Free A Javelin for Jonah by Gladys Mitchell

returned at the end of twenty-five minutes.
    “Nothing doing,” she reported. “A few cases of incipient lesbianism, but nothing more. They get lonely, you know, and as they can’t co-habit with the men, what can you expect? After all, they’re in prison here, poor little stinkers.” With this sympathetic pronouncement she said goodnight and closed her door.
    “Now for the attics,” said Henry. But in the attics they drew blank once more. “Well, we shall have to give it up for tonight,” he added at last, “but in the morning I’ll inspect the halls of residence, just to leave no stone unturned, and get keys to the changing-rooms. I’m beginning not to like the look of things, and that’s a fact.”

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chapter 5
Interviews
    « ^ »
    W ell,” said Henry on the following morning, “there seems to be nobody in the stoke-hole, or anywhere else we thought of. If Jones doesn’t turn up at lunch I shall speak to Gassie and get him to utter threats.”
    “What sort of threats?” asked Hamish.
    “That is up to him. Expulsion of ringleaders, I suppose, although I do hope it won’t really come to that. The threat may be sufficient to bring them to their senses.”
    “Who are the ringleaders?”
    “One can do no more than guess, at this juncture. After all, there are those among us who have grievances, are there not?”
    “Yes, but the chief sufferers from Jones’s machinations are still in hospital.”
    “How do we know they’re the chief ones? There may be others. In fact, we know there are.”
    “Good Lord! You don’t suppose Barry or Lesley would be a party to a student rag, do you?”
    “No, of course not. Anyway, we’ll hope to goodness Jones shows up at lunch, that’s all.”
    Jones was not at lunch. Henry, looking worried, left his seat at the high table, got out his car and drove to the village to make certain that the missing man had not decided upon a snack and a drink at the public-house which was his frequent haven. He drew blank, as he had expected to do, returned to College and caught up, as best he could, with his meal.
    The students were unusually quiet. Such talk as went on was in undertones. There was an air of conspiracy about the place.
    “Have you been to see Gassie? Does he know that Jonah is still missing?” Hamish asked when Henry had re-seated himself at the high table.
    “I’m going to see him directly after lunch. I’m beginning to hope that the students will have freed Jones and that he’s decided to sling his hook, after all. There was that rumour, you know, that he had resigned.”
    “I thought it had been scotched, and by Medlar himself.”
    “I know. And, of course, Gassie, I feel certain, would be loth to ask Jonah to go. I have an idea that, apart from being his brother-in-law, Jones has some special reason for having earned Gassie’s gratitude. What it is I don’t know and should never attempt to find out, but, shortly before you came, Miss Yale and I made representations to him to get rid of the mischievous, unpleasant fellow. Some of the women students had tackled us about his little ways, you know. It was then that Gassie told me privately that he owed Jones a living and could never sufficiently indulge him for something he had done for him in the past. Personally, I cannot visualize Jones’s doing anything for anybody unless he had to, but one never knows, of course, and therefore one should not judge, I suppose.”
    He was about to rise from the table to pronounce the customary Latin grace when Richard, flushed and sweating, came up to the high table and said,
    “Would you make an announcement, Harry boy?‘
    “Now?” asked Henry.
    “Well, everybody seems to be here except Gassie.”
    “And Jonah,” said Henry, glancing towards Jones’s vacant chair.
    “Well, that’s it,” said Richard. “They shoved Jonah down the stoke-hole. We’ve just been along to get him out. He isn’t there. They didn’t leave him any more grub after yesterday, so