Whether because Harriet’s night prowlings, or perhaps the mere knowledge that the circle of suspects was so greatly narrowed, had intimidated the Poison-Pen, or for some other reason, there were few outbreaks during the next few days. One tiresome episode was the complete stopping-up of the lavatory basin drain in the S.C.R. cloak-room. This was found to be due to some torn fragments of material, which had been rammed firmly down through the grid with the help of a fine rod, and which, when the plumber had got them out, proved to be the remains of a pair of fabric gloves, stained with brown paint and quite unidentifiable as anybody’s property. Another was the noisy emergence of the missing Library keys from the interior of a roll of photographs which Miss Pyke had left for half an hour in one of the lecture-rooms before using them to illustrate some remarks about the Parthenon Frieze. Neither of these episodes led to any discovery.
The Senior Common Room behaved to Harriet with that scrupulous and impersonal respect for a person’s mission in life which the scholarly tradition imposes. It was clear to them that, once established as the official investigator, she must be allowed to investigate without interference. Nor did they hasten to her with protestations of innocence or cries of indignation. They treated the situation with a fine detachment, making little reference to it, and confining the conversation in Common Room to matters of general and University interest. In solemn and ritual order, they invited her to consume sherry or coffee in their rooms, and refrained from comment upon one another. Miss Barton, indeed, went out of her way to invite Harriet’s opinions upon Women in the Modern State and to consult her on the subject of conditions in Germany. It is true that she flatly disagreed with many of the opinions expressed, but only objectively and without personal rancour; the vexed subject of the amateur’s right to investigate crimes was decently shelved. Miss Hillyard also, setting aside animosity, took pains to interrogate Harriet about the technical aspects of such historical crimes as the murder of Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey and the alleged poisoning of Sir Thomas Overbury by the Countess of Essex. Such overtures might, of course, be policy; but Harriet was inclined to attribute them to a careful instinct for propriety.
With Miss de Vine she had many interesting conversations. The Fellow’s personality attracted and puzzled her very much. More than with any other of the dons, she felt that with Miss de Vine the devotion to the intellectual life was the result, not of the untroubled following of a natural or acquired bias, but of a powerful spiritual call, over-riding other possible tendencies and desires. She felt inquisitive enough, without any prompting, about Miss de Vine’s past life; but inquiry was difficult, and she always emerged from an encounter with the feeling that she had told more than she had learnt. She could guess at a history of conflict; but she found it difficult to believe that Miss de Vine was unaware of her own repressions or unable to control them.
With a view to establishing friendly relations with the Junior Common Room, Harriet further steeled herself to compose and deliver a ‘talk’ on ‘Detection in Fact and Fiction’ for a College literary society. This was perilous work. To the unfortunate case in which she had herself figured as the suspected party she naturally made no allusion; nor in the ensuing discussion was anybody so tactless as to mention it. The Wilvercombe murder was a different matter. There was no obvious reason why she should not tell the students about that, and it seemed unkind to deprive them of a legitimate thrill on the purely personal grounds that it was a bore to have to mention Peter Wimsey in every second sentence. Her exposition, though perhaps erring slightly on the dry and academic side, was received with hearty applause, and at the end of the meeting the Senior Student, one Miss Millbanks, invited her to coffee.
Miss Millbanks had her room in Queen Elizabeth, and had furnished it with a good deal of taste. She was a tall, elegant girl, obviously well-to-do, much better dressed than the majority of the students, and carrying her intellectual attainments easily. She held a minor scholarship without emoluments, declaring publicly that she was a scholar only because she would not be seen dead in the ridiculous short gown of a commoner. As alternatives to coffee, she offered Harriet the choice of madeira or a cocktail, politely regretting that the inadequacy of college arrangements made it impossible to provide ice for the shaker. Harriet, who disliked cocktails after dinner, and had consumed madeira and sherry on an almost wearisome number of occasions since her arrival in Oxford, accepted the coffee, and chuckled as cups and glasses were filled. Miss Millbanks inquired courteously what the joke was.
‘Only,’ said Harriet, ‘that I gathered the other day from an article in the Morning Star that “undergraduettes,” in the journalist’s disgusting phrase, lived entirely on cocoa.’
