Spotted Hemlock

cross about things. I have a lovely gilt in-pig, and I’m afraid this may have upset her. Pigs are terribly temperamental, as you know. How’s Ernest settling in? Yes, quite. The importance of being Ernest is that if he mates nicely with Barbara we ought to get a beautiful litter of Gloucester Old Spots, which is a pig I’ve always wanted to try.’

‘If you’ve had a lot of destruction, why don’t you call in the police?’

‘Miss McKay thinks it may be a Highpepper rag. She’s had their bloke on the phone and he’s promised to brainwash his lads, but, personally, I don’t think it’s ragging. It’s nasty, which the boys, on the whole, are not. Anyway, don’t worry. I’ll see you tomorrow night, with any luck.’

Carey and his pigman stayed up until three in the morning and caught nobody. Carey had no lectures until after the mid-morning break, so he slept-in until half-past nine, made a leisurely breakfast in the Staff dining-room and then went for a short stroll in the grounds.

The pigs which had been released by the marauders had done a considerable amount of damage, most of which was still being tidied up by the students. Carey stopped beside a perspiring lass in breeches and leggings who was putting a flower-bed to rights, and pointed to a heap of rhubarb crowns and the extremely decayed carcass of a small mammal.

‘How come?’ he enquired. The girl straightened her back and leaned on the garden fork she was using.

‘Isn’t it horrible?’ she said. ‘We keep finding rhubarb and rats all over the place. This is the fifth lot that I know of. Those filthy louts! I’d like to get hold of one of them!’

‘I doubt whether this is the work of louts,’ said Carey, gazing at the remains of the dead rat. ‘It looks more like ancient history to me. I should incinerate that carcass, if I were you. Let’s hope the pigs didn’t investigate the corpses too closely. It can’t have done them much good if they did.’

By lunch-time seventeen more deposits of rats and rhubarb crowns had been discovered, and the Principal of Highpepper had been along to look at the damage. His view was that the gentlemen-farmers were innocent of the destructive raid on Calladale, but it turned out that, although Soames and Preddle had contrived to remain discreetly silent about the rats and the rhubarb, Old Benson, the local rat-catcher, had confessed to the sale of sundry corpses to ‘some of the gentlemen’ at the end of the previous term.

‘Not a nice rag,’ said Miss McKay, ‘but if Mr Sellaclough declares that his men did no damage, I have no option but to agree. I do wish they would leave this College alone.’

That in some respects this was unlikely was demonstrated very shortly afterwards. In spite of Preddle’s ungallant assertions, not all the Calladale students were uncouth in body and mind. Some, indeed, were both handsome and gifted, not the least pulchritudinous being one Rachel Good. From the point of view of Miss McKay, Rachel was inclined to belie her surname, but in the eyes of a certain Highpepper youth named Cleeves she was the rose of Sharon and the lily of the valley. In other words, at the end of the summer term they had plighted their troth, and, as Cleeves was a young man of substance, Rachel sported an engagement ring tricked out with rubies and was taken into Garchester to partake of ambrosia and the blushful Hippocrene far more often than some of her envious contemporaries thought was reasonable.

Miss McKay, canny though she might be, was no Mrs Grundy. She was prepared to grant her students a reasonable number of late passes each term without wishing to find out how they spent the hours between lunch and lock-out. She disapproved of engaged students because she believed that their entanglements interfered with their studies, but she was a just and reasonable woman and was prepared to admit that it took all kinds to make a world, and, that microcosm of it, a college.

On the morning of the second Thursday in October, Miss Good applied for a late leave. The college secretary looked up the records.

‘It’s your third this term, Miss Good, but I’ll ring Miss McKay.’

‘How dreary of you, Louise! Come on! Be a sport! Give me a pass. Who’s to know?’

‘Miss McKay, of course.’ The secretary connected herself with the Principal. ‘Miss Good, asking for a late pass… she’s had two… Very good, Miss McKay.’ She put down the intercommunication receiver. ‘She says you can go ahead, but you’ve got to be in by eleven.’

‘The old sourpuss! Still, it’s better than nothing, although Barry will create, I expect. She’s always made it half-past before. Oh, well, if you’ll just give me the card… Thanks a lot.’

Thursday was the Calladale half-holiday. It had been arranged between the two principals that Highpepper should take Wednesdays, but this pious attempt at sabotage was frustrated weekly by the Highpepper students, who, if they had any desire to escort Calladales to the pictures and take them out to tea or supper, cut the Gordian knot by cutting the Thursday afternoon lectures and chores. This inspired cutting was accomplished by Mr Cleeves on the Thursday of Miss Good’s late pass, and an enjoyable time was had by both, Cleeves merely remarking, when his affianced referred to the cheese-paring dictum of Miss McKay, that, at any rate, eleven o’clock would be all right. There would be plenty of time for a four o’clock cinema followed by a dinner and drinks, and his Morris would get the girl back to Calladale before the expiration of her pass.

He was prepared to be as good as his word, but, as the car was within a mile of her college, Miss Good gave a sudden exclamation.

‘My ring! I must have left it in that cloakroom place! I took it off to wash my hands, and I must have forgotten to put it on again!’

‘Oh, damn!’ said Cleeves. ‘I’d better go back, I suppose. Good thing the place is an hotel and not just a pub. I’ll be able to get in all right. I’ll ask at the office. Look, I’ll put you down at your gates, if you don’t mind. That will save me a bit of time.’

‘Oh, yes. After all, you’ve still got another twenty-five miles to do. Oh, dear! I’m terribly sorry.’

‘Yes, you are a little chump. I’ll hang on to the ring when I get it, and let you have it back when I see you on Saturday.’

‘I only hope it’s still where I left it! Surely nobody would steal it, would they?—not in a nice hotel like that!’

Mr Cleeves was not prepared to bet on this, but he did not say so. He merely told his beloved not to fret, put her down at the gates of Calladale, turned the car and drove back at top speed to Garchester. Miss Good watched his rear lights until they disappeared round a bend, and then turned her steps towards the hostel, for she was not an in-college student.