Fault in the Structure

had to get my hair dry and fixed before I could meet the company at dinner.’

‘But how did you get yourself dry?’

‘The sun did most of it and I finished up on the enormous pocket-handkerchief I keep in my handbag in case a tourniquet or sling is suddenly required. Incidentally, did you know this place is supposed to be haunted?’

‘I have heard tales to that effect.’

‘One of the students thinks she has seen a monk dragging a sack. She wanted me to ask you whether she could come for psychiatric treatment but of course I fobbed her off.’

‘Why?’

‘Well, you don’t run a private practice any more. I explained she’d have to go to London and attend your clinic, but that, even if she did, she wouldn’t see you.’

‘What is her name?’

‘I don’t know. I wasn’t going to ask, anyway, but, as soon as I’d given her the bird, a surge of strawberry- seekers rolled up and I saw no more of her. It was after that that I explored around a bit and had my swim.’

‘I am interested in this girl because Miss Peterson, the Senior Tutor, told me the same story.’

‘So the girl had been to her for help and consolation?’

‘Oh, no, nothing like that. I meant that she herself has seen the ghost. Only being older and more sceptical she regards him merely as a prowler, so now, at nights, the College is under police protection.’

‘Well, in a women’s college, I suppose a prowler is even more worrying than a ghost. You hear some pretty lurid tales these days about nurses’ homes, women’s hostels, single girls’ bedsitters and the like. What did the Senior Tutor think she saw? Somebody at dinner mentioned a monk.’

‘The Senior Tutor, more reasonably, thought it was a man wearing a white anorak with the hood pulled over his head.’

‘Is this fairly recent?’

‘Apparently. There are other stories, though. It seems that there is what may be called a permanent wager offered among the students. Did you visit the cloister on your perambulations?’

‘Yes. Not a place in which I should care to spend much time. It’s the sort of set-up immortalised in La Belle au Bois Dormant, all overgrown with unpruned rambler roses. It’s dark and smells damp and if there is a ghost here, that’s where I’d say it walks.’

‘You would be right, I daresay. This wager to which I referred…’

‘…Is to walk widdershins three times slowly round the cloister at the witching hour of midnight on All Hallows Eve. I was hearing about it at dinner. One of the dons told me that she took on the bet once when she was a student, but didn’t win it because after the first time round she turned and fled. She said she didn’t actually see anything, but she felt that something was following her all the time.’

‘Another student playing a trick on her, I imagine.’

‘She said nobody would do such a thing. She added that she wouldn’t take on the bet again for a thousand pounds. But what about the Senior Tutor? You said she saw something, too.’

‘Yes, indeed she did, but it had disappeared before she could decide whether it was real or some trick of the moonlight.’

‘If it’s really a Peeping Tom they ought to form a posse, waylay him and chuck him in the river.’

‘He would pollute the water, perhaps. We are not to leave tomorrow until after lunch so if you set eyes on your worried student during the morning, you might waylay her and ask her to talk to me.’

Apart from the High Mistress’s Lodging, the refectory and the chapel, the only other remains of the mediaeval buildings to be in daily use were the Senior Common room and its buttery. These, as they had once been part of the abbess’s lodging, were conveniently situated in that members of the Senior Common room did not need to cross the grounds to attend Hall or chapel unless they were in their own rooms in the new buildings; also the Senior Commonroom gave direct access to the Fellows’ garden.

It was not from the Senior Commonroom, however, that Miss Peterson claimed to have seen the prowler, but from the same part of the new buildings as, it turned out, the student had seen what she claimed to be the ghost of a monk.

Miss Peterson had left College in her car immediately after the dinner following the garden-party, and so could not be questioned further, but the student, whose name was Runmede, was waylaid by Laura as she came out from breakfast and invited to stroll with Dame Beatrice in the grounds.

‘I am told that you are psychic,’ said Dame Beatrice, when they met, ‘and that you wished to tell me of your experiences.’

‘I only want to be sure I’m not going mad,’ said the girl. ‘There has always been something mystical about moonlight and one does remember that the word lunatic comes from luna. Besides, moonlight and magic are closely connected, aren’t they? By moonlight Medea gathered the enchanted herbs that did renew old Aeson. Then, of course, there is Oberon’s contention that he and Titania were ill-met by moonlight. Also, it’s rather easy to fall in love by moonlight.’

‘Yes, indeed,’ said Dame Beatrice.

‘It was seeing him the second time that worried me,’ went on the student, ‘because that time it wasn’t any trick of shadows; he was there, out in Bessie’s Quad, right in the open, and he only existed down to his waist.’

‘As somebody once said of Mr Rochester.’

‘He was dragging something heavy in a sack,’ said the student, ignoring the slur on the hero of Jane Eyre.

‘How tall did he seem?’ asked Dame Beatrice.