Skeleton Island (Mrs. Bradley)

by Gladys Mitchell

  I was sufficiently intrigued to go back to my room and get my binoculars. These I trained on the vessel and noted that it was a powerful motor-yacht and carried two small boats. I estimated its length as being at least eighty-five feet. There were a couple of men on deck, and one of them was having a good look through a telescope at the cove, the cliffs and, ultimately, the school. As we have among the boys a small kid who is the son of the present president of Querigua Montes, I thought it well to apprise the Man of the boat’s presence in our waters, as all the Staff have been briefed that there is always a chance that small Manoel may have to withstand attempts to kidnap him, and that, if one of these attempts came off, it might involve the school in an international incident.

  After breakfast, however, the boat had gone, and Mr. Eastleigh, noting this, dealt with me kindly, but decided, I think, that I was the usual (in his opinion) jittery female and must be told not to panic. However, he thanked me for my zeal and asked after you. He knows you by sight because he’s attended some of your public lectures.

  Yesterday I went to lunch and tea with young Spalding’s people. They have taken over the disused lighthouse I told you about. Spalding’s father is about fifty, I should think. He’s keen on seabirds and is writing a book about them. He manages, in conversation, to make them seem remarkably dull. I nearly froze to death up on the lighthouse gallery while he held forth about, among other of our feathered friends, the Manx shearwater. It breeds on turfy, rocky islands (which calls this one to mind), and apparently it is but a visitor hereabouts, and actually nests further north and west, as well as in south-west Europe and the Scillies. The Manx shearwater we get is not, as, in your ignorance, you may have supposed, Procellaria puffinus puffinus, but rather Procellaria puffinus mauritanicus, which breeds in the Balearics and comes to see us from August to October.

  I had to put up with this sort of thing from two-thirty until nearly half-past four, standing on the lighthouse gallery in the bracing air and a Force 8 gale, and went down to tea more dead than alive. The only item of interest during the whole of this martyrdom was the spectacle of young Spalding—now, by his request, known to me as Colin—have not reciprocated by inviting him to call me Laura—sneaking out of the house after I had been up on the gallery for what seemed about a fortnight, and pretending, when he came back, that he’d been for a long walk. I think he’s pursuing Mrs. Spalding—a row between father and son indicated this. Fiona by name, she is about thirty and his father’s second wife, but no doubt she has ways and means of choking Colin off, since, dull though her life most probably is, his antics can scarcely do more than come under the heading of light entertainment, if that. He is a callow, conceited, schoolboyish youth with no head for heights and a distressing tendency to quote Neitzsche in the original German. This surely can’t endear him to any woman, particularly if she understands German, Neitzsche being fundamentally unsound as regards our sex.

  Fun and games this afternoon (wrote Laura, three days later). Mr. Ferrars, known to his intimates, i.e. Colin and Mr. Heathers, as Ronnie, and to our sweet but unimaginative lads as the Ferret (hopeless description!), has gone out and got himself posted as missing. He is the only person, except for the headmaster, the games master, and Mr. Grange, who isn’t in charge of a form, so he has been told to help Mr. Heathers, yclept Erica—a most apposite name, as the innocent young gent has a certain chubby girlish charm about him—with the Sevens and Eights. I have only ten boys in my form, so they are put in with Mr. Pocock’s lot for games and I get the afternoons free, as I am considered too delicately nurtured and, I rather think, too bone-headed to take any part in the coaching. I offered to do Mr. Eastleigh’s typing, but he prefers to keep his secrets to himself.

  Well, apparently Heathers and Ferrars think it’s a complete waste of time for two of them to watch twenty extremely well-behaved little boys kicking a ball about and pulling one another down into the mud, so they take on the job in turn, and it happened to be Ferrars’ day off.

  Nobody saw him go, and he gave no indication of his plans, but, when they get time off, most of the masters make a bee-line for the mainland except for Heathers, who teaches geography and is a bit of a geologist. Tea-time came, and no sign of Ferrars, but this impressed nobody, because, except for the master in charge, there is no rule that any of the Staff need turn up for tea, although most of us do, at this time of year, because there’s nothing much else to tempt one, and, anyway, we are all supposed to sit in with our own forms at prep., which lasts from six until seven.

