Cat Among the Pigeons - Agatha Christie [26]
But do I want that? thought Miss Bulstrode to herself as Ann went out. Carry on where I leave off? That’s just what Eleanor will do! No new experiments, nothing revolutionary. That wasn’t the way I made Meadowbank what it is. I took chances. I upset lots of people. I bullied and cajoled, and refused to follow the pattern of other schools. Isn’t that what I want to follow on here now? Someone to pour new life into the school. Some dynamic personality … like—yes—Eileen Rich.
But Eileen wasn’t old enough, hadn’t enough experience. She was stimulating, though, she could teach. She had ideas. She would never be dull—Nonsense, she must get that word out of her mind. Eleanor Vansittart was not dull….
She looked up as Miss Chadwick came in.
“Oh, Chaddy,” she said. “I am pleased to see you!”
Miss Chadwick looked a little surprised.
“Why? Is anything the matter?”
“I’m the matter. I don’t know my own mind.”
“That’s very unlike you, Honoria.”
“Yes, isn’t it? How’s the term going, Chaddy?”
“Quite all right, I think.” Miss Chadwick sounded a little unsure.
Miss Bulstrode pounced.
“Now then. Don’t hedge. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Really, Honoria, nothing at all. It’s just—” Miss Chadwick wrinkled up her forehead and looked rather like a perplexed Boxer dog—“Oh, a feeling. But really it’s nothing that I can put a finger on. The new girls seem a pleasant lot. I don’t care for Mademoiselle Blanche very much. But then I didn’t like Geneviève Depuy, either. Sly.”
Miss Bulstrode did not pay very much attention to this criticism. Chaddy always accused the French mistresses of being sly.
“She’s not a good teacher,” said Miss Bulstrode. “Surprising really. Her testimonials were so good.”
“The French never can teach. No discipline,” said Miss Chadwick. “And really Miss Springer is a little too much of a good thing! Leaps about so. Springer by nature as well as by name….”
“She’s good at her job.”
“Oh yes, first class.”
“New staff is always upsetting,” said Miss Bulstrode.
“Yes,” agreed Miss Chadwick eagerly. “I’m sure it’s nothing more than that. By the way, that new gardener is quite young. So unusual nowadays. No gardeners seem to be young. A pity he’s so good-looking. We shall have to keep a sharp eye open.”
The two ladies nodded their heads in agreement. They knew, none better, the havoc caused by a good-looking young man to the hearts of adolescent girls.
Seven
STRAWS IN THE WIND
I
“Not too bad, boy,” said old Briggs grudgingly, “not too bad.”
He was expressing approval of his new assistant’s performance in digging a strip of ground. It wouldn’t do, thought Briggs, to let the young fellow get above himself.
“Mind you,” he went on, “you don’t want to rush at things. Take it steady, that’s what I say. Steady is what does it.”
The young man understood that his performance had compared rather too favourably with Briggs’s own tempo of work.
“Now, along this here,” continued Briggs, “we’ll put some nice asters out. She don’t like asters—but I pay no attention. Females has their whims, but if you don’t pay no attention, ten to one they never notice. Though I will say She is the noticing kind on the whole. You’d think she ’ad enough to bother her head about, running a place like this.”
Adam understood that “She” who figured so largely in Briggs’s conversation referred to Miss Bulstrode.
“And who was it I saw you talking to just now?” went on Briggs suspiciously, “when you went along to the potting shed for them bamboos?”
“Oh, that was just one of the young ladies,” said Adam.
“Ah. One of them two Eye-ties, wasn’t it? Now you be careful, my boy. Don’t you get mixed up with no Eye-ties, I know what I’m talkin’ about. I knew Eye-ties, I did, in the first war and if I’d known then what I know now I’d have been more careful. See?”
“Wasn’t no harm in it,” said Adam, putting on a sulky manner. “Just passed the time of day with me, she did, and asked the names of one or two things.”
“Ah,” said Briggs, “but you be careful. It’s not your place to talk to any of the young ladies.