The Third Eye

Book 751: Murder Room

by Ethel Lina White

Genres: Mystery; Traditional Mysteries

Synopsis

Caroline Watts has accepted a post as games mistress at the prestigious Abbey School in the west of England. She is delighted with the appointment: it's an excellent private girls' school. No matter that she was introduced to the post through a tenuous network of family contacts. And that the previous games mistress was found dead in bed from heart failure. From the moment she arrives at the school, Caroline is beset by fear. But of what? How could a school, owned by two influential ladies and run by the formidable Mrs Nash, threaten harm to a new teacher, eager to start her first job? Rumour has it that her predecessor died of fright ...

Release date: March 14, 2015

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 240

Sample

FROM the first, Professor Freeman was reluctant to let his young sister-in-law—Caroline—accept the post of games mistress at the Abbey
School.

He rubbed his heel over his instep, scratched his cheek, bit his nails, and generally ran through the gamut of nervous mannerisms for which he scolded his two small sons. When the practical
sex—as represented by his wife and sister-in-law—pressed him for some logical objection, he was unable to justify his misgivings.

“It’s such a roundabout business,” he complained to his wife. “You broadcast the fact that our Beloved Fool”—he smiled affectionately at
Caroline—“wants a job, and some one who’s staying in Wiltshire goes to tea with some one who can put her in touch with some one who can offer her work.”

“But it’s a clinking school,” declared Caroline, who was studying the prospectus. “Look at the list of staff. They all have degrees.”

As the non-brilliant member of a family who appeared to acquire academic honours as easily as the average person solves a crossword puzzle, she had a reverence for alphabetical tags. But the
Professor merely wrinkled up his nose.

“If you’d coached as many thick-headed students as I have,” he said, “you’d give the credit—if any—to their unlucky tutors. And I fail to see the good
of it in these over-specialised days.”

“Don’t be reactionary,” remarked his wife, Lesley Freeman, M.A. “Tell us instead exactly what you have against the school.”

“Well, to begin with, it’s a private school,” grumbled the Professor. “I know from personal experience that these places can be hotbeds of jealousy and
scandal.”

“Don’t reason by analogy,” chimed in Caroline, eager to prove that even she possessed a vocabulary. “You don’t know how I yearn to earn my first salary. I shall
spend it going to Switzerland to the Winter Sports.”

“I suppose I can’t stop you. But there’s plenty of room for you here.”

Caroline avoided meeting her sister’s eye, for the flat had only two bedrooms. She herself had slept for eleven weeks on a short divan in the dining-room. As the period included a
heat-wave, and as she was tall and super-charged with energy, the experience had proved slightly trying.

“You’re angels,” she murmured. “But I must get a job.”

Lesley backed her up, for she was intelligent as well as clever. A genuine student, and more interested in text-books than facial charts, she knew she could not compete with Caroline’s
bloom at the breakfast-table. Seeing that he was beaten, the Professor gave in.

“You must first let me make some inquiries,” he stipulated. “I seem to recollect that Hawkins knows a man who has a daughter at the Abbey School.”

“You’re going to ask some one who knows some one,” jeered Caroline. “A bit roundabout. Stop quacking, Donald Duck. I’m going to find my most flattering photograph
to send to Mrs. Nash.”

“I feel worried about her,” declared the Professor when she had burst out of the room. “She’s such a babe.”

“Babe, my eye,” was the elegant retort of Lesley Freeman, M.A.

Checked in his lapse into sentiment, the Professor went to his club, where he ran his quarry to earth in the reading-room.

Mr. Hawkins, who was headmaster of a preparatory school, bore a character for scrupulous impartiality. Although no one else was present, he was obviously uneasy about conversation in a place
dedicated to silence.

“Yes,” he agreed, speaking in a whisper. “Major Buck has a daughter at the Abbey School. He told me recently that he was satisfied with her progress. She matriculated with
honours.”

“Good,” commented the Professor. “Then I take it he would recommend the school?”

Mr. Hawkins weighed the question.