  It has become the custom, however (for we are a matey lot in our Staffroom), to put some of the forms together for prep. so as to give freedom and a bit of leisure to the deserving. Thus Mr. Pocock and I take it in turn at doing the chore with our combined groups (although Mr. Eastleigh did tell me that I could count prep., as an extraneous duty and so dodge it, if I liked), and Robson and Skelton also have an arrangement. Old Mr. Grange, who counts as senior master now that Mr. Noble has been sent back to Kent, insists on taking his turn, although he hasn’t a form. Grange is known (inevitably, I suppose) as Mariana, and is popular because he produces the annual school play, and so all the little Thespians suck up to him like mad in order to be considered for chief parts. All small boys think they can act Sir Laurence Olivier’s head off. It’s only in adolescence that they retreat into their shells and shy away from making a public appearance. I shall never forget how utterly insufferable Hamish was, the year before last, when chosen to play Mr. Toad in Toad of Toad Hall, but that’s by the way.

  To resume my narrative: nobody bothered, or even thought about it, when Ferrars didn’t show up for tea, but when he was still absent at five minutes to six Heathers became plaintive. It looked, you see, as though he would have to take prep. until Ferrars got back, and that was breaking a gentleman’s agreement, this being that whichever one of the partners takes games, the other takes prep. and puts the form to bed.

  I wasn’t “on” that evening, so I went to my room and lay on the bed and re-read Thank You, Jeeves until I heard the bell that ends prep. Then I went down to the day-room, where the lads get milk and biscuits, and helped Mrs. Eastleigh to supervise this Lucullan feast. After it, the custom is for us to assemble for night prayers and then begin to put the lads to kip. The youngest kick off at seven-thirty and the others at quarter-hour intervals until we have interred the oldest ones, the twelves. After that, the rest of the night is our own, and we go to bed as soon as we like, except for the master who is on night rounds at ten o’clock.

  When, at seven-thirty, Ferrars still was not with us, and Heathers, naturally enough, became restive, because now, in addition to taking them for games and prep., he had to put his babes to bed. I felt sufficiently sorry for him to act as stand-in, an offer which he accepted with becoming gratitude. Skelton always puts my Elevens to bed. He’s the games man. Well, my method, on such occasions, is simple but effective. All in bed by the appointed time—a story. Failure in this respect—no story. Some obtain the same effect by flourishing a threatening hairbrush, others by denying to the undeserving a seat at the Saturday film-show in the dining-room, but I find that my way works like a charm with the Sevens and Eights. The occasion I am describing was no exception, and by a quarter-past eight I had done my rounds and was in the Staff common-room ready and willing to play chess with Mr. Grange, who is an expert. Fortunately I’ve learnt enough from you to be able to give him some sort of a game, although I’m in nothing like his class.

  It’s pretty quiet in a men’s common-room. They don’t knit and gossip, as women do, but concentrate on cross-words, or the daily papers (which come from the mainland and don’t reach us until near enough lunch-time) or play bridge, chess, draughts, or occupy themselves in just plain reading or even in marking exercise books, although this is pretty rare and is considered anti-social. All, then, was no gas and an absence of gaiters, when the holy calm was shattered by Heathers. I don’t think anybody had noticed, up to that time, that he wasn’t amon
g us, but now he came bursting in, wild-eyed and incoherent, asking what on earth should he do? The Man had sent him to get Ferrars, who was wanted on the telephone, and no Ferrars was on the premises.

  “Do you mean he’s still out?” asked Pocock. This, it transpired, was what Heathers did mean. “Well, answer it yourself,” advised Pocock. “I expect Ferrars has had a breakdown in his car. No need to get in a flap. There’s no law to say that he’s got to be in by nine o’clock.”

  “But he didn’t take his car. He only went for a walk,” bleated poor little Erica. “He must have met with an accident.”

  “All right,” said Skelton. “Do as Pocock says, and go and answer the ’phone. The call is probably from Ferrars himself. The Man thought the caller said for Ferrars, instead of from Ferrars, I expect.”

