Elizabethan mansion Squire’s Acre.
Beyond a broad, hedge-bordered lane opposite these gates were market gardens, and further north still, beyond these, was another farmhouse, a long, low building supported by stables on one side of a hollow square and cow-byres on the other. Beyond the farm, incongruously enough, ran a branch of the Underground railway.
The road, still bordered by fields on the side opposite the farmhouse, rose to the railway bridge and dropped gently down to the other side. In a meadow on the left, a solitary oak tree stood in the middle of grassland. At some distance from it, half-a-dozen swings and a see-saw indicated a public recreation ground. In addition, there were park benches and a cricket pitch.
Dame Beatrice’s car drove on, and very shortly came to an imposing road-house set back from the thoroughfare so that cars could be parked in front of it. Young Mr Perse’s lodgings were down a turning by the side of the building and proved to consist of two very respectable rooms on the first floor of a semi-detached house. The visitors were expected, and Mr Perse opened the door to them himself.
“Ah, come right in and have a drink,” he said, hospitably, “unless you’d prefer a cup of tea.”
Dame Beatrice accepted sherry, Laura and the host chose whisky. The object of the visit then came to light.
“I am anxious to see the private road in which Mr Spey’s body was found. Apart from that, I am also keenly interested in this projected pageant of yours. Perhaps you will be kind enough to tell me all about it,” said Dame Beatrice.
“There’s nothing much to tell. I thought the first one was entirely inadequate. The wrong people, including my aunt, were running it, and some aspects of it were farcical, as was the whole of the Town Hall show. I want to put on a pageant which really does credit to the history of the borough. What’s more, I’m not going to give that pernicious and ridiculous drama club any part in it. I am going to use my boys and the High School girls for the whole thing.”
“Does the High School know?” enquired Laura shrewdly. Young Mr Perse smiled.
“Not yet. I conceived the idea too late in the term—in the middle of G.C.E. and all that—to bother them, but I shall write to Miss Empson immediately after the summer holiday. She’ll be only too glad to allow her girls to take part. I shall need to hold auditions, of course, and to vet the girls for looks and height and so on, and that will take a good deal of my spare time, as it will all have to be done out of school hours, but I feel it’s necessary.”
“Your headmaster is aware of your project and approves of it, I imagine?” said Dame Beatrice. Young Mr Perse looked down at the drink in his glass. He frowned thoughtfully.
“Actually, neither—yet. But he’s bound to think it a thundering good idea. It will be entirely educational, you see, and, in addition, it should put an end, once and for all, to the Cold War.”
“What cold war?” enquired Laura; although she could guess the answer to her question and so was not surprised when it came.
“Why, the cold war between our scholastic establishment for the sons of not quite gentlemen and the High School for Girls, of course.”
“Oh, really?”
“Yes. There was a bit of tension about a year ago on account of the fact that a gang of our nit-wits kidnapped a couple of Fourth Form girls and shut them up in the groundsman’s tool shed, it being his afternoon off. There was no end of a hoo-ha. The girls, who, of course, complained, were brought into our Senior Assembly to identify the culprits. This they failed to do. The school itself stood firmly shoulder to shoulder, so that nothing the Head could think of succeeded in bringing the sinful boys to justice.”
“An unusual state of affairs, surely?”
“I would think so, but, as one would expect, there were wheels within wheels.”
“There always are. What inner wheels in this case?” demanded Laura.
“Well, I happen to be on terms of more than ordinary friendship (as they say) with the junior Maths mistress, and she confided to me that she was fairly certain the kidnapping was a put-up job and had had the full support and connivance of the two girls. It was an odd sort of coincidence, she said, that they should have been kidnapped and locked away on the very afternoon of her end-of-the-year Maths test, Maths being a subject at which they did not shine.”
“Didn’t she make them sit for it next day?” enquired Laura, reminded of her own delinquent youth.
“No. As it happened, the next day the end-of-term inter-House tennis tournament was staged and took all the time there was.”
“They could have missed the tournament for once.”
“That’s just what they couldn’t do. Both were playing for their House, and their housemistress happened to be the formidable Mrs Golightly (but she doesn’t), the senior physics mistress. Science women always seem to me to get it up the nose, and this one is no exception, so poor old Valerie didn’t dare chuck her weight about, and keep the blighters out of the tennis, for fear of offending this frightful woman.”
“How about after school?”
“Well, the school bus, a decrepit affair run by the local motor-coach people, is the sacred cow of the High School’s being, because, for some of the girls, there’s no alternative form of transport unless they come on bikes or (in the case of the privileged Sixth Form) in their own cars. So, as it would be manifestly unfair to keep back those kids who
“Oh, I see. No wonder the girls found themselves unable to identify your naughty lads. But why the ill-feeling between the two schools?” asked Laura.
“Bless you, there’s no ill-feeling between the two schools; it’s just between the two Heads, whose senior Staff, of course, feel bound to back them up. The High School lady accuses our Old Man of lax discipline, and the Old Man avers that her sexy little madams lead our pure young boys astray.”
“And you really think your pageant will effect a reconciliation? I shouldn’t like to bank on it,” said Laura.