“He is sending his younger daughter elsewhere,” he remarked.

“Any specific reason?”

“Nothing definite. Perhaps some dissatisfaction with the discipline. He made some vague mention about not approving of one woman having too much influence. That is positively all I can
tell you.”

Mr. Hawkins lapsed into inaudibility at the entrance of a member, and the Professor knew that the subject was closed.

When he returned to the flat his womenfolk held an inquest on his findings.

“Of course the high-handed woman is Mrs. Nash,” said Lesley. “Well—it’s her own school.”

“And the discipline wouldn’t affect me,” beamed Caroline. “It’s a luminous thought that at last I shall give discipline—not receive it.”

As the Professor continued to pull his chin his wife made a suggestion.

“Could you tackle the Major direct?”

“He’s abroad. Besides, it’s unnecessary, for the deduction is obvious. The school is evidently going down, but the Major thinks it will last his elder daughter’s
time.”

“Mine, too,” declared Caroline. “I only want a ref.”

But the Professor was far from satisfied.

“Before I give the Beloved Fool my blessing,” he said, “I must know two things. First—why the games mistress left only three weeks after the beginning of the term;
second—why Mrs. Nash didn’t apply to an agency, in the usual way, for her successor.”

“That can soon be settled,” his wife told him. “Mrs. Gloucester is expected home this afternoon. So we’ll go over there to-night after coffee.”

Mrs. Gloucester was the friend who had been the intermediary in Caroline’s interests—over afternoon tea drunk from pedigree china in a stately Wiltshire drawing-room. She was a
kind-hearted lady and possessed a talent for benevolent manipulation. In this special case she was beaming over her success when she greeted the Professor and his wife that evening.

“I do hope Caroline will get the post,” she said. “I spoke strongly in her favour. The personal recommendation counts for so much after an unlucky experience.”

“What unlucky experience?” asked the Professor, pouncing on the admission.

“Oh, the other poor games mistress. She was found dead in bed. Heart failure.”

While the Professor and his wife were expressing conventional horror, Mrs. Gloucester—unprompted—answered the second objection.

“But you know what rumour is. All sorts of ridiculous stories got about. So Mrs. Nash felt that if she applied to an agency after all the best mistresses were snapped up she’d be
landed with some odd-come-short. She preferred to get a temporary coach, and look around. Then a Miss Yaxley-Moore, who has an administrative post in the Abbey School, chanced to mention it in a
letter to her half-sister in Wiltshire. She spoke about it casually when we were calling on her. I saw my chance—and leaped for it. . . . Really, I think I ought to charge both sides a
commission.”

“But is Mrs. Nash prepared to consider Caroline, when she is such a roundabout acquisition?” queried the Professor, who was fishing for an opening.

“I stood Sponsor for her,” replied Mrs. Gloucester modestly. “That is one advantage of being in a book of reference.”

“And your hostess in Wiltshire—whose half-sister is at the school—is she also duly documented?” asked the Professor.

He felt that this lady—as the unknown factor—was the most important link in the chain, so he was really relieved by Mrs. Gloucester’s assurance.

“That goes without saying, or I should not have mentioned Caroline to her. Both she and her half-sister, Miss Yaxley-Moore, belong to those families that are older than the Peerage. She is
one of the most influential ladies in the district. Of course, I saw her in her own background—a beautiful period house which has been in her family for generations.”

She paused for a breath before she uttered the name which was loaded with such fateful significance for Caroline.

“Miss Bat, of Bat House.”

Unfortunately the girl was at home in the flat coaching her nephews in the gentle art of boxing, while to the Professor and his wife it was of secondary importance, since the main question had
been answered, and therefore not worthy of mention.

When they returned, Caroline listened to their report with unexpected gravity.

“Don’t you want to go?” asked the Professor hopefully.

“Of course,” she replied. “Only—I’ve thought and thought about getting a job. I’ve wished—I’ve even prayed. And now at last it comes,
through some one’s death. . . . It seems unlucky.”

