I
“I want to talk to you, Eileen,” said Miss Bulstrode.
Eileen Rich followed Miss Bulstrode into the latter’s sitting room. Meadowbank was strangely quiet. About twenty-five pupils were still there. Pupils whose parents had found it either difficult or unwelcome to fetch them.
The panic-stricken rush had, as Miss Bulstrode had hoped, been checked by her own tactics. There was a general feeling that by next term everything would have been cleared up. It was much wiser of Miss Bulstrode, they felt, to close the school.
None of the staff had left. Miss Johnson fretted with too much time on her hands. A day in which there was too little to do did not in the least suit her. Miss Chadwick, looking old and miserable, wandered round in a kind of coma of misery. She was far harder hit to all appearance than Miss Bulstrode. Miss Bulstrode, indeed, managed apparently without difficulty to be completely herself, unperturbed, and with no sign of strain or collapse. The two younger mistresses were not averse to the extra leisure. They bathed in the swimming pool, wrote long letters to friends and relations and sent for cruise literature to study and compare. Ann Shapland had a good deal of time on her hands and did not appear to resent the fact. She spent a good deal of that time in the garden and devoted herself to gardening with quite unexpected efficiency. That she preferred to be instructed in the work by Adam rather than by old Briggs was perhaps a not unnatural phenomenon.
“Yes, Miss Bulstrode?” said Eileen Rich.
“I’ve been wanting to talk to you,” said Miss Bulstrode. “Whether this school can continue or not I do not know. What people will feel is always fairly incalculable because they will all feel differently. But the result will be that whoever feels most strongly will end by converting all the rest. So either Meadowbank is finished—”
“No,” said Eileen Rich, interrupting, “not finished.” She almost stamped her foot and her hair immediately began coming down. “You mustn’t let it be stopped,” she said. “It would be a sin—a crime.”
“You speak very strongly,” said Miss Bulstrode.
“I feel strongly. There are so many things that really don’t seem worthwhile a bit, but Meadowbank does seem worthwhile. It seemed worthwhile to me the first moment I came here.”
“You’re a fighter,” said Miss Bulstrode. “I like fighters, and I assure you that I don’t intend to give in tamely. In a way I’m going to enjoy the fight. You know, when everything’s too easy and things go too well one gets—I don’t know the exact word I mean—complacent? Bored? A kind of hybrid of the two. But I’m not bored now and I’m not complacent and I’m going to fight with every ounce of strength I’ve got, and with every penny I’ve got, too. Now what I want to say to you is this: If Meadowbank continues, will you come in on a partnership basis?”
“Me?” Eileen Rich stared at her. “Me?”
“Yes, my dear,” said Miss Bulstrode. “You.”
“I couldn’t,” said Eileen Rich. “I don’t know enough. I’m too young. Why, I haven’t got the experience, the knowledge that you’d want.”
“You must leave it to me to know what I want,” said Miss Bulstrode. “Mind you, this isn’t, at the present moment of talking, a good offer. You’d probably do better for yourself elsewhere. But I want to tell you this, and you’ve got to believe me. I had already decided before Miss Vansittart’s unfortunate death, that you were the person I wanted to carry on this school.”
“You thought so then?” Eileen Rich stared at her. “But I thought—we all thought—that Miss Vansittart….”
“There was no arrangement made with Miss Vansittart,” said Miss Bulstrode. “I had her in mind, I will confess. I’ve had her in mind for the last two years. But something’s always held me back from saying anything definite to her about it. I daresay everyone assumed that she’d be my successor. She may have thought so herself. I myself thought so until very recently. And then I decided that she was not what I wanted.”
“But she was so suitable in every way,” said Eileen Rich. “She would have carried out things in exactly your ways, in exactly your ideas.”
“Yes,” said Miss Bulstrode, “and that’s just what would have been wrong. You can’t hold on to the past. A certain amount of tradition is good but never too much. A school is for the children of today. It’s not for the children of fifty years ago or even of thirty years ago. There are some schools in which tradition is more important than others, but Meadowbank is not one of those. It’s not a school with a long tradition behind it. It’s a creation, if I may say it, of one woman. Myself. I’ve tried certain ideas and carried them out to the best of my ability, though occasionally I’ve had to modify them when they haven’t produced the results I’d expected. It’s not been a conventional school, but it has not prided itself on being an unconventional school either. It’s a school that tries to make the best of both worlds: the past and the future, but the real stress is on the present. That’s how it’s going to go on, how it ought to go on. Run by someone with ideas—ideas of the present day. Keeping what is wise from the past, looking forward towards the future. You’re very much the age I was when I started here but you’ve got what I no longer can have. You’ll find it written in the Bible. Their old men dream dreams and their young men have visions. We don’t need dreams here, we need vision. I believe you to have vision and that’s why I decided that you were the person and not Eleanor Vansittart.”
“It would have been wonderful,” said Eileen Rich. “Wonderful. The thing I should have liked above all.”