‘Journalists,’ said Miss Millbanks, condescendingly, ‘are always thirty years behind the times. Have you ever seen cocoa in College, Miss Fowler?’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Miss Fowler. She was a dark, thick-set Third Year, dressed in a very grubby sweater which, as she had previously explained, she had not had time to change, having been afflicted with an essay up to the moment of attending Harriet’s talk. ‘Yes, I’ve seen it in dons’ rooms. Occasionally. But I’ve always looked on that as a kind of infantilism.’
‘Isn’t it a re-living of the heroic past?’ suggested Miss Millbanks. ‘O les beaux jours que ce sícle de fer. And so on.’
‘Groupists drink cocoa,’ added another Third Year. She was thin, with an eager, scornful face, and made no apology for her sweater, apparently thinking such matters beneath her notice.
‘But they are oh! so tender to the failings of others,’ said Miss Millbanks. ‘Miss Layton was “changed” once, but she has now changed back. It was good while it lasted.’
Miss Layton, curled on a pouffe by the fire, lifted a wicked little heart-shaped face alight with mischief.
‘I did enjoy telling people what I thought of them. Too rapturous. Especially confessing in public the evil, evil thoughts I had had about that woman Flaxman.’
‘Bother Flaxman,’ said the dark girl, shortly. Her name was Haydock, and she was, as Harriet presently discovered, considered to be a safe History First. ‘She’s setting the whole Second Year by the ears. I don’t like her influence at all. And if you ask me, there’s something very wrong with Cattermole. Goodness knows, I don’t want any of this business of being my brother’s keeper – we had quite enough of that at school – but it’ll be awkward if Cattermole is driven into doing something drastic. As Senior Student, Lilian, don’t you think you could do something about it?’
‘My dear,’ protested Miss Millbanks, ‘what can anybody do? I can’t forbid Flaxman to make people’s lives a burden to them. If I could, I wouldn’t. You don’t surely expect me to exercise authority? It’s bad enough hounding people to College Meetings. The S.C.R. don’t understand our sad lack of enthusiasm.’
‘In their day,’ said Harriet, ‘I think people had a passion for meetings and organisation.’
‘There are plenty of inter-collegiate meetings,’ said Miss Layton. ‘We discuss things a great deal, and are indignant about the Proctorial Rules for Mixed parties. But our enthusiasm for internal affairs is more restrained.’
‘Well, I think,’ said Miss Haydock bluntly, ‘we sometimes overdo the laisser-aller side of it. If there’s a big blow-up, it won’t pay anybody.’
‘Do you mean about Flaxman’s cutting-out expeditions? Or about the ragging affair? By the way, Miss Vane, I suppose you have heard about the College Mystery.’
‘I’ve heard something,’ replied Harriet, cautiously. ‘It seems to be all very tiresome.’
‘It will be extremely tiresome if it isn’t stopped,’ said Miss Haydock. ‘I say we ought to do a spot of private investigation ourselves. The S.C.R. don’t seem to be making much progress.’
‘Well, the last effort at investigation wasn’t very satisfactory,’ said Miss Millbanks.
‘Meaning Cattermole? I don’t believe it’s Cattermole. She’s too obvious. And she hasn’t the guts. She co
uld and does make an ass of herself, but she wouldn’t go about it so secretively.’
‘There’s nothing against Cattermole,’ said Miss Fowler, ‘except that somebody wrote Flaxman an offensive letter on the occasion of her swiping Cattermole’s young man. Cattermole was the obvious suspect then, but why should she do all these other things?’
‘Surely,’ Miss Layton appealed to Harriet, ‘surely the obvious suspect is always innocent.’
Harriet laughed; and Miss Millbanks said:
‘Yes; but I do think Cattermole is getting to the stage when she’d do almost anything to attract attention.’
‘Well, I don’t believe it’s Cattermole,’ said Miss Haydock. ‘Why should she write letters to me?’
‘Did you have one?’
‘Yes; but it was only a kind of wish that I should plough in Schools. The usual silly thing made of pasted-up letters. I burnt it, and took Cattermole in to dinner on the strength of it.’