Perhaps it was even more unlucky that the Professor had not the gift of clair-audience, and so was unable to hear Mrs. Gloucester’s remark to her husband that night.

“I felt so sorry for the poor dear Professor having his sister-in-law wished on him for so long that I was furious with myself for blurting out about the rumours connected with the other
games mistress’s death. Luckily, her sister took no notice, and the Professor was far too wise to raise any question.”

“What were the rumours?” asked her husband sleepily.

“Oh, the usual hugh-hush affair. The doctor had been attending her for heart-strain, so he was able to write a certificate. . . . But the story got about that she had been frightened to
death.”

EVERY ONE knew that Caroline was desperately eager to get a job; but no one knew that she nearly turned back at the gates of the Abbey School.

She always regarded herself as the family failure because of her inability to pass examinations. When her mother’s death disclosed a financial crisis and her relatives had no option but to
capitalise her skill at games, she writhed in secret humiliation. Her brother-in-law’s enforced hospitality was another thorn in her flesh, since she was quite unaware of his admiration
for his Beloved Fool.

He grew quite dejected in anticipation of her loss, for there was a clear daylight quality about her nature which appealed to him as much as the charm of youth and her vivid attractive face. But
he was also worried about her character, for her own sake.

Impulsive, warm-hearted and imprudent, she also possessed unusually rigid principles harnessed to an incapacity to accept compromise which he feared might send her crashing into disaster.

He tried to put her on her guard when they were having tea together in a dark, smoky café before she caught the local bus out to the Abbey School. Against her wish, he had insisted on
coming with her to Plume—the old west-country cathedral town which was as far as she could travel by rail; but, now that their parting was near, she was only too glad of his company.

“I don’t wish to quack,” he told her, “but there is something I must say. It’s this: Keep clear of every one your first term. Don’t make friends—and,
above all, don’t make enemies. Steer clear of any quarrel. Don’t be curious about other people’s business, or you may find yourself drawn into an intrigue which will spin you
round like the drum which shuffles the counterfoils in the Irish Sweep, and land you up somewhere where you least want to be.”

“I promise,” said Caroline soberly.

They were the sole patrons of the tea-room, and she was vaguely depressed by the drizzling rain on the window-panes and the empty clutter of chairs. As though he read her thoughts, the Professor
tried to tempt her.

“Still time to change your mind,” he said. “Come back to London with me.”

“Quack, quack,” she murmured mechanically as she looked at her watch. “It’s time to go, darling Donald Duck.”

She felt an actual pang, after she had climbed into the bus, to see him standing below her on the pavement.

“Shall I promise not to change my shirt until you come back?” he asked.

“No—promise not to change your tailor.”

Pleased with the compliment to his new suit, the Professor grinned bashfully; but his smile faded as the bus began to move.

Her face, too, was serious as she rolled through dingy utilitarian quarters of the ancient town, which smelt of petrol—over a stagnant green river—past the last villa—and then
out into the twilit country, where owls hooted dismally in the woods and the white scuts of rabbits were dimly visible as they scampered amid clumps of bracken.

Her luggage had been sent out by the local carrier, so that the driver was able to drop her almost outside the gates of the school. As she covered the short distance to the lodge, something
happened which filled her with horror.

As a rule she walked quickly, with her head erect and looking before her, as though she saw some one she loved standing at the end of a long, straight road. This special characteristic was to
prove of vital importance at a future crisis of her life, but it was absent that night.

While she moved slowly and unwillingly, dragging her feet and with her eyes fixed upon the road, a dark object writhed across her path and disappeared into the long grass which bordered the
ditch.

“A snake—and I nearly trod on it,” she shuddered.

She was so unnerved by the incident that she was almost on the point of waiting for the first bus back to Plume, lest it should prove an omen of ill-fortune. But while she waited in the greenish
gloom, common sense prevailed, reminding her that the reptile was probably but a harmless grass-snake and prodding her through the lodge gates and up the drive.

The Abbey was now represented only by a pile of ruins in the grounds, while the house was one of the stately homes of England, whose owner could afford the cost of its maintenance no longer. It
was a huge biscuit-stucco erection, with a pillared portico and a double flight of stone steps leading up to an imposing entrance.