  It didn’t turn out to be that. I didn’t think it would. Mr. Eastleigh isn’t the man to muck up a telephone message. He always insists on answering the ’phone himself, incidentally, before he hands over the receiver. I suppose most of the calls are for him, anyway, but, if they do happen to be for the Staff, I suppose he likes to keep his finger on the pulse, as it were.

  Heathers came back after a few minutes and again asked us what he ought to do. The call was from some girl who wanted to know why Ferrars had stood her up. Apparently he’d promised to meet her for a drink at the pub at the mainland end of the causeway, and hadn’t shown up. She was feeling more than a bit shirty about it, Heathers said.

  “And so am I,” went on Heathers, legitimately aggrieved. “It means that the blighter intended all along to shove prep. off on to me, and get me to put the chaps to bed.”

  “Odd,” said Grange. “Who is this girl?”

  “I’ve no idea,” said Heathers. “I didn’t even know there was a girl. I thought it was that Miss Beverley. I suppose that’s where he got to on Saturday and Sunday, only he took his car then. Really, he is the limit. I call it a lousy way to go on.”

  “Well,” said Grange, “I’ll give him—what’s the time now? A quarter-past nine?—say I give him until ten. If he’s not back by then, I suppose I’ll have to let the Man know.” Lock-up’s at ten, except on Saturdays, you see, so that fixed zero hour.

  “I think you ought to let him know at once,” said Pocock. “Suppose the young idiot has tumbled into one of the quarries? It would be easy enough, you know. A chap of his age doesn’t stand girls up without a pretty good reason. I should say he’s hurt himself or something.”

  “Perhaps you’re right,” said Grange, and Robson and Skelton backed up the idea, so off went Mariana to the boss and laid the depositions before him. Mr. Eastleigh came back to the common-room with him and asked whether anybody had the least idea which way Ferrars would have taken, but nobody had. Then Colin had a bright thought.

  “It’s possible my father may have seen him,” he said. He explained about his parent’s capers on the lighthouse gallery. “Unfortunately, the lighthouse isn’t on the ’phone,” he added, looking hopefully at the headmaster.

  “It is not like Mr. Ferrars to absent himself in this way,” said the Man, “without a word to anyone. You are all free agents, apart from your obvious commitments, of course, so he had a right to do as he pleased, but I sincerely hope that nothing untoward has happened to him. I should be happier if he had taken his car. That would only mean that it had broken down. A car accident, as such, would have been reported to us by this time. I do not care for the thought that he has been wandering about on foot after dark, with all these quarries around. I think, therefore, that it would be a good plan for you to contact your father, Mr. Spalding, if you think he can help us in any way. You had better take someone with you.”

  “I’ll go,” I said. “In my car,” I added, having seen something of Colin’s driving. So off we pushed, and landed up at the lighthouse in a reasonably short time. Colin, of course, had a key, but he also had the sense to give a shout, announcing himself, as soon as we got inside the lighthouse door. It was as well that I’d gone with him, as his father was up on the gallery studying the stars, and Colin, of course, won’t go up there, so I had to. I soon located Mr. Spalding and told him why we were there. He went all jittery on me—scared about something, I should say—and talked much too fast.

  “Oh, dear!” he said. “No, I’ve seen nothing of him since a week ago, when he came to take tea with us, as usual. I’ve seen nothing in particular all day, except a powerful vessel which crept in under the cliffs and made for the cove. She came at about two o’clock and dropped anchor, and a boat put off, but I lost sight of it, as I cannot see the shore of the cove from here, and then, of course, the sea-mist rolled in and one couldn’t see anything. I went down to have my tea, and did not come up again until after dark, as I wished to study the night sky. By that time the boat—the large one—must have gone, since I saw no riding-lights.”

  “Well, I’m sorry to have bothered you,” I said. “We thought there was just a chance that you’d spotted Mr. Ferrars and could tell us which way he might have gone.”

  Anyway, to go on with my story, we went back to school to find the place in a nice state of excitement. For the first time I learned that there is a prison on the island. What is more, one of the prisoners had escaped. The warders had been to see Mr. Eastleigh to warn him not to let the boys wander about tomorrow, as, although the escaped man is not considered dangerous, there is always such a thing as taking a chance.

