The Murdered Schoolgirl: A Classic Crime Novel. John Russell Fearn
not an ordinary schoolgirl. Not by any means! Manner, figure, deportment—they are all against it.… Most extraordinary! Most!”
CHAPTER THREE
For three days of the week’s confinement to college Frances Hasleigh made no effort to break the sentence. She had become entirely reserved and spoke only when spoken to, except for occasional outbursts of icy invective against Vera Randal, who never lost an opportunity to remind Frances of her infraction—being careful, however, not to go too far. She remembered the heavy fall on her back in the solarium.
Then, on the night of the third day, Joan Dawson awoke abruptly about one in the morning to find the girl fully dressed and gliding towards the biggest window at the far end of the dormitory.
“Frances!” she called softly. “Where are you going?”
“A walk,” came the laconic answer. “Stick up for me if anybody finds I’ve gone. I’ve left a bolster—”
Then, silently, the window opened and a dim figure was visible for a moment sliding on to the stone balcony outside. Obviously Frances was using the big drainpipe method of exit this time.
Joan peered through the window. Her bed was right against the centre window and without any effort she could see across the quadrangle to the big bulk of the School House. There was a moon getting up, and by its murky silver light she presently saw Frances’s figure move swiftly across the open space below into the shadows—then she lost sight of her.
Joan gave a start as the light at Vera Randal’s end of the dormitory suddenly gushed into being. She was sitting up in bed with her big freckled face shining with triumph.
“Put that light out!” Joan cried. “The curtains aren’t drawn! Blackout—”
Since Vera took no notice Joan hopped out of bed and covered the windows quickly. By this time the whole dormitory seemed to be awake.
“I heard what she said!” Vera cried. “Off again, is she? Well this time it will finish her! I’ll get her kicked out of the school for this! Throw me about the solarium, will she!”
“Shut up!” hissed Molly Webster, one of her study mates. “You’ll be having Tanny here in a minute!”
“Let her come!” Vera snapped. “If she doesn’t, I’m going to her.”
Vera got decisively out of bed, put on slippers and a dressing gown. She headed towards the door, but before she reached it Joan and Beryl Mather had caught her arms tightly.
“Wait a minute, Vera!” Joan insisted. “If you keep on running to Tanny with stories, you’re liable to get yourself labelled as a sneak, and you know what that will mean. You just won’t be head girl any longer!”
Vera hesitated, looking across at Molly.
“We can settle this between ourselves,” Molly said. “Anyway, Frances didn’t get expelled last time, so she probably won’t this. I think she’s one of Black’s favourites—”
“That isn’t true!” Joan said hotly. “And since it seems to get on all your nerves, why don’t you have it out with her personally when she comes back? That’s only right!”
“Listen to little Joan standing up for wayward little Frances,” Vera sneered. “It makes me sick! You and Tiny there and Frances are as thick as thieves. Why don’t you share your joys and sorrows with us? And another thing, Joan, when are you going to share that parcel you got this morning?”
“I can’t share it,” Joan retorted. “It was a pair of stockings and I’m sticking to it!”
“One day,” Vera mused, her eyes narrowing, “I’m going to take you apart, Joan! But first I’ll deal with Frances! Just wait until she gets back!”
She put the light out again, drew the curtains away from the windows once more, then back to bed to wait. The example set the other girls did likewise.
It was nearly an hour later before Frances reappeared at the big window and opened it silently. Just as carefully she closed it and began to glide across to her bed; then there was stealthy movement in the dark, and she found herself surrounded with torch-beams playing on her face.
“Well, Miss Gadabout, what this time?” Vera demanded. “Been out with your precious science master again? He’s still in the village, you know, even if he has quit the school. I saw him this afternoon when I went shopping.”
“Is it any business of yours where I’ve been?” Frances asked, in that quiet, insolent voice she had.
“As head girl of this class, it definitely is! I’d have reported it to Miss Tanby right away but for—my sense of honour.… And don’t smile like that, either! You can’t keep on breaking rules when it is my job to see that they’re kept!”
“I’m afraid you take an awful lot on your shoulders,” Frances said coolly, taking off her overcoat and returning it to her locker. “And don’t keep flashing that beam in my face, please. Or are you playing at gangsters?”
“That’s it!” Vera whispered. “Give me one chance and I’ll break your neck one day, Frances—believe me!”
Frances sat on the side of her bed and began to undress leisurely. The torches had been extinguished now, but she could see the girls hovering over her in the moonlight.
“You’re all very tiresome,” she sighed. “If I feel like going out for a walk in the moonlight, I’ll go! Anyway, Vera, a girl with a cloddish mind like yours can’t be expected to feel as I do. My father is a traveller and a soldier, remember. I get the wanderlust from him.”
“You’re not going to call me a clod and get away with it!” Vera snapped.
“Oh, why don’t you leave her alone?” growled Cynthia Vane, her other study mate. “I don’t like her either, but why do we have to lose our sleep just because of that? If she wants to creep about, let her!”
“Anyway,” Molly Webster said, “one would think you’d never broken a rule in your life, Vera! I’ve been here long enough to know that you’ve broken every rule in the book in order to be top girl. Let’s get back to bed—”
Vera hesitated, then with memories of her fall in the solarium at the back of her mind, she relaxed and nodded slowly.
“All right, we’ll go back to sleep. Otherwise there will be some questions asked if we’re tired in class tomorrow. But I’m not finished with you yet, Frances Hasleigh! I know what you want—to be in my place. And that issue’s got to be decided! Before I’m finished with you, you’ll be on your knees begging for mercy!”
Frances did not answer. Undressed by now, she climbed into bed, drew the covers over her and remained silent. Grim-faced, Vera plodded back to bed. The group broke up and retired again.
After her one infraction Frances did not break the rules again during the rest of her week’s punishment—but whether it was because she was uncertain of what Vera Randal might do was not entirely clear. She said so little, even to her two study mates, and by now they had become her bosom friends. They both gave every impression of liking her really, despite her rather queer temperament.
The only thrill the girls got as the week ended and Frances found herself free again—on probation anyway—was the arrival of a new science master, by the name of Clive Whittaker. All hopes of a young man rather less dull than Robert Lever were realised when into the classroom to take biology there walked one afternoon a man of perhaps twenty-eight, tall and stooping, clean-shaven, with black wavy hair and a rather pale face. Somehow he looked delicate, or else it was an impression conveyed by his bent shoulders.
But he knew his job, as the girls soon found out—and to their delight he treated them, in every Form, with an easy courtesy calculated to get the best out of their studies. There was none of the dull recital of facts that had made Robert Lever so outstandingly uninteresting.
For