Free Hare Sitting Up by Michael Innes Page B

committed a crime, he has done something disgraceful, he has gone harmlessly off his head. Anything that would prompt his schoolmastering brother to say, ‘Very well, lie low here for a time.’ That is the situation, and when John popped up here the other day the unfortunate schoolmaster was taken completely by surprise, and could do nothing but acquiesce in his plan. Alternatively, what is lurking here now is not Professor Howard Juniper living but Professor Howard Juniper dead. His brother has done him in. An affair of passion connected, no doubt, with Miss Grimstone. And my dear husband has pleasantly given me the task of finding the body. A policeman’s wife is not a happy one.
    Outside, it was still raining dismally, and thunder was rumbling in the distance. And everything was planned for outside at this time of the year, so that there was a feeling abroad that the day was running drearily down. In one empty classroom the boy who had chattered so cheerfully to Judith on her arrival was now forlornly engaged in sticking together the parts of a model aeroplane which obviously bored him extremely. U-Tin – it was easy to identify U-Tin – was in a corner of the boys’ day-room, addressing himself with equal lack of conviction to a chess problem. Alabaster Two – since he was in blue corduroy he was presumably Alabaster Two – was in another corner, playing ludo with a conscientiously interested young man who must be either Pooh or Piglet. The holiday boarders ran about uncertainly; and Piglet (if the ludo-player was Pooh) kept on rounding them up and making suggestions of which they didn’t think too well.
    Judith, conscious of this state of affairs as Miss Grimstone marched her around, found herself suddenly in the possession of a plan. It would be exhausting, but it might work very well. Unfortunately there was one serious difficulty in the way of putting it into operation. She herself hadn’t arrived at Splaine as quite the right person. Gushing and enthusiastic, yes. But not quite jolly enough. That was it… Judith, as Miss Grimstone showed her the kitchens and the up-to-date refrigeration, set herself to modulate, unobtrusively but rapidly, into a very jolly person indeed. An admiral’s daughter, she said to herself. A Betjeman girl. Or a matron from Eliot’s land of lobelias and tennis flannels. Slap Miss Grimstone on the back? Well, not quite. It was important to be asked to stay to tea.
    A bell clanged out somewhere above the domestic offices. It was a cracked bell, Judith noted, of the kind with which the sombre imagination of Graham Greene regularly provides schools in the distressful memories of his male characters. But at Splaine Croft this horror of the ringing bell (John Donne, Judith told herself, being thus launched upon literary references) appeared to be rather cheerfully received. Perhaps it was because it did, on this occasion, mean tea. There was a general stampede to the dining hall.
    ‘Are they to have tea?’ Judith asked – enthusiastic and oh so jolly. ‘But I must see them! May I just peep?’
    ‘During the holidays I myself take tea with the school.’ Miss Grimstone glanced at Judith with what could not be other than naked suspicion. ‘I hope you have time to take a cup yourself? It is far from elegant, of course. But thoroughly wholesome. Each boy has half a pint of milk from the special cows.’
    Judith found herself wondering what this formidable old person really believed about her. That she was some brazen woman from a magazine, perhaps, preparing a colourful feature on the education of the surtax-paying classes. Still, here she was safely in the dining hall, where Pooh and Piglet were being introduced to her under perfectly commonplace names that she didn’t catch. At school, of course, small boys are not introduced. But Judith, considering it to be all in her part, shook hands with them all vigorously. They stared at her, polite but round-eyed. She acknowledged in