鸽群中的猫10

Nine

CAT AMONG THE PIGEONS

ILetter from Jennifer Sutcliffe to her mother:

Dear Mummy,

We had a murder last night. Miss Springer, the gym mistress. It happened inthe middle of the night and the police came and this morning they’re askingeverybody questions.

Miss Chadwick told us not to talk to anybody about it but I thought you’d liketo know.

With love,

Jennifer

II

Meadowbank was an establishment of sufficient importance to merit the personal attention of theChief Constable¹. While routine investigation² was going on Miss Bulstrode had not been inactive.

She rang up a Press magnate and the Home Secretary, both personal friends of hers. As a result ofthose manoeuvres, very little had appeared about the event in the papers. A games mistress hadbeen found dead in the school gymnasium. She had been shot, whether by accident or not was asyet not determined³. Most of the notices of the event had an almost apologetic note in them, asthough it were thoroughly⁴ tactless of any games mistress to get herself shot in such circumstances.

Ann Shapland had a busy day taking down letters to parents. Miss Bulstrode did not waste timein telling her pupils to keep quiet about the event. She knew that it would be a waste of time. Moreor less lurid⁵ reports would be sure to be penned to anxious parents and guardians⁶. She intended herown balanced and reasonable account of the tragedy to reach them at the same time.

Later that afternoon she sat in conclave⁷ with Mr. Stone, the Chief Constable, and InspectorKelsey. The police were perfectly⁹ amenable¹⁰ to having the Press play the thing down as much aspossible. It enabled them to pursue their inquiries¹¹ quietly and without interference.

“I’m very sorry about this, Miss Bulstrode, very sorry indeed,” said the Chief Constable. “Isuppose it’s—well—a bad thing for you.”

“Murder’s a bad thing for any school, yes,” said Miss Bulstrode. “It’s no good dwelling¹² on thatnow, though. We shall weather it, no doubt, as we have weathered other storms. All I do hope isthat the matter will be cleared up quickly.”

“Don’t see why it shouldn’t, eh?” said Stone. He looked at Kelsey.

Kelsey said, “It may help when we get her background.”

“D’you really think so?” asked Miss Bulstrode dryly.

“Somebody may have had it in for her,” Kelsey suggested.

Miss Bulstrode did not reply.

“You think it’s tied up with this place?” asked the Chief Constable.

“Inspector⁸ Kelsey does really,” said Miss Bulstrode. “He’s only trying to save my feelings, Ithink.”

“I think it does tie up with Meadowbank,” said the Inspector slowly. “After all, Miss Springerhad her times off like all the other members of the staff. She could have arranged a meeting withanyone if she had wanted to do so at any spot she chose. Why choose the gymnasium here in themiddle of the night?”

“You have no objection to a search being made of the school premises¹³, Miss Bulstrode?” askedthe Chief Constable.

“None at all. You’re looking for the pistol or revolver or whatever it is, I suppose?”

“Yes. It was a small pistol of foreign make.”

“Foreign,” said Miss Bulstrode thoughtfully.

“To your knowledge, do any of your staff or any of the pupils have such a thing as a pistol intheir possession?”

“Certainly not to my knowledge,” said Miss Bulstrode. “I am fairly certain that none of thepupils have. Their possessions are unpacked¹⁴ for them when they arrive and such a thing wouldhave been seen and noted¹⁵, and would, I may say, have aroused considerable comment. But please,Inspector Kelsey, do exactly as you like in that respect. I see your men have been searching thegrounds today.”

The Inspector nodded. “Yes.”

He went on: “I should also like interviews with the other members of your staff. One or other ofthem may have heard some remark made by Miss Springer that will give us a clue. Or may haveobserved some oddity of behaviour on her part.”

He paused, then went on, “The same thing might apply to the pupils.”

Miss Bulstrode said: “I had formed the plan of making a short address to the girls this eveningafter prayers. I would ask that if any of them has any knowledge that might possibly bear uponMiss Springer’s death that they should come and tell me of it.”

