by Anne Morice
“And did the trick work?”
“Up to a point. One or two bits and pieces turned up in some unexpected places, but no cash, you may be sure. I’m afraid we’re dealing with a clever monkey here. My guess is that she scattered just enough of the stolen bits around to prove my point. That’s the trouble with these naughty people, you see. They get so cunning. It starts off in a harmless sort of way, helping themselves to sweets and biscuits and so on; well, that’s just plain old greed of course, but they find they’re getting away with it and it makes them more ambitious. They want to try for something a bit harder. In the end it becomes like a disease and they can’t any longer control it.”
“And you think you know who this joker is?”
“Oh yes,” Patsy replied firmly. “Not much doubt about that.”
“Then why not . . . ?”
“Have her on the carpet and get her to own up? I’ve thought of it, but it wouldn’t really do. She’s leaving, anyway, at the end of this term and then, as I say, it will all die down. Besides, if I were to accuse her to her face, it would be sure to get to Mrs. Bland’s ears and then the fat would be in the fire. We’re treading on delicate ground with this one.”
“But even so, Patsy, how could she be so unreasonable as not to back you up? I realise she’s not well, but surely that’s a purely physical thing? Do you mean she’s going off her rocker or something?”
Patsy gave me a strange, speculative look, blinking at me over the top of her glasses, as she poured out my second cup:
“Well, dear, I suppose it would take you to put it into quite those words, but confidentially, in my candid opinion, you’re not far off the mark. As you say, we all know she hasn’t been well lately and that may cause her a lot of anxiety, poor woman, but the mental breakdown, if that’s what you’d call it, started long before. More than a year ago, looking back on it.”
“Honestly? I’m afraid I’ve been rather out of touch. What form does it take? Loss of memory, that kind of thing?”
“Oh, much more distressing than that. You know what grand ideas she’s always had? And her way of trampling over everyone and disregarding their advice? Well, we all managed to put up with it, I suppose, because in the old days she did run things so efficiently and so often she turned out to be right. Not any more though, I’m sorry to say. Her judgement isn’t nearly as sound as it used to be and, what’s worse, she gets these fixations; pure prejudice, most of them, but nothing will shake her. And the extravagance is appalling. Strictly between ourselves, Tess, it worries me dreadfully sometimes. Having to sit by and see the money thrown away on madcap schemes and silly unnecessary luxuries. One can’t help wondering where it will end. Things can’t go on for ever at this rate though, that I do know.”
“What do you mean by luxuries?”
“Anything and everything which adds to her own glory, to put it in a nutshell. Perhaps you didn’t notice, not being a very frequent visitor, but the entire theatre has just been redecorated especially for this occasion. As though anyone cared! It’s their girls they’ve come to see, not the new upholstery. She’s had the old house in Gillsford entirely redone too, and what that cost is something I can’t bring myself to tell you. The latest is that she’s taken on an extra garden boy at twenty pounds a week, because Holden complained he couldn’t any longer manage the lawns on his own. You’d think it was some millionaire’s castle, instead of a girls’ school.”
“What do you suppose brought all this on?”
“Well, as I say, she’s always had big ideas, but it seems to have gone beyond all sense and reason now. I’ll give you an example. We had a burglary here not so long ago. A real, professional one, I mean. It was one night when she and the doctor were up in London and the thieves got in through the scullery window. Mind you, I’ll always believe those foreign servants they’ve got now had something to do with it, because these villains must have known exactly what they were after and where to lay their hands on it; but do you think she would report it to the police? No, she would not.”
“How strange! Did they take much?”
“Only some jewellery and cash; well, quite a lot really, about a hundred pounds, which she always keeps in her bedside drawer. And there’s a silly idea, if you like! So she said no insurance company was going to compensate her for that and where was the sense of dragging the police in? It would only lead to a lot of publicity in the local rag, which would probably upset some of the parents and get the school a bad name.”
“Something in that, I suppose?”
“Oh, I dare say, Tess, but it’s the high-handed attitude I find so worrying and where’s it going to end? She keeps putting the fees up every year, to try and keep pace, and that’s a pity too, in my opinion. I know Madam isn’t at all pleased about it either. It goes against all her principles that only the very rich girls should get the chance to come here. Besides, it’s not practical in the long run, is it? She’ll end by pricing herself out of the market, and then what an almighty crash there’s going to be. It makes you weep to think of it.”
“Well, cheer up, Patsy! You must be planning to retire one of these days. No one more sorry than me to see the old firm go bust, but at least you’ll have nothing much to lose financially, if it does.”
I offered this small consolation with some trepidation, for she had always been secretive about her age and, although I judged her to be now in her seventies, that was no guarantee against giving offence. I have noticed that the older people become the more sensitive they are apt to be on the subject of retirement.
