“He’ll be home from school by now,” said Gavin. “Let’s hope he hasn’t gone out, and let’s hope he’s got the fixture list handy.” He rang up the only Belton living in Brayne and asked to speak to the cricket captain.
“Speaking.”
“Sorry to bother you, but can you possibly remember the date of your last summer’s match against Goodman’s School?”
“We played them twice.”
“This would be the match played on the Brayne ground.”
“Oh, yes. Hold on a minute please… Hullo!”
“Yes?”
“Saturday, June 25th.”
“Did you win?”
“No, it was a draw. We had to pack up at half-past twelve, so the game, as usual, didn’t get finished.”
“I see. Thank you very much.” Gavin rang off. “I expect the lad wondered why I rang him up,” he said, when he joined Dame Beatrice and his wife. “I was ready with some tale, but I didn’t need it. When do you propose to visit the school?”
“Next Friday, at a quarter to five. The cleaners will have begun their work by then.”
“Do I come with you?” asked Laura.
“I think not. Elderly ladies are expected to be somewhat inquisitive and eccentric, whereas younger ones who trespass on enclosed premises are apt to have their motives misunderstood.”
“What shall you say to the caretaker?”
“That I am in urgent need of a daily woman, mornings only, and that I wonder whether one of his cleaners would like to undertake the work.”
“Suppose one of them would?”
“I think we may dismiss the supposition. To travel up to Kensington on six mornings a week will scarcely appeal to a person domiciled in Brayne.”
“Hardly. I wish I were going with you. It would be an education in itself to see you being inquisitive and eccentric.”
On the following Friday afternoon George drove his employer to Brayne Grammar School and in at the double gates. One or two cars were still drawn up on the asphalt and boys were still drifting out of school. Dame Beatrice got out of the car and enquired for the caretaker. His house was pointed out by a boy who raised his cap politely when Dame Beatrice thanked him, and she walked over to the small neat building and knocked at the door.
A woman opened it and said, in response to an enquiry, that the caretaker was “in the school somewhere, probably in the art room, which the cleaners have been creating about because the art master always leaves it in such a mess. First floor, at the bend of the stairs.”
Dame Beatrice found the art room and the caretaker without difficulty. There was no difficulty, either, about contacting the cleaners once she had stated her business. They were all about somewhere or other, the caretaker assured her. He was busily writing a report on the state of the art room, this, Dame Beatrice surmised, with a view to apprising the headmaster of the cleaners’ legitimate complaints.
Dame Beatrice made for the sound of voices combined with the clatter of domestic sweeping and the dumping of chairs, and, having run to earth a couple of the cleaners, she asked to be directed to the Staff Room. Here she found another woman. She was angrily picking up teacups and saucers from the floor and dumping them on to a large table littered with exercise books and ashtrays.
“Excuse me,” said Dame Beatrice. “I have spoken to the caretaker, so he knows that I am on the building. Would you mind telling me whether you are always responsible for tidying this room?”
“Oh, so it’s come to the ears of the Board of Governors, has it?” said the woman. “And about time, too, I reckon. If I’ve left a note once to ask these dratted teachers to clear away their cups and saucers and empty the teapot of an afternoon afore they goes home, I must have done it a dozen times or more. And what happens? The day after I leaves the note the place does get tidied up a bit, and, after that,
“I understand that there have been complaints about the state of the art room, too,” said Dame Beatrice.
“Same with the woodwork room; same with the science lab. Really, call theirselves schoolmasters! Just look at this Staff Room! I never seen a pigsty in a muckier state nor this!”
“But don’t the masters who stay after school to mark books do a little clearing up? Surely they don’t attempt to work in this muddle!”
“Them do a little clearing up! Don’t make me laugh! Not as they often stay behind. The bell hasn’t hardly gone to finish school when half of ’em’s halfway down the drive and the other half revving up their cars. You don’t catch
“I had an idea that Mr Perse often stayed to mark books. The Chairman of the Governors seems to think so,” said Dame Beatrice, unblushingly taking that gentleman’s title in vain. The cleaner banged another cup on to a saucer and picked up an ashtray in each hand. She flung the cigarette ends into a bucket—most of the ash seemed to have been flicked on to the floor already—pushed an overflowing wastepaper basket into the corridor, clumped back into the Staff-room and seized the broom.
“It’s not for me to tell tales,” she said, “but