‘Good for you,’ said Miss Fowler.
‘I had one too,’ said Miss Layton. ‘A beauty – about there being a reward in hell for women who went my way. So, acting on the suggestion given, I forwarded it to my future address by way of the fireplace.’
‘All the same,’ said Miss Millbanks, ‘it is rather disgusting. I don’t mind the letters so much. It’s the rags, and the writing on the wall. If any snoopy person from outside happened to get hold of it, there’d be a public stink, and that would be a bore. I don’t pretend to much public spirit, but I admit to some. We don’t want to get the whole College gated by way of reprisals. And I’d rather not have it said that we were living in a madhouse.’
‘Too shame-making,’ agreed Miss Layton; ‘though of course, you may get an isolated queer specimen anywhere.’
‘There are some oddities in the First Year all right,’ said Miss Fowler. ‘Why is it that every year seems to get shriller and scrubbier than the last?’
‘They always did,’ said Harriet.
‘Yes,’ said Miss Haydock, ‘I expect the Third Year said the same about us when we first came up. But it’s a fact that we had none of this trouble before we had this bunch of freshers in.’
Harriet did not contradict this, not wishing to focus suspicion on either the S.C.R. or on the unfortunate Cattermole who (as everybody would remember) was up during the Gaudy, waging simultaneous war against despised love and Responsions. She did ask, however, whether any suspicion had fallen upon other students besides Miss Cattermole.
‘Not definitely, no,’ replied Miss Millbanks. ‘There’s Hudson, of course – she came up from school with a bit of a reputation for ragging, but in my opinion she’s quite sound. I should call the whole of our year pretty sound. And Cattermole really has only herself to thank. I mean, she’s asking for trouble.’
‘How?’ asked Harriet.
‘Various ways,’ said Miss Millbanks, with a caution which suggested that Harriet was too much in the confidence of the S.C.R. to be trusted with details. ‘She is rather inclined to break rules for the sake of it – which is all right if you get a kick out of it; but she doesn’t.’
‘Cattermole’s going in off the deep end,’ said Miss Haydock. ‘Wants to show young what’s-his-name – Farringdon – he isn’t the only pebble on the beach. All very well. But she’s being a bit blatant. She’s simply pursuing that lad Pomfret.’
‘That fair-faced goop at Queen’s?’ said Miss Fowler. ‘Well, she’s going to be unlucky again, because Flaxman is steadily hauling him off.’
‘Curse Flaxman!’ said Miss Haydock. ‘Can’t she leave other people’s men alone? She’s bagged Farringdon; I do think she might leave Pomfret for Cattermole.’
‘She hates to leave anybody anything,’ said Miss Layton.
‘I hope,’ said Miss Millbanks, ‘she has not been trying to collect your Geoffrey.’
‘I’m not giving her the opportunity,’ said Miss Layton, with an impish grin. ‘Geoffrey’s sound – yes, darlings, definitely sound – but I’m taking no chances. Last time we had him to tea in the J.C.R., Flaxman came undulating in – so sorry, she had no idea anybody was there, and she’d left a book behind. With the Engaged Label on the door as large as life. I did not introduce Geoffrey.’
‘Did he want you to?’ inquired Miss Haydock.
‘Asked who she was. I said she was the Templeton Scholar and the world’s heavyweight in the way of learning. That put him off.’
‘What’ll Geoffrey do when you pull off your First, my child?’ demanded Miss Haydock.
‘Well, Eve – it will be awkward if I do that. Poor lamb! I shall have to make him believe I only did it by looking fragile and pathetic at the viva.’
And Miss Layton did, indeed, contrive to look fragile and pathetic, and anything but learned. Nevertheless, on inquiry from Miss Lydgate, Harriet discovered that she was an extremely well-fancied favourite for the English School, and was taking, of all things, a Language Special. If the dry bones of Philology could be made to live by Miss Layton, then she was a very dark horse indeed. Harriet felt a respect for her brains; so unexpected a personality might be capable of anything.
So much for Third-Year opinion. Harriet’s first personal encounter with the Second Year was more dramatic.
