‘Yes, there is. The University town, as you probably know, has two cemeteries. I have combed both of them to find the Coralie St Malo grave but could not locate it, so I applied in both cemeteries to the persons in charge. They had no record of a burial of anybody called Coralie St Malo and suggested that I might try the various churchyards.
‘I thought it possible that Coralie’s mother had been buried with full ecclesiastical honours, so to speak, so I did as I was advised, interviewed vicars, pastors and sextons, so on and so forth, but failed to find any trace of any Coralie St Malo’s grave, neither was I introduced to Lawrence’s helpful undergraduate friend. Oh, well, if you won’t involve yourself you won’t and I don’t blame you, but I
In spite of her objections, Dame Beatrice found that she could not avoid involvement. Fate, as she expressed it later, sent to her from Abbesses College a card inviting herself and Laura to the principal’s annual garden- party.
The official card of invitation was accompanied by a letter. Part of it ran:
Do come if you can. We shall be overflown, not with a honey-bag, as Bottom feared Cobweb might be, but with a bevy of reverend signiors (pronounced
‘The gardens at Abbesses should be at their best,’ said Dame Beatrice, when Laura had read the letter. ‘Shall we go?’
‘I see that we are invited to stay to dinner and for the night,’ said Laura. ‘That means evening kit as well as our garden-party get-up. I suppose I shall have to wear a garden-party hat! Ah, well! “One must suffer to be beautiful!” One thing, we need not take George. I can drive and that will do away with any bother about where to lodge him for the night. The end of next week? That will give me time to get my hair fixed and iron my finery.’
CHAPTER 4
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…
Abbesses College was set in the midst of water meadows on the outskirts of the town and, as its name implies, had been built as a convent for nuns. As was the custom with mediaeval abbeys, it had been built round a cloister and this still remained although it was not much frequented, since it was both dark and damp.
The dampness was due to an imperfectly repaired roof; the darkness was accentuated by the undisciplined tangles of climbing and rambler roses which a former principal of the College had planted in the cloister garth just outside the embrasures which served as windows. The growth of the roses had gone unchecked during the war, when gardeners were hard to come by, and pruning had received little attention since.
What had been the nuns’ chapel was now the parish church. It formed the north wall of the cloister, but there was no longer any connecting door between the two. This had been blocked up so that visitors to the church had no direct communication with the College. Of the other original features which remained, the nuns’ frater, was now the College dining-hall and the convent kitchen which adjoined it, although it had been completely modernised, still fulfilled its original purpose. The nuns’ infirmary had become the College chapel and the abbess’s lodging, a commodious building because it had been designed to accommodate important visitors to the abbey as well as housing the abbess herself, had become the house of the High Mistress, as the principal was proudly entitled. Part of the lodging had been made into the Senior Commonroom, but the Fellows, the dons, the students and the servants were domiciled in a large new block which had been erected on what had at one time been the nuns’ orchard.
The High Mistress’s garden, known as Nuns’ Enclosure, was her personal property in that the only means of admittance to it was from the Lodging itself or by way of a small gate to which she alone held the key.
The much larger Fellows’ garden was adjacent to it, but the two were separated by a broad walk between two high stone walls, each smothered in free-blooming, climbing roses. There was a doorway in each wall, but only the High Mistress held the keys to both doors, so that she had access to the Fellows’ garden, but they had none to hers.
Beyond the gardens the original outer court of the convent was now tree-lined and had flower-beds. It was known as Bessie’s Quad after the intrepid Abbess Elizabeth Smallfield, who had held Henry VIII’s commissioners at bay outside the gate-house (which was still standing and which formed the main entrance to the College) for three days before she would allow them inside.
Beside the gate-house, but a few yards from it, the nuns’ store-house and barn had been turned into garages (lock-ups) for staff cars and a bicycle shed for the students, who were not allowed, for lack of space, to keep their cars in College. Between the bicycle shed and the gate-house was the porter’s lodge. It was nothing but a small, stone-built hut consisting of one room and a wash-room. There were two porters who worked four-hour shifts. The gates were locked at night and opened at eight in the morning. This arrangement was occasionally inconvenient, but in the main it worked smoothly. Each Fellow and don had a key to the little, roundheaded door in the huge gate-house portal, but for students the hours of ingress and egress were strictly enforced, and to bring a don in her dressing-gown and slippers to let one in after hours was not a practice worth cultivating.
Dame Beatrice and Laura lunched on the way down and arrived at the gatehouse at three. The enormous gates were wide open, so Laura drove in and was stopped by a uniformed man on duty.
‘Police at a garden-party?’ said Laura, who, on the strength of possessing a husband who was an Assistant Commissioner at New Scotland Yard, treated policemen with aunt-like familiarity. ‘How come, Sergeant?’
‘We have to search your car for bombs, madam.’
‘What! Has there been a scare?’
‘No, madam, but this is a big do. The Vice-Chancellor is expected and the local M.P., besides other celebrities.’
