Free Cat Among the Pigeons by Agatha Christie

sporting laugh again.
    “Hope nobody here has anything to hide,” she said gaily.
    Nobody was amused. But Miss Springer was not the kind of woman to notice that.

Cat Among the Pigeons
    II
    “Can I speak to you, Miss Bulstrode?”
    Miss Bulstrode laid her pen aside and looked up into the flushed face of the matron, Miss Johnson.
    “Yes, Miss Johnson.”
    “It's that girl Shaista - the Egyptian girl or whatever she is.”
    “Yes!”
    “It's her - er - underclothing.”
    Miss Bulstrode's eyebrows rose in patient surprise.
    “Her - well - her bust bodice.”
    “What is wrong with her brassière?”
    “Well - it isn't an ordinary kind - I mean it doesn't hold her in, exactly. It - er - well it pushes her up really quite unnecessarily.”
    Miss Bulstrode bit her lip to keep back a smile, as so often when in colloquy with Miss Johnson.
    “Perhaps I'd better come and look at it,” she said gravely.
    A kind of inquest was then held with the offending contraption held up to display by Miss Johnson, while Shaista looked on with lively interest.
    “It's this sort of wire and - er - boning arrangement,” said Miss Johnson with disapprobation.
    Shaista burst into animated explanation.
    “But you see my breasts they are not very big - not nearly big enough. I do not look enough like a woman. And it is very important for a girl - to show she is a woman and not a boy.”
    “Plenty of time for that. You're only fifteen,” said Miss Johnson.
    “Fifteen - that is a woman! And I look like a woman, do I not?”
    She appealed to Miss Bulstrode who nodded gravely.
    “Only my breasts, they are poor. So I want to make them look not so poor. You understand?”
    “I understand perfectly,” said Miss Bulstrode. “And I quite see your point of view. But in this school, you see, you are among girls who are, for the most part, English, and English girls are not very often women at the age of fifteen. I like my girls to use make-up discreetly and to wear clothes suitable to their stage of growth. I suggest that you wear your brassière when you are dressed for a party or for going to London, but not every day here. We do a good deal of sports and games here and for that your body needs to be free to move easily.”
    “It is too much - all this running and jumping,” said Shaista sulkily, “and the P.T. I do not like Miss Springer - she always says 'Faster, faster, do not slack.' I get tired.”
    “That will do, Shaista,” said Miss Bulstrode, her voice becoming authoritative. “Your family has sent you here to learn English ways. All this exercise will be very good for your complexion, and for developing your bust.”
    Dismissing Shaista, she smiled at the agitated Miss Johnson.
    “It's quite true,” she said. “The girl is fully mature. She might easily be over twenty by the look of her. And that is what she feels like. You can't expect her to feel the same age as Julia Upjohn, for instance. Intellectually Julia is far ahead of Shaista. Physically, she could quite well wear a liberty bodice still.”
    “I wish they were all like Julia Upjohn,” said Miss Johnson.
    “I don't,” said Miss Bulstrode briskly. “A school full of girls all alike would be very dull.”
    Dull, she thought, as she went back to her marking of Scripture essays. That word had been repeating itself in her brain for some time now. Dull...
    If there was one thing her school was not, it was dull. During her career as its headmistress, she herself had never felt dull. There had been difficulties to combat, unforeseen crises, irritations with parents, with children; domestic upheavals. She had met and dealt with incipient disasters and turned them into triumphs. It had all been stimulating, exciting, supremely worthwhile. And even now, though she had made up her mind to it, she did not want to go.
    She was physically in excellent health, almost as tough as when she and Chaddy (faithful Chaddy!) had started the great enterprise with a mere handful of