To my relief, she took it calmly, although evidently not much cheered up either:
“If only that were true, my dear,” she replied sadly, “but it’s not quite as simple as that. I had always hoped to end my days here, in these two dear familiar rooms. I haven’t much saved up, I’m afraid, but Dr. Bland promised me years ago that, so long as there was a Waterside, there’d always be a home for me. I know he meant it too, but how long will there be a Waterside, that’s what I begin to wonder? And he’s just as powerless as all the rest of us, poor fellow. Oh well, never mind, that’s quite enough about my troubles. Tell me some of the theatre gossip. I’m so out of touch these days and you must have no end of excitement, now you’re beginning to do so well.”
I endeavoured to oblige, but soon resigned myself to the fact that she was only giving me half her attention, being irretrievably sunk, apparently, in her own doubts and worries, and when she had asked me the same totally irrelevant question for the third time I gave up the struggle, making the excuse that Tina was expecting me at the flat.
She looked older and sadder still when I said goodbye and I could not help wondering whether, despite all my present good intentions, I should ever see her again.
EIGHT
Tina was in the kitchen and a snarling rage, banging pots and pans about and with such a deep frown creasing her forehead that her face looked like a carving fork.
I started to bring her up to date with the results of the competition, but she only grunted and glared at me and so, in pursuit of my role as chief booster of the impaired morale of Waterside females, I said consolingly:
“Well, one good thing has come out of it, anyway, Teeny.”
“Glad to hear it. What?”
“Connie will have to climb down now. She couldn’t possibly sack that girl, Belinda, after the performance she gave this morning.”
“Ha ha!”
“No ha ha about it. If she’s even half as good at the gala show tomorrow all the governors and parents, not to mention the local press, will be falling about at her feet. If Connie has a grain of sense left, she’ll be paying the girl’s mother to allow her to stay on.”
“Then it may interest you to know that she hasn’t a grain of sense left. And it may also interest you to know that not a single governor or parent or member of the press will get the chance to see Belinda tomorrow. She is in solitary confinement and all they’ll see is her understudy.”
“Yes, I am very interested indeed. Has she got cholera or something?”
“No, she’s been expelled. She is to be sent home tomorrow.”
“You must be joking?”
Tina’s grim expression showed plainly that this was not so and I pressed for details.
“Connie caught her stealing. At least, that’s the story.”
“Stealing what?”
“Literally dipping her fingers in the till.”
“What till? I didn’t know you had one.”
“It’s new since our day, but they’ve turned one of the downstairs rooms at The Lodge into a kind of shop. It’s open for an hour every afternoon and the whole of Saturday morning and the girls can buy Coke and yoghourt and stuff like that.”
“And?”
“Connie popped in there some time this afternoon, probably to make sure it was well stocked up with all the right vitamins and health foods when the parents came round. She claims to have found Belinda in there, at a time when she had no business to be, and that she was helping herself from the till.”
“And what does the defence say?”
“Don’t ask me! You don’t imagine we live in a democracy up there, do you? Presumably, that she was putting in the exact money for the bar of chocolate she’d taken, or whatever; but what good would that have done her? You know what I believe, Tessa? That the whole affair has been deliberately trumped up by Connie to serve her own ends. Oh, I’m not denying that Belinda was in the shop, or that she’d broken a few rules, but that’s no novelty. They all do it and there’s nothing particularly dishonest about it.”
“But isn’t the place kept locked up out of business hours?”
“Yes, and Patsy has charge of the key, so you can guess how strictly that’s guarded. Quite apart from leaving it around in full view, they can usually talk her into letting them borrow it for special occasions, like today, when some kind of celebration is called for. Connie must know that as well as anyone, only naturally it wouldn’t suit her to admit it. She’s seized on this as an excuse to square her own conscience and prove to us all just how right she was to chuck Belinda out.”
“You really think as badly of her as that, Teeny?”
“You bet I do. Everyone was really upset about her firing one of the most promising pupils ever to enter those portals. Not only Madam, but all of us. And of course she can’t take criticism in any form, so now we’ll all have to bow down and admit she was right. Belinda not only committed the cardinal sin of becoming penniless, she has proved herself to be a thief and a liar as well. That’ll be the story.”
I considered this for a while and came to the conclusion that, despite never having personally seen Connie in such a sinister light, Tina had indisputably had opportunities to see sides of her character which had been denied to me and that she was most likely right. However, a small doubt still remained and I said:
“I expect what you say is true and I’ve been getting hints on all sides, ever since I arrived here, that she’s rapidly going round the bend, particularly where money is concerned. And I’ve had a little first-hand evidence of it too. That lunch we had today would have kept the average family in caviare for a year, and yet nobody has really been able to explain why it’s happened. After all, it’s not so long ago since you and I used to see her practically every day of our lives and it was never any secret that she was a tyrant and a snob, but when it came to practicalities she always had her feet firmly on the ground. She didn’t go around behaving as though she’d just won the pools. So how do you account for this extraordinary transformation?”
“How would I know?” Tina replied indifferently. “She’s not well, we’re all beginning to realise that, so presumably the illness has affected her brain as well.”
“But, as you’ve just implied, that’s a comparatively recent development. Yet Patsy assured me that this dotty extravagance is not new at all. It’s been building up for some time.”
“You can’t tell,” Tina began. “People get brain tumours and things which. . . .”
