Free Witch Week by Diana Wynne Jones

was seething.
    He trudged up the corridor to the swinging door, still seething. The swinging door swung as he reached it, and, to his surprise, Miss Hodge came through it. Miss Hodge did not live in school. As Estelle had speedily found out and told everyone, she lived with her old father in town. She was not usually here in the evenings at all.
    “Charles!” said Miss Hodge. “How convenient! Have you been seeing Mr. Wentworth?”
    It did not occur to Charles to wonder how Miss Hodge knew that. In his experience, teachers always knew far too much anyway. “Yes,” he said.
    “Then you can tell me which his room is,” said Miss Hodge.
    Charles pointed out the room and applied his shoulder to the swinging door. He had just forced his way out into the corridor beyond, when it swung again and again let Miss Hodge through.
    “Charles, are you sure Mr. Wentworth was there? He didn’t answer when I knocked.”
    “He was sitting by his fire,” Charles said.
    “Then perhaps I knocked at the wrong door,” Miss Hodge said. “Can you come and show me? Would you mind very much?”
    Yes, I would mind, Charles thought. He sighed and went back through the swinging door with Miss Hodge. Miss Hodge seemed pleased to have his company, which surprised him a little.
    Miss Hodge was thinking how fortunate it was she had met Charles. Since the afternoon, she had been thinking carefully. And she saw that her next and most certain move towards marrying Mr. Wentworth was to go to him and impulsively take back her accusation against Charles. It was unpleasant to think of anyone being burned, even if Charles did have the most evil glare of any boy she knew. She would look so generous. And here she was, actually with Charles, to prove she bore him no malice.
    Charles looked at Mr. Wentworth’s name on the door and wondered how Miss Hodge could have gotten the wrong room.
    “Oh,” said Miss Hodge. “It was the right door. That’s his name.”
    She knocked, and knocked again, with golden visions of her romance with Mr. Wentworth growing as, together, they tried to protect Charles from the clutches of the inquisitors. But there was no answer from the room. She turned to Charles in perplexity.
    “Maybe he’s gone to sleep,” Charles said. “It was warm in there.”
    “Suppose we open the door and take a peep?” Miss Hodge said, fluttering a little.
    “You do it,” said Charles.
    “No, you,” said Miss Hodge. “I’ll take all responsibility.”
    Charles sighed, and opened Mr. Wentworth’s door for the second time that evening. A gust of cold, smoky air blew in their faces. The room was dark, except for a faint glow from the cooling gas fire. Even that vanished when Miss Hodge imperiously switched on the light and stood fanning the smoke away from her.
    “Dear, dear,” she said, looking around. “That man needs a woman’s hand here. Are you sure he was here, Charles?”
    “Just this minute,” Charles said doggedly, but horror was beginning to descend on him. It was almost as if Mr. Wentworth had never been. He walked over to the bald patch of carpet in front of the fire and felt the fire. It was quite hot. Mr. Wentworth’s pipe was lying in the pottery ash-tray still, and that was warm too, but cooling in the icy air from the open window. Perhaps, Charles thought hopefully, Mr. Wentworth had just felt tired and gone to bed. There was a door in the opposite wall, beyond the blowing curtains of the window, which was probably the door to his bedroom.
    But Miss Hodge boldly walked over and opened that door. It was a cupboard, stuffed with schoolbooks. “He didn’t go this way,” she said. “Has he a bedroom along the corridor, do you know?”
    “He must have,” said Charles. But he knew Mr. Wentworth had not gone down the corridor. He could not have come out of this room without Charles seeing him as he went to the swinging door, or Miss Hodge seeing him as she pushed past Charles the other way. There was only one other