The College had been so quiet for the last week that Harriet gave herself a holiday from police-duty and went to a private dance given by a contemporary of her own, who had married and settled in North Oxford. Returning between twelve and one, she garaged the car in the Dean’s private garage, let herself quietly through the grille dividing the Traffic Entrance from the rest of College and began to cross the Old Quad towards Tudor. The weather had turned finer, and there was a pale glimmer of cloudy moonlight. Against that glimmer, Harriet, skirting the corner of Burleigh Building, observed something humped and strange about the outline of the eastern wall, close to where the Principal’s private postern led out into St. Cross Road. It seemed clear that here, in the words of the old song, was ‘a man where nae man should be.’
If she shouted at him, he would drop over on the outer side and be lost. She had the key of the postern with her – having been trusted with a complete set of keys for patrol purposes. Pulling her black evening cloak about her face and stepping softly, Harriet ran quickly down the grass path between the Warden’s House and the Fellows’ Garden, let herself silently out into St. Cross Road and stood beneath the wall. As she emerged, a second dark form stepped out from the shadows and said urgently, ‘Oy!’
The gentleman on the wall looked round, exclaimed, ‘Oh, hell!’ and scrambled down in a hurry. His friend made off at a smart pace, but the wall-climber seemed to have damaged himself in his descent, and made but poor speed. Harriet, who was nimble enough, for all she was over nine years down from Oxford, gave chase and came up with him a few yards from the corner of Jowett Walk. The accomplice, now well away, looked back, hesitating.
‘Clear out, old boy!’ yelled the captive; and then, turning to Harriet, remarked with a sheepish grin, ‘Well, it’s a fair cop. I’ve bust my ankle or something.’
‘And what were you doing on our wall, sir?’ demanded Harriet. In the moonlight she beheld a fresh, fair and ingenuous face, youthfully rounded and, at the moment, disturbed by an expression of mingled apprehension and amusement. He was a very tall and very large young man; but Harriet had clasped him in a wiry grip that he could scarcely shake off without hurting her, and he showed no disposition to use violence.
‘Just having a beano,’ said the young man promptly. ‘A bet, you know, and all that. Hang my cap on the tip-top branch of the Shrewsbury beeches. My friend there was the witness. I seem to have lost, don’t I?’
‘In that case,’ said Harriet severely, ‘where’s your cap? And your gown, if it comes to that? And, sir, your name and college?’
‘Well,’ said the young man, impudently, ‘if it comes to that, where and what are yours?’
When one’s thirty-second birthday is no more than a matter of months away, such a
question is flattering. Harriet laughed.
‘My dear young man, do you take me for an undergraduate?’
‘A don – a female don, God help us!’ exclaimed the young man, whose spirits appeared to be sustained, though not unduly exalted, by spirituous liquors.
‘Well?’ said Harriet.
‘I don’t believe it,’ said the young man, scanning her face as closely as he could in the feeble light. ‘Not possible. Too young. Too charming. Too much sense of humour.’
‘A great deal too much sense of humour to let you get away with that, my lad. And no sense of humour at all about this intrusion.’
‘I say,’ said the young man, ‘I’m really most frightfully sorry. Mere light-heartedness and all that kind of thing. Honestly, we weren’t doing any harm. Quite definitely not I mean, we were just winning the bet and going away quietly. I say, do be a sport. I mean, you’re not the Warden or the Dean or anything. I know them. Couldn’t you overlook it?’
‘It’s all very well,’ said Harriet. ‘But we can’t have this kind of thing. It doesn’t do. You must see that it doesn’t do.’
‘Oh, I do see,’ agreed the young man. ‘Absolutely. Definitely. Dashed silly thing to do. Open to misinterpretation.’ He winced, and drew up one leg to rub his injured ankle. ‘But when you do see a tempting bit of wall like that—’
‘Ah, yes,’ said Harriet, ‘what is the temptation? Just come and show me, will you?’ She led him firmly, despite his protests, towards the postern. ‘Oh, I see, yes. A brick or two out of that buttress. Excellent foothold. You’d almost think they’d been knocked out on purpose, wouldn’t you? And a handy tree in the Fellows’ Garden. The Bursar will have to see to it. Are you well acquainted with that buttress, young man?’