‘I want to thank you, Gerald,’ said the High Mistress, at a pause in the conversation, ‘for the very unobtrusive and courteous way in which your policemen carried out their duties in Bessie’s Quad yesterday and for the comfort it is to know that we are protected at night.’
‘Not really
‘Not a Miss Coralie St Malo, by any chance?’ asked Dame Beatrice.
‘How on earth did you guess that, Beatrice?’ asked the Chief Constable, with whom she had been acquainted for many years, having known his mother since their university days when the latter had been an undergraduate and Dame Beatrice a lecturer in medical jurisprudence.
‘It was not so much a guess as a deduction, my dear Gerald. When one hears certain facts, one is apt to draw certain conclusions.’
The Chief Constable looked uneasily at Laura and then said to his hostess.
‘Certain matters have come to our knowledge which reflect no credit on the nephew of a certain distinguished member of this University, so we should wish our activities in the matter to remain as unremarked as possible at present. We may be barking up quite the wrong tree. If we are, well, the more we keep ourselves in the background, the better.’
‘I shall be as dumb as the Eldest Oyster,’ said the High Mistress, ‘so do tell us what it’s all about.’
‘Mrs Gavin is entirely in my confidence,’ said Dame Beatrice, ‘and knows all that I know. But if I may put a question to you before the subject, as might be desirable, can be changed, how do the police come to know anything of the matter?’
‘Nicholl received what is known as a tip-off from one of the Wayneflete College servants. I don’t know why these worn-out theories are still extant.’
‘What theories? Are they documented?’ asked the High Mistress, smiling.
‘The theories that the College servants have neither eyes nor ears, let alone feelings.’
‘I don’t think that applies to the scouts in the women’s colleges.’
‘Probably not, but some of the male dons appear to think we’re back in the early nineteenth century. They make no allowance at all for the fact that in these days Jack not only thinks he’s as good as his master, but, in many cases, actually earns more money.’
‘I should not think that would apply to the scouts here, either. I don’t think we pay them nearly enough for what they do.’
‘I was speaking in general terms. However, to return to the special subject under discussion, it appears that this particular scout had taken umbrage over some triviality or other – the disappearance of some bottles of wine, I believe.’
‘Scarcely a trivial matter with wine the price it is since the last budget,’ said Laura.
‘Well, at any rate, the Warden’s nephew, a man named Lawrence, appears to have accused the scout in front of the College Bursar. The case was disproved, but the man seems to have been determined upon some form of revenge. Apparently he had overheard part of a conversation involving a woman he knew, a woman who used her stage name of Coralie St Malo, although he knew her as a Miss Piggen. Anyhow, the fellow seems to have come to the conclusion that it was a clandestine assignment, since he could think of no good reason for a meeting between Lawrence who, after all, is the Warden of Wayneflete’s nephew, and a girl from Headman’s Lane. He decided that it might be interesting to follow up the matter, so he sneaked along and was a witness of the meeting at a public house between Lawrence and this woman. It was the second time he had seen them together, the first having been in the market, where he overheard their conversation.’
‘So the Wayneflete College scout had known the young woman,’ said Dame Beatrice.
‘She had lived in the next street from his. It’s rather a poor quarter of the town and Headman’s Lane is not the most salubrious part of it, even at that. The residents in his own street regard themselves as a cut above the Laneites. That is why he thought there was something very fishy about Lawrence’s getting together with the girl in a public house so far out of the town. But what do
‘Oh, I heard her name mentioned some week or so ago,’ said Dame Beatrice evasively. ‘Did the College servant gain anything from his eavesdropping?’
‘He claims that he was a witness of the public house meeting. It began cordially, but degenerated into a quarrel. He was in the public bar, but the two met in the saloon bar. However, the counters are at right angles to one another so that, at slack times, one barman or barmaid can attend to both. He was in a strategic position, therefore, for a little spying and eavesdropping. He seems, from what he overheard, to have come to the conclusion that the woman was demanding some kind of compensation. He assumed that it was for breach of promise of marriage, for she said that if she did not obtain satisfaction she (in her own words, according to this fellow) would know what to do about it.’
‘Well,’ said the High Mistress, ‘Mr Lawrence could hardly give her one sort of satisfaction, seeing that he is already married to the Dean’s secretary.’
‘He told my son that it was to one of your dons,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘He must be a man of shallow character if snobbishness of that sort is part of his make-up.’
‘Under present conditions, Miss St Malo might be unwise to invoke the law over a question of compensation,’ said the redhaired Fairlie, pursuing his own train of thought, ‘especially if there were no witnesses to an offer of marriage. I don’t know much about that side of the law, but I do know that breach of promise cases don’t by any means always succeed, especially nowadays.’
‘In this instance,’ said Dame Beatrice, ‘it was not a question of breach of promise in the sense that you mean.’
The others looked at her, but she added nothing to this statement. The Chief Constable went on with his story.
‘Apparently, by the time they left the public house, the quarrel had been resolved, for Lawrence drove the