Caroline had to wait some time before her ring was answered. She stood forlornly gazing at beds of water-logged dahlias and dripping laurels until the door was opened by a pleasant-faced young
manservant in a striped linen coat.

“I’m Miss Watts,” she told him. “Mrs. Nash is expecting me.”

As she spoke, she got the uneasy impression of the birth of a smile behind the man’s eyes.

“This way, please,” he said.

He conducted her across a vast hall with a slippery parquet floor and into an immense drawing-room. It was a handsome apartment, but faintly suggestive of board meetings—for although most
of the family furniture had been bought with the house, the place had already acquired an institutional air.

“If you will take a seat I’ll tell Miss Melody you are here,” offered the man.

“No,” corrected Caroline firmly. “I wish to see Mrs. Nash.”

She could not tell whether she were supersensitive, but again she had the uncomfortable suspicion that the man was suppressing some secret amusement.

“Mrs. Nash is never disturbed in the evening,” he said. “I’ll send Miss Melody.”

Feeling chilled by her reception, Caroline sat waiting until a little elderly woman bustled into the room with the air of having just caught a train. She had a small frost-bitten face, wispy
grey hair and sunken brown eyes, under a straight fringe. Somehow she reminded Caroline of an irritable old dog who would snap at strangers, yet be faithful to its owner till the last whistle.

She shook hands in a nervous manner, and spoke abruptly, without looking at Caroline.

“As it is so late, I expect you would like to have your meal at once and then go straight to your room.”

While Caroline tried to assure her of her success as a mind-reader, Miss Melody bustled her into the dining-room, which was blazing with electric clusters, as though lit for a banquet. It was
also large and handsomely furnished, but it had a vaguely stripped appearance, due to unfaded crimson patches on the olive-brown wall, where family portraits had formerly hung.

One place was laid in the middle of a long, bare table. Miss Melody led Caroline towards it, only stopping at the door to switch off all the lights, with the exception of a single pendant.

“When you’ve finished,” she said, “ring for Parker, and he will show you to your bedroom.”

Stranded in the midst of a vast gloom, Caroline did not enjoy her first meal, which consisted of cold meat and salad for her first course, and tinned apricots and custard for the sweet.

When she had rung the bell, the manservant—Parker—appeared after a long interval. Their footsteps alone breaking the silence, she followed him up a wide branching staircase to a
gallery—now denuded of its portraits—through a door at one end, and along the corridor of the east wing.

As she was sleeping at its extreme limit, he led her through a confusion of narrow passages, with uneven boards, to her room, which was small and reminded her of a single apartment in a popular
hotel. Every inch of space was utilised to make room for the fumed-oak suite. There was a brown and buff Wilton carpet, beige casement-cloth curtains, and sheets of glass over the table and
toilet-chest. All the surfaces were sticky with moisture, while the air held the smell of damp fabric.

She was looking around her with a forlorn expression when Miss Melody bustled in with a coffee-tray.

“I thought you would like a hot drink,” she said nervously. “May I have a cup with you. Do you smoke?”

She opened her cigarette-case and began to pour out coffee with shaky haste. As she inhaled her first mouthful of smoke, Caroline’s spirits began to rise.

“It’s frightfully decent of you,” she said. “I feel normal again. But I wish I could see Mrs. Nash and be formally approved. You see, I didn’t have a personal
interview.”

Miss Melody bit her cigarette as though she wanted to hurt it.

“You’ve nothing to worry about,” she said. “You’re young—and you haven’t reached a vulnerable salary-point.”

“But where is Mrs. Nash?”

Miss Melody crossed the room and pointed to a large lighted window in the opposite wing. It was curtained with some light silk which glowed whitely, giving the effect of transparency.

“That is Mrs. Nash’s private suite,” she told Caroline. “She is with Miss Yaxley-Moore. So she must not be disturbed.”

The peculiar note in her voice corresponded wit. . .