“Very sound idea,” said the Chief Constable.

“But you must remember this,” said Miss Bulstrode, “one or other of the girls may wish tomake herself important by exaggerating some incident or even by inventing one. Girls do very oddthings: but I expect you are used to dealing¹⁶ with that form of exhibitionism.”

“I’ve come across it,” said Inspector Kelsey. “Now,” he added, “please give me a list of yourstaff, also the servants.”

III

“I’ve looked through all the lockers¹⁷ in the Pavilion, sir.”

“And you didn’t find anything?” said Kelsey.

“No, sir, nothing of importance. Funny things in some of them, but nothing in our line.”

“None of them were locked, were they?”

“No, sir, they can lock. There were keys in them, but none of them were locked.”

Kelsey looked round the bare floor thoughtfully. The tennis and lacrosse sticks had beenreplaced tidily on their stands.

“Oh well,” he said, “I’m going up to the house now to have a talk with the staff.”

“You don’t think it was an inside job, sir?”

“It could have been,” said Kelsey. “Nobody’s got an alibi¹⁸ except those two mistresses,Chadwick and Johnson and the child Jane that had the earache¹⁹. Theoretically, everyone else was inbed and asleep, but there’s no one to vouch²⁰ for that. The girls all have separate rooms andnaturally the staff do. Any one of them, including Miss Bulstrode herself, could have come out andmet Springer here, or could have followed her here. Then, after she’d been shot, whoever it wascould dodge²¹ back quietly through the bushes to the side door, and be nicely back in bed againwhen the alarm was given. It’s motive²² that’s difficult. Yes,” said Kelsey, “it’s motive. Unlessthere’s something going on here that we don’t know anything about, there doesn’t seem to be anymotive.”

He stepped out of the Pavilion and made his way slowly back to the house. Although it was pastworking hours, old Briggs, the gardener, was putting in a little work on a flower bed and hestraightened up as the Inspector passed.

“You work late hours,” said Kelsey, smiling.

“Ah,” said Briggs. “Young ’uns don’t know what gardening is. Come on at eight and knock offat five—that’s what they think it is. You’ve got to study your weather, some days you might aswell not be out in the garden at all, and there’s other days as you can work from seven in themorning until eight at night. That is if you love the place and have pride in the look of it.”

“You ought to be proud of this one,” said Kelsey. “I’ve never seen anyplace better kept thesedays.”

“These days is right,” said Briggs. “But I’m lucky I am. I’ve got a strong young fellow to workfor me. A couple of boys, too, but they’re not much good. Most of these boys and young menwon’t come and do this sort of work. All for going into factories, they are, or white collars andworking in an office. Don’t like to get their hands soiled with a bit of honest earth. But I’m lucky,as I say. I’ve got a good man working for me as come and offered himself.”

“Recently?” said Inspector Kelsey.

“Beginning of the term,” said Briggs. “Adam, his name is. Adam Goodman.”

“I don’t think I’ve seen him about,” said Kelsey.

“Asked for the day off today, he did,” said Briggs. “I give it him. Didn’t seem to be much doingtoday with you people tramping all over the place.”

“Somebody should have told me about him,” said Kelsey sharply.

“What do you mean, told you about him?”

“He’s not on my list,” said the Inspector. “Of people employed here, I mean.”

“Oh, well, you can see him tomorrow, mister,” said Briggs. “Not that he can tell you anything, Idon’t suppose.”

“You never know,” said the Inspector.

A strong young man who had offered himself at the beginning of the term? It seemed to Kelseythat here was the first thing that he had come across which might be a little out of the ordinary.

IV

The girls filed into the hall for prayers that evening as usual, and afterwards Miss Bulstrodearrested their departure by raising her hand.

