Faintley Speaking

tone as much as by her words. Laura glanced at her tingling palm and then at several unnaturally red left ears in the front row on the boys’ side of the class, and suddenly laughed.

‘I can’t stand that man Tomalin next door to me,’ she said to Miss Cardillon when they met to go out to lunch.

‘Think yourself lucky you’re not me,’ retorted Miss Cardillon with unprofessional frankness. ‘I have to share my subject with him, and by the time I get his classes the kids are fed up and sick to their little bellies of composition, grammar, and Eng. lit. I’d throw up my job except that I’ve had a hot tip that I’m to be short-listed for the next headship. So don’t talk about Tomalin to me!’

This set Laura’s thoughts in the direction of her real duty in the school.

‘That reminds me,’ she said. ‘Do we refer to the others just by surnames? I mean, do the men talk of you as Cardillon, Miss Cardillon, a nickname, or how?’

‘They call me Liz, behind my back. So do most of the boys.’

‘Liz?’

‘Short for Skinny Lizzie,’ explained Miss Cardillon cheerfully. ‘On the other hand, if I were ringing up the school to explain that I couldn’t come, or if I were out on a school visit and had some reason to ring up, I should inevitably say, Cardillon speaking. It’s considered rather Fauntleroy to call yourself Miss Cardillon on a mixed staff.’ Miss Ellersby and Miss Franks, who were joining them to make up a table for four, concurred in this opinion.

‘It doesn’t do to call too much attention to the blessed state of spinsterhood in this school,’ Miss Ellersby, an anaemic, sardonic-eyed woman of forty, added. ‘Although we only get four-fifths of the men’s money and work three times as hard as most of them, we’re looked upon as bloated plutocrats. What I say is, you can’t have a wife and still expect to have holidays in sunny Italy. Selfish brutes! They ought to try our lives for a bit! Digs and landladies, or else a flat and your own shopping and chores! If it weren’t for the holidays, I should go crackers, for one!’

‘I don’t know,’ said Miss Golightly, coming into Laura’s, first ‘nature’ lesson, ‘whether you would care to call for the next parcel of school stock? It is just as you like, of course. Elbows, Frances! Handkerchief, Evans!’

The two children looked so much astonished at being thus addressed that Laura guessed that these injunctions were not Miss Golightly’s usual line of country. The head, she thought, was embarrassed, an uncommon state of affairs and one which indicated clearly that, a conscientious and intelligent woman, she fully realized that to offer Laura the task which possibly had brought Miss Faintley to her death was to take advantage of the possession of authority, a thing she never knowingly did. She added, very quickly:

‘I can easily make other arrangements, but, as I know quite well why you are here, I thought perhaps it would offer facilities if—’

‘I’d like it very much,’ said Laura warmly. ‘When would you wish me to go?’

‘It could be to-morrow morning, I think. I have been looking at the time-table. You have only one nature lesson. It is with 1B. They can draw instead, and Mr Tomalin, who is free then, can sit with them while he marks his books. You have your own form for the rest of the time. They can have an extra arithmetic lesson and then do silent reading. You might set them a chapter which they can prepare for an essay. That is only a suggestion, of course, but it is as well to set before them some definite objective, otherwise they only waste their time. How are things going? Quite well?’

‘More or less, thank you. Getting hold of all their names is the worst part.’

‘Get the children to make out nameplates which they can leave out on the desk until you get to know them. Very well, then. To-morrow, as soon as you have called the register and sent the class down to morning assembly, knock on my door and I will give you the invoices. But you will be careful, won’t you? I should be dreadfully sorry if you did anything rash, as it appears poor Miss Faintley must have done.’

The moment she was gone there was a buzz all over the classroom, for, although both teachers had talked very quietly, the elastic-eared young had followed most of the conversation.

‘Now what?’ asked Laura, who had been giving a good lesson until the entrance of the headmistress. The buzz ceased, but one or two hissing whispers went the rounds, and then a voice from the back row said threateningly:

‘Go on, Maisie Dukes! I dare you! You said you would. Now you go on and do it!’

‘What is all this?’ asked Laura, mentally prepared to deal with impudence. A girl in the second row got up, flushed and inclined to giggle. Laura deduced that she was scared.

‘Please, Miss Menzies,’ she said half-hysterically, ‘some of them think you’re a policewoman!’

‘Well, you can assure them that I am not!’ said Laura, grinning. ‘But don’t bank too steeply on that!’

‘Did you read about Miss Faintley in the papers?’ asked a bright-eyed girl from a front desk. ‘We thought anybody what took her place must be a policewoman trying to find out things. That’s what Too Pretty for Prison was about.’

‘Was it? Why don’t you read something decent?’

Howls of protest from the girls and of derision (equally divided between Laura and the girls) from the boys greeted this question. Laura became terse and authoritative, and the lesson continued. But she had broken the thread of it, and her mind was occupied with other matters. She wondered how much the children knew about Miss Faintley. Probably a good deal more than the staff did, since they would have regarded her more dispassionately, less sympathetically (most likely) and were keener observers and more accomplished critics. A pity that she could not talk to them freely. There might be something extremely important to be gained. They might even know which member of the staff was the most likely to have been Miss Faintley’s friend of the telephone-box arrangements. A pity one couldn’t very well ask them!

Another aspect occurred to her. She remembered, from her own schooldays, the capacity of adolescents for imaginative speculation. If these children were inclined to the belief that she was connected with the police it was only a matter of time before they found out that their guess was not so very far from the truth, and once that was established her value to Mrs Bradley as a spy in the school camp would be questionable if not actually non- existent.