  One dislikes being fanciful, but I couldn’t help wondering whether the boat which I’d spotted on the Sunday morning and which, according to Mr. Spalding, had shown up again on Tuesday afternoon, had anything to do with the escape. These things seem to be planned by master minds with all the resources of the American Marines nowadays.

  Mr. Eastleigh had to make up his mind what to do, and it didn’t take him long. He assembled us in the common-room and told us that no volunteers would be allowed to go and look for Ferrars. With a possibly desperate criminal on the loose, he could not risk letting any of the garrison leave the house. The boys must be guarded, and anybody trying to make a forced entry—“the man will be in need of money and a change of clothes, most likely”—must be choked off. We saw his point, of course. What was more, I don’t think anybody was very keen to go out and shout for Ferrars, with a desperado probably lurking in one of the quarries, so there we all were, ready to repel boarders, and much preferring to meet the escaped convict, if we had to, on our own ground, rather than in the open country.

  This, of course, was all very well, but I couldn’t help thinking of the wretched young Ferrars lying helpless in one of the quarries with a broken leg or something. However, it was obviously out of the question to go and look for him that night, especially as we had no idea in which direction to begin the search, and, in any case, I’m usually prepared to concede that orders are orders, and to fall in with the wishes of my commanding officer. You must have noticed this. So nobody complained.

  I tried to work it out as I lay in bed. (We wage slaves keep early hours, and I had hit the hay at about ten-forty-five.) If Ferrars had arranged to meet the girl for a drink, he couldn’t have planned to get to the rendezvous until, at the earliest, six p.m. I don’t know exactly when he left the school, but he would have had a fair amount of time to fill in before meeting the girl at the pub.

  Well, it all seemed so improbable, especially as he didn’t even take his car. The time of year was the very early spring, the weather was on the chilly side and it was just the sort of day when a sea-mist comes up and blots out everything, and that was exactly what had happened. I took a bet with myself that he’d got caught in the mist and perhaps fallen into one of the quarries or even over the cliff. This thought had me worried, and I decided that, in the morning, something would have to be done about him.

  Then another idea came to me. If Ferrars’ only plan was to meet this girl, he surely would have taken his car. He’s the last person to go for long, lonely walks. It seemed to me that he must have been up to
something. I thought and thought, but nothing came, so at last I got up and looked out of my window. There was nothing to be seen except the stars. The mist had cleared later in the afternoon, and now there was a lovely clear night, although there was no moon. I was prompted to go up the stairs to that window I told you about, and look towards the cove where I had seen that big boat, but there was nothing there at all, so far as I could see—no riding-lights, I mean—so I gave up and went back to bed. More news (if any) tomorrow. By the way, it was news to me that Ferrars sometimes takes tea at the Spaldings’ lighthouse on his afternoons off. Do you think Mrs. Spalding is the attraction? He can hardly go there to be lectured on our feathered friends by Howard—or can he? And do you think he was making for the lighthouse and is carrying on what used to be known as an intrigue? It might account for his not taking the car, mightn’t it?—not to advertise his presence, you know.

  However, he could hardly be staying the night there, so, as he hadn’t met the girl, I thought he might still have met with an accident after he left the lighthouse.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Second Childhood

  “I now felt for the first time the joy of exploration.”

  “…the general colouring was uniform and sad.”

  Breakfast duty, like tea duty, was on a rota. Laura woke from a short and troubled sleep just as dawn broke and, feeling unrefreshed, got up immediately and decided to go for her walk, telling herself that the headmaster’s orders applied only to the hours of darkness.

  She had descended the stairs and was about to let herself out by the side door when another thought came to her. She might as well find out whether Ferrars had returned from his wanderings. The Staff had been given the single rooms in the hotel, the doubles having been turned into dormitories for either three or four boys or used as classrooms. The dining-room had been retained as such, and the largest lounge did duty as the school Assembly hall. The bar had become the woodwork centre and the long, narrow sun-parlour was in service as a gymnasium, although no apparatus could be used there except the balancing forms, the horse, and the buck.