“I have something to say to you all. Miss Springer, as you know, was shot last night in theSports Pavilion. If any of you has heard or seen anything in the past week—anything that haspuzzled you relating to Miss Springer, anything Miss Springer may have said or someone else mayhave said of her that strikes you as at all significant, I should like to know it. You can come to mein my sitting room anytime this evening.”

“Oh,” Julia Upjohn sighed, as the girls filed out, “how I wish we did know something! But wedon’t, do we, Jennifer?”

“No,” said Jennifer, “of course we don’t.”

“Miss Springer always seemed so very ordinary,” said Julia sadly, “much too ordinary to getkilled in a mysterious way.”

“I don’t suppose it was so mysterious,” said Jennifer. “Just a burglar.”

“Stealing our tennis racquets, I suppose,” said Julia with sarcasm²³.

“Perhaps someone was blackmailing²⁴ her,” suggested one of the other girls hopefully.

“What about?” said Jennifer.

But nobody could think of any reason for blackmailing Miss Springer.

VInspector Kelsey started his interviewing of the staff with Miss Vansittart. A handsome woman, hethought, summing her up. Possibly forty or a little over; tall, well- built, grey hair tastefullyarranged. She had dignity and composure, with a certain sense, he thought, of her own importance.

She reminded him a little of Miss Bulstrode herself: she was the schoolmistress type all right. Allthe same, he reflected, Miss Bulstrode had something that Miss Vansittart had not. Miss Bulstrodehad a quality of unexpectedness. He did not feel that Miss Vansittart would ever be unexpected.

Question and answer followed routine. In effect, Miss Vansittart had seen nothing, had noticednothing, had heard nothing. Miss Springer had been excellent at her job. Yes, her manner hadperhaps been a trifle brusque, but not, she thought, unduly²⁵ so. She had not perhaps had a veryattractive personality but that was really not a necessity in a Games Mistress. It was better, in fact,not to have mistresses who had attractive personalities²⁶. It did not do to let the girls get emotionalabout the mistresses. Miss Vansittart, having contributed nothing of value, made her exit.

“See no evil, hear no evil, think no evil. Same like the monkeys,” observed Sergeant²⁷ PercyBond, who was assisting Inspector Kelsey in his task.

Kelsey grinned. “That’s about right, Percy,” he said.

“There’s something about schoolmistresses that gives me the hump,” said Sergeant Bond. “Hada terror of them ever since I was a kid. Knew one that was a holy terror. So upstage and la-di-dayou never knew what she was trying to teach you.”

The next mistress to appear was Eileen Rich. Ugly as sin was Inspector Kelsey’s first reaction.

Then he qualified²⁸ it; she had a certain attraction. He started his routine questions, but the answerswere not quite so routine as he had expected. After saying No, she had not heard or noticedanything special that anyone else had said about Miss Springer or that Miss Springer herself hadsaid, Eileen Rich’s next answer was not what he anticipated. He had asked:

“There was no one as far as you know who had a personal grudge²⁹ against her?”

“Oh no,” said Eileen Rich quickly. “One couldn’t have. I think that was her tragedy, you know.

That she wasn’t a person one could ever hate.”

“Now just what do you mean by that, Miss Rich?”

“I mean she wasn’t a person one could ever have wanted to destroy. Everything she did andwas, was on the surface. She annoyed people. They often had sharp words with her, but it didn’tmean anything. Not anything deep. I’m sure she wasn’t killed for herself, if you know what Imean.”

“I’m not quite sure that I do, Miss Rich.”

“I mean if you had something like a bank robbery, she might quite easily be the cashier that getsshot, but it would be as a cashier, not as Grace Springer. Nobody would love her or hate herenough to want to do away with her. I think she probably felt that without thinking about it, andthat’s what made her so officious. About finding fault, you know, and enforcing rules and findingout what people were doing that they shouldn’t be doing, and showing them up.”

“Snooping?” asked Kelsey.

