Gaudy Night (16 page)

“Is that Miss Barton? I was looking for you. I saw a light in the New Library.”

“So did I. I’ve just been over to investigate. The door’s locked.”

“Locked?”

“And the key inside.”

“Isn’t there another way up?” asked Harriet.

“Yes, of course there is. I ought to have thought of that. Up through the Hall passage and the Fiction Library. Come along!”

“Wait a minute,” said Harriet. “Whoever it is may be still there. You watch the main door, to see they don’t get out that way. I’ll go up through the Hall.”

“Very well. Good idea. Here! haven’t you got a torch? You’d better take mine. You’ll waste lime turning on lights.”

Harriet snatched the torch and ran, thinking hard. Miss Barton’s story sounded plausible enough. She had woken up (why?), seen the light (very likely she slept with her curtains drawn open) and gone out to investigate while Harriet was running about the upper floors hunting for the right room. In the meantime, the person in the Library had either finished what she was doing or, possibly, peeped out and been alarmed by seeing the lights go up in Tudor. She had switched out the light. She had not gone out by the main door; she was either still somewhere in the Hall-Library Wing, or she had crept out by the Hall stair while Miss Barton and Harriet were grappling with one another in the quad.

Harriet found the Hall stair and started up it, using her torch as little as possible and keeping the light low. It came forcibly into her mind that the person she was hunting was—must be—unbalanced, if not mad, and might possibly deliver a nasty swipe out of a dark corner. She arrived at the head of the stair, and pushed back the swinging glass double door that led to the passage between the Hall and the Buttery. As she did so, she fancied she heard a slight scuffling sound ahead, and almost simultaneously she saw the gleam of a torch. There ought to be a two-way switch just on the right, behind the door. She found it, and pressed it down. There was a quick flicker, and then darkness. A fuse? Then she laughed at herself. Of course not. The person at the other end of the passage had flicked the switch at the same moment as herself. She pushed the switch up again, and the lights flooded the passage.

On her left, she saw the three doorways, with the serving-hatches between, that led into the Hall. On the right was the long blank wall between the passage and the kitchens. And ahead of her, at the far end of the passage, close to the Buttery door, stood somebody clutching a dressing-gown about her with one hand and a large jug in the other.

Harriet advanced swiftly upon this apparition, which came meekly enough to meet her. Its features seemed familiar, and in a moment she identified them. It was Miss Hudson, the Third Year student who had been up at Gaudy.

“What in the world are you doing here at this time of night?” demanded Harriet, severely. Not that she had any particular right to question students about their movements. Nor did she feel that her own appearance, in pyjamas and a Jaeger dressing-gown, suggested dignity or authority. Miss Hudson, indeed, seemed quite flabbergasted at being thus accosted by a total stranger at three in the morning. She stared, speechless.

“Why shouldn’t I be here?” said Miss Hudson, at last defiantly. “I don’t know who you are. I’ve as much right to walk about as you have... Oh, gosh!” she added, and burst out laughing. “I suppose you’re one of the scouts. I didn’t recognise you without your uniform.”

“No,” said Harriet “I’m an old student. You’re Miss Hudson, aren’t you! But your room isn’t here. Have you been along to the Buttery?” Her eyes were on the jug; Miss Hudson blushed.

“Yes—I wanted some milk. I’ve got an essay.”

She spoke of it as though it were a disease. Harriet chuckled.

“So that still goes on, does it? Carrie’s just as soft-hearted as Agnes was in my day.” She went up to the Buttery hatch and shook it, but it was locked. “No, apparently she isn’t.”

“I asked her to leave it open,” said Miss Hudson, “but I expect she forgot. I say—don’t give Carrie away. She’s awfully decent.”

“You know quite well that Carrie isn’t supposed to leave the hatch open. You ought to get your milk before ten o’clock.”

“I know. But one doesn’t always know if one will want it. You’ve done the same thing in your time, I expect.”

“Yes,” said Harriet. “Well, you’d better cut along. Wait a second. When did you come up here?”

“Just now. Just a few seconds before you did.”

“Did you meet anybody?”

“No,” Miss Hudson looked alarmed. “Why? Has anything happened?”