Miss Bulstrode was faintly surprised by the tense, although she did not show it. Instead she agreed promptly.
“Yes,” she said, “it would have been wonderful. But it isn’t wonderful now? Well, I suppose I understand that.”
“No, no, I don’t mean that at all,” said Eileen Rich. “Not at all. I—I can’t go into details very well, but if you had—if you had asked me, spoken to me like this a week or a fortnight ago, I should have said at once that I couldn’t, that it would have been quite impossible. The only reason why it—why it might be possible now is because—well, because it is a case of fighting—of taking on things. May I—may I think it over, Miss Bulstrode? I don’t know what to say now.”
“Of course,” said Miss Bulstrode. She was still surprised. One never really knew, she thought, about anybody.
II
“There goes Rich with her hair coming down again,” said Ann Shapland as she straightened herself up from a flower bed. “If she can’t control it I can’t think why she doesn’t get it cut off. She’s got a good-shaped head and she would look better.”
“You ought to tell her so,” said Adam.
“We’re not on those terms,” said Ann Shapland. She went on, “D’you think this place will be able to carry on?”
“That’s a very doubtful question,” said Adam, “and who am I to judge?”
“You could tell as well as another I should think,” said Ann Shapland. “It might, you know. The old Bull, as the girls call her, has got what it takes. A hypnotizing effect on parents to begin with. How long is it since the beginning of term—only a month? It seems like a year. I shall be glad when it comes to an end.”
“Will you come back if the school goes on?”
“No,” said Ann with emphasis, “no indeed. I’ve had enough of schools to last me for a lifetime. I’m not cut out for being cooped up with a lot of women anyway. And, frankly, I don’t like murder. It’s the sort of thing that’s fun to read about in the paper or to read yourself to sleep with in the way of a nice book. But the real thing isn’t so good. I think,” added Ann thoughtfully, “that when I leave here at the end of the term I shall marry Dennis and settle down.”
“Dennis?” said Adam. “That’s the one you mentioned to me, wasn’t it? As far as I remember his work takes him to Burma and Malaya and Singapore and Japan and places like that. It won’t be exactly settling down, will it, if you marry him?”
Ann laughed suddenly. “No, no, I suppose it won’t. Not in the physical, geographical sense.”
“I think you can do better than Dennis,” said Adam.
“Are you making me an offer?” said Ann.
“Certainly not,” said Adam. “You’re an ambitious girl, you wouldn’t like to marry a humble jobbing gardener.”
“I was wondering about marrying into the C.I.D.,” said Ann.
“I’m not in the C.I.D.,” said Adam.
“No, no, of course not,” said Ann. “Let’s preserve the niceties of speech. You’re not in the C.I.D. Shaista wasn’t kidnapped, everything in the garden’s lovely. It is rather,” she added, looking round. “All the same,” she said after a moment or two, “I don’t understand in the least about Shaista turning up in Geneva or whatever the story is. How did she get there? All you people must be very slack to allow her to be taken out of this country.”
“My lips are sealed,” said Adam.
“I don’t think you know the first thing about it,” said Ann.
“I will admit,” said Adam, “that we have to thank Monsieur Hercule Poirot for having had a bright idea.”
“What, the funny little man who brought Julia back and came to see Miss Bulstrode?”
“Yes. He calls himself,” said Adam, “a consultant detective.”
“I think he’s pretty much of a has-been,” said Ann.
“I don’t understand what he’s up to at all,” said Adam. “He even went to see my mother—or some friend of his did.”
“Your mother?” said Ann. “Why?”
“I’ve no idea. He seems to have a kind of morbid interest in mothers. He went to see Jennifer’s mother too.”
“Did he go and see Miss Rich’s mother, and Chaddy’s?”
“I gather Miss Rich hasn’t got a mother,” said Adam. “Otherwise, no doubt, he would have gone to see her.”
“Miss Chadwick’s got a mother in Cheltenham, she told me,” said Ann, “but she’s about eighty-odd, I believe. Poor Miss Chadwick, she looks about eighty herself. She’s coming to talk to us now.”
Adam looked up. “Yes,” he said, “she’s aged a lot in the last week.”
“Because she really loves the school,” said Ann. “It’s her whole life. She can’t bear to see it go downhill.”
Miss Chadwick indeed looked ten years older than she had done on the day of the opening term. Her step had lost its brisk efficiency. She no longer trotted about, happy and bustling. She came up to them now, her steps dragging a little.
“Will you please come to Miss Bulstrode,” she said to Adam. “She has some instruction about the garden.”
“I’ll have to clean up a bit first,” said Adam. He laid down his tools and moved off in the direction of the potting shed.
Ann and Miss Chadwick walked together towards the house.
“It does seem quiet, doesn’t it,” said Ann, looking round. “Like an empty house at the theatre,” she added thoughtfully, “with people spaced out by the box office as tactfully as possible to make them look like an audience.”
“It’s dreadful,” said Miss Chadwick, “dreadful! Dreadful to think that Meadowbank has come to this. I can’t get over it. I can’t sleep at night. Everything in ruins. All the years of work, of building up something really fine.”
