Free The Theban Mysteries by Amanda Cross

asked. “I thought the mothers always came in the afternoon and were fed tea and well-bred cookies afterward, to revive them.”
    “We’ve been doing this for years now,” Julia said, “in the happy thought that fathers want to attend too and are, of course, far too busy with the important things of the world to spare afternoon hours.” Julia’s voice trailed off as they reached Miss Tyringham’s office.
    “Simply let it ring,” Miss Tyringham was saying. “Just plug my line, though, in case I have to make a call. You might know,” she added to Julia, “that someonewould see the ambulance and call to inquire what the crisis was, if any. I’ve always been most pleased with the way the Theban mothers keep in touch with us if they’ve got the slightest worry, but tonight I could have done without any curiosity. The school is supposed to be closed at this hour, and we will simply act as though it were closed.”
    “Suppose they call Miss Freund at home?” Julia asked.
    “She will simply answer with perfect rectitude that she doesn’t know what they’re talking about.”
    “Wouldn’t she then immediately come round to see what they
are
talking about?”
    “No doubt you are right. Call her up, Julia, and tell her enough to let her talk with confidence, but tell her to stay at home and grapple, if necessary, from there. Thank you, Kate, for coming. We bump, these days, from crisis to crisis. Like Pooh being dragged upstairs by Christopher Robin, bump, bump, bump. In fact, I think we can avert a real one-hundred-percent stinker in this case, if you’ll excuse the expression, but the implications are terrifying. I hoped,” she added to Kate, “that you might throw light.”
    “Where is Angelica?” Julia asked.
    “Angelica is lying down in the nurse’s office, being comforted by Mrs. Banister. You and she,” Miss Tyringham said to Kate, “are our rescue squad. I hope,” she rather faintly added.
    “You want to know what’s happened, of course,” she continued. “We found a young man hiding out in the building almost unconscious with fright, worry, and near-starvation I suspect. But, for any of this to make sense, I’ll have to explain all the complicated heavingand hoing we’ve been put to here to try to keep the school building safe from intruders. If you want to smoke, smoke. I’d offer you something to drink if I had it, but I don’t. Will you be patient with me for a moment as I go through this rather long-winded explanation?”
    Kate leaned back, lit a cigarette, and decided that if it were possible to wring anyone’s interest to a higher pitch than hers was now wrung to, she didn’t know what methods would have to be employed.
    “I don’t know if you’ve heard anything about some of the damage we’ve suffered in the building from intruders and thieves,” Miss Tyringham began. Kate said that Anne Copland had told her about the stealing and the ruined gymnasium floor. “Yes; of course our first steps were to put up metal gates over all the lower windows and to secure the doors so that they were literally impenetrable with any device short of a major explosion. But the ways of today’s intruders are many, varied, and ingenious. For one thing, however much of an eye we try to keep out—and we simply can’t, for many reasons, have doormen guarding the lobby every moment of the day—anyone who puts his mind to it can gain entrance to the building and simply lie low until everyone’s gone home. True, this takes a certain agility and dodging about to avoid the cleanup people, but I don’t think it’s past the ingenuity of even the most simple-minded robber. In addition, though it doesn’t do to say so these days, our staff, both kitchen and cleaning, changes constantly for the most part—we have, of course, our old and faithful regulars—and one never knows what
their
motives may have been in taking the job. One is happy enough to find someone whowill push a mop these days without