the one bedroom to the other.
‘Amazing,’ Mrs Bradley had observed, when the Principal, who had led her on a personally-conducted tour, pointed out the supreme advantages which this method of joining up the various Halls must confer upon Wardens and students. ‘And the same key, I suppose, fits all the doors?’
‘Yes, naturally,’ the Principal had replied. Then Mrs Bradley’s obvious lack of enthusiasm caused her to add with some haste: ‘But, of course, whatever has happened to poor Miss Murchan could not possibly have happened to her here.’
To this illogical remark Mrs Bradley had made no reply. As she followed Deborah up the front staircase she was thinking about it, however, and, perhaps for this reason, was sufficiently on the alert to make an irritating but interesting discovery.
Her bedroom doorway was in a small recess. Across this recess, in a business-like manner, a thick piece of string had been stretched. Two U-shaped staples had been driven, the one into a landing cupboard, the other into a wooden partition which formed the bathroom wall, and the string was stretched tightly between them about eight inches from the ground. Anyone going into the room would most likely have failed to see it in time, for it had been painted white to, match the bedroom door, and, as a piece of white drugget had been used as a slip-mat, the effect, concluded Mrs Bradley, studying the booby-trap thoughtfully, was that of complete camouflage.
Leaving the string exactly where it was, she stepped along the landing to Deborah’s door, to find that the artist, whoever she was, had exactly repeated her effects. She waited there until Deborah came down from the floor above.
‘All serene, although not, I am sorry to say, asleep,’ Deborah remarked. ‘In fact, the little blighters have been smoking. Is it allowed, do you think?’
‘It will be,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘I must put up a notice about it. Look, child. The “little blighters” appear to have been doing something other than smoking.’
Deborah looked at the contraption. Then she knelt down and looked at it again. Mrs Bradley noted, approvingly, that she did not attempt to touch it.
‘Those three didn’t do this,’ she said, rising from her knees. Mrs Bradley looked at her with interest and with even more marked approval.
‘Are you sure, child?’
‘Well, Laura and Kitty — I mean Miss Menzies and Miss Trevelyan — aren’t the sort to think a hobbledehoy trick like this a bit funny, and I can’t see the senior student doing it.’
‘No. Remains the fair Alice,’ said Mrs Bradley complacently.
‘Or the servants — who may not like us.’
‘Speak for yourself,’ said Mrs Bradley, grinning. ‘Come on; let’s go up and bully the witnesses.’
‘If any,’ said Deborah, following her up the stairs. ‘By the way,’ she added, as they reached the next landing, ‘I do hope we shall remember those beastly strings, and not go tripping over them when we come down again.’
‘I shall remember mine, but I think I’ll untie yours,’ said Mrs Bradley, going down again. The driving-in of the staples, she was particularly interested to notice, had splintered the soft wood, but the splintering had been rendered almost unnoticeable by the application of more of the white paint. Nevertheless (and she had a keen sense of smell) not the slightest odour of paint could be detected.
‘Hm!’ said Mrs Bradley, switching off her powerful torch and rising from her knees. ‘Very painstaking.’
She went up on to the next floor when she had detached Deborah’s string, to find the Sub-Warden seated on Alice’s hat-box and Alice looking scared and uncomfortable.
Chapter 4
A MULTIPLICITY OF PROMISCUOUS VESSELS
« ^ »
‘You know,’ said Kitty, sitting up in her narrow bed and yelling over the partition, ‘the old girl was up to something last night. What do you suppose was the object of all that third-degree velvet-glove stuff she pulled?’
There was no reply from Laura, but Alice put her head over and observed: ‘I didn’t know what she meant, and I don’t now.’
‘But I do,’ said Laura, appearing in the doorway of Alice’s cubicle. ‘On the excuse, if asked, of losing my way to the bathroom — not that you can lose your way anywhere in this geometrically-constructed loose-box — I’ve been down and had a snoop at those doors. I fig-ew-er that the Duchess of Main put on burglar’s gloves and undid those knots with a hairpin. The cords still lie
‘Oh, I do hope not,’ said Alice, who was now doing her hair. ‘I don’t want any more questions. It’s horrible. It makes you begin to wonder whether perhaps you did do it, after all.’
‘Well, did you?’ asked Laura. ‘Personally, the orange-skin banana-peel jest, ripe though it may be, has never appealed to yours truly. It’s unsubtle.’
She went into her own cubicle, and the other two could hear drawers being flung open and thrust in again to the accompaniment of a considerable amount of blasphemous comment.
‘What have you lost, Dog?’ inquired Kitty, who retained her comfortable attitude in bed.
‘Belt,’ replied Laura. ‘I received a nasty hint yesterday that we’re supposed to wear stockings to go over to College, and I’ve got nothing to hang mine on to.’
