle with the nobs?’
Deborah modestly disclaimed any previous engagement, and Laura thereupon observed that she supposed they had all better hang about to learn the fate of ‘old Kitty.’ This was settled by the appearance of the heroine herself, who, with a woebegone expression, came out by the front door of Athelstan and informed all and sundry that she was ‘for it,’ having been enlisted with the rest of the inmates at the end of her first two and a half seconds in the Principal’s room.
‘What have we here, Dog?’ she inquired, gazing kindly upon Miss Boorman.
‘A buffer state,’ Laura cryptically but intelligibly replied. Kitty favoured Miss Boorman with a long and thoughtful stare.
‘Ay, ay,’ she pronounced with a satisfied smile. ‘Good generalship, Dog.’
‘As ever,’ replied her friend modestly. ‘As for Miss Cloud,’ she continued, ‘after today, when we are all girls together, she will be ashamed to be seen out with us, so make the most of her company while you can get it and before she knows her way about, and the shades of the prison house begin to close around the growing boy.’
‘The thing is,’ said Deborah, as all four of them entered Athelstan, ‘I can’t quite see why there was any question about your being admitted to College, Miss Menzies. I mean, you don’t seem to be—’
‘A moron like me? Oh, no, she ain’t,’ said Kitty.
‘Bad reputation at school for ragging,’ replied Laura, with unwonted modesty. ‘In fact, I was given to understand just now by Old Beezer du Mugne — between ourselves, what a pill! — that but for the direct intervention of the First Grave-Digger, I should have been scrapped.’
‘Mrs Bradley wanted you?’
‘And how!’ agreed Laura, squinting down her nose. ‘And do you know what I think?’ she continued, to Deborah’s extreme alarm. ‘I think there’s dirty work at the cross-roads. Why does the Third Witch come here disguised as a Warden? There is something behind all this. Had it struck you, Comrade Boorman?’
‘No,’ said Alice Boorman. ‘What?’
‘What, indeed?’ responded Laura cordially. ‘Kitty, love, has anything struck
‘Nope. Nothing ever does. But as soon as Miss du Mugne insisted upon availing herself of my services, I raced back here and secured from that Miss Mathers who deals in lists and things, three perfectly good little dungeons on the second floor, all side by side and hotsy-totsy. I thought we ought to be all three together.’
‘Good for you!’ said Laura, with enthusiasm. ‘Now, young Alice Where Art Thou! Do you, or do you not, become the Third Musketeer?’
‘Wilt thou, Alice, take this Thingummy as thy wedded what-do-you-call-it?’ demanded Kitty idiotically.
‘I will,’ said the pale Alice, looking pleased but also slightly apprehensive. ‘But I’ve come here to work, you know.’
‘The bleating of the two kids excites the tiger,’ observed Laura, linking her arm in that of the third musketeer. Deborah found herself unable to decide whether Alice had chosen wisely or not. The four of them went into the students’ Common Room, and at the end of about half an hour Deborah pleaded that she wanted to unpack, and was conducted by one of the maids to her bedroom, and then shown her sitting-room. The Warden and Sub-Warden were similarly accommodated, she had been pleased to see. She had had not more than sufficient time to take a hasty but pleasantly proprietary glance about the large-windowed squarish room when the house-telephone rang, and she discovered that she was connected with Mrs Bradley’s sitting-room.
‘Let’s go to dinner in York,’ proposed the head of the house. ‘These children can’t come to much harm between now and midnight, and I find myself, as Miss Menzies would say, cribbed, cabined and confined in the College atmosphere. Don’t loiter. George has the car at the door.’
