Faintley Speaking

‘Oh, Lord! I quite agree,’ said Laura. ‘But why on earth did she want it?’

‘Some garbled story of the mortgage, but I found out she was not buying anything, only renting, do you see? So I said to myself that here comes something funny. So I don’t visit there any more. Anyway, only margarine on the bread, and nothing better than bloaters or a pot of shrimp paste for our tea. There, now.’ She stepped away from her work. ‘How does that do, would you say?’

‘Fine! Thanks a lot. I say, I couldn’t do anything like that in a hundred years! How would it be if I made some reason of my own not to send Master Trumper to you at all?’

‘That would not pass with Miss Golightly, but it is the kind thought that counts. He slings poster paint about and puts it on other children. He painted Annie Maggs blue last week.’

‘I’ll paint him black and blue,’ said Laura, on a note of sadistic enjoyment.

‘And that’s as far as we got,’ reported Laura that evening. ‘I don’t see what good I’m doing at the school, and it’s an intolerably lousy job. Thank goodness it’s only for a fortnight! I couldn’t stick a whole term.’

‘You don’t feel you have missed your vocation?’

‘No, I jolly well don’t! Look here, what is the explanation of that man who came out of the telephone-box that night when Mandsell agreed to collect the parcel? And why wouldn’t that porter give me one? Scared about the murder, I suppose.’

‘Ah, the parcel!’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘Yes. The police collected it, and Inspector Darling was good enough to call me up this afternoon and tell me what was in it.’

‘No! Say on! What is it that’s so fascinating about parcels?’

‘Their mysterious and secret nature. There was a statue in the parcel… a piece of plaster representing a slightly inebriated young gentleman in evening cloak and opera hat. When you are at school to-morrow I shall drive in to Kindleford, I think. There are three things I want to do. I want to see the statue and talk to the Inspector; I want to talk to Mr Mandsell, and I think I would like to visit the wicked shopkeeper.’

‘Too bad! And there shall I be teaching wretched kids about the lesser hogweed and the greater bladderwort! Our botany syllabus belongs to the age of faith and not of reason. In other words, it’s at least forty years out of date. I suspect that Miss Faintley botched it up from what she remembered of her own schooldays. You never knew such silly muck!’

‘Never mind. There is something else you can do. Find out, as circumspectly as possible, exactly which of the staff did, and which did not, put in an appearance at that end-of-term party. Somebody on the staff knows that Miss Faintley used to deliver those parcels, and I’d rather we found out than the police, and so would you.’

‘You’d be far better than I at that sort of game. Couldn’t we change places for the day?’

‘No. I have forgotten all I ever knew about the lesser hogweed. Besides, the Inspector won’t talk to you as he is going to talk to me. But be of good cheer! At the end of next week, unless our problem is solved, we are going back to Cromlech to continue our investigation from there.’

‘Lovely! All right, then. I’ll continue to wrestle with kids and conscience for another few days. I know now why T.G.I.F. is the harassed teacher’s favourite slogan! I wonder…’

‘Yes?’

‘I wonder whether Bannister could help us? He’s supposed to be a woman-hater, so he may have a line on Faintley that the others haven’t got.’

‘You could try, but I think the first step will be to establish which of the staff were and which were not at that end-of-term dance.’

‘All right. I can pump Cardillon on that. I’d have done it before, but she’s rather intelligent and I want to do it so that she doesn’t realize I’m pumping her. Any suggestions?’

‘Yes. Take her into your confidence if you discover that she herself was present the whole time at the dance. If she was not, she won’t be of very much help. She may, however, be able to tell you of somebody who was there the whole time.’

Laura tackled Miss Cardillon on the following morning before school began. She was lucky enough to find her alone in her classroom. It was a golden opportunity.

‘I say,’ she said, ‘when is half-term?’

‘I don’t know. We haven’t had the list round yet.’

‘I hope this isn’t a school where we’re expected to take parties of kids out, or run an Old Scholars’ evening, or something of that kind, in the half-term break?’

‘Oh, no. We have the Old Scholars twice… just before Christmas and at the end of the summer term.’

‘Does everybody turn up? I shouldn’t know any Old Scholars, you see.’

‘It’s optional… although, of course, Rankin does push it a bit to make sure that enough of us are here to make the thing go.’

‘How about you? Do you roll along?’

‘Oh, yes. It seems part of the job. We’re not asked to do much in the way of outside activities. Miss Golightly’s pretty reasonable like that, and I’m one of those who can be led but hates being driven, so I feel it’s the thing to show willing.’

‘Pity everybody doesn’t think the same, but my experience is that the willing horses always do the pulling for the slackers, especially in jobs like this.’

‘Yes, that’s pretty true. We don’t have much bother here, though. Miss Ellersby and Mr Trench are the only ones who never turn up to anything. She’s got an ancient father and he’s got an invalid wife, so we can’t say much, although we feel sometimes that their troubles aren’t really our business.’

‘Were they the only two who didn’t come to the end-of-term dance, then?’