“It may get all right again,” said Ann cheerfully. “People have got very short memories, you know.”
“Not as short as all that,” said Miss Chadwick grimly.
Ann did not answer. In her heart she rather agreed with Miss Chadwick.
III
Mademoiselle Blanche came out of the classroom where she had been teaching French literature.
She glanced at her watch. Yes, there would be plenty of time for what she intended to do. With so few pupils there was always plenty of time these days.
She went upstairs to her room and put on her hat. She was not one of those who went about hatless. She studied her appearance in the mirror with satisfaction. Not a personality to be noticed! Well, there could be advantages in that! She smiled to herself. It had made it easy for her to use her sister’s testimonials. Even the passport photograph had gone unchallenged. It would have been a thousand pities to waste those excellent credentials when Angèle had died. Angèle had really enjoyed teaching. For herself, it was unutterable boredom. But the pay was excellent. Far above what she herself had ever been able to earn. And besides, things had turned out unbelievably well. The future was going to be very different. Oh yes, very different. The drab Mademoiselle Blanche would be transformed. She saw it all in her mind’s eye. The Riviera. Herself smartly dressed, suitably made-up. All one needed in this world was money. Oh yes, things were going to be very pleasant indeed. It was worth having come to this detestable English school.
She picked up her handbag, went out of her room and along the corridor. Her eyes dropped to the kneeling woman who was busy there. A new daily help. A police spy, of course. How simple they were—to think that one would not know!
A contemptuous smile on her lips, she went out of the house and down the drive to the front gate. The bus stop was almost opposite. She stood at it, waiting. The bus should be here in a moment or two.
There were very few people about in this quiet country road. A car, with a man bending over the open bonnet. A bicycle leaning against a hedge. A man also waiting for the bus.
One or other of the three would, no doubt, follow her. It would be skilfully done, not obviously. She was quite alive to the fact, and it did not worry her. Her “shadow” was welcome to see where she went and what she did.
The bus came. She got in. A quarter of an hour later, she got out in the main square of the town. She did not trouble to look behind her. She crossed to where the shop windows of a fairly large departmental store showed their display of new model gowns. Poor stuff, for provincial tastes, she thought, with a curling lip. But she stood looking at them as though much attracted.
Presently she went inside, made one or two trivial purchases, then went up to the first floor and entered the Ladies Rest Room. There was a writing table there, some easy chairs, and a telephone box. She went into the box, put the necessary coins in, dialled the number she wanted, waiting to hear if the right voice answered.
She nodded in approval, pressed button A and spoke.
“This is the Maison Blanche. You understand me, the Maison Blanche? I have to speak of an account that is owed. You have until tomorrow evening. Tomorrow evening. To pay into the account of the Maison Blanche at the Credit Nationale in London, Ledbury St. branch the sum that I tell you.”
She named the sum.
“If that money is not paid in, then it will be necessary for me to report in the proper quarters what I observed on the night of the 12th. The reference—pay—attention—is to Miss Springer. You have a little over twenty-four hours.”
She hung up and emerged into the rest room. A woman had just come in from outside. Another customer of the shop, perhaps, or again perhaps not. But if the latter, it was too late for anything to be overheard.
Mademoiselle Blanche freshened herself up in the adjoining cloak room, then she went and tried on a couple of blouses, but did not buy them; she went out into the street again, smiling to herself. She looked into a bookshop, and then caught a bus back to Meadowbank.
She was still smiling to herself as she walked up the drive. She had arranged matters very well. The sum she had demanded had not been too large—not impossible to raise at short notice. And it would do very well to go on with. Because, of course, in the future, there would be further demands….
Yes, a very pretty little source of income this was going to be. She had no qualms of conscience. She did not consider it in any way her duty to report what she knew and had seen to the police. That Springer had been a detestable woman, rude, mal élevée. Prying into what was no business of hers. Ah, well, she had got her deserts.
Mademoiselle Blanche stayed for a while by the swimming pool. She watched Eileen Rich diving. Then Ann Shapland, too, climbed up and dived—very well, too. There was laughing and squeals from the girls.
A bell rang, and Mademoiselle Blanche went in to take her junior class. They were inattentive and tiresome, but Mademoiselle Blanche hardly noticed. She would soon have done with teaching forever.
She went up to her room to tidy herself for supper. Vaguely, without really noticing, she saw that, contrary to her usual practice, she had thrown her garden coat across a chair in the corner instead of hanging it up as usual.
She leaned forward, studying her face in the glass. She applied powder, lipstick—
The movement was so quick that it took her completely by surprise. Noiseless! Professional. The coat on the chair seemed to gather itself together, drop to the ground and in an instant behind Mademoiselle Blanche a hand with a sandbag rose and, as she opened her lips to scream, fell, dully, on the back of her neck.
[Cat Among the Pigeons -Agatha Christie] Twenty-one Gathering Threads