“No, not exactly snooping.” Eileen Rich considered. “She wouldn’t tiptoe round on sneakers oranything of that kind. But if she found something going on that she didn’t understand she’d bequite determined to get to the bottom of it. And she would get to the bottom of it.”

“I see.” He paused a moment. “You didn’t like her yourself much, did you, Miss Rich?”

“I don’t think I ever thought about her. She was just the Games Mistress. Oh! What a horriblething that is to say about anybody! Just this—just that! But that’s how she felt about her job. It wasa job that she took pride in doing well. She didn’t find it fun. She wasn’t keen when she found agirl who might be really good at tennis, or really fine at some form of athletics³⁰. She didn’t rejoicein it or triumph.”

Kelsey looked at her curiously³¹. An odd young woman, this, he thought.

“You seem to have your ideas on most things, Miss Rich,” he said.

“Yes. Yes, I suppose I do.”

“How long have you been at Meadowbank?”

“Just over a year and a half.”

“There’s never been any trouble before?”

“At Meadowbank?” She sounded startled.

“Yes.”

“Oh no. Everything’s been quite all right until this term.”

Kelsey pounced³².

“What’s been wrong this term? You don’t mean the murder, do you? You mean something else—”

“I don’t—” she stopped—“Yes, perhaps I do—but it’s all very nebulous.”

“Go on.”

“Miss Bulstrode’s not been happy lately,” said Eileen slowly. “That’s one thing. You wouldn’tknow it. I don’t think anybody else has even noticed it. But I have. And she’s not the only onewho’s unhappy. But that isn’t what you mean, is it? That’s just people’s feelings. The kind ofthings you get when you’re cooped up together and think about one thing too much. You meant,was there anything that didn’t seem right just this term. That’s it, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” said Kelsey, looking at her curiously, “yes, that’s it. Well, what about it?”

“I think there is something wrong here,” said Eileen Rich slowly. “It’s as though there weresomeone among us who didn’t belong.” She looked at him, smiled, almost laughed and said, “Catamong the pigeons, that’s the sort of feeling. We’re the pigeons, all of us, and the cat’s amongstus. But we can’t see the cat.”

“That’s very vague, Miss Rich.”

“Yes, isn’t it? It sounds quite idiotic³³. I can hear that myself. What I really mean, I suppose, isthat there has been something, some little thing that I’ve noticed but I don’t know what I’venoticed.”

“About anyone in particular?”

“No, I told you, that’s just it. I don’t know who it is. The only way I can sum it up is to say thatthere’s someone here, who’s—somehow—wrong! There’s someone here—I don’t know who—who makes me uncomfortable. Not when I’m looking at her but when she’s looking at me becauseit’s when she’s looking at me that it shows, whatever it is. Oh, I’m getting more incoherent thanever. And anyway, it’s only a feeling. It’s not what you want. It isn’t evidence.”

“No,” said Kelsey, “it isn’t evidence. Not yet. But it’s interesting, and if your feeling getsanymore definite, Miss Rich, I’d be glad to hear about it.”

She nodded. “Yes,” she said, “because it’s serious, isn’t it? I mean, someone’s been killed—wedon’t know why—and the killer³⁴ may be miles away, or, on the other hand, the killer may be herein the school. And if so that pistol or revolver or whatever it is, must be here too. That’s not a verynice thought, is it?”

She went out with a slight nod. Sergeant Bond said,“Crackers³⁵—or don’t you think so?”

“No,” said Kelsey, “I don’t think she’s crackers. I think she’s what’s called a sensitive. Youknow, like the people who know when there’s a cat in the room long before they see it. If she’dbeen born in an African tribe she might have been a witch doctor.”

“They go round smelling out evil, don’t they?” said Sergeant Bond.

“That’s right, Percy,” said Kelsey. “And that’s exactly what I’m trying to do myself. Nobody’scome across with any concrete facts so I’ve got to go about smelling out things. We’ll have theFrench woman next.”

 

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