“Not that I know of. Get along to bed.”

Miss Hudson escaped and Harriet tried the Buttery door which was as firmly locked as the hatch. Then she went on, through the Fiction Library, which was empty, and put her hand on the handle of the oak door that led to the New Library. The door was immovable. There was no key in the lock. Harriet looked round the Fiction Library. On the window-sill lay a thin pencil, beside a book and a few papers. She pushed the pencil into the key-hole; it encountered no resistance.

She went to the window of the Fiction Library and pushed it up. It looked on to the roof of a small loggia. Two people were not enough for this game of hide-and-seek. She pulled a table across the Library door, so that if anybody tried to come out that way behind her back she should have notice of it; then she climbed out on to the loggia roof and leaned over the balcony. She could see nothing distinctly beneath her, but she pulled her torch from her pocket and signalled with it.

“Hullo!” said Miss Barton’s voice, cautiously, from below.

“The other door’s locked, and the key gone.”

“That’s awkward. If either of us goes, somebody may come out. And if we Yell for help there’ll be an uproar.”

“That’s about the size of it,” said Harriet.

“Well, listen; I’ll try and get in through one of the ground floor windows They all seem to be latched, but I might break a pane of glass.”

Harriet waited. Presently she heard a faint tinkle. Then there was a pause and presently the sound of a moving sash. There was a longer pause. Harriet came back into the Fiction Library and pulled the table away from the door In about six or seven minutes’ time she saw the door handle move and heard a tap on the other side of the oak. She stooped to the key-hole, and called “What’s up?” and bent her ear to listen. “Nobody here,” said Miss Barton’s voice on the other side. “Keys gone. And the most ghastly mess-up.”

“I’ll come round.”

She hurried back through the Hall and round to the front of the Library Here she found the window that Miss Barton had opened, climbed through and ran on up the stairs into the Library.

“Well!”, said Harriet.

The New Library was a handsome, lofty room, with six bays on the South side, lit by as many windows running nearly from the floor to the ceiling. On the North side, the wall was windowless, and shelved to a height of ten feet. Above this was a space of blank wall, along which it would be possible, at some future time, to run an extra gallery when the books should become too many for the existent shelving. This blank space had been adorned by Miss Burrows and her party with a series of engravings, such as every academic community possesses, representing the Parthenon, the Colosseum, Trajan’s Column and other topographical and classical subjects.

All the books in the room had been dragged out and flung on the floor, by the simple expedient of removing the shelves bodily. The pictures had been thrown down. And the blank wall space thus exposed had been adorned with a frieze of drawings, roughly executed in brown paint, and with inscriptions in letters a foot high, all of the most unseemly sort. A pair of library steps and a pot of paint with a wide brush in it stood triumphantly in the midst of the wreckage, to show how the transformation had been accomplished.

“That’s torn it,” said Harriet.

“Yes,” said Miss Barton. “A very nice reception for Lord Oakapple.” There was an odd note in her voice—almost of satisfaction. Harriet looked sharply at her.

“What are you going to do? What does one do? Go over the place with a magnifying glass? or send for the police?”

“Neither,” said Harriet. She considered for a moment.

“The first thing,” she said, “is to send for the Dean. The next is to find either the original keys or a spare set. The third, is to clean off these filthy inscriptions before anybody sees them. And the fourth is to get the room straight before twelve o’clock. There’s plenty of time. Will you be good enough to wake the Dean and bring her with you. In the meantime, I’ll have a look round for clues. We can discuss afterwards who did the job and how she got out. Please make haste.”

“H’m!” said the Fellow. “I like people who know their own minds.” She went with surprising promptness.

“Her dressing-gown is all over paint,” said Harriet aloud to herself, but she may have got it climbing in. She went downstairs and examined the open window. “Yes, here’s where she scrambled over the wet radiator. I expect I’m marked too. Yes, I am. Nothing to show whether it all came from there. Damp footmarks—hers and mine, no doubt. Wait a moment.”

