Faintley Speaking

‘What does Mr Bannister teach?’

‘Maths.’

‘And is it a favourite subject with you? I feel that as Mr Bannister is your form-master —’

‘It’s all right. I like geometry better than algebra. You can fool about with protractors and set-squares and things, and —’

‘No doubt with compasses, too?’

Mark wriggled, as one who not only suspected irony but had recollected the stab of an ancient wound.

‘You can’t do much with Mr Bannister in that way,’ he replied. ‘Not if he’s in the room. It all goes on when he goes out.’

‘And his outings, I swear, are not frequent. But he takes the boys for football, therefore much is forgiven him.’

‘Yes, on Saturday mornings. I don’t think he’s got much to do with his time. I meet him sometimes, mooching about, but he has jolly decent holidays, I believe. Not like’ – he scowled at the recollection of Ellison and the fun they had planned to have in France – ‘not like at Cromlech, where there’s nothing to do except bathe.’

‘What sort of holidays would you call good ones?’

‘Well, I’d planned to go to France, these hols., with a friend of mine.’

‘Boy or girl?’

‘Girls are no good. I don’t mean Laura, but, then, she’s not a girl. She’s pretty old, I should think.’

Mrs Bradley, who looked upon her secretary as a child, gravely conceded that Laura was in the sere and yellow leaf, and added:

‘France is a beautiful country, and I am not surprised that your plans included a visit there. Does Mr Bannister like France?’

‘I expect so. He’s been into those prehistoric caves. Lascaux, they’re called, I think. They’re in the south-west somewhere.’

‘Lascaux, yes. So have I. The Jumping Cow and so forth.’

‘Mr Bannister says it isn’t. It wouldn’t be jumping at all, except that the artist didn’t want to cover up the ponies that some earlier bloke had drawn, so he put its legs up.’

‘The cow jumped over the moon, according to popular legend. What thought he of the Apocalyptic Beast, on the main hall vaulting?’

‘I don’t know. He didn’t mention that one. It comes in Revelations, doesn’t it?’

‘And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion,’ quoted Mrs Bradley.

‘Yes, I expect that’s the bit. He showed us pictures in a book he’d bought.3 There’s an awfully good one of a horse slipping over a precipice and another of some deer crossing a stream. He doesn’t often tell us things about his holidays, like some of the masters do, but he did tell us about how five French chaps lost their dog and found the caves. There was a hole where a tree had blown down, and I suppose the dog fell in the hole and the chaps went after it. I bet they were jolly surprised when they found themselves in that whacking big place with all those paintings on the walls! I bet it’s weird in there, isn’t it?’

‘Extremely weird.’

‘If my people hadn’t turned sticky about France, Ellison – he’s my friend – and I were going to cycle to Lascaux and have a look for ourselves.’

‘A worthy object of pilgrimage. I wonder whether Miss Faintley ever told you how she spent her holidays?’

‘We wouldn’t have been very interested in ladies’ holidays. They don’t often do much that you’d want to hear about, do they?’

‘Alas, no. Mine is a dull and deficient sex, I fear.’

Mark looked alarmed, and began to sidle towards the door. Mrs Bradley smiled like a well-intentioned serpent and let him go. Mark walked straight into the Inspector.

‘Ah, Mark! The very man!’ said Vardon, with what, to Mark, sounded like satisfaction of a ghoulish and frightening kind. ‘Come into the little writing-room – there’s nobody there – and tell me all about your school.’

Except for the bit concerning Mr Bannister and the Aurignacian wall-paintings (which he did not think Vardon would find interesting, even supposing that he had ever heard of them), Mark stolidly repeated the information he had given to Mrs Bradley.

‘So Miss Faintley taught nature study, did she? What was she down this way for? – to collect specimens for next term’s work?’

‘I haven’t a clue,’ said Mark doggedly. ‘Why don’t you look at her luggage and see if she’d brought her botanical cases with her? They’re kind of tin things. Airtight, I think, when they’re fastened. They’re jolly expensive, I believe, because Jones fell off his bike once when she’d lent him one to take home some specimens after a nature ramble… it wasn’t bad: old Skipton got chased by a bull… and when Jones fell off his bike this botany case got itself dented and Miss Faintley moaned like billy-o when he took it back to her on Monday morning. He apologized, too, and, after all, he had done his knee in for games.’

‘And what were these rambles? What was their object?… just anything you kids picked up, or for anything special?’

Mark looked round as Mrs Bradley came into the small room.