Spotted Hemlock

‘She’ll do a lot for a favourite nephew.’ He liked and respected Miss McKay. ‘I can understand that you don’t want the police butting in until we know there’s real cause. After all, the girl’s of age. There’s nothing to stop her going off with a man, which is what I, personally, would rather bet she’s done. What kind of girl is she?’

Miss McKay repeated what she had been told by the various lecturers and then added:

‘You’ve only had her in your pig-keeping classes for a week or two, I know, but I should be interested to hear what you made of her.’

Carey wrinkled his brow.

‘She seemed rather a self-contained sort of girl, I thought, and rather more mature in her outlook than some of them. She was quiet and worked well—seemed to take her training very seriously indeed. I got the impression that she was trying to learn all she could as quickly as she could. In fact, I used to wonder whether she hadn’t a stronger motive than some of them for taking the course at all.’

‘I don’t think her people were very keen. She was acting partly in opposition to them, I believe. I’m glad to hear on all sides that she was such a keen student, except that it makes her absence from the college all the more unaccountable. If you really think Dame Beatrice would come…’

‘I’ll telephone her at once. No, come to think of it, I’ve a free afternoon tomorrow because of that film show you’re putting on in the lecture hall. I’ll go over and see her, and bring her back with me, unless, as I say, she’s dated up.’

His aunt, as usual, was delighted to see him, invited him to dinner and to stay the night, and promised to go back with him to Calladale in the morning. Carey telephoned Jenny to let her know where he was, and settled down to enjoy his evening.

After dinner he gave the elderly, quick-eyed and beaky-mouthed Dame Beatrice, psychiatrist and consulting psychologist to the Home Office, an account of the several happenings at Calladale since he had joined the staff there. She listened without interruption until he had finished.

‘Well?’ he said, after a lengthy silence had succeeded his remarks. Dame Beatrice shook her head.

‘I think we may discount the original work of destruction,’ she said. ‘It was almost certainly carried out by a gang of louts. In putting matters to rights, the students, you say, came across alien matter in the form of rhubarb crowns and the decomposed carcasses of rats. These, you believe, may have represented a long-term (so to speak) bit of ragging on the part of some men-students from Highpepper. There follows the appearance of this ghostly figure on horseback seen only by Miss Good…’

‘But testified to by the dumb mouths of Miss Gonsidine’s brussels sprouts, don’t forget…’

‘… coupled with the disappearance of Miss Palliser.’

‘We don’t know that it was coupled with it, you know. There’s a considerable time- lag between Saturday and Thursday. Besides, if anybody wanted to spirit the girl away, it was surely a damn’ silly way to do it?’

‘I don’t see that. A motor-car or motor-cycle would have been noisy.’

‘Do you suppose the girl was a consenting party to being carried away?’

‘It seems that she must have been. Consider the facts: here are these students in study-bedrooms in a comparatively modern building, twenty or so, at least, of them, I suppose. It is not likely that one of the girls could have been carried off at just before midnight against her will.’

‘No, but there was only one horseman, according to Miss Good.’

‘You mean there was only one horse.’

She drove with Carey to the College early next morning and was introduced to Miss McKay, who professed that she was very glad to see her.

‘Mr Lestrange has told you of our problem, of course,’ she said.

‘He has told me all he knows, but that really amounts to very little. I had better speak to the other lecturers. Have you any reason to think that this girl has run away with a young man? I gather that that is your opinion.’

‘It seems that I may need to revise it. It was my opinion, but I have telephoned Highpepper Hall, and, so far as they know, none of their students is missing. It was the first thing I thought of, naturally. Some of our girls take themselves very seriously and are apt to do foolish things in consequence. If you get nothing helpful from the lecturers, I must ring up the mother. I can’t take the responsibility of keeping her in the dark if the stupid child really is missing. It will all turn out to be some sort of an emotional upset, no doubt. You know what these adolescents are!’

Dame Beatrice ascertained from Miss Paterson, a weather-beaten, grey-eyed Scot, that the girl, so far as she knew, was in no trouble. She hesitated and then mentioned the thefts.

‘But you could talk to the students,’ she said. ‘Naturally, they get to know things about one another that never come to our ears. The girl was well-off, I am sure. There couldn’t have been any temptation to steal.’

Dame Beatrice did talk to the students and at first it seemed as though she was going to draw blank. Then she met a girl who knew the missing student from schooldays.

‘Norah got married in the holidays. I’m not supposed to tell anybody, but… well, I think she may have gone to her husband. She told me the other week that she’d had a letter from him. The only thing is, I should have thought she’d have asked for an Absence. After all, she didn’t need to say it was her husband. A white lie wouldn’t be out of place under the circumstances.’

‘Do her parents know about the marriage?’

‘No. She’s turned twenty-one and didn’t need their consent. She wouldn’t tell them in case they refused to go on paying her fees here, I suppose, although I think perhaps she pays her own.’

‘Her husband could not afford the fees?’

‘No, he isn’t earning. He’s an art student.’