She traced the damp marks up to the top of the stairs, where they grew faint and ceased. She could find no third set; but the footmarks of the intruder would probably have had time to dry. Whoever it was must have begun operations very soon after midnight at latest. The paint had splashed about a good deal; if it were possible to search the whole college for paint-stained clothing, well and good. But it would cause a terrific scandal. Miss Hudson—had she shown any marks of paint anywhere? Harriet thought not. She looked about her again, and realised unexpectedly that she had the lights full on, and that the curtains were drawn open. If anybody was looking across from one of the other buildings, the interior of the room would show up like a lighted stage. She snapped the lights off, and drew the curtains again carefully before putting them on again.

“Yes,” she said. “I see. That was the idea. The curtains were drawn while the job was done. Then the lights were turned off and the curtains opened. Then the artist escaped, leaving the doors locked. In the morning, everything would look quite ordinary from the outside. Who would have been the first to try and come in? An early scout, to do a final clean-round? She would find the door locked, think Miss Burrows had left it like that, and probably do nothing about it. Miss Burrows would probably have come up first. When? A little after Chapel, or a little before. She would not have been able to get in. Time would have been wasted hunting for the keys. When anybody did get in, it would have been too late to straighten things up. Everybody would have been about. The Chancellor—?”

Miss Burrows would have been the first to come up. She had also been the last to leave, and was the person who knew best where the paint pots had been put. Would she have wrecked her own job, any more than Miss Lydgate would have wrecked her own proofs? How far was that psychological premise sound? One would surely damage anything in the world, except one’s own work. But on the other hand, if one were cunning enough to see that people would think exactly that, then one would promptly take the precaution of seeing that one’s own work did suffer.

Harriet moved slowly about the Library. There was a big splash of paint on the parquet. And at the edge of it—oh, yes! it would be very useful to hunt the place over for paint-stained clothes. But here was evidence that the culprit had worn no slippers. Why should she have worn anything? The radiators on this floor were working at full blast, and a complete absence of clothing would be not merely politic out comfortable.

And how had the person got away? Neither Miss Hudson (if she was to be trusted) nor Harriet had met anyone on the way up. But there had been plenty of time for escape, after the lights were put out. A stealthy figure creeping away under the Hall archway could not have been seen from the far side of the Old Quad. Or, if it came to that, there might quite well have been somebody lurking in the Hall while Harriet and Miss Hudson were talking in the passage.

“I’ve mucked it a bit,” said Harriet. “I ought to have turned on the Hall lights to make sure.”

Miss Barton re-entered with the Dean, who took one look round and said “Mercy!” She looked like a stout little mandarin, with her long red pigtail and quilted blue dressing-gown sprawled over with green-and-scarlet dragons. “What idiots we were not to expect it. Of course, the obvious thing! If we’d only thought about it, Miss Burrows could have locked up before she went. And what do we do now?”

“My first reaction,” said Harriet, “is turpentine. And the second is Padgett.”

“My dear, you are perfectly right. Padgett will cope. He always does. Like charity, he never fails. What a mercy you people spotted what was going on. As soon as we get these disgusting inscriptions cleaned off, we can put on a coat of quick-drying distemper or something, or paper the wall over and—goodness! I don’t know where the turpentine will come from unless the painters have left a lot. It’ll need a young bath. But Padgett will manage.”

“I’ll run over and get him,” said Harriet “and at the same time I’ll collar Miss Burrows. We’ll have to get these books back into place. What’s the time? Five to four. I think it can be done all right. Will you hold the fort till I come back?”

“Yes. Oh, and you’ll find the main door open now. I had an extra key fortunately. A beautiful plated key—all ready for Lord Oakapple. But we’ll have to get a locksmith to the other door, unless the builders have a spare.”

The most remarkable thing about that remarkable morning was the imperturbability of Padgett. He answered Harriet’s summons attired in a handsome pair of striped pyjamas, and received her instructions with monumental stolidity.

“The Dean is sorry to say, Padgett, that somebody has been playing some very disagreeable tricks in the New Library.”

“Have they indeed, miss?”

“The whole place has been turned upside down, and some very vulgar words and pictures scrawled on the wall.”

“Very unfortunate, miss, that is.”

“In brown paint.”

“That’s awkward, miss.”