She was obliged to break off at this point because the telephone rang and she had to go into the sitting room to answer it.
The conversation lasted for several minutes, although Tina’s part in it consisted of scarcely a dozen words, all of which were clearly audible:
“Hallo . . . Yes . . . Who? . . . Constance has what? . . . How did . . . ? Yes . . . terrible . . . All right . . . Goodbye.”
“That was Madam,” she said, walking very slowly back into the kitchen and regarding me with a dazed expression. “The most appalling thing has happened. I still can’t take it in, I simply can’t.”
She bent over, resting her elbows on the draining board and her head between her hands. “It’s just too ghastly and incredible.”
“Something has happened to Constance?”
“What? Oh, you heard, did you? She’s dead.”
“Oh, my Lord! No wonder you’re knocked out! When? And how?”
“I’m not really sure. Madam wasn’t very coherent. In fact, she was pretty nearly hysterical. She kept yapping on about suicide. I couldn’t understand it.”
“Not just hysterical, off her head, I should say. Much more likely to have been a straightforward heart attack, don’t you think?”
Tina straightened up and stared at me with her mouth falling open:
“Why would she have a heart attack, for God’s sake?”
“Oh well, you know, she’s been having these blackouts and one thing and another. They must have been more serious than anyone realised. Poor old Connie!”
“Poor old Connie?” Tina repeated on a screeching note, followed by a snort of strangled laughter. “My God, Tessa, I do believe you think I’m talking about Mrs. Bland, don’t you?”
“Who else?”
“Constance McGrath, that’s who else. You know, you’ve met her. She’s the one they call Hattie.”
NINE
Gallantly responding to my urgent summons, Robin and Toby drove over from Roakes Common on Sunday morning and arrived in the lounge of the Nag’s Head punctually at half past ten, although not in the best of humours at having their day of rest disrupted in this way.
“It can’t be helped,” I explained. “There is a lot to tell you and I could hardly be expected to go through it twice. Having you both here at one sitting will save us all time. So do listen to this. . . .
“And the ironical part of it is,” I concluded, having given a résumé of events, “far from this being the last straw to break the back of Constance Bland, it seems to have done her a world of good. She is rallying magnificently, as she invariably does with a real challenge. The show must go on, sort of thing. And it’s got poor Belinda off the hook too. The expulsion order has been lifted, temporarily at any rate. I dare say even the indomitable Constance would have felt there was a little too much rain falling on her parade to have a second scandal on her hands during the festivities.”
“You could also say that it bears out the claim that she is going steadily off her head,” Toby remarked. “Surely the sane thing would have been to reject the challenge and cancel the parade?”
“I gather that was mooted, but, as she was quick to point out, it would have been a practical impossibility. There are about three hundred people converging on Waterside at this moment and they come from far and wide. Hattie’s death wasn’t discovered until yesterday evening, much too late to contact every one of them. It would have ended with about half the parents turning up and the other half staying away, which would have been worse than anything.”
“Who did the discovering, by the way?”
“It was one of the girls in her house who raised the alarm; Lottie someone or other. They all eat in a communal dining room, but each house has its own table, so if anyone is missing it’s quite easy to spot her and Hattie didn’t turn up for supper yesterday evening. If it had been any other sort of gathering no one would have blinked an eye, because she seems to have been a law
unto herself where timetables were concerned, but this was different. In all the years she’d been at Waterside she’d never been known to miss a meal.”
“And where was she found?”
“Over at the art exhibition, eventually. It took rather a long time because naturally Lottie looked in all the obvious, nearly places first, like dormitories and so on. It wasn’t until she went back to the dining room to report that a proper search was started, which may have been a pity, although maybe the delay didn’t make any real difference. At any rate, Dr. Bland didn’t seem to think so, and I suppose he’d be the one to know.”
“Was she already dead?”
“No, in a heavy coma. She died on the way to the hospital.”
Robin said: “You still haven’t told us who actually found her?”
“It was Madam. She said afterwards that she’d had a hunch that’s where Hattie would be, but I don’t think it was a particularly inspired one. Anyone could see that, next to her appetite, Hattie loved her art. It may even have been the other way round. However, it isn’t yet clear whether she stayed there right through the afternoon, or left and went back again. Personally, I incline to the former.”
“Why?”
“Because, as I’ve just implied, I think she was immensely proud of her work; not vain exactly, but proud and sensitive about it. I think she’d have stuck around, so long as there was a chance of any spectators turning up. Which reminds me: I must try and get to see Patsy tomorrow. There’s something I want her to do for me.”
“Now, listen, Tessa, you’re not by any remote chance contemplating . . . ?”
“Getting mixed up in the affair? Producing the irrefutable evidence that it wasn’t suicide? No, certainly not. It’s simply that a few hours before her death Hattie had promised to give me one of her drawings. I think she really wanted me to have it too, only it might be a bit tricky explaining that to Constance Bland. Perhaps I should ask Pauline. If I tell her that it’s a little secret, just between the two of us, she’s bound to co-operate.”