Faintley Speaking

‘How did you discover that there was another way round? You’ve never stayed here before. Your father said so.’

Mark looked scared. He was determined neither to flatter nor to let down Laura by declaring that hers had been the moving spirit in the adventure, and the Inspector’s question flustered him. Into his desperation an idea came hurtling like a life-line.

‘Well, you see,’ he said, ‘I felt sure there was a house up there somewhere, and they’d have to have grub, and perhaps they kept a car, and all that. There’d have to be some other way in, so we thought we’d look for it.’

‘I see. You thought you’d look for it. Very reasonable, especially as you’d never been there before.’

This put Mark on his guard. When parents and teachers agreed with you, that was the time to keep your eye skinned. It stood to reason that they did not agree with you really. They always had something up their sleeve. He hedged.

‘It just seemed like that,’ he said. ‘Miss Menzies wouldn’t see it that way, I don’t suppose. She just wanted to get down to the beach. There’s the cliff railway, of course, but it wasn’t running so early, and we wanted our bathe, and it seemed such a sweat, going back all that way, or so we thought.’

‘I see. Thank you, Mark. Going in for the law, by any chance?’

He departed, grinning. He left Mark feeling uneasy. To add to this uneasiness, on his way upstairs Mark encountered the yellow-skinned Mrs Bradley. He stood aside politely at the turn of the flight to let her pass, and trusted that he would escape notice, but, instead of passing him, she stood still and they met face to face.

‘Well, Sir Gareth!’ she said cheerfully. ‘How does the Lady Lyonours to-day?’ Mark looked and felt embarrassed and would have tried to slip past had he been even one year younger. As it was, he stood his ground like a man. He blushed and said:

‘All right, I expect. After you. It’s unlucky to pass on the stairs.’

‘I think that our paths should cross,’ said the ancient lady. ‘What is this trouble in which you have involved my secretary, amanuensis, and friend, Miss Laura Menzies? Account to me for the fact that you have set the bloodhounds on her trail.’

‘But I didn’t!’ said Mark indignantly, his voice shrill with fright. ‘In fact… as a matter of fact… well, that policeman jolly well third-degreed me, but I wasn’t going to give Laura away!’

‘Come with me.’ She led the way upstairs to her lair. ‘In here. Sit down. Comfort you with apples’ – she produced sweets and a bottle of orange juice – ‘stay you with flagons, although neither of us, thank goodness, is sick of love.’

Mark nervously took a sweet and accepted the drink she poured out.

‘I don’t know anything about Miss Faintley, I swear I don’t,’ he said. Mrs Bradley clicked her tongue.

‘Who mentioned Miss Faintley?’ she demanded. ‘No, my dear Solomon, Miss Faintley is beside the point at the moment. Tell me about your school.’

‘School? But I thought Miss Faintley —’

‘Quite so. Whose form are you in?’

‘Mr Bannister’s.’

‘What manner of man may he be?’

‘He’s all right,’ said Mark, keeping his guard up.

‘What is his standing in the school?’

‘He doesn’t stand much. He sits, and fetches you out in the front.’

‘With what in mind? Are his intentions honourable?’

‘Oh, he’s all right,’ repeated Mark. ‘Sometimes it’s your work, and he marks it and perhaps he keeps you in, and sometimes it’s the cane, and then you don’t get kept in, but nobody really grouses. He takes us for football sometimes.’

‘Ah! Nobody really grouses. A school of philosophers, I find. Now, what subject… no, never mind that at the moment, although I confess that I do not at present perceive the answer to what I was about to ask you. Now, Mr Plato, how many women teachers are there in the school?’

‘Well, there’s Mrs Rolls, Miss Ellersby, Miss Franks, Miss Batt, Miss Welling and Miss Cardillon. That’s all, except… well, Miss Faintley, of course. And, if you want to know, she takes us for Nature – it’s a sort of botany really.’

‘And the head-teacher’s name?’

‘Miss Golightly.’

‘A woman, eh?’

‘Worse luck!’ said Mark. He scowled. ‘She favours the girls.’

‘A woman of character, I feel. Another bite of the serpent’s tooth, dear Daniel?’ She handed over a dish and Mark accepted some chocolate.

‘I thought it was lions with Daniel,’ he observed, ‘not serpents. We had a poem… “Bite Daniel!” Rather good.’

‘Not only serpents, but every creeping thing,’ his terrifying hostess observed. ‘Did Miss Faintley teach zoology?’

‘No, botany and nature study. Tadpoles, and twigs and things, and bees and pollen, and that rot. I shall be jolly glad when I go up into the next form. Then we have Mr Roberts for science and do decent experiments and visit the gas-works and all that. He